Episode 22

full
Published on:

14th Mar 2023

Adam Coffey | Building Empires- Journey to a Billion-Dollar Successful Business with a Strong Culture

In this podcast, Adam Coffey discusses the importance of culture in business and how it directly affects revenue. Adam, a seasoned CEO, believes that revenue can't be managed from the top down and instead, culture must be built from the ground up. He focuses on creating a strong culture to increase employee engagement and improve customer service, leading to increased revenue. Adam believes that transparency and education are key components to building a strong culture. He concludes the show with sound advice for any business owner looking to sell their company and retire.

You can connect with Adam on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamecoffey/

You can purchase his books on Amazon:

https://a.co/d/6Z154V4

Mentioned in this episode:

1on1 App Information

https://www.thinkmovethrive.com/1on1-app/

Transcript
Dallas Burnett:

Hey, everybody.

Dallas Burnett:

We're talking to Adam Coffee today.

Dallas Burnett:

What an amazing guy.

Dallas Burnett:

He's a best selling author, A speaker, c e o has some incredible stories

Dallas Burnett:

about leadership and growing companies.

Dallas Burnett:

He's a great new friend of mine.

Dallas Burnett:

You don't wanna miss this incredible conversation.

Dallas Burnett:

Welcome, welcome, welcome to the last 10%.

Dallas Burnett:

I am Dallas Burnett, sitting in my 1905 Koch Brothers

Dallas Burnett:

barber chair in Thrive Studios.

Dallas Burnett:

But more importantly, we have the man, the myth, the legend, Mr.

Dallas Burnett:

Adam Coffee with us today.

Dallas Burnett:

Thank you for being on the show today.

Dallas Burnett:

Mr.

Dallas Burnett:

Coffee.

Adam Coffey:

Dallas, it is good to be here.

Adam Coffey:

Hello to all your listeners.

Adam Coffey:

I'm ready to get it going.

Adam Coffey:

Let's

Adam Coffey:

do

Dallas Burnett:

Let's do this.

Dallas Burnett:

So that sounds like a man who has just come off of an empire building

Dallas Burnett:

summit, that you have had people from all over the world come in

Dallas Burnett:

and you've been teaching them.

Dallas Burnett:

You said you're teaching them how to go from zero to a billion.

Dallas Burnett:

Tell us about what you've just been into in doing this past week.

Adam Coffey:

I, I gotta tell you, it was, it was actually the brainchild of

Adam Coffey:

JT Fox who, who has this global network.

Adam Coffey:

And, if Adam Coy wants to do a seminar, you might get four people show up.

Adam Coffey:

If, if JT Fox wants to put on a seminar, you're gonna get

Adam Coffey:

hundreds of people showing up.

Adam Coffey:

So we literally, we had 300 plus people from around the globe come into

Adam Coffey:

Dallas, Texas for a two day event.

Adam Coffey:

It was a 250 page seminar workbook.

Adam Coffey:

We called it Empire Builder.

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And I had people coming in from Indonesia and from Australia, blew

Adam Coffey:

me away that, that people would spend 20 hours on an airplane to come

Adam Coffey:

hear me drone on for a couple days.

Adam Coffey:

My, my wife was saying, hell, I listen to you drone on every day for free.

Adam Coffey:

And, uh, I don't know that I'd come from across the globe and pay you money.

Adam Coffey:

But what we did, we broke it down.

Adam Coffey:

over my career, I've had the pleasure and privilege to

Adam Coffey:

build three different empires.

Adam Coffey:

and these were big companies and they started small, they got big.

Adam Coffey:

So I have a toolkit I've developed across 30 years, of senior executive leadership.

Adam Coffey:

10 years at ge, 21 years as a C E O.

Adam Coffey:

I've built three companies for nine private equity

Adam Coffey:

sponsors, did 58 acquisitions.

Adam Coffey:

I have billions of dollars in successful exits.

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and so we broke it down on what's important, how to build a company,

Adam Coffey:

going from zero to a million, which is where most people fail out.

Adam Coffey:

There are 31 million small businesses in America.

Adam Coffey:

Only 7% ever hit a million of revenue.

Adam Coffey:

And then from a million to 10 million of feet that only about

Adam Coffey:

4% of those 7% actually achieve what changes in that business.

Adam Coffey:

You gotta get it right small, get the unit level economic dialed in, and

Adam Coffey:

then it's about starting the scaling efforts, making some initial pivots,

Adam Coffey:

bringing on some ancillary revenue streams, perfecting the core, and then

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it's 10 million to a hundred million.

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How do I then take it and build this thing out to its first exit point, and then

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the journey from a million to a billion.

Adam Coffey:

What does that look like?

Adam Coffey:

and I'll tell you, if you could envision the Wizard of Oz, the guy behind the

Adam Coffey:

curtain with all these levers on the machine that he was using, and it's kinda

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like you set your levers differently when you're just starting and you

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make adjustments at these different.

Adam Coffey:

these different points in your company's progression.

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And ultimately it's, you know, we, we kind of walked the walk for two days

Adam Coffey:

solid on how to go from zero to a billion.

Adam Coffey:

And a piece of that then of course was since we got to a billion, how the hell

Adam Coffey:

do we exit it and get maximum value?

Dallas Burnett:

right, exactly.

Dallas Burnett:

That is so cool.

Dallas Burnett:

If you want to check that out, we'll talk about that at the end of the episode, how

Dallas Burnett:

you can stay in touch with Adam and know when his next session's going to be, so

Dallas Burnett:

you can be a part of that if you want to.

Dallas Burnett:

So that, I mean, that sounds like such a cool event.

Adam Coffey:

Oh, and then we created this cool thing that I didn't even know it

Adam Coffey:

when I walked on the stage on day one.

Adam Coffey:

it just got developed.

Adam Coffey:

While we were we, we started, the, this version of Empire Builders.

Adam Coffey:

I'm now the chairman, and this didn't happen until I walked in of 30

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different companies who have joined to create, call it the ultimate

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high level peer group representing billions of dollars collectively in

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portfolios and business businesses.

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and we collectively are the board.

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I've been elected the chairman of the board, and each of these

Adam Coffey:

companies brings their problems, their issues, and the members of the.

Adam Coffey:

Help everybody.

Adam Coffey:

So you've got literally billionaires helping other people build their

Adam Coffey:

bu, build their empires, fun.

Adam Coffey:

It was a fun

Dallas Burnett:

Unbelievable.

Dallas Burnett:

And what's that?

Dallas Burnett:

What's that group called?

Dallas Burnett:

What's the peer group called?

Adam Coffey:

right now it's called the chairman.

Adam Coffey:

I'm the chairman and I'm now the chairman of 30 different companies.

Adam Coffey:

you know that, and again, we didn't see this coming.

Adam Coffey:

I'm Friday when I'm leaving to the hotel, this was not on my radar screen

Adam Coffey:

by Sunday night, I'm now the chairman of 30 companies who've got billions of

Adam Coffey:

dollars in in revenue and portfolios.

Adam Coffey:

And collectively now we are the board for each other's companies.

Adam Coffey:

It's gonna be a lot of fun.

Dallas Burnett:

unbelievable.

Dallas Burnett:

That is awesome.

Dallas Burnett:

So you're hearing it here first, think, move, thrive.

Dallas Burnett:

You've heard about the chairman, the peer group, and now you get to hear

Dallas Burnett:

from the chairman of the Chairman.

Dallas Burnett:

That's, as it good as it gets.

Dallas Burnett:

So I want to talk, let's start too, because we've got, , a very diverse

Dallas Burnett:

group of listeners and we've got, we've got young leaders, we've got

Dallas Burnett:

seasoned veterans, we've got business owners, we've got team leaders.

Dallas Burnett:

We've got a lot of different people that's managing groups and organizations and

Dallas Burnett:

we like to help people grow and thrive.

Dallas Burnett:

You do a lot of mentorship.

Dallas Burnett:

You've spoken at colleges like UCLA and you've done a lot of work with MBA

Dallas Burnett:

students just to help them get a good start out the gate into their careers.

Dallas Burnett:

What's some advice that you would give to people that are young people maybe

Dallas Burnett:

coming in, or young professionals, maybe they've come out of college, they've

Dallas Burnett:

been in the workforce a few years.

Dallas Burnett:

What advice would you give to them in terms of how to maximize their career?

Dallas Burnett:

And then we'll get into all the culture stuff and the business stuff where I can.

Adam Coffey:

Sure.

Adam Coffey:

I'll tell you, I think collectively at you, so I, I've been speaking at

Adam Coffey:

top business schools around the world.

Adam Coffey:

For the past 15 years and was an active part of my life, even as a sitting

Adam Coffey:

ceo and I probably have mentored around a thousand people and these are

Adam Coffey:

what I'd call mid-career executives doing an executive MBA program.

Adam Coffey:

They represent the next generation of the world's business leaders and

Adam Coffey:

to have an ability to give an, to make an impact on that group about

Adam Coffey:

how to think about culture and the importance of taking care of employees

Adam Coffey:

and that the concept that profit and culture are not mutually exclusive,

Adam Coffey:

but in actuality to enjoy generating the, the most profit that's possible.

Adam Coffey:

It comes from the base of a very strong culture, but for most of these

Adam Coffey:

people that I'm mentoring, it really started in what kind of steered them

Adam Coffey:

to wanting to have a mentor or have a conversation was really about them facing.

Adam Coffey:

I would tell you, 90% of the cases people came to me with a basic problem

Adam Coffey:

or concept and it was, Adam, I'm faced with a crossroad in my life.

Adam Coffey:

I have a job opportunity, should I take it?

Adam Coffey:

And, they come to me when they're at a crossroad.

Adam Coffey:

I'm standing at a crossroad in life, I'm doing my executive mba.

Adam Coffey:

I've been of of spinning my wheels and I've got this choice

Adam Coffey:

to make and I don't know how to.

Dallas Burnett:

Mm.

Adam Coffey:

you help me?

Adam Coffey:

And of course, I would think to myself, not out loud, but

Adam Coffey:

thinking to myself, I just met you.

Adam Coffey:

How the hell can I tell you which road you should take?

Adam Coffey:

And so after a while, I developed a process where I could help these people.

Adam Coffey:

And I would answer a question with a question in order to know whether to turn

Adam Coffey:

left or turn right at this crossroad.

Adam Coffey:

It really starts with, do we know where we're going?

Adam Coffey:

do we understand the road we're about to take?

Adam Coffey:

And I'd run them through some exercises.

Adam Coffey:

So I tell 'em, get a piece of paper.

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Write a date 10 years from now on the top of it.

Adam Coffey:

And I want you to describe your ideal life.

Adam Coffey:

Where do you live?

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What kind of car do you drive?

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Are you married?

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Do you have kids?

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What's, how are you giving back to society?

Adam Coffey:

What do you want your life to look like in 10 years?

Adam Coffey:

And then the second, thing that I'd have 'em do is that,

Adam Coffey:

let's write your own obituary.

Adam Coffey:

So let's talk about, your your life now, and what did you do

Adam Coffey:

to contribute and who showed it?

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Did anybody show up at your funeral?

Adam Coffey:

And what I was doing, it wasn't about goal setting, it was

Adam Coffey:

getting people to define success.

Adam Coffey:

What did success look like to you?

Adam Coffey:

Because the reality is some people wanna change the world.

Adam Coffey:

Hey, I wanna go to Africa.

Adam Coffey:

I want to be a doctor without borders.

Adam Coffey:

I want to cure disease.

Adam Coffey:

someone else would be, hey, I want to be the next billionaire, global

Adam Coffey:

business man who, or lady who, who just got this ultimate empire.

Adam Coffey:

some people are motivated by money, some people are motivated by helping society.

Adam Coffey:

Everybody's different.

Adam Coffey:

So I, I'm an ex-military guy.

Adam Coffey:

You give me a couple different compass or grid points, you

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know, I can chart a course, and that's what I'm having them do.

Adam Coffey:

I'm having them chart a course from where they're standing at to where they want

Adam Coffey:

to be in 10 years, and then where they want to be at the end of their life.

Adam Coffey:

I can now shoot a, an azimuth.

Adam Coffey:

We can walk that journey.

Adam Coffey:

And when we come back, now we can answer that question.

Adam Coffey:

now we know where we want to go, and if we know where we want to go, now

Adam Coffey:

let's use that lens and that compass to decide, should we turn left?

Adam Coffey:

Should we turn right on this path at this juncture in our career?

Adam Coffey:

And you'd be amazed when you know where you're going, how much faster

Adam Coffey:

it is that you actually get there.

Adam Coffey:

And then I I would even tell a story and I would say, look, if I told you to

Adam Coffey:

go get in a car and drive you probably wouldn't go more in five miles from

Adam Coffey:

where you're at right now today, because you don't have a destination in mind.

Adam Coffey:

But if I told you when you're in, uh, Los Angeles, go get in

Adam Coffey:

the car and drive to New York.

Adam Coffey:

now you gotta plan.

Adam Coffey:

You gotta find, I'm gonna drive to here, stay in a hotel.

Adam Coffey:

I'm gonna need food, I'm gonna need gas.

Adam Coffey:

I could take one of three paths from west to east across the United States.

Adam Coffey:

I better have somebody get the mail.

Adam Coffey:

Someone's gotta feed the dogs, the cats, And it's like, you'd be amazed.

Adam Coffey:

when you know where you're going, in this case to New York City, now you can plan

Adam Coffey:

all the waste stops and all the details that are required to get you there.

Adam Coffey:

And when employees.

Adam Coffey:

And so I always tell young people coming outta high school, coming outta

Adam Coffey:

college, you need a plan for your life.

Adam Coffey:

You have to know where you're going in order to make sure that the

Adam Coffey:

journey you're on is going to get you there in the fastest amount of

Adam Coffey:

time with the least amount of detours and the least amount of time wasted.

Adam Coffey:

Because we only have a finite amount of time on the planet and

Adam Coffey:

only a finite amount of time in our careers in which to get there.

Adam Coffey:

And if we spend 20 years going left and right and not really knowing

Adam Coffey:

where we're going, we're not gonna get as far as someone who starts

Adam Coffey:

that journey that has a plan.

Adam Coffey:

So that's what I tell 'em.

Dallas Burnett:

I mean, it's just amazing how fundamental that advice

Dallas Burnett:

is and how you can't skip it.

Dallas Burnett:

You can't, it's like advice that you can't just.

Dallas Burnett:

Skip over because so many people will just skip that and they'll

Dallas Burnett:

try to get the, I wanna get the highest payout, out the gate.

Dallas Burnett:

if I come outta school, what's the highest job?

Dallas Burnett:

maybe that's the, maybe that's the right thing and maybe it's not.

Dallas Burnett:

Maybe that's the worst decision that you could do based on

Dallas Burnett:

just the basic fundamentals.

Dallas Burnett:

And I love how you described it in terms of the journey, how

Dallas Burnett:

it's if I tell you just to drive, you're just gonna go five miles.

Dallas Burnett:

But if the more clarity that you get, the more clarity that you can insert, we

Dallas Burnett:

talk about that and Move!, the book Move!

Dallas Burnett:

Clarity, begets clarity.

Dallas Burnett:

If you say New York, all of a sudden now say, okay, I gotta pack a bag,

Dallas Burnett:

I gotta let people know I'm gone.

Dallas Burnett:

And as soon as you put that out there, as soon as you paint that, clear picture

Dallas Burnett:

to the vision, then all of a sudden all these things start making more sense.

Dallas Burnett:

And you just get more clarity because you set these boundaries, in, in place.

Dallas Burnett:

So now you know the zone that you can operate in and what's outside that zone.

Dallas Burnett:

I love how you also pair that with the kind of the ultimate obituary, it's not

Dallas Burnett:

just about the journey, it's about who you're being while you're journeying.

Dallas Burnett:

And I love that because sometimes those can conflict and you gotta have some

Dallas Burnett:

clarity about that because you may have to make a decision on who you want to be.

Dallas Burnett:

And part of that journey may include that.

Dallas Burnett:

What's crazy?

Adam Coffey:

about those things early.

Adam Coffey:

we can't think about 'em 30 years down the road.

Adam Coffey:

We gotta think about what's the legacy, what's important to us,

Adam Coffey:

what's our moral compass look like?

Adam Coffey:

You know, I'm, I'm, I'm writing five books.

Adam Coffey:

That's the fifth one.

Adam Coffey:

It's already written, but it's not coming out till the end.

Adam Coffey:

it's called Life Lessons from the Corner Office.

Adam Coffey:

And it's all about navigating career and learning how to navigate career

Adam Coffey:

so that you can get to your ultimate destination sooner and enjoy it longer.

Adam Coffey:

Because how many people have you ever encountered in your life

Adam Coffey:

that just, you know, that I, I wish I could, uh, wish I would.

Adam Coffey:

Uh, you know, and 20 years later, I'm still in the same cubicle

Adam Coffey:

and I'm a dreamer, not a doer.

Adam Coffey:

And I, and then, then there's a feeling of, I, I didn't hit my

Adam Coffey:

fullest potential because I was asleep at the switch for far too long.

Adam Coffey:

And so I think for young people that, that, that's the key.

Adam Coffey:

And we don't necessarily teach

Dallas Burnett:

no, I think that's lost.

Dallas Burnett:

And I think too, what you're saying is, which is fantastic, is that your potential

Dallas Burnett:

is not good enough to get you to where your destination, your, you may have

Dallas Burnett:

had, great, classes, you may have great grades in school, you may have, but that's

Dallas Burnett:

all very clear and it's packaged in the syllabus and given to you execute that.

Dallas Burnett:

And the day you walk out is the day you get to choose that destination.

Dallas Burnett:

Am I going to Seattle or am I going to New York?

Dallas Burnett:

and if you start towards Seattle and then realize it's New York, the further you

Dallas Burnett:

get down the road, it's a bigger shift.

Dallas Burnett:

And so I think that knowing that and having that clarity

Dallas Burnett:

early on is fundamental.

Adam Coffey:

I, and I tell people to review those two exercises often

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because oftentimes our lives change.

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our objectives change.

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And so we, revisit that exercise once a year.

Adam Coffey:

Is, is my path, am I still going to New York

Adam Coffey:

City?

Adam Coffey:

You know that's the end result.

Dallas Burnett:

I love that.

Dallas Burnett:

I love that.

Dallas Burnett:

Now you've had a tremendous career.

Dallas Burnett:

you've led multiple companies.

Dallas Burnett:

You started in the military.

Dallas Burnett:

Tell about how your journey, each kind of stage, you break

Dallas Burnett:

it up into different stages.

Dallas Burnett:

Tell about how your journey kind of has influenced, your path and like

Dallas Burnett:

how that's created, who you are and what you, how you see things today.

Adam Coffey:

When I meet people for the first time, I generally

Adam Coffey:

talk about four experiences.

Adam Coffey:

So for me, first is the military.

Adam Coffey:

The military taught a young kid.

Adam Coffey:

Discipline, teamwork and leadership, I went in a smart ass.

Adam Coffey:

they smacked the, the ass part off really quick.

Adam Coffey:

And, and, you know, I was a smart kid, but you know, it, it gave me a foundation.

Adam Coffey:

It gave me a good, solid foundation upon which to build a career upon.

Adam Coffey:

And it was all about teamwork, leadership, and discipline.

Adam Coffey:

And I was a private in the United States Army.

Adam Coffey:

I went in the bottom, I was bubblegum on the bottom of your shoe.

Adam Coffey:

that's how low I was.

Adam Coffey:

And to be honest, that informed a lot of my thinking about culture because

Adam Coffey:

I've been the guy in the trenches.

Adam Coffey:

I've been the, the smallest, lowest form of life and worked

Adam Coffey:

my way up the ladder from there.

Adam Coffey:

So that was first.

Adam Coffey:

Second was engineering.

Adam Coffey:

in the military I worked on classified air defense, radar, and missile systems.

Adam Coffey:

And I always had a technical background as a person.

Adam Coffey:

engineering as a career led me as a first career after the military.

Adam Coffey:

It brought me to, you know, a a, a place of being, a meticulous planner

Adam Coffey:

and engineers are very methodical.

Adam Coffey:

I can't do step 39 till I've done the first 38, and in many cases

Adam Coffey:

I can't skip the first 38 or I'll have a suboptimal outcome.

Adam Coffey:

So engineering made me a meticulous planner.

Adam Coffey:

Being a pilot made me a meticulous planner.

Adam Coffey:

You don't go, jump in an airplane, take off without knowing where you're going.

Adam Coffey:

You know what the winds of loft are, you know what the weather is,

Adam Coffey:

where you're at en route at the end.

Adam Coffey:

How much fuel I need, what are my alternates?

Adam Coffey:

And there's just so much that goes into it.

Adam Coffey:

So meticulous planning, came out of that.

Adam Coffey:

I'm an anal retentive strategic planner.

Adam Coffey:

GE then 10 years of the glory days, Jack Welsh, it's Camelot.

Adam Coffey:

I call it the Camelot era of GE.

Adam Coffey:

There is no tech, tech doesn't exist yet.

Adam Coffey:

GE is the world's most admired company.

Adam Coffey:

It's the oldest Dow component.

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Over a hundred years old.

Adam Coffey:

Stock is splitting every two and a half years, so Jack is in the

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early days people called him Neutron Jack, cuz he was blowing it up.

Adam Coffey:

The last 10 years was Camelot.

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It was the growth era where a hundred year old business was doubling its

Adam Coffey:

stock every two and a half years.

Adam Coffey:

And, it was a magical time.

Adam Coffey:

And I credit GE with teaching me how to run a business, not this GE

Adam Coffey:

of today, the GE of yester year.

Adam Coffey:

and then from there, it comes down to experience, 21 years as a CEO and,

Adam Coffey:

nine different private equity sponsors.

Adam Coffey:

A along the way, lot of exits and, the 37 year old CEO.

Adam Coffey:

definitely has learned a lot, and now the 58 year old CEO you make every

Adam Coffey:

mistake in the book you can make.

Adam Coffey:

and so experience is something that can never be understated.

Adam Coffey:

And so I think those are the four collective experiences that

Adam Coffey:

bring me to where I am today.

Dallas Burnett:

What was the biggest thing when you were going from in,

Dallas Burnett:

engineering to more of a executive at GE.

Dallas Burnett:

I love how you refer to that as the Camelot, at ge, cuz those, those,

Dallas Burnett:

you know, epic times, for ge what was your biggest aha moment or surprise?

Dallas Burnett:

Cause you said GE really was formative as it related to leading

Dallas Burnett:

companies and culture for you.

Dallas Burnett:

Something that you took away with that one of your biggest

Dallas Burnett:

surprises or aha moments when you got into that, higher level at ge.

Adam Coffey:

first, let me just tell you that as an engineer,

Adam Coffey:

I was a really good engineer.

Adam Coffey:

And I'm in my early twenties and I'm making six figures a year, and, but I'm,

Adam Coffey:

I'm bumping up against the ceiling of what an engineer can make as an engineer.

Adam Coffey:

And if I think about my own life's journey, I was chasing

Adam Coffey:

money title, and I wanted to find financial security for a family.

Adam Coffey:

I, I didn't have.

Adam Coffey:

And, you know, in the military, you know, when when I was leaving home

Adam Coffey:

for the first time, it was like, you know, what are my goals and objectives?

Adam Coffey:

I'm chasing title and money.

Adam Coffey:

I'm trying to find security.

Adam Coffey:

and so when I've had my own crossroads in the career, when I was a really good

Adam Coffey:

engineer, faced with the prospects of putting away, call it the proverbial

Adam Coffey:

slide rule and toolkit, and jumping over into this thing called management

Adam Coffey:

where I'm now gonna be competing against Harvard MBAs people who were

Adam Coffey:

born with silver spoons in their mouth.

Adam Coffey:

You it's that was a scary time.

Adam Coffey:

But I was hitting the glass ceiling on pay, and if I just stepped over

Adam Coffey:

to the side and got into management, all of a sudden my runway goes

Adam Coffey:

all the way to the corner office.

Adam Coffey:

It's a hard ladder to climb, but the potential was so much bigger.

Adam Coffey:

And so, you know, I took that leap of faith you know, I went to GE

Adam Coffey:

Crotonville , so GE Crotonville was GEs own college campus where they trained

Adam Coffey:

the top 5% of GE people to be their next generation of business leaders.

Adam Coffey:

And it was back in the magical days when the business unit, the, the

Adam Coffey:

Jack Welsh's, uh, the Bob Nardelli's, they were coming to teach and help

Adam Coffey:

educate GEs top young leaders.

Adam Coffey:

Into, the next global leaders GE and business.

Adam Coffey:

So it was a magical time there, and just to show you how far it's

Adam Coffey:

come, e eventually they had a cadre of people, they've now sold it.

Adam Coffey:

GE just recently announced the sale of Crotonville.

Adam Coffey:

I thought, boy,

Dallas Burnett:

gosh.

Adam Coffey:

that, that's a sad day when Crotonville bill's gone.

Adam Coffey:

So Camelot needed a castle.

Adam Coffey:

Crotonville was the castle.

Adam Coffey:

and so I got world class leadership training.

Adam Coffey:

And you know what?

Adam Coffey:

I really was a, an arrogant young, you know, up and coming guy.

Adam Coffey:

I, I remember times where so here's, here's, here's

Adam Coffey:

one of these stories, right?

Adam Coffey:

so my business unit, worst of first, that was the goal.

Adam Coffey:

We pulled it off and I'm walking into a board meeting with my leadership team.

Adam Coffey:

I've got a boombox on my shoulder.

Adam Coffey:

I'm wearing dark sunglasses.

Adam Coffey:

Pink Floyd song.

Adam Coffey:

The money is blasting out.

Adam Coffey:

I got a cigar in my mouth, and I'm not walking in all cocky.

Adam Coffey:

My business team behind me, we're doing like this, the shuffle of

Adam Coffey:

the seven Wharfs, the guys in the middle are like throwing up monopoly

Adam Coffey:

money, to, to demonstrate that we are the best business unit in ge.

Adam Coffey:

And the board, talked about a high level risk.

Adam Coffey:

It's a good thing.

Adam Coffey:

We were number one, and not at the bottom of the.

Adam Coffey:

And that's why we did it, of course, but they were like falling outta

Adam Coffey:

their seats, laughing their asses off.

Adam Coffey:

And in that era, you worked hard, you played hard.

Adam Coffey:

But when you were the best, you celebrated being the

Dallas Burnett:

Yeah, that's, that is so cool.

Dallas Burnett:

That is so cool.

Dallas Burnett:

I can see it.

Dallas Burnett:

It's a great visual picture.

Dallas Burnett:

You coming in with, your entourage throwing monopoly money up on the air.

Dallas Burnett:

That's well done.

Dallas Burnett:

Well done.

Dallas Burnett:

it sounds like it just really was a formative time for you, especially,

Dallas Burnett:

being able to just soak up a lot of that, information from Jack and from

Dallas Burnett:

all these other great executives.

Dallas Burnett:

So that's awesome.

Dallas Burnett:

If you were to talk about, I would love to get into a little bit more conversation

Dallas Burnett:

about culture with you because you've sat at the top of several different entities

Dallas Burnett:

and you've got a different vantage point.

Dallas Burnett:

You've seen it from private equity side, you've seen it from the

Dallas Burnett:

CEO level, you've seen it all the way down through engineering.

Dallas Burnett:

So you've seen it at multiple levels.

Dallas Burnett:

Let's talk about it.

Dallas Burnett:

what is some of the things that you see now, especially you've just gone

Dallas Burnett:

through this empire, summit, empire Builder Summit, and what's some of the

Dallas Burnett:

things that you see as really common mistakes that business leaders make or

Dallas Burnett:

even team leaders make when trying to develop a strong, sustainable culture?

Adam Coffey:

So let's start with my philosophy after running businesses

Adam Coffey:

for decades is that culture and revenue are directly correlated.

Adam Coffey:

You know, in, in a business, A C E O can't manage revenue from the top down.

Adam Coffey:

You control revenue by building culture from the ground up.

Adam Coffey:

so let's unpack that for just a second.

Adam Coffey:

I've run service companies in my.

Adam Coffey:

Not to sound sexist, but basically it's guys', trucks, broken stuff,

Adam Coffey:

guys', trucks, building things, know, you know, blue collar workers, HVAC

Adam Coffey:

technicians and construction workers and service techs fixing things.

Adam Coffey:

That's been my world.

Adam Coffey:

And in service, you don't have a tangible product.

Adam Coffey:

I can't package a box of service and put it on a shelf, you know, for you

Adam Coffey:

to pull off as a consumer later, or, or customer and, and you know, sprinkle it

Adam Coffey:

on a broken piece of equipment, water, and it magically starts working again.

Adam Coffey:

Doesn't work that way.

Adam Coffey:

in a business, when you can't store your product on a shelf, your product

Adam Coffey:

is actually by default people.

Dallas Burnett:

Yes.

Adam Coffey:

They perform a service.

Adam Coffey:

So I don't focus on top line, much to the chagrin of boards.

Adam Coffey:

I focus on do I have a strong culture?

Adam Coffey:

That's the base component.

Adam Coffey:

So instead of coming in trying to force revenue or cost actions,

Adam Coffey:

let's start by looking at culture.

Adam Coffey:

What's the turnover rate in a company I'm coming into?

Adam Coffey:

do we have a problem or an issue with the culture?

Adam Coffey:

If I fix it and build it right, I'm building the base foundational level.

Adam Coffey:

If I build a strong culture, I get an engaged workforce.

Adam Coffey:

Engage workforce takes care of the customers I'm servicing.

Adam Coffey:

They give us more stuff where they buy more stuff and revenue

Adam Coffey:

just kinda rains from the sky.

Adam Coffey:

So someone who comes in at the top and starts measuring from the, and stops

Adam Coffey:

leading, starts leading from the top down, they may or may not find success.

Adam Coffey:

But if you want sustainable success, if you wanna bend the growth curve

Adam Coffey:

and make your company something special, you start at the bottom

Adam Coffey:

and you build up and it starts with,

Dallas Burnett:

I think that's so fascinating too, because I've had

Dallas Burnett:

multiple private equity companies that I've had experience with.

Dallas Burnett:

In fact, one of them I was sitting across, it was a funded startup, and

Dallas Burnett:

I went and we were talking, it was the first, few months outta the gate.

Dallas Burnett:

and one of the guys sit down with me and we were waiting on a meeting to

Dallas Burnett:

start and he's how's things going?

Dallas Burnett:

I said, I mean, things are going really great.

Dallas Burnett:

We've hired some amazing people and the, you can just feel the cultures

Dallas Burnett:

moving in the right direction and we've got a lot of momentum.

Dallas Burnett:

And he just looked at me and he said, I don't give a blank

Dallas Burnett:

about whatever you just said.

Dallas Burnett:

Where's the money?

Dallas Burnett:

And I was just like, I just sat back.

Dallas Burnett:

I was like, oh my gosh,

Adam Coffey:

And it's guys

Adam Coffey:

like that, that give private equity a bad name,

Dallas Burnett:

Yeah, I know.

Dallas Burnett:

And so it's just, I think it's really cool that you in as a part of that world

Dallas Burnett:

see that and value that, because I think that's really important, especially

Dallas Burnett:

if you do have a strong culture.

Dallas Burnett:

Having a partner that has your mindset is really important,

Adam Coffey:

Well, I I think in today's world now, in the 21

Adam Coffey:

years as a C E O, we went from hundreds of PE firms to over 6,000.

Adam Coffey:

we went from hundreds of billions in assets under

Adam Coffey:

management to over 5 trillion.

Adam Coffey:

So I've really seen the world of PE mature and grow up.

Adam Coffey:

And I would tell you, when you have 6,000 of anything in an industry, you're

Adam Coffey:

gonna have good, bad, and indifferent.

Adam Coffey:

And I think more and more PE firms, I would even hazard guess to say, majority

Adam Coffey:

of PE firms recognize that multiples are high, they're paying high prices, that

Adam Coffey:

they need to be an active partner with management in order to ensure success.

Adam Coffey:

And I think a lot of people, and especially in today's world, over

Adam Coffey:

the last few years, what we've been through, people get that culture

Adam Coffey:

matters and can't just pay at lip service and expect good results.

Adam Coffey:

You can't get workers right now, in, in most industries and businesses.

Adam Coffey:

And if you've got a crappy culture, good luck, fill in open jobs.

Adam Coffey:

you gotta start by building a strong culture.

Adam Coffey:

It not only leads to improved enhanced economic performance, but

Adam Coffey:

it helps you, attract and retain the best talent that's available

Adam Coffey:

in a pool for a given industry too.

Dallas Burnett:

What's some of the drivers?

Dallas Burnett:

And when you, let's say you walked into a company and it had, a high turnover

Dallas Burnett:

rate or just had some dysfunction.

Dallas Burnett:

What are the, what are some of the things that you're looking for

Dallas Burnett:

that you would immediately go and say, these are some things that

Dallas Burnett:

are important enough to change.

Dallas Burnett:

we

Adam Coffey:

So I came into a company, for the first time and a, a company had a 42%

Adam Coffey:

turnover rate and, employee turnover rate.

Adam Coffey:

And I'm thinking to myself, I also saw that they had underspending

Adam Coffey:

in sales and marketing.

Adam Coffey:

And I'm like, yeah, I get it.

Adam Coffey:

we don't have enough employees.

Adam Coffey:

Take care of the customers.

Adam Coffey:

We got, let alone enough employees, go find new ones, right?

Adam Coffey:

So we're not spending any money.

Adam Coffey:

And, and we have this self-defeating prophecy around, half our workforce

Adam Coffey:

is all my HR team's doing is trying to get bodies and seats.

Adam Coffey:

And I mean, you can spot a toxic culture coming in real, real quickly.

Adam Coffey:

So I try to do some thoughtful analysis around what is impacting

Adam Coffey:

culture in different areas.

Adam Coffey:

And it can be different from geography to geography.

Adam Coffey:

And I remember for that business, Pacific Northwest, we had heavy union competition.

Adam Coffey:

So our wage scales were just off.

Adam Coffey:

we weren't paying people enough and the union was picking

Adam Coffey:

off, the non-union employees.

Adam Coffey:

And, in other places, Texas was a good example.

Adam Coffey:

In Texas, we didn't have paid sick days, and some states in the

Adam Coffey:

country require it and others don't.

Adam Coffey:

along with your thinking, the company was thinking, it's not required here,

Adam Coffey:

therefore I'm not going to do it.

Adam Coffey:

okay, you saved a few bucks, but now you got high turnover rate.

Adam Coffey:

I added simply paid sick time to employees in Texas.

Adam Coffey:

And the turnover rate drops 50% in 12 months.

Adam Coffey:

so sometimes it's money, sometimes it's benefits, sometimes, to a large degree

Adam Coffey:

it's usually I've got poor leadership.

Adam Coffey:

I've gotta teach managers who are managing the product, which is our people, how

Adam Coffey:

to be an, how to be an effective leader.

Adam Coffey:

But I really start from it, from one goal in, in objective.

Adam Coffey:

my goal for employees is I want to build a company where employees can

Adam Coffey:

spend their entire career in one place.

Adam Coffey:

I want to become the preferred employer in the industry.

Adam Coffey:

I want them to bring their friends, I want them to bring their families.

Adam Coffey:

I want to be able to attract and retain the talent.

Adam Coffey:

And I do that by instilling a pride in the organization

Adam Coffey:

that, that they, they work for.

Adam Coffey:

Because I'm gonna fix that culture.

Adam Coffey:

I'm gonna be a transparent leader.

Adam Coffey:

And to do that, usually I've got a four-legged stool.

Adam Coffey:

So my goal is I want you to stay for life.

Adam Coffey:

The four things I've got to do, first is pay a fair wage.

Adam Coffey:

In today's world, if I don't pay a fair wage, I'm gonna lose talent.

Adam Coffey:

Rather than recruit and retrain, I'd rather keep the people I've got, so

Adam Coffey:

let's start by, let's pay a fair wage.

Adam Coffey:

People don't usually leave jobs because of wages, but what

Adam Coffey:

happens is they hate their boss.

Adam Coffey:

Their boss pisses 'em off, and so they're like, I gotta get outta here.

Adam Coffey:

Then wage becomes a litmus test.

Adam Coffey:

If I make X, I need X plus one to justify the move.

Adam Coffey:

leaving.

Adam Coffey:

But I wasn't looking until I had this conflict or this hatred, for the boss

Adam Coffey:

or the person that I'm working for.

Adam Coffey:

So I have to pay a fair wage or lose talent.

Adam Coffey:

I wanna provide excellent benefits.

Adam Coffey:

I want to have a strong retirement plan.

Adam Coffey:

But the most important leg of the stool is I have to create

Adam Coffey:

opportunity for personal growth.

Adam Coffey:

And so I need the person who's driving the truck, who wants to be driving the

Adam Coffey:

truck 30 years from now, God bless them.

Adam Coffey:

They become the journeyman that teach the next generation how to

Adam Coffey:

do whatever the job is or provide the service that we're providing.

Adam Coffey:

but at the same time, I need the young kid who's in the truck who

Adam Coffey:

wants to become the service manager.

Adam Coffey:

Who wants to become the general manager, regional manager, vice president,

Adam Coffey:

wants to be a CEO someday that kid's.

Adam Coffey:

and in this country you can accomplish that.

Adam Coffey:

And so once upon a time, I was the guy in the truck, and now I'm the c e o

Adam Coffey:

and I've held every job you can hold in a service company on an org chart.

Adam Coffey:

and so I, I have to create that path.

Adam Coffey:

Some people aren't looking for it, others are.

Adam Coffey:

But if I want them to stay, which is my goal, then pay a fair wage,

Adam Coffey:

give good benefits, have a strong retirement plan and growth gives

Adam Coffey:

them the opportunity for advancement.

Adam Coffey:

lot of small companies, maybe they've got one managerial position and the founder's

Adam Coffey:

name is Smith and the son or daughter's name is Smith and they're 33 and I'm 32.

Adam Coffey:

and I'm never gonna have that leadership position.

Adam Coffey:

And so potentially I don't leave because I don't like the family or the pay

Adam Coffey:

I'm getting, but I need opportunity.

Adam Coffey:

And so I leave looking to find it.

Adam Coffey:

So I find that when I have a strong culture, I create a growth company,

Adam Coffey:

and the growth itself creates the opportunities that provide for the growth.

Dallas Burnett:

I love how you structure that from, it's just starting

Dallas Burnett:

again back with the fundamentals.

Dallas Burnett:

a company like that, that you walk in and has 40% plus turnover.

Dallas Burnett:

you look at that and they pr they could even have.

Dallas Burnett:

one of our top five core values is caring for the employees.

Dallas Burnett:

and then you see in the back office, they're not paying, for

Dallas Burnett:

time off, so it's or sick days.

Dallas Burnett:

And so it's there's so many things like that where you want

Dallas Burnett:

to bring it into an alignment.

Dallas Burnett:

Everything has to come together.

Dallas Burnett:

and a lot of what you're talking about is saying, look, we want to

Dallas Burnett:

create this environment that people wanna be at and people wanna work in.

Dallas Burnett:

So what are the things that are outside that purview?

Dallas Burnett:

what are the things that are falling outside that, and it's

Adam Coffey:

And by the way, it's, I'm not gonna create an environment that

Adam Coffey:

coddles employees, they need to work hard.

Adam Coffey:

they need to produce, I'm gonna hold them accountable.

Adam Coffey:

So leadership attitude matters.

Adam Coffey:

And, I'm investing in technology to drive productivity.

Adam Coffey:

I'm a transparent leader.

Adam Coffey:

I think in today's world, it's really important that

Adam Coffey:

you be a transparent leader.

Adam Coffey:

So I come in, I look around, I ride in the trucks, I talk to people and I

Adam Coffey:

put together a plan and I articulate the vision to all, look, we're gonna

Adam Coffey:

build a billion dollar business.

Adam Coffey:

And I explain the difference between.

Adam Coffey:

Publicly held companies where stock is traded all day long every day.

Adam Coffey:

And private equity backed companies where capital comes and goes about every

Adam Coffey:

five years and what the differences are.

Adam Coffey:

I try to deconstruct, call it the mysteries of business so that I don't

Adam Coffey:

have to be hiding, things in a closet and then spring them on people,

Adam Coffey:

Hey, I just sold the company today.

Adam Coffey:

in my world, people are gonna know that I'm gonna sell that company the day I walk

Adam Coffey:

into it, and I'm gonna sell it every five years and bring in different shareholders.

Adam Coffey:

And they're my tool for growth.

Adam Coffey:

And what they need is performance and return.

Adam Coffey:

And we're on a journey to build a billion dollar public company

Adam Coffey:

empire where we can all be owners and enjoy the fruits of our labors.

Adam Coffey:

and it's the gospel according to Adam, as it relates to business and leadership.

Adam Coffey:

And so I'm constantly educating, I'm transparent, during covid I would

Adam Coffey:

hold a town hall with 3000 employees.

Adam Coffey:

I'd get more than a thousand on a call at any given time who just want to tune in.

Adam Coffey:

they had no idea what the hell EBITDA is, but they know how much we have, right?

Adam Coffey:

and they know when the next shareholder's gonna come or go.

Adam Coffey:

And, I'm investing in them.

Adam Coffey:

And the growth allows continued investment in them.

Adam Coffey:

And so, you know, it, you know, transparency is a piece of this.

Dallas Burnett:

I love how you do that, and it's transparent regardless.

Dallas Burnett:

I love how you said, look, I got people tuning the call that don't

Dallas Burnett:

even know what EBITDA is, but they are on the call and that it's almost

Dallas Burnett:

more important and for those people that they're invited to be on the call

Dallas Burnett:

than it is that they even understand all the information on the call.

Dallas Burnett:

Right?

Dallas Burnett:

Because it's just the idea of transparency, the idea that we're in

Dallas Burnett:

this together and you bringing them on the inside has as much impact as them

Dallas Burnett:

actually knowing, the definition of ebida.

Dallas Burnett:

So think that's fantastic.

Dallas Burnett:

You talked a little bit about a change in leadership in some toxic areas.

Dallas Burnett:

I'd love to know, there's, there is a difference between being

Dallas Burnett:

a manager and being a leader.

Dallas Burnett:

and a lot of times we see in cultures that maybe are stagnant, we've gotten

Dallas Burnett:

into the point where we're in a rut.

Dallas Burnett:

We may have either managers, either leaders acting as managers, or just

Dallas Burnett:

lack of leadership and just managers.

Dallas Burnett:

So talk a little bit about your, the idea of what, how you see managers and

Dallas Burnett:

leadership and the difference between

Dallas Burnett:

doing

Adam Coffey:

Yeah, sure.

Adam Coffey:

so managers handle the affairs of an organization.

Adam Coffey:

Managers handle things, leaders inspire people to act.

Adam Coffey:

and that's the basic, fundamental difference.

Adam Coffey:

but where it usually starts to go wrong in a company.

Adam Coffey:

You think about my typical companies, it's, it's, we're

Adam Coffey:

providing a product or a service.

Adam Coffey:

and so who becomes a service manager, probably the best service.

Adam Coffey:

Technician in the truck, after some time period gets tapped to be the first, to

Adam Coffey:

be his first management position or hers is gonna be as a service manager, okay?

Adam Coffey:

They're a great technician.

Adam Coffey:

Who the hell taught them how to be a good leader, right?

Adam Coffey:

and all of my organizations, I would have requirements, look, my product

Adam Coffey:

is people, culture is everything.

Adam Coffey:

If you're gonna take that first promotion to a leadership position, I'm gonna

Adam Coffey:

require you to attend leadership training.

Adam Coffey:

And if I don't have my own GE Crotonville, which, I don't, I can leverage, Dale

Adam Coffey:

Carnegie or some other organization that for a relatively low price, might be

Adam Coffey:

a thousand dollars, 1500 couple grand.

Adam Coffey:

I can send a first time supervisor or leader to a school that lasts

Adam Coffey:

weeks and, they're going a couple nights a week for eight weeks or

Adam Coffey:

whatever it is, and I'm gonna teach them how to be a leader of people.

Adam Coffey:

Because being good at a job doesn't prepare you to lead people.

Adam Coffey:

So I think it starts going south in an organization when we fail

Adam Coffey:

as an organization to prepare people for leadership roles.

Adam Coffey:

And the most critical role as a leader is the first, because the

Adam Coffey:

vast majority of our employees report to the first level of leadership,

Dallas Burnett:

yes, absolutely.

Adam Coffey:

Let's get it right there.

Adam Coffey:

Let's have a program there, and if I make the proper investments there,

Adam Coffey:

I have a much higher probability of preventing, just call it the classic

Adam Coffey:

mistakes first time leaders make.

Dallas Burnett:

and it's so easy to, because there's so much transition

Dallas Burnett:

from that like high level technician to that first level leader, whether it's a

Dallas Burnett:

project manager or whatever it is that's managing people, that's team leader.

Dallas Burnett:

there's a lot of people that's either moving up, moving out, but they're

Dallas Burnett:

moving into those positions a lot.

Dallas Burnett:

That's a very broad base of your first level leaders.

Dallas Burnett:

and there is a tremendous gap in training from that zero to one.

Dallas Burnett:

I mean, it's just that, it's like almost once you get up higher in the

Dallas Burnett:

organization, it's more, there's more available, but there's so many companies,

Dallas Burnett:

and so I guess if you're listening to the last 10, And you're a young leader.

Dallas Burnett:

If you've just been promoted in this position, you're

Dallas Burnett:

leading an organizational team.

Dallas Burnett:

I love what Adam's advice is.

Dallas Burnett:

Take his advice.

Dallas Burnett:

If the company's not investing in your leadership ability, go get it

Dallas Burnett:

personally, cuz you are going to need it and is different than being a

Dallas Burnett:

technical expert, a manager, an sme.

Dallas Burnett:

Those are great tools that make you very powerful at your production or

Dallas Burnett:

your job, your technical, your craft.

Dallas Burnett:

But when you're going to lead people, it's a different set of skills.

Dallas Burnett:

And I think that his point to that is so powerful, so important and it's what

Dallas Burnett:

allows you to continue to progress and not do the Peter principle where you just got

Dallas Burnett:

promoted to your position of incompetence and you're stuck there, right above

Dallas Burnett:

this team that you don't enjoy, leading.

Adam Coffey:

in Dallas.

Adam Coffey:

I can tell you the vast majority, overwhelming majority, if I had to

Adam Coffey:

put a percent on, I'd probably say 90% of companies in, in, in the

Adam Coffey:

country, in the world don't provide that first level of leadership.

Adam Coffey:

So here's some statistics for you.

Adam Coffey:

There are 31 million small businesses in America, and they represent 99.9%

Adam Coffey:

of all businesses in America, and they employ 50% of the workforce.

Adam Coffey:

Now, the government defines small businesses under 500 employees.

Adam Coffey:

And in those statistics then, of those 31 million companies, only

Adam Coffey:

7% have a million in revenue.

Adam Coffey:

So we're talking about a lot of little companies and it's, there's

Adam Coffey:

0.1% of the companies that are bigger than 500 employees in the country.

Adam Coffey:

Those might have first level leadership training, but even there, it's not, it's

Adam Coffey:

hit or miss as to whether they do or not.

Adam Coffey:

But the vast majority of small businesses in America, they think they can't

Adam Coffey:

afford to have a low level, some kind of training for low level leaders.

Adam Coffey:

And so they forego the expense.

Adam Coffey:

And what winds up happening is they probably pay more in lost employees

Adam Coffey:

and employee turnover and customer dissatisfaction than if they had just

Adam Coffey:

spent a little bit of time, effort, and money on educating first level.

Dallas Burnett:

I agree.

Dallas Burnett:

The opportunity cost is so great.

Dallas Burnett:

That is so true.

Dallas Burnett:

It you just don't, you've got to calculate the opportunity cost of losing customers

Dallas Burnett:

or losing your employees if you have a bad

Adam Coffey:

And I like your point, I like your point about if your company's

Adam Coffey:

not providing it, go get it yourself.

Adam Coffey:

you don't even have to spend a whole lot of money.

Adam Coffey:

I think about LinkedIn and I think about some of the educational

Adam Coffey:

opportunities and the videos and the courses that you can take just online.

Adam Coffey:

And I think there's a small fee that's charged monthly, but it's like in today's

Adam Coffey:

world of digital information and chat, g p t and all this other crap, it's like,

Adam Coffey:

boy, if you wanna learn about leadership, you, all, you, what it takes is effort.

Adam Coffey:

That's it.

Adam Coffey:

But you're investing in yourself.

Adam Coffey:

So it's not that your company requires it.

Adam Coffey:

You want to be an effective first time leader so you can get the next

Adam Coffey:

promotion and you can avoid the pitfalls of leadership that are

Adam Coffey:

predictable, but you might not be seeing cuz you haven't been there before.

Adam Coffey:

So investing in yourself is the best investment you'll ever make.

Dallas Burnett:

I love that.

Dallas Burnett:

Let's talk a little bit, and then I would say too, just to, to piggyback on

Dallas Burnett:

what you just said, it's, Getting that information is fantastic, and you have

Dallas Burnett:

to start with some basis of knowledge.

Dallas Burnett:

But I would say to your point, it's about action and about actionable leadership.

Dallas Burnett:

And sometimes we can gather the information and say we can take

Dallas Burnett:

it in, but we don't know how to connect the dots and apply it.

Dallas Burnett:

So if you're leading a team, if you're leading organization, if you own the

Dallas Burnett:

business and you're going through this, I encourage you to go out and find either a

Dallas Burnett:

mentor or a coach or someone that can help navigate how you implement some of this.

Dallas Burnett:

How do you connect the dots between this value or this information that you've

Dallas Burnett:

just pulled in and how you actually apply it to your team, to your situation,

Dallas Burnett:

to your, to the people that you're managing and your leading at that time.

Dallas Burnett:

So I think that's fantastic.

Dallas Burnett:

I want to jump in because you literally have written the book on,

Dallas Burnett:

on exiting your best seller on Amazon.

Dallas Burnett:

You've ta you've written the book on exiting and how you do that effectively

Dallas Burnett:

and work with private equity.

Dallas Burnett:

we have business owners that listen to the last 10%.

Dallas Burnett:

And so I wanna spend just a l a few minutes talking to specifically

Dallas Burnett:

to business owners about how they can prepare, what mistakes you

Dallas Burnett:

tend to see business owners make, and then how they can exit well

Dallas Burnett:

or at least begin that process.

Adam Coffey:

Oh boy.

Adam Coffey:

We could be here for hours.

Adam Coffey:

This will be fun.

Adam Coffey:

the, let me start with a couple of the biggest mistakes that

Adam Coffey:

I see business owners making.

Adam Coffey:

and the first is assuming that because you're an expert at building

Adam Coffey:

a business and building your business and you know your business inside

Adam Coffey:

out, Somehow they think that expertise will transcend and make them an expert

Adam Coffey:

when it's time to sell their business.

Adam Coffey:

And like anything in life, for most entrepreneurs who've built

Adam Coffey:

a business and put 20, 30 years into it, it's your first exit.

Adam Coffey:

It's your last exit.

Adam Coffey:

it's your life's work and you think you're an expert and you

Adam Coffey:

have an arrogance of success.

Adam Coffey:

It's not intentional, but it happens.

Adam Coffey:

And I see it every day.

Adam Coffey:

You assume because you are an expert, you built a business

Adam Coffey:

that you're an expert at exiting.

Adam Coffey:

You don't know anything about exits.

Adam Coffey:

I bought 58 companies.

Adam Coffey:

I can tell you that, I could sniff out an expert from a novice in about

Adam Coffey:

three minutes of casual conversation.

Adam Coffey:

And if you're a novice, I'm a good guy.

Adam Coffey:

But there are a lot of sharks out there in this world who will absolutely

Adam Coffey:

take advantage of the fact that you are a novice at selling a business.

Adam Coffey:

So first, first golden rule, if you're thinking about an exit, is

Adam Coffey:

recognizing that you're gonna need help.

Adam Coffey:

You're gonna need a team of people around you doing different types

Adam Coffey:

of activities to help maximize the potential o of your business.

Adam Coffey:

so that's the first mistake that I see predominantly.

Adam Coffey:

Second biggest mistake I see them make is when they are actually exiting,

Adam Coffey:

is they're chasing highest priced only, and they're not thinking about

Adam Coffey:

the future, and what the potential is of the business and what kind of.

Adam Coffey:

Gets them to the promised land.

Adam Coffey:

There's a lot of different kinds of buyers.

Adam Coffey:

There's strategic buyers, financial buyers, strategic buyers who

Adam Coffey:

turn the lights off, who keep the lights on, private equity.

Adam Coffey:

Do I wanna, I could be a rollover investor in a private equity back company.

Adam Coffey:

I could get a second bite of the apple, potentially a third, my personal

Adam Coffey:

record sell in the same company five times and getting multiple paydays.

Adam Coffey:

It's the world's most sophisticated asset class.

Adam Coffey:

And a lot of people, a lot of business owners, a mistake they make

Adam Coffey:

is thinking, look, if I sell, I want to take all my chips off the table.

Adam Coffey:

there's no way anybody's gonna, I'm not gonna be a minority

Adam Coffey:

shareholder in my company.

Adam Coffey:

That's a bunch of crap.

Adam Coffey:

it's and I can't make any money, other than unless I've got control.

Adam Coffey:

and I mean, that's just an arrogantly wrong thinking that your God's gift

Adam Coffey:

and the only person who can make money, because the asset class known

Adam Coffey:

as private equity on average beats the s and p 500 by a two to one basis.

Adam Coffey:

And they didn't go from a few hundred firms when I started my CEO career

Adam Coffey:

to 6,000 by sucking, these are the world's most sophisticated investors.

Adam Coffey:

And if you can ride their coattails using a rollover investment, then,

Adam Coffey:

know, what's the problem when you sell a business, you get a pile

Adam Coffey:

of money, you sign a non-compete.

Adam Coffey:

So you can't go back to doing what you just did.

Adam Coffey:

So the first thing you gotta do is figure out what the hell's next?

Adam Coffey:

I got a pile of money and I'm now a no.

Adam Coffey:

Who doesn't know anything about anything's, gotta go back and

Adam Coffey:

start a new business or invest, and I'm outta my comfort zone.

Adam Coffey:

Why leave something you already know, unless it's just time for you to retire.

Adam Coffey:

Potentially you take a first bite of the apple, stay running the business,

Adam Coffey:

and build, but now you're using other people's money to grow it and grow

Adam Coffey:

it faster because you don't have the same kind of limitations you did when

Adam Coffey:

you were a sole owner of the business.

Adam Coffey:

So many different paths that you could take.

Adam Coffey:

So many better outcomes than.

Adam Coffey:

And so if you take those two experiences, those two observations of mine in buying

Adam Coffey:

companies, those are the two biggest mistakes that I see entrepreneurs make.

Dallas Burnett:

that's amazing.

Dallas Burnett:

Great advice.

Dallas Burnett:

I love it.

Dallas Burnett:

And you just went through so much, so fast.

Dallas Burnett:

I gotta pull back and just cuz I know people's heads just went, what, when you

Dallas Burnett:

said you sold the same, your record is selling the same business five times.

Dallas Burnett:

Te what in the world?

Dallas Burnett:

Tell us how you did that.

Dallas Burnett:

what was that like?

Dallas Burnett:

And tell us that process.

Dallas Burnett:

Cuz I'm sure people are like, how does that, I didn't even know that was.

Adam Coffey:

So most people, again, think about, a business as a one and done event.

Adam Coffey:

My exit's gonna be a one and done event someday.

Adam Coffey:

I wrote an article for Forbes not too long ago, and I coined the rule of one 30.

Adam Coffey:

and here's another, here's the third biggest mistake, entrepreneurs.

Adam Coffey:

They assume that nothing bad can ever happen to their business and

Adam Coffey:

that the value of that business is at a base level forever.

Adam Coffey:

planes fly into buildings, wars start pandemics happen.

Adam Coffey:

Imagine that you owned a chain of movie theaters in January of 2020.

Adam Coffey:

What happened to your business in March?

Adam Coffey:

You were out of business by summer, or you were taking P loans

Adam Coffey:

trying to hang on and survive.

Adam Coffey:

Bad things do happen.

Adam Coffey:

And so I coined the rule of one 30, which is you take your age, you add

Adam Coffey:

to it the percent of your net worth that is tied up in this illiquid

Adam Coffey:

thing known as your business.

Adam Coffey:

And if it equals more than one 30, chances are it's time for you

Adam Coffey:

to think about diversification.

Adam Coffey:

And that doesn't necessarily mean a full exit.

Adam Coffey:

So I see guys all the time, or business owners, ladies who are in

Adam Coffey:

their forties, early fifties, and they're like, I'm not ready to retire.

Adam Coffey:

I got lots of.

Adam Coffey:

But I am nervous.

Adam Coffey:

I'm nervous about the general broader economic environment

Adam Coffey:

that I'm seeing out there.

Adam Coffey:

And there's so much happening in, and a lot of it's negative.

Adam Coffey:

And I get concerned about my financial future.

Adam Coffey:

And so I start to make mistakes.

Adam Coffey:

I start to get ultra-conservative as a business owner.

Adam Coffey:

And I'm not taking advantage of opportunities that I have cuz I'm afraid

Adam Coffey:

that my nest egg is gonna go away.

Adam Coffey:

And so when you get into these positions, it's time to potentially think about

Adam Coffey:

bringing on a partner and when you do, you can accelerate your growth trajectory

Adam Coffey:

with the access to unlimited capital, that, that can be brought to the table

Adam Coffey:

by a private equity firm and the debt relationships that, that they have.

Adam Coffey:

And by nature of a private equity fund, and you learn all this in my

Adam Coffey:

first book, which is the private equity playbook, which educates you,

Adam Coffey:

everyone on what private equity is.

Adam Coffey:

Hey, I just had a room of 300 people.

Adam Coffey:

I gave them a basic 10 question quiz on private equity for the first time ever.

Adam Coffey:

I had one person score, a 10 out of 10 and she told me she

Adam Coffey:

had just read my book the night.

Adam Coffey:

so that was good.

Adam Coffey:

But the vast majority of people in that room flunk.

Adam Coffey:

, and these are people who potentially even owned a billion

Adam Coffey:

dollar business and they flunked.

Adam Coffey:

The world does not understand private equity or how it works.

Adam Coffey:

You need to get educated as a business owner because they're buying more than 50%

Adam Coffey:

of all companies on the planet right now.

Adam Coffey:

They're the reason multiples are high, and you need to

Adam Coffey:

understand how that vehicle works.

Adam Coffey:

So the nature of private equity fund is, it exists for 10 years.

Adam Coffey:

It generally buys company in the early years of the fund.

Adam Coffey:

It improves 'em in the middle years.

Adam Coffey:

It sells 'em in the back half, typical whole period's, five years.

Adam Coffey:

So I know if I'm a business owner and I sell to private equity,

Adam Coffey:

first of all, they bring a checkbook, not the leadership team.

Adam Coffey:

So I'm gonna keep going.

Adam Coffey:

They want me to go, they want me to roll over, they wanna align interest.

Adam Coffey:

I also know they're gonna exit.

Adam Coffey:

I know they're gonna exit in five years, which gives me the economic event that's

Adam Coffey:

gonna give me a second bite of the apple.

Adam Coffey:

So if the average private equity firm is seeking a three times multiple of

Adam Coffey:

invested capital or a three times return, if I'm a founder and I sell the business,

Adam Coffey:

all I have to do is roll over 34 cents on the dollar and my second bite of the

Adam Coffey:

apple is gonna be bigger than my first.

Adam Coffey:

And my third bite will be bigger than the second, and my fourth

Adam Coffey:

bite will be bigger than the third.

Adam Coffey:

and in my case, my average career, multiple of invested capital is a

Adam Coffey:

five times return on investment.

Adam Coffey:

So if I roll over 21%, I'm gonna get.

Adam Coffey:

A bigger payday the second time than I did the first time.

Adam Coffey:

And what you wanna do is learn about this economic behemoth, who, by the way,

Adam Coffey:

if they were a separate country, would have the third largest GDP on the planet.

Adam Coffey:

You're talking about a 5 trillion animal that buys 50%

Adam Coffey:

of the companies in the world.

Adam Coffey:

If you learn how it works, you can feed it what it needs and take from it what

Adam Coffey:

you want, which is generational wealth.

Adam Coffey:

And you do that by engineering exits for them to get their money out because this

Adam Coffey:

is an illiquid private company investment.

Adam Coffey:

I know that what they buy, they have to sell in order to return

Adam Coffey:

the money to their shareholders.

Adam Coffey:

So while they have average pe whole periods, five years, I try

Adam Coffey:

to engineer a three year exit.

Adam Coffey:

And if I can do a three year exit, then in a 21 year period, I got a

Adam Coffey:

lot more exits for myself, right?

Adam Coffey:

And I see where this is going.

Adam Coffey:

So if I learn about PE and I can build a company that meets their needs,

Adam Coffey:

they're not, when you think about a 10 year lifespan, the average whole

Adam Coffey:

period being five years, usually the three year exit is a good exit.

Adam Coffey:

It's a company that's growing really fast, and they're measured by I

Adam Coffey:

R, which is a percent of return.

Adam Coffey:

and it has a time dependency.

Adam Coffey:

So if I get a quick, three bag or four bagger, and I can do that in three

Adam Coffey:

years, it's like a 50 plus percent i

Dallas Burnett:

raise your i r That's.

Adam Coffey:

so that helps me raise my next.

Adam Coffey:

Which I don't wait 10 years to do.

Adam Coffey:

I'm raising it early in the, I'm deploying money from one fund.

Adam Coffey:

Couple years later I'm raising my next fund.

Adam Coffey:

I can point to that fund and say, looky lucky.

Adam Coffey:

My early exits are at a 50 plus percent.

Adam Coffey:

I r gimme a bunch of money.

Adam Coffey:

The dogs with fleas are the ones that go seven to 10 years, and those are the

Adam Coffey:

ones I need more time to try to fix 'em.

Adam Coffey:

They're gonna be a low i r and they're usually sold towards the end of a fun

Adam Coffey:

life when I've already raised three more funds in the 10 years that, that those

Adam Coffey:

dogs with fleas were being deloused.

Adam Coffey:

So at the end of the day, it's, you gotta learn as an

Adam Coffey:

entrepreneur how this thing works.

Adam Coffey:

And when you understand what its needs are, you can feed it.

Adam Coffey:

And as you're feeding it, it goes away.

Adam Coffey:

New one comes in, I get another payday, put more money, off of the shelf.

Adam Coffey:

I'm diversifying my asset base and yet I'm still running the same

Adam Coffey:

company and I can keep on going.

Adam Coffey:

And so that's the mechanics behind it.

Dallas Burnett:

that's incredible.

Dallas Burnett:

that's incredible advice.

Dallas Burnett:

and I know that the listeners, if you're a business owner and you're even

Dallas Burnett:

remotely close or thinking about an exit, definitely by Adam's book, by both, by the

Dallas Burnett:

one on private equity and the exit, cuz

Dallas Burnett:

you

Adam Coffey:

lemme put it to you this way, Dallas.

Adam Coffey:

If they go into Starbucks and they buy a scone and a grande soy vanilla latte.

Adam Coffey:

For less than that price.

Adam Coffey:

They can buy both of my books on the Kindle version if they want, and they

Adam Coffey:

will learn everything they need to know in about eight hours reading both in order

Adam Coffey:

to maximize their potential and build an

Dallas Burnett:

And there's a lot more, there's a lot more to be gained from

Dallas Burnett:

your books Than a latte and a scone.

Adam Coffey:

Sometimes they need a lot

Adam Coffey:

going, but, you yeah.

Adam Coffey:

I just, and you, lemme just talk about coaching for a minute too.

Adam Coffey:

I, I left the CEO seat because I wanted to help multiple companies at a time.

Adam Coffey:

I wasn't enjoying running one company anymore, but I loved teaching and I

Adam Coffey:

wasn't making any money teaching, but I was making a lot of money as a ceo

Adam Coffey:

and I wanted to come up with a model where I could flip these things around.

Adam Coffey:

And I wanted to be helpful to other business leaders and owners.

Adam Coffey:

And so I started my own consulting business and I thought about, to

Adam Coffey:

work with me on an entry level.

Adam Coffey:

it, it costs less than the cost of hiring an entry level employee.

Adam Coffey:

And so whatever the entry level work is in your business, Walmart just raised

Adam Coffey:

their starting wage to 15 bucks an hour.

Adam Coffey:

to work with an expert coach who's built billion dollar businesses,

Adam Coffey:

you can do it for less than the annual cost of a new employee.

Adam Coffey:

and yeah, I'm not giving you 2000 hours at 15 bucks an hour.

Adam Coffey:

I promise you that.

Adam Coffey:

, but I'm gonna give you more value in, in the time you spend with me for 30

Adam Coffey:

grand a year than you are ever gonna do.

Adam Coffey:

in with that entry level employee, and I have some people who are, who pay me

Adam Coffey:

hundreds of thousands of dollars, to have me consult in their businesses.

Adam Coffey:

putting me aside, you raised the point.

Adam Coffey:

Business leaders, need to recognize that they can up their game by

Adam Coffey:

working with people who can help them maximize the potential.

Adam Coffey:

Whether that's a coach, a mentor, it's a practitioner like me who's

Adam Coffey:

been there and done it, or it's someone who does it from an academic

Adam Coffey:

perspective and they've got a model.

Adam Coffey:

it's like business owners and leaders just need to be open to the fact

Adam Coffey:

that they don't know everything and they can accelerate their learning

Adam Coffey:

and maximize the potential of their business by working with others.

Adam Coffey:

Whether it's a peer group, or it's a coach or mentor, that it

Adam Coffey:

can help them amp up their game.

Dallas Burnett:

I love that.

Dallas Burnett:

And I think that's, so important and I think that you engage

Dallas Burnett:

people at so many different levels and I think that's awesome.

Dallas Burnett:

I think that you, having the books out there, you're obviously a,

Dallas Burnett:

an absolute world-class expert in private equity, world-class expert in

Dallas Burnett:

transitioning and retirement and how that process all works and everything.

Dallas Burnett:

and then to be able to give that back and also business running businesses as

Dallas Burnett:

a CEO and that high level executive view from that seat in the ballpark, I think

Dallas Burnett:

that's just awesome because people can engage with you in that different ways.

Adam Coffey:

that seminar I just finished, empire Builders people paid

Adam Coffey:

a thousand bucks, 300 of 'em to come in and sit there, and I gave them 30 years

Adam Coffey:

worth of executive knowledge and a 250 page workbook that they walk out with.

Adam Coffey:

That's essentially the toolkit to build a billion dollar business.

Adam Coffey:

I wish to hell somebody had given me that when I was 20 years old, or 30 years

Dallas Burnett:

Yeah.

Dallas Burnett:

That's a lot less than an nba, but I know just based on our show today there,

Dallas Burnett:

what, that was a heavy workbook they left with I can assure you that Oh my

Adam Coffey:

yeah.

Adam Coffey:

Cause of the price, it was a pdf,

Dallas Burnett:

Yeah.

Adam Coffey:

at end, at the end of the day though, a lot of people said,

Adam Coffey:

Jesus, I spent 150 grand on an mba, and I have learned more here in two days.

Adam Coffey:

That's actionable than I did in 18 months at this top

Adam Coffey:

business school.

Adam Coffey:

You know, it, it was, it's the School of Hard Knocks, mba,

Dallas Burnett:

And I think that's what you just said is exactly right.

Dallas Burnett:

There's knowledge is.

Dallas Burnett:

, but knowledge is not actionable.

Dallas Burnett:

You have to get to an actionable place.

Dallas Burnett:

You have to know how to apply that knowledge and

Dallas Burnett:

that's what experience gives.

Dallas Burnett:

That's what experience does.

Dallas Burnett:

And that's why you can have people fly in from all over the world, sit down and

Dallas Burnett:

be so grateful to get that information.

Dallas Burnett:

Because it's not just, pie the sky theory.

Dallas Burnett:

This is an, this is, these are actionable things that they can do

Dallas Burnett:

to help and grow their business.

Dallas Burnett:

And I love how you go zero to a billion.

Dallas Burnett:

That's just that's just, it's just awesome because it's so oh my gosh,

Dallas Burnett:

that's, how is that even possible?

Dallas Burnett:

But you're laying it out.

Dallas Burnett:

And I think there's so many things that we've talked about today that can

Dallas Burnett:

help business leaders, can help team leaders, can help business owners.

Dallas Burnett:

One last thing I'll talk about private equity.

Dallas Burnett:

If you were to advise, because you made some bold statements about the market

Dallas Burnett:

of private equity, the industry and how it's grown over the last few years.

Dallas Burnett:

I've experienced that and seen that in myself and in other businesses.

Dallas Burnett:

And so if a business owner was thinking about transitioning, they

Dallas Burnett:

go and read your book, how would they go about, how would you advise them

Dallas Burnett:

going, cuz this went from a several hundred to 6,000 different PE firms.

Dallas Burnett:

How would you advise them in, in, in general about picking a

Dallas Burnett:

partner that's right for them?

Dallas Burnett:

that's

Adam Coffey:

so.

Adam Coffey:

and again, I'm not trying to Hawk books because I donate

Adam Coffey:

all my royalties to charity.

Adam Coffey:

Let me just start with that.

Adam Coffey:

But on the exit strategy playbook, I really lay it out step by step.

Adam Coffey:

When you're a business owner, how to think about, an exit.

Adam Coffey:

And it starts, first of all, before you ever head down that

Adam Coffey:

path, about helping you to define what your goals and objectives are

Adam Coffey:

that you're trying to accomplish.

Adam Coffey:

As an example, let's say you're in your fifties and you don't want to retire and

Adam Coffey:

you want a second bite of the apple, then you're looking for, either a financial

Adam Coffey:

buyer because they'll give you the opportunity to stay, or you're looking

Adam Coffey:

for strategic buyer, potentially backed by private equity, which will still give you

Adam Coffey:

the same action if you're a small company.

Adam Coffey:

but you want one that keeps the lights on.

Adam Coffey:

and if you're gonna sell to a strategic who's then gonna ask

Adam Coffey:

you to leave, you, you didn't accomplish your goals and objectives.

Adam Coffey:

So it starts by trying to understand what your own personal goals and objectives are

Adam Coffey:

in selling the business, aligning yourself to the universe of buyers that are

Adam Coffey:

gonna allow you to achieve those goals.

Adam Coffey:

From there, I help you build a team of advisors in this book and who

Adam Coffey:

are the four people you need to help you down this road to exit?

Adam Coffey:

It's the largest asset you have in your life.

Adam Coffey:

It probably is the largest transaction of your life to date.

Adam Coffey:

I want it to, I want your next one to be bigger, but for right now, today,

Adam Coffey:

this is the biggest transaction of.

Adam Coffey:

You're a novice at selling.

Adam Coffey:

I teach you who the four people are, you need on your team and

Adam Coffey:

how to find them and what role it is that they play in helping you.

Adam Coffey:

And then I walk through what a typical lower middle market type, PE process

Adam Coffey:

would look like from cradle to grave.

Adam Coffey:

Maybe they hired an investment banker because they were a little

Adam Coffey:

bit bigger and they were able to, and run a traditional process.

Adam Coffey:

Maybe they had to hire a broker dealer, or a business, broker to help

Adam Coffey:

represent their business or business was a little bit smaller, wasn't big

Adam Coffey:

enough for a, an investment bank.

Adam Coffey:

And so I walked them through how to decide what your goals and objectives

Adam Coffey:

are, how to build the team of people around you that will level the playing

Adam Coffey:

field between you, the novice seller and the world's most sophisticated buyer.

Adam Coffey:

And then, as a part of that journey, what the process looks like.

Adam Coffey:

And then finally how to make that decision.

Adam Coffey:

So there's a lot that goes into it, from a soundbite perspective, but it

Adam Coffey:

starts by just like in the beginning where we started, this podcast comes

Adam Coffey:

down to, filling out that forum 10 years from now, what are you trying to.

Adam Coffey:

You really gotta put some forethought into selling a business

Adam Coffey:

before you start down that road.

Adam Coffey:

And boy, there's preparation work that needs to happen.

Adam Coffey:

I see it too often where entrepreneurs wake up and they say, today's the

Adam Coffey:

day I'm gonna sell my business.

Adam Coffey:

I'm gonna chase the highest damn dollar I can find, and I don't give

Adam Coffey:

a crap who buys it and I've taken all my marbles and I'm going home ready?

Adam Coffey:

Go.

Adam Coffey:

And they wind up, hitter, first of all, they don't know what they

Adam Coffey:

don't know, so I guarantee you they didn't maximize their outcome.

Adam Coffey:

But they don't know what they don't know.

Adam Coffey:

So they didn't know that they just left, 50 million on the table by not planning.

Adam Coffey:

But think of it this way, imagine you own a business in

Adam Coffey:

California, Nevada, as an example.

Adam Coffey:

California has a 13.6%, capital gains tax.

Adam Coffey:

You own this business.

Adam Coffey:

You live in LA and your business is also in Nevada.

Adam Coffey:

If I sell it in California, if I don't have my tax and trust,

Adam Coffey:

structure set up properly of where the windfalls gonna come into, bing.

Adam Coffey:

I'm going give 13.6% of all this to, what did my brother call him the

Adam Coffey:

other day instead of Gavin Newsom?

Adam Coffey:

It was gruesome.

Adam Coffey:

and your money's gonna get just peed away, in the general state budget really quick.

Adam Coffey:

But if I had a couple years in advance, picked up steaks, checked

Adam Coffey:

17 different boxes, how do I know 17?

Adam Coffey:

Because I've done this.

Adam Coffey:

and I left and I set up shop in Nevada and, and then sold my business.

Adam Coffey:

I pay zero.

Dallas Burnett:

It's unbelievable.

Adam Coffey:

So there's tax planning.

Adam Coffey:

I need help from accountants because my first thing I'm gonna get asked

Adam Coffey:

for is three years worth of clean and potentially reviewed or audited

Adam Coffey:

financials, depending on how big I am.

Adam Coffey:

And right now, I got the boathouse in there.

Adam Coffey:

I got Uncle Jimmy, who's been dead for three years on payroll.

Adam Coffey:

My wife hasn't worked a day in the business in 20 years, but

Adam Coffey:

I'm paying her 200 grand a year.

Adam Coffey:

when you're a business owner, you're programmed to not pay taxes.

Adam Coffey:

When you're a business seller, you gotta normalize all your financials

Adam Coffey:

because it's gonna hurt you, in a sale process, if all that stuff is clouded.

Adam Coffey:

If you hand over a QuickBook file, you didn't work with a transaction

Adam Coffey:

advisory services team, you didn't do a sell side Q of E, you're listening

Adam Coffey:

to me and you're saying, I don't even know what the hell a Q of E is.

Adam Coffey:

ed, so there's a process.

Adam Coffey:

There's things that you need to do to prepare for sale.

Adam Coffey:

And if you do these, I guarantee you, you're gonna find maximum outcome.

Adam Coffey:

from this asset that you spent a whole life building.

Adam Coffey:

You spent so much time building and caring for it.

Adam Coffey:

I can't believe how little effort people put into actually

Adam Coffey:

maximizing the potential of an.

Dallas Burnett:

it, what you've just said.

Dallas Burnett:

I mean, it's unbelievable.

Dallas Burnett:

And if you're listening to the show, I know we've got some listeners, if

Dallas Burnett:

you're listening to the show, bare minimum, you should be buying at least

Dallas Burnett:

the exit strategy playbook at bare minimum, because what he's just covered

Dallas Burnett:

is phenomenal and worth millions of dollars in just what he just said alone.

Dallas Burnett:

if you love the book or if even if you just say, I wanna circumvent

Dallas Burnett:

that, go to one of his Empire Builders seminars, it's thousand bucks.

Dallas Burnett:

go to him on that.

Dallas Burnett:

Or it unbelievable that you could have access to Adam for such a low rate in

Dallas Burnett:

his advisory and consulting practice.

Dallas Burnett:

You're, you're talking, you have the ability to talk to

Dallas Burnett:

the chairman of the chairmans.

Dallas Burnett:

So this is, this is big time,

Adam Coffey:

Yeah, we gotta work on that branding.

Adam Coffey:

I'm the chairman.

Adam Coffey:

We dunno yet what the

Dallas Burnett:

the

Adam Coffey:

but I already had, a ton of people sign it up to be part of the thing,

Dallas Burnett:

good.

Dallas Burnett:

we're excited to hear more about it.

Dallas Burnett:

Maybe in a year we can have you back on, you can tell us all about

Dallas Burnett:

the new, that new venture and what you're into then and everything.

Dallas Burnett:

But I want to make sure where can people find you?

Dallas Burnett:

We're gonna, we're gonna post, we're gonna post, in the show notes.

Dallas Burnett:

We're gonna post all the links to your books and Amazon, your Amazon bestseller.

Dallas Burnett:

Easy to find there.

Dallas Burnett:

Where would you like to engage people if they want to get to you more

Dallas Burnett:

about talking about more advice and things to how you can help their

Adam Coffey:

Yeah.

Adam Coffey:

So let's do two, two primary ways.

Adam Coffey:

Go to LinkedIn first.

Adam Coffey:

I'm Adam Coffey, c o f e y.

Adam Coffey:

you'll find me and I love to connect and talk to people, via LinkedIn.

Adam Coffey:

I also have a lot of content there that you can plug into

Adam Coffey:

and always know what's going on.

Adam Coffey:

And then I have a website, it's Adam e coffee, c o f e y.com.

Adam Coffey:

You can come find me there as, as well, and happy to, engage

Adam Coffey:

with, that's why I did this.

Adam Coffey:

I quit being the ceo.

Adam Coffey:

I was bored.

Adam Coffey:

I wanted to help multiple companies at a time and to help

Adam Coffey:

multiple companies at a time.

Adam Coffey:

I gotta find you, and you have to find me.

Adam Coffey:

So I try to make it as easy as possible to en engage.

Adam Coffey:

But those are the two primary.

Dallas Burnett:

Adam, it has been such a pleasure to have you on the show today.

Dallas Burnett:

You are a wealth of wisdom and knowledge.

Dallas Burnett:

Thank you for sharing that with us today.

Dallas Burnett:

It, we could just, I could just talk to you for another three hours.

Dallas Burnett:

this is, there's so many things that I would love to talk to you

Dallas Burnett:

about, but we're gonna have to save that for another episode.

Dallas Burnett:

But thank you again.

Dallas Burnett:

We'll be putting you, into oh one last thing.

Dallas Burnett:

and this is something you may, you we always ask a guest at the end

Dallas Burnett:

of the show, and it can be someone that you know personally, it can be

Dallas Burnett:

someone that you would like to hear.

Dallas Burnett:

But if there's anyone that comes to mind that you would like to hear on the

Dallas Burnett:

last 10%, who would that person be as someone that you would like to hear, and

Dallas Burnett:

it may be somebody you know or don't.

Dallas Burnett:

Who would you like to hear on the last 10%?

Adam Coffey:

I know some other entrepreneurs who are

Adam Coffey:

on the journey right now.

Adam Coffey:

there's a young guy out there named Robert Brier, who worked

Adam Coffey:

at ge, worked for me at Cool ci.

Adam Coffey:

he now owns a, an electrician, company up in, in Northern California.

Adam Coffey:

He's a, an Annapolis grad, a former Navy Seal officer, and,

Adam Coffey:

led Seal teams during the Gulf Wars, or during the War on Terror.

Adam Coffey:

And he now runs business called Triad and Electric.

Adam Coffey:

he's another great guy that could tell some great stories about his

Adam Coffey:

experience building a business.

Dallas Burnett:

Fantastic.

Dallas Burnett:

Adam, thank you for being on the last 10%.

Dallas Burnett:

We look forward to having you on another show sometime and

Dallas Burnett:

and we just appreciate you.

Adam Coffey:

Thank you, Dallas.

Adam Coffey:

Thank you to everybody out there who's listening, build

Adam Coffey:

your business, build an empire.

Adam Coffey:

I wanna see you at one of my upcoming events.

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About the Podcast

The Last 10%
Inspiring People, Coaching Teams, and Improving Cultures
Join The Last 10% for incredible conversations that help uncover the secrets of what it takes to finish well and finish strong. Our guests share their journeys, hardships, and valuable advice. We release new episodes every other Tuesday. If you are a leader, a coach, a business owner, or someone looking to level up, you are in the right place!

You can give 90% effort and make it a long way. But it’s the finding out how to unlock the last 10% that makes all the difference in your life, your relationships, and your work.

About your host

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Dallas Burnett