How I Built DOZENS of Multi-Million Dollar Companies Aaron Scott Young

 Right as we started to record this, I looked at my text messages. The top guy in franchising was a senior executive McDonald's who brought us Jack and Box, massage envy and serve pro, just wrote to me and said, I've got a great franchise that's exploding, they need a board member, are you interested? I've also started dozens of multi-million dollar companies, I've taken several companies public, I've seen a lot of things over like 41 year career. Kilo, I want you to be wildly successful learning from these mistakes you've been broke before. You've been to prison. What I would love is some of the stories behind the things that make Aaron. Aaron Young is the CEO of Laughlin Associates and has helped over 200,000 entrepreneurs start, grow and profit from their business. He's also the author of Unshackled, a book that outlines the formula, Aaron and his co-author Robert Injuries used to build businesses that have generated over a billion dollars in revenue. I didn't want to write this book, there's a co-author's name on this book and he wasn't a ghost writer, he was one of my students and we took his company from a million and a half dollars to almost 50 million dollars in four years by implementing what's in this book. No, we can you make great relationships but you can also make a lot of money. Aaron Young, welcome to Tennessee, welcome to our studio, it's an honor to have you in town. Yeah, it's great to be here and what a great place and I love the Nashville area. So any chance that we could have done this on Zoom but this is way more fun to be here with you. Aaron Young, I don't know how open you want to be on this podcast about your story. Aaron Young, you can ask me anything about it. Aaron Young, there was probably 15 times last night and this morning when we were talking about me and you saw it probably on my face every time like just go, I'm just like, you've lived so many lives, you have so many experiences, you've experienced some super, super highs, you've experienced some pretty crazy lows. What do you think of people who zoom out from a standpoint of like what people would call lows? You have a book that at the time of this recording every single person will be able to go get and support and I would also love to like dive in again to some of the principles of what it looks like to be unshackled but how would you just how would you set the stage if we were on a long elevator ride and someone just asked you the general question. Aaron, what do you do? Aaron Young, I guess if it was a long elevator ride, at this stage of my life at 60 years old, what I really do is I look for how can we build value in any relationship, any business engagement as well as personal. Also at 60, I'm way more interested in working with people that I enjoy than just trying to make a good financial deal with somebody. So I would say that I am able to help in my own businesses and in others that I advise or that I do business with, a path to getting to the goal that we have and I guess my skill is being able to not get lost in all the extraneous stuff, not get lost in the weeds and able to keep my eye on the outcome that we're seeking to achieve. And I'm really good at being, if you go back to like a wagon train, you know back from the old westerns, the scout was always out in front or up higher than the wagon train. So here's all the all the energy down here but the scout's going, oh the bridge is out or there's a problem over here or let's this other way will actually seem longer but it's going to actually be better. And I think that's sort of the role I feel for a lot of individuals. I explain it breakfast I see you as a super connector and someone that's very strategic when it comes to business and that's rare. A lot of times you have people that are business whizz that hate people or don't want to talk to people are very introverted and just like don't talk to me or you have super connectors which are always fun to be around but they're not necessarily thinking 40 chess. They're thinking like hey how can I connect Aaron with somebody else and when you can have someone that has both I think there's a big responsibility that comes with that but I think that's very special and for someone who you know admires people like you I just love talking because I love talking to people like you because I'm like what can I learn how can I take you know someone that has 30 plus years on me when it comes to experience in wisdom and how can I learn from that. So the leverage on that real fast is when you are and I think yeah you saw me maybe for the first time really because first time we were together was at my back. You were very busy. Last time where somebody else's event had a private event and it was pretty small maybe 50-60 people and I think I got to many of the most important people in the room. I didn't have a very casual and I was the the interloper you know but if you ask them what what they're looking for what's your ideal or what's your avatar what's your what are you trying to reach they want to talk about that and then if I can go oh I wonder if law I wonder if I can make this connection with them then that it creates a level of friendship or maybe not friendship but you start to build trust and there also becomes if you do a good job connecting you get some emotional indebtedness from that person they're like oh yeah that guy helped me out so now you know he's calling I better take his call yeah and as long as you never waste that and you always you're always trying to do the right thing for the other person they'll want to introduce you right as we started to record this I looked at my text messages the top guy in franchising worldwide the guy who was a senior executive McDonald's who brought us Jack and box and massage envy and serve pro and hundreds and hundreds of big well-known franchises just wrote to me and said I've got a great franchise that's exploding they need a board member are you interested oh now I don't know anything about that industry but he's like oh Aaron knows people yeah Aaron will help raise money Aaron will help them solve problems yeah because he and I are said on another board together and I've never asked him for anything and I've introduced him to people so then when he's got an introduction he wants to come back and the cool thing is is if you are not just a super connector which it's very flattering I don't think I would have identified myself as super but I do love people yeah I've also started dozens of multi-million dollar companies I've taken several companies public I've seen a lot of things over my career 41 year career and if you can connect with people and see how you can take different disparate business pieces and connect them then you can make not only can you make great relationships but you can also make a lot of money yeah you can become very financially successful and never have your hand out never be like the one that's always just trying to take from somebody yeah I don't know how I became me I just have noticed over my whole career I've had that wonderful experience well we're gonna we're gonna dive into a little bit of your story and what I find is it's one thing for people like you to say hey here's the top three things that you should do and blah blah blah a lot of people out there that will give advice great I think there's a lot to be learned about the backstory and the stories behind the advice so you've been broke before you've you've been to prison huh you've taken companies public you've made millions millions of dollars on transactions yes you there's a lot and in between there you have a love for your family I saw I saw you tear up with someone singing about their family and so like what I would love is some of the stories behind the things that are make Aaron Aaron and some of the the principles that you will not budge on or these are the life lessons that we are sitting across the cuff off in your like Caleb I want you to be wildly successful learn from these mistakes here's the stories behind what I'm about to share with you I'm gonna hand it over to you to navigate this obviously we we'd be here all day but but I think I would love to highlight like when you were broke when you made hard decisions you even mentioned to me like you said earlier at breakfast which really stuck with me you're like hey I did this and it was an eagle play pure eagle play there's maturity and in since that decision so I'm just again I'm gonna sit back all right you want to just tell you some stories stories but the lessons that were rooted in making you who you are and then obviously I want to get into your book I would love every single person that watches this listen to this to get the book selfishly for them you know at the end of the day you don't need support selfishly for them if this book couldn't help them they should get it I'm so excited about this book and we will come back to you but I'll just to that point that you just made I didn't want to write this book okay there's a co-authors name on this book and he wasn't a ghostwriter who's co-author yeah he was one of my students yeah and we took his company from a million and a half dollars to almost fifty million dollars in four years by implementing what's in this book well and he lives in Romania yeah and he said an engineer in Romania makes five hundred dollars a month they can't afford your training but they need to get the training and they could afford a twenty five dollar book so this book was written for the people that aren't gonna that are trying to figure out how to start and do it in at least the way I do it it's not the way to do it but it's my way to do it where you have the greatest likelihood of succeeding so that 41 years or maybe it was 39 years because the books in in process for a couple years it's only only come out in July of 24 that collective experience and all the things I learned of what I applied now they worked are there we can talk more about it later but for everybody that's listening to this this is a twenty five dollar twenty two dollar something way of getting everything that's in a seventy five hundred dollar training course or if they were gonna pay me twenty five thousand dollars a day to sit and talk to them yep but it's it's at a fraction of the price and it's all there nothing's held back the entire course is in the book so it's a very easy way for me to get a start using a formula that has worked dozens of times public and private and for hundreds more big companies so okay enough about the book where did it start when I was a little boy I was diagnosed with a degenerative bone disease I was about two years old and they told my parents he's never gonna be able to heal the embraces for a while eventually his hip bones will completely deteriorate at that time they weren't doing hip replacements like we do now yep and they said he'll be in a wheelchair his whole life and the doctor said to my mother and I was just little I don't remember that stuff I have vague memories of the leg braces but I was a little kid but the doctor told my mom um he's going to have a hard time moving around with these braces on his legs in a bar a metal bar between my shoes to hold my bones in just the right way to try to increase blood flow he said um he made up in a wheelchair but only you will make him a cripple wow wow and my mom said what do you mean she said and the doctor said he's gonna be on the ground and won't be able to stand up he's gonna want to he's you're gonna need him to do something and you'll have a hard time moving you have to let him sort it out if you go pick him up or rescue him every time you'll make him a cripple and my mom told says told stories about me a little he imagine a little three-year-old calling for their parent and um I'm just gonna hurry up you're gonna be in trouble if you don't get in here you know come on relate let's go what I learned as a little little child was if I've got a difficult circumstance I have to figure it out because nobody's gonna rescue me I've got to solve this problem thankfully I got through that period of time things happened which we don't need to go into but where medically I got the help I needed and I'm not in a wheelchair six years later but I learned that as a little child and I I can't tell you that I consciously remember it but I know for a fact as I heard the stories back for my parents that this was one of the hardest things they have had I was their oldest yeah so they had no experience with anybody else but they learned I've got to let him do it and I learned I have to figure it out it doesn't mean I have to figure it out alone we had mom and dad we had doctors we had braces there are things and folks don't have to go it alone but if you want to be a leader and if you want to be an entrepreneur if you want to have success in any sort of career there is an element of I need to figure this out yeah because there is no there is no white night coming into rescue me I need to figure out how am I going to do this and how am I going to make it work and so for us as entrepreneurs um one of the greatest stories and or lessons I ever learned was not only do I need to figure it out but I'm capable of figuring it out uh and that when you realize you can do it almost everything else comes easy what what is your initial like need your reaction when people play the victim card because lots of people in business lots of people in life play the victim card and and for people like you in your situation it would be easy to justify like hey I was born this way but that would have robbed you of so many things in your life I wasn't I mean I was born into a very modest home my dad worked two jobs my mom did day care in our home so we had all these little kids running around I was changing diapers and I was you know 10 11 years old um and uh no if I was going to have nicer tennis shoes or jeans so I was going into middle school or high school yeah I'd figure out how to do that myself and um mom dad took great care of us but it was limited yep and um so people if they say you're born this way now first of all I'll I'll say this I wasn't born you know mutated in some way where you know yeah people are gonna be naturally you know we're right right or something um uh I would like to work harder than the average person maybe I'm in the senior I mean nobody gave me anything but except for my parents did give me probably the most important thing that I think any parent can give their kids which is they loved me but they also believed in me they also were always encouraging they always said you can do anything yeah anything you put your mind to you can do it and I loved them and trusted them enough that I believe them uh and and there are a lot of people who don't have that yeah who don't have anybody cheerleading so I did have an advantage I had mom and dad that stayed together uh I had a religious construct that was very helpful for me as a young man um I was the oldest which a lot of leaders are the oldest you know in their family yeah a lot of people that ended up running things were the were the first child yeah and um so were there things sure was I born white in in a country that is dominated by a white class of people yeah I mean was I born a man yeah that is an advantage especially starting from 1964 that was an advantage you know remember women couldn't even get a credit card without their husband co-signing no matter how much money they made until the 80s they couldn't get a credit card I mean so was it to be a white man in in America with parents who loved me and that's like winning the lottery right and less to me and I if I've offended any of your viewers I'm sorry but you're stupid if you don't understand this um that's lucky now there's a lot of changes societally that are making it easier for other people who are not the dominant culture to to succeed and and I we have a very diverse employee base with it incredibly diverse client-based you know tens of thousands of business owner clients they're from all they're from every every walk of life because who cares right all we want is for people to be successful right we want people to be able to reach their dreams we want people to do that but did I have it uh financially easy no did I have an education easy no yeah but did I have some things my favor yes everybody has something right in their favor and the the goal is to identify what is it yeah and leverage that thing okay because would I have been a great NBA basketball player no five feet eight I'm built stocky I got a big button legs I was never going to jump high yeah but somebody who was ever going to be a Olympic swimmer look at Michael Phelps and all the weird stuff about him physically that makes him a great swimmer everybody has something so if I just summarize what you're saying is find that thing that you're that you're good at or that you love and then leverage that use the word leverage because everyone no matter who how you're born there is some type of genius that you have in your life you've got some super hot and leverage it yeah it's a matter of fact for anybody that's young that's listening um I'm not against college even though I didn't get a college education I'm in favor of college if there's a reason to get that education um there's a there's a great quote that says education will make you a living self-education will make you a fortune yeah and I believe that yeah the biggest thing people do is they get us they go follow all these classes yeah so they get a certificate so they can try to go get a specific job and that may or may not work whereas if people say what am I really good at yeah in my personality yeah and you develop that you can apply it in any industry that's good you can be successful anywhere but find your thing yeah find your super proud so um I tell long story the first time you were broke 1991 well we had a big setback in in 91 we had a bankruptcy okay so I had my first come I started my first company built it up sold it started my second company built it up to five stores it was in 1986 in the cellular phone business it was when phones were $3,000 for the phone 49 cents a minute to use the phone oh yeah and it only worked at a little tiny geographic area yeah couldn't go everywhere like walkie talkies oh it's oh yeah it's I think walkie talk is that longer range um but it was cool you know yeah this giant thing mounted under your seat in your car in a curly cord that yeah hooked to a handset it wasn't like we have it wasn't anything like we think of now that was back in 86 um yeah we built that up to multiple stores were very successful and then in one meeting um the carrier GTE just pulled the rug out from under us on everything everything well I was in my 20s and I'd only had successes bunch of these other people were older than me and they'd been around for a while most of them closed up they sold out of their inventory close up their shop let their people go very smart me I was naive I'd never been down that road before so I thought well I'm one of the biggest agents and I've got great people and everybody loves us and you know anyway after I use up all of our cash and all of our business credit and all of my cash and leverage our home and did everything and ended up hundreds and hundreds of thousands dollars upside down uh and my wife pregnant with our second child nine months pregnant sitting in a bankruptcy court um I learned a very valuable lesson which is don't think you're stronger than the marketplace the market will dictate things um at the time of this recording we're we're less than two months from a presidential election the biggest thing people business owners should be thinking about right now is regardless of who wins how will I need to adjust what I'm doing to go along with what the real life circumstances are everybody gripes and complains and pickets and kicks dirt and and I'm like well that's gonna get you nowhere right but what we'll get you somewhere to go what are the facts what is happening yep and you have to be pretty zen about that you'd be dispassionate and it really says well business is all about passion I like I don't agree with that yeah I think business is all about being smart and being opportunistic yeah what's happening right now and how can I provide some value to the market where people will buy something from me because of the circumstances yeah right so that's what you that's what we did then and what happened then was I went from being on the radio in the newspaper kind of a you know quasi big deal in my little city of Portland Oregon to being without all that and I was broke um but another guy who was CEO of a big company said oh that guy has done some cool things that we need at our much much bigger company and he took me out of lunch and he offered me a job and next thing I know at 29 I'm the vice president of sales for a publicly traded multinational with offices all three or 50 offices around the world um they gave me the keys to a really nice car basically and let me drive and I fixed I fixed their sales and I didn't know I the other thing I want to say really clearly to anybody listening is I just didn't know any better I figured I was old enough 29 now I go what I've really given a 29 year old in a public company setting that role but I was I was the oldest I'd ever been yeah yeah I thought I could do it right and I did do it I did do it but the point is I just sometimes it's good to just go I somebody's gonna do this why not me right I want to go back to when you failed fail that that business oh sure the lesson that you learned from that was hey you were on the Titanic and you were trying to like be super efficient and trying to outsmart but at the end of the day the business that you were in was sinking do the market and what you mean by that is supplying demand there was not demand for the business that you were getting into I well I would say it slightly I characterized it differently because it has cellular phone business grown or shrunk I would say it's grown yeah so no it was growing but it was the decision by the powers it be had decided to grow it through big box retailers not through independent agencies and so they basically removed everything that made it possible for us to operate how we got paid how we got co-op advertising and so on that that all shifted to what a big retailer who's going to use cell phones as a lost leader instead of trying to make money at on it um what I didn't understand was where the market was going yeah and I fought against it so what I learned was there's plenty of demand just not demand for the way I was doing it and so um it was a really tremendous lesson in retrospect yeah it was a painful lesson yeah but it taught me something that I've never re never done it again when I've seen the market shifting I adjust to the market instead of trying to swim against the current yeah my question is how it's it's easy to say you adjust the market but how now do you become aware how do you put your own biases aside what questions are you asking what are you looking at when you're like how do I know what the market is thinking well you just use a great word which was bias um most people that I meet are are consuming information that supports their belief system yeah they don't want to hear somebody making a logical argument for something they don't like right right and we're in political season now and that's prime example yeah every day so if you if you decide to watch MSNBC or Fox um you're doing that typically because you have a con you have a confirmation bias toward one opinion or the other yeah and they will just feed you what you want so I have to I just I cited many many years ago to consume both so if you were to go to look at my radio and my car you'll see Fox you'll see MSNBC you'll see the BBC and you'll see Bloomberg and even though Bloomberg Bloomberg is a Democrat yep but they are reporting on finance yep and the numbers move somewhat politically but they mostly they're driven by opportunity right so if I'm listening to what are people saying yep including people in other countries um about what we're going through and I'm looking at the numbers I I've been around long enough I can sort of get a sense of I think we should be leaning this way or we should be positioning our message this way how do you do it you you have to decide to um be more dedicated to helping your customer than proving your opinions right yeah that's how I would tell you do it that's how you adjust what is the customer going to be looking for what are they afraid of what are they excited about how do we bring whatever our service or product is to them in the way that at this moment they're thinking yeah and that is really what it is and um if you're providing a good valuable product or service and you can explain it based on what's happening today people will buy from you right if you try to convince somebody that has a different philosophical stand than you do you're going to just beat your head against a wall they're not going to switch over to your philosophical beliefs but they will buy your product or use your service and if you can keep it apolitical don't be political I tell people all the time you want to be political go vote go knock doors go go give money to candidates that you believe in but at work yeah keep it keep politics out because you don't want to be and unless you're dedicated to just working with one mindset yeah which I'm not and anybody that wants to get big wants to do great things for as many people as you can help as many people as you can and the way you do that is by providing something really valuable yeah and not putting a bunch of weird strings on it that make people uncomfortable so if I could summarize all that I'd say one part of the definition of being zen you know like a zen guard and or whatever meditation all that is to look at things unemotionally yeah just very still it's well yeah so still racism is based on the same thing yeah being quiet and just noticing what is going on yeah and if you're unsure check with a variety of people who have different perspectives in you and confirm what you think you're observing remember what you're observing isn't just what's going on what you're observing is what you interpret what's going on to be through the lens of your life experience and so you and the person next to you may be seeing a completely different thing happening based on your history yeah sometimes you need to cross check with people and go am I seeing this like are you seeing this yeah what you're seeing something different tell me what you're seeing and being open to it that's how you adjust the market in my opinion so 1993 you're 29 years old you you take on your executive the public company what's the next lesson in your timeline that you want to bring up so you're crushing it there yeah just in general like I okay so if I go back to my first not real business but it acted like a business but it wasn't the business was my painting business house or it wasn't a house pay it was apartments turning apartments in high school I got hired I negotiated with the owner of a bunch of bill I got hired by a manager of a building to turn apartments when I was 14 at 16 I got hired by the owner of that building and a bunch of other buildings to paint his house and I got to know him and I said I'll do all your buildings for this price which was three times what the manager was painting so then all of a sudden I've got a bunch of other teenagers painting apartments right then I took that and built the cell phone or the recycling business then the cell phone business they went to the public company so I went from me painting to a bunch of people in different buildings how am I going to manage that then the recycling business two trucks four guys five thousand homes how do we manage that five thousand customers then it was the the cell phone business ended up with five locations how do I manage sales teams accounting all how do I manage all that as a mid-twenties guy in different locations I'm not there to look over the shoulders then I go to the public company 350 offices all over the freaking world how do you do it so and and part of what you'll see in this book is I talk a lot about SRA same rules apply once you figure out a formula for for keeping track of people keeping score like if you went to a ballgame and you're watching a basketball game and there are people running up and down the field there's great athleticism but you have no idea how much time is in the game how many points have been scored how many timeouts are left how many fouls have been committed if you don't know any of that and they're just running around at what point you kind of get bored with that or you don't have any sense of how to define success or failure right when you learn how to create scoreboards based on really really simple things inside of your business and then you know where the outcome is you know what the goal is you're trying to reach and then you have a few things that you're measuring and everybody in the team knows what the goals are and then they get to decide how to move the ball and you keep score on all that you can do that across great landscape you can do that across lots of people lots of offices lots of because it's all it's all the creative genius of the people coupled with very simple matrix that you're measuring knowing that this this thing these four things that let's say we're measuring tell us if we're going the right direction and we're going the wrong direction what's the lesson from the public company the stuff that I'd learned before translated to a much higher level much more professional much more scrutinized industry with lots more people and lots of different cultures it's still worked the same rules applied in all these places once you understand the math or the recipe however you wanted the formula around something then if you can't unsee it you're going to get all over the place and go oh here's how we would fix that here's how we would grow that here's how we would solve that turnover problem here's how we'll increase marketing sales delivery so on so forth that was the great lesson was that in a circumstance that I believed I was utterly unqualified for yeah no college education been scrappy entrepreneur just went bankrupt yeah right and now you're going to put me in a corner office and put me in charge of all this stuff and send me around the world okay well let's I only knew what I knew I applied what I knew it worked and then all of a sudden at that point so by the time I was 31 32 I knew oh I understand something that apparently a whole bunch of people that I thought were smarter better educated more competent than me they don't understand it which gave me a level of confidence to go out and do it over and over and over and over again dozens and dozens of times and then teach other companies from very famous names that you know big public companies to lots of companies you've never heard of but they're still doing tens or hundreds of millions of dollars you know the same rules apply across everything I'm helping right now I've got a genetics laboratory I've got a military contractor I've got a red light therapy national franchise I've got a robotics company that I just helped negotiate a deal with Reynolds aluminum for several hundred million dollars I've all these people that I get to work with and advise and the the help goes across the board but for me it's the same thing over and over and over again profound that's profound it works I've done Indian reservations and school districts and hospitals same rules apply I'm going to ask a question that might sound like a dumb question but when you say same rules apply and you are getting into a random business how do you how do you get in like when you say same rules apply and like I'm in the financial service business but let's say someone's in the trucking business how do you approach the just we just enrolled a bunch of trucking companies okay California okay hundreds of drivers well how do you approach the same rules same rule apply the rules that I'm just yeah that I'm talking about yeah um the best way I've been able to translate those to other people and I know we didn't I didn't expect the book to be sitting on this table when we came in here today but the rules are right here this is my formula this is the formula in that book and not only is this book the formula it's the formula plus how one of my students who was 29 years old when we started took his company to almost 50 million dollars and from one and a half in four years yeah so it's how what what I taught him and how we applied it and um the rules are right there this is a this is a workbook this is like a 300 page book right here is there any favorite rules out of this book that you just like highlighters it's okay no well okay if you want to do I'll I'll give you this filter if you have a horrible idea it doesn't matter how good the formula is okay if you have a really clever idea but you're ahead of the market yeah it doesn't matter if if you think that you need to be the the lord and master and king over the thing that you're building this won't help you yeah this is going to tell you how to build a company that transcends beyond you yeah and some people love to be the bottleneck they love everybody come into the door and say hey boss do you have five minutes they love it they get a lot of juice from that I never liked it I love people yeah but I don't want to do the same thing over and over every day this book tells you how to build successful organizations and this this stuff is is in action on the entrepreneurial level but also on the on the big enterprise level for middle management people yeah they're using the same rules apply and if you're running a department I'm not dropping any names but I will tell you one of the biggest companies in the world one whole huge division that takes care of 1.6 million employees is using this material and so the rules are right the formulas in the book that's why we did the book I'm not trying to be cute or coy I'm saying there none of those is more important the other yeah and it's important to do them in order yeah so assume you have a good idea if you if you order buy this book and just go there's step zero which is basically are you organized properly but then one one through eight you do all of them they're different growth periods and seasons of the company because this book is really from startup to either sell or or step out I don't say you have to step out but step out of the way yeah step out of the way of your management team because if you build a great management team they're going to do a better job than you at almost every single thing yeah what they may not do as well as you is see the big picture and so if you want to be a chairman instead of a president you want to direct them something but not work your tail off a million hours a week then this is for you and those are the rules that I learned through reading and going to events and talking to people smarter than me talking to people richer than me being humble enough to be teachable when I thought I knew the the bankruptcy was a great humbler yeah I'll be sudden I realize oh I'm not that smart yeah but then I talked to other people and I learned how you avoid it and my way is not the way it's just a way yeah but it's a way that just keeps on working yeah so why not at least check it out yeah right love it so you went to prison I did why don't you unpack the lessons and stories in that 14 month period of your life but all what led up to it and then what you learned after it the worst thing I learned so I was indicted not because of any actions of me or my companies yeah but because of somebody else that we were working with and they indict the indictment was conspiracy which to me means we were plotting together to do some bad thing yeah but the law says conspiracy you can be charged with criminal conspiracy and never know about any crime you just have to have materially assisted so we formed a bunch of Nevada corporations for somebody's clients you know over time they would just say we need a company name this company which we do with law firms all the time they were all from law firms 100% of the sales were from law firms we did that and then when the when their big client who owned an offshore bank when that person came under scrutiny they just walked back the chain to everybody that was involved and like 40 people got indicted and my partner I got indicted on conspiracy and the lawyer said we know you don't know about the crime but you still materially assisted by forming entities and I thought well that's insane there's nothing illegal about anything we've done so we fought it and spent about two million dollars fighting in legal fees they never froze a bank account they never took our passports they never stopped our business I to my knowledge I didn't lose any customers I didn't lose any of the legal accounting firms we were working with I didn't lose my team my two leaders my two main generals both got called in and we're threatened with either being a witness or a co-conspirator what do you want to be they'd only worked for us for about a year and a half at that point and that was in 2003 it's now 2024 and both of them still work for me yeah um what I learned was there are things that are just outside of your control that it doesn't matter logically as you evaluate it it doesn't really matter that you go this isn't right or this isn't fair or you know whatever and this was in this case it was a legal case it could be somebody who gets hit by a drunk driver it could be somebody who goes through a bad divorce it could be somebody who gets robbed or attacked or has to go to war and see horrible things and they come back and go this isn't fair like I shouldn't I shouldn't have had to go through that somebody should pay for that and maybe somebody should I don't know in different cases in my case I finally had to come to grips with we're on we're on this conveyor belt and we can't get off so what do I do to mitigate the risk what do I do to get as mentally prepared for what's coming as I can and then how do I make the experience itself as useful as possible even though I do not want to be here and to be really clear and um I just cannot overstate this loudly enough it was much worse for my wife and for my kids and it was for me yeah what seemed so terrifying I got there and I was like oh mostly I'm just gonna be bored out of my mind yeah but I'm not gonna get hurt yeah um I mean maybe have the judgmental it's coming from the outside world but even those fears I thought my career was over I mean you already went bankrupt and I feel like that like I feel like a lot of people are afraid of what other people think of them and what I admire about you is like I don't I don't see that hanging over your head because it's like you're still you're alive you're thriving and you've had things like so many people are afraid to actually take a move or take a stand because they're afraid but like when you already experienced that I'm just wondering like how do you think? There was 15 years in between those two things yeah where we had tremendous success right employed tons of people helped thousands tens of thousands of individuals I mean we did all this good work so that when when the government thing came the judge just got flooded with letters hundreds of letters oh they were like uh you got the wrong guy yeah and even the judge at sentencing said to the the DOJ and the IRS and said this is a Monday morning first case Monday morning nine o'clock Monday morning and the Chief Justice for the federal court who's also on the ninth appellate court so he makes case law he's a he's a big time judge he said I've spent the better part of the last two days so the weekend trying to reconcile what these two my business partner with these two men have been accused of versus everything else in their life well those it's in the public record he said that I'm trying to reconcile what they've been accused of versus all this evidence of everything else and then he chastened the government and they wanted to bring some witnesses and he said you have the right to bring witnesses but I've already made up my mind so if you'd like to waste the court's time call your witnesses and they said no no no because they have to face him again this afternoon right they've got to keep going back in front of this guy nope and then he said are you done are you done pursuing these guys they said yes he said okay then we're gonna dramatically reduce this from what we'd agreed to to what we actually did and um all of our actual work all of our actual relationships all of our relationship capital all of our social capital was on display yeah versus the thing that somebody was saying look what they they they they were conspirators if we if we just show up and do the best we can every day and do the best we can to take care of our our stakeholders so our family our employees our clients our vendors if we are honest and just keep showing up in integrity day after day for year after year when you have a problem that you think is the end like who will ever to I thought who will ever trust me again yeah I deal with very very personal things to people their assets their money I deal with things that you want people to feel comfortable comfortable yeah and I thought this is it I'm done and you know what actually happened bigger companies who'd been through similar things yeah and prevailed came back said you didn't lose your marriage you didn't lose your partnership you didn't lose your employees you didn't lose your leadership you didn't lose your clients we want to work with you yeah I could not have imagined that but what it was was all those years of trying to make sure I'm doing things properly yeah and honestly and in integrity and except when I did something wrong yeah and acknowledge it and deal with it all that came back to lift us up yeah through that bad experience what did you what did you learn wall camping that's what you that's what you that's what you jokingly that's what you jokingly yeah we call it prison camp and then and then what it when you got out what were some of the when you look back you're like hey take this principle or lesson from me without having to live through it probably the most important thing I learned while I was in the prison was because most of the guys were they're probably 90% were there on drug charges lots of them were gang members who had been arrested on nonviolent crimes some of them had committed very violent or like baby bank robbers or whatever and they'd maybe had a 40-year sentence and they were now near the end so they were in the low security you know waiting for five years round when they're gonna get out what I learned in meeting so many of these men there are 500 people there and what I learned was that you know when we think about the the ladder of life that success ladder or the progression of life yeah I realized I was further up the ladder than basically everybody there yeah but I don't know that I'd made as much progress on the ladder as a lot of them a lot of those people had come from horrible situations yeah the worst things I didn't even know could be true and had yes they they'd done some criminal things but they had done a lot of things to build families build relationships they wanted almost to a man wanted to get out away from the gangs they were safe in here they didn't have to be part of it yeah but out there they were at risk and their families are at risk they wanted to get out and I thought I have judged people harshly because they were they looked different me they looked rough they were you know think about people will see on the street you know and you sometimes you see scary people and you go I think I'll cross the street not go through there I'll go over there yeah you know I couldn't walk away from it here and and I got to hear a lot of their stories and understand their their journey and that was that has made it much easier for me to look past a lot of things that I was as a young man I was much more superficial yeah and I've I think I see people I'm able to look past things that at first don't look like what we're looking for yeah and dig a little deeper sometimes I'm right they're not what I'm looking for but sometimes it was good to dig in and find more that was a that was a really valuable thing to learn there there are many lessons from that time period but probably the greatest one was don't get too cocky because you can get brought down pretty fast yeah live a life where if you do get you know your knees knocked out that you if you've done the right thing before people tend to support you and stay with you and and don't judge a book by its cover tried and true you know truths but I learned them very visibly there all right so it's 2024 at the time of this recording what since then what are their stories until six seven oh seven yeah I mean any other stories principles what obviously the book is has has the stories has the lessons none of those stories are in the book none of those stories are in the book this this is not a particularly personal that's not a memoir right so workbook um I will I will tell you since then so it came out and and the day the day that my wife picked me up six o'clock in the morning at the prison the judge said you can go right back to running your companies and so because these principles had been in place during that yeah that year that I missed of work I still took home $974,000 right it was our take home pay so my wife said hey if there was a problem I just threw money at it right and my wife thankfully is such a genius and such a powerhouse of a human yeah um you know we had the the Harvard MBA founder of Web MD that offered to watch over the company had the CFO of Intel offered to watch over the company um and my partner said the only person I feel really truly comfortable with is your wife wow who was a stay at home mom at the time but the formula was in place and she said I don't I don't know anything about how to do this and I said you don't need to know how to run the company the company wore the team knows how to run the company up what they need is somebody that can hold them accountable on the big topics on the big you know I remember her telling me signing a uh $400,000 tax check or something like that and their hand was shaking issue is going to sign this big check I said have you talked to her rich because yeah I said good then you you do the right thing that was wonderful you know that if you if you build a system it'll work with whether or not you're there um that has been I always knew it but prison gave me the chance to really see it work yeah like really where I couldn't have a meeting and email a phone call it wasn't like nothing I'm going on vacation but I'm turning on my phone yeah yeah there was zero I could do zero like the best subbatical opportunity of your life and it was a great test yeah of this formula that I believed in yeah and it worked beautifully well and so beautifully that I didn't come back and get so involved in the companies as I was before I stood back and I started buying other businesses and we started we just started doing tons of new stuff because I could fully trust yeah that the system was working and now we've spread that so that my life now is is uh to me at least is endlessly fascinating it is fun I can I can um a test to that I can attest to that you have many stories many lessons many people yeah better in your life for eight people it's very rich it's a very rich life and it's a very free life because I only do what I'm great at and that I want to do yeah and I believe most individuals can achieve that if they're if they're I mean if you've got real things against you you've got medical issues or psychological issues or or just circumstances that have buried you it's sometimes going to be difficult if not impossible to climb out but for most people and they don't need to be entrepreneurs I mean I just matter fact most people shouldn't be entrepreneurs aren't the people that should be entrepreneurs are people who see the world in a way where they see opportunity everywhere like they're seeing things that people around them are not seeing that mine that that vision that mindset is what makes a good entrepreneur it also makes most really good entrepreneurs really bad managers because managers need to get things into a rhythm an entrepreneur is constantly seeing the next thing yep so most people are not able to walk that walk that that path so I don't say oh if you really want to be successful being an entrepreneur I don't believe that I think people can be widely successful as an employee I think they can be widely successful as a government employee leverage the the definite definiteness of your income and of your retirement to start investing in real estate or investing in water to use a whole life in policy and start creating tools around you that you can use opportunistically and you have the the definiteness of this of this paycheck coming and you know you're going to have good health benefits your whole life you know that's taken care of already entrepreneurs don't have that yep right so use that as your as your home base as your safe spot or as your as your your pivot point right yep and start using leverage to take advantage of those opportunities that exist and go do some now I guess if you're investing in real estate or if you're doing things that is it's not really entrepreneurial but it is sort of a business yeah I I don't know you know this but you just went back to your childhood did I that same principle I didn't hear what did I say so you said where regardless of where you're at take your resources learn the leverage to think leverage that yeah I guess that's true and it's actually very profound because and it's and it's that's what I mean by that beauty of talking to someone like you is like the lessons the same lessons always apply and it holds the play yeah and and there's something very beautiful about regardless of who's watching or listening to this one of the thing you do not have to be and quote unquote entrepreneur doing and like take your resources take the inputs your current relationships the money that is coming in or not coming in your skill sets that you have and and and figure out where we can be more valuable but then leverage that and regardless of what situation that's in like that is the one to punch to live a more intentional um free life which is special and intentional a life that you'll love yeah you know a lot of people say follow your bliss I don't really believe in that I I believe in do something that gives you some control over your life that's good and then when you have control then then you have flexibility to do things that you love but to just follow your bliss which is a really nice thing to say yep but it's not always going to pay the bills yeah so do things do things that put you in a position to have affirmative control over your life yeah love that before we wrap up what are you currently up to I know you're involved with a lot of cool businesses we don't have to go through a mall but is there any any businesses that you're currently involved with that would be worth mentioning and having people check out well still at the mother at the mothership um so back in 2001 my partner and I bought a company called Lothlin Associates it was already 29 years old and they were the biggest Nevada incorporation service in the country um we bought them immediately went to all 50 states instead of being just locked into Nevada again I looked at it and I thought there's all this value here and if the Nevada assembly changes the rules we're out of business so I don't want to be that dependent on an ever fluctuating governmental body so we're going to go to all 50 states yeah because then if Nevada changes I've still got lots of places to go right so um um Lothlin we've grown Lothlin Lothlin went through the whole prison thing um we've recently added something called Lothlin Black we've done a joint venture with a private equity slash a fractional family office company to bring another level of services basically we've set things up for wealthy people but then it was like and here's your my box have a great time here's your supercar you know but we found that just because you give somebody a supercar doesn't mean they really are ready to drive it right or that they want to drive it they might want to sit in the back of the my box and be on their on their phone while somebody else drives it so what we're doing now is we're helping uh our our most you know well healed clients to manage their empires yep and those are much bigger engagements but as I've been told now over and over again you know what we're charging is no different than what they would have to do to go higher a really competent employee who would not know any of the stuff that we're doing so it doesn't it's cheaper to pay us than try to bring us a team along to run it for them so that's a lot of fun I'm I'm really enjoying that and I'm enjoying teaching the unshackled uh class and so on that is a lot of fun and we have um we're adding an under lawful and black because we're dealing with uh everybody that becomes a lawful and black client is is um is going to be more financially successful yeah so while we've used whole life policies as uh sort of in an ad highway um now through partnerships like with you guys we're very excited to have a systematic way you know part of that I've always been hesitant to because we do a really good job with our clients right we we have good systems our clients say with us for a very long time yep so when I would hand somebody off to someone else and I kind of didn't have rights to um hold that new vendor accountable I never knew what I was going to get and I knew if this doesn't go well it's gonna reflect it's gonna reflect back on us yeah and so um we've become very intentional about uh basically what I described it as we've got everybody under the tent you know so we have all these separate companies that are have their own business but we all have an agreed upon um accountability to one another right and a way of serving the client making make sure the clients needs are met before our individual corporate needs and what's happening with that is that the not only is the client beautifully taken care of no matter where they started as they progress and learn and grow the next thing is available and it's and you know now there are entities and their strategic tax planning and their insurance and their their corporate strategy and like you'd go on adding things they're they're borrowing and and credit lines all these things that we now have under the tent that are still run by individual companies but everybody's working cooperatively to make sure the customer gets taken care of and that as appropriate we make the next introduction and there's transparency and accountability where it's legal I mean if somebody's if I give somebody to a lawyer yeah I can't know everything they tell the lawyer right I'm not gonna look at everybody's taxes I don't have that right but planning-wise it's cohesive which means the customer is beautifully taken care of and all of the service providers are not having to constantly hunt for new clients because we're all we're all lifting this group of clients now we're talking about you know a lot of people yeah tens and tens and tens and maybe maybe over a hundred thousand people yeah so there's no end of work and opportunity but the point is it's done in a way that puts the client first it gives us an ability to hire great employees and really train them and they give them a lot of flexibility to use their superpowers so that they can solve problems and innovate because there's there's a there's like a what I'm trying to say there's a I keep thinking continuity that's not what I want there's a predictability about the workload that's going to be coming through so you can afford to pay good people and pay them well and have the the great team whereas if you don't have that predictability of of new clients and revenue you kind of have to hedge yeah right so by creating a cooperative model with great providers we end up doing a better job for the client and a better job for our companies and everybody's prosperous in that circumstance and to me that is like the ultimate deal it's not about this is mine I need to hold on to it's like how do we how do we take care of that person yeah and build enterprise value that's good it's it's a much happier way to live for me Aaron if this was your last standard then you couldn't give the book or any talks or any podcast recordings to the people that you love the most which is your family uh-huh but you had one last conversation with them um besides telling them that you love them what else would you say I get to know yourself as best as you can if that means getting some therapy to see blind spots if that means um doing something that's maybe not the most financially valuable for a period a season of your life to go learn more about who you are as a human because once you know who you are the the world opens up completely to you relationships are better your parenting will be better your your friendships will be greater uh you'll see the world as an abundant place not a scarce place when you understand who you are how you fit and what you what value you bring when you can really understand who you are um your life is great and if I if that's all I could teach my kids and our grandkids is spend less time trying to meet somebody else's qualifications figure out what your superpowers are and then just play with those in as big a ways you possibly can and you'll have a fabulous life that's what I would encourage them to do and I'm I'm grateful that you're my life I'm grateful that we have this conversation I'm grateful to get an advanced copy of your of your book yeah and I'm excited to see what the future holds is an honor to have you in my life it's a pleasure to be with you and to and to work with you it's an honor for me so thanks you