The Exchanges

Q million dollars in revenue for my businesses, And fundraise over eight million dollars for my businesses and my clients. If you want to build relationships that work for you before you need them, go get this guide right now. The link is in the show notes. Okay, let's get back. What's something that one of these people taught you that helped you to take your business to the next level?

A One thing that I learned that I got stuck in my business when we were around, um, It was somewhere between seven and nine million. I remember the year was 2017, and one of the things that I got stuck on was I just didn't have financial literacy. And I started reaching out. Uh, there was this group, um, they were like retired CEOs, mostly retired. Some were still CEOs. They had big exits and so on. And they would do this mentorship program with other CEOs. And so I got these two guys and they would come in and they were like, okay, we want to see, I would start telling them about the business and all the things we did. They're like, I don't want to hear anything about that. I was like, they like would constantly shut me up when I tried to like talk about it. And I was like, how are these guys going to help me? And they would constantly say, I want to see your financials, your profit and loss statement. And I want to see the financials against the budget. So the financials, we had them. But I didn't have a good grasp. They would ask questions when they looked at the financials. Why is this? Why is that? I don't know. I have to go ask. Um, or they would, you know, and they were like, okay, well, what is the budget? What, what, what, how did you perform? What does this even mean? There's no budget here. And so they would just hammer. These guys would treat me like, um, not mean, bu…

AI assessment note: “one of the things that I got stuck on was I just didn't have financial literacy.”

Q Um, are you still in contact with these guys now?

A Not anymore. Um, I'm so sorry, man. I can't remember their names, but it'll come to me. I can find them. I can find them, and I'll, I will, I'll make sure to drop you the link, but they were just like, uh, I don't know if they were a local San Diego group or not. But I had to go through an interview process too. They didn't, they didn't just like helping anyone. And in fact, they kicked me out. Um, not because I did anything wrong, but after meeting with me for about four or five times, they're like, well, you know, come back to us later. Well, you know, we're going to cut off at this point. This is going to be the last meeting. And the reason for that was I was just trying to scale. That's not the kind of stuff they were trying to help owners with. They were trying to help them with exits. So they were, they were trying to help them or like an acquisition or like some fundamental business pivot that is not to do with product or anything like that. Really had to do with like an acquisition or a sale or something of that nature. Um, and I wasn't doing either of those things. I was just trying to, you know, go from ten million to twenty million and on up, right? And they're like, well, you know, we, we've helped you enough for that. What we're really focused on is this. And so they kind of parted ways with me, but, um, but it was, it was an education for me.

AI assessment note: “Not anymore. Um, I'm so sorry, man.”