In this episode of Business Monday, join us as we delve into Sam and Travis' firsthand experiences with expanding their businesses. Get ready to explore essential factors and valuable tools that can help you achieve streamlined growth in your own business. Let's delve into the details!
Key takeaways to listen for
Resources Mentioned In This Episode
Drive by Daniel H. Pink | Kindle, Paperback, and Hardcover
About Sam Salah and Travis Revelle
Former corporate executive Travis Revelle switched to entrepreneurship in the internet and healthcare sectors, founding many successful businesses and raising hundreds of millions of dollars for his clients.
Sam Salah is a well-known businessperson and a lifelong serial entrepreneur interested in everything from technology to high-performance vehicles.
This episode is suitable for the C-Suite, entrepreneurs, business leaders, managers, and front-line employees because each of them is a wealth of material and a powerhouse when combined.
Connect with Sam and Travis
LinkedIn: Travis Revelle | Sam Salah
Connect With Us
Master your context with real-results leadership training!
To learn more, visit our website at www.greatsummit.com.
For tax, bookkeeping, or accounting help, contact Dr. Nate’s team at www.theincometaxcenter.com or send an email to info@theincometaxcenter.com.
Follow Dr. Nate Salah on his Social Media
In this episode of Business Monday, join us as we delve into Sam and Travis' firsthand experiences with expanding their businesses. Get ready to explore essential factors and valuable tools that can help you achieve streamlined growth in your own business. Let's delve into the details!
Key takeaways to listen for
Resources Mentioned In This Episode
Drive by Daniel H. Pink | Kindle, Paperback, and Hardcover
About Sam Salah and Travis Revelle
Former corporate executive Travis Revelle switched to entrepreneurship in the internet and healthcare sectors, founding many successful businesses and raising hundreds of millions of dollars for his clients.
Sam Salah is a well-known businessperson and a lifelong serial entrepreneur interested in everything from technology to high-performance vehicles.
This episode is suitable for the C-Suite, entrepreneurs, business leaders, managers, and front-line employees because each of them is a wealth of material and a powerhouse when combined.
Connect with Sam and Travis
LinkedIn: Travis Revelle | Sam Salah
Connect With Us
Master your context with real-results leadership training!
To learn more, visit our website at www.greatsummit.com.
For tax, bookkeeping, or accounting help, contact Dr. Nate’s team at www.theincometaxcenter.com or send an email to info@theincometaxcenter.com.
Follow Dr. Nate Salah on his Social Media
[00:00:00] Sam Salah
You have to make sure that you're a good leader. You have to make sure that your organizational culture, which is the foundation of your organization is strong. If you have that, you'll have so many people coming, jumping on board with you that you won't have enough positions for that.
[00:00:14] Dr. Nate Salah
Hello, my friend, and welcome to this Monday episode of A Call to Leadership. I'm Dr. Nate Salah, your host. And every Monday we talk business. This series of two episodes is all about scale from just you as an entrepreneur and beyond yourself. What is necessary? What is needed? Such a relevant topic. Something we haven't really broached on the show in depth and detail. So I've invited Sam and Travis back on the show to unload this important topic. Listen in. This is a call to leadership. Fellas, welcome back. Welcome. How's it going? For welcoming me. You're welcome. Welcome for welcome. What do you think of the new studio? It's beautiful. The look.
[00:00:59] Travis Revelle
I like it. Yeah. I feel like I'm in Darth Vader.
[00:01:04] Dr. Nate Salah
If you're, if you're just listening, you need to hop on the YouTube channel and watch some of our reels. Super cool. So it's an upgrade. Anyhow. And this is also kind of related to the conversation today around scaling. We've talked about this at length outside of the studio. We live this in our businesses, our joint ventures and companies. We've had the blessing and pleasure of being a part of. We see this in the marketplace. And I think our listener, it's relevant because at some point you've got to answer the question of, do I scale? If so, how do I scale? Right. We've got some folks in our leadership group. One of our folks in particular who says in the past, he would say, I want to stay small and keep it all. And that's like now flying by the wayside.
[00:01:49]
Now this individual is like, no, that means I got to work my trade for the next 20 years. And I've got no way to relax because as soon as I take my foot off the gas, it's over. Right. So let's have the conversation. Let's start with this. So scaling is not easy. Scaling is something that is elusive to many entrepreneurs because it's a completely different animal. So let's start with before we scale, right? Someone listening is like, okay, how do you start a business, right? Generally speaking, unless you're buying a business or you start with a certain large sum of money, you generally start on your own, right? When you started your cell phone business, how many people were working for you? One. It was you. Cell phone Sam. That was how many years ago? Let's see, what year would that have been? Thank you. This is my plus years, right?
[00:02:39] Sam Salah
Yeah, this is 27 years, 28 years, years ago.
[00:02:43] Dr. Nate Salah
All right. So you start your business and you got an idea, you got a dream, right? I'm a technician, right? And your technical skill, Travis, you can chime in on this was probably. The gift of loving tech and loving sales. Yeah. Yeah. And loving people.
[00:03:00] Travis Revelle
Yeah, indeed. And so people loved him. So that's why if you needed a cell phone, call cell phone. Sam.
[00:03:08] Sam Salah
Yeah. I think that every entrepreneur, it's all about them at first, which is normal. It's your business, your brand. And then you realize, you know, I can only go so far by myself and people are the most important piece of the puzzle and you have to have an inclusive vision. To get people to jump on with you. And there's a lot of pieces that have to fall into place to scale. You got to have great leadership. You have to be a great leader. You have people that want to buy into your vision. And my business was just me. And then I added one person and then added a third person and then opened up more retail locations. And obviously figured out that having a larger retail model was my vision and I had people that were willing to follow me into that growth plan, right? Those people, I mean, nine years, I had Latoya if she listens, I mean, she's with me for nine years, maybe 10. There's something about inclusiveness and vision that is very important early on early on early on because this is what we're trying to do. This is what I see us going. You're such an important part of that. And that's where
[00:04:17] Dr. Nate Salah
I think the misses. That's the miss. That's one of the misses anyway, right? Because it's not always the case. And it wasn't a case early for me. Like when I first started, I wasn't cell phone Nate. I was check-cashing Nate, right? In the hood. And so, if any of my clients are listening from those days, I probably cashed your check. You ever seen a tin can before?
[00:04:34] Sam Salah
It used to count. It was my office.
[00:04:37] Dr. Nate Salah
It was a tin can. It was actually made of metal. And I had two bulletproof glass windows, one on each side. You slid your money underneath the glass. And... I hired, when I first started, I hired my best buddy, Henry. It's my first scale scale. I was like, I'm going to scale this business, Henry, you got to work. And the only vision I had was just don't. And I used to cut, so just don't blank it up. Right. Just fill in the blank. Right. And this is probably hard to believe, but I was probably the worst sort of visionary entrepreneur at the time. Really, you know, you come full circle. Right. But at the time I was like. You need to make us enough money so I can afford the fancy cars. I can have nice vacations. You're a people person. So like,
[00:05:22] Sam Salah
if you partied with Nate on the weekend, you probably could work there. That was the application process. That was the prerequisite.
[00:05:31] Travis Revelle
Interview is at Velvet at 9pm. Right.
[00:05:36] Dr. Nate Salah
But everybody starts out in a different place, right? Someone listening right now may have started out where you are talking about like, you're like, Hey, this is a vision for the future. We're intact. Others might start out like me, like, Hey, I just want to get paid. You can be a part of this. We start on different places, right? Travis, for you, you started out in corporate.
[00:05:52] Travis Revelle
My first start was with my dad's company. I remember you talk about, I wanted to scale his company. And so he indulged a little bit, right? Because I'm very aggressive about it. I was in college, you know, working on a business degree. So I'm learning all these things in school and I want to put them into practice. And so we bought another home healthcare company that had multiple locations. And so we went from my dad, he ran this out of, he started in the garage then got a little bit bigger and he bought a building, but it was just my dad, right? It was my dad and my mom. And that was it. Nobody else worked there. My dad did everything. My mom did the billing. My dad did everything. And then here I come along and you know, I would like work when I was on my early teens and then as I got older, I was like, there's so many things I wanted to do. Right.
[00:06:38]
I love business. And so. Convinced him to buy this company. It was super cheap. It was like 40 grand they were selling this company for, right? So we had three locations. It got to a point to where my father and I, we could not work together because he wanted to stay small and just he wanted to control everything because that's all he knew how to do, right? He didn't know how to Create a bigger vision and look bigger, right? He's just like I need X amount of patients who are gonna do X amount of dollars a month and this is how I'm gonna live comfortably and so It got to the point to where we could not work together anymore because he couldn't see we had different visions, right? I wanted it to be big. I wanted to keep growing it He wanted to keep it nice and small where he was making his 150 grand a year back in 1998 and just live his life, so I left Then I went to corporate America
[00:07:31] Dr. Nate Salah
Yeah What kind of business was it?
[00:07:33] Travis Revelle
It was a home healthcare business. So oxygen, DME, turbo medical equipment, just your standard. The oxygen was the big one. So we'd have patients, you know, I had to fix concentrators, fill oxygen tanks. Like I learned the business from the ground up. And then when he finally, we couldn't see eye to eye and he made this comment to me and it stuck with me. And he told me, he's like, you'll never have a job better than the one I gave you. And that was the last day I worked for my dad. So I left there at the time it was Ameritech. I called her a MarTech cell phone rep and I was like, I need a job. She was like, all I can do is get you like a retail job. I remember MarTech and I was like, I'll take that retail job, like I'll take a job. I was proving to a point, you know what I mean? Yeah. And the rest is history. Yeah. History. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:08:19] Sam Salah
I think the takeaway from that is whether it's your son or employee, like, you know, have, you know, buy into your vision. Yeah, right.
[00:08:26] Travis Revelle
And scaling is not for everybody. And that's when I really learned that is you get individuals who start a company and they control everything. And there's a huge fear that entrepreneurs have. Because when you scale you inevitably have to give up control you have to write you have to trust other people are going to do things and my dad did not want to trust anybody else to do things because he had a recipe down he was successful with it in his own right and he was comfortable. I look back on it, you know, at the time, he's probably around a few years older than me now. Right. So he was kind of at that point in his life where he's like, I don't want to take a bunch of risks. You know what I mean? Like I've built this out of nothing. I've got a decent can take care of my family. We live comfortably, but that wasn't me. I mean, as you guys know, I'm pretty ambitious. I can take risk and that's where we differ. Being content is not a typical trait.
[00:09:16] Sam Salah
Cause I mean, there gets to a point where you reach levels. Let's say your first level is to have a million dollar company. Okay. You reach that level. You're like, well, I'm going to have a 10 million company, you know, then you hit that level. I do believe it, it ends up not being about the money. I think in the beginning it is because you're trying to make it. So, I mean, we all know, you know, you're not taking money the first couple of years, you're not really making any money. If your business is successful, right? But I think that once you get beyond that point, you start actually experiencing success. That's where these conversations become in this thought process. Like, okay, how am I doing this? How much farther can I go on my own? Me personally, though, I took pride in other people taking ownership in my brand. What do I tell you? What do I tell Ruben? I mean, people around me, this is not my company.
[00:10:09]
This is your company. Right. And it's a selfless, right, but it's the only way I don't do it because I want to give up something that I've created. No, I know that you have to care like me in order for this to grow because I don't want employees. Because what happens is when your value to that person is just that Friday deposit. What happens? That's all that. Whatever that check amount is, you're worth it, and it makes it difficult for you to get them to do things above and beyond what that checks worth, right? But if you create an organizational culture that people love being a part of and love who they work for and who they work around, asking for that little extra thing is not gonna be a big deal because they care more Then just like, Hey, am I getting paid to do this? Right? Performance based companies, sales based companies, a little different, right? Because we live in a performance based world. Like you eat what you kill. And then if you kill a lot, you're eating good, right? And we love that. We created an organization that has unlimited income for people. And we create an opportunity that's real, right?
[00:11:20]
Where I think that a small business who wants to scale hits a point where They realize it can't be them anymore. They get to the point where they're like the business, the phones ring in, they gotta be there. They're dealing with, they're like, Oh my God, I can't do this anymore. Right. That is that point where I think me personally and I would seek out a coach and mentor and I would listen and better myself because that From the one to two to three to four, if that's what your real vision is, you have to make sure that you're a good leader. You have to make sure that your organizational culture, which is the foundation of your organization, is strong. If you have that, you'll have so many people coming, jumping on board with you, that you won't have enough positions for them.
[00:12:03] Dr. Nate Salah
Right? It's an attractant. It's magnetic, right? Plus, I think it's more the exception than the norm. And so that's what makes it even more attractive because you find this individuals and not everyone, but people are looking for an environment that believes what they believe, right? This shared value, shared culture. And really, it doesn't even take a whole lot of work to come up with a culture that is not only inclusive, but delivers on the basic needs, right? Look, I want some autonomy. I want some opportunity for mastery. I want to have a sense of purpose. You know, Pink talked about this years ago in his book, Drive. Once the money's off the table, you get that out of the way, then you can really focus on, like, what are the intangible needs that I can help? Plus, one thing that you brought up is really important, is that when you say, okay, this is your company, it's not my company, right?
[00:12:47]
If you don't have the kind of culture that supports that, people are going to laugh at you, right? They're going to say, yeah, okay, fine, but you know, you're the one that ends up driving the Ferrari, you're the one that ends up, blah, blah, blah. Right. You have to actually include people in such a way that is not just believable, but is genuine and sincere. Like, look, you know what, we're doing this together and we're going to benefit together.
[00:13:08] Travis Revelle
Yeah. Yeah. I think the first thing, right, if you are looking to scale is you need to first understand your market. Does it make sense for you to add more? Right. I mean, you've got to understand your market. And I think a lot of times entrepreneurs, they put their head down, they're just focused on their four walls and they're not looking around to see what your competitors are doing. But let's just say you understand your market, you understand your competitors, you understand your process, and you have something that differentiates yourself, right? Whether it's a process, whether it's the product, whatever it is, right? You have your quote unquote special sauce, right? Then it's just merely, do you want to grow this into another location, right?
[00:13:46]
You do. Okay, so how do you double yourself? It's just this game you play, right? But the work in scaling comes before you actually scale. You know what I mean? Like it comes from understanding your market, understanding what your competitors are doing, understanding how you're doing it better, building your systems. You know what I mean? Building your processes. And if your processes all dictate. that you have to be the one who's doing it, that's not a process or a system. That's just your work ethic. You know what I mean? Like you've got to build something.
[00:14:14] Sam Salah
Look at this water, right? It's built a certain way. You know, there's millions and millions of dollars to design this, right? They're tweaking stuff, the cap, the logo, the design, right? The next bottle of water that's manufactured, it looks exactly the same. It's no different in scaling your business. You perfect your business model with one location, one business, you create your brand, you create the item that's going to be duplicated. Right? So that's done. Now it's just duplication. Yeah. We talked about a retail our whole lives, right? Yeah. All retail is a duplication. Just you don't reinvent the wheel a second, third, fourth time.
[00:14:52] Travis Revelle
You just hold steady to the standards that you hold steady.
[00:14:54] Sam Salah
Right. If you look at a lot of the large retailers across the country, right. Verizon, I always use the wireless side of it, but Verizon. T Mobile, whatever it may be. Do you think every location is just different from the other? No, they've perfected a retail model. That's duplicated and everything's built in. It's turnkey like Travis said, you know, that first location is where it's the hard work is done.
[00:15:20] Travis Revelle
Yeah. That's the lab. That's the lab, you know, I mean, that's where you're practicing and you're trying and you're making mistakes. That's what you do.
[00:15:27] Dr. Nate Salah
And those mistakes at that point, it's what, like Colin said, you fire bullets, you four cannonballs, right? You can make incremental mistakes. This is also Pixar's model. They were building the movies, right? They were building them. And okay, what mistakes we make on a small scale? Correct. Before we go big, right? But I've said it like this big businesses, small business with big numbers, right? I mean, it could be daunting for someone who is in a place right now where you're like, yeah, I want to scale, but There's some pitfalls that I know I'm going to face. The very first one people face is capital, right? The insufficient capital, either they don't have access to resources, the underestimated their financial needs and can totally hinder their scalability. No matter how much money, and I want to say this very clearly. No matter how much money you think you're gonna need more, it's always gonna be more.
[00:16:14]
Yeah. I've never, and this is in 28.5 years of doing this, run into a business that said, boy, you know what? I thought I was gonna need more money, but I actually ended up with 10 million in surplus. Right. It's always the case because there's so many factors that are beyond your control, beyond your understanding. That doesn't mean that you can't scale and make numerable dollars. Right. And it depends on the business. A lot of factors. But that's one of the pieces. Let's start right there. Let's start with... Insufficient capital, right? Access to funding. You've raised money. Let's talk about that. I want to go through a few different pitfalls for this scaling model. Have you ever run into a situation to where either you've had insufficient capital, you've seen a company have insufficient capital, recognizing that? Yes.
[00:16:58] Travis Revelle
Multiple times. Yeah. A lot. Right. And that's usually when people will call me. Right. It was like, Oh my gosh, what do I do? You know? So I see this a lot in the medical field, right? So high dollar equipment. I mean, we're talking, you know, a piece of equipment can be a million dollars, but you've got so many different factors, right? You've got governmental factors that are in there. You've got state local factors that are in there, right? Like you've got approval processes that are in there and all businesses have this, right? Right. Right. And so before I would get to that, I think one thing that people need to understand is you don't have to go to business school to be a business owner, but there are some things that you should know how to do right. And the first thing is called a SWOT analysis, right? And if you don't know what that is, please Google it. Please look it up. It will be your best friend on decisions that you're making. to understand everything that's out there, right? The pitfalls, but when it comes to capital, you either have it or you got to go get it. That's only two things.
[00:17:49] Dr. Nate Salah
This is the first thing I think that people, I may have talked about this on the show before I used to teach a class. I still teach it, but it's different today, but it's basically business planning, right? One on one and the students go through the business planning process. It's now introduction to entrepreneurship, very similar course. But anyway, I would go through finance, the fourth segment of the class. And inevitably, most of the students, once you went into the financial part of it and understood, hey, here's the capital needs, here are all the different parts of it, you've really done a deep dive, like you said. Most of the students found that, I'm actually losing money, I'm broke. This business is going out of business. This needed to be like in the first class. Because in the first class, you go through the market needs and the trends and your differentiation strategy and the models and things like that. Like.
[00:18:34]
You know what? I need to figure out if I even have the possibility of making money at this business before I even do any other research. Right? It's interesting that students found out, and this is the way the course was designed. But, even for me, first thing I do when I'm getting ready to possibly join a business or start a business, first thing I do is think about, can we make any money? Financials, right. No, a thousand percent. Right? And I know that's not like, sexy, because what's sexy? Sexy is, oh yeah, this is a super cool business, and I'm going to change the world. Right. You can't change the world, bro.
[00:19:03] Sam Salah
And you can't change the world without going in debt either. No, that's the biggest.
[00:19:09] Dr. Nate Salah
It's a good segue. It's a good segue. Yeah. Yeah. Financing your growth.
[00:19:12] Sam Salah
Right. Right. Because I mean, I've talked to entrepreneurs that like, Hey, I want to grow, but I don't want to take any debt on. I've been around this thing. No debt. I'm like.
[00:19:21] Travis Revelle
No gas in your car. That's the thing, right? I mean, people look at debt as a negative thing. Unless you have money and you look at debt is the greatest thing ever.
[00:19:31] Sam Salah
Yeah, it is the greatest thing ever. And the thing is, it's a backwards thinking, right? I feel like whatever you're taught in finance, right? In your finance school or whatever about debt, you know, being a bad thing. You know, entrepreneurs need money to make money, right? And you'll never grow your business without money. So if you're telling me you don't want to go into debt and you don't have money, then you're telling me you don't want your business to grow. Right. And the other thing is, let's say you have 50, 000 to your name, but the bank is going to give you a hundred thousand dollar line of credit.
[00:20:05]
And you're like, ah, maybe I just use the money, my cushion. You know, instead, right? That's a pitfall too. Cause like, well, I don't want to pay the 4% interest or 6% is 12%, right? Right. I don't want to pay that. Right. But I always say if that's all you have, you never want to risk more than what you can lose. Right. You can't have that attitude either, like going into it, but keep the cash. Let that be a cushion for you. Yeah. Take some debt, take on a partner, take on an investor. Right. There's nothing wrong with that. But I do feel like really small businesses like owner operator type businesses. This is what I see a lot, right? They want to grow and then they go into the people pitfalls I call it, right? It's like, well, they, I had this guy, you know, he worked. 12 hours a week and he didn't have the right attitude and he didn't, you know, he worked 12 hours a week. And what are you paying him? 10 an hour? I mean, he's going to care 10 an hour.
[00:20:57]
How do you talk to him? How do you include him into the operation? How is he impactful? Right? Like, and then they end up not wanting to hire anybody because they had one bad experience because owner operators are not great at hiring other people. Correct. They just aren't. They're not, you know, this trial and error, right? Like For me, I had to learn how to hire, and trust me, I had a lot of bad hires, a lot of nightmare hires. I always say, your first interview, you meet the people, the person they want to be. Right? Oh yeah. It's like the first date, right? Like you meet, this person's amazing, you know, you don't see any of the flaws, the pimples on the face, right?
[00:21:31] Dr. Nate Salah
Right. But second, third, fourth, interaction. Oh, you start warming up. And then it's not even until sometimes 30, 60, 90 days in the seat. Yeah. Before you're like, oh. Oh, it's interesting because that's another pitfall right now, the pitfalls of talent exposition piece. Right? So I think one of the biggest pitfalls that people fall into, especially when they're starting a business, someone listens like, yeah, that's me. Is they hire friends and family as the low hanging fruit. No, there's nothing wrong with hiring friends and family if it's objective and they fit that exact role and there won't be any drama.
[00:22:06] Sam Salah
That's tough. Well, take advice from me. I work with some of my best friends and it's difficult.
[00:22:13] Dr. Nate Salah
Well, don't you just love a cliffhanger? Travis and Sam, I am so thankful for these two guys as they continue to pour. Into you and help me to develop this community of people who are aiming for greatness and serving others. I haven't ever said this on a show. Sam and Travis do this because they care. They don't get paid. In fact, none of us get paid. I don't monetize the show. I don't have advertisers. This is simply a content-based show that goes from one to many, gives you free content, free access to entrepreneurial leadership, family leadership, community, leadership and how to thrive by serving others, aiming for greatness. And so I am so thrilled that you're on this journey with us, and I'm so thrilled that we continue to challenge the status quo in doing good in this world.