Leading with Kindness Creates Stronger Companies: Interview with Gui Costin

How do you build a company where people thrive without micromanagement while still maintaining high performance? In this revealing conversation, Gui Costin, founder and CEO of Dakota, shares the leadership principles that have helped him grow from a single client to a 90-person organization that has raised over $40 billion for investment firms.

Costin's entrepreneurial journey began after being fired from his 13th job, when he discovered the power of getting paid to provide a service. With refreshing candor, he explains how focusing on solving real problems for clients became the foundation for his success, and how his approach to building teams centers on finding "A-players" who don't need traditional management.

What truly sets Dakota apart is its culture of kindness paired with accountability. Costin has eliminated vacation policies and travel restrictions, instead trusting his team to make responsible decisions within clear guardrails. "People want to be treated like adults, people want autonomy," he explains, revealing how this approach has created an environment where top talent wants to stay and contribute.

The conversation takes a fascinating turn when Costin discusses his ongoing experience with imposter syndrome despite his success, offering a vulnerable glimpse into the mindset of a seasoned entrepreneur. His philosophy that "my mission in life is to help other people get what they want out of life" provides a compelling framework for service-oriented leadership that benefits everyone involved.

Whether you're leading a team of three or three hundred, Costin's insights on communication, expectation-setting, and the power of acknowledgment offer practical wisdom you can implement immediately. His upcoming book "Be Kind" promises to further explore these principles, making this episode essential listening for anyone looking to build a business where both people and profits can flourish.

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Transcript

Welcome to Light Up Your Business

Tammy Hershberger 0:01

Welcome to the Light Up your Business podcast, the show where we dive deep into the world of small businesses. I'm your host, tammy Hershberger, and each episode will bring you inspiring stories, expert insights and practical tips to help your small business thrive. Whether you're an entrepreneur just starting out or a seasoned business owner, this podcast is your go-to source for success in the small business world. Let's get started to source for success in the small business world. Let's get started. Hi everyone, I want to welcome you back to a Light Up your Business podcast.

Tammy Hershberger 0:33

I am Tammy Hershberger and today I have a special guest. His name is Geek and I'm hoping I say his last name right Geek Austin. He's the founder and CEO of Dakota and they are a financial software, data and media company in Philadelphia no, I mean Philadelphia, pennsylvania. He has Dakota Marketplace, which looks like to me and you can tell me more about this as we go. It looks like you like to help invest using different it's like 6,000 different fundraisers, 1,400 global investment firms, to kind of help people get going, and then you have a coaching program which I'm really curious about, and a lot of other things. So how are you doing today?

Gui Costin 1:07

How are you?

Tammy Hershberger 1:10

I am very good, let's just I'm going to have you kind of do a quick synopsis of all the things you're doing, because it looks like you're a very busy man.

Gui Costin 1:18

Yep. So, and to tell you the truth, it's somewhat simple. Where our main business is, investment firms hire us to do sales and marketing for their company, which really means raise money for their funds, and then that business started in 2006. It's going strong today and then, over time, to raise all the money, we created a database and then, in 2019, we decided to take that database and turn it into a product, so commercialize it, so we allow other investment firms to use our data to set up meetings for themselves. So now we work with about 1,300 investment firms, about 5,800 fundraisers, who use our database, which is effectively a curated and accurate up-to-date CRM. And then I wrote a book that really started in 2011 and came out in February of 2025, called the Dakota Way, which is our four core principles of investment sales, and we do a lot of coaching and helping investment salespeople follow the four core principles so they can have fundraising success.

Tammy Hershberger 2:24

And how did you end up getting into this space?

Gui Costin 2:29

Well, I graduated from college in 1989. And by 2006, as my kids remind me, I had 13 different W-2 jobs and after I got fired from my last job, I presented an idea for an investment product. The CEO loved it, the executive committee didn't like it and you're fired. You have 90 days. I got fired from my last job. I presented an idea for an investment product. The CEO loved it, the executive committee didn't like it and you're fired. You have 90 days severance. And so I started Dakota the summer of 06 after that happened and I actually ended up creating the product on my own with a partner, and then we started finding other firms that needed help, fundraising, and then kind of, the rest is history, and that's how it kind of started.

Tammy Hershberger 3:06

So it kind of worked out to just become your own little entrepreneur and just make it happen for yourself.

Gui Costin 3:11

Exactly, exactly. And, as I always say to people, if you want to be an entrepreneur, get somebody to pay you to provide a service. That's the key. It's not the I'm going to invent the next this or that. That's really the key is get somebody to pay you to provide a service and then from there it compounds in itself. And then, of course, what we ended up doing, like a lot of people do you take a service, then you turn it into a product, a software product.

Tammy Hershberger 3:38

And so what kind of drew you into the investment fundraising space?

Meet Geek Austin: Dakota CEO

Gui Costin 3:44

Well, I was in the real estate business my first eight years of my career and someone asked me if I wanted to come on board and raise money for a real estate product at their firm. And that's how, that's how I got into it and I I guess, if you had to break it down, there's some people who would like to have a hundred clients, right, and there's other people that would just want to have four. To go really deep and what I really liked about the fundraising sales process it was a long sales process that's consultative and educational in nature, so people can really learn, and that really suited my personality. So, versus being sort of transactional, I'm much more relationship-based versus being sort of transactional, much more relationship-based, and so I'm curious.

Tammy Hershberger 4:30

I mean, like you said, you had a partner to start with. How did you even get that? Did your partner fund it for you? Or where did you find funding for that? How did you? I mean, this is, you turned it into quite a company, which is really impressive. So can you kind of give us like these because I deal a lot with small businesses that are like starting and they're growing and you know all that stuff and what did it take for you to get it to where it is today?

Gui Costin 4:51

Really, what saved the day was I got a our first fundraising client to pay. Basically, pay me a salary from day one. And so when you think about, when I think about small businesses which I've started two small businesses that have grown significantly it really starts with generating revenue day one and we have people pay you to ride that service and once people are paying you and you're doing a great job providing the service, maybe you can get other people to pay you and then it starts to compound on itself. But that's really what we did. So from day one we had a group in New York. You know, pay me a normal salary plus commission if I was successful, and 19 years later I still have an unbelievable relationship with them. They've been the best partner on the planet like saved my life, career, made my life, so I went all to them. But they started paying us day one salary and that's how we did it and how did you find them?

Tammy Hershberger 5:42

just, I mean, you don't have to give me super detail, but like did you happen? To know someone or?

Gui Costin 5:47

Yeah, I just you know the good news. I got introduced to this one guy a year before that and I interviewed with him. So I met him through some friends, I interviewed and he made me an offer. But this other firm made me a four times bigger offer and so I ended up taking the four times bigger offer, which turned out to not work out. And then I circled back to him and we were starting another product and I sat down with him and told him what we were up to and he goes hey, would you like to raise money for us and we'll pay you. We cut a deal and we have not had a financial conversation in 19 years after that.

Tammy Hershberger 6:18

Wow, it's really connections in this world. I mean, I'm 42 now but I'm experiencing the more I connect and make my. You know there's networking. I'm talking actual connections with people. You're really just a couple of people away from the people you need to be talking to. It's pretty wild. The world's pretty small.

Gui Costin 6:35

Yeah, and I think you're. You're just talking to people and I, and then I think too, is that any small business right? The more that you add value right and get people the outcome they're looking for? That's really the key, right? So if you're always thinking about value like you're solving a real problem, and that's that's, that's the key, it's like the more acute the problem, the more money you're going to make, right.

Tammy Hershberger 6:57

Yeah.

Gui Costin 6:57

That's why biotech companies are so valuable. Right, they're creating stuff to save people's lives.

Tammy Hershberger 7:02

Yeah, absolutely so. Can you tell me just to kind of inspire people who are starting smaller, you know, and now they look at a guy like you who's made your business what it is today, and can you tell me some of the hurdles, you know, some of the things that you had to overcome to get to where you are today?

Gui Costin 7:17

Yes. So I would say the the the biggest hurdle you know what you're going to want to do over time is, you know, build a team to give yourself some leverage. And it really comes down to finding total A players. So if I had to tell my older self, my younger self, something that would be you know, take your time, find A players, don't compromise on the hiring. So that's number one. So back to the real number one is get people to pay you for a service that you provide and solve a real problem for them and be exceptional at it.

Gui Costin 7:52

Another thing is always be asking why, like? Why are we doing this? What's the desired outcome we're looking for? I find that when we slow down or we're not focused on asking why we're doing something you know companies can get you know you can be doing a lot. It's like, as I said, it's like having you know, it's like having a you know sort of magic. You know gun, right, that's the most powerful gun in the world. But the problem is you're shooting it all over the place, right, you have to have a target and with everything you do, right, you have to shoot at a target if you will and you know, just simple. It's a simple analogy, but having that level of focus and understanding why you're doing something and the more, the more deeply you understand that, the better you're going to be at delivering the service.

Tammy Hershberger 8:35

And how many employees do you have in your company?

Gui Costin 8:37

now Roughly 90.

Tammy Hershberger 8:40

90. Wow, and so I would imagine, obviously going from small to where you are now, delegation control, you have to give up right and, like you said, finding the right team players.

Gui Costin 8:52

the A players that you need, yep.

Tammy Hershberger 8:54

Was it hard for you? I'm always curious because I talked to different people and I noticed a lot of entrepreneurs. They have control issues. Was it hard in the beginning to you know, as you were growing, to let go of some of that control, or did you just know I have to do it?

Gui Costin 9:07

Uh, let's see how do I want to answer this. Uh, the lesson learned in control, the better the the the more you understand this concept of even if you think you have control, you don't have control. So so just get over yourself. Just you know, just just get over right now. You're never going't have control. So just get over yourself, just get over it right now. You're never going to have control. But the problem? So I'm writing my third book called Be Kind.

Gui Costin 9:32

So at our company, our culture is about kindness, but not sacrificing super hard, charging culture and combining those two, and we've proved you can do both. So people want to be treated like adults, people want autonomy, people want, they want to have focus, they want to have clear direction, they want to have transparency and accountability. So it's the leader's job to set the goals and set the focus for the team and define what good looks like and then get out of the way. Then let them be an adult and do their job. And then, if they're not doing their job or it's not working out, you can coach them and talk to them. But you've got to let people do their job, and that's what they call micromanaging Checking in and making sure people are on point and on pace is not micromanaging. Checking in and making sure like people are on, on point and on pace is not micromanaging. Right, micromanaging is calling every five minutes. Hey, did you do this to you?

Gui Costin 10:32

know, yeah, you got. You got to let people, once you set the direction and the goals and the focus, let them execute. To give you one more comment on control so since the beginning of the company, I have not done two things. We've never had a travel and entertainment policy and we've never had a vacation policy. So take the time you need when you travel on behalf of the company, stay at a nice hotel, have a nice dinner, just be responsible, and I've never had an issue with that. So that would be the ultimate non-control.

Tammy Hershberger 11:08

And so basically time off. Also, you're saying you don't limit them to how much as long as they're not being like excessive with it. Is that what you mean?

Gui Costin 11:16

Yeah, and it's just like look, you know, listen, if you feel like you have to take off, you know, three, four, six months, then you're probably not a good fit for our company. What we want is we. We want, we want people that want to come here and become the best version versions of themselves and get after it and learn and grow and serve our customers, because being of service is the ultimate goal in life. Right is serving other people. Yeah, helping other people get what they want is that is the ultimate right. So, if, so, if you're taking, all you do is take time off. And, by the way, let's just be honest, okay, and be like straight. No one can work eight straight hours. It doesn't. It's physically and mentally impossible. The goal is to get the job done, okay.

Gui Costin 12:00

And so when I played golf with a big, big time software CEO big, huge, multi-billion dollar firm he looked at me and he goes I'm from Silicon Valley, been doing this job for 25 years and I don't understand the term they always use in Silicon Valley. So I tell you it's work-life balance, because that doesn't make any sense to me. I'm like well, it doesn't make sense to me either, because I just think of life. I don't think of it as work, it's just life. You know what I mean and you have a life and so you don't need, like, take the time you need on vacation. But listen, if you end up finding you're going to need three months, you're not going to be able to probably get your job done.

Gui Costin 12:33

If you're truly on vacation, where kind of like when the team says I'm out of office, my thing is, I don't want to bug them, I want them to enjoy their time off. So I'm not going to call them, we're not going to bug them or anything. But if it turns into they're always off, it's very hard to get your job done. So that's why we've never had an issue. But I want to give people the mental release and mental flexibility to make their lives work for them, and so we can hopefully. So what's the goal of any company? As a company grows, keep your best people. You got to keep them happy, like that's. That's the number one job of a leader. Keep your best people and don't and make it a wonderful environment to work in.

Finding Revenue From Day One

Tammy Hershberger 13:18

Yeah, and I believe if they're mentally and emotionally and physically in the best shape or in the best way they can be, they're going to produce more for you than if they're just overworked, exhausted, if their lives are falling apart, they're not a lot of help and serving them. Then you're not doing that as a leader. So that's really good. I like that. I want to dig into, because you are a pretty good size company. So for you as the founder, what does a typical day look like? Or a week, or you know what? Can you kind of tell us about how you? I don't like the word balance.

Gui Costin 13:52

But how do you manage it all and still have a life other than what you just told us? So it is as long as you have your, your focus on the things that matter most. So, first off, what makes a whole company work? Or core principles, your standards that you live by, right, what do you stand for right. And those can't be taken lightly and I strongly recommend your core principles should be phrases and terms that really your internal company would only know. We call them decodisms, we have about 13 of them and so, first off, you have to have your core principles.

Gui Costin 14:24

One of our core principles is focus on what matters most. So, within each business unit at the company, it's always defining what matters most. And as long as everyone knows that and they prioritize that, they're going to be doing their job because they know what matters most. And the way that you do that is you do it with little check-ins here and there. What matters most? And the way that you do that is you do it with little check-ins here and there. So we have check-ins for every business unit each week to make sure everybody's focused on what matters most. And I check in, I listen, okay, why. And I'm always asking why Okay, that makes sense, yep, good, okay. And then for the leader too, like I said, there's kindness and there's nice, and nice is actually being unkind. And you can't be nice in business. You can be, you want to be kind. And why is that? Is because you're going to always have to have uncomfortable conversations, because you're doing your team a disservice if we bring something up and I'm not discussing it, not talking about it, what have you? And listen, every business is a people business, so you're dealing with personalities, you're dealing with the way that people address problems, how they deal with problems. You've got so much going on within a company because it's all people, right, and so you really do have to take the psychology of it all very seriously.

Gui Costin 15:46

But keeping people on point and focused is the job, and then it actually goes pretty smoothly because I have a goal. My goal is culture first, company second, employees, teammates first, customers second. Take care of everybody, have high standards, right. Then that's the people you attract that want to play at the highest level, but do it with low volatility. That's the goal. You should try to have it, where not every moment's a fire drill. I believe you're going to have 10% to 15%, you're going to have like a little stress, right, and it's kind of unavoidable. Why is it unavoidable? Because you're dealing with human beings and you've got human beings.

Gui Costin 16:33

Basically each human being that I've learned kind of wants to do their own thing, their own way. Well, unfortunately, that's not really how you can run a successful business. So right, so you have to create some boxes and some guardrails but then let people operate in those guardrails. But you have to be constantly checking in, because people will jump over the guardrail and they will, but they're not doing it because they're bad people. They just kind of want to do it their way, but they're not really even thinking consciously about that.

Gui Costin 17:00

And so you have to be very conscious to bring them back into the guardrails and be like, okay, why are we doing this? Didn't we agree? Oh, yeah, sorry, yeah, yep, okay. And through your daily check-ins and weekly check-ins that aren't meetings, they should be check-ins 10 minutes, five minutes, 15 minutes max. And I also found that if you really want to get what you want from your team, you literally have to do the forcing mechanism and put it on the calendar and let's just check in for five minutes. When you're on, these five minutes. You're going to give me an update on this, just so I can stay in the loop and I can coach you in the whole thing. I found that to be extremely effective and it like produces insane results.

Tammy Hershberger 17:41

And I like that you're not doing these big long meetings which suffocate the life out of the room. It seems like um and so getting the buy-in. Do you have any tips on, like, if someone or if your team cause you're you're talking about focus, which I believe when you talk to your team and you have a strict well, strict is not the word If you have a direct target, like you said you have you want to hit, how do you get those people to buy in? Or if there is someone on the team that are like I'm just not quite sure, if I want to buy into that, what do you? How do you coach them through that?

Gui Costin 18:09

So I'll say it in the kindest way I can Is that I'm 58 years old, right, and we're not. Dakota is not a debate club, okay. So if you want to debate, just tell me, let's debate, ok, and then we'll go outside of Dakota and we'll debate, ok. But if we're going to get things done, you're going to come over here on my side of the table. We're going to look at the situation or define what are we trying to solve for. What's the desired outcome? For whatever decision, there's always a desired outcome for anything you're doing, and we are going to get to yes, which is an Amazon comment. There are no no's at Amazon. Get to yes, okay, but we're going to do it together, okay, and we're going to define the desired outcome.

Gui Costin 19:01

Once you do that, you get out of this like because some people just like to argue for argument's sake that's known at the code at Outer Stone because that's just wasted time Talking about people, wasting time debating, playing devil's advocate, all that stuff is literally the greatest time wasters and emotional energies suck that you could ever have. And so I just do it very simply let's, let's get on the same side of the table, let's define our desired outcome. Then you, then in a good way, you put everyone in a straight jacket, then they're not able to argue like well, because they're gonna be arguing with themselves. It's like you know, and so that's why I do it. And but, as you can tell, even as you bring this up, it kind of makes me a little nauseous, because I don't want to spend my days like debating with people or playing devil's advocate, or why would we do this? Or because a lot of times when people do this, they're just, they're scared. Hey, we're gonna go do that. That's why one of our core principles is throw your hat over the wall, turn your brain off. Another core principle why don't overthink it? Right, we're not. No one's gonna stab you in the leg. Okay, if we do this, this is not gonna hurt. If it doesn't work, we'll pivot, we'll make a move.

Gui Costin 20:14

So as you start to, and so it, all of our core principles come back to like human beings, you coaching human beings through things, and we just don't the way that we do it, we just don't have that normal Dilbert cartoon office type stuff like that craziness. Now you do have things that pop up that all of a sudden rear their ugly head and I start asking questions and I'm like, well, why are we doing this? Well, and then people are a little confused. But I asked why? And then I'm like, look, I'm just trying to understand what's going on. Guys, I'm not here, I'm not even criticizing the path, I'm just having trouble understanding why we're doing this or what's going on. And then when you have those just very upfront conversations, you don't get into those long crazy meetings, those long debates. Right, it's just. And that's why I like to move fast, to make decisions and then pivot where you have to pivot.

Tammy Hershberger 21:11

And can I ask you for anyone that is listening, I do have some people recently that I've been talking to and they're literally small enough where they're starting to make their first few hires for a. Can we talk about a players? But to you, what is an, a player?

Gui Costin 21:30

Well, other people have really defined it for me, but most people most a players don't necessarily need to be told what to do. One guy said after six months if somebody's coming to me asking what they should be doing, I made the wrong hire um, they don't need to be managed. I don't believe you should ever use the word manage in a business. It should be lead.

Tammy Hershberger 21:45

Can you expand on that real quick?

Gui Costin 21:49

Yeah, people want to be led Like managing people. I think that's kind of gone away in business these days. No one wants middle management. All these big companies have just taken up middle management. You want to be able to sit down with someone, establish whatever it is you're trying to achieve, what are you trying to do? But remember coming back to the leader if you establish standards as a leader, the whole game changes once you do that, because then people know what the rules of the game are.

Gui Costin 22:16

The problem is leaders don't establish the rules of the game and what they stand for, and that's like a real, real problem. Every decision we make, I can come back to our core principles, what we stand for, and that's like a real, real problem. Every decision we make, I can come back to our core principles, what we stand for, and then it becomes like okay, it's unarguable. So A players obviously all just the basics you know motivated. A lot of times I prefer kind of just take the whole conversation off the table. If I hire team athletes from you know in college, that really solves like 85% of the people's issues. And then you want to be able to have up front when you're talking to A players and A players don't buy into a team environment where we're playing for the team, not for the individual. That's not an A player Like there's. No, everyone gets acknowledgement. We're here to work as a team, solve problems, and then there's also kindness, right. And then getting back to the not managed, don't have to be told what to do. They will. There's another human frailty out there with non-A players, where you ask somebody to do something, they're doing it repeatedly and then they just stop doing it. So that would not be an A player Like.

Gui Costin 23:36

You want to find people that's like look, part of our core culture is that if we ask you to do something, then you have to keep doing it and we can't have to check in with you all the time if you're doing that. That's another A player, right, but for the most part A players. You can set them on their course and they're able to get their job done. They're continuously improving, they're always trying to grow, they have a growth mindset, they have energy, they're not afraid to try things, and then your job as a leader is to create safe space for those teammates. You remove obstacles, open-door policy, anything you need, we'll give you all the resources, and your job is to be so careful with your words.

Gui Costin 24:20

So if you want A players, right, a players want to play for other A players, but you can't treat A players like B and C players. You can't demean, you can't have little jokes here and there, you can't make little comments. Everything has to be kind of on the up and up and the words you use have to be so thoughtful with your words, and especially when you're confronting situations. And that's why I'm writing this book, because I'm having to, like, completely like, tell all my war stories of all my bad leadership moments and things I've done and everything.

Tammy Hershberger 24:56

It's a little cringeworthy but into that book when it comes out, which I know it's a little ways. Yeah, be kind. You said is the name of it yeah, be kind I'll have to watch for that. It's yeah, it's interesting how our mouths can get us into stuff, or even like everybody has little different personalities and you say something and it's like, ooh, as soon as you say it, it's like I didn't mean it like that, or they take it wrong, or so.

Gui Costin 25:16

I'm glad that you brought that up because that is huge in leadership to really watch that At every level. As I say, if you're in the Jiffy Lube and it's a five person team, right, if he wants to come in and work for that, you know. For that boss, right. People leave, bosses, not companies. I'm saying it's like it doesn't matter, right, where, whatever work environment you're in, right you. And then cause if you treat people kindly, okay, they're going to treat each other kindly, Otherwise they're off the ship, ship. And then all of a sudden you walk in it's like no, we're not, you know. But if you come in and feel like you have permission which is the chapter in my book, permission you can't. Just, you know leaders, a lot of leaders, give themselves whatever permission they want, to give themselves to say whatever they want, and they don't realize one word can ruin someone's life literally yeah one word can like we've all had it happen.

Gui Costin 26:02

We know that guy said that thing at one time.

Tammy Hershberger 26:06

And it replays in your head Right. Yeah, right.

Gui Costin 26:09

And it's like you know.

Tammy Hershberger 26:12

Man, that is powerful. I'm so glad you said that Because no one on this podcast has said that yet. That I've had on the guest. I love that you have acknowledged that. To shift gears just a tiny bit, so you have, from the numbers I found you've your company, dakota, has raised over 40 billion dollars. Is that correct? Yes yes, so I mean that's crazy discipline, and or is it more discipline or mindset would you say that it took you to get to that kind of level?

Gui Costin 26:38

it's, it really is. Well, hey, it's a mindset that then you figure out what works and you codify that, you define it and then you follow it right Unless something changes. So, like process is everything. The only exception would be the Jeff Bezos line of you can't use process as a proxy, and so the way I defined it was good old Zig Ziglar, if you remember.

Gui Costin 27:02

He was a self-help guy in the 80s and 90s, one of the most popular of all time. He tells this amazing story and I tell it to the team all the time and it's basically why are we doing this? Well, that's because that's the way we've always done it. I said, okay. So the story goes grandma has got the ham and she's putting the ham in the oven to cook. Grandson's sitting there. She watched grandma chop up both sides of the ham really good parts of the ham and put it in the oven. She goes grandma, why don't you cut off the sides of the ham? That looks like it's very good. She goes I don't know, that's just how I've always done it. He goes why? And she kind of looks at him and she looks over, she kind of peers out. She goes oh my gosh, honey. Well, I guess, back before we had an oven, we had a toaster and the ham would never be able to fit in the toaster, so I had to cut off the ends of the ham to fit in the toaster.

Gui Costin 27:54

Now we have an oven and I'm always like saying, like you know, process is amazing. That's what you need to have a successful anything. But at the same time, it can't be a proxy, because what worked two years ago from a process standpoint might not be appropriate for today. So you always have to be asking why are we doing this? And that's basically. You want to talk about health and freshness of a business, having the freedom and the ability, and then also as a leader, to say what are the things you'd like to stop doing right now that are hard and kind of not useful? What would those be? And you do that and it's quite amazing the answers you get.

Gui Costin 28:34

We have an off-site. We do every month that we change the name. We call them W-days what's working, what's not working. So each business unit comes in and presents. It doesn't present. It's a type of conversation All right, what's working, what's not working, what do you want to stop doing? We're here to solve problems for you and, by the way, I'm always looking for prima donnas. I always say we don't have enough prima donnas I need. I need more complaining, more stuff to start working well, because some people get scared to like what I thought you wanted me to do. Right, they get. They get in their head versus saying I don't want to be seen as not a team player. No, it's like if this is a waste of time, just tell me, and if there's a more efficient way to do it, let's figure it out. Yeah, I think that's really important.

Tammy Hershberger 29:13

That is great, yeah, cause you've got to be efficient so you can consist, especially when you're growing to the size that you have.

Gui Costin 29:27

I mean you've got to be able to be mobile, you've got to be able to make those changes, and that's why I like your open-door policy, so they're not afraid to come to you.

Tammy Hershberger 29:31

Yeah, that's huge. What do?

Gui Costin 29:38

you think has been one of the most challenging parts of either building your team or scaling your business to the size it's at. The most challenging thing is, well, number one just keeping people on point right, focused on what matters most. So having those core principles and then, as it grows, making sure the things people are working on are the things that they should be working on, and because once you have revenue and things are working, mistakes things can creep in where it's like. Why are we doing that? I don't know. Like I said before, keeping everyone on point on what matters most is maybe not the hardest thing, but the most important thing, and just making sure that you don't need to micromanage. You just need to be having conversations all the time about that particular topic. Like, is this? You know, are we focused on the things that matter most? Do we know what matters most in your domain? And if we don't, let's define it Like you know, what does utopia look like in this situation?

Gui Costin 30:43

And then, another thing that's obviously the hardest is we're now in a world last past two and a half, three years of the proverbial AI, and you know you have to think all the time how's it going to disrupt you, what are you doing? How are you thinking about it? I'm always thinking about new end markets and growth, because there's growth, but then there's also the underlying why growth? Right, you're not just growing to grow, you're growing number one, to keep serving your customer. Two, making sure your employees have professional growth within your company. If you're not growing, they're not growing, they're going to leave, right. So there's the growth component new end markets, new products, always thinking about how you can better serve your customers and add value. Those would be the two things keeping people on point and growth.

Tammy Hershberger 31:34

I did not have this in your questions, but seeing you brought up AI, I'm curious. I don't know tons about it, but I mean I use it like everyone else. How do you feel like AI is going to affect your industry, what you're in?

Gui Costin 31:49

Well, I'm in the data business it's obviously going to affect your industry. What you're in um well, I'm in the data business it's obviously going to have a massive effect on data and what people can retrieve. I think that I think the thing that I've always asked myself when I follow a really, really special dude named sanjit shubhra. He wrote a book called reshuffle, his third or fourth book, and the the shuffle book called Reshuffle, his third or fourth book. And the reshuffle book talks about orchestration and really that's how you're going to win is through curation and orchestration, because you have to think about. Ai can help us do tasks faster, but what he'll make the case that companies aren't thinking about enough is they're actually redefining platforms. You know, it's kind of like. I think the most recent example that he used was Adobe, which if you're creative, you obviously know Adobe.

Tammy Hershberger 32:43

Yeah.

Gui Costin 32:43

And then Figma right Creative you obviously know Adobe and then Figma right and Figma really redefined the platform versus Adobe just took their shrink wrap software and put it online, whereas Figma completely reconstituted the platform. So, in a simple way, I think, to answer your question, I think you have to be intensely curious and I think AI is going to benefit, more than people recognize, people with life experience and people with domain expertise. If you have life experience and domain expertise, you're going to be able to ask questions of this genie in a bottle and get answers at a level that most people won't be able to get to. So if anyone that's a little bit older, with life experience and domain expertise, you're in a great spot.

Tammy Hershberger 33:37

Yeah.

Gui Costin 33:38

And people don't think of it that way. Right, they think of technology disrupting older people and younger people benefiting from it, and that's really beneficial to older people.

Tammy Hershberger 33:55

And I'm curious from your perspective, what makes investment sales more unique when it comes to running a business or leading a team, and if anyone and maybe can you explain investment sales real quick, just to anyone that's like, what is that they don't understand?

Gui Costin 34:03

It's the simplest thing. So everybody is a general, everyone has a 401k, everybody kind of knows what a financial advisor is because they're on commercials every single day from morgan stanley and merrill lynch and ubs. Right, financial advisor helps families do financial planning and then what you have is you have investment products that they want to put you into. The simplest one would be just an index fund, right? Well, believe it or not, vanguard has salespeople and they go out and they talk to financial advisors about why the financial advisor should be using a Vanguard index fund. That's investment sales. So, basically, you're going out talking to but this also could be and I know you went to college, so if you went to college, your college has an endowment. That endowment needs to be invested. So sales people that work for investment firms call them to say, hey, you might want to look at my private equity fund, my hedge fund, my mutual fund, and that's investment sales. So it goes across. You know all those financial advisors?

Tammy Hershberger 35:00

um, yeah, and so it sounds to me like I mean, you're still running a business, you're still trying to find employees. It doesn't seem to me like it's really. I mean, obviously what you do is different, but running a business is running a business right, like it's not really any different than someone that's a plumber, that's running this business, correct? You still need your sales people.

Tammy Hershberger 35:18

You still gotta make money stay yeah, okay, um, and then uh, kellen had mentioned dakota marketplace. Um, it says it's built by fundraisers. How does that by fundraiser for fundraisers, philosophy, manifest development, like? What does that look like?

Gui Costin 35:37

it would be just that it would be the same thing as the plumber like runs a plumbing business, starts as a plumber himself or herself, and it's a plumber and then hires other plumbers to then expand the business and gets more trucks and grows, and then that plumber is all of a sudden like man, I have a problem in my business. I'm trying to scale. This is frustrating. I need to solve for this. I'm going to try to create some software to solve my own problem. So now it's a software piece that solves an administrative issue for a plumber. So it's a platform built by plumbers for plumbers. So nobody is going to know this platform and the problem, the very specifics of the problem, better than the plumber him or herself, right, and so that's where you end up seeing so many of these cool, really cool businesses being built. They're built from the person who had a problem themselves and they created the solution. They sell the solution to other people.

Tammy Hershberger 36:31

Yeah.

Gui Costin 36:32

And that's essentially what we did.

Tammy Hershberger 36:35

Yeah, I found even for myself it's interesting with, like you're saying, these platforms and things and CRM. You mentioned that earlier and in a window business there's Housecall Pro, and when we found that it was like it was someone that had a window business, that was like a service company was struggling trying to find a good CRM, and we tried different ones and that one was like our favorite because these people understood what we really needed the shed industry. We can't find a good CRM for that because they want to go manufacturing side and then customer and they just don't merge together well. And so I am curious on your side, because you have thousands of users, how do you ensure that your data quality, the relevance and all of that is continuously updated? What does that look like? How do you keep on top of that?

Gui Costin 37:16

We have a massive data team and then we've got really good processes in place that we've had since day one. So we run the whole platform through an email bounce platform once a week, and we run the whole platform through an email bounce platform once a week and we get the bounces and then we go do that. So that's one way to keep it up to date. And then what you end up having is you have all these different protocols in place that are essentially tripwires right for for anything, right, if there's any changes here, changes there, right, we're always.

Gui Costin 37:42

And then what we use salesforce and so what that ends up producing which is really cool is it'll provide you with these exception reports, so it'll show you where there's polls in your data. And then we also, from a contact standpoint, we there's LinkedIn has these things called lists and we put every contact on a list, and then, if that person changes their LinkedIn profile, we get a notification and we update. If that person changes their LinkedIn profile, we get a notification and we update. So it's really, really it's actually easier than you think, as long as you stay disciplined to the processes, if that makes sense.

Tammy Hershberger 38:14

Yeah, yeah, you got to stay to them, but that's really anything. I mean, if you create the system or the process and then every now and then I see somebody like not, they blow our process and I'm like you, just the thing fell apart because you skipped steps, right, like you just thought you could jump over that and I could see in your world how you've really got to keep up with that. So I saw you wrote a book.

Gui Costin 38:34

Oh no, I'm so sorry.

Tammy Hershberger 38:35

Go ahead.

Gui Costin 38:36

No, I was just saying it's the consistency. That's what you just said. It's just, it's consistency. Right, processes keep the consistency, but they respect your a players. Yes, right, if you have a really top administrator with administrator operator mind right? No, it's like you got to stick to the process.

Tammy Hershberger 38:50

That's why it works yeah, yeah, uh, you wrote a book the dakota way. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Gui Costin 38:57

sure, um started the company in 2006, started hiring salespeople for real in 2011 and I uh, instead of training them, I just did the read. I called the read my mind method, and so they would read my mind of how I sell, and then they would never be able to figure it out, and then I'd fire them and, after burning through some salespeople, I was like this is not a good way to run a business. I found this book by this guy, carpenter, which is like on processes, okay, and so I documented every single thing I did as a salesperson and I turned it into a whole I call it the Dakota way and I codified it, I defined it and then I had everyone follow it.

Tammy Hershberger 39:41

And that basically changed everything you said, but it changed everything for you.

The Four Core Principles

Gui Costin 39:45

And then if they follow it, but then you have to you, and then they follow it, but then you have to put safeguards in place to make so. One of the biggest investment firms in the world brought us in we want to hire you guys, okay, cool. So he goes I can't get our sales team to always consistently use a CRM. She goes how do you do it? It's amazing, you have everyone using it. I said, well, one I pay the commissions out of Salesforce. She goes okay, that's one way to do it. And I said two I make them go through their pipeline in front of everybody every week in the system. She's like don't you think that's mean?

Tammy Hershberger 40:15

It's accountable. That's what it is.

Gui Costin 40:18

I'm like nope, nope. And, by the way, if you have to sit down with your boss every week for five minutes and show him or her your pipeline report, either if you show up empty-handed, with no pipeline, you're going to be fired. So that's easy, right? Most people don't want to show up empty-handed, so they'll fill it in. If they don't have to report each week to their boss, guess what they may or may not. I don't want to put people in that position.

Gui Costin 40:49

It's a self-forcing mechanism. I call it the straitjacket, but it's in their best interest. You're in sales. This is your job, okay, so you're going to show up at the pipeline and you know. And so having to be transparent, uh, in front of everybody, especially your boss. A, it's called job preservation. B it's how you make money, right? So you're cause look at the end of the day sales, okay, is you're selling? The end of the day sales, okay, is you're selling? I'm selling, uh, I'm selling um pain. I'm selling a cr, a fully uh, curated crm. This is so you can send cold emails and have people not get back to you. I'm selling pain, right? So you need to put processes in place to get around the emotional pain for people so they can have success and make a lot of money and do really well and build a great career yeah, and I know one of the principles in your book is setting expectations.

Tammy Hershberger 41:30

How does that play out in your own leadership or with your client engagement?

Gui Costin 41:35

That's the number one job. Right of a salesperson is you need to set expectations with your boss of what good looks like and you have to have it in writing one pager. This is the sales plan you and I are going to agree on what success looks like and then I'm going to report once a week back to you on how I'm doing against the plan of what we agreed to. So if you simply just do that, get agreement, report progress against the plan. What does a boss do if they haven't heard from a salesperson? Mentally they assume the salesperson's literally doing nothing, playing golf, screwing around, right. So informing and being in communication on how you're doing against the plan that you agree to is a foolproof way to not only have success but keep your job and keep your keep your boss off your back.

Tammy Hershberger 42:27

Yeah, I think that's fantastic. So your book really focuses on clarity, repeatable systems, and has that structure always been something that's kind of come naturally to you? I mean, it kind of sounded like you had to learn it, if I'm understanding you correctly because you went through so many people, 100%.

Gui Costin 42:43

Yeah, I mean I think I went through two or three people and I was like this is not good. No, I had to learn it myself. I mean, I didn't know anything about this. I didn't know anything about leadership. It wasn't until I started coaching our high school golf team.

Gui Costin 43:12

In anything, that was the foundation of leadership for me, because when you coach golf versus like lacrosse or football, what have you? Words really matter, because an individual sport, that's a mental game. You can scream and yell lacrosse, kid, football, they, they're so used to it, they whatever golf's way different because it's not a team game. See, they're not used to being told what to do, and so I had to really master the art of what you know, essentially, what not to say, and so it's probably more about business leadership just doing that. I was nine years, I did that for and it worked. We had a ton of success and you know six championships and three seconds. It was an amazing thing. The kids loved the program. It was a ton of fun. My son was part of it the last four years, which is cool.

Tammy Hershberger 43:50

That's really cool On the leadership side. I mean, is it always for you just been learning on the fly, kind of as you go and make the mistakes, or has there been any books or podcasts or programs or anything you went through that you could recommend for people listening? Oh, my gosh, and I'm sorry I'm throwing that on the spot on you.

Gui Costin 44:09

So, if not, that's okay. No, no, no. I'm like a crazy, crazy, voracious reader. I read everything. I try to listen to so many podcasts I mean listen at the end of the day, wherever you get your podcasts Apple or Spotify whatever Awesome, substack Awesome. Or Spotify whatever Awesome, substack awesome. There's so many great leadership books. I think the best sales book I've ever read is the Challenger Sale, so read that.

Tammy Hershberger 44:37

And you said the Challenge of.

Gui Costin 44:38

Sale the Challenger Sale.

Tammy Hershberger 44:40

Challenger Sale.

Gui Costin 44:41

Challenger Sale.

Tammy Hershberger 44:42

I'll have to get that myself.

Gui Costin 44:45

It's the Bible. I mean, that's just the Mac daddy, um, so if I'm looking at, you know what I'm reading, and there's a great book, uh, that I just picked up, called the AI driven leader.

Tammy Hershberger 44:57

Okay.

Gui Costin 44:59

Um, there's another great book called how big things get done. Okay, Uh, if you're. If you're talking about an NPS score, the founder of the NPS score has a great book called Winning on Purpose. Another one that I would read is insane, which is completely under the radar, which is the Amazon Management System.

Tammy Hershberger 45:24

Really, that's good.

Gui Costin 45:27

Killer book.

Gui Costin 45:28

And I mean if I had to pick one, yeah, that is so killer. So, yeah, so I think there's just so many, but those would be the ones that come to mind just right off the bat. But also, I think, as a leader, you asked me how did I do it? I've done it by just being curious. I've just been, you know, asking, studying, learning, and then, and then you start to realize you know, you do have epiphanies. When I said in the book my most recent book called be kind, it was literally the hiring of my two best friends, daughters, right where I knew my you know kind of locker room talk and chatter and how I did, you know, did things and stuff. Yeah, didn't really, wasn't really going to work. You know what I mean.

Tammy Hershberger 46:16

So yeah, it's in those challenging when people come, or different people or whatever.

Tammy Hershberger 46:19

Those challenges make us change, which is the good thing, and you have to be open to that yes, exactly I'm curious so for my readers, I think I'm going to have you at the end tell me how to get that book, um, the Dakota way. But if someone had bought that that's listening and they put that into action what would you tell them that they should be expecting as far as a shift in their business or their team, or um, the shift in the business or the team based upon the book yeah, based upon your book.

Gui Costin 46:49

Unless you have a really bad product, it's hard not to have success if you follow the core principles. But what I'm going to tell you is that you have to get very comfortable with sort of the pedestrian nature of the whole thing, because it is sending cold emails to book meetings, but then then having discipline to use a crm, having discipline to set expectations and writing with your boss doing these things. But if you do it, it's a, it's a full game changer. You, you, basically, unless your product stinks, you can't lose, and I and I I've proved it in two businesses now. Um, and then just staying disciplined to it is really the key.

Tammy Hershberger 47:30

Yeah, I agree with you. Is there anything recently that you can say you've learned? I mean, you've already gave us a bunch of nuggets here, but recently that you've learned about communication or leadership or anything that you were like that's an aha moment for you.

Gui Costin 47:44

Sure, I mean, we just had had a. This is really getting into the mental weeds of your teammates and roles they play, but as you're building a company, there has to be a really good understanding as a leader to understand that when you put different people in different jobs like the more they do that job, they actually more they become adept at that skill and that development. And I'll give you a for instance if you start two people off, one is an account executive, which is out outbound sales, and another is a customer success manager, which is inbound sales. Okay, so both are technically sales. One, though, is proactive, one is reactive, right, well, as they grow just think of one's growing up into the right, one's growing up into the left, okay, literally reinforcing a whole different set of standards and skills and processes that have to be put into place, whereas the CSMs are fielding phone calls or emails from customers asking for certain things to be done. They're selling them, they're selling them on, maybe adding additional users or upselling, but if you actually ask them to sell too much, they run into a wall and blow up. Okay, why is that? Because, and so the question then is how often do you want to take the account executive and the person in sales off of the relationship. Because if the CSM is going to be much more of a gardener and taking care of the person, they might be uncomfortable trying to sell them something new or cross sell them. So it's understanding that if you're going to ask the CSM all of a sudden to take off the CSM hat and put the sales hat on, there's a good chance it's not going to work.

Gui Costin 49:33

But a lot of people like me spent years and years and years separating those things and expecting some things to happen. So the takeaway is always be looking and examining these things, like always, trying to be learning. And now you have this chat, gpt, you can ask questions of Always be sort, poking and prodding, of how, what am I missing here? What would be my blind spot? How can I improve? What are the unintended consequences of this? And you're just always poking and prodding and you know you're never going to get there. There's no mountaintop to get to, it's just a never-ending process. But you have to just keep poking and prodding.

Tammy Hershberger 50:13

Yeah, that's really good, staying intentional about seeing. I like how you turn it on yourself, because you have to think about what am I missing, especially when you're, you know, at the top of this company, trying to make it go and become innovative and do new things and keep people moving, and I think that's really great. You talk a lot about culture in the beginning. Um, what did you do to kind of obviously you had your core values, that kind of stuff. But as far as the people, the culture, how are you building it? How are you keeping it intentional? You know, what does that look like for you?

Gui Costin 50:40

so it's. It's actually sadly, insanely simple. It's how you treat people, and how you treat people is how the words you use, and so you have to live culture, you have to act. Culture. You can't talk about culture. So, because it comes down to how do I treat people right, and how you deal with situations, how you treat people, and so and that's the intentional part right, it's just because then it just builds in itself and then you have to walk the talk.

Gui Costin 51:14

So when there are situations that need to be addressed, you run away from the situations or do you address them and right, and then how you know how do you address them, and are you actually building someone up? Like? We had a situation recently, uh, and I just asked our president to go have a conversation with someone and I said, look, I just want you to start with insane, insane compassion for the situation. Just have insane compassion because clearly something's building up and right, there's something going on and this is our job is to figure it out. But start with insane compassion and by doing that, when you feel that you just really want to understand what's going on with someone, versus attacking, versus saying you know you're not doing your job and it's just to do this, you know, which is really kind of more the standard way of how people deal with things versus seeking to understand, right, and having compassion for people. Um, that's like just another way, right, and I? It takes insane vulnerability to really lead in this way.

Gui Costin 52:21

And it's not perfection. I'll never be perfect. I'm not perfect. I've made so many many mistakes. I admit them in my book. I talk about them if people want to talk about them.

Creating a Culture of Kindness

Gui Costin 52:29

Uh, we, I work extremely hard. It's not like I'm some guy who like has to like, all of a sudden have a, has a massive temper tantrum every two months. I don't go, I don't go back to like that, that bad behavior. You know where you get, so but then that I might have the temper tantrum or the frustration in my brain. Now, and I have it in my brain Now it doesn't come out of my mouth anymore and that's good and it's like, okay, cool, we solved the problem.

Gui Costin 52:57

But then even that, just seeking to understand, and so, at the end of the day, the business is more about the culture than it is about the business.

Gui Costin 53:05

It's about creating a place that people can come have fun, play at the highest professional level, become the best versions of themselves, develop their careers, do it with great people, be of service to customers. And then we're just lucky enough that we have a service business and a product business that we can wrap the culture within. So it's really a cultural play versus a business play, because you want to create places that people can come work, have fun, they spend more time at work than anywhere else and they don't feel and they feel like they're respected, they feel like they're treated with respect and excuse me, like an adult. So you start to like put all those things that people know, make sure that your, you, your projects that are started get completed. I think it's like it's just all this stuff really, you know, sort of adds up and then then you can end up doing great things and hopefully changing people's lives, which is like the cool thing, right.

Tammy Hershberger 54:00

Yeah, which really brings you back to that servant service you know, to your customer service, to your employees. And I can, I can see why you've been successful. You've got such a good mindset wrapped around what you're doing and you can really tell that you care about your people.

Gui Costin 54:16

Yeah, that's I mean, for me, that's all that really matters. And and you're very kind to say that you know I've had success and I, you know there's probably a little bit of an imposter syndrome with me and you know there's probably a little bit of an imposter syndrome with me and you know, because I don't quite, you know, know exactly what success probably exactly looks like, perfectly, I don't feel it's just an ongoing day-to-day kind of thing and I think that's, I think, the fun thing about for me about life is just this constant learning and being able to be creative every day to serve. So it's fun to be able to be creative and solve problems for people and help them get what they want out of life. I started that line in 2011. That's like been my line. I just want to.

Gui Costin 54:55

My mission in life is to help other people get what they want out of life. I'm not just saying that. That is how I live it and the reason being if I'm being very selfish is it's so empty focusing on yourself. Yeah, it is so empty and exhausting that it's like I had to, like I said I can't, I can't do myself anymore. This is like I'm going insane. I need to, I need to come up with a different thing. And then I realized just how gratifying it is to serve other people and help other people get what they want. To serve other people and help other people get what they want.

Tammy Hershberger 55:26

I actually just listened to a I think it was a reel or something and it was Will Smith and he was, you know, extremely rich, well-off, has the best of everything, and he was saying how empty it is. Like you get there and you get to the top and it's just there's like what is this? I'm just bored with this. And he said at that point in life you've got to start finding more meaning, because it's just more money, more trips, more whatever. It's just not. It gets boring, you know, and it's not what it's about. So I think that's cool. I am curious, it's fascinating to me, because nobody's even acknowledging that kind of imposter syndrome that you just brought up, Even at your stage of business. You still struggle with that a little bit. You still feel it. Oh, yeah, oh, yeah, yeah, oh, my god, yeah, yeah. Well, do you think it magnified?

Gui Costin 56:11

more as you grew, or has it just been the same the whole time? I think it's just been the same. It's just kind of like you know, you just have these conversations with yourself, you know, is it all going to end someday? Yeah, like you know, and you know and, and I guess, like the will sm thing, I mean I think that that you know, somehow people think of like that, money, happiness, like the whole thing.

Gui Costin 56:34

I think the service part being about other people authentically is kind of what puts you over the edge. Puts you over the edge because, listen, it doesn't mean that you're not incredibly self-motivated, right? But if it's all about, if it's always about, other people, then you realize in a coaching, what are you going to sit there if you're working with one of your teammates and they're doing something or think about something in a certain way, and then you're like, oh, if I say this, I'll hurt their feelings. I mean, I don't really care right about that, because I'm actually doing them a disservice by not addressing this issue. And I'm not going to address it in a demeaning, you know public shaming way in any way, shape or form, right, but you're going to address and you're going to say, look, this is in your best interest. This is how I think you should be thinking about this, or how do you think you should be thinking about this? Right, and yeah, I mean I don't see like the whole concept of the imposter syndrome kind of going away, the whole concept of the imposter syndrome kind of, you know, going away.

Gui Costin 57:32

It's fun being around people that you sort of have an appreciation that you've actually learned something when you know people you really respect kind of are sort of missing it like in a certain way, and then you mentioned it, they're like man. That's really. That really resonates. Thanks for saying that. Like, what are you talking about? It's like you're the, you're like the teacher. Yeah, I'm in the student. What's going on here and that's fun. But it's also, I think, from someone like Will Smith, and I guess my question is I don't even know what he means by having it all or having this or having that, because I'm not quite sure that actually means anything.

Tammy Hershberger 58:11

I don't know what that is. You know what I mean. Yeah, he was like. He was like. You know I've had. I don't even know how much money he has.

Tammy Hershberger 58:13

He has loads of money and he's had women like crazy and all these things that I think the world puts these things like you need a bigger house, you need a bigger car, you need more friends, you need a bigger boat, whatever, and like you got to of. But then you get there and it's like I got the bigger home, I got everything, I got this great job, whatever, and it's just this emptiness inside of you. You know, and I agree with you. I think it's serving others and helping others and finding your purpose in this life, which is not just, I mean, money and all that is great and it makes us comfortable, but I would imagine, I mean there's yeah, go ahead expand you're, you're, well you're, you're, so you're, you're unpacking the great line from my friend and friend and garnos dad there's always gonna be somebody bigger, stronger, faster, better looking richer, nicer car like.

Gui Costin 58:56

Forget about it, right? Yeah, what will smith is saying without saying? It is the only way you can get into that mentality is if you're comparing yourself to others.

Tammy Hershberger 59:05

That's a good point like what tells a bigger house me from what?

Gui Costin 59:06

but no, you're comparing yourself to others. That's a good point, like what does a bigger house mean From what? But no, you're hanging out with people in a certain city that I'm not going to name, where they make lots of movies, right. And then you have those people that are actually bad souls and they are pursuing, and then all of a sudden they realize I've been trying to climb this thing and now I've got this figurehouse in here and all this stuff. It's like you want to hang out with people like that, like I don't hang out with people like that yeah exactly Right.

Gui Costin 59:34

It's like you know what I mean. It's like who do you? Don't compare yourself to anyone. Now listen, you can have mentors and idols and people that you look up to and everything, but like it's a comparison game. And who wants to be in a comparison game? That that like, like it, like that's horrible. I mean, I can't even it like that. That. That to me is like the empty thing, because you know, we, we, right right now, I'm at a um, I'm in a uh, we have a house on a lake next to where kids went to camp and have had it for now. Like 10 years Off the lake, this guy in the late 1800s, early 1900s, built the largest shoe company in the world and he was from nothing, sold it for $6 million in 1910, which I chatted GPT a couple weeks ago would be called $194 million today.

Gui Costin 1:00:26

Wow. He bought 6 6300 acres on the lake up in the mountains. He bought, he built a castle with a thousand people and his home overlooking the lake they call castle in the clouds, not tourist thing. And then he built like the club down below where they're going to build houses and have a golf course and have a summer retreat. Right, long story short. He built the house in 1914 up on the hill, opened the club in 1921. He had very few members, he had to underwrite the whole thing, built some houses. Great depression hit 1941. He dies penniless up in his castle in the clouds oh lost all his money.

Gui Costin 1:01:02

Wow. So my and and and the reason I say that is, like you know, he just did it by committing, you know, I guess what I was just saying. Like, like, we all know this. Like, if you are, you go buy a sports car, but you go buy a ferrari, right, is that gonna okay, great, in the ferrari, is that okay? Well, this is like my goal, because all those in a fry, okay, great, great, not even a fryer and the next one's gonna look cooler, and this one's gonna get boring to you and right like right, yeah, I mean it's.

Gui Costin 1:01:33

It's all the stuff you can't buy, right, it's really what's worth things. It's like I have two kids that play lacrosse in college and they made it to the final four. One has made it twice, one made it once with them and I'm like, as I said to those guys, you can't buy that. Guys like you can't, that's like that only comes from you know hard work and being a great teammate and just like all these intangibles, right, you can't. All the things that are worth having aren't for sale, right, I mean having relationships. That's not, they're not for sale. Like all the stuff will smith's is telling us you can buy right and that's why it's empty. There's no value in buying. It's like the real. The real value is in helping other people.

Tammy Hershberger 1:02:14

I mean, at least in my opinion, I mean I think you're on it having relationships and making the connections, Cause I seen guys who've done very well and their kids don't talk to them. Their wives left them and they're you know. They got loads of money and people around them that are wanting their money, but it's like you're missing out on the most important things, because you know how exciting is that money going to be when you're old and you're rocking chair and your kids are not there and your wife's gone or whatever. You know what I mean. It's like I just don't understand the point of that.

Gui Costin 1:02:37

It's very empty yeah, if you, if you mess up that relationship with your kids, which is 100 in your control and, by the way, to any young parents. This is what I did at my advice and I, I think I, this one, I think I'm not. I'm not a perfect human. I'm the furthest thing for a perfect human being, not a perfect parent. But I try to be very judicious with my words, with my kids and not have every moment be a coaching moment, and I have an incredibly close relationship with all three.

Gui Costin 1:03:06

I have so much fun with all three, all a little different, and they love being around me and my wife and the whole thing, but they also have their own lives. You know what I mean? We're not around each other all the time. They're early 20s and you screw that one up, right for money or for I mean, I stopped traveling for like five or six years in high school so I was around for the kids, all that stuff. You screw those ones up. I have these families who don't talk to each other. What are you doing If I wasn't talking to my mother or my stepfather? That's a horrible outcome. That's all within our control, right, but you can't buy that stuff, the Will Smith stuff. He's talking about all that like it's empty, it's like well will you're focused on the wrong goal.

Leading Without Micromanaging

Gui Costin 1:03:50

Yeah, like, that's not right, like you know, and and you know the there should be just being able to say I've made a bunch of money so I could buy stuff. I mean, what do you really need? You know what I mean. Like, like, like, when you're at, you're asking me all these questions, right, which are wonderful, but all the answers are, literally, they just have to do with not, there's nothing to purchase, right? All this stuff's up within your control and it's all about contributing to other people's lives, right, and it's that whole service thing I just keep coming back to that because it's unpurchasable, right, but it's what's the most valuable and hopefully, on a day-to-day basis, we can be helping in our company, helping people break through certain mental barriers they might have, or learn things that they didn't know they could do before. Or, as I've been saying to the team, one of the coolest things we're at the epicenter. This is why acknowledgement is so important. We have everybody gets the personal bio video and we run it our all company check-in every day at 8 30.

Gui Costin 1:04:57

We run each just one, so everyone gets to know that person that's cool and this videographer asks like six questions, but then it ends and I and I and I give 60 seconds comments on it and it's basically effusive praise, compliments, gratitude, thanks, um, hey, this is the one thing that you didn't know about kevin. This is one thing you didn't know about janiviv. That you know really is cool is what she's been able to do and it's like that. So people feel completely acknowledged and then everyone else gets to know that person. But it's like you can't buy that, right, but that's so much fun. You're making people, someone, feel great about themselves publicly, right and right. It makes you feel great that you're doing it and you're not sitting there saying you know, do you know how easy it would be to just be a little funny at their expense? On a personal body, yeah true, you know what I?

Gui Costin 1:05:52

mean Because he says he goes what, what it's like. One question is what would you be the best at the code at um? You know a karaoke dancer, you know whatever the thing is, you know. Then you can make like a little flip comment yeah, I bet you look pretty good up there. Yeah, like, like, do you see what I'm saying? Words, you know. You have to like, you have to point the energy in a completely different direction. That's only positive and about them. It makes them feel great about themselves and to me that's that.

Tammy Hershberger 1:06:21

No, I was just gonna say you, him, you humanize them and, as a company as large as yours, you humanize them. You made them real human beings with real feelings, real lives, real things outside of work. And how do you not?

Gui Costin 1:06:32

yes I think that's a fantastic leader yeah, well, thanks, it's just and it's and it's fun and it's just the right thing to do. Right, because the way that I look at it, and I want everyone to get to know everybody and then everybody you know, I want everyone to feel acknowledged and then, like I said earlier, it's like main job of business leaders to keep the best people. Yeah, because if those people if every business is a people business and good people walk out the door, guess what? You literally have years and years and years of institutional knowledge how to get a job done walking out the door.

Tammy Hershberger 1:07:07

Yeah.

Gui Costin 1:07:08

I mean, what price can you put on that? Just process that. So you, as a leader, everything that you say to somebody that would make them want to leave, you've literally just impaired your company a little bit. Your customers like everything. So you know it's like use your words at your own risk.

Tammy Hershberger 1:07:25

Yeah, for sure. We're almost done here. I want to ask you, with what you've done with Dakota now, what is it you're most excited about with the future? What's coming up that you can tell us about?

Gui Costin 1:07:37

I'm really excited and just a little nervous. We have come up with a few new data sets that allow us to attack new end markets, new customer bases that we haven't been able to go after, and I couldn't be more excited about being able to serve that group with information that can help them do their job. And that's going to make us get very uncomfortable I have to focus on new end markets. Really, it's going to cause us to really stretch and that creates uncomfortable times, which is is good, but so we're super excited about that. Then, of course, I'm excited about just embracing everything that these new tools that you know can bring us. And, and the thing that I'm really loving every minute so it's not just in the future and kind of the futures you know in a minute you will is with these LLMs and what you can ask it, these neural networks of your brain. When you actually learn something new, it's allowing you to get a depth of knowledge on very deep subjects very quickly, which has never been done before.

Gui Costin 1:08:43

Sometimes you might have to call an expert. There's these companies that do expert networks and so they'll set you up with an expert, but now you don't have to do that anymore. You don't have to pay $100,000 to have the chief economist to blah, blah blah consult you for a month and get all this information. It's all right there so you're able to just. It's much more democratic, where you can learn very quickly almost any topic, and so for me it's just so much fun to be able to see where that's going to go and how it's going to get into the company, into our teammates, into our product, into our customers, and so that's really for me, embracing this, it's very, very exciting.

Tammy Hershberger 1:09:22

Yeah, I bet it is. It'll be fun to see what you do with it. And as far as you said, you had a third book. So what's the name of the second book? Because I missed that somewhere.

Gui Costin 1:09:32

The first book is called Millennials Are Not Aliens. I wrote that in 2019. That was for basically how to effectively connect with and sell to this next generation.

Tammy Hershberger 1:09:42

Okay.

Gui Costin 1:09:43

Which, you know, every generation thinks the generation coming up is entitled. By the way, it's never true, but history repeats itself every generation. So that was one. The second book dropped Feb of 2025. That's called the Dakota Way, and then the third book was going to be called Be Kind, dakota way, and then the third book was going to call be kind. And I'm finishing up the last chapter, I think, on Thursday, so that'll be almost done on Thursday.

Gui Costin 1:10:17

Actually, my last chapter, which is I'm taking some risks, is, uh, it's called little league and it's it's, it's the. The target audience for little league. The chapter is all these parent coaches who coach 8-, 9 and 10-year-olds. Okay, and they have the greatest opportunity in the world to make them love the sport of whatever they're coaching and for whatever reason, the parents decide that's their first time coaching whatever. They're just going to make it a real serious thing and all the kids want to do is love the game or whatever. They're just going to make it a real serious thing and all the kids want to do is love the game, have a popsicle after or run around, have fun with their friends and learn the game.

Gui Costin 1:10:53

But no, we're going to turn it into life and death and we're going to scream and yell and all this thing and I'm like you have lost respect. That's funny. But we know like if you have kids and you've experienced that, you see how psycho these coaches can be and uh, and they ruin and I saw it firsthand Some of my kids. Thank God my kids kind of got through it. But it's like how can you like treat an eight year old kid? Yeah, like, have you liked her? You got him mentally ill. I mean, come on, so that's, that's that's. I was just, I was reading through it before we jumped on and I was laughing. I share some unbelievable stories just about myself and stuff. It's just fun.

Tammy Hershberger 1:11:32

And from the time you finished that, I've never wrote a book to actually publish it. How long does that take before we'll be able to get that, do you think?

Gui Costin 1:11:39

It shouldn't take that long, maybe a couple months. Oh, okay, I mean, the times are short. We did it with the ghostwriter Gail, she sure, and I didn't. We did it with the ghost writer gail. She did the fire book. She's awesome. Um, yeah, and, and the timelines have just shrunk so much, okay, and uh, yeah, and it's so. Thank god, I have no emotion towards it because I'm just writing and uh, so right, so, because it's there's so much noise, is that people say, well, what's the hardest part about writing a book? It's the simplest procrastination, fear of what you put out there. That people are book, it's as simple as procrastination Fear of what you put out there. If you can get over the procrastination thing, then you're in great shape.

Tammy Hershberger 1:12:15

And to get these books. Is it Amazon or where is the best place to find them?

Gui Costin 1:12:19

Yeah, both are on Amazon, yeah, Amazon excellent.

Tammy Hershberger 1:12:21

Okay, I'll put links in this episode when it drops.

Gui Costin 1:12:24

Thank you.

Tammy Hershberger 1:12:25

Lastly, do you have any more advice or anything you want to let my listeners know?

Gui Costin 1:12:29

Again, mostly small business owners, but yeah, but to tell you, I mean, as I'm evolving through this whole thing, I mean it's like you know, lead with kindness, lead with love, love your customers. Um, yeah, I think those are the things I mean. If you love your customers, you treat them like gold. I would always treat the employees nice from the customers, but them first. Yeah, and that's you know. I think that. I think that has shown too, even though I didn't do it, for you know, historical purposes I think that has proven out to be profits. Shareholders, employees right and everyone. In other words, they thought profits, then everyone's right and everyone originally thought profits. Then everyone's like put the customer first, the whole thing. Then it's turning out, the best businesses, the most successful businesses, put their employees first.

Tammy Hershberger 1:13:17

Yeah, and they'll take care of your customers, right.

Gui Costin 1:13:20

Exactly.

Tammy Hershberger 1:13:22

Well, it was super fun to have you on here. I really appreciate you coming on. Everyone, make sure you go and get his book through Amazon Millennials, not Aliens Dakota Way, and then in a few months maybe Be Kind will be out. So we thank you all for listening.

Tammy Hershberger 1:13:35

We ask you to like, share, subscribe, guy. Thank you so very much. We will see you guys. You're amazing. Thank you, this was really special. Yeah, it was a great conversation. You are a smart guy. You can tell you lead your team well I see why you're successful and little guys like us who are growing our businesses. You know it's good to have guys like you that are got your head on straight. You care about the right things and it's fun to listen to you guys because we get, we learn from you, we get experience and we see the things that we can change in our business.

Gui Costin 1:14:06

Great Cool, all right, well, have a great day, thank you.

Tammy Hershberger 1:14:09

You too. Everyone, thanks for listening. We will see you on the next one. And remember in the world of business, every success story begins with a passionate dream and ends with a strategic billion-dollar handshake. Stay ambitious, stay innovative and keep making those deals that reshape tomorrow. Thank you all for tuning in and until next time, remember. Proverbs 3.3 says Let love and faithfulness never leave you. Bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart. That way you will win favor and a good name in the sight of God and man. And remember if you like what you heard today, click the follow button so you never miss an episode.