Chris Carneal, Boosterhon CEO, Authentic Leadership, Family Man

What if balancing a thriving entrepreneurial career and a fulfilling family life isn't just a dream, but an achievable reality? Join us as Chris Carneal, founder and CEO of Booster, shares his inspiring journey of raising over $700 million for schools while staying deeply involved with his family, including coaching more than 30 of his kids' sports teams. In this captivating conversation, Chris opens up about the profound impact of his upbringing, his passion for education, and the powerful lessons learned from his parents' relationship, all of which have shaped his values and approach to business and life.

Chris takes us on a nostalgic journey through his early years in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, sharing personal stories that reveal his love for baseball, his adventures in Egypt and Russia, and the influential role his parents played in fostering his respect for continuous learning and entrepreneurship. With a keen emphasis on mentorship, Chris introduces the concept of a personal advisory board, offering a fresh perspective on gathering guidance from a diverse network of mentors. We uncover how these relationships have illuminated his path, providing invaluable insights along the way.

As we explore the challenges faced during the COVID-19 pandemic, Chris demonstrates how faith and resilience can lead to renewed momentum and success. His vision for Virtue Village, a collaborative workspace, highlights his dedication to fostering community and growth among like-minded businesses. Finally, Chris articulates his aspirations for Booster as a model of a redemptive business, emphasizing the importance of family legacy and the evolving landscape of entrepreneurship. Discover how Chris encourages seizing opportunities within existing businesses and the unique ways school principals can build a positive culture.

#Entrepreneurship
#RaisingKids
#LeadershipJourney
#FamilyFirst
#SchoolFundraising
#StartupStories
#WorkLifeBalance
#BusinessAndFamily
#PersonalGrowth
#Boosterthon

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

The entrepreneurial, I can control my schedule. Yep. I'll take a risk. I'll prioritize things that matter most to me. My friends didn't even know my parents were divorced until high school because my dad coached every team and was so present. And my parents got along really well and communicated really well. So never have I ever heard a parent speak a bad word about the other one. And they've been divorced now for 40 years because they said, I want to prioritize positivity, encouragement. You know, they didn't need to put that on my shoulders in any way. And so I really respect

SPEAKER_00: 0:36

it. That's incredible.

SPEAKER_02: 0:45

All right, folks, welcome back to another episode of The Jeff Hopeck Show. Thanks for joining us today. And I have, as promised, a very interesting one for you today. His name is Chris Carneal. And I bet most of you out there may know either him or his brand because he's the founder and CEO of a company called Booster. And Booster, if you've been in school, you'll probably know them because they come to your school and help your school raise money. What's fascinating, a couple things we're going to talk about today. One is that they just hit a milestone. And that milestone is you have raised now. And counting by the day, over$700 million for schools. That's right. Which is remarkable. We're not going to focus the show as everybody out there knows. We're going to really dial into your story and your upbringing. How does a person do that, right? Because I used to think, oh, you wake up and you start a business and then it's top right. Everything's growth. Yeah. But you're going to share some incredible stuff with us today, and I'm excited for everybody out there to get a feel for who you are. Most importantly, who you are, what kind of person you are, your values, what drives you, and the reason you're sitting here. I just want to say this to you. The reason you're sitting here, why I think it's just so interesting, the person you are... When I hear somebody with this tremendous success in business, my mind for some reason goes to like, they're always away from home. They're always traveling. They're always doing this. You have figured out a way. You've coached over 30 of your kids' sports teams. I mean, it's incredible. So you've like figured out this mix. You've got this brand. I told Chris this morning, when you roll in, it's going to be like a tumbleweed. You're like a tumbleweed man and it's a compliment. You just like... Like going in a direction, Jeff. You never know. And it's incredible. And you're meeting people and you're making friends and you're just... You're just a great guy, and I really appreciate you being here, man. Thank you. I'm honored. Respect

SPEAKER_01: 2:43

you. Love what you've built. Just listened to a few previous guests on the show recently, like the last couple of days. Awesome. Love your audience. Love all that you do. Respect you, and thanks for the opportunity. This will be fun. Let's go. I appreciate you. Tumbleweed away.

SPEAKER_02: 2:57

Tumbleweed away. This is all about legacy here. We're going to build an awesome story, and I'm excited for everybody to get a feel for you. We're at the same church together, friends, many, many, mutual friends, overlapping circles. But the biggest one where I really got to like feel and watch you in action was when our church decided to make a men's, create a men's program, a program. And they picked, picked us. I think there were six of us to go ahead and head that up and get that started. So that's where we really rolled up our sleeves. And that's when we talked

SPEAKER_01: 3:31

about doing the show. Something didn't exist. It needed to exist. I know, right. And we had a vision for it. And a lot of great people like, let's get this thing started. What could it look like? We started tossing around ideas. What does exist? What doesn't exist? What exists elsewhere? What would fit our unique context? Yeah. That was a fun. We probably met, what, every couple of weeks for six months or more, just kind of hashing

SPEAKER_04: 3:49

things out. Six months, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 3:50

Let's go back. Let's go back to young Chris. Let's start. Sort of earliest childhood memories you have. What did you hear from your parents? That type of thing.

SPEAKER_01: 4:00

So I grew up in sunny South Florida, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I still consider it home in my head that when I was there last week, I'll be there again in two weeks for some business and speaking at something. And whenever I land and I feel the ocean breeze and the palm trees, everyone kind of has a feeling of home. My wife grew up in Lexington, Kentucky. For her, it's the rolling hills. For me, it's the ocean breeze and the palm trees. I love it. Love South Florida. In the midst, South Florida is Kind of crazy in some ways, but I grew up in this really nice bubble of South Florida, East Fort Lauderdale. My parents were divorced, but both unbelievably involved in my life. So I was an only child, but in some ways I felt like I had all of my mom and all of my dad. They didn't get remarried till I was in my teenage years. So only child, great friends, great community, great church life. I was super involved in lots of things, sports, church, mission trips, friends, school. I'll tell you, a childhood memory that really formed me and the older I get, I want to create this for my kids. And I feel like we have been doing it. It's one of the reasons I kind of planned my year around our annual summer family trip. My mom and her parents and me, so the four of us, my grandparents, my mom and me, every summer would take me from age five to... 12 or so, kind of these formative years, an international trip, like a pretty exotic. It wasn't, we weren't, you know, hiking across Antarctica. Yeah. Exotic. I was with my grandparents. Usually it was like a cruise or something, but we cruised up the Nile. We went to Indonesia, Malaysia. Yeah. Russia, China, London. You have a favorite one? Favorite place you've been? Uh, the most formative, I think it was 86. I was six years old. We were cruising up the Nile river. I think when you go to that part of the world, you see the pyramids and like, this has been around for thousands of years. I was at all these trips. I was the only kid. So I kind of had to grow up a little bit and have adult conversations and just the worldview, the exposure, the opportunity to literally see the world in like histories, cultures have been here for thousands of years. It just gave me a context. How did America get here? How did I get here? You know, who are we? So respect for uh for humankind for all of god's creation so those are just really really formative years

SPEAKER_02: 6:13

yeah what kind of what sports were you into

SPEAKER_01: 6:16

i played basketball through middle school but baseball was my sport still was my sport i just landed this time yesterday from getting back from the world series in new york what a game didn't sleep at all came back i love baseball i love the sport of baseball i'm a braves fan through and through i was there in 21 when they won in houston i actually as a 15 year old my dad flew me up here to atlanta when they won it so i've seen both clinching games of the braves in Even when I didn't live here. Incredible. So love the Braves. I was a pitcher in high school. I actually played in college a little bit. Yep. Samford and Birmingham and then at UAB. Yeah. So love baseball. Just finished two days ago, finishing out my 34th season coached of my kids, both my boys' baseball teams. 34 seasons. Seasons ended this past week. Oh my goodness. And what age is that? 110 days to spring training. Not that I'm counting down everything, but it's baseball season and then there's wait for baseball season. What ages are your kids? My boys are, so I have four kids. My oldest daughter's in college. She's 19. She goes to Liberty in Lynchburg. She absolutely loves it. She's a freshman. Perfect fit. Awesome. My daughter, Emma, is a junior in high school. And then my boys are 13 and 11, eighth grade and sixth grade. Eighth and sixth. Really fun, full, incredible season of

SPEAKER_02: 7:27

life. I'll bet you. This show is brought to you by our good friends over at badassaccountingjobs.com. Go check them out. You'll get three free months using the code HOPEC. That's H-O-P-E-C-K. They're doing really cool stuff connecting accountants and employers on a simple to use platform. We appreciate them. We love them. And we know you will too. Go ahead and check them out. It's badassaccountingjobs.com and use the code HOPEC, H-O-P-E-C-K. So, okay, going back to the earlier years, what kind of student would you say you were?

UNKNOWN: 7:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 7:58

So my mom was a college professor and my dad was an attorney. They both valued learning even more than grades. I've used the phrase often to my kids and people hear and they kind of laugh, but we kind of mean it. Don't let school get in the way of a great education. Yep. I've heard it. School's incredibly important. My parents have combined nine degrees. So education was incredibly important. Stacks of books everywhere I went. Mom was a college reading professor. You've been to my office and seen my bookshelf. You must have

SPEAKER_02: 8:25

a... 3,000 books, I think.

SPEAKER_01: 8:28

We've actually got to put a

SPEAKER_02: 8:29

picture of that up there because it's

SPEAKER_01: 8:30

incredible. I've read a lot of them. I've started most. I have not finished them

SPEAKER_02: 8:33

all.

SPEAKER_01: 8:33

Your bookshelf. Also, if I think it's going to be important, I'll buy it and put it on the schedule to read ahead.

SPEAKER_02: 8:39

So speaking of, I remember last time being in your office and you were just getting it set up and it's a giant wall of books. It's incredible. Where does the, I remember seeing like Washington, some Lincoln stuff, some Washington

SPEAKER_01: 8:49

stuff. Where does all that come from? I have like eight shelves. The first two are American history, starting with revolution, working through kind of modern day World War II. Love the revolutionary period of American history. As a founder entrepreneur, I'm a CEO of our company, but I resonate most with entrepreneur founders. There's something in the DNA of founders. Yeah. Nothing exists. Something can exist. How do I bring it into existence? How do I bring it in? How do I create it? I love, we're all creative. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. But Washington was the first leader that galvanized our country. So he's your guy. He's my guy. I love him. His character, his fortitude, his persistence. He had the money. He had the thing and didn't need to, but he believed in the vision of what was possible. And here we are, hundreds of years later, recipient of a leader with vision and with grit. Yeah. So really

SPEAKER_02: 10:00

respect that. Love it. Great. Going back again– When was your first real entrepreneurial memory where you looked at things and you were like, how much does that cost? Totally.

SPEAKER_01: 10:13

After fourth grade Christmas, so whatever year that was, 1990 or something, I remember going to the grocery store and seeing– they used to have these extra large candy canes, like huge, like foot-long candy canes. And they were discounted 90% because this was December 27th. So instead of being a dollar each, they were 10 cents each. Oh my goodness. So I remember seeing 10 or 20 of them. I asked the person, hey, how many? Oh, we got a box in the back. I'll take them all. I'll buy them all. School starts back in January. I sold them at price for a dollar. I bought them for, and I sold out in like a day. Like this is fun. This is exciting. I found a deal. I brought value to my friends. I made 25 bucks. I got in a little bit of trouble for selling stuff at school. Yep. Later that summer, driving through Tennessee, we stopped at a huge fireworks superstore. Have you ever driven through Tennessee? Well, if I can sell candy canes, I can sell fireworks. Got in a little bit more trouble selling fireworks at school. This is back in the early 90s. But I remember making money doing that. People were like, this is awesome. So selling things at school. That was my first. And then my dad, let me give him some credit here. He made me my first business card. And it said, Chris Carneal, entrepreneur. And I remember him giving that to me, say, Hey, here you go. You need a business card. It didn't have a phone number. It didn't have cell phones. I mean, I was like nine, 10 years old, 11 years old. Uh, but it was an identity, uh, encouragement, affirmation from a father to a son saying, I see something in you. It's different. Here you go. Super cool. So if my dad ever hears this, dad, thank you for that. If any dads hear this, if you see gifts in your kids, gifts and friends calling it out,

SPEAKER_02: 11:45

really, really special. That's incredible. Do you know, you know, Finn Smith? Yep. Okay. So Finn's son

SPEAKER_01: 11:51

was on my car yesterday. I hire his company once every two weeks to come to our office and to wash car. He's awesome.

SPEAKER_02: 11:57

Okay. This all goes full circle. He was in this room and I interviewed him. Finn Finn's his father told us a story of this parental contract that he had when his son came and said, I don't want to go to college anymore. Or I don't want to go to college. Finn said, that's fine, but we're going to have a contract. And it's unbelievable. It was so cool that I said, you got to be on the show to talk

SPEAKER_01: 12:19

about it. We were talking through that with Finn as he was creating it. You did? I love it. It's really cool. It's a great concept.

SPEAKER_02: 12:25

So I would be curious, did your parents at that time, your dad... Wrote you the card. Did they really know, like, what is it really as an entrepreneur? What are we getting into?

SPEAKER_01: 12:37

No. And I didn't know it at the time. And I didn't know it for really another 20 years. But my mom's dad... My mom's parents were entrepreneurs. They were home builders in Western Kentucky. Okay. They valued, we can come back to this later, but they valued family and family trips. So they would work really hard during the school year and they shut their office. They turned their clothes sign around. Greatest generation war, you know, World War II granddad and his wife. And they said, hey, we worked hard. And now we're building this country. And now we're going to pause. We're going to take our daughters, my mom and her sister, on a trip all summer. They like gallivant the world over the summer and they come back. So they... The entrepreneurial, I can control my schedule. Yep. I'll take a risk. I'll prioritize things that matter most to me. And my dad was an attorney. So my mom, college professor and dad attorney, two jobs that don't seem entrepreneurial. Yeah. But my mom was the head of her department. Right. She would hire and fire. She would build her schedule around her son. Yeah. Which I greatly appreciate. Entrepreneur. Yep. Entrepreneur. And my dad always had, though he was an attorney, he always had something going on. Yeah. buying and selling real estate. He discovered some pictures in Boston once of like Ted Williams and DiMaggio that like previously unreleased. So he bought part of that company and sold ads in Sports Illustrated. So he always kind of had like a tinker around. I don't know if he'd call himself an entrepreneur, but he ran his own practice. So both parents being in charge of their schedules and having the pressure and responsibility and opportunity to say, It's kind of up to me to make it happen. That was... kind of given in my DNA.

SPEAKER_02: 14:13

Yeah. So they were present with you. Very present. It sounds like through like sports or whatever it was.

SPEAKER_01: 14:19

Super involved. That's one of your memories. Yeah, my friends didn't even know my parents were divorced until high school because my dad coached every team and was so present. And my parents got along really well and communicated really well. So not an ideal situation, of course, being divorced. But the fact that they prioritized me and never, still to this day, this is amazing. Never have I ever heard a parent speak a bad word about the other one. And they've been divorced now for 40 years because they said, I want to prioritize positivity, encouragement. You know, they didn't need to put that on my shoulders in any way. And so I really respect it. That's incredible. Are they in Florida? Yep. One in South Florida, one in my dad's in Jacksonville. Jacksonville. What kind of law? Curious. Personal injury for years is what he did. Yeah. So loved walking into his office and, you know, seeing his books on the shelf. Did he have a big book? Did he have a case like yours? American history stuff. Yeah. I modeled

SPEAKER_02: 15:16

a lot after, you know, what you, Do you look, I never saw a picture. Do you look like, do

SPEAKER_01: 15:20

you look like your dad?

SPEAKER_02: 15:21

I

SPEAKER_01: 15:21

hope, I hope so. Good looking

SPEAKER_02: 15:24

guy. Like, I mean, splitting, like splitting image type. Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. Yep. Means a lot. So at that stage, then mentorship. Did you know what it was? You weren't saying like, I need a mentor. That's the next logical thing. But did you have any? Anybody

SPEAKER_01: 15:41

step in your life? And I have lots of thoughts on the idea of mentorship. I think it needs to be redefined. We can make this a whole conversation. Let's do it. Well, let me rant for a second on the soapbox of mentorship. Then I'll go back to me. Please. The next generation, I don't know. I don't know what that age cutoff is. Let's say under 40. I'm 44. So maybe it's under 45. And let's say over 65. The idea of retirement, thank goodness, it's kind of being reframed a little bit. I don't like the traditional, the last 30 years, like make your money, be done, move to Florida, play golf. I don't think that's a worldview that helps the next generation. I don't think that gives back or pays it forward. I've seen a lot of that generation recently saying, how can I get involved in my church or in mentorship? So the older generation, though, that has the wisdom, has the resources, has the money, they define, I think, inappropriately mentorship as like, I got to meet every single week, or it's going to stifle my schedule, or man, I'm at the season where I want to be with my grandkids. I don't want to commit to an everyday thing. Well, listen, our generation, I got four kids running around. You do as well. We don't have time for another one. So I think the key to The next season of mentorship is availability. And I don't think there's one singular person that knows it all. I subscribe to the idea of a host of mentors. And I've been really blessed to build this network of mentors over the past 15, 20 years. Yeah. A host of mentors, for me, there's about 20 people that given the topic, business, personal, marriage, family, profitability, marketing, I know who to go to and they are the best at it. And I probably have a coffee or a phone call intentionally scheduled every year, one or two a year with these people. But I know at any moment, I could also call them or text them and they'll pick up my phone. So instead of just the one person, I do think it's healthy to have like, here's the older father, husband that I meet with. But In all of life, there's so many questions I might have. So to have a host of mentors, a team of people that I could go to, and for that next generation to say, I'll be available. I can't meet every single week, but I'd love to be available when you need me. I'd love to unlock that more in that generation's mind and unlock in our generation, younger's mind. You don't need to add one more thing every week. You need to be able to just build a breadth of mentors to be able to go to, to get perspective. So I've been able to do that a lot. Availability. I love that. Hey, here's my card. If you ever need anything, let me know. Happy to meet you for coffee. We're not committing to every Tuesday morning breakfast. Right. No one has time for that. But

SPEAKER_02: 18:05

if you've got a problem in this specific area. Category.

SPEAKER_01: 18:08

This is my marriage guy. This is my parenting guy. This is my father of daughters guy. This is my father of sons guy. I kind of know who to, yeah. So do you

SPEAKER_02: 18:20

see, do you think, do you know that? Is it a problem out there where people mix mentors? They're like, oh, well, this guy made a ton of money. So I'm going to ask him for fitness advice or like, are they crossing through or where are they making the mistakes?

SPEAKER_01: 18:32

I think those over, let's say over 65 say they want a mentor, but they get scared away of like the commitment. Cause this is a season of life. Like I finally, my time's back to my own. If I could convince that season to just be available for, I mean, we're talking a coffee once or twice a year. or breakfast once a year. And hey, if you need anything, let me know. Can I get a quick, I mean, I called a guy recently. Hey, I got 15 minutes, a very specific question about our kind of our big business architecture on the business stuff. Don't really know who to ask, but I know you own a business. So I need the owner of a business of a certain size to give me advice into this. Yeah. And bam. Do you have a board of advisors? I do personally and I do professionally.

SPEAKER_02: 19:10

Okay. Personal board of advisors. You have a personal board. Tell us about that.

SPEAKER_01: 19:14

Yep. So about, Eight, 10 years ago, I started, eight years ago, our company's board of advisors. And then about two years after that, I thought, I'm getting really good advice. I need a personal board of advisors as well. So kind of take accountability group of sorts, but more like, where should I give money I've made? Or where should I invest my time or resources? Or here's my calendar for the next year. I wanna keep this kind of in check. And the difference versus an accountability group of men's group is those, which I'm part of and I love, and they're incredibly valuable. Those are a co-shared, we're all in this together. I'll give you advice. You give me advice. This group that I started called the wise men was, you're the three wise men. You're giving advice. Me advice. Like I'm not entering in this, we're all friends, but it's not about me giving you advice. Like I'm being selfish. I have this question. I want to schedule calls and times to meet for you to speak into this subject of my life. In the same way you would run a professional business advisory board. So I didn't have a board for the first 15 years of our company. Because I wrongly thought that a board had to be a fiduciary, formal, I had to answer to them. And not that I don't mind accountability or responsibility, but I'm an entrepreneur and I didn't want some outsider, even if I handpicked them to tell me where they thought I needed to go. I wanted to pray about it, think about it, talk to my wife about it and So an advisory board, I have an incredible advisory board, eight years now, there's seven of them. And we've rotated a few on and off over the years, but we meet three times a year professionally. And that professional advisory board, we basically have one big topic and say, here's our thing and give us advice.

SPEAKER_02: 20:55

That's something I want to attach to your personal brand as we go out and like market this show and make Instagram reels. A personal, I've literally never heard that. I heard a business advisory board and I have one, but I never heard of a personal. I think that's- Well, you joined a men's group. Let's all share.

SPEAKER_01: 21:10

Wonderful.

SPEAKER_02: 21:11

All right, let's move on to college. So where'd you go? What kind of student were you?

SPEAKER_01: 21:16

Yeah. So let me jump back four years. I met my wife, Lindy. We've been married for 22 and a half years now. We met in eighth grade. She moved from Kentucky to Florida. Her locker was next to mine. I looked over. And I thought this is the most beautiful woman I've ever seen in my life. My dad and I have a baseball practice that afternoon after the first day of school of eighth grade. How was the first day of school, son, dad? I met the most gorgeous girl. She's from Kentucky, like you and my mom. Oh, wow. She sounds amazing. She's gorgeous. She's way out of my league, dad. So we never dated in high school. What was his advice when you said it? Go for it. Go, you know, ask around like that. There's levels, you know, and right. You know, she's an 11 out of 10. So I don't, it's not going to go well, but Hey, persistence, Jeff, this is part of my story. So I had my eye on her for four years. We happened to go to college together at Sanford. In Birmingham. We became very good friends, like truly friends. Yeah. Freshman year. Okay. All of our friends thought we were dating at the spring of freshman year. Like, no, we're really just good friends. Then 4th of July after freshman year, went to go see fireworks, stayed up half the night talking, hanging out. And I knew like, this is the moment. I actually told my mom on the drive home from college freshman year that I was going to marry Lindy. And she's like, I missed something. When did you start dating? Well, we're not dating yet. Because once we do, we're going to get married. So that night I said, hey, you know, you're it. I love you. And within a week, I'm like, we're going to get married. And Wendy's like, do you think we should start dating? We hadn't even been on a date yet. Like, we should start dating. So we got married as soon as we graduated college. But back to college, I was a religion major. This is why that's significant. I never took a business class. I don't want to jinx it. So I still haven't. I've read more business books than most, but I've never had a business class. So to any of the entrepreneurs out there, if you got an idea, you kind of just go for it. You don't need the business class. I've hired brilliant people and they're running the day to day. But religion major is important because it speaks to what I was passionate about then and I'm passionate now, which is I wanted to change the world. I want to make a difference in the lives of others. I feel like I've been giving gifts to encourage, to build teams, to motivate, to cast vision, to communicate and how could I use these gifts to change the world? And in my paradigm from age 15, when my youth pastor, Chris, gave me a couple of great opportunities to speak, to lead, encourage those same gifts in me, I got to see in high school, those gifts come alive in the context of what I call ministry, nonprofit, church, service work. So what I wanted to do, my way to The only way forward for the missional ministry, do good, world change heart and the entrepreneur head, hands, passion was, I know, I'm gonna be a religion major. I'll go to seminary, which I did. I'll move back home to South Florida and I'll start, not join, I'll start a church. Loved my church, loved my experiences, the community in church, loved the good that our church did. So, hey, I'll be the head pastor, but I want to be the entrepreneurial. I don't want to take over one. I want to start a church in a new, fresh, different way. So four years of religion major. While in college, I was starting my businesses and the business that I currently run, Booster, today started in college. So kind of running those parallel tracks and literally four years of college, three years of seminary in Lord Jesus Christ. global Kentucky, back to Atlanta at age 25. From age 15 to 25, ministry, mission, nonprofit, do good, world change, and business, kick, tail, competition, grow, sales, were two different categories in my mind. It took 10 years, and it really took, back to mentor, me watching who I would say is my number one mentor, Dan Cathy, former CEO, now board chair of Chick-fil-A, son of the founder, drew it. We got connected and I had an incredible opportunity in my late 20s to travel the country with him and host some of his PR tours. The way that happened was just kind of God's miraculous plan. But I got to watch this incredibly mission-minded, want to change the world. How can I be generous with the resources I have and do good for human flourishing?

UNKNOWN: 25:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 25:20

And CEO of the fastest growing, best quick service company.

SPEAKER_02: 25:25

Third just

SPEAKER_01: 25:25

behind Starbucks and McDonald's. And not compromised at either one. So I had read books, I'd read scripture, I'd read all kinds of things, but I'd never seen a person with my DNA of innovation CEO and heart for world change at the same time. And that was it. It took me a decade. And I think now... The language that we use, the language, the world that my kids are growing up into doesn't see the dichotomy that I saw back then. That, hey, you want to go into business or you want to change the world? For-profit, non-profit, ministry versus business. And, you know, the language growing up for me from my churches, from all these wonderful people, they didn't know anybody was who wants to go into ministry or, you know, like the, like, like God, this is kind of silly. And I don't know if everyone, I'm assuming some people on the show have a faith framework, but I don't assume that everybody does. But the way the world I grew up in, there was like the missionary who moved to Africa. Yeah. Then there was like the senior pastor. And then there were some of the nonprofit at the time we used to call them parachurch leaders, you know, the do good nonprofit leaders. And then there was like the business people. Or the commerce people. And their job was to make money and send it up the food chain. But this is who God liked the most. And your job down here, he likes you, he loves you, but make some money and give it to them. And it didn't occur to me for a decade. And I really wrestled with it. I had to see Dan and others doing it. I can do just as much good. I would even argue, depends on the person, depends on the context, this is my calling. And through Booster, I feel like I could do more good, more world change, more impact than if I went the nonprofit church route. So to say that I'm not doing ministry, I kind of get offended now. Someone's like, who's going... If you have a faith framework where you feel like God's given us gifts, he's given it to all of us in different ways, using that for the good of others, even if the context is hosting podcasts, running fundraisers, being in real estate. Are you around people? And do you wake up every day thinking, how can I impact positively for good the lives of those around me? So it's not what you do, as A.W. Tozer says, it's why you do it. Why? Your motive. That determines whether your work is sacred or secular. Like it could be eternal work. You wake up every day. There's a guy we're redoing our house. There's a guy that's been in my house for about the last four months. And man, he is literally moving dirt and dirt. digging stuff out with a smile and joy on his face. You can't say that that's not missional work and that it doesn't have as higher purpose as someone who's in a nonprofit. He's doing it with joy. I see it. The culture he's building, he's impacting his team. He's leading them with excellence, with grace, with joy, and with fulfillment. So I think if there's one message I want the world to know, it's whatever you're doing now, if your motive is right, there are people around you, you can make a difference. In your context, right where you are. Right where you are. You don't need to go jump to a nonprofit. Do it right where you

SPEAKER_02: 28:19

are. Yeah. And he's impacted you so much that you come on a show. We're talking about him. And he's the first guy that comes to mind. Right. That's incredible. All right. So where did Booster, where did it come from? Where was the idea?

SPEAKER_01: 28:30

Yeah, so most of the audience that has heard of us has probably heard of Boosterthon Fun Run. Maybe just clicked. Oh, wait a minute. Now, moms have heard of us probably more than dads because moms are the ones that are going through their kids' book bags and making sure the schedule works. Now, I'm not putting a total stereotype, but for the majority, the kid comes home, mom looks at the teacher email, the principal email. So schools have a funding gap, every school, rich or poor, big or small, rural, urban. Yeah. They want more resources to do good things. Teacher training, new gym floor, new technology for the classrooms. Whatever it might be. For about 50 years in American history, from the 50s through the 2000s, the primary way to bridge that gap for the majority of public schools was product sales, selling stuff, specifically magazines or world's finest chocolates. There you go. Private schools would do dinner auctions, golf tournaments, galas, annual funds, capital campaigns. And public schools do those as well through foundations. But there's 100,000 schools in America, about 90,000 public, 10,000 private elementary schools. Okay. When I was in elementary school, let me go back to my parents, super involved in my childhood. My mom would run the reading program. My dad would help. He was the booster club president and he would run the fun run in conjunction with the PE coach. And the fun run we did every year was you would run laps and people would sponsor you and you would win. The stuff they gave away was like athletic gear. The senior that graduated, here's his old practice jersey or something like that. But I remember the fun run we did that I participated in as a magazines in the fall. And it was competitive, it was outdoors, it was exciting. Grew up in South Florida, but let's race, let's do it. So it was fun. So I played college baseball at Sanford. And by played, everyone likes to paint nice rosy pictures. I got cut. Then I made the team later as the team manager. I later got cut again. But as the team manager, I would be up from 2 to 6 a.m. washing the team laundry. That was what I mean by playing baseball freshman year. Yep. Red shirt, team laundry, washing everybody's stuff. Right. It's great. I wouldn't trade it for the world. Built grit, and it's what you do. Yeah. But then the next year, I went to UAB and actually played for a little bit. Then I transferred back to Sanford because I realized I'm not a pro. I miss my wife and friends, but I loved baseball and I wanted to start a business and I like, I need to make some money. So I started doing baseball lessons, one-on-one lessons. I went to the local park in Mount Brook. I was just there a few weeks ago, touring it with my wife and daughter, uh, And I was really good at it because I knew what to do. I had a college level of training and athleticism and most dads were well-meaning, but they didn't know how to give a lesson to their seven-year-old. And I could engage and talk dad baseball confidence and I could talk to the seven-year-old and motivate them and tweak some things. But I learned there in that moment I got a platform. This kid thinks I'm a 20 year old. They think I'm a superstar and I'm not. I barely played in college, but to the seven year old, I played in college and I had a really successful high school career. So I used the platform I had of influence to not just teach baseball, but to teach some character lessons about life. And this was super fulfilling back to my missional for-profit nonprofit tension, religion major. How do I make a difference? So I developed a very basic like content curriculum that I would walk kids through before we start the lesson. Let's talk about teamwork. You know, you're not just part of a team on the baseball field. You're part of a team at home, right? Who's your team? Who's your coach parents? Well, who's your teammates, brother or sister? How's your attitude towards your team? So I would like two minute conversations and the dads and the moms were like, He's a better brother because you're coaching him at baseball. No, he's hitting better. You gave him confidence, but he's a better son. His attitude's great. What have you done? I'm just linking together everyday life, character traits. We're making it fun. So I totally fell in love with this idea. This is the first time I'm living out now. I'm running a business, which was actually making some money as a 20-year-old for lessons in the afternoon, and I'm making a difference in the lives of kids. So that was like kind of the trajectory. All the components I'm still doing now. It's impacting kids, building a business, engaging with parents, delivering value to different key stakeholders, parents, kids. One day, one of the kids I was giving a lesson to, Carter Gannon was his name. And I know it because he graduated high school, went to the Marine Corps. And after the Marine Corps, came and worked for Booster for three years, which was amazing. So I'm giving Carter, the sixth grader, a lesson. And he says, Coach, before we start... will you help me out and buy some magazines for my school fundraiser? And I thought, you gotta be kidding me. This is what I did 10 years ago. You're still doing it at this great school you go to? He's like, yeah, all right, well, sure. I'll buy a couple of magazines. I'm in college. I'll just support you. Not that I need magazines. That lesson ends and I called my dad. Dad, remember we did the fun run as a kid? He's like, Chris, I'm like, this kid's selling magazines. I feel like, why don't schools do that? He goes, well, some schools organize their own fun runs in the same way that they organize their own golf tournaments. But there's not, listen, this is back to father affirmation again. You should start this. You could tell school, they would trust you to run their fundraiser. You're good with kids. You're motivating. You've done it before. I'll help you out a little bit. So that was the first light bulb moment of, wait a minute. 20 years old. I was 20 years old. And the idea was, I'll help you run a fundraiser that's not selling magazines, but running kids in circles where sponsors would give pledges or donations for the number of laps you ran. This is where it all started. Well, I'd like to say I signed up schools left and right. I started pitching this idea to friends, to friends' parents, to some of my mom's friends, to principals, to anybody I could. And everybody was gracious and said, great idea. I get the concept. It makes sense. And yeah, it sounds like a lot of work to organize, to promote, to hand out, to communicate. But have you ever done this before? Well, no, but it sounds like a good idea. And I participated in it when I was nine. Yeah, right. Trust me with your kids and your money. I've never done it. So what is any entrepreneur looking for? The first client. Just give me one client. I want one client because I knew it. I was so confident. So for a year and a half, I kept talking about it, going back to people. Met with one school, Shades Mountain in Birmingham, Alabama. Yeah. The athletic director, Bill Wilder. He was 27 at the time. I thought I was this old guy. I was 21 at that point. He needed to raise an extra$3,000 because he had told the school when he took over as athletic director, hey, I'm going to redo things. I'll also help you raise money and I'll raise about 30 grand in a couple of years. He was three grand short. So I said, coach, I'll do it for you. Give me a shot. He said, okay, but I need you to guarantee me the three grand because if this thing is a bomb and it's the end of the school year, I look bad. I said, okay, done. Guaranteed three grand. Put it in the contract,$3,000. Now this is spring of 2002. What I was guaranteeing, I finally told her a few weeks later, I had the courage. I was guaranteeing my saved up honeymoon money from baseball lessons because I'm getting married in a few months as soon as I graduate. So here I literally had it like an old cigar box, about four grand. Guarantee it. This day doesn't work. I'm out. I don't know what we're going to do for honeymoon. Hey, babe. From that moment, though, Lindy was then, is now, will always be super supportive. Go for it. I believe in you. Let's make it work. Go do it. I was doing it, but she's always been supporting and encouraging. I was more shocked than the school when the final results came in. He kept asking me, how are we doing? How are we doing? Well, I didn't even know to be recording as we were going. I was just kind of pulling it off as I went. I was going to college, doing it senior year. School profited 21,000. They were looking for three. So good news, I got to go on a honeymoon. But I'm like, this worked. I knew it would, but wow. So we finish and he's like, let's sign up for next year. Okay, I'm going to grad school in Kentucky next year, but sure, sounds good. So I scheduled around my spring break, grad school. I'm up in Kentucky. Another school hears about it. They call, when can we go? I go, oh, okay. So the next three years, age 22 to 25, my master's degree years, pursuing, getting a master's, going into ministries, kind of still wrestling with this. This became my job. I was doing some other little odds and ends. But we're driving all over the country, chasing down schools, living in hotel rooms, living in my stepbrother's basement in Atlanta, living in just all over the Southeast. Fly home to Florida for a couple weeks, pull off a school. And it was gaining momentum. And then at age 25, we're pregnant with our now 19-year-old college daughter, Grace. Oh, yeah. And my wife's like, listen, this on-the-road thing's awesome. But this season's over for me. I'm a mom-to-be in a few months. What are we going to do? So we did the legal pad options. I'll never forget. I'm driving from Hattiesburg, Mississippi after serving Brett Favre's kid's school 20 years ago. Driving to Louisville for an exam, driving all night long, passing the Batman building in Nashville as the sun's coming up, trying to rush back after a long, fun run in Hattiesburg, packing up all night, driving, trying to take my exam. Wife's pregnant, thinking, yeah, we can't do this. What is our thought? I'm like, we got to figure it out. You know what? My stepbrother at the time was starting a church in Atlanta. I had clients in Atlanta. Atlanta felt like a bigger city and a hub. Babe, Let's move to Atlanta. Let's give it a shot. So a few months later, moved to Atlanta, had our daughter, had my first official full-time hire as a team. I had been kind of piecing together part-time. Friends helped me out for a week or two. So that was 2005 when we finally moved to Atlanta and said, let's go for it. Who was the first client when you moved here? The first client here was Christopher Ray. He was the youngest person. principal of Grayson in the county, in Gwinnett County of Grayson Elementary at the time. Grayson Elementary. He gave me a shot. Yeah. And from, you know, we did a good job then. And then he told me about a friend of his, Craig Barlow, who was a principal of Riverside. I remember these names, 18 years. You never forget your first clients who help you out. And Craig Barlow, I talked to him a few weeks ago and he sent an email in Gwinnett County to about 20 colleagues and said, guys, we've done fundraisers for years. You know, we're a blue ribbon school. We like to only hire the best and do the best. You should give this a look because Boosterthon raised our school$60,000. We used to raise$20,000. And I got 15 clients in one email. And then from then, we were kind of off to the races. Then we did the same thing in Charlotte and in Dallas and Orlando and started then plant general managers. And so here we are now. We've raised about$1.2 billion. about 750 million school profits. That's gone back to after fees and paying for expenses. We have about a thousand team members nationwide and we're in every major market. We do more than just fun runs now, glow runs, color runs, and not just elementary school. We have middle school, high school programs. Yeah. When did high school start? We had an acquisition two years ago. We acquired a company out of South Carolina. We were wanting to get into the middle school, high school space. We had built so many relationships and You know, the principals, the PTA moms, the kids, sometimes we'll have relationships in middle school. We said, there's nothing for you. Right. And we thought we could develop it our own or buy a great company out of South Carolina. So we've been integrating that in the last two years. Interesting. So just more schools. What size were they? Like when you bought them, were they just a regional company? Regional. Yeah. Eight million or so in revenues. Yeah. A little smaller, but a great regional company.

SPEAKER_02: 39:48

What year did you do the school next to Virtue Village, which is where Booster headquarters is, right? Cornerstone was about. Cornerstone, yeah. Yeah, 04, 05-ish. That was one of our first schools early on. I participated with my nephew there. No kidding. That was the first year I moved to Atlanta. Yeah, right across. Moved to Norcross. Yeah. And I remember doing it.

SPEAKER_01: 40:08

It was me. Right there. In those first years, it was me and my wife and maybe a friend. Yeah. And I was doing everything myself. So you'd pack

SPEAKER_02: 40:15

up and then go to the next school and then pack up and go to the next school. Pack it up in the suburban and yeah. What was it back? Like, what did you have back then? Things that, I remember things blown up and

SPEAKER_01: 40:24

big. Flags, windows. I mean, I was totally making it up every school. I mean, every day, I just, what's needed? What do I not have? Let me go get it. I'd finish the program, and then from about three to midnight, I'd prepare for the next day. That was one of our very first... So, yeah, it was just my wife and I and our suburban at the time driving all over and doing it. Doing it. Making it work. Serving a client.

SPEAKER_02: 40:44

So, I know now there's an element because you have perimeter as well. You do the perimeter. And like sort of the whole week leading up, you guys are there. Two weeks. Is that part of the model everywhere at every school?

SPEAKER_01: 40:55

There's basically two models. The lead up? Yeah. Yeah. I could get into all the different service levels. But bottom line is there's really two predominant models, which is the we'll do everything for you or we'll give you everything you need to do it on your own with some customer support. So a support service model, basically. Perimeter, where our kids go to school, has been the we'll do it all for you. So our team spends about two weeks promoting it, communicating it. teaching character lessons, cool character videos. We partnered with Dude Perfect this past year, so they're integrated into the program. They do some, Tyler does some Character lessons and talks about some prizes they can win and fitness stuff. And yes, that's a fun partnership. How did that come about?

SPEAKER_02: 41:37

Yeah, they're

SPEAKER_01: 41:38

awesome. At our kids' program, watching my program, Boosterthon, at my kids' school as a dad, not from CEO perspective, but from dad perspective. Perimeter. Yeah, perimeter. Okay. And thinking, we've got to keep this fresh, keep it new, keep it exciting, make it just all the same ideas, but what's up? And my kids loved Dude Perfect. Yeah. And they're great guys. So the last year, we've become friends. We've been out there to film 50 custom videos with them a couple of times, played golf with them last year. I mean, great people. What you see on TV, it's not fake. That's totally who they are. Totally who they are. And you got to be careful, we especially, when you attach yourself to any brand. I mean, I'm dealing with people's kids and money. So we don't do celebrity endorsement. We don't do like, you know, what if they do something wrong? Like this is, we're teaching character to 10% of America's elementary kids, three and a Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 42:53

I mean, everything that's made Dude Perfect, I think, is in it. Yeah. Everything. The mugs. All of it. They did the promotion out. What was it? Smoothie King. Smoothie King. We had the smoothie cups. Oh, that's awful. Congrats on that. Just keep it fresh. Will we see that anywhere?

SPEAKER_01: 43:09

yeah your kids program it's on our website and you know it's it's integrated appropriately into the into the program and you did a what i did see was a giveaway that you did what was that all

SPEAKER_02: 43:18

about

SPEAKER_01: 43:18

yeah we had schools that were interested in hearing more they got entered into a drawing and uh we had we flew out a few families that won that uh to dallas and got to meet the guys and hang with the dudes play basketball yeah a lot of fun so we're always doing trying to stay innovative keep it fresh for students and keep it family wholesome yeah so

SPEAKER_02: 43:37

good that's a good look into booster so So let me come back. I want to– I got to understand where this culture– I mean, your culture, you got your quotes. I want to hear them. You are just culture, your blood, DNA, everything. Where did that come from? Where did you get the idea? Let's talk about that.

SPEAKER_01: 43:55

I love culture. There's lots of answers to this question. The modern answer is I've seen cultural impact. The right culture, a healthy culture, impact people more than almost anything else. If you could build the right workspace, cultivate. I love that word, cultivate. It's where culture comes from. Cultivate, working with your hands. Here's how I picture culture. Here's my visual every day. I got a field. I'm not a farmer. I'm a South Florida city boy. The opposite of a farmer. I don't know what I'm talking about. State that up front. I picture a field, a farmer's field. I do not create the sun and the rain and the resources. The Lord creates those. God created those before me, after me, but it is my responsibility to take the plow Take the tools and make that field ready for harvest. So here it is. It exists. There's no crops on it. Sun and rain alone won't do it. My hard work alone won't do it. But if I work hard, if I'm strategic and intentional, and I'm blessed with sun and rain, we can create something beautiful. We can create fruit that people can enjoy. So I view every day... as a blank field. I view every business unit, every client, my office, my teams, this is a field. What's my responsibility? That's appropriate. Hard work, intentionality, discipline, strategy, vision, mission. But also, what do I not create? Well, let me pray for favor, because if it doesn't rain, it doesn't really matter what I do. So I want the right people, all the right ingredients that the Lord's given me, coupled with gifts of hard work and discipline to come together. And then still, let's pray for the harvest, because I can't determine it all. But more often than not, the principles... Of hard work, of intentionality, of the right people, the right curated conversations. A phrase I've used for years is people grow into the conversations you create around them. For example, we just had our general manager meeting last week in Atlanta. I built the two week schedule from what I call fire pit backwards, the middle night. of our GM meeting, you know, in between dinners and sales meetings and financial updates and business updates and challenges and HR meetings, we always have a come together meal and then a fire pit. We gather around the fire pit. And I always try to think about what is the conversation, really the question I'm going to ask to get people engaged in a conversation. And if I can get that right, that kind of sets the cultural tone for the whole event. So I love culture in every way. I think also Yeah. Sure. uh, great gatherings of people. So I can be part of it. And then how do I create those for the good of others in the way that people created that for me? Yeah. It's incredible. What was the question? Just curious. Oh, from this last meeting or any meeting. Like what's an example? An example. Okay. I'll tell you one. My wife, Lindy started things off, uh, last week. Um, she is a spiritual director. And so she, I said, babe, what have you kicked things off? I got a couple of questions, but what have you kick it off? So she, she did this like 60 second reading. Everybody kind of close your eyes, take a deep breath. You know, the fire's going, the fall breeze was in the air. She said, she read this great, incredible reading about seasons of change and seasons of life and how we hang on to the past season because we love summer. But hey, so she read about fall, what autumn brings. And she said, you know, what leaves need to fall? on the tree of your life like what needs to fall and then you could watch it fall and say hey that that's over and that's done so that you can move on to the season ahead so that we're not out of season but we're in the right season so kind of picture so then we went around and share like what what season are you in literally the word season we're shifting to fall what season are you in and is there anything you need to let go of to fully embrace the season you're in that's a great I mean that's all you need light the fire and ask that question and then that took various forms but three hours later sure we're talking you know that's more personal than professional but if you get a healthy personal culture it leads to professional growth so how can i establish an appropriate team yeah feel in my top team right by asking each other real life questions right now giving people an opportunity to to open up and be who they are and then learn who each other are personally

SPEAKER_02: 48:24

yeah so i love doing that now you're okay your world headquarters is just i don't know off the charts is probably a good starting point to say i mean it's incredible when you walk in that place where'd that idea come

SPEAKER_01: 48:34

from yeah we're about Three miles away from here. Yeah. So we have about 1,000 team members that live in 30 states. And then we have about 25 officers. But our home office is here in Metro Atlanta, these street corners. We just had a really cool opportunity. COVID is a story I could share it a little bit. But coming out of COVID, which we were not sure we were going to, coming out of COVID, our last office, our lease was running up. We leased forever and reminded us of where we'd been and almost not surviving and a lot of tough decisions. And so we thought– so I called my real estate agent, Will, and said, show me a bunch of offices. At the time, interest rates were the lowest they've ever been in American history. So I thought if there's ever a moment to buy an office, this might be the moment. We'll see. Probably not. I want to invest money in the company and in our clients, not an office space. But I stumbled across an office that was– for sale. Excuse me. It was for lease. It was not for sale. Yeah. But when I walked around it, I thought what I want to do culturally and What I mean by that is when guests come in or new hires come in, we do a tunnel. We do smoke. It's like you're running through a tunnel, confetti cannons going off, music playing. So I want to be respectful of other people. But if I don't own this building, this landlord is going to say, what is this confetti cannon doing all over the yard? Why is the music playing? So all the stuff we want to do and always have done. I previously had a great landlord, but I thought if I could be the landlord, even better.

SPEAKER_03: 50:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 50:02

I literally felt like the back of this building, it's got, it's on like five acres. It's got a bunch of grass. It felt private. It felt like I could control the environment, create, cultivate the right culture and experience. So we didn't need the whole building. Walked around it, did a prayer lap, told my buddy Will, make an offer on this building. He's like, man, it's not for sale. I'm like, I know. I feel like this is our spot. Make them an offer. Well, believe it or not, 24 hours later, they accepted the offer. We locked in the lowest interest rate in the history of America. And so we were paying less in rent than we paid in Less than a mortgage we paid for the previous rent. So it all worked economically. And then I thought, well, I don't need this whole building. Let me start. Here's an idea I've had for a little bit. Some friends of mine have always talked about what if we didn't just get together at night or over dinner, but what if our lives were integrated where our vocational life, our working hours would be in the same space? I mean, appropriately so. Let's not distract each other, but who are you going to bump into at the coffee shop, at the break room, before or after, spur each other on? We're always talking work out of work. What if we kind of got together and had incredible work conversations and helped each other's companies grow? And we were grown at the time, so I wanted to keep the entrepreneurial where you'll spark alive. So I basically made a couple of phone calls to my best friends, thinking about buying this building. What if your business moves in here as well? And then what if we create a private, invite-only, shared workspace for all of our friends that had the same vision of vocation, that business can be missional, that we can make a difference in the lives of others. So our company doesn't have values we used to. We have virtues. That's another conversation. So I called this building Virtue Village. So that's our website. It's virtuevillage.com. That's the story why virtue. But the idea is what are virtues? Well, they're aspects. inspirational. They're inspirational. They're like the best of who we hope to be. It's the idea of, man, if the world had more virtue, our policies, our governments are like, what is the right thing to do? So let's attract companies, organizations with virtue, but let's operate like a village. Meaning, what do you need? How can I help? What do you specialize in? You know, ask for help, have the courage. Hey, if you're in a season where you can give back, be a mentor. So we've started lots of really cool multi-companies, about 30 companies in the building. Um, about 25 entrepreneurs plus a nonprofit, a couple of mid-sized companies and ours. We have things called micro communities where they're like basically like book studies. We do a masterclass every Wednesday where I hand select someone like you. Hey, talk about, you know, your background. What are you the best at? You got 30 minutes. So we connect people together. Last night we had a, yesterday afternoon, a CEO round table. Yeah. And we're basically had like 10 CEOs and one guy spent an hour pitching his business challenge right now. We all get to speak into it. Again, all from different, Is that where Austin

SPEAKER_02: 52:47

came and spoke?

SPEAKER_01: 52:48

Didn't you have Austin speak? Yeah, he spoke on stage. That's another event I do called Virtue Voices. That's open to the public. Virtuevoices.com. If anybody's here, wants to come, see our place. Got one coming up in a couple weeks. We do six of those a year every other month. Virtue Voices. And it's basically a speaker on some topic that's incredible. They talk for about 45 minutes. A lot of amazing... Tim Elmore, David Salyers, a lot of... Stephen Mansfield spoke last week. Salyers. Yep. Tim DeSopolis, former president of Chick-fil-A, speaking in the spring. So virtue. That's open to anybody. These are friends. Yep. Anybody want to come here? It's 8.30 to 9.30 breakfast. So what I'm doing with all these different things is I'm trying to curate culture for the purpose of conversations, to help people... professionally and personally. Hey, I mean, it's happening every day. People will hire someone they met. They'll get additional funding. They'll get a new idea. They'll have a new vendor. And these are great people. I mean, great people with pure hearts, incredible motives that want to do good. And I'm saying, don't just do good in the non-profit sector. Do good here at work with the people you know every day. Make your business a redemptive business and organization. Wow. So lots of fun. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 54:02

I could feel it. I don't even need, I could just feel it like coming across. It's awesome. Awesome. All right. Let's talk a little bit about mistakes. Cause it, cause it sounds like such an awesome, it's, it is an awesome story. It's an incredible story. And in there. There's roadblocks. There's hurdles. There's things that didn't go as well, right, as you thought they were going to. Pick a few. Let's talk through some of

SPEAKER_01: 54:27

them. How long do you have? As long as you need. So professional mistakes along the last 22 years?

SPEAKER_02: 54:33

They could be personal, too, because we want to learn about you. Yeah, gosh. Let's start with COVID. How about that? Oh, gosh. Because you mentioned COVID and you said you'll come back to it.

SPEAKER_01: 54:42

Let's dive into the COVID. Well, so there's mistakes. There's things that happen to you and mistakes you make. COVID happened to us. Yeah, to us. So we'll come back. I'll tell COVID, there's lots of mistakes I make every single day. You know, entrepreneurs view, I view mistakes as learning opportunities. This is my first, my frame. Like I don't mind mistakes. I kind of want us to, as Maxwell called it, fail forward, learn, test, pilot, adapt. What'd you learn? But I make mistakes every single day and I'll try as often as possible to look in the rear view mirror. What would I do differently based on that learning? But COVID was the most disruptive time professional, and personal in a good way of any event that's happened in my life so far. So everyone has a different COVID story. I hear about companies pivoting, companies retooling. A lot of companies became more successful during COVID. Not us. Every school in America was closed. How long were they closed, Jeff? How long do we go without revenue? Are you ready for this? Zero revenue. Not half revenue, not 10% less revenue. Zero. Zero revenue for 173 days. Zero revenue. With no

SPEAKER_02: 55:54

end in sight. With no end in sight

SPEAKER_01: 55:57

and no PPP because we were too big. Over 500 employees was not eligible for PPP. No. There were some tax credits. There was a furlough. There were some things at the time. But the big like, here's a big paycheck to protect paychecks, which we did. We were not eligible for. So... A mistake I made in retrospect professionally was probably being too optimistic. I'm rarely too negative. I'm often too optimistic. Sometimes your strengths can become your weaknesses because you overplay your hand. And I'm never going to not be an optimist. That's just my DNA. But two weeks to slow the curve. That's what they said. I mean, let's trust these people, right? Of course, they're from the government. They're here to help. Two weeks to slow the curve, it'll all be over. Yeah, right. That's another episode. Say that. So... Two weeks turned into two months, turned into the entire spring. So we were on pace for our best spring ever, our best year ever, and it's only going to be a couple weeks. I mean, I remember when I got the news. Japan was the first country in the world, February 2000, to– close their schools. And we thought, well, that's Japan, smaller country. In America, it's going to be a state-by-state thing. And they might close in California for a couple weeks or New York for a couple weeks, but maybe the red states won't close or the middle America won't close. And we're so diversified in service levels and in literally clients in every state, we'll take a hit. This stinks. We'll be back in a couple weeks or a month. Every school in America closed immediately. Yeah. And I kept paying every bill and every paycheck. So we were burning$100,000 a day with no end in sight. And it doesn't really matter how big you're– we're privately held. There's no public money. How big you are, eventually you're going to run out of cash. You can't pivot anything. I can't get– and it's not far to there. I couldn't get a principal to answer the phone. Parents weren't thinking about fundraising for a school. I'm just trying to get my kid's iPad to work so he can connect to his teacher who's trying to do this Zoom meeting. It was a disaster. America is still paying. Check out some test scores. But we're still paying. We're still trying to catch up from– stopping everything economically led to inflation educationally led to you know we're behind mental health I mean a lot of I don't know if we really thought through well what turning off the switch of education, of relationships, of finances really did and has done. And we're starting to see, unfortunately, some of the negative consequences. I think we will for some time. But it's our job now on this side of it to redeem and restore and do all that we can to make up for it. So the worst moment, though, for me, grit is one of our virtues. There it is on my wristband. So I'm just preaching grit. Let's go. I did a few things well in that season and a few things not well. I think the thing I did well, Steve and my business partner and I in that season was, well, we got nothing going on. So let's just do an all call to the whole company every week. And let's be clear. Let's be consistent. Let's communicate with transparency. Ask us any question you want. I'm going to just tell you the truth. So that bred a whole lot of trust in the organization. Guys, this stinks. Two weeks, that's out. That's what I thought. That's what you thought. Nope, it's probably gonna be another month. If anything changes, we'll let you know. Here's what we recommend. I was giving pep talks, tearful conversations. The worst, I was kind of holding it together with a lot of willpower, grit. Let's just call it Chris's personality and strength. Okay, yeah. Which is a gift God's given me. And summer, July 2020, when it became apparent that the fall season fall 2020 was going to also be rough and I'm running out of cash and I'm not just going to like have to fold up shop. Like I'm going to be bankrupt because we made the decision. Let's go for it. Another great conversation. My wife and I, you know, sitting down, Hey babe, this is the type of thing I need your, I mean, we own this company and if it doesn't go well, we're in trouble. And my wife's like, let's go for it, baby. Yeah. Let's do it. Go for it. It's not a guaranteed success here. This isn't two weeks. We're like into June now. Sure. Go for it. So, Praise God for a wonderful wife who listens to the Lord and has a piece to support. So we get to July, though, and my wife can tell that I'm kind of running out of my strength. And I'm like, we're great, babe. I got this. She's like, you're not great. You're a mess. So we go on a hike to North Carolina, up to Highlands, North Carolina, climb Whiteside Mountain. If anybody's ever been to Highlands, beautiful. You can see 50 miles in every direction. Every time we've done this over the past 15 years, go a lot. Yeah. It's the most beautiful view. It's always perfect view. So let's go to the top of this mountain where we can see clearly and let's pray about the future and let's pray for clarity. Okay, so here we are. We're hiking up the mountain. We get to the top of the mountain. I got pictures I can show you. It's the foggiest view of all time. We're like in a cloud. And I mean this metaphorically, and I mean this actually. We can't see, I can't see the railing that drops off 2,000 feet. Like, well, isn't this appropriate? This is exactly where I am right now. My job's to see the future. My job's to see ahead. I'm a visionary. I can't see 15 feet in front of me, five feet in front of me. And she's like, well, let's just pray about it. So we pray. About three minutes later, Like, God, give me clarity in life. I don't know what to do. I've got to take my team that I value greatly, my 800 team members, and I've got to trim them to 140 or else we're not going to be alive to make next payroll. Pray for clarity. Is this the right decision? No clarity. All of a sudden, the sky starts to open up, the sun starts to shine, and I'm like, okay, that's kind of what I need. So Lindy asked me, like, how do you view yourself in this story? I'm kind of going faith-based here. So if you're not a person of faith, you know, try not to cut the feed. But how do you– this is my faith and my view. Where do you view yourself in this whole story the last six months? I'm like, babe, I am– captaining this ship in the storm that I thought would, the rainstorm I thought would last two weeks or two months. It's now a hurricane and I'm in the middle of the hurricane and it's getting worse. There's another hurricane coming. Another one. And I just, I don't, I think, here's what I felt like. I said, I think I'm about to drown. I mean, I just can't. Yeah. It's like, I haven't slept at like, so it's the first time she got to me to actually admit like, this is tough. It's been a long six months. And she says, that's the problem. You're not the one captaining the boat. Yeah. You're on the boat. This is God's ship to sail. And you just need to kind of trust him with it. I'm like, boy, that sounds good in my head. But it was the first time my heart actually admitted, okay, I can't control everything. I'm not in charge. We might actually go out of business. But. Nothing I could do. I've done everything I could do. So kind of the open-handed posture of– now, some people have two open hands. They need to grab the reins and take responsibility and work hard and kick tail and have some grit. I tend to have the personality that takes too much control and thinks things are too much on my shoulders, and I needed to let go of control of the future, which we don't really have control of anyways. So took a deep breath, cried a lot. Came back and said, I know what has to be done. I want to do this with as much grace and compassion as possible. We had to resize the company or we're going to go out of business and then therefore have no mission. And that's it. So we did. Had to let go of friends. Had to furlough friends. And we went from 800 to 150 to 143 employees. Overnight. Yeah, it was super tough. Stayed in touch with the majority of them, a lot of them. The vast majority at the time. Got jobs and are doing– I mean, I heard it was God giving me some encouragement that I did make the right decision. When over the next year or two, I'd keep hearing, hey, going into this year, Chris, I remember you talking about wanting to multiply your culture and impact other organizations. I thought I'd do podcasts. I'd write a book, boost your culture. Well, what happened? That was my plan. What happened was 700 team members went to other companies. So God answered my prayer of multiplying the culture when I kept hearing– Chase going to Salesforce saying, you're not gonna believe it. I'm leading a team of 15. I'm making more money. I'm having influence. I'm doing cool cultures. I'm encouraging people. I'm championing and challenging. I'm doing stuff I learned in early booster days. They've never seen it before. Asking about personal lives, lighting a fire pit, having like intentional conversations, asking about people's kids. Like I feel like this is where I need to be. Thank you for making a tough decision. I'm having an impact. And the culture that you talked about is now being multiplied. Yeah. How about that? Not what I pictured at all. It's incredible. But it took the fall. It took that to kind of, in many ways, kind of break open my heart. Can't just spend stuff positive. Can't just be optimistic. Can't just work your way out of it. Hey, I'm not in control. That was a breaking point at my age 40 in a really healthy way. My wife and I talk about it. It's pruning. And there's a parable in the New Testament about God prunes what he wants to grow. So if anybody listens to this, I'm going faith. This is a principle of life. What you prune grows. Jesus talked about it. But pruning is painful. Who wants to prune? But if you see what's possible, you can understand that I believe there is a pruner and a gardener that's not me. And he will prune me. so that I will produce more fruit over time. That's incredible. I don't like the pruning still, but I know that it's a tool that the gardener uses to produce fruit. Did you want to quit? No. At any point through it? Never wanted to quit. I wanted relief. I wanted someone to pick up the call. I wanted to fight our way out of it. The most frustrating part was like silence was the most frustrating part. Like, hey, get back to us in three months. We can't think about anything else. What would your wife have said if

SPEAKER_02: 1:05:41

you came back and said, I want to just, I want to give up. I want to quit.

UNKNOWN: 1:05:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:05:45

She would have said, that's not you. No, you're tired. Take a nap and come back to fight tomorrow. She would have. Okay. So it's way out. She might have asked some depth level questions of like, is that really quit? Or do you feel like God's called you to do something else? Or, you know, and I would have, she would have maybe gotten a question. I would never have said that. And she would have said, this is not the end of the story for booster. There might be one day, but it's not, it wasn't. It's not now.

SPEAKER_02: 1:06:06

How did it, how did it end then? What, what, what happened? So you have 140, 140 people. Yeah,

SPEAKER_01: 1:06:11

we were praying. Our goal that fall, revenue-wise, was five to survive. We were projecting a$50 million fall. Then we were praying for five million, five to survive, fall 2020. That was the goal. If we don't get five, we're out of business still. So we're going for it. We resized. But who knows? I was 0 for five with my predictions. Right. My board kept saying, Chris, your optimism is blinding you, and you're good. Better, good, worst projections. Your worst case scenario has been your best case scenario five times in a row. So there was no prediction the five was really going to work. We were hoping for it. And then it was five to survive, 10 to win. We ended up with$13 million of revenue. So we're like, okay, we're back. Here we go. We're back. The last four years have been regrowing pains to get that. We've still made some wrong assumptions thinking the world would be back. In some ways it is, and in many ways for schools it's not. back to how it was and it would never will go back. So we're still trying to figure out ways to retool and re it's part of that's challenging as an entrepreneur. It's also invigorating. Like let's reinvent again. Let's go, let's create something new. Pass has been awesome. That's awesome. Let's, let's start something new. And so I'm, I'm kind of calling it the new booster thon. It's a lot of the old, but it's also retooled people in American life in 2024 are busier than ever. They're more overwhelmed than ever. There's more noise than ever for good or bad. They're, they're too, we're too busy. There's too much noise. There's too many screens and things. Oh, yeah. So it's in the attention economy. We need to be able to get people's attention. Sure. Put on a two-week campaign to help their school. And some of our old playbook doesn't work anymore. Some of our new playbook does. We're also looking for new ways to do it. New ideas. But schools are still, man, let me tell you. Hey, if you're hearing this, go serve a local school. Help a local school. Send a principal a text and say, I got an hour. If you're at a season where you have an hour a week. Yeah. Ask the principal if you could just read to a third grade class. Who needs reading help? Can I stop by? Can I read to a kid? They're still catching up. Teachers are overwhelmed. So many wonderful, tenured, incredible, experienced teachers retired because they're like, well, I'm 61. I'm going to retire soon. My life is about teaching digitally in this season. And golly, let's go. And honestly, this is unfortunate, but there's less teachers in the front end of the pipeline than there used to be. for various reasons. So teacher retention is a huge priority of principals. And so to all the teachers out there that are working harder and doing more, thank you. Keep going. You have what it takes. And to those of you that aren't teachers that are listening to this, help a teacher, serve a teacher, ask them what they need, give them 50 bucks, give them an hour of their life back, read a book, something. So we need to get schools. We need to do all we can for the next generation. I feel like schools, elementary schools especially, where they are, how can we all serve and help them?

SPEAKER_02: 1:09:02

Great advice. I appreciate that. Is there anything in your life personally professionally that you haven't done yet that's on your

SPEAKER_01: 1:09:11

radar you mentioned a joking skydiving if my wife hears this she's going to give me a look there she is is it

SPEAKER_02: 1:09:17

really skydiving

SPEAKER_01: 1:09:17

I would love to do it I'm 44 so I would love to do it at some point You know, I have yet, I've been talking about it for like seven or eight years. There's always one thing that derailed me, but I'm in the middle of starting, emphasis on starting my first book with Tim Elmore, good friend of mine. We're going to co-author one. I'm actually going to write it on school culture. I had an interview yesterday with the superintendent of Gwinnett County Schools and had one last week. We're identifying the best principals, superintendents in the country. And I'm asking them just very practically, you have a great culture. I see the results. I've heard from your team. We've observed it because We're in 7,000 schools nationwide. You walk into school, like any environment, you could feel the culture immediately.

SPEAKER_03: 1:09:57

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:09:58

So we've identified some of the best, and I'm interviewing them and saying, what are you doing differently in your culture? Yeah. And it's a very practical book, two-page, five-minute chapter read that we're going to give to our principals, like principals for principals type of thing. Yeah. And just to equip them with ways to encourage them. Here's ways I can spark and encourage my culture.

SPEAKER_03: 1:10:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:10:18

That's a first because I want to write a book on culture because I just know, as Peter Drucker says, I've got the quote in the front of my office, culture eats strategy for breakfast. Strategy matters, but culture is what wins. So I eventually want to write a book on culture. I have yet to do it. That's your question. But my first step is I want to write a book bragging about my clients' cultures and then kind of figure out what works and doesn't work. What

SPEAKER_02: 1:10:43

kind of stuff are you hearing out there now?

SPEAKER_01: 1:10:45

What are they credited to? Schools. Well, like– any successful. builder of anything, they're most are unaware of their strengths. It's really funny. The first five minutes, all shucks. I don't really do anything different. I just encourage my teachers and I'm not different than anybody else. Nonsense, Ms. Principal. You're amazing. You have the highest retention of teachers in the state. What do you mean? You said the word encourage. What do you mean by encourage? Oh, I don't know. I talked to an incredible principal of Cartersville Elementary last week. Oh, I do my teacher cart. What's a teacher cart? Well, I don't know. I get a wagon. It's my grandson's and I put a speaker in it and I dress up and I play music and I ask my teachers what their favorite snack is. And I go classroom to classroom once a month and I pass out their favorite snack and I walk in and I do a little dance party and I brag on their teacher like, oh, okay, that's what you mean by encouraged. So let's go a little deeper. So people that are good at things don't know why they're good. They just do it naturally. She's got a wagon. She dresses up. She makes it fun. It's like teacher appreciation day, but done by the principal, not delegated to the parents. She knows their favorite snacks. I want to tell you about your teacher. Let me tell you what she did. That changed the culture. That's like one of the five things that she does. You kind of got to get into it to figure out what people are doing practically. So I want to share those stories with principals all over the country just so they could say, here's one thing I could just try to do that will help. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_02: 1:12:01

I love it, man. All right, family, what do you want to be? What do you want to be remembered as by your kids and then by your wife? Two different questions.

SPEAKER_01: 1:12:11

Well, both my wife and I's parents were divorced. Wonderful parents and wonderful people. We were very intentional when we started dating, which was after we told each other we were going to get married, that we wanted our marriage to be the foundation. It's faith and then family. But even when I zoom in to family, really our marriage, if we get our marriage right and be intentional about it, We know it's not going to be perfect, but let's keep that in the focus. And we've heard this from others that are stages ahead of us that kids love nothing more than knowing their parents or even saying, hey, we're going on a date night. We'll be back in a couple hours. I'm putting our marriage, not the kids, at the center of our relationship. So we want to redeem and restore our family history of having a wonderful marriage so that our kids Kids and others can be blessed by that, and we do. My wife's amazing and more amazing even in this season. It's really cool watching her now discover that we're in a different season with our youngest being in sixth grade. She's always discovered her strength. She knows who she is, but she now has some opportunity and time. as a spiritual director and counselor to start to live out and impact others in areas of our strength, which is super fueling for me. So our kids aren't just watching dad vocationally and mom helping. Now they're watching both parents vocationally live out their strengths, which is just a fun new season. I'm super supportive of that. Uh, I want, I'll tell you what I want. Uh, Personally, marriage and family and intentionality with our kids. I picture all the time I'm 65 and it's Thanksgiving. What does Thanksgiving feel like? The kids come back with their spouses, our grandkids. I'm an Enneagram 7, so I think about the experience. How does the day start? What's the flag football game look like? What does brunch look like before lunch? What are all the fun experiences we're having and memories we're making? I call them Kairos moments, moments that matter, Greek word for time, the best time. Best time. But professionally, I feel like the world needs, you'll probably ask me about book recommendations. I'll weave it in here. One of my favorite books, the book I wish I wrote that's written way better than I could write, it's called The Redemptive Business. It's by Dave Blanchard and Andy Crouch. Maybe you all know Andy Crouch. He's from an organization called Praxis that I'm really involved in. And it's basically the book I wish I read 20 years ago. It would have saved me a decade. Wow. How does a business that's run by someone that's on mission, wants to do good, wants to change the world, how do you take your business and think about it redemptively? How do we, through marketing, through sales, through HR, people, how do we grow this the right way with the right principles or virtues? It's a faith-based book, so it assumes or presumes that you have a worldview that says business, like anything, is a tool that God uses to bless other people. So that's kind of the... presumption. It's amazing. So I love that. I want our business of Booster to be a redemptive business in the same way that we all reference Chick-fil-A. I think the world needs more Chick-fil-A's out there. I don't think we're ever going to be their size or impact, but I want our business to be referenced as, hey, here's another case study of a way that you can have a privately held, I intend by God's grace to Give the business one day to my kids. Don't intend to sell it or flip it. That's different from most entrepreneurs. Most entrepreneurs are serial entrepreneurs. I'm not. I love my mission. I love my people. I love what we do. I love the legacy of kind of carrying that, carrying a redemptive business, showing people that for-profit, vocation, nine to five, not just an hour or two on Sunday, can be missional, redemptive, and world-changing. That's a professional legacy I want to leave.

SPEAKER_02: 1:15:48

Wow. Okay. Speak to parents out there specifically who have kids. Now it's probably as young as seven, but seven to 16. Kids are showing signs of entrepreneur, right? Yeah. But the parents are not. See, if the parent is, it's easy. Sure. But parents that are not entrepreneurs– give some advice to them. Wow. When your son or daughter is showing that they just want to start something.

SPEAKER_01: 1:16:20

Well, they might have what I had. It wasn't quite diagnosed at the time. They might have ADD. They might be dyslexic. I don't have dyslexia. I have a kid that does too that do. They might not be typical, normal. Here's a way to tell your kid might be entrepreneurial. They're not the world's best at sitting still in school. They're not necessarily good at school. they might be really good at other things. Now, they could be good at school. I mean, there's a bunch of brilliant minds. But if you study some of the famous entrepreneurs, at least in the last 20 years, most of them dropped out of school at some point because an opportunity presented itself and then, you know, let's go. I think if they have a desire to create, let's go create. I think that's the word, even more than entrepreneur. Entrepreneur assumes kind of this business startup, even kind of has the tech, like tech entrepreneurs almost associate with it. Is your child creative? Every parent can fuel the creative flame. I have a daughter that's a musical theater, total creative lane. I have a son that loves building Legos. I think my youngest son is gonna do something with building because the way his mind works with something that doesn't exist and taking Legos, He builds solutions to things. He builds the net for the wiffle ball. I put sand in it, dad. How did you see that? I don't build that way. I build cultures, businesses, and ideas, but not tangible things. So I think if we zoom back- Two, all of our kids are creative. I don't think good grades are necessary for every endeavor. And I think some of the most successful people in the world are like, you know, let's develop the character and the skills around what's necessary to create beautiful things that the world needs. Sure. Businesses, ideas, organizations, projects, art, et cetera.

SPEAKER_02: 1:18:36

Yeah. I love it. What would you say to kids out there? Again, sort of that same age range, you know, 8 to 15-ish that– feel they're being stifled. They know something in their heart. Yep. And they know they want to have a business or do something that is in or around entrepreneurialism. But mom or dad or maybe other mentors are like, you're too young. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:19:02

Ignore that nonsense. Forget the haters. It's Roosevelt's quote in the arena. It's not the critic that counts. It's the man in the arena. And the man in the arena, as Roosevelt, is marred by blood, sweat, tears. Like, it's tough. You're going to lose. You're going to fail. Don't fear failure. Failure is learning so go find something to sell and no one buys it oh shucks I shouldn't be an entrepreneur no one bought it why were you sitting in the wrong corner of the street right did you have the wrong product was the wrong time don't stop so to the parent question encourage your kids to try things to risk things they're gonna lose money they're gonna lose time it might not look smart no one's successful the first 15 minutes the first product the first service never right so to the kids out there the next generation try something yeah I would encourage as much as possible, get in front of a live client soon as possible. Too often in 2024, it's like, let me build the thing on my computer and let me keep building the thing. And what's my supply chain, my website, like what's the product? Yeah. Does the customer buy it? Make that interaction happen. Fire that bullet as quick as you can so that you could get the feedback from the customer. Do you like this? Do you not like this? That's too expensive. It doesn't have this feature. Once you learn that, then you can start to build the product. So build the product and sell the product. And to me, sales is the best form of R&D. I love it. Right now, we have a new idea. I'm like, let me go sell it to a client because I can read on their faces as I'm talking about it. Yeah. They don't like it. They do like it. What else? Hey, I saw that you didn't really like that idea. How would you design it? What would you have? What am I missing? Boom, boom, boom. That's what I'll build. So get in front of a client. Try it. You're going to fail. That's okay. Be encouraged. Your friends are sitting home. You're in the arena, man. People that fail, don't make fun of these people. They're trying it. It's not the critic that counts. Don't criticize. That person's in the arena.

SPEAKER_02: 1:20:50

Yeah, exactly. Go do it. Would you say like, go get a client and work for them for free? Totally. I'm

SPEAKER_01: 1:20:55

here to learn.

SPEAKER_02: 1:20:56

Yes.

SPEAKER_01: 1:20:57

There are years to learn and there are years And you're not there yet. Keep learning. You'll eventually earn. Great advice. All right.

SPEAKER_02: 1:21:05

One more person I want you to speak to. The one who's out there who's got a good career, they might have what we know as golden handcuffs. They're doing well. They're doing fine. They're bored, most likely. Yeah. They know there's something more out there. They typically look at things and go, man, I love my boss, but gosh, we could do so many things better around here. They're showing signs of being an entrepreneur. Then all of a sudden they read an article and they're like, yeah, that's for me. I need to own my own business. But they're not going to make the jump because they have a family at home.

SPEAKER_01: 1:21:38

Sure.

SPEAKER_02: 1:21:39

How can they sort of dip their toe in today's world?

SPEAKER_01: 1:21:42

Yeah. I read an article very recently in Wall Street Journal of the average age of an entrepreneur's first startup is in their 40s, the average. We read about, I was one, college dorm room. You read about some tech guys, they dropped out of college. Excuse me. But the average has experience. So I would say, one, let me encourage you. You have more experience now than you've ever had. You're way more equipped than I was. Wow. So you're not gonna make the dumb mistake. You'll make some mistakes, but they'll be minimal and you'll learn faster. So you might be the most equipped you've ever been Right now, not 26. You didn't lose time. Now's the moment. And there's ways to minimize. There's ways to minimize some risks that you're not having to choose between your kids, college, and the idea. One, you could raise some money from friends and family. Two, you can test things. I had a friend of mine in Phoenix, Arizona, entrepreneur, Kathy. She was an author, and she had all these ideas for books. So what she would do, like, which one do I start on? She'd put them online. with the title. She'd work really hard on the titles, put 10 of them online and say, due to popular demand, there's a three-week delay in which everyone got sold. The first three that got sold, she canceled the other seven. And those are the books she wrote, like these small kind of info books. So you don't necessarily have to have the perfect thing and then sell it. Part of me is like, how can you find a way to sell it before you invent it? Because really, What a customer wants to buy is what needs to be created. You have your presuppositions and half of them are correct, the other half's not. So could you create some MVP as it's called, minimal viable product that the customer buys before it's this big infrastructure and the whole big thing, how can you kind of get it out there and test it before it's a business? Don't start a business, sell an idea, then build the idea, then maybe over time it becomes a business.

SPEAKER_02: 1:23:33

Today's episode And underinsured, which is the worst part. He did a free look-in, and wow, did it help us out a lot, and I know it can help you out too. There's no commitment, nothing you have to sign. Just give him a call. He'll do a look-in, and I think you'll be glad you called him. Again, the number is 470-415-8030. Leo Yerushunas. Last question. So we got Shark Tank out there, longest. I'm curious for your thoughts on it in this particular question. So longest running show, right? It's great in a lot of ways. Just me personally, I think a lot of times it's forcing people to go, well, I'm not going to start this because it's not a unique project. one of one standalone idea. Right. Right. So there's, you can come in and do something that exists better. Yes. Right. Now that's just my point. Totally. And it's, so it's an awesome show. I love the show. We just had, what's his name on? Chris Schuller. Chris Schuller, who just took over Robert Herjavec's position, which is so cool. And he has a great story. I'm just curious, what's your, what do you feel about the show in general?

SPEAKER_01: 1:24:58

Well, I love it because it put entrepreneurship as a big conversation and made it exciting, sexy, and fun. Great. Totally for that. At the same time, They're not going to get viewers unless they have really distinctive guests with distinctive products. So they're picking their guests and finalists and presenters based on what the audience will watch. And so the idea that someone might have could look boring. There's been a lot of friends of mine recently like I invest in sweaty, not sexy companies.

UNKNOWN: 1:25:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:25:29

Because if it looks good, it might be trendy. And it's tough to build trendy things that last for 10 or 20 years. Now, that's not the case for all. But I'll tell you what's about to happen. Listen to this. Let me combine your last three questions into one. Sure. It's already happening. It started.

UNKNOWN: 1:25:44

The great wealth transfer. You can Google it. Chat GPT. What is a great wealth transfer? How many businesses that exist with a product market fit are going to be transferred from basically our dad's generation– Over the next 10 years. It's something like 30 million businesses. I mean, it's just a ridiculous number. And what is it?

SPEAKER_01: 1:26:02

It's the four-person auto shop that you've driven by 300 times and never walked into. Or it's the thing that makes the thing that goes to the thing shop. And they've got a wonderful owner. Right. And they're due$2 million a year in revenue. And the owner is 76. He hasn't updated the tech yet. Leadership, philosophy, managing. That's okay. What an amazing job. Great entrepreneur. What's going to happen to all those businesses? There is a business, the dry cleaners next to your house. I mean, they guarantee you, the listener, can do a better job because this guy's, they're tired. They've done it for 40 years. They created it. But those businesses are there. And man, to create something out of nothing is awesome. But to take something that exists and say, let me enhance it. Let me kind of just literally clean it all out. Add a little bit of value, a little bit of money, a little bit of talent. and off to the races. So, and maybe that's the first thing that one of these entrepreneurs does is not start their own thing, but take an existing. Sure. Borrow a little bit of your line of credit, buy the existing over time, maybe even some seller debt and get it started and kind of get into business. So it's just like, now I'm trying it and I'm running this, whatever, I'm making it up. A local dry cleaners that you own, that you run for a couple hours at night before you jump full on in. What if somebody out there. The wealth transfer is about to happen and the majority of that wealth is in businesses that are owned by people over 70.

SPEAKER_02: 1:27:19

What if, that's great, great tip. What if somebody out there wants to go and buy one of those small businesses and they have a feeling that they can operate it better, which is great. So they're already an entrepreneur. They don't need a brand new idea. Yeah. Or just start there. What can they do to buy it?

SPEAKER_01: 1:27:37

Well, that's a good question. I'm sure there's all kinds of SBA stuff. I'm sure if they feel like they can run it better, then yes, you got it. You're an entrepreneur. There's something in you that's like, I mean, every time I walk into Elm Street, I'm like, I could do this better. Right? That's something in it. in the entrepreneurial mindset, like I can do this. Right. So, uh, I don't want to answer specifically. I'm sure it's a state by state thing. They have options. Lots of options. Lots of funding. They can talk to a friend that owns a business first. What did you do? What have you done? There you go. Here's how much it would cost. Yeah. I think that's, I mean, that's going to happen a lot. People are gonna be really glad 10 years from now. They brought some of these businesses and took it to the next level. Yeah. Even if it's just as a, an investment thing, not necessarily a full time.

SPEAKER_02: 1:28:16

Right. Great place to start. Yeah. Absentee owner kind of stuff. All right. That'll be a whole nother episode. Well for today. Oh my goodness. Thanks man.

SPEAKER_01: 1:28:25

We covered a lot. This was an honor. Love your show. Thank you for your work. You curate great people and tell great stories. Thank you. Thank you so

SPEAKER_02: 1:28:32

much. Thanks for coming on. So if people do want to learn more about you, how would we tell them to get a hold of you?

SPEAKER_01: 1:28:39

Sure. Choosebooster.com is the company website. It tells us all about school fundraising from kindergarten to college, everything in between, service levels, events. T-shirts, the whole thing. Virtuevillage.com is our space. Shared, like the share that you were talking about. Private workspace, that's right. And then chriscarneal.com is just an easy way to get in touch with me. It's kind of a personal site where I list favorite books and email address and stuff like that. So they

SPEAKER_02: 1:29:08

can follow you on social through chriscarneal.com. Correct. That'd be awesome. My goodness. Thank you so much for being here. This was awesome. Folks, thanks for joining us here again on another episode. I hope you agree it was just special. We really got to know Chris today. I feel like I know you so much more just by this simple interview. I knew you at a pretty high level, I would say, compared to today. So thanks for being transparent. If you did make it through the show, if you got some nuggets, pass them along, especially the ones for parents, for the kids. So that advice was awesome. Like, share, comment. We appreciate all that stuff. Some of the best tips of this show have come through people sent in simple comments. So thank you for that. And thanks for, uh, thanks for being here.

SPEAKER_01: 1:29:54

Thanks

SPEAKER_00: 1:29:54

for having me.

SPEAKER_01: 1:29:55

God

SPEAKER_00: 1:29:55

bless you. Thanks for watching the Jeff Opec show. Be sure to subscribe and follow us on all socials.