Episode 4: Why Every Entrepreneur Is Alone (And The One Thing That Actually Fixes It)

Michael Thomson sits down for a raw, unfiltered conversation about what it really takes to go from solo operator to business owner. No fluff. Just the real story.

From facing death at 18 to 4X-ing a company in four years, Michael has been able to accomplish things most deemed impossible. 

In this episode, you’ll discover:

• Why seeing the “ceiling” of your industry is actually the most motivating perspective.
  
  
• The one mindset shift that turns a solo contractor into a business owner and community leader.
  
  
• Why failure is the only real teacher and why you should fail fast
  
  
• The boardroom model: how a group of entrepreneurs became a movement that changed business
  
  
• Doing the impossible: How Michael pulled off a rodeo in 60 days 
  
  
• Why entrepreneurship is lonely, and the one thing that actually fixes it

If this hit home… like, subscribe, and share it with the entrepreneur in your life who needs to hear it.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Folks, welcome back to SD Podcast. Today we have a guest of honor. We are in Blenco, Texas, Mr. Michael Thompson. How are you doing? Welcome, Benny. How are you? I'm doing wonderful. Michael, thank you so much always with his hospitality and what he created over here. Today is gonna be like rough, guys. So I want you to get ready. Michael is Italian, and of course I'm Italian, so I'm gonna start immediately over there. Michael, why don't you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit more about your story? Who is Michael Thompson for people that they don't know him? Okay.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

Um I'm one of nine kids. I'm number six. I was born and raised in an abandoned gas station outside of Detroit, Michigan. Uh homeschooled my whole life. But I started doing entrepreneur stuff when I was like nine. So in fourth grade, I wanted to just abandon school, just be done with it, because I was homeschooled. So I put all my school in a wheelbarrow and I took it down to the property and I dumped it and I burned it. I was afraid if I threw it away that my mom and dad would find it in the garbage bin. And so I just burned it. And then they didn't really check too much. And so I went three, four months. And can I see your school? What school? It was gone. I wasn't doing. I never did school again. They put me on computers and everything, and I just I hacked the computer and gave myself C minuses, B minus, flew into the radar. I never did school again, not once. Um then I was in a car accident when I was 17. I got gangrene, toasted my left hand, skin grafts, uh, seven surgeries, a year of physical therapy, and that's why I got not rejected from the Marine Corps, but I couldn't go. I'm legally I'm handicapped. So my brother said you should move to Texas and you should uh learn a trade. Now, in fourth grade, because I wasn't doing school, I had nothing to do. So I would watch uh Glenn Beck on Fox. Like I wouldn't miss a single episode. And I was like, I'm gonna go into the trades, blue collar. All my friends are going towards computers and software and internet chip. I'm gonna do, I'm gonna do the trades. So I knew I wanted to be blue-collar when I was a kid. I love the outdoors, all that jazz. So then I'm in the car accident, can't go to the marine corps, and the marine corps was a substitute for lack of direction, lack of leadership, and I was a man full of testosterone, energy. You're 17, you know, you're you want to go and punch somebody. And my brother goes, Well, Texas is basically God, guns, church, family, land. Like, that's it, big trucks. I love it. So I moved here when I was 18, and I was just really good at cabinets. That was the trade. I had no direction for what trade I wanted to do, but he happened to be doing cabinetry. His friend was doing cabinetry. Almost immediately, his friend was training me, became a mentor. He's extremely organized. He's the absolute boy scout. Organize your tools, polish them down, do it systematically like crazy. And I wasn't. I was artistic and free-spirited and entrepreneur and all that jazz. And so I happened to just be very good at it, and I had probably the best teacher in Texas. Honestly, that's an objective opinion. Um, so then I did it for nine years. And there was a common theme I noticed from every single customer. I'd go into the customers' houses, sand down all the cabinets, make them look beautiful, new stained, white, whatever, whatever color and style, they picked it all out. I did it uh for a big store. And out of 860 customers, probably 90%, this is gonna sound arrogant. Probably 90% said, you know, you're really different. You're going somewhere. You spend two days in the house and you like to talk, which I do. You get to know the customer, and I had grown men laying on their island countertops, bawling their eyes out about their divorce. Like I would get to know these people because I kind of saw it as almost a ministry, relationships, community, whatever. 860 customers, not one of them offered me a single opportunity. Not one. And so they're saying, Oh, you're different, you think differently, you act differently, you're whatever. And I remember driving home just pissed. How is that possible that none of them said, we should get coffee afterwards? Do you know my you should meet my dad, my brother, my buddy, my business partner? Not one. And 860 cut people in a city is a pretty big sample size. So how is this possible that two guys gave me the opportunity to do this and I was making good money before I was 20? I was well, probably around 20, 21, I was making 80 grand a year, 100 grand a year, almost no debt, almost zero. So I did whatever I wanted all the time. And uh it just kind of it kind of disappointed me coming into the real world from being homeschooled, and and there's a culture shock moving across the country, and it just how come no no one out there no one out there is is hustling. They don't wake up every morning and go, my life should be better. How could I make this better? How could I do something, a movie or a shaker? How could I partner up, sell something, whatever? And that's what I found. I got married and my wife bought a pair of glasses, 350 bucks. Now, I don't wear glasses, so I didn't know how much they cost. I thought they cost like $50. I had my bank notifications text me if my account went below $50. I thought $50 was a good number. That's when you should get warned that your bank account's low $50. You get a oh $4721. Oh well, I gotta be more frugal this week. I think back on an hour is crazy, but um so all of a sudden I get a notification, you're you're out of money, you're like negative. And I'm what the hell? So I call my wife, what happened? Well, you saw it, said I'd go get glasses. Like, yeah, of course you can go get glasses, but they're 350. Did you buy the golden glasses? She's like, No, I I didn't. So we we we didn't really fight about it, but it was what the hell? And I went, Oh my gosh, I have to, she's gonna spend my money too. You know, it's a couple weeks into marriage. And so I went just scouring on YouTube, found Patrick but David. I listened to him every single day. And there was a day for out of nowhere, this is gonna sound kind of loony, but I was driving to Austin for a job and it was bumper to bumper traffic. And I thought, man, if I could phrase like my life goal, what would it be? If I could turn a phrase it, like tattoo it almost. And it was the world's gonna know the Thompson name because of you. And so I said, the world's gonna know the Thompson name because of you. I'm like, in a good way. The world's gonna know the Thompson. And it was sort of weird out. I said it probably seven or eight hundred times, just driving with the windows down, smoking a cigarette in my truck, going, the world's gonna know the Thompson name because of me, the world's gonna know the Thompson name because of me. Not arrogantly, genuinely, but that I love my family. We're all like this. I'm not unique in my family. I mean, I am in some regards, but we're all pushing and leaders and entrepreneurs, and I'm extremely proud of my family. So that's how I becoming a wizard in in cabinets, getting told this that society doesn't offer you any opportunities, all these people never did. Being disappointed, I thought, I want to be like my brother and Sid, those two guys that gave me one opportunity with a jacked up left hand, come to Texas, we'll help you all, we'll do it. So I'm like, I want to do that every single day. I want to do what those two men did for me when I was 18 every single day. And I was never, I never got into business. I couldn't scale. I I did, I was always solo act, more artistic, more trade focused. And then this little cabinet company found me, asked me to do work for them. And they were really, really tiny, two, three guys. And one thing kind of led to another, and I just was steering their company, giving everything I had to them because I wanted to provide opportunities like I had had. And they eventually said, you know what, you're basically running this company. Do you want to just buy it and let's just be done? You can have it. So I bought it from them, and it was the hardest thing I've ever done, bar none. Even having my hand crushed out the window of a car, um, is the hardest thing I've ever done. And as I've pushed and pushed and pushed, I've able, I've been able to forex the company in four years. Um it's come down to I I say I did it as though there's some kind of like I'm a magic trick. It was finding the right people, it was being patient. When your guy makes a $10,000 mistake, you want to punch him. You want to yell, you want to do something that feels good. Is it gonna make you more money? Honestly, no. Is it going to shrink the next tomorrow when you have to spend another $10,000 again? No, it won't do anything. So is the guy fundamentally broken? Is your right hand man the guy you're working with? No, you probably just made a mistake. Can you work though? So I would I well kind of restart. I bought the company, the guy, my guys have made mistakes, it's grown, but it's been the team, and it's been just failure after failure after failure. And what's my biggest thing, and we've talked about it a hundred times, is if you have a hundred failures before you're successful, whatever that looks like for you. Fail fast. Get them out of the way. Everyone says that. All the the guys we listen to and and and hang out with say that. And so fail a hundred times as fast as you freaking can. So it's kind of funny. My business is, I would call it successful. My team is unbelievable. I I trust all of them completely. Um this company is my favorite thing. Um but they're okay with me failing. We brag about the failure. If I got up on stage in front of the whole world, I'd be like, let me tell you my failures to the best. They teach you everything. Fit success teaches you nothing, as far as I can tell. I've not learned one damn thing from getting a bigger check than I thought. I've only learned from from lack of from pain. So that's what I I I met you two years ago. Three for real? Was it yeah?

SPEAKER_00 10:38

Three, no, yes, this is your three, brother.

SPEAKER_01 10:42

All right. Okay. Um, and you had the same. I I I don't know exactly your experience. Upcoming, I I've heard your story a couple times, or I've heard things, I don't know exactly, but um, we connected on that front. On the you have the goal, you have the vision, you want to provide opportunity, whether it's for your customer or for your teammate. If I could have a hundred employees, I would. Because practical opportunity wins over every other you're really going. You're you're really gonna do something one day, Minnie. You're a mover and a shaker. I'm so impressed with you. All right, bye. I guess thanks for the compliment. I don't know. There's there's no real opportunity there. So it's like come to Texas, let's start talking, let's start working on things. And it's what what failure did you have? What what went wrong this year? What did you do? I did these things. All right, I can learn from that. You can learn from that. Just sharing failure. I love it. Oh, that's I love probably that it should be, but that's no, no, I I love it.

SPEAKER_00 11:43

And the beauty, the beauty, guys, in uh knowing Michael Thompson is the following there is nothing like it because it's real deal. So, what we're missing like in these days, Mike, uh, and that's what we uh discovering day by day, talking with so many entrepreneurs and business owners all across the country, is that authenticity is going by, right? It's very hard to find the hardcore people like yourself. And this is the reason why we relate with Michael is because he has been to a process of this is my story, a story built on resilience, pain, failure, changes, recreation, growth, and people and community. You mentioned you mentioned many times uh that in uh that in the first uh moment uh in this podcast that for you you give the success to people that you meet along the way, right? So there are two things that I want to talk about with you, and one is people, and one is like pivotal moments, right? So let's start with uh people, okay, and then we go to the pivotal moment. So, people. What do you think was for Michael? There is always one person that you meet along the way that you say, okay, I met this person, changed my life, and from there I built. So if you think about that one person that changed your life, Michael, who's that's a really hard question, actually.

SPEAKER_01 13:26

There's so many people that made tweaks that changed the path. You know, it's like success is a line that is like this, you know. It's not if I focus on the target, I'll go linearly there. You know what I'm saying? Like aiming a gun, the bullet's gonna go straight. That's not a success. It's like you're constantly changing. So so many people have changed my have changed the trajectory of my life. I've made the influence. But the first one that comes to mind, which I've actually I've not thought about, I've I've shared the story, but I've not thought about this in a long time. What I was doing, I made $120,000 a year by myself, working by myself for 10 hours a day. I was good at my job, I liked my job, everything was fine. And then my wife the glasses, everything else. I went, okay, wait a minute. Who makes the most amount of money doing what I do? I'm curious. Turns out he had worked out of Houston, Texas. And I could go to Houston and do work for them any day I wanted to. Um, so I was like, I really want to meet this guy who makes the most. They wouldn't tell me what he made. He's like this elusive, oh, he's the top brass installer. He's he's wild. And then I was hanging out with one his manager, and I'm like, who's the number one producing guy? And they said he makes $250,000 a year. He has two helpers. He does, he works seven days a week. And it killed what it killed what I was doing for me. That was the ceiling. Seven days a week, two helpers. So two helpers, you're paying them $50,000 a year, $40,000 a year. So he's not making two seven two fifty, he's making $150,000, really. And then you have all your expenses, which are 20% when you're a contractor, you gotta make tools and blades and everything else. So $150 minus 20%, plus he works seven freaking days a week. He doesn't golf, hang out with his kids, ranch, whatever the hobby is. And I was it it killed the job what's the word? It killed the job value for me. And so I thought of this. I thought if a guy walked up to me and said, here's a shovel, here's a bunch of cow shit, if you shovel cow shit five days a week, I'll give you a million dollars a year. As a fun mind game, I said, Well, can I buy a bobcat? No, no, no. Can I hire a guy? No, no, no. All you do is work eight hours and just do this simple task to shovel shit. I'll give you a million a year. I would say no. Because that's the ceiling. That's that's your life. It fits in this box. And so when you wake up in the morning, what's the what's the win? What's the and so I went, I have to do something else. So I started showing up five minutes early for I was the CEO, the employee, the everything. I was staying 15 minutes late. I was going the extra mile, I was dressing a little bit nicer, trying to be who the hell am I impressing? I'm work alone. And so it's kind of funny. It was seeing the very top earner, the best of the best of the best, seeing him and going, that doesn't turn my crank in any way, shape, or form. Crap. If he's making 250 million, okay, fine, I'll keep doing what I'm doing. So a guy I never met, actually, and or never talked to. Very good. Don't even know his name.

SPEAKER_00 16:48

And I and uh and I love uh what he said, and uh, I have more okay on that. Okay, so you go to that um pivotal moment, right? Because the pivotal moment is in what you just told me right now. It's not when you were 18 years old and you were so good in making cabinets, right? But the pivotal moment, if we're talking about that, was gonna be okay, now from making the cabinet, how do I run a cabinet business, right? That's a pivotal moment. But based on what you told me right now, you see, like that's why I think you're you're very unique in your way. You you got inspired, or there was this person that gave you that fire in the belly, but but also so there was that um the moment that you realized, right, that Mr. Nobody, let's call it this way, also if it's somebody obviously very successful producing uh $250,000 at the moment, like very, very good uh quality of life for income, not for time spent outside of the production seven days a week and all of that. No scalability, no growth, that's just it. Nothing. That's just like that's what I do on program, that's that's my life. I'm which we respect and accept, God bless you for doing that. My goal is different. So my goal goes this way. Okay, make a million dollars, that's my cap, right? So my pivotal uh question to you is okay, how did you break that ceiling? Knowing that you that million dollars for you at the lifestyle is not what you wanted to pursue. When was the moment that you know that you were Michael Thompson willing to go above that ceiling to go after the dream that you have?

SPEAKER_01 18:33

Um well, because it it wasn't a number, it was infinite opportunity. That's what I liked. So two guys go, we'll teach you to do a thing. And I the first year I made like $11,000. I mean, I was poor the first year. Um, they took an opportunity. Oh, they sorry, they didn't take an opportunity, they gave me an opportunity, and and it didn't cost them much, but they just went, yeah, yeah. If you'll lean into this, we'll we'll watch your back, we'll help you out, whatever. And now I own what I own, it all because of these two guys just going, yeah, yeah, we'll help you out. One opportunity led to everything I have right now. Um, I mean, I know it's a culmination of many things, but it was it was so much that. So I don't care if this, if there's a ceiling and it's a billion, I don't want it. If it's a ceiling and it's a million, I don't want it. If the ceiling's underground, I don't want it. Because where the ceiling is, that's you break through it and then it's new and exciting, and you keep going. And all along the way, you're providing real opportunity. It's give a man a fish, teach a man to fish. No, it's like, yeah, I want to teach one guy to fish, then two, then four, then eight, then sixteen, and then I have a fishing school, and then I have multiple coaches, and then we're teaching thousands to fish, then no one's hungry anymore, and they all don't need fish. It's like way to go, like, bravo. That's exactly what we've I thought that's what everyone did. I thought that's how everyone thought. That's not how everyone thought. That's that's maybe the entrepreneur, the one percent point one percent shit.

SPEAKER_00 19:57

I love it. And now did I answer your question okay? You did. Okay, okay. Now that um you actually gave me more more material and more to talk about, because nowadays we see a lot of uh entrepreneurs, a lot of influence, a lot of business owners only talking about success. We're talking about growing, scaling, killing it. Every day is a beautiful day. I'm 23% higher than last year, I'm 51% higher than last quarter. But hey, the real deal is in behind the scene and in the pain that we go through as business owners. Now, you talk about something beautiful and you talk about uh duplicating fishes, right? Phenomenal. Fishes can be um transcribed into people, right? So we're talking about leadership. Now, I have a very, uh very uh interesting question for you, which uh it's uh I wanna I wanna challenge you a little bit to answer. This question is this would you believe that 99.9% of the time the actual business owner, right? With the founder, let's call the founder, the CEO of the company, is actually the biggest bottleneck of the company itself on a leadership standard.

SPEAKER_01 21:15

Would I believe it?

SPEAKER_00 21:20

I mean, go go a little more. Very good. I'll give you an example. I many many is um is owning uh XYZ uh company that is making five million dollars a year, and uh many's goal is to grow the company to uh ten million dollars for the next year to hire like 25 new people, right? And to possibly start thinking about an exit plan and expanding the company. So that's Manny's dream. But Manny has a mindset of a five million dollar business owner and never done $10 million.

SPEAKER_01 21:55

That's what we're talking about, where it's that's a $5 million company and a $10 million company. Are two different companies. It's an F-150 and F-350. They're different trucks. You didn't grow one. It's basically a completely different truck. It's a different company. Yeah. Go to that. Totally agree.

SPEAKER_00 22:13

So what many saying is like, okay, I never got there. So this is why you hire people that they help you to get to the next level. But this is like the biggest dilemma, right? You can hire all the people in the world, but as you speak to many of these people that they actually made it above the 10 million, 25, sorry, 100, 150, 250, you see that everybody's talking about the same thing, which is breaking yourself and your old belief, let them go, in order for you to become the next level business owner to get the company over there. So that's why it goes to leadership. So my question to you is, Michael, would you agree that 99.9% of us business owners, we we don't have a scaling problem, but we have a leadership problem.

SPEAKER_01 23:09

How I think about it, at least for me, is uh you write a book on how to how to do a million-dollar business. You do it through failure, trial and error, and you and you finish it when you're done. You're pleased with it. It's working. And you go, what how do we how do we get to two? And the business is you know still growing. So you can see two is in the vague future, one year, five years, ten years, twenty years. It's there. How can I start working on that book? And starting a book, writing a manual is daunting, it's hard. And you can't even conceptualize it. So as soon as you're done writing the one million dollar a year business book, you have to start writing what it is to have a two million dollar a year business book. And you restart all of those failures over again, essentially. So you have to pursue and enjoy and like failure. I'm gonna write another manual. We're gonna put this engine together and it's going to explode. But it's a two million dollar engine this time. And then how do you train your team underneath that to do it too? That's the harder part. So, yes, it is breaking the founders, the leader, the heads, mindset out of a one, five, ten, twenty hundred million is the key, one hundred percent. Um as soon as he does that at a in a yurt in a sweat lodge with whatever CEOs, whatever the payote, as soon as he breaks that, he goes back to the business. And if he is a wolf, it'll kill his business. If he's a sheep, it'll never happen. He has to be a leader, and that's why leadership training is so important. I mean, it yeah. So that yeah, that's it. I agree. It is the you have to break the the mindset of the leader 100%.

SPEAKER_00 24:54

And um, I I love that. Now, this is like um gets me to to your story, right? So you are a born entrepreneur, right? Yeah, that became a growing leader, right? That impacts Michael impacts so many people. Like uh, wanna I wanna tell you guys something incredible that we've been uh building together, but was one of uh Michael's dreams, right? Michael is a guy that has multiple dreams, and we're gonna talk about these dreams because they're part of our dreams as well, and we're so blessed to be part of your life journey together and ready uh in this life. But check this out. So, Michael, Michael, um, after a while knowing each other, comes to us and says, Hey, listen, guys, I had this boardroom that I was doing. You see, I got him. So I got this boardroom that I was doing like a few years ago. I loved it, but there was something missing. Did it really work out? And he said, guys, I want to restart the boardroom. What do you think? I said, that's the best thing that you can do. Let's do it, no? So we started traveling from uh Florida to Texas like uh every first Friday at the month. So we go over here, get to support Michael, see like the boardroom, see the evolution, and see this beautiful community growing and more people join in, right? So let's talk about the boardroom first. Why do you think the boardroom, right, is so important for business owners? And what do you think is the highest value that an impact that you want to bring to local business in Blanco, but not only, right? Considering coming from Florida here to do this. What is your ultimate goal, Michael?

SPEAKER_01 26:51

That is uh really hard. So we call it the board meeting because we meet. Um, we don't really do it in a in a room. We move, we don't move around, but the room is in barns and in my office and stuff. I mean, I like it a little bit rough. So, what I was saying with the glasses, right? So I'm listening to entrepreneurs on YouTube and I'm going, what do I, how do I do this? I'm showing up five minutes early. I'm going, I nothing's happening. How do I do this? And I heard someone say, which is true, you're like, uh, what is it, the median income of all your friends combined, the sum of whatever I don't know how to say. So your buddy makes 90,000, your butt your other buddy makes 110, you're gonna make about 100. It's pretty true. So as an independent contractor all by myself, how do I how do I go into how do I make peers that make 200, 350,000 million dollars? How do I do it? 860 customers, none of them did. Um, so I called a few friends who would probably say yes, and I said, Meet me uh out on this ranch and we're gonna have a business meeting. And they said, uh, okay, what's it about? I said, I don't know. We're gonna we're gonna talk about business. He said, Okay. And I kind of felt stupid. And so I bought a Domino's pizza and a six pack of beer, and we sat in the bed of my truck, actually. That was the board meeting. He said, Why are we here, Michael? And I was wearing a tie because he take it out jersey. I'm like 23, you know, in a tie in the bed of my pickup. And I said, like, your truck breaks, you should have a guy that you call for that. Your thing happened, you should have a guy. We should have a community that's better than Google. We should have businesses should collaborate. And so that was the idea. And then it dawned on me that entrepreneurs are alone, they're all alone, and their number one person is probably their wife. So let me lay out a map for you.

SPEAKER_00 28:46

Who's that?

SPEAKER_01 28:47

Oh, no, they so let me lay out a map for you on how to become a successful person in America. Um, have big dreams, but not too big. Create a system that supports it. Get married to a woman because she's gonna be CFO, COO, etc. And she you have to marry just right. And then you gotta have you want to have kids early, but then she's gotta know the business. And then if you can get, and then you've got to be dedicated, you gotta fail it crazy. That map is insane, it's impossible. And so, one marriage, one hiccup over dinner, all of a sudden your CFO doesn't want to talk to you, doesn't want to go over, and so you've got invoices doing things, but she did not like the dinner you picked out today, whatever. And that's how so many of us do it. That's literal. So imagine you're like a cutthroat hardcore businessman, you're like driven, and you marry a sweetheart. Well, then you don't get the CFO, maybe you're a little more balanced, and your wife's a little bit driven. All right, so you do get the CEO. So, what power comp it doesn't, it's not systematic, it just isn't. And so, as you're all alone, and here's what I noticed when we were sitting in the bed of my truck talking about business, dude. It was just vague and nonsense. What's your what's your biggest pro how do you want to become rich? Like that was a question that we thought was serious, you know. Um, we have the much more focus now. Um it was the guy who's a software engineer, he's typically not very good at talking to people. Um, the guy who's really charismatic and fun, he probably doesn't sit at a computer for very long. Attention span problems. TikTok is right, so whatever. Um you need a team. Everyone has a team. Walmart has a team, Tesla has a team, everyone's got a team because you find experts to invest, run, organize, manage your industry, obviously. So the big fancy rich businessmen can walk into a room with experts and go, guys, how do we do this? How do we start writing the next book on the $250 million business? Um, entrepreneurs don't have that. And so we said, we're gonna have a board meeting. It's gonna be a that stuffy businessman thing. A room full of experts that aren't gonna go anywhere. And so when the guy says, I want to buy a house, I want to start a business, I want to have a I want to get a new job, whatever, he could talk to men that are ahead of him. And it grew from there. And before I knew it, it was 25 business owners that were pretty, pretty high up coming to this barn out on a ranch. It was my buddy's barn, he's like, dude, this is getting out of hand. You gotta move it somewhere. And it's at the peak of COVID. And um so we shut it down. We went into something kind of collaboratively, failed miserably, learned a lot, huge failures, left, right, and center. And that was what you were saying when we restarted it. We restarted it to go, I can't believe the mistakes that entrepreneurs make that they really don't have to if they just could walk into a safe room and go, How do you run a million-dollar company? How do you scale a business? Who should I hire first? Who's the key employee? We had one guy, he showed up and he says, I'm trying to scale, I want to double myself. I think I can do it. He was doing pretty good money too. He says, I got this young buck, 19-year-old boy, badass kid. Um, I think I'm gonna create incentive for him and I'm gonna give him. I he'll if he sees this, he'll correct me, something like 20% equity in the company off the bat to create incentive. He thought it was a good idea. All of us panicked. It was what are you doing?

SPEAKER_00 32:32

The whole table.

SPEAKER_01 32:33

Whoa, whoa, what are you doing? And he goes, Well, if he had 20% ownership in a company, he would take it seriously. He's 19. Why don't you give him anything else? You get this much done, I'll give you a hundred bucks for you know uh for pizza, whatever. Uh I would like to buy you a new truck in two years if you hit these numbers. Something that he can see and it's tangible and it's real. Help him date a gal, help him go out with his buddies. That's what he wants. That he's trying to set up. Don't give away equity to your company just to try and grow. That's not how you grow, that's how you scale. That's how you maybe partner, diversify, or you know, whatever. But good lord. He didn't do it, kept running his business. Kid ended up getting interested in something else, walked away, shook hands, happy. Business took a huge dip. He said, Have I made a big mistake? What am I gonna do? Got back on the horse, and his business is now back up, and he could take on another young buck or whatever. But thank God that kid's not in Virginia somewhere at R O T C school. Air, I he did some kind of Air Force Army something. I don't remember what he did, but um, and good for that kid. But so the board meeting was essentially could you walk into a room, shut the door? And if you go, my business does a does 50 million, I'm afraid it's only gonna do 40. What do I do? Because if you say that to your uncle, he's gonna go, well, first give me a loan because I got a new idea. I've got a business idea. Don't talk to them, don't take advice from anybody who hasn't done where what you want to do or been where you want to go.

SPEAKER_00 34:03

Yes, sir.

SPEAKER_01 34:03

It's like if I'm gonna go to Italy, I'm calling you. Where should I go? Where should I not go? Obviously. So creating that community is um is a passion project for mine. It's it's it's what I like to do. I can see clearly your where you're going and what you need, typically. If I can't, someone in the room does.

SPEAKER_00 34:23

That's um that's exactly why we grew this um this meeting into like a movement, right? So the the ultimate goal of the board meeting uh is to create a community where people are able to unleash what they wouldn't if they would have been head home or in a in a different uh space. It's all about who you know. Exactly 100%. It's always about people. And what what I've noticed, what I noticed the most is that from meeting one to year forward, people now come over here with more intention. So we started really like certain people, yes, certain people no, certain people feel like you know, I can overcome rejection or objection. Somebody tells me something. Oh, there are a bunch of uh of people that they judge me. Number one, the board meeting, nobody's here to judge. We are over here to help you to do what by yourself you wouldn't. So it's a place where you have to feel safe.

SPEAKER_01 35:29

Let's knock out two or three of those failures together.

SPEAKER_00 35:33

There you go. It's like having a body where you can cry on your shoulder, right? Because at the end of the day, guys, you can go into a board meeting and have a bunch of people telling you where's the longest D, and I'm excuse my French, but that's the reality. Or you get in community like Michael's where you at you feel yourself at home and you can actually try to solve bigger problems and that grow your business. With that being said, I want to keep talking about this, but let's go to the other dream, okay? This is even crazier. This is like this was the beginning of a bigger dream, okay? And since I met this man uh at a conference with uh with Stephanie, like this is crazy. There was not one time that Mr. Thompson came to us and said, I want to do a rodeo. I want to do a rodeo, I'm gonna have a rodeo. He manifested a rodeo so bad that I started dreaming horses when I was sleeping. So that's that's Michael Thompson. That's what that's how bad is that true. That's true. That's true. And we can tell the funny story. Like I was in Michael's ranch, and I said, Many like drive the horses. Like, dude, we don't have horses in Rome. But if you look at uh on Instagram and there pictures like look like I look like Clint Eastwood and I always drive the horses, right? So I'm like that being said, uh, let's talk about uh Thompson Rodeo. That's a phenomenal story. We call in the Thompson story, and Michael, please tell the audience, tell us like how crazy was that and how did we kill it? Because it was a badest event and everybody enjoyed.

SPEAKER_01 37:21

Oh man. Well, it was again trying to provide opportunity, like honestly. Um, I fell I fell in love with rodeo when I moved to Texas uh 15 years ago. And there was there's this abandoned rodeo arena behind my shop. So I was like, man, it'd be so cool. It's hard to get into that world. I won't I'll spare the details, but um, so I met the owners and we're talking about it, and they're throwing these little teeny events. When I say teeny, like there's seven people. And I uh I come on, guys, I'd help you out. I'll do anything, I'll I'll work with you, I'll help put it on whatever. And and um they said, okay, we'll we'll do one then. We're gonna do it. They got all hyped. And I'm like, I got you. So I run out of that meeting and I'm doing research. I'm working on branding, I'm surveying the property. What do we got a weed whack, what metal, welding, prep, everything. And unbeknownst to me, for 30 days I prepped for it, and I go to another meeting, and one of them says, Oh, we canceled it, we're not doing it anymore. Like, what do you mean? I'm I've got momentum here, and I'm making connections with people. And they're like, No, no, no, you can't do a rodeo in 60 days. Uh the time's up, it's it's over. And I said, Well, I can like no, you no, you actually can't. And I was like, No, I th I can't, and so I just started working. I I would I'd work, I'd run my company for eight, nine, ten hours, and then I would work for four, five, six hours on the rodeo, seven days a week. And my wife, she worked her butt off. It happened because of her largely. But um I used I was getting two, I was getting three phone calls a day, ballpark, about the rodeo. Two of them said, I can't do what I'm doing. One of them said, you might. And it was it every day, it was just it was like you're walking and you see the cliff and you hear the waterfall, and you can you know it's tall, and you're still just walking towards it. It was so hard. Um and what I what I did was I went to the board meeting first. As soon as I was like, I guess I'm gonna do this, holy crap. I went to the board meeting. I said, guys, I think I'm gonna do this. What would y'all do? And there's no, I don't want to say emotional reaction, but there's no pie in the sky fluff nonsense at the board meetings. Um, they go, okay, what's your marketing? How would you do this? Who are you gonna hire? How would you solve this problem? Everyone, for a moment, everyone at the table works for you. When when I'm talking, everyone in the room works for me. When you're talking, everyone in the room works for you. That's the culture there. And so all of a sudden I'm sitting in a room with 20 guys that have taken risks and failed and had the pain and have done events, Chad, you know. Um, and I did, I learned more at the I was I was so much better equipped to move forward into it. And then all along the way, calling different board members of their different expertise. I have to be selling uh sponsorships, I have to be selling ads. I'm talking to you, I'm talking to Nando. They're better at that infrastructure, audio, video, editing, talking to Chad, all from the board meeting. Again, it's always it's always about who you know, always. And uh from the outside, from the inside looking out, it was uh a dumpster fire. From the outside looking in, not my opinion, we had unanimous I don't know how the hell you did the best road I've ever been to. That was amazing. I mean, it just worked, and it was chaos. I sat in the dirt around 2 45 in the morning in the middle of the arena, everyone was gone. And I walked out in the middle of the arena, I sat down, I was just staring. My wife came out, oh just me and her. She sat down in the dirt next to me. Cow shit, horse shit. We just sat down. She says, What you doing? I was like, I can't believe we just did that. What the hell did we just do?

SPEAKER_00 41:18

At Thompson story. Wild. That was a Thompson story. And uh guy lost his finger at that rodeo. Yep. Yeah, it was anything can happen at Thompson Rodeo, so like get ready because there's gonna be more, and we're excited about it. But let me let me close this with um with um with a great and tough question. Okay, what is the grade and the tough question? We all go through challenges as business owners when there is a moment that you literally with the you are on the ground. Right? You are almost there. Yeah, and you've you look, you are yourself staring at the ceiling, and you wonder the exact word that I'm about to say. Am I gonna make it till tomorrow? How am I gonna make payroll? How am I gonna pay my bills? How am I gonna feed myself family? Am I gonna survive? And the question that we all ask, because we we all want all of us, we want to quit at least three times a day running a business. At least, and it's like what would I think about myself if I am quitting tomorrow? Would I be able to survive, right? So, Michael, let's close with the good stuff and the tough stuff to give some inspiration to people. What was your darkest challenge that you had to go through and how you came back? And let's kick some ass and give some some hold to these people that they want to start a business. Because if you did it and I did it, I don't see why other people should not.

SPEAKER_01 43:14

Can't do it, yeah. Um it's it's kind of funny. Uh, if you think you should, then you should. Um, like marriage. When are you ready to get married? Well, it's when you're willing to take on that level of responsibility, you're ready. It's not a feeling like uh I'm good enough, I've I've got the equipment or the tools. It's I'm willing to carry the responsibility, whatever that means. That's what so when you go, I want to start a business, you're 100% ready. As soon as you think in your mind, even one time, I'd be willing to carry the responsibility. That's the first thing. The darkest, what you're going to hit, and and God bless you, the guys that run. For one year, two years, and then they hit that million dollars and they nothing is what they thought it was, and and they feel so alone and they don't have a board meeting to go, you know, all that. Um I I hit that moment. I spent 172,000, which was a which is a shit ton of money, um, in a month, and I went, oh no, we're going out of business. It's over. We haven't we haven't done any of the things. We haven't we haven't nothing. We just we're just we're done. It was just over. Um and it was killing me to the point where I was drunk beyond drunk almost every day. I couldn't breathe. I don't have to tell myself to breathe. Um, I couldn't listen to music, I couldn't listen to podcasts, I couldn't listen to any of the things I like to listen to. I couldn't watch television. I was so guilty for everything. I have to just work. I didn't see my newborn son um for like three months. Because I was gone. And I remember I got up, it was Sunday morning, supposed to go to church, supposed to be with my family. And in the covers, totally basically what I thought was asleep. My wife just said, Are you going to work again? And I said, Yeah. And she goes, Do you have to? Yeah. And she goes, Fine. Shit. This this is not good. Um, and it was 3 45 in the morning. I was still in a job site by myself. I'd been there since six in the morning, trying to put out fires and solve problems. And my whole thought, I wish I could tell every entrepreneur that starting out, going through that, that, that moment. I told myself, you I'll do whatever it takes. I'll do whatever it takes. I'll do whatever it takes. I'll do whatever it takes to be successful to make this work. And then what happens is that the devil in your head goes, Well, maybe you'll do whatever it takes to build something that's valuable enough to sell. That's a good thing. Maybe you'll make something that's valuable enough to maybe pay your bills. So scale it back 30, 40%, cut half your staff. You could you'll make more than you were making before now. Yeah, maybe you'll do whatever it takes to make. Do you know what you're gonna make? Well, not exactly. I don't know what the you know where my company could be and what it could do. I have visions and dreams, things. But maybe you'll do whatever it takes to, and the difference between I'll do whatever it takes and I'll never quit are miles apart. Leave that job side at 3:47 a.m. I looked at my phone and went, oh shit, I got I'm not, I guess I'm not gonna sleep again. I I don't know what else to do. I drove home. I only drove home so I could lay in my own bed, kiss my wife, brush my teeth, shower, but then I was gonna just not even really sleep and just go straight to work. Um and so I walked into the bathroom and it's I don't remember the time, it was just just the morning, and I got home from work and I looked in the bathroom, I'm fixing to get in the shower, and I thought, I'll do whatever it takes. That's wrong. I should not quit. That's the difference. I'm just not gonna quit. So then I thought, all my employees go, you didn't run my payroll, we didn't have the money. Yeah, we didn't. I hate you, Michael, and you're the worst. Yeah, I know. But I'm not quitting. And the electric company, we're cutting off your power. Yeah, I know. I'm gonna start using the handsaw. I don't care. I'm not gonna quit. I'm not gonna quit to the point of the police dragging me out of the shop. So it sucks right now. If you find yourself in hell, keep going. But the difference between I will do puffing up your chest, I will do whatever it takes, and I'll never quit are so freaking different. The guy's go, I got what it takes. Do you? But will you never quit? Are you not gonna quit? So that's the darkest moment. Um, there's so much more to that, but the darkest moment, the apex of it, the rock bottom was oh shit, I'm not gonna do whatever it takes, I'm just not gonna quit. I don't care if it sucks, it can just suck for a while. And it did, and then it didn't, and it will again, and then it won't. That's okay.

SPEAKER_00 48:04

And I love it, guys. If you're not inspired and motivated to do whatever it takes and to have the ability not to quit, this is a Thompson story, Michael. Thank you so much for being with us today. And before we wrap up, guys, Michael, final to you. How do people connect with you? Where can they find you? Oh, that's a dumb question.

SPEAKER_01 48:35

No, it is not. White Rock Millwork is my cabinet company. Uh, we're in Blanco, Texas. We are the best. That's objective. We are we are the best, or one of the best, at least top shelf. Um, a Thompson Rodeo Company um is brand new. We're going from there. The board meeting is not secret or exclusive. We want everyone to come. Um, but it's more intimate. We're building that brand, that that platform to make better connections there. Um, and then my social media is Michael G. Fairley. It's just me and my family living in Texas.

SPEAKER_00 49:09

Again, Michael Thompson, and see you in the next habit of uh SD podcast. Thank you, guys.