429 | The 7 Principles of Success for Entrepreneurs : $100M Journey by John St. Pierre

Feb 2

[00:00:40] Chaz Wolfe: What's up everybody? I'm Chaz Wolf gathering the King's podcast. Coming back to you here today with another king on the stage. My man John St. Pierre. How we doing?
[00:00:50] John St. Pierre: Doing awesome, Chaz. Thanks for having me.
[00:00:52] Chaz Wolfe: Good man. I, um, appreciate you being here. ~Uh, ~what kinda business do you have, John? I.
[00:00:57] John St. Pierre: Chaz, I,~ uh,~ I'm the CEO and chairperson of a company called Rhombus Group. We're a private holding company comprising of six,~ uh,~ businesses, small, medium-sized businesses. And then also I just launched,~ uh,~ my first book, the a hundred Million Dollars Journey. And so, ~uh, ~along with that I do some one-on-one coaching, some speaking and,~ uh,~ strategic planning, personal life planning,~ uh,~ coaching as well.
[00:01:15] Chaz Wolfe: I love it. You've got,~ uh,~ many things to be able to draw from here. Um, and,~ uh,~ just excited to be able to get all of that out of your head, hopefully in this podcast and, and out to the listeners. But, um, tell us just a little bit, um, let's dig in just a little bit because you've got, you've got a kind of like a portfolio of companies.
[00:01:32] Chaz Wolfe: Tell us what kind of industries that you're in. Um, maybe if there's any businesses that we'd recognize. Give us just a little bit of context here of where you're coming from.
[00:01:39] John St. Pierre: Yeah, so we have a variety of companies,~ uh,~ in that portfolio. Not all in the same,~ uh,~ market, but we have, um, a facilities maintenance,~ uh,~ and construction company. So a national,~ uh,~ commercial,~ uh,~ business. We have,~ uh,~ digital marketing. I. ~Uh, ~business called IOI ventures. ~Uh, ~we have a, a fractional CFO controller,~ uh,~ finance firm called Financial Wing.
[00:01:59] John St. Pierre: We have a travel business in the sports travel hospitality industry called Pellucid Travel. ~Uh, ~we also own a captive insurance company,~ uh,~ and we have a, a hockey business as well.
[00:02:09] Chaz Wolfe: Wow. Okay, so, um, I've gotta dive in here because not only are you doing a lot of very different things, but . All of them at an extremely high level. And then of course we'll get to your book and stuff here in a second. 'cause I got all kinds of questions for you there. But, um, there's a lot of people that I've heard say that, you know, like focus on, you know, one thing and one thing only, and you just described lots of different things all at the same time.
[00:02:32] Chaz Wolfe: How is it different for you or was there a journey to be able to get there that maybe puts that into perspective a little bit differently?
[00:02:38] John St. Pierre: Yeah, well, there's certainly a journey story behind that. ~Uh, ~Chaz, no question about it. But ultimately,~ uh,~ I don't operate these businesses. These businesses are operated by their own CEOs. In some cases, CEOs and presidents, and,~ uh,~ I, you know, coach and advise and help them grow their businesses from the holding company perspective.
[00:02:53] John St. Pierre: But I'm not operational in any of those businesses specifically. So as a chairman of that business, I can pull myself. Above the trees a little bit and work strategically with those CEOs and help them grow the business that we aspire to build without actually having to be, you know, operationally and working in the business.
[00:03:07] Chaz Wolfe: I love that. Okay, so describe that relationship here. 'cause you probably got, you know, CEOs listening here today, maybe even all the way down to one man bands and they want to be a CEO one day. Describe that relationship that, that, you know, difference between maybe strategic or like you're saying, high level planning versus being operational.
[00:03:24] Chaz Wolfe: What's the difference?
[00:03:25] John St. Pierre: Yeah, it's one of the things I learned,~ uh,~ you know, through, through my journey is,~ uh,~ sometimes it's hard to, you know, grow a business, be the CEO of that business and do what everybody tells you you should be doing, which is I. John work on the business, not in the business. Well, that's a lot easier said than done, Chaz.
[00:03:40] John St. Pierre: You know, when you're working 60 to 80 hours a week, you're shoveling the dirt over here, you're solving the problems. Over here, you've got the Growth paradox issue. You're trying to hire some new people. You're running ragged all over the place. When do you work strategically on your business? Like how does that happen Exactly.
[00:03:53] John St. Pierre: ~Uh, ~and one of the lessons I've learned is. You know, as an entrepreneur, do you want to be a business operator or do you want to be a business owner? You got you. Which one do you want be? Are you trying to build a business asset that's gonna create tremendous amount of value? Or are you looking for a job?
[00:04:06] John St. Pierre: Because if you're looking for a job, you know you're gonna go work for a complete lunatic, right? It's you. ~Uh, ~so , you gotta really think about which path you wanna want take. And, and that was a lesson for me. 'cause I, you know, throughout my, most of my entrepreneurial career, I was. The chief cook, bottle washer, CEO, you name it.
[00:04:21] John St. Pierre: I was in that business fully in, and when I came to realize that if you move from CE to chairperson. You can be more strategically involved, you can think a little bit more and you can help drive the direction of your business. So today, in working with the CEOs that, that on our teams, really it's about the strategic planning process, about what that CEO's trying to achieve in their life, connecting it to the business, helping them, you know, get to, you know, coach them to where they aspire to build their business and not make some of the mistakes I've made in my history as a CEO as well.
[00:04:50] John St. Pierre: And really support them with situational leadership. Servant leadership, really trying to help guide them in their teams. And when there is a problem, I can roll up my sleeves and jump in there with them as well. I have that ability to go do that, but that relationship is really a relationship of coaching and helping them build the business they're aspiring to build.
[00:05:05] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah, let's, because we got kind of two layers here that I'm, here I'm seeing form up and I'm sure there's actually more than that, but just obviously, um, you know, the, the operator to CEO and then CEO to, to chairman and. There's, there's, you've given some, some pieces here of working more on the business or working more strategically.
[00:05:25] Chaz Wolfe: Give us a couple of things in there that the listener who is still the operator very much in the business, and you're talking about, you know, they get hammered, you know, seven different ways of, you gotta work on the business, you gotta work on the business. How can they do that as a CEO before becoming, you know, the, the chairman like you
[00:05:39] John St. Pierre: Yeah. Well, Chaz, I think this was, again, another lesson that I had learned is when I was the CEO of one of our businesses,~ uh,~ we had grown a sports business to around $10 million of revenue, and it was going really well. And,~ uh,~ I got invigorated. I was like, okay, let's go. What, what else can we do here? And I looked at the team one day and I looked at, at the partner in the business, I said, look, next five years I'm taking this business to a hundred million.
[00:06:01] John St. Pierre: Let's go. and went, went after it, right? ~Uh, ~we ultimately ended up growing that business to north of $50 million of revenues, and um, then I got fired. And I was like, wait, wait, wait a minute. We just grew this company for 15 years. I was the CEO and co-founder of that business. It was my vision what we were trying to build, and I found myself on the pavement.
[00:06:22] John St. Pierre: Like, what just happened? Well, the reality is I was growing a business for the sake of growing it. I didn't, it didn't really connect with my, my personal life plan. I was just going. And so I didn't really have, you know, for me growing to a hundred million dollars meant success. It meant fulfillment. Like, oh, look at me, we got this big business.
[00:06:38] John St. Pierre: Along the way of growing to a hundred million, we're bringing on investors' capital. My, my equity gets diluted, diluted, dilu di diluted. I lost complete control of the business and I got put back on my butt, right? And so what was I trying to do? So, to answer your question, if I'm talking to this person who's trying to build their business, the first question is, what are you trying to achieve?
[00:06:56] John St. Pierre: Not in the business
[00:06:56] John St. Pierre: whatcha trying to achieve in your life? What is your life plan like? What do you want in your life in the next 30 years? 'cause maybe what you're building doesn't align. And I'm finding way too many entrepreneurs don't have a life plan. They have a business plan. So, you know, one of the things I've done, you know, from that failure was, okay, I'm gonna align my life plan with what I wanna build as a business and have true connectivity between those two.
[00:07:19] John St. Pierre: Now I can go build the business of my dreams. And so I tell that CEO or that entrepreneur, do you have a life plan? 'cause most entrepreneurs I ask don't. Let's start there. Let's create your life plan and now let's connect your business plan to that. 'cause unless you're, again, unless you desire to go work 80 hours a week, be fully stressed out, not spend enough time with your family,~ uh,~ you know, eat unhealthy 'cause you're traveling all over.
[00:07:39] John St. Pierre: If that's your goal, then fine. But if your goal is to create wealth and freedom through this business asset, maybe there's another way of doing it.
[00:07:46] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah. ~Uh, ~you've, you've set us up here for some, for some great questions here. So tell us, first off, what, what is inta? What goes into a life plan, and then maybe what would be for some first steps that you would suggest them taking to maybe identify what that would look like for them personally?
[00:08:01] John St. Pierre: Yeah. I love that. I mean, again, it took me having a massive failure to realize that I didn't have one myself, so I get it If, if you don't have one, right? I was just going along saying, oh, things are working. I got a great family, great wife. Business is good, but I didn't really have, I. Something I was shooting for, like what was my passion?
[00:08:18] John St. Pierre: What was my mission? What am I trying to do beyond myself in life? What was my purpose? And so, you know, tools like Simon Sinek, start with why,~ uh,~ Gary Keller's, the one thing. ~Uh, ~you know, there's a lot of tools out there. ~Uh, ~Jim Collins, the hedgehog concept,~ uh,~ you know, what are you most passionate about?
[00:08:33] John St. Pierre: What can be the best in the world at what drives your economic engine? I took all of those things together,~ uh,~ uh, and said, okay. I gotta figure out what my why is what, what my purpose is. Because I used to always cha meet with my company. I'd meet with our executive team Q4 every year, go, okay, what's our why?
[00:08:48] John St. Pierre: I'd play Simon Sinek video. We, you know, what's our why for our business? What's our strategic business plan? I never did it for myself. I never sat down with myself and said, what am I trying to achieve? So ultimately the format I came up with, and I do talk about it in, in the a hundred million dollar journey book, is I came up with a true north life plan format, which is, what am I trying to achieve in the next 30 years?
[00:09:09] John St. Pierre: Think far out 30 years in life, not in business, in life. What am I trying to achieve? And then break it down into a few segments that are important to you. So my segments were financial health, relationships, family, spirituality, you know, those you break up into your categories that are important to you and lay out a 30 year plan.
[00:09:28] John St. Pierre: And then break it down and go, well, in 10 years, where do I need to be in these segments to be on track for my 30 year plan? And you can see where I'm going here. Where do I need to be in three years to be on track to my 10 year plan? Where do I need to be in a year to be on track for my three year plan where I need to be this quarter, this month, this week, this day, this hour I'm doing right now, Chaz, what I should be doing towards my 30 year plan.
[00:09:48] John St. Pierre: And that's how you align it.
[00:09:50] Chaz Wolfe: Um, the reverse engineer,~ uh,~ you know, process that you just gave to us, um, comes maybe a little bit more naturally for, you know, some wired in a certain way to be able to think that way. For those that it's a little harder to kind of go, like I can see the vision and most entrepreneurs do have some sort of a vision, maybe not 30 years out, but they've got something that they can hold onto.
[00:10:10] Chaz Wolfe: Practically, how can they start walking that back? Because timelines get a little hairy sometimes. You know, is this even possible? Like, what am, am I thinking that this is true? Like what are my, what are my beliefs in this? Like all of those things get really, really muddy as you're starting to back it up to figure out what you do today.
[00:10:26] Chaz Wolfe: Give us some insight there.
[00:10:27] John St. Pierre: I think it was Bill Gates that said, people always underestimate what they can do in 10 years. They overestimate what they can do this year, but they underestimate what they can do in 10 years. So what I truly believe is if you are setting a year plan for yourself, but you don't ultimately know what you want in 10 years, how do you know what you're doing this year is the right path?
[00:10:48] John St. Pierre: You may be undershooting what you should be doing this year for that matter. So I truly believe in long-term thinking. And I was talking to somebody recently that . Um, was a little bit,~ uh,~ older than myself, and I said, you need a 30 year life plan. And they're like, well, I'm not gonna be alive in 30 years.
[00:11:01] John St. Pierre: I go, oh, hold on a second. I think people are gonna be alive a lot longer than you think with what's going on right now. So you need to really think further out in your life. Because what ends up happening is we do things on a weekly basis that may be good for this week,
[00:11:14] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah.
[00:11:14] John St. Pierre: and you make it the instant gratification of this week.
[00:11:17] John St. Pierre: But what do you want long term? And so the same thing. You go back to that CEO that's running their small business, right? You may be doing the things today that's gonna help you this week, but is it the things you should be doing today gonna help you 10 years from now? And if not, maybe you should be rethinking that.
[00:11:31] John St. Pierre: Maybe you shouldn't be doing that. Maybe you should be hiring somebody to do that so you can focus on building what you ultimately want. So I really think having that long-term vision is important, but then to get into a bunch of time management things, right? I have a daily visualization. That ties to ultimately what I want in life that I read for 12 minutes every single day to train my unconscious, you know, subconscious mind, right?
[00:11:50] John St. Pierre: Um, I have a weekly planner that outlines exactly what I gotta do, and if I look at that weekly planner and there's stuff on there that doesn't align to my 30 year plan, some way, shape, or form, it shouldn't be on there. And that's how you ultimately become, you know, really super efficient in what you're trying to accomplish.
[00:12:05] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah, this is interesting. ~Uh, ~you've brought up several things here that I'm super curious about as well as,~ uh,~ implement myself, but just real quick here on the timeline for that guy who was like, I'm not even gonna be around in 30 years, I, I personally am working on right now a hundred year family plan.
[00:12:19] John St. Pierre: Love it.
[00:12:20] Chaz Wolfe: Maybe I'm alive, and I mean, that would put me at 136. That there's, there's a possibility to that maybe.
[00:12:25] John St. Pierre: I think there is.
[00:12:26] Chaz Wolfe: Um, but, but the reality of it is, is that in my mind, I'm, I'm planning for three generations. And so I don't know if that a hundred years includes me or not, but it will include the things that I'm deciding to do today, to your point.
[00:12:40] Chaz Wolfe: Right. And so I, I think that, um, that 30 year or or out further, whatever that looks like for, for you is super important , because I'm a big hunter, so I'm archery guy. A lot of times you start get, you get stuck at the 30, 40, 50 yard, you know, I just can't hit the target step back to like 75, step back to a hundred, and you're like, wait, what if I can't hit it at 40?
[00:12:58] Chaz Wolfe: How am I supposed to hit it at a hundred? It, it's just the way that it works, you step back a little bit. You can just see it a little clearly a little clearer. Um, okay, so you've talked, you've, you mentioned several things in here, the, the, the 30 year life vision. Broken it down. Okay. And then you quickly hurried up like all the way down to a daily visualizations like big gap on this side over here, 30 years out, all the way down to something.
[00:13:20] Chaz Wolfe: I'm reading 12 minutes a day. Talk about how do I get from here to here? You don't have to gimme every step, but then I wanna ask you about that visualization.
[00:13:27] John St. Pierre: Yeah, but now I'm thinking the re I'm rethinking the 30 year. Now you got a hundred year. I think I gotta step my game up here a little bit. ~Uh, ~geez. But you, you know, a hundred. Just a quick point on, on lifespan, I mean the advances that are going on in technology and artificial intelligence and gene therapy, I have no doubt that you have a chance to live to 136 years old.
[00:13:45] John St. Pierre: I mean, there's just no doubt. And now, will you, weren't you? I don't know, but there's a chance for sure. And,~ uh,~ that, that's really interesting to me. Um, look, when I create my 30 year life plan, I work it all the way down to my year plan ultimately. I look at that occasionally. ~Uh, ~this is the time of year around, you know, the beginning of the year where I actually re-look at it again and go, am I on track for what I'm doing?
[00:14:07] John St. Pierre: But then when I have my life plan, I kind of put that aside. Now I'm working on, you know, 90 day increments. Okay, what do I need to do every quarter this year to achieve this? I. Annual plan, and then I back a track to it as well. Like I have a weekly plan every week. Oh, here were my top three priorities.
[00:14:20] John St. Pierre: Here's what I got in all these different segments, right? And whether it be my, this business or that business or my book or whatever it may be, and I break it all the way down. But really it's how do you become super efficient with how you're spending your time? Towards your goals. Right. So, you know, yes, I do work it all the way back down to a daily visualization, which basically articulates who I ultimately wanna be in life, what I ultimately wanna accomplish, just so I can always be reminded.
[00:14:42] John St. Pierre: Right. And I think Chaz, the, the biggest thing on that is the reticular activating system that is in your mind. The mind is so powerful. And,~ uh,~ I heard, um, I think it was Susan Sly who had mentioned this, but she, she was talking about the red car concept. ~Uh, ~have you ever heard of the red car concept?
[00:14:58] John St. Pierre: Right.
[00:14:58] Chaz Wolfe: I've heard it. Yes, go ahead. I, I think I know what you're talking about, but I've heard it phrased just slightly
[00:15:02] John St. Pierre: Yeah, it was kinda like, you know, if you were driving around this weekend, how many red cars did you see? And he answered, I don't know. I am sure I saw some, but I wasn't counting them. But if I said, look, I'll give you a hundred bucks. If you count how many red cars you see, next time you'd count 'em all right?
[00:15:13] John St. Pierre: Because you're, you're reticular activating system, the filter of your mind is opening up to the things you should be seeing at any given time. So, as an entrepreneur, if you're not training your mind to see opportunities and see what you're ultimately trying to create in your life, they're just gonna, you're gonna miss 'em.
[00:15:28] John St. Pierre: You're just gonna completely miss 'em. So that daily visualization helps me see the types of things I need to be able to see by opening my mind to be aware to ultimately what I want to accomplish. So, I guess to make a long story short, how would I start, create a life plan for yourself, you know, know ultimately what you wanna achieve.
[00:15:43] John St. Pierre: And then break it down is simply, if you know what you wanna achieve in life, just break it down to this week if you need to. What do I need to accomplish this week? What are some of the big rocks I need to accomplish this week to be moving in the right direction and focus on those rocks? That's the Stephen Covey Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, right?
[00:15:58] John St. Pierre: With the big rocks and small rocks. Way too many entrepreneurs are moving gravel every single week. They're not moving the big rocks, they're moving gravel. Start moving big rocks,
[00:16:07] Chaz Wolfe: That's a one-liner for sure. ~Uh, ~drop the mic after that and just call the, at the end of the show, to kind of summarize here, we've, we, we can figure out, um, maybe what the red car is that 30 year plan out, and then I'm bringing it all the way down into a highly descriptive form that I'm reading to myself every single day, so that way I can pay attention.
[00:16:28] Chaz Wolfe: When the red car should be coming up. Um, but I can do this in all areas. I mean, I think that,~ uh,~ you know, I call it, you know, a couple different, you know, ~uh, ~dimensions of kingship, but you're saying in all areas of life, it's like, okay, there's all these different pieces of life. So talk to us about that, because there's a lot of entrepreneurs that believe I can go after hard after a business and I gotta be all in and obsessed.
[00:16:47] Chaz Wolfe: But that, that . Then limits me to have then a great relationship or, you know, a great, to be a great dad or to not be able to have,~ uh,~ fitness or all of the other things that you've mentioned. So what do those things look like or how do I go about all of them at the same time?
[00:17:02] John St. Pierre: Yeah, I mean this concept of work life balance is a bunch of crap, right? It's work life abundance. You know, prior to this show,~ uh,~ your daughter walked in, right? Um, and it was just so, it's such a cute moment. It's a real moment. It's it, this is work life abundance. It's life abundance. Ultimately, people think they have to give.
[00:17:21] John St. Pierre: If I'm working so hard in my business, I can't have a good relationship, or I can't be healthy, or I can't be, you know, there's, there's a give and take. That's phony. ~Uh, ~and in my daily visualization as example, it's not about my business. Yes, there's a component of my business, but it's also about me. It's about my health and my eating habits and my workout habits and what time I'm getting up every day.
[00:17:39] John St. Pierre: It's about my relationship with my wife, my relationship with my kids. It's the full picture of who you are. 'cause if you can't bring yourself to be your full self to your business. People see through that as well. So how can you accomplish this, this area of abundance where you're high powered in all areas.
[00:17:58] John St. Pierre: You wanna have the best relationship, the best health, the, you know, help your kids grow and develop. You wanna have the best organization, you wanna help develop the best leaders you can in your business. That's infectious.
[00:18:07] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah. How do you, how do you look back at your story and go This was the moment that I started to do the things that you're talking about, the 30 year reverse engineering using a daily visualization, because I'm gonna guess very similar to me, that you kind of just took off running , you probably had a good amount of success, and then you got smacked in the face and you were presented with a different way of doing things.
[00:18:29] Chaz Wolfe: Talk us to us about that.
[00:18:31] John St. Pierre: Yeah. I mean, Chad, to your point,~ uh,~ I was a young entrepreneur. I was a college pro painting franchisee. Became a college pro,~ uh,~ general manager for a couple years. Made a lot of money in college, running a painting business. I thought this thing called business was super easy. I, I had this all figured out, right?
[00:18:45] John St. Pierre: ~Uh, ~then I. In the late nineties, we started an internet company that you would be,~ uh,~ connected to in some way, shape, or form, but it was handyman online.com and,~ uh,~ we were VC funded and,~ uh,~ we were growing like gangbusters. I was the vice president of sales. I was 24 years old, traveling across the country, opening up offices.
[00:19:01] John St. Pierre: This thing called business is super easy. This is fun, and I'm, I'm having a ball. And the crash happens, bang.com crash and ~uh, ~we ultimately end up selling all of our assets to service magic. Who became homeadvisor.com, who then merged with Angie and is now called Angie. That was our business. And I can remember driving back in my Jeep Cherokee from Beaverton, Oregon, back to Chicago, listening to Anthony Robbins personal power tapes, trying to figure out what is going on, right?
[00:19:31] John St. Pierre: I thought I had this thing all figured out, stock options, everything else figured out. And yet here I was on my butt going, okay, now what?
[00:19:38] Chaz Wolfe: Mm-Hmm.
[00:19:39] John St. Pierre: And I was like, you know what? I'm, I'm gonna pick myself back up being an entrepreneur again. Let's go. And I, and I got myself back up and start building again, building anew and built the sports company I was mentioning earlier.
[00:19:48] John St. Pierre: Um, and I just had this vision, let's grow. I wanna build something big and let's go, let's go. And ~uh, ~in 2018, 15 years of building this company, the logos tattooed on my forehead. My kids had all the apparel of the business. My best friends were in the business,
[00:20:03] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah.
[00:20:03] John St. Pierre: sitting in the boardroom. Getting fired from the company you've built to over $50 million of revenues after 15 years.
[00:20:09] John St. Pierre: And losing everything
[00:20:11] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah.
[00:20:12] John St. Pierre: was the moment I needed to sit back and go, whoa, what am I doing? This is a second failure. You know, the one was a crash, which, you know, what I thought was gonna happen didn't happen. And then here's another one, self-doubt,~ uh,~ reflection. Um, and that turned real quickly into perspective introspection learning.
[00:20:32] John St. Pierre: ~Uh, ~Uh, you know, what Have, what, what are my contributions to the situation and how am I gonna make sure this never happens again to me? ~Uh, ~or for that matter, any other entrepreneur I work with.
[00:21:31] John St. Pierre: Yeah. What were the components, you know, the, the kinda the framework that you've given here? ~Uh, ~again, like you said, you explained it, I'm sure in, in depth in your book, but the framework of the 30 year plan and backtracking and using the daily visualization, what part of that didn't you have before? Or maybe it was the whole thing?
[00:21:49] John St. Pierre: I. But then, but why were you, yeah. I would say even inside of those failures, you were still successful to a degree, right? Like you were still operating on certain principles, maybe whether you realized it or not. And so like, what did, what didn't you have before that you got in that enlightenment at, through that second crash?
[00:22:06] John St. Pierre: But obviously had some things because you were, you know, successful even though they bombed, you know, you, you get what I'm saying? Like, give us a little bit more there.
[00:22:13] John St. Pierre: Yeah, I had none of it. I, I, I never had a life plan. Um, I was always very goal oriented. So if I set my mind to something,~ uh,~ I would go for it. And I, and I could, you know, I had a lot of successes, you know, set target, hit target, kind of, you know, mode. ~Uh, ~so I was really good at that, but I didn't really have.
[00:22:29] John St. Pierre: A life plan. You know, I, I, there was segments of it, right? Like I, I, you know, after listening to Anthony Robbins personal power tapes as an example, I wrote down on my little daily planner at the time, like all the things I was looking for in a significant other. Right, 34 things. Ultimately, I married Amy, she had 33 other 34 things on the list subconsciously.
[00:22:49] John St. Pierre: So I was very goal oriented, but I didn't really have the full picture. I didn't really know what my purpose was in life. I didn't really know, you know, really what I was trying to accomplish until this massive failure in 2018 where I really had to sit back and go, what's my purpose? You know? And I had had older,~ uh,~ mentors of mine.
[00:23:07] John St. Pierre: Ask me, well, I was, you know, young gun, you know, young guns, spitting vinegar everywhere, right? They're like, well, John, someday you're gonna figure out there's a deeper purpose than just growing something. And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever, , I'm just gonna go build this thing. And that really, those conversations came back to remind me in this moment of failure, man, they're, they're probably right because I was growing something for the sake of growing it.
[00:23:28] John St. Pierre: I just thought there was power and glamorization in growing something big. But when you grow something big that you no longer control or own
[00:23:36] Chaz Wolfe: right.
[00:23:36] John St. Pierre: what's the point of that? And so, yeah, I had, I had none of it.
[00:23:40] Chaz Wolfe: What's the nuance now? It's growing something big. With what, like what, what's the, what's the difference now? 'cause obviously you're still growing, you're still growing, actually multiple companies.
[00:23:51] John St. Pierre: Yeah.
[00:23:52] John St. Pierre: Well.
[00:23:53] Chaz Wolfe: how, what's the perspective change?
[00:23:54] John St. Pierre: To me, it's the connection again between your life plan and your business plan. So now I'm not growing something for the sake of growing it. Now I have a life plan. I know exactly what I want in my dream life, I know exactly what I need to be doing. You know, you know, I know exactly what I wanna accomplish.
[00:24:09] John St. Pierre: Excuse me, in my dream life. So if, if I wanna accomplish this. Well then here's how I'm gonna align my strategic business plan to it, right? If, if my life plan said I want to go work 80 hours in a company and be fully stressed out, unhealthy, and doing all that well, then I'd start structure a business to go do that.
[00:24:24] John St. Pierre: That's not what I want. I ultimately want to be able to impact entrepreneurs, make a difference, and help them grow the business of their dreams. Well, I can't do that if I'm going to operate a business, so you have to align the two together. That was the biggest aha moment for me, is I never, ever, ever had my true North Life plan aligned to my strategic business plan.
[00:24:42] John St. Pierre: I always had a strategic business plan, but I didn't have this side, and now I align the both of them. So I can always look at am I creating a business that I want for my life, or am I just creating a business to glamorize? Look how big I built something, or look how much capital I like. You know, it, business owners talk about this all the time.
[00:24:56] John St. Pierre: Oh, I have this size company, I just got $20 million of capital. They, they glamorize those things, but ultimately, is it tied to what they want in life?
[00:25:03] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah. Yeah, there. I mean, this is a big, well, um, I wanna go back to the moment though. You're in the boardroom and you're fired from the company that you've just built to 50 million plus over the last 15 years. And like, I love that picture of your kids wearing the garb and you know, the logo tattooed on your forehead.
[00:25:20] Chaz Wolfe: You were all in, is what I'm hearing.
[00:25:22] John St. Pierre: Yep.
[00:25:23] Chaz Wolfe: So what went wrong? What can you share with the listener that you have perspective on now that you couldn't see in that moment?
[00:25:30] John St. Pierre: Yeah, well, I'd say those in, in, in the book a hundred Million Dollar Journey. I talk about the seven principles of entrepreneurial success, and the reality is in this particular situation, I violated all of the principles,
[00:25:41] Chaz Wolfe: Okay,
[00:25:42] John St. Pierre: and upon learning the principles and applying those principles to my other business, I successfully grew that to a hundred million dollars the right way.
[00:25:51] John St. Pierre: Applying all of the principles, but I'll run through the principles, Chad, and you dive in wherever you want, right? But principle one is protect and grow your equity. It's the most important thing you have in your business to create wealth and freedom. Two, build your own capital because if you don't build your own capital, you don't build your the net operating cash flow, you need to self-finance your own growth.
[00:26:12] John St. Pierre: You're gonna be going to banks and investors to go find the capital, which is gonna violate principle one.
[00:26:18] John St. Pierre: Principle three, reinvest smartly. In the sports business, I was reinvesting carelessly. We were making money over here and I been reinvesting as fast as I can over here. But the, where I was reinvesting, it was actually generating less net operating cash flow, which was hurting our ability to self-finance our growth, which is making us go get investors in bank debt, which violated principle one.
[00:26:37] John St. Pierre: Principle four, build a culture of entrepreneurship. If you ultimately wanna have a business asset someday, you gotta build people within the organization that can . Think like an entrepreneur run the business, like they, it was theirs. ~Uh, ~so you gotta create that culture of, in entrepreneurship. Principle five is protect the house.
[00:26:54] John St. Pierre: There's a lot of situations, entrepreneurs, you know, you, you have a hundred holes in your boat, you plug 99 of 'em, guess where the water's coming through? Right through that other hole. Right? So you, how do you protect your business properly? Principle six, you would appreciate this based on what you're talking about in your a hundred life a hundred year life plan, how do you access the owner's liquidity in your business?
[00:27:12] John St. Pierre: I. You've got this business balance sheet and you've got your personal life balance sheet. How do you move liquidity from your business' balance sheet to your personal balance sheet in tax efficient manners that can really help you and future generations of your family benefit from this business asset that you've created?
[00:27:29] John St. Pierre: And principle seven, how do you move from CEO to chairperson? 'cause you may not be the best person to run your business, but if you can move to the chairperson level, you can be more strategic and oversee the growth of the business and create something of huge value.
[00:27:40] Chaz Wolfe: Wow. ~Uh, ~I, I'm in alignment with all seven of those, and I'm gonna pick five and six to dive into here. So I, I wanna talk about protecting the house because, um. You're right. You know, and I almost, I see it as a boat, like you said, like we're, you know, kind of building the ship at sea as an entrepreneur and, and it's constant, you know, trying to plug the boat and, and eventually we have this dream of it being this huge cruise line.
[00:28:05] Chaz Wolfe: And no ever, you know, issues how in the moment the listeners right now, they're going, okay, so maybe I'm, I'm just starting my company. I'm only doing, you know, a couple hundred thousand, or maybe I'm listening and I'm doing a couple hundred million. But I got these springs coming up in the house. How? How do I protect what, what's some of the principles that you're sharing in that chapter
[00:28:25] John St. Pierre: Yeah, absolutely. It's a game of whack-a-mole, right? You, you hit 2, 3, 4, down, 5, 6, 7 pop up. It's just like a continuous game, right? You know, I think the first one is,~ uh,~ who do you surround yourself with? What's your team of protectors and,~ uh,~ you know, I, I, rich Hoffman, who's the co-host of,~ uh,~ our podcast, the Entrepreneurs United Podcast.
[00:28:41] John St. Pierre: At one point when I was gung ho and running on my business, he's like, who's coaching you today, John? And I'm like, coach, I don't need a coach. I'm good. Like I, I got this thing like, I don't need anybody to coach me. Right? And he reminded me of that after the failure, by the way. He's like, would've coach have helped you?
[00:28:57] John St. Pierre: And I'm like, oh, dang. You had to ask me that question. . But like, who, who, who, who's coaching you? Do you have a professional, small, medium-sized business, CPA? Or are you using the mom and pop tax, you know, accountant down the street? Do you have professional advisors, attorneys, commercial insurance agents, captive insurance agents?
[00:29:15] John St. Pierre: Trust attorneys. ~Uh, ~do you have, do you have a team where you look around the room and you're like, man, we got a team right now in our business, Chaz, I have, you know, six advisors on our team that are all world class. We do not sneeze unless all six are unanimously on board with a decision. We just, if it's a big decision, if it's a one door decision, like this is an irreversible one door decision, we need all of our professional advisors to sign off on it.
[00:29:37] John St. Pierre: And when they don't, we pause, okay, there's something, something's off here. Let's, let's caucus, let's get this thing together. Two vulnerability assessments. When did, when does an entrepreneur sit down and perform a full vulnerability assessment on all the holes that potentially exist on the boat? We're so busy running.
[00:29:52] John St. Pierre: When does that happen? It never happens. We just keep running. So, you know, when do you pause on an annual basis and do a vulnerability assessment? Maybe you need a little risk committee, a focus group amongst your team that does that. I'm not sure there's a lot of ways to, to go about that. Do you have the proper insurance coverage or you be carefully, you know, are you careful of who you hire into your business?
[00:30:09] John St. Pierre: You know, there's a, a book called Snakes and Suits. You know, in my situation with a sports company,~ uh,~ I had a snake in the, in the business that wanted to chop my legs off and. They did,~ uh,~ it worked. ~Uh, ~you know, and you gotta be careful who you surround yourself with and the culture you create. So we go through all those different, there's more, but ~uh, ~you know, how do you protect the business from every single angle?
[00:30:28] John St. Pierre: And we go through a lot of those angles because as an entrepreneur, whether it be customer credit risk, we. Customer going bankrupt on us for a quarter million dollars. We got, we had a wire fraud situation where we wired a quarter million dollars over to Asia by accident. Never got it back. I mean, there's a, you know, what are your financial controls?
[00:30:43] John St. Pierre: So there's a whole bunch of different areas you need to protect your business. 'cause one mistake, one lawsuit, one situation can really go back and violate. Principle 4, 3, 2, 1. Done.
[00:30:54] Chaz Wolfe: I'm assuming just because in, in my daily visualization, it's positive, you know, positive energy. I'm focused on vibration and, and I'm all in. Right. I'm only assuming that you're that way. And so how can you plan for all these things that you just said and, and putting a team together around the table of trust attorneys and thinking about how my, my wealth is gonna perpetuate and, and other professionals that you just described protecting the house, which is inevitably thinking something bad is gonna happen.
[00:31:22] Chaz Wolfe: How do I teeter between planning properly and not being negative is really what I'm asking.
[00:31:27] John St. Pierre: Yeah. You'll love this term. It will connect with you immediately. It's do you have a healthy dose of productive paranoia?
[00:31:35] Chaz Wolfe: I
[00:31:35] John St. Pierre: If you are not in this state of productive paranoia, you're blind Crap happens like literally. Stuff will happen when you least expect it. And if you're not protecting your family's estate as an example in your a hundred year plan, you never know what can happen, right?
[00:31:54] John St. Pierre: So how are you protecting it along the way? Not because you anticipate something's gonna happen, but you're prepared in case something does. So how do you have that productive state of paranoia? I'm, I'm a trust first person. Like, I love to build things. I'm very positive, optimistic. So I, I, I think the world's a perfect place and no one's ever gonna wanna be litigious with our business as an example.
[00:32:12] John St. Pierre: But all it takes is one situation. Where you know, an employee gets terminated and next thing you know you're facing a lawsuit 'cause you didn't properly have your HR processes in place. It just takes those one situations and that distracts you from your strategic business plan. Strategic, you know, distracts you from the why of your business, what you're trying to do.
[00:32:28] John St. Pierre: It distracts you from your true North Life plan. It's stressful, it's draining. It's no fun. So if you can, you know, if you think about a highway with all these different exits, and imagine the exits are all vulnerabilities, just close the exits. Just, you know, you don't want anybody going off those exits and creating a vulnerability, you know, aspect for your business.
[00:32:43] John St. Pierre: So that's, that's the way I view it.
[00:32:45] Chaz Wolfe: I'm in alignment with that as I'm thinking about my a hundred year plan. I know that stats tell me that in the third generation of wealth, if I'm first generation, it's my grandkids that are gonna lose it all.
[00:32:55] Chaz Wolfe: It's like, okay, well I don't, I don't have any grandkids yet, so I can't, I can't like,~ uh,~ emotionally go, well, John is a terrible grandson and you know, Susie is,~ uh,~ you know, a, a wild at heart and gonna, you know, spend all my money.
[00:33:09] Chaz Wolfe: I have no idea. They're not, they don't even exist yet. But I can take statistics to your point. I can think down the road and I can go, okay, lemme just let me create some frameworks here to where they can't even mess it up.
[00:33:21] John St. Pierre: Exactly a hundred percent.
[00:33:23] Chaz Wolfe: We're trying to, we're trying to have, um, we're trying to have Rockefeller perpetuation here. Yeah.
[00:33:28] John St. Pierre: Exactly. You gotta let it keep going through
[00:33:31] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah. Okay. Um, number six, I don't remember exactly what you called it, but you basically, it was the protection and then the perpetuation. So remind me number six again.
[00:33:38] John St. Pierre: a access owner's liquidity, moving it from the balance sheet to your personal balance sheet.
[00:33:43] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah, I think this is important because at, at some point the listener may not be there yet, but maybe they are where they've had success and they start to have some money and there's some either equity and or actual kickoff of cash and they're like, lemme go buy this. Not very smart thing, . Or how do I, how do I strategically plan just to move equity on a balance sheet like that?
[00:34:04] Chaz Wolfe: Maybe this is number magic. I don't know. What, what are you, what are you saying?
[00:34:07] John St. Pierre: Yeah, there's a, there's a lot of, um, financial instruments that we talk about in the book, and, and ultimately it depends on what you're trying to accomplish. If you're building a lifestyle business where you wanna maximize your income this year, so you can go buy the material goods or whatever you want, this
[00:34:20] John St. Pierre: Principle may not work for you. This book may not work for you. Actually, this book is really meant for an entrepreneur who's building a business and wants to go from a lifestyle sized business to a high performance, high value net worth business, right? So the one way to do that,~ uh,~ it goes back to principle two.
[00:34:34] John St. Pierre: You gotta build your own capital and have enough net operating cash flow to self-finance your own growth, so you retain your equity. Well, the one way to do that is to make sure you're very, very smart about how you access owner's liquidity, because you still wanna pay yourself. You still wanna create wealth for yourself along the journey.
[00:34:47] John St. Pierre: You don't wanna wait. Until someday you might get a pot of gold at the end. How do you, how do you do that? But if a business today has made a million dollars of net income and you just distributed that to the partners, as an example, right? 40 to 50% of that's going to taxes. Not a very smart way to do things.
[00:35:02] John St. Pierre: But there are instruments that are out there, captive insurance programs that further protect your business. With extraordinary coverages that also reduce your taxable income and you create another business asset for yourself and your business that's taxed at lower capital gains as opposed to ordinary income.
[00:35:17] John St. Pierre: So we get into some financial instruments here. There's,~ uh,~ we do in our business 401k, um, ~uh, ~cash balance, profit sharing programs where all of our employees participate in,~ uh,~ our, that, that program where they automatically get 3%, whether they, whether they participate or not, they all get 3%. Of their salaries in their, in their retirement programs.
[00:35:34] John St. Pierre: There's a vesting period and such, and we do profit sharing for them on an annual basis. But by doing that, it allows the owners of the business to put 10 times the maximum IRS allowable limit into our own 4 0 1 Ks. Which reduces our taxable income and creates wealth for our family. So there's a bunch of, but guess what?
[00:35:51] John St. Pierre: I knew none of these instruments I you, you don't actually end up learning about some of these until you surround yourself with the right amount of protectors around the business that can help share that with you. And what we now do with some of that business. So that's why we have multiple entities, is we also reinvest into other entities.
[00:36:07] John St. Pierre: Because by reinvesting our capital into other entities, sometimes you get accelerated depreciation and other tax benefits that reduces your taxable income. So we're able to hire more people. That's what the government wants you to do. They want you to build more business, build more commerce, hire more people.
[00:36:20] John St. Pierre: So by doing that, our taxable income comes down. So instead of the money going to the government, we have the money building our business assets and building our wealth along the way. And that's, that's ultimately, I think, a lot of people think, in order to access owner's liquidity, I gotta sell my company.
[00:36:33] John St. Pierre: I gotta bring on a minority investor. I gotta bring on maybe a majority investor, and I'm a big proponent of no, no, build your business asset. If you wanna get outta your business, sell, sell a hundred percent and get out, that's fine. But ultimately, you can build business, business assets that create a tremendous amount of value for you and your family for the next a hundred years by deploying some of these principles correctly.
[00:36:51] Chaz Wolfe: I love it. What would you say that the average entrepreneur, outside of the fact that they don't have a life plan, 'cause all the things that we're talking about are connected to that, that's clear. But once we get past that, you know, these seven principles that you kind of discussed here, we just discussed five and six, but what's the hardest one for entrepreneurs to kind of wrap their minds around in your experience?
[00:37:13] John St. Pierre: Principle two,
[00:37:15] Chaz Wolfe: Okay.
[00:37:15] John St. Pierre: build your own capital.
[00:37:17] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah,
[00:37:18] John St. Pierre: They, they.
[00:37:19] Chaz Wolfe: I mean it, does it feel slower to them or what's the, what's the response?
[00:37:22] John St. Pierre: Um, if, if there was a hundred entrepreneurs listening to this and I said, raise your hand if on a monthly bi, you know, basis you measure the performance of your business based on the profit and loss statement, all the hands would go up. And Alan Milts, who,~ uh,~ runs this company called Cash Flow Story, he was the co-author of the chapter Cash in Vern Harnish's book called Scaling Up.
[00:37:44] John St. Pierre: He says, if you measure your business based on your profit and loss statement. You're basically reading a murderous mystery novel and only reading the first chapter and thinking, you know, how the story's gonna end.
[00:37:54] Chaz Wolfe: Okay.
[00:37:55] John St. Pierre: You know, there, there's other instruments and, and the one instrument that most entrepreneurs don't know how to calculate is their net operating cash flow.
[00:38:02] John St. Pierre: And based on how much cash flow you generate, you can calculate, literally calculate your self financeable growth rate. So there's a Harvard Business Review and the article was called How Fast Can Your Company Afford to Grow? And the reality is, every entrepreneur listening to this has no clue. 'cause I didn't, and no, no, no entrepreneur I've ever talked to knows exactly what percentage you can afford to grow.
[00:38:23] John St. Pierre: So, Chaz, if you, if your company can afford to grow 5% a year based on the cash flow you're generating, but you are motivated entrepreneur, you wanna grow 20% a year, where's the other 15% come from?
[00:38:36] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah. We're, we're not gonna just get lucky and, and grow.
[00:38:39] John St. Pierre: Yeah. You're, you're, it is gonna come from investors. It's gonna come from debt. Which then puts pressure on principle one, protect and grow your equity. So you, you know, you wanna own a business where you own a hundred percent of it or majority of it, but over time you, you're growing above your skis and you grow yourself poor.
[00:38:55] John St. Pierre: I mean, the one thing that entrepreneurs don't understand, you can grow yourself out of business. You can be a victim of your own success 'cause you don't know how to calculate your self financeable growth rate, your net operating cash flow and the financial instrument of your business is broken. You're growing for growth's sake.
[00:39:10] John St. Pierre: And that's what happened to me. I was growing so fast. We were successful because our revenues were going like that. I was like, this works. I was looking at the profit and loss statement. Oh, this is working. We're in good shape, but we had no cash, so I had to go back to the bank. Well bank, we need more debt.
[00:39:22] John St. Pierre: We need more debt. Well then at some point I to deliver the balance sheet, had to go get investors. Investors come on in. And then I'd brag, oh, we just raised $20 million. Look at this . Next thing you know, I get fired. Right? So build your own capital is the hardest one. I provide some workbooks and tools on how to exactly calculate those,~ uh,~ numbers for you and your business.
[00:39:41] John St. Pierre: But yeah, it's, it's a tough one and you really gotta master it. 'cause if you can, if you can master building your own capital, now you're in business.
[00:39:48] Chaz Wolfe: What kind of timeline? Um, I mean, you're talking about a hundred million dollar business that you grew after a $50 million business. You know, I know that less than 9% of all businesses do even a million in revenue, let alone a million in net. The person that's listening right now is like, these are really big numbers.
[00:40:07] Chaz Wolfe: I don't, you know, you're talking about fund my own growth. You're talking about like a much slower process. Probably, um, maybe, maybe not, but. Wrap their mind around, how can I even get to what you're talking about at at a hundred million dollar level.
[00:40:23] John St. Pierre: Yeah. Well, ultimately I'll, I'll, I'll say this right, right away, would you rather own 10% of a hundred million dollar business or a hundred percent of a $10 million business? And the reality is, I felt if I owned 10% of a hundred million dollar business, that'd be fantastic. But guess what? It's 50 times harder to build a hundred million dollar business than it is a $10 million business.
[00:40:45] John St. Pierre: It's not linear, right? And so these principles are not for somebody who wants to build a hundred million dollar business. The a hundred million dollar journey was my journey. It may not be your journey. What is your true North Life plan? What are you trying to accomplish in your life? What do you want in your daily life?
[00:41:00] John St. Pierre: Now let's build a business that can accomplish that. Build the business of your dreams. Your dreams may be to have a 2 million business, a 3 million business that you own. A hundred percent of that has great margins. That creates wealth for you and your family. You never imagined. So it really depends on what you want to chew, but way too many times entrepreneurs glamorize building a hundred, 200, 300 million company.
[00:41:18] John St. Pierre: They own 5% of, or 2% of, or 1% of or own none of it. ~Uh, ~ultimately. So it's a very risky, dangerous road. But if you aspire to grow a business of high value, there's a lot of pitfalls. There's a lot of cliffs. You gotta be careful. And this book was specifically written for those who wanna build a business of high value to be dangerous for all of those cliffs.
[00:41:36] John St. Pierre: But it also applies to small entrepreneurs trying to build the business of their dreams.
[00:41:39] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah, I think that you, the way that you're defining high value, you did a great job there of, if I own a hundred percent of a $10 million business, in essence, it's effectively the same from a net perspective as the 10% of a hundred million dollars business. There's just a whole lot less things that have to happen for me to actually be able to achieve it.
[00:41:54] Chaz Wolfe: Now, I. There are some things in here around, um, you know, principle one, making sure that you have people around you at the bigger company. You probably have an advisory board, stuff like that, where if you're smaller, then maybe you have to, you know, join groups, gathering the kings or programs or other things to be able to get ahold of those.
[00:42:09] Chaz Wolfe: That same principle, but I. Um, in essence, it's effectively the same. I wanna, I wanna change gears here on you because I got some questions. You mentioned earlier that, you know, even before some of the failures that you still had a great family and great kids and great wife, and especially now with the daily visualization, and you like really focused on those things.
[00:42:27] Chaz Wolfe: How can the, how can the power of you and your marriage. That's truly the core, but then of course after that is then you and your children. But talk about you and your wife for a second and how that's played into some of the early success and or even now, the success that you're enjoying today. What, what, how are those two things linked?
[00:42:46] John St. Pierre: Oh wow. Um, After the,~ uh,~ dot com failure after the handyman online. And, and, and that,~ uh,~ is when I bet my wife and,~ uh,~ I was in no position to be an entrepreneur at that particular moment. Um, you know, I was, I, I didn't have the, the cash, the capital to be able to go start something significant. ~Uh, ~but she had a stable career, chemical engineer, very smart woman.
[00:43:08] John St. Pierre: ~Uh, ~and she provided me the ability to go,~ uh,~ pursue my dreams of being an entrepreneur. So right from the be, get, go, right? Like, it's like, okay. Right. That's where that is. And as I was growing these businesses, um, she saw a goal oriented I was and how big I wanted to build these businesses. But,~ uh,~ guess what, Chaz, um, you know, when I would talk to her about bringing on capital and bringing on investors and we're going to a hundred million,~ uh,~ uh, her comments were, are you sure that's what you should be doing?
[00:43:31] John St. Pierre: Like, you should be careful. Like, you know, you sure this is smart? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I got this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no. This is good. Right? So, imagine. That night, coming back from the board meeting and her getting up from the couch and, and giving me a hug and how hard that was to be like, you know, honey, I, I, I effed up.
[00:43:52] John St. Pierre: You're right. Right. ~Uh, ~and the support, I got to keep going. The time I needed to reflect and get these learnings. And so the learnings became a little bit more than just me. I, I had to take these learnings for my wife, for my kids, for my family, so they could see me, you know, my kids now who are 10 and 12 at the time are now 15, 16.
[00:44:12] John St. Pierre: They've seen me go through this journey of failure to rebuilding, to perseverance, and I'm sure that's gonna have a massive effect on them. So just all of that space. To be able to go,~ uh,~ learn, reflect,~ uh,~ and the support,~ uh,~ it, it's, it's unbelievable. And whether it be your spouse or whether it be your friends or your mentors, your coach, or whoever you have around you, that surrounding is so important and how you feel about your surrounding will play into the energy you bring into your business every day.
[00:44:39] Chaz Wolfe: It's interesting because, um, you know, you saying your wife's an engineer,~ uh,~ obviously she's super smart and, and thinks about things in process. Um, and probably at least all the engineers that I know, um, I. They know how to do it and they, they don't have a problem telling you And so I can only imagine some of the conversations that, that you guys had around, um, her opinion on the order that things should be done in and, and how clearly,~ uh,~ uh, maybe sometimes you listen, sometimes you you didn't.
[00:45:08] Chaz Wolfe: But um, after all that, regardless, the moment that you just described is where the power is, is because you inevitably felt like no matter what happens, it doesn't give you permission to be frivolous, but it gave you permission to be free. Even to make bad decisions and fail, which is like really kind of tough I think for some spouses where it's like, well, I don't want you to fail, so I'm going to try to control situations.
[00:45:32] Chaz Wolfe: And so there's this balance here and I don't know if it balance is the right word 'cause we don't believe in that, but. There's this, maybe there's this relationship of support yet guidance yet, like Mastermind, I mean, Napoleon Hill talks about this, like this is the, it's the ultimate mastermind in the marriage where something can be born from these two minds.
[00:45:48] Chaz Wolfe: And it sounds like you guys couldn't be more opposite also. So it's pretty, pretty perfect.
[00:45:51] John St. Pierre: Yeah, no, a hundred, a hundred percent. And you know, it's funny 'cause a lot of people talk about their spouses always being right, but unfortunately in my case, she always is . So I have to, you know, learn from that. But I, I think at the end of the day, it's um, when, when you feel empowered,~ uh,~ uh, with your health.
[00:46:06] John St. Pierre: When you feel empowered with your relationships, when you feel empowered across the board, you can then be empowered in your business and you can have a free mind to be strategic and free and grow and build the right way. And so that's why this life plan continues. I just keep coming back to that is one of my biggest learnings.
[00:46:23] John St. Pierre: 'cause you have to make sure you're aligned in all these different areas or you can't bring your full self.
[00:46:27] Chaz Wolfe: That's right. That's right. Alright, I got one last question here for you, John. I want you to,~ uh,~ roll back the clock. I'm gonna let you, 'cause you've got a couple moments here, maybe it's even younger. I want you to talk to the younger John. You pick the age, you tap him on the shoulder and you whisper in his ear.
[00:46:42] Chaz Wolfe: What do you tell him?
[00:46:43] John St. Pierre: Well. Um, if you open the a hundred million dollars journey,~ uh,~ I love your question. ~Uh, ~the first thing you'll see in the book is something I call dear entrepreneur, and it's signed your future self.
[00:47:02] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah.
[00:47:02] John St. Pierre: So in the absence of reading that, um, the overall emotion of that letter to the entrepreneur. Is, you know, you think you know it all when things are going well, but you may not.
[00:47:16] John St. Pierre: Um, and you need to have patient ambition, not just ambition,
[00:47:22] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah.
[00:47:22] John St. Pierre: not careless ambition. Not ambition. Norah, look at me. I can go do this. You have patient calculated ambition. To build the business of your dreams the right way. Otherwise you risk making some fatal mistakes along the way. And so how do you surround yourself with the right people?
[00:47:38] John St. Pierre: How do you take time to make two door decisions instead of one door decisions? How do you put yourself in in a position where you can actually thrive and not be just driving carelessly around in circles? Because if you don't know where you're going, any path will do that saying, I don't know who said it, but they go, you don't know where you're going.
[00:47:53] John St. Pierre: Any path will do. But unfortunately in my situation, I was driving the car around. I was going really, really fast. It was really, really exciting. But then it's like, whoop, right off the cliff and you know, don't let that happen to you is ultimately the message. And you can move. You can prevent it by just having that patient ambition, being a little more calculated.
[00:48:11] John St. Pierre: Study, you know, bring people around. You get coaches, join mastermind groups like you talked about. All those things are so critical to surrounding yourself and building something the right way. But have patience. Have patience. If you could build a business of your dreams, it doesn't have to happen next year.
[00:48:24] John St. Pierre: Or in two years, you got in 10 years and you'd be extremely fulfilled. So have patient ambition.
[00:48:30] Chaz Wolfe: I love it. That's a great way to end. Um, what a. But a pure message, truly, we get, we get ahead of ourselves and our,~ uh,~ urgency problems or our ego or comparison game. I mean, you name it, we can go down the list. Um, John, how can, number one, where can we find the book? Or, or if I'm an entrepreneur that wants to dig past the book, I wanna maybe even hire you as a coach or,~ uh,~ network with you somehow.
[00:48:52] Chaz Wolfe: How can I find you?
[00:48:53] John St. Pierre: Yeah, so the book is on Amazon,~ uh,~ the a hundred million dollar Journey. Our website is 100 m journey.com, so 100 m as in mary journey.com and on social. You can find me at at john St. Pierre 100.
[00:49:07] Chaz Wolfe: I love it. Okay. Well, you've been incredible. Your journey is,~ uh,~ vulnerable and, um, we appreciate you sharing those moments and, um, seeing how those failures have raised you to where you are and sharing that all that . All that juice. So appreciate you being here. Blessings to you and your family and all the businesses that you're impacting.
[00:49:24] Chaz Wolfe: Thank you so much.
[00:49:25] John St. Pierre: Thanks, Jess.

Welcome to Episode 429 of the Gathering The Kings Podcast with your host Chaz Wolfe. In this episode, we're joined by John St. Pierre, acclaimed author of "$100 Million Dollar Journey", seasoned entrepreneur, and coach. Get ready for a deep dive into the entrepreneurial mindset and strategies for monumental business growth.

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