10 Years: The Highs and Lows of Building Our Business PART 1 (ft. Valerie Welch)

Brandon Welch 0:00
To hold on to your freaking vision and go back to the moment you started your company, and go back to why, and don’t let people trick you into doing things that aren’t they may be very, very good things. There’s There was never a bad idea in that time period that anybody brought us. They were all good ideas. They just weren’t on mission. And so hold on to your mission. Hold on to your vision and like if that drives you and you’re saying that out loud, often, the right people will show up.

Welcome to the Maven Marketing Podcast. Today is Maven Monday. This is the place where we answer your real life marketing questions. You can eliminate waste in advertising, grow your business and achieve the big dream. Today, I have the most special of all guests the backbone of my big dream, my safety net, my release, my business partner, my best friend, my one and only Valerie Welch, if you know Valerie, say hi to everybody. Hi. You know Valerie. You know, this is not this is the last thing she wanted to do, but she is proud to do it, because today is a very, very special day. 10 years ago to the day we started Frank and Maven, we opened the doors, and we set off on the journey, and today we’re going to peel back the curtain. This is a rare episode. We never talk about ourselves and the way we’re going to today, but it is a milestone, and with much encouragement, we’re going to show you behind the scenes the highs and lows of building our business. We’re going to talk about growth, marriage, relationships, burnout, kids, and anything else you may have wondered about building a business like Frank and Maven. So we have so much to cover. This is going to be two episodes, and you have the full authority of Valerie here. She’s going to call me on any BS, so you’re going to get the most truth from me you’ve ever gotten. And we’re just going to jump right in. We’ve gathered several questions over the last couple of weeks here with our network and just people. We told her, we’re gonna be doing this podcast of like, what would you want to learn about the business we’ve built? And so weird to say that that we have that kind of a story a decade story Agreed,

Unknown Speaker 2:15
agreed, yeah.

Brandon Welch 2:16
But here we are, so we’re gonna jump right in. Is that okay with you? Yeah, you have anything to say? No, okay,

Valerie Welch 2:22
let’s do it.

Okay? So Brandon and Valerie, I want to hear about the initial struggles and challenges when you started. Did you ever want to quit or wonder if you have what it takes? Chris sent this question in such a great question. Chris deals with a lot of people starting their business, so I’m sure he’s asking this on behalf of his audience. And to that, I would say, with the initial struggles, it was definitely time management. Yeah,

Caleb Agee 2:51
I agree.

Brandon Welch 2:53
What are some ways you saw time management, or lack thereof, show up for me?

Valerie Welch 3:01
Well, Brandon worked all the time,

Brandon Welch 3:04
all the time,

Valerie Welch 3:05
yeah, till one or two in the morning.

Brandon Welch 3:08
Probably worth saying this business was started between the hours of 8am or 8pm and 2am like, that’s just how it had to happen, because we both had real jobs,

Valerie Welch 3:18
yeah. And your real job went to like, 7pm Yeah. Maybe come home eat dinner,

Brandon Welch 3:22
dinner on the couch, laptop in one hand. Eventually it was baby in the other hand. And I don’t know my third hand. I, you know, started the business, yeah, doing, doing emails and things like that till late in the night. So struggles, Chris, it was fear of letting people down. You and I have talked a lot about that, that fueled a lot of my late nights, fretting over presentations, fixing problems, trying to make everything perfect. Believe it or not, we didn’t always know exactly what we were doing with marketing, so it was often testing and trying and spending all the money we were making to, you know, put more ad dollars in to try to produce the result.

Speaker 1 4:00
A lot of experimenting, yeah, yeah,

Brandon Welch 4:03
figuring out, like, literally, in those days, what would become the Maven method, like all those struggles and things we talk about in the book is those were literally late nights and very early mornings. I bet I lived weird to say, didn’t even it didn’t feel like I was, like, making some huge sacrifice with like I was falling on some sword. But I literally think

Valerie Welch 4:21
we didn’t have kids at the time, so I think we both just kind of build our build our day with, yeah, work

Brandon Welch 4:28
couch, you would be doing your master’s degree, and I would be doing this things that would let us do this business. So one thing, that’s one thing that I would like to say here is that that period of time for me was I’d already been through years of experiencing failure through my family’s business, which you guys probably know the story about, but I was kind of pre conditioned. It’s like fear had broken me so much that I was like I was over it. There’s nothing I could do to affect me more than it already had. Yeah, and that that was a curse at times, but that was a gift that kind of allowed us to, I wouldn’t say, be numb to it, because we definitely weren’t naive. I think I was probably over fearful in a lot of ways, but it did force us to make mature moves. I agree, things like never getting into debt, things like I had some silly rules. When I say they’re silly, we still use them today like we had to have, you know, three, four or five months of excess payroll in the bank before we’d hire another person, that sort of stuff. So one thing speaking of team that I did not struggle with is we had the huge, huge, huge blessing of first Caleb, then Tanner. We had Chelsea. We just had amazing, amazing people that were, I believe, placed by God, in our business early on. And that’s that is something that I think a lot of people struggle with, and I just never have,

Valerie Welch 5:53
yeah, Caleb was there from the beginning. And I don’t know how, I don’t know how he’s still here?

Brandon Welch 6:00
Does he know he’s still here 10 years later? And it just the amount of I’m going to use the word Providence, because I’ve been studying that word lately, that was placed just around our little ecosystem was incredible, and it still continues to deliver. We have Nate the camera guys, we have LJs, we have Audrey’s, we have Rylee’s, and we have all of our Megan’s, Carter’s and Caleb’s, and all of our original people that we’re so blessed to work with. So what was a struggle for you?

Did you ever worry if you could do it?

Valerie Welch 6:35
Oh, I mean, I don’t. I think I just did the I just woke up and did the day I I don’t know if I ever thought I couldn’t do it. I just had to do it.

Brandon Welch 6:46
Had to it wasn’t a choice. I would say failure wasn’t a choice for

Valerie Welch 6:50
us. No, like, I mean, once we went on our own, we had, we had to do it otherwise, or we had to do something else. So we kind of liked the company and liked what we were doing. It was fun. I think that helped. Yeah, true story.

Brandon Welch 7:05
The person that pushed me off the ledge was Roy Williams to start this business, and he convinced me that I could do it. One of the key questions he asked was, what’s your monthly debt Do you have? Do you have a lot of people, a lot of money? He’s like, because if you’re making decisions out of fear to pay bills or whatever, you’ll never make the right decisions, and it’ll never work. And I was like, Nope, we owed $738.42 I still remember the number to Empire bank at the time for our house, and that was the only payment we owed to anybody. And that was super key. So staying power. The other question, that was the most important question was, does your wife believe in you? And she did, yeah, she probably more than I did.Yeah, thought that we should do it. So that’s crazy.That’s crazy talk.

Valerie Welch 7:50
Yeah, Brandon’s not one. I’ve always had trust in you. I’ve because if it didn’t work, it was he was going to find something else that did work. So I never worried about

Brandon Welch 8:02
that’s a lot to say about an ad salesman,

Valerie Welch 8:05
you know, but you were the number one ad salesman.

Brandon Welch 8:09
Well, we made it we made it work. So that’s a great question. Chris, thank you for asking that kind of related to that. Next question is, what do couples need to prepare for When embarking on a business venture together. So if you are listening and you you probably have already been through this to some degree. If you’re married and have a business, but maybe you’re looking at starting another business, maybe you’re going, Wow, this is really wacky, having to deal with marriage and how do I put a business together? We’ve certainly seen friends and family members who I think we’ve learned from some what to do, some what not to do. Yeah, about how to be, you know, good partners, partners, partner, yeah, life partners, wink and building this business. And I think something we learned really early on. I’m not sure how we learned it, but we just learned that if we did not protect our time together. A gazillion things were going to take it, yeah.

Valerie Welch 9:05
Well, that’s my love language. Is time. So when we did a key book, yeah, well, we didn’t have time together. I was not a happy camper, maybe, um, so

Brandon Welch 9:17
I think I only put my hand on that fire so many times, and I learned, yeah, I

Valerie Welch 9:21
think when we’re struggling, we know that, oh, we need to spend time together. And we started just setting that up so that we would have that.

Brandon Welch 9:31
So I think that’s that sounds so obvious, like that sounds like duh. But I think I think what happens to visionaries or dreamers, or maybe the extroverts or whatever, the crazy people like me trying to start something was, I think I had the illusion that I was giving you the time at times, and I wasn’t. And so I think what I learned was that you were never asking to. To pop my balloon or take some excitement away from me, it was just as little as 15 minutes a day. I’m not saying that’s all I should give but that 15 minutes a day made a mountain of difference.

Valerie Welch 10:10
Yeah, a conversation, dinner together, there’s

Brandon Welch 10:13
your advice. Talk to your wife. You heard it here, folks.

Valerie Welch 10:18
But yeah, it’s when you’re in the heat of building a business and working. I mean, sometimes

Brandon Welch 10:24
there’s a huge difference in talking and having a conversation, and I had to learn that the other thing would be understanding each other’s strengths. Valerie very, very rarely has something strong or has something like she’s has a strong opinion about any of the number of things I was dealing with, or now or then, but when she does, she’s never wrong. It’s true, it’s true. And so she’ll be like, yep, that’s gonna get you or that person. Nope. I don’t, I don’t think that’s gonna work out. And I’ve, I’ve got a 0% success record of going against her intuition. I just really do and so I think that’s so key, because I think so many of us that are running and doing all the things is like, No, you don’t understand. You don’t understand. I see so much more of it than you do. You know you got it all wrong. You don’t see what I see. And it’s like, no, you don’t see. What you don’t see is the is the truth about that? And I think you’ve done that for me over the years. You’ve trusted my strengths. A couple of my have, yeah. Anything to say about that advice to other muscle units?

Valerie Welch 11:38
If binder strength, I that’s kind of a big idea. I think once I realized that my intuition was pretty strong and pretty accurate. I’m not like, it wasn’t like big things, but just maybe little things that once we started listening to that we it did become better or easier. You are the bit. You’re the dreamer. So once I let you dream and let you have that moment of extroverting, I think that’s what you call it, yeah, once I learned that, oh, he’s just extroverting. Let him this one was

Brandon Welch 12:18
huge. So this is on the topic of strengths, but also like, man, so many times it was weird for me, because 99% of time you’re like, cool, whatever, and then I would have these moments of like, Oh, we’re gonna buy this building, and we’re gonna hire this person, I’m gonna open up another branch, and, you know, probably gonna buy this business too, and hey, I’m gonna buy a helicopter. And it wasn’t ever that you were popping my balloon. But it was like, okay, visionary overload. I need some details. Yeah. And so I think a huge thing for us was learning that balance of she knows when I’m, you know, just BS ing or extroverting or throwing things at the wall, official, you know, essentially seeing what sticks. And that’s those aren’t everything’s I take into the real world. I think she learned to trust that maybe I wasn’t going to act on those right away. No, but remember a lot of conversations, a lot of times it came to hiring people, or came down to, yeah, you know, we moved into a really huge new space, and things where she was totally trusting, but I would just build up this big vision in my mind of how we’re going to make it eight times bigger. And she’s like, Wait, we don’t have this thing done yet. And so if you’re a visionary, that’s cool. You should do that. Yeah, that’s how we’re wired, right? But know that your person needs to know when you’re in visionary mode, something as simple as, hey, I’m just throwing some ideas out. I know it’s not going to make sense. And then also, if you’re the person, if you’re the integrator or the Valerie of the world, probably just give them a little grace and say, Okay, well, I’ll know when this is for real, when we start talking dollars and cents, right, right?

Valerie Welch 13:56
And I think, I think knowing that has really helped me. And then, in the inverse, sometimes I need details, and sometimes I need help with the details, instead of just being big picture. So yeah. And then you, once you know that I’m kind of in that mode, you know, we can kind of figure that out,

Brandon Welch 14:18
yeah, yeah. So set as I would say, set aside time to talk about details, or just know that there’s a time coming to talk about details and then allow the times that freely flow with your, you know, precious, extroverted, you know, entrepreneurial spouse. If you’re both that way, I don’t know how you could. I don’t know if, I don’t know how that works out. I have only been able to do what I’ve done because of Valerie’s structure, and for those moments that she’s like, No wait, hey dude, like, what’s going on here?

So let each other talk. Listen to each other. We’re gonna say that about a million times. Yeah, don’t wait your turn to talk. Listen. That’s cliche advice, but my goodness, and a lot of people who’d be. Be a lot happier married if they did that.

Valerie Welch 15:01
And sometimes it’s just listening and apologizing. Sometimes you just need to, and that’s that’s hard sometimes, but it’s

Brandon Welch 15:10
hard for you. It’s hard for me. She’s never wrong. It’s like, I’ll apologize when I’m I don’t apologize when I’m not wrong. I’m kidding. Oh yeah, um, last so I would say founders, like, I’m talking to my entrepreneur guys, here’s the thing your spouse has done so much to already trust you, and it’s probably felt like you always have that. I think we end up taking that for granted, like you have to realize, even if you’re a dual income household, which for a while we were, but especially when you’re not a dual income household, but that that person has trusted you with reputation, oftentimes with financial things that they may not have full clarity on, just because of the complexity of it, they’ve trusted you with the time and the people you’re around every day. I mean, my goodness, there’s the there’s a world we live in which is one that is always trying to make us, you know, present us with temptation and things like that. They trust all this freedom you have, and we think, Okay, well, that’s how it should be. I’m caveman, going out to kill something and and that’s true, and it’s a blessing to have that trust, that if you’ve built it in your relationship, but, but, but, but sometimes it feels like blind trust, and it’s not, and it doesn’t mean that there’s not fear and there’s not moments of insecurity. So I think you have to, we have to check ourselves, and we have to go, okay, when she’s asking about details, it’s not like this, you know, railroading my idea and man and moments of passion, I remember early on when I just didn’t understand the difference.It felt like you were trying to pop my balloon, right, right?

Valerie Welch 16:46
Can I add something there? Add something I think this might not be an option for everyone, but for me, I like to know the people you’re working with and be involved. I like to know the clients. So whenever I had Anna, our third baby in three years, I got to stay home. I was, I was a teacher before that, and I took over the billing for the company. And so I get to talk and communicate and like, it’s not just, I’m just, like, included, like I have a job, and I get to feel needed and feel like I’m contributing. She’s needed folks. So I’ve really enjoyed that. I’ve enjoyed getting to know the clients and then working with the team and being involved that way. So it kind of makes me feel like more connected to the company, instead of just being a stay at home mom or and I, that’s my greatest job. And I would do that over anything, but being involved is really helpful for me. Yeah,

Brandon Welch 17:52
we have a amazing team. You can hear us talk a lot about that, and they have reciprocated that. And we just have kind of a family mentality here that has allowed for that in a lot of ways over the years. Builds a lot of trust that way. But I would say that’s been key to our hiring process. We do not hire anybody unless Valerie has met them or and vice versa, with Caleb, the other main leader in this company, and

Valerie Welch 18:17
that’s mostly like a his wife. How are we getting along? Like, how are we jiving? We want the person to be happy here at work and at home, so it’s not really like a, I want the control or the like, I don’t trust Brandon. I 100% trust him. It’s just a, let’s get together and see how this goes and make sure it’s a good fit. I think, yeah,

Brandon Welch 18:43
yeah. So that was, we didn’t have that written down. Val made me prepare answers today. I was like, No, we’ll just do it. And she’s like, No, we’re gonna write some stuff down. But that is, that is huge, if okay, I’m talking to my guys who are and gals who are running the show and doing all the things, and you think, Oh, my God, my spouse, beautiful, wonderful. Love them to death, but they would never possibly understand my world. That’s not true. And you can make room, and you should make room, and the gesture and the trust and the connection that comes from that being in it together is irreplaceable. I think in the equation has been for us, but I’ve seen so many other I can think of a couple people who just literally, it’s like, Nope, I do work now, and you do your thing now, and then we’ll meet back at the house at six o’clock, and it’s like, now you’re, I can’t see that ever being you’re missing an opportunity at the very

Valerie Welch 19:41
least. Yeah, that’s just kind of how we’ve always been, like, I started little side hustles,

Brandon Welch 19:46
or you started a side hustle without me, no,

Valerie Welch 19:50
and I’ve included you, and I’ve asked you, like, I’ve wanted your help, and I’ve, you know, how can I make this graphic better? Or so I think we both, we both. Want that, because we both want to be involved with with what we’re doing. We should do an ad for your side hustle. I’m done with it. Oh, she’s done now. Now it’s homeschooling. Homeschool.

Brandon Welch 20:09
That’s her side hustle. Homeschooling is my side hustle. Okay. Gosh, anything you would add couples need to prepare for when barking in a business venture, business venture, I would just say, Man, make that time, try to find ways to do it together. I don’t care if you’re an attorney and your wife doesn’t have anything to do with legal, or you’re you’re a surgeon and your husband doesn’t know anything about that world. Like make, I would say, work, outings, Christmas parties. Make those things priority that you do that

Valerie Welch 20:37
in another I think when you would come home at at a time you would I would say my first question would be, how was your day? Or what’d you do today? And by the time you get home from working 910, hours job, you’re that’s, you don’t talk about that. But I think for a while, whenever I was maybe feeling a little distant, you would look back at your calendar and in Oh yeah, give me the highs and the lows. And that was a good hack that made me feel connected, even though you’re like, I’m burnt out. I don’t even know what I did today.

Brandon Welch 21:11
That’s true, but you experience a lot of days, yeah,

Valerie Welch 21:15
because for a while it was like, I don’t want to talk about work. I’m done. And that really made me feel like I’m not connected or or I don’t need to know. There were

Brandon Welch 21:25
days I would run six meetings. I’m talking heavy consult. We had. We used to have two conference rooms. I would run the show in one, and I would literally like go to the bathroom, and as I’m coming out, they would hand me the sheet for the other and the other and the other people are in the other conference room, and it was back and forth five days a week, and so your fuse is burned. And, man, I know, I know that feeling. I know I’m not saying I’m past that. Like, there’s days, it’s still the case, but you have some sort of record, like, you can try, you can, you can find the high points of your day, and it’s not just good, bad like that, yeah. Like the late comes home

Valerie Welch 22:03
from school or or an activity, and you’re like, how was it in there? They say good, and that’s not what you want. You want to know, yeah, how was it? Um, so, but

Brandon Welch 22:12
maybe ask the a question we’ve built into our house, which I think I actually learned from Megan. Um, was, what’s the high? What’s been the higher? What was the high point of your day and the low point of your day? Yeah, and that gives really good context. So thank you, Megan for that hack, but look back on your calendar. Find something to say. Man, find the find the things. So, all right, next question, we gave that one a lot of stage time. That’s so important, though, what fueled your original vision, and how do you find it when you lose it? How does this person know we lost our vision? Okay, this one’s easy. What fueled the original vision was what we we talked about it a couple Maven or, frankly, Fridays ago at your pissed off moment. I was mad, not in my current situation or financial situation, or anything like that, but my family endured a tremendous amount of pain. I, as somebody who was trying to rise up in my family’s business and really make them proud, endured a tremendous amount of frustration, and I witnessed like my most important and foundational hero, which is my dad and then my mom, with that, just go through so much struggle. And it was a really good idea, and it was just, it was just, there was a few things that came together that made the execution not happen, and one of those was marketing, and that was the thing I was in charge of. And so I just got incredibly pissed off at business owners who would make really good faith investments into things like marketing and not get anything to show for it. And so I wanted that to never happen to anybody again. And so we went on this journey and this thing to help entrepreneurs confidently grow without wasting money on advertising. And we say that every day. Nathan, camera guy, can tell you it’s true in our company, and that’s why we’re here. I can’t say I’ve ever lost that completely, like the intuition and driving the decisions we make are always rooted in that. I’m so thankful that nothing ever distracted me enough to make that not true. But there are times I have not communicated it well. So if we forget it, or if we find ourselves working for some client in the past, or if we find ourselves maybe adding a service thing to our business, and it’s not the right thing to do, like just going back to that vision, it’s like, does it help an entrepreneur confidently grow without wasting money? And if that’s true, we’re onto that. We’re onto something. But when it’s not, we go back to it and we get out of that that can be with team members who have different ideas. We’ve had some wonderful people over the years that just wanted to do a different type of work, and that was probably the biggest threat to my vision. Is there was one point I tried too much to collaborate. With a team on vision and not on execution. You remember that? Yeah, oh, yeah. Were you there? I was, and I thought I was doing the right thing by saying, Guys, help me make help me decide where we’re going next. And that dude, that’s not something your team. That’s between you and God and like your wife of like, what you’re making happen if you don’t have that fuel, if you don’t have that passion, you’re a manager. You may be a really effective manager. You may be really effective systems person, but you are not building something that is new, or that is, that is, gosh, that is going to be attractive to people in its very nature.

Valerie Welch 25:39
I think that time was kind of a shiny object for you. Maybe it kind of felt like it was, it

Brandon Welch 25:45
was burnout that flared into a lot of grabbing at different things for it to be maybe the answer. But then also, I had a I had a really awesome team at the time that I wanted to honor and I wanted to make happy, and I wanted them to have everything I’ve ever wanted. Because I kind of felt like they had given that to me, and

Valerie Welch 26:02
you were probably a little scared to lose them. See,

Brandon Welch 26:05
this is the truth part. This is truth. This is very true. I was extremely scared to lose them, so I think that kind of we didn’t like we lost several team members that period of our time. And I don’t know how it would have played out differently. The conclusion that all of us came to was that they wanted different things than I wanted and but all along, I’d probably let them believe that the things they wanted were my vision and they weren’t. And I think that was just a weird it’s one of those experiences. You don’t realize how you got there, but in hindsight, you can see how to never get there again. And what I would say is just hold on to your freaking vision, and go back to the moment you started your company, and go back to why, and don’t let people trick you into doing things that aren’t they may be very, very good things. There’s There was never a bad idea in that time period that anybody brought us. They’re all good ideas. They just weren’t on mission. And so hold on to your mission. Hold on to your vision. And like, if that drives you, and you’re saying that out loud, often the right people will show up. Nate the camera guy will show up for you, yeah, when you least expect it, yeah. I mean that Nate the camera guy, okay, anything you would add to fueling our original vision.

Valerie Welch 27:19
I mean, have your people you you one of your I forgot to say that, um, so important strengths is finding really good mentors and friends.

Brandon Welch 27:31
Um, so true. I don’t know if it’s a strength. I think it’s ah, I think it’s well, I

Valerie Welch 27:36
think it’s harder than you think, but Providence, yeah, so I think you’ve had those people. You’ve had the people that are twice your age, that have been there, done that, who want the best for you, and yes, you’ve trusted them and been able to talk to them. Because I think sometimes we were, we were scared to talk to people, or, I don’t know, like I

Brandon Welch 27:59
observed my peers doing that, and I one day, I just kind of went, well, that sucks. Like, I’m gonna go up and talk to that guy. One of them was Bill Perkin. He was a big deal, like, for somebody to, like, ask Bill perkin, in my world at that time, he was like, Oh, why is he talking to Bill Perkin? It’s like, because I think the guy’s really cool. Why not? And I just had this dork mentality of like if he doesn’t like me, then I guess he doesn’t like me, but he did, and we’ve been very good friends, and Bill has been a huge mentor of mine. Randy Mays would be the bill perkin, by the way, Randy Mays would be the exact same thing I I don’t know how exactly it happened, but I ended up taking Randy to lunch and asking him if you be my coach. And he gave me a price that I couldn’t afford. And I said, Would you do it for half? And he said, Well, since you asked, I guess it will, and we’ve been really good friends ever since. So I would say, Man, you have got to elect mentors in your life. I don’t care if it’s somebody, hopefully it’s somebody in your local circle, somebody in your church that you see doing something kind of, sort of like you want to do. Find people who have accomplished what you want to accomplish, but they’re ahead of you. And that has been, I should have said that first, like, I should have said

Valerie Welch 29:12
and then I think even friends like Taylor’s been there, he’ll let you extrovert way more than I will. So I think that’s yeah, like, I’m like, Okay, let’s bring let’s bring it down. But they will sit out all night, not really all night. But used

Brandon Welch 29:28
to, used to, used to call the sack of our first little house, yep.

Valerie Welch 29:32
And so I think you need that, like, especially a dreamer. You need those people to just dream with. And I mean, I’m really thankful for these people, because,

Brandon Welch 29:43
yeah, they let us become who we’re trying to become, even when we’re not sure we have it figured out yet. And they just kind of hold up the mirror. And so all these people, your mom, Janet, has been the most key mentor that allowed us to do it like truly, for. A financial standpoint,

Valerie Welch 30:01
yes, you’re ready go for it like, I think, and I think that’s what I can I think, I think she’s the reason why I have been able to do everything I’ve done is because it was like, Well, I don’t know if I’m ready for this. And she’s like, No, you are go. And she’d kind of give you that healthy push.

Brandon Welch 30:18
Yeah, she’s so good at that. When I have Janet’s green light, I could even be going, I’m not sure about that, but I’ll be like, I better do it. Yeah, got Janet’s green light, so especially on things financial and all those things. So,

man, so grateful.

So I will summarize that point by saying, like, go back to the moment that got you mad enough to start this thing, if you lose your vision, and then surround yourself with people that allow you to talk about it and get excited about it and then spend regular time with him. It’s not just call him up when you’re having a rough time. Like sometimes you go, you’re like, Oh man, it’s the last thing I have time for today is to go meet with Randy or bill, but oh my gosh, I’m going to go to it anyway, and you end up coming away from that. It happened to me this

morning, actually. Yeah. Thank you, Bill, yep. Next question, do you want to read it me? Yes.

Valerie Welch 31:13
How was starting this business different than what you thought? What happened faster than you thought? What happened slower? Hmm? What

Brandon Welch 31:23
happened faster for me was clients and work, what would you say? And

Valerie Welch 31:28
you had to do the work for the client. So it was a lot,

Brandon Welch 31:33
yeah, opportunities for us, we’ve been so blessed to just, they just, literally, I had phone calls the date, the first date, like 10 years ago today, like they were, they were ready to go. They’re like, we believe in you and let’s we don’t know what. We don’t know we’re gonna buy from you, but we’ll buy something. Come on over. And it’s like, Mark and Julie. It was Tyler and Ashley. It was Keith. Tim Baer, oh man, Tim and Jennifer bear, just the coolest experience, and

Valerie Welch 32:04
it’s hard to say no too it was like, well, we’ve got all these great opportunities. We can’t say no. They’re all great. Yes. Then it was like, okay, but now we have to figure out, yeah, what we’re gonna do and when, yes, yes. Uh, what

Brandon Welch 32:17
happens slower, still happening pretty slow, is freedom and balance, um, and I did. I’m not gonna say I longed for this, or I was that was never, dude, if you if your vision to start it is to start a business so you can go live a life of freedom, just go work for somebody. I’m serious, like, oh yeah. Go, go sell. Go be a good selling something, or be good at a craft or work remote or something, but like, if that is why you’re leaving your job, or why you’re trying to grow your current business or whatever, that’s a bad motive, in my opinion, I’ve never seen that be sustainable. I’ve, at this point, we’ve consulted 1000s of business owners, one to one or off a stage, or just groups and programs, stuff we’ve been a part of. And anybody who’s going, My why is that I want to travel the world and do this? It’s like, yeah, and it’s like, I’m sure that’s your why, and that’s fine. We all want that. And Valerie and I’ve been blessed enough to be able to start enjoying some of those things, yeah,

Valerie Welch 33:21
but even when we’re enjoying those things, we’re still you still take calls you Oh, yeah, and that’s when your work is your Yes. What do you say here? Your work is your play. Your work is your play. Like it doesn’t matter you, you end up. You want to take that call. You want to talk to those people because they’re your friends, like all of your clients are Yes, and your employees like, it’s never a, oh, I’ve got to go work. It’s but yes, we there’s never a time when your phone isn’t on, yeah, or

Brandon Welch 33:53
I’m not available. It’s not it’s not that we can’t create healthy boundaries, because we do. There are times I look at it, I go, not gonna answer that right now, that can wait. It’s a special moment, and probably that’s most of the time now. But it’s, it’s not like, ooh, don’t bother me. It’s 5:01, like, you’re never going to have if you’re building a business of passion and purpose. I don’t think you’re ever going to have that. I just You can now. Doesn’t mean you can’t make money otherwise, doesn’t mean you can’t invest passively into businesses and be just a, you know, not the leader, but when you’re the leader, dude, like, until you are no longer the leader, you are not off. And even if you are incredibly gifted at meditation or whatever, and you get away from it for hours or days or even a week, you’re just, it’s not ever this thing. And I think, I mean, I’m preaching to the choir. Did anybody listening right now, just but to anybody who’s young, I’m thinking to myself, 10 years ago, I never really had that ambition. No, I had this ambition, and it’s in the first page of our book. The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and. His leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. That’s my favorite line. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him, he’s always doing both, and it’s a weird thought, but if you’re doing something that is for a bigger cause, I think that is certainly what fueled us. And if you’re doing something for a bigger outcome, for somebody, you’re trying to make a life better, which for us, it’s entrepreneurs and our team like, you know, likewise, I don’t think it ever becomes work, right? Still, to protect the time and all that stuff, and

Valerie Welch 35:45
this journey is just way different than what I grew up with and what I knew. So it is still a little bit, yeah, my, my mom and dad worked them eight to five, or really eight to six or seven, but, um, it was very consistent, very hard. But, yeah, yeah. And so it’s just it is very different, and I’m still learning and processing and yes, um, and we, we are really blessed, so it’s always been a good thing. It’s just different,

Brandon Welch 36:13
even when you have an awesome team, and I’m confident we have the best in the world who want that life for us and each other. We support each other in that who want us to be autonomous and all that stuff, you’re just never totally off. And that’s, yeah, that’s not an expectation that I think is realistic. So anything else you would add to what was different?

Valerie Welch 36:40
I mean, I’m sure there are

Brandon Welch 36:42
you didn’t expect me to lose all my hair by now. Yeah, I’m not sure. What have you learned about taking risk and being comfortable with the moves we’ve made?

Valerie Welch 36:56
Um, taking risk. I mean, I feel like we both kind of thrive off of taking risk, so I think that kind of fuels both me and you. So I don’t know if it’s ever comfortable, but it’s Yeah.

Brandon Welch 37:24
One of my friend, Marcus, good friend of mine, said this probably better than I’ve ever heard it said. He said, like, is actually in a different context. But he was saying, you know, when you start your business, did that feel uncomfortable? It’s like, hell yeah, it felt uncomfortable. It’s like he’s asking, um, you know, did you wonder if you’re going to make it all this stuff? Of course, right? He’s like, that’s called risk. And it doesn’t matter what level you’re at. If you don’t feel that feeling a little bit you’re not growing, that’s okay. Maybe you don’t want to grow, but if you want to grow, that feeling has to be there. My flight instructor, Earl, I was really wanting to, you know, pursue my license, probably faster than I should have at one point. And he goes, dude, nothing grows without stress and restraint. He goes, anything in nature that grows too fast. What do we call that cancer? Oh, anything

in nature that grows faster than it should is called cancer. Yeah, that’s the only thing that grows faster than it should. And so, like, risk, like, I’ve, I think, I think we all get here, like, we just, it’s not that we ever get immune to it. It’s that we go, okay, if it’s the right to have a risk, and if I’ve stopped and I’ve gotten counsel, and if I’ve, you know, slept a reasonable amount of time on this, sometimes you just got to do it. The risk isn’t going to go away. And if it does, Your opportunity is probably gone. On the other side of that. This is why people that lose the lot, or, sorry, win the lottery, end up losing everything, and they never actually make an impact. So it can become more calculated, the more wise you get. Hopefully that’s happening. Good decisions come from bad experiences, right? But to get to the next level, whether it’s 10 million or $10 you’re gonna have to be you have no risk of a certain amount of resources and security if you’re gonna gain, yeah,

Valerie Welch 39:18
I think initially, especially when we take a big, bigger risk, I I really struggle, and then I breathe a minute, and I know it’s gonna be okay. But I think out of the two of us, you take the risk, and I

Brandon Welch 39:33
don’t do that. Don’t put that on me. No, well,

I mean, we take it, we take the plunge. But it’s like, I but even with scheduling or routines like anytime something changes, I kind of struggle initially, and then I acclimate. But I think so I risk is scary. Yeah,

with that, Dave Ramsey, the book’s sitting on the floor here, I would reach down, but you’d see. My bald head. We’ve got this camera positioned just right enough to where got the illusion. We read that book really early on. And one of the biggest things that I learned from that is don’t risk what you’re not willing to lose, right? And so the risks we’ve taken have been scary, and they could have ended badly, but they would have never. I can’t think of a risk we’ve taken that would have ever put us under because we’re very adverse to debt, would have ever taken us to a level that we couldn’t have overcome, right? They’ve been hard, maybe disappointing, but don’t risk what you’re

Valerie Welch 40:35
not willing to sometimes you have to remind me of that. I think I’m like, oh, and then,

Brandon Welch 40:39
yeah, that always, I’m always thinking, it’s like a jiu jitsu I don’t know anything about that, except for, like, I know that you’re it’s always thinking about how you’re going to get out of a certain situation, yeah, and like flying, the analogy I have is we always have a path out if we fly that helicopter in somewhere we don’t ever land until we know what our path out is. And hopefully we have two or three, right. There you go. Mr. Flying last night today. Okay, hopefully you’re having fun. I’m having so much fun. We should do this more often. We’re going to cut this episode short. We want to make this into two episodes. So if you have any questions between now and the next episode, please send them to Maven Monday at frankandmaven.com while you’re there, sign up for the Maven Monday newsletter. We have all kinds of this stuff that we talk about with other business owners, and there’s lots of goodies in there to help you start your week with confidence. But until the next episode, we will be here every Monday answering your real life marketing questions so you can grow your business, eliminate waste in advertising and achieve the big dream. Because marketers who can’t teach you why our

Valerie Welch 41:40
just a fancy lie. Have a great week.