Merry Christmas!—2020 Year in Review Part 1

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Merry Christmas Week! We sincerely hope you enjoy your holiday and some time to reflect back on one roller coaster year!

This week’s podcast we bring back the first nine guests for each podcast to have them remind us about what success means to them. Each guest and their episode is listed and linked below.

Tom DuFore, Jr. – How to Survive in an Ultra Competitive Industry for 48 Years
Melissa Rulli – How to go from Restaurateur, to Roofer, to Property Manager, to Franchisor
Chris Baker – How to Lose Big and Keep Your Sanity!
Bob Steinhardt, CPA – Avoiding IRS Red Flags
John Rayyan – Turning Lemons into Lemonade
Dennis McKinley – How to Make Your Vision a Reality
David Leopold – How Baseball Cards Led to the NBA and a Harvard MBA
Jeremy Pourbaix – Why You Should Buy Your Kid a Franchise
Pete Dosik, Esq. – Why You Should Never Be a Houseboat

Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team:

Hey everybody. Before we get started on today’s podcast, we wanted to invite you to take a quick, short survey to help us make the podcast even better for 2021. The survey, I promise, is super simple, and it’s only going to take you about three minutes to complete. And at the end of the survey, if you decide to put your email in, you’ll be entered in for a chance to win an Amazon gift card.

Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team:

So one other thing, the survey is only going to be live until about, I think it’s January 11th is the date. So speak now or forever hold your peace on giving us feedback on how you want the podcast to go in 2021 and beyond. The survey link is in the show notes, right at the top. We’re going to leave it right there. Just click on that, enter it. Again, takes you about three minutes. We so greatly appreciate it. And now time for the podcast.

Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team:

You’ve worked hard to build your business and now it’s time to grow. Welcome to the Multiply Your Success podcast. I’m your host, Tom DuFore, CEO of Big Sky Franchise Team, and a serial entrepreneur. And today we have a wonderful episode for you, and it is an end-of-year recap for 2020. I can’t believe we’re already at the end of the year, it’s been an incredible ride. I’m sure you’re all thinking that as well as you’re reflecting back here with the holidays forthcoming and 2021 fast approaching.

Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team:

And for a close out of the year, we’re going to have a few episodes here to recap all of the great advice and information shared to us by our guests. And what better way to do that than to tie it in with the name of the show, Multiply Your Success. So we have aggregated all of our guests when we asked the question to them, what does success mean to you? We took all of those questions or all of their answers, I should say, and put that together in a flow. So here we’ll have the first nine guests of the year and what their responses were. So we’ll give a little intro of each guest as they come along and we’ll go through that.

Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team:

So the first guest of the entire podcast, I was so fortunate and happy to have was my father, Tom DuFore Jr. And I was so thankful to have him on the show. It launched, if you recall, right on Father’s Day or the week of Father’s Day. And so this was his response when we asked him what success means to him.

Tom DuFore, JR.:

To me, success to me is if I have just sold an automobile, my customer’s happy, and I see them a year later at a grocery store, or maybe I’m out having a drink and they come up to me and go, “Hey, Tom, that’s really a nice car you sold me. Thanks for the great deal.” That’s success to me. That’s what I like. And I just… That’s success to me.

Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team:

Well, that was a great feedback. I love that one from my dad. And then we went straight into the next episode with Melissa Rulli. If you recall, she’s with Eye on Your Home. And she is a second home property management owner. She owns a franchise that helps companies, or excuse me, folks with second homes, she does property management for them. And she had a great perspective on what success meant to her. So here is Melissa.

Melissa Rulli, Eye on Your Home:

My version of success is I think a little different sometimes than other people I see out there in the business world. I’m not striving for any number, any financial number, any franchises sold number. That honestly doesn’t matter to me. I am successful. I’ve always been successful. I’m very proud of who I am and how hard I work and getting up every day and doing what I love. I love what I do. But I love myself. I love my family. I like my hobby. I play really hard, as hard as I work. Success to me is being able to have a career and a company that allows me all the flexibility I want.

Melissa Rulli, Eye on Your Home:

I literally start my day when I want. Obviously, I have a really responsible routine, but I’m a nine-to-five kind of girl, maybe nine-to-three. It depends. I am a Monday through Friday person. I will not be doing any business tomorrow or Sunday, unless there was an emergency. And guess what? My company is not geared towards emergencies. That’s why I have no tenants. Nobody knows what happens in pretty much all my homes most of the time. Occasionally, we’ve got some serious sensors that might alert us to something. But for the most part, I only address serious emergencies on my time that I basically have closed for business.

Melissa Rulli, Eye on Your Home:

Success for me is about enjoying my life. For me, it’s about, I think I have to throw in there, I learned a long time ago and I see a lot of people not do that and I think it’s very unhealthy. I think taking care of myself and nurturing myself is critical. Whether that be me going on a yoga retreat for a week or more to just having a bath for a half an hour, to getting a full eight hours of sleep and eating healthy. I’m that woman. Those things are crucial for me. Spending time with my family.

Melissa Rulli, Eye on Your Home:

I want to be remembered for someone who was present in all the people around me’s lives, as well as being of course, very hardworking and driven to making this successful. But I can’t be that one if I don’t nurture myself. And unfortunately, I think a lot of people deplete their emotional and physical bank account I refer to and they forget to keep adding deposits in. So the bottom line is I could sell 50 franchises by now, but would I be as physically fit and healthy and happy and present for the people that love me? No. So success for me is getting up every day and being the best me I can. And then let the success of, if you want to label it, with the business evolve from that.

Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team:

And if you remember, after Melissa came Chris Baker, who’s currently with Franchise Flippers. And if you recall, he’s the one who had a massive loss in one of his businesses, big time loss, and turned that around. So he had huge successful wins and some big losses along the way, and just has an awesome outlook on life and business. And here’s what success meant to him.

Chris Baker, Franchise Flipper:

Oh Tom, what a great question. I mean the first thing success to me is that at about 2:00 today, my daughter will be dropping off my grandson and I get to spend a couple of hours with him goofing off during the middle of the day. And So I would say that success to me as I am mid-fifties now, success is the ability to manage your own time. It’s not always easy. I couldn’t do it in my 30s when we were growing businesses. But now on reflection, I could have done a better job managing my time. So success is the ability to be where I need to be when I need to be there now. And take a couple of hours off during the day and let works lie for a while while I hang out with my little guy. Success is looking around me at the people we’ve inspired or motivated to do their own thing.

Chris Baker, Franchise Flipper:

I look at the businesses around Fort Collins now that we were part of starting. And that brings me joy, just seeing that those folks are doing well. And so I think that’s it. I think the freedom and flexibility that comes from having made financial success and the fact that we’ve mentored and motivated others to do the same. It’s never been about the money, Tom, I can with absolute clarity, say that I never did this to make money. I did this because my canvas is business. I’m not a great artist, but I get to paint the most incredible artwork on a canvas of business. And so my passion and my hobby, if you like, has been growing things. And so success for me is having really never worked a day in my life. Just being able to paint on a canvas a business, that’s success.

Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team:

Thank you, Chris. That’s just an awesome explanation of what success means. I appreciate that. And our next guest, our next episode was Bob Steinhard. He’s a CPA and a partner with one of the largest CPA and accounting companies in the country. And here’s what he had to say about what success means to him.

Bob Steinhard, CPA, Carr, Riggs and Ingram:

I have three little girls. So success means being able to make sure that they are not wanting for anything and that if, obviously I’m not trying to spoil the heck out of them, but I want to make sure that they really, they don’t have to worry. I love what I do, but what I do is for all of them. It’s for my kids and my wife and my family. I want to make sure that… So success is growing my practice to a point where I have good people working below me and with me that I can enjoy my family. I want to work to live, not live to work. I mean, again, I love what I do and I work a lot, but I still want to make sure that I’m taking the time to be there for my family.

Bob Steinhard, CPA, Carr, Riggs and Ingram:

And so to me, success is just feeling comfortable enough with my situation that I can enjoy my family. I think that would probably be what I would regard as success. Listen, would it be great to have millions of dollars in the bank? Sure. But to me, it’s not necessarily all about that. And it’s funny, I say that, because I have a lot of high net worth clients who have lots of money in the bank. But you can see, just because they have a lot of money in the bank, doesn’t mean they’re happy. Happiness is being able to enjoy the little things in life. And being with my family is one of them, even if it just means taking a walk when I get home from the office with all of them. Getting out in the neighborhood, being with friends. But to me, success and work are probably, they’re on two different paths. It’s not necessarily, one leads to the other, but it’s really they’re separate in that regard.

Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team:

Our next guest was John Rayyan who runs Always Direct, a direct mailing company. He also has the Always Direct podcast and he also owns Papa Ray’s Pizza, which is a pizza franchise and has been growing in the Midwest. And listen intently here for John. Because it goes real quick. So you might want to arrow back a couple of times when you’re listening to this. But he has a great explanation of what success means to him.

John Rayyan, Always Direct:

So what’s the definition of success is the… The definition of success is the continuous attainment of a goal that you have set consciously. So if you can create a goal and achieve it, that is success. When you want something, you create a plan, you achieve. And you continue to do that in different areas of your life over your entire life, you will always be successful.

Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team:

Dennis McKinley is our next guest on the episode and Dennis is a businessman and entrepreneur extraordinaire. He owns all kinds of businesses. He owns several franchise companies from Crew Hookah Lounge to The Original Hot Dog Factory that are now growing across the country in addition to his other business interests and enterprises, he’s involved with. Fantastic. Here’s what he had to say about what success means to him.

Dennis McKinley, The Original Hot Dog Factory:

I think at the end of the day, it’s about the ability to help other people. Not only help people realize their dreams, but your team, your employees, your community. You can make all the money in the world, but if you don’t do anything to help anybody else, then what’s the point of having any cash. And in the capitalist society we live in, cash, of course, is the ultimate measure of success. But you’ve got to help your team. Got to help your employees. Got to help your community. And community is a wide range of what you’re involved in. It could be civic, it could be political, it could be religious. But those are things that you’ve got to have.

Dennis McKinley, The Original Hot Dog Factory:

And you’ve got to do it on a high level if you really want to be called successful. Otherwise, you’re just considered greedy and who wants to be called that? So I always believe that God helps those who help themselves, but he also helps those who help other people. And that’s really the model that we live by, our franchisee’s in my firm at Detroit Equities. Every franchise partner that we have, every vendor partner that we have, we’re thankful for. And we do it for them, for their families, for our families. But also for our community.

Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team:

So David Leopold is our next guest that came on to the Multiply Your Success podcast here. And David, if you recall, runs Criterium Engineers. And he’s the one who actually had a chance and an opportunity to work at the NBA. And his podcast was how he worked at the NBA and ended up with a Harvard MBA and now running an engineering company. Pretty incredible story. And here’s what success means to him.

David Leopold, Criterium Engineers:

I’ve heard people ask questions in some theme of, would you consider your success luck or would you consider your success hard work? How’d you get there? And I know it may sound like a little bit of a cop out, but I think it’s a mix of both in that you make your own luck. And if you don’t put yourself out there and you don’t put the effort in to make something happen, then the luck won’t be there. And certainly there are things that are just incredible coincidences that somehow things just fall into place. But for the most part, you’ve got to work really hard to get to that place where the luck can happen. Life inevitably has a set of trade-offs. That’s the nature of our existence. And so success to me is being comfortable with the trade-offs you inevitably have to make. Because once you gain that comfort level, you have made your own success.

Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team:

Jeremy Pourbaix was our next guest and he was the franchisee, he was a multiunit franchisee and an area developer franchisee that built and sold the business and is now a partner with one of our previous guests, Chris Baker, in the Franchise Flippers company. And here’s what success means to him.

Jeremy Pourbaix, Franchise Flippers:

I think it’s twofold for me. One is enjoying the journey and just doing something that I love with people that I love and care for and to have fun together. And of course, as we talked about earlier, not every day is a fun day. It’s not all fun. But a lot of times, it’s challenging and you get to overcome that challenge and achieve and accomplish something with other people or for other people. And that brings a lot of satisfaction. And so enjoying the journey to me is part of what makes up success. And then the other thing is to give more than I get. And so with employees, with colleagues, with customers, with friends, with family, I think that true success is largely found in being able to give more than I take. And not saying I do that perfectly, or that happens every day, but that’s how I define it. That’s what I aim for.

Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team:

And the last guest for today’s episode that we’re going to hear about what success means to him is Pete Dosik with Shipe Dosik Law. And he is a lawyer and franchise attorney. And he’s the one who told us about houseboats. How you don’t want to ever buy a houseboat. I always thought that was just clever and funny, but memorable. So if you recall the houseboat episode, if you don’t, go back and listen to Pete Dosik’s interview, but here is what success means to Pete Dosik.

Pete Dosik, Esq., Shipe Dosik Law, LLC:

So I’m turning turning 50 this year. I still don’t know exactly what success means to me. I do know at the end of the day, your relationships, your family, your friends, those are the things that are important, helping other people. Those are things that are important. And you can’t really measure those. You can measure your income, you can measure wealth, those things. You can’t measure how good you are or how happy you are with other people. So I don’t know what success means exactly. Hopefully, someday I’ll figure it out. But I guess it’s always evolving and changing. The things that I want at this point in my life are a bit different from where I was years ago. But I’m very happy with the way things have been going. And I’m very grateful for all the opportunities I’ve been able to have and where I’ve been able to get to.

Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team:

Well, wasn’t that awesome? Having all of those summaries put together of what success means to each of our guests. I thought it was awesome. I love listening to it and because all of them were so fantastic, we’re going to bypass the three key takeaways for this week. But we are going to talk about the win-win. So now it’s time for today’s win-win. And today’s win-win is to please request again for you to fill out our survey. We’d love your feedback. So please click in the show notes here as the episode’s ending, go ahead and click, fill out the survey. We’d love feedback, any information from you on how we can make this better and bring you information and content that is important and of interest to you. And so that’s the episode, folks. Please enjoy the holiday, Merry Christmas. It’s Christmas week here. So enjoy the holiday and we will see you back here next week.

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