Welcome back. This is
the 2nd recap of the 1st season of
the default profitable podcast.
We did the
prior recap was covering the the lessons of
failure, financial literacy, and learning.
Today, we're gonna hear people talking about pivoting
their business plan,
how now is the time to get started,
and and that business success is a journey,
not a destination. So let let's start with
the beginning, you know, pivoting.
So, Eddie Rangel from Adelante Schools,
episode
49, talks about
how he had great plans, and the charter
school was gonna be this, and it was
gonna be that. And and they really knew
what they were gonna do, and then
they started, and they had a pandemic, and
they had to run a school without meeting
any of the people.
And so, you know, listening to Eddie talk
really gives you a lesson about
if you have a goal
that's set in stone, you can have a
path that's drawn in pencil, and you can
learn to adjust to get there, whatever it
takes. So here's Eddie.
And sometimes that pivot is gonna be in
the wrong direction, and then you pivot again.
And so I I think
that all leads to, you know,
the beauty of autonomy.
Well, that's
and so now that's another
consistent
message
from business owners
is that almost nobody
delivers
what their initial plan said they would deliver.
Alright. That's a that's a good episode.
Next is Tommy Reddicks. Now Tommy, you know,
we talked about him back in failure on
the first recap of the of the first
season, but in this clip,
Tommy's gonna talk about his evolution as a
leader.
Right? Most people think
that what they did to become successful is
what they're always going to do.
And what Tommy talks about is how his
relationship with both students, the school, the staff,
and himself has changed over time, and how
he's had to learn and grow as a
leader. So listen to Tommy talk about his
evolution as a leader.
It actually frees you up because the job
of getting down the road is done for
you. Now how you travel down that road,
you get to have some flexibility on, but
we know that we're tracking the right way,
that we've got a curricular approach that's gonna
be paced the right way.
So it forced us to go back to
a more tried and true old school approach.
So when you when you think about your
role
as a as a leader in the school,
you know, when when we talk to business
owners, we talk about, you know, you gotta
be able to recruit
new people. You have to be able to
solve your vision to existing employees.
You gotta train, you gotta supervise, and then
you gotta coach.
Right?
What what is your you know, of those
four things, what do you think you spend
the most time
doing as a leader?
Well, there's there's multiple facets of of leadership.
And so I would say early on as
a school leader,
my direct reports were teachers.
And so in that role, you're a coach,
and and the coaching is is direct.
So what you're observing, you need to
do a really good job of providing observation,
based feedback and data driven feedback to improve
the system.
The second thing,
early on that
we realized was was super important is you
can't coach if you don't have a model.
So while we may have a curriculum for
language arts, we've got a curriculum for math,
we've got a curriculum for science, what's our
overarching model that brings all that together? How
do we behave? How do we operate as
a system? So by the 3rd or 4th
year of operation,
we started putting that model together. I wanted
to know who we are, like, what was
the Paramount School's playbook?
And
we worked on that for a couple of
years. We brought in an outside consultant to
walk through our processes and make sure that
from an unbiased lens, we were getting a
really accurate
recording of
what we did that worked in a way
that we could then
leverage that model in in coaching in future
schools. So,
you know, coaching at first, but then, you
know, I moved from
school leader to executive director and put a
school leader underneath me. And
then that's more,
you know, observation, evaluative,
training a new leader, coaching a new leader
to lead. So it's a different relationship at
that point because you're looking at fidelity of
systems and,
making sure the direct report relationship is based
on strong outcomes and letting the data do
the talking and the model do the walking
at that point and have since moved up
to where we've got, you know, a robust
central office team supporting 250 employees in 6
schools.
And, you know, my relationship with teachers, unfortunately,
is very minimal
because, you know, our central office has 30
employees, and my direct reports within that central
office are really important in making sure that,
you know, we're we're
goals driven and and outcomes oriented.
There you go.
So now we have, you know, some pivoting,
some learning. We've gotta pay attention to what
the market's telling us. We gotta pay attention
to what our people are telling us.
And and then we have Stephanie Daley,
episode 14, send a friend lasagna. Now I've
known Stephanie for a lot of years. She's
had a lot of different jobs, and she's
always been passionate about what she's doing. But
listening to her talk about the importance
of now being the time, it's not too
late, it's never too late, pick a direction
and go go go
is is really kinda
well,
it's good message for all of us. It's
a good message for me. It's something that
I needed to hear. So listen to Stephanie
Daley talk about, you know, now is the
time.
I think people get overwhelmed
with the amount of stuff
that they need to know to start.
Yeah.
And even
hearing you talk, it's like all this stuff.
And then we had
the complication of, oh, by the way, we've
got a pandemic.
Right.
Right. So, I mean, I I've
been, you know,
a a solo entrepreneur with social media before,
so I know I needed to register with,
like, you know, the state, and I knew
I need to register with the federal government
and all that stuff.
And
having
so I have an employee now, an actual
employee,
which was a very different
very different experience for me. I had to
hire a payroll company and, you know, registering
with the state of Indiana about taxes and
all those things. So,
I would tell anybody that was thinking about
starting their own business
to get an accountant
and get a lawyer and
that and and just pay them. And it's
really hard for,
somebody, you know, because I'm a cash business.
I've never taken any loans.
You know, some people took PPE loans during
the pandemic. I did not because I thought
I was taking away from somebody else.
I was stupid.
But, you know, I'm I'm still a cash
business and this will 4 year it'll be
my 4th anniversary in November.
So,
but paying people for things and kinda letting
go of that
the money and the control.
Because I was doing all of this for
my by myself
for 3 years,
making,
delivering
all of it. So, yeah,
get an attorney
and get a pair
and get a payroll person.
Yeah. Yeah.
Mhmm.
Great. And I think that's a a valuable
message as a
as an individual business owner, as an aspiring
business owner, understanding that it's not too late,
it's never too late, it's time to jump
in, get going, and do the stuff
is is really a great message,
which gets us to our final
message.
And that's, you know, from Steve Salwa and
Andrew Elsner.
So it's the business is a journey.
It it it doesn't work in a straight
line. It it doesn't happen as quickly or
as slowly as you expect it to, but
you gotta strap in and be ready. So
the first clip is gonna be Steve Salwa
saying, hey, listen. This is a journey. It's
gonna be tough. You gotta strap in. You
gotta get you gotta get ready. Right? Life's
tough. Get a helmet.
So as we as we listen to this,
I want you to to listen to Steve
talk about a company that he has run
for 30 years
and and how it's gone.
If 2023
Steve Salwa could sit down the night before
you buy the business
with 2,000 Steve Salwa,
what's what's the thing that 2023 Steve would
tell 2000 Steve to focus on first?
Focus. Well, I don't know if there'd be
a focus as much
as just understanding
when you're starting, you better buckle up. It's
I mean, it's a it's a bumpy ride
when you get started.
You better be able to lose yourself in
the business a little bit and have people
that are around you that understand that,
because those those initial years are
are really important,
as far as building a foundation.
And
and then look for opportunities outside of that.
That's a great message.
And then our final our final clip to
recap season 1,
of the default profitable podcast
is Andrew Elsner talking about
success
is something that you get a one day
contract on.
And regardless of how yesterday went, today is
different, and you gotta get back to work
and you gotta do it again.
You know, he's he's been pretty successful. You
listen to his episode, and you're you're gonna
hear the largest business owner I interviewed.
You listen to Steve Sawah, you're gonna hear
the longest tenured business owner I interviewed.
And both of them came out with the
message that, hey. This is a journey.
So listen to Andrew talk about how, you
know, it's a it's a journey. You're gonna
have to strap in.
Things are always gonna change,
but you only get one day at a
time.
I'm assuming
with 700 people in in offices around the
country
that you're always looking for the people that
can take you to that next level.
Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. So the our website is
awesome. We're active on LinkedIn. We have a
great marketing team, great recruiting team.
So everything from developers, data scientists, salespeople,
support people, accounting, finance. There's there's there's stuff
for a lot of different people. So Alright.
Any, any final message for that that first
time entrepreneur who's just
who who's getting ready to tell his wife
with 3 kids and Yeah. Pregnant?
Yeah. And I I I always just say,
like, be resourceful, be addicted, be obsessed. I
mean,
it's when you don't stop and think about
all the bad things, just plan the map
forward. It's a long journey. I mean, it's
a long journey. So and it never stops.
That's the beauty of business.
Every day, you're on one day contracts every
day. So That is beautiful.
Yeah. Yep.
Alright.
Well, that's the end of the second recap
for the 1st season of default profitable.
You know, there's there's been a lot of
lessons, 51
different business owners
sharing what it is they've learned
while owning their business, while getting it started,
while running it, while helping their people grow,
and every single episode
had great lessons.
You know, lessons about failure, lessons about financial
literacy, lessons about continuing to learn, lessons about
pivoting when you think you have a great
plan and it just doesn't work, understanding that
the best time is right now,
and then remembering
that it's a journey. You know, business ownership
is a journey. I don't think there's anything
more American
than starting, owning, running a business,
you know, hiring people,
training them so that they can go start
a business. I think it's it's great. I
love the clients I work with. I love
the people that I spend my days with,
and and hopefully, you're getting some value out
of this. We'll come back next year
in 2024
with a with another set of 50 episodes
for season 2, and we'll continue to learn
from business owners in the Indianapolis area about
what it takes to start, run, and grow
a business.
Until then,
keep working,
stay profitable,
and enjoy.
That's it.
See you in January.