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And the question I get asked most
is if you had it to do over

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again, what would you do differently? And to be honest, you know,

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it's I want to spend twenty one
years as a CEO building billion dollar

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businesses for other people. I would
have started my own empire earlier. And

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I do think the American dream,
call it the entrepreneurial spirit far from dead.

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You know, based on my activities
in the last couple of years,

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there's about to be a resurgence I
think in small business and small business becoming

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bigger business. You were listening to
Carrie Let'sa's Financial Survival Network where you get

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00:00:36,520 --> 00:00:42,119
valuable information you just can't find anywhere
else to thrive in today's trying times.

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00:00:42,359 --> 00:00:48,920
You need the Financial Survival Network now
more than ever. Go to Financial Survivalnetwork

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00:00:48,960 --> 00:00:55,679
dot com and get your free newsletter
and gift. Financial Survival Network now more

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00:00:55,759 --> 00:01:03,280
than ever. Welcome you are listening
and watching the Financial Survival Network. I'm

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00:01:03,319 --> 00:01:07,680
your host, Cherry Lutz. Hey, we're just about the at the end

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of October, and hey, so
far no crashes. But person you're about

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to hear from isn't here to talk
about crashes. No, he's talking about

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building your billion dollar dream and author
and also returning guest author of new book

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Empire Builder, The Road to a
Billion and his name. Your name is

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Adam Coffee, and your book is
officially an Amazon bestseller. The only place

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where it's not a bestseller now,
I think is in Antarctica, Oceania.

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It's a bestseller Asia, Europe,
South America, North America, all these

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places. So it's a book you
definitely want to get, Adam. It's

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great to have you back on.
So according to your book, the American

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dream is not yet dead. It
is not Jerry and glad to be back.

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Thank you for having me back.
Hello to all your listeners out there.

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I would tell you a matter of
fact, you know, the question

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I probably get asked the most.
I spent twenty one years as a CEO

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building building three companies for nine different
private equity firms, and the question I

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get asked most is if you had
it to do over again, what would

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you do differently? And to be
honest, you know it's I want to

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have spent twenty one years as a
CEO building billion dollar businesses for other people,

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I would have started my own empire
earlier. And I do think the

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American dream. Call it the entrepreneurial
spirit. Far from dead. You know,

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based on my activities the last couple
of years, there's about to be

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a resurgence I think in small business
and small business becoming bigger business, which

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is really what the focus of my
book was about. All right, So

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how do you take a small business
and turn it into a billion dollar money

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maker? Well, let me start
with a story if you don't mind.

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You know, when, uh,
not too long ago, a billionaire and

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I have an NDA in place,
so I can't disclose the name, but

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I said, you know, please
come see me in Granti's, Connecticut.

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I'm having a problem with a company
I own, and I like to talk

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to you about fixing it. Giant
company. Everybody in America would know the

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name of this company, and it's
kind of lost its way over time.

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And you know, he's talking to
me about how do you fix this this

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this large business, and and you
know, we've had three CEOs come in

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fail and it's like, you know, what, what would you do differently?

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And and to answer your question,
I'm getting there in a roundabout way.

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But the answer is, I don't
fix the big company. I go

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back to the unit level economics.
I don't need to fix six thousand service

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vehicles, you know, and hunger. I got to fix one truck,

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one service call, one service event. And when I focus on the unit

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level economics of this business, in
essence, I'm fixing this global behemoth.

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And one of the things I noticed, Carrie was that you know, when

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the statistics are just scary and shocking. If you go to SBA dot gov,

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you know you and you find out
about small business thirty three million small

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businesses in America today, only seven
percent get to a million dollars of revenue,

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only forty percent are profitable, more
than half will go bankrupt over the

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next five years. Why can't anybody
seem to get it right? And the

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more I looked into that as a
guy who's bought fifty eight businesses, to

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me, it all comes down to
unit level economics. If you know,

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in order to build a perfect big
company, you have to start by building

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a perfect small company. And if
you can get then perfect business dialed in

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between one hundred thousand in revenue and
a million in revenue, that I guarantee

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you what you have is a scalable
business that with some tools that I talk

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about and teach you can get to
that elusive billion dollar mark. But it

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starts by building the perfect small business. Unit level economics are where most people

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go astray, and tons of entrepreneurs
tell me, you know, Adam,

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I'll worry about how to get profitable
when I get bigger, and I tell

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them wrong answerabout to get profitable when
you're small, because otherwise you waste time.

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And that's the white thing we can't
buy. So true, and one

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of the things that I do in
my spare time, I was a mentor

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for Service Corps Retired Executives SCORE,
and I built a number of businesses,

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and I specialize in this thing called
the ninety day turnaround guarantee, the day

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turnaround, because at this point in
life, having done it with myself,

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I can walk into virtually any business
that's not making money, that's losing money,

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or that isn't profitable enough, and
I could spend literally an hour there

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and I can turn that company around
to ninety days. How because I've done

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it myself. Because all the stupid
things I've done, I can see in

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the others and more stupid things that
I've never even thought of. As we

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get older, you know, old
guys rule, you know, because we

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learn, we learned from having already
made all these mistakes, you know,

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for for sure, And I think
about, you know that, what you

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just said, the ninety day turnaround. So I still look under the hood

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of hundreds of companies a year,
and I'm doing that doing operating partner work,

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you know, for pe firms,
or I'm doing it as a coach

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mentor to CEOs and founders who are
scaling their businesses and trying to build them.

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And I apply this thing I call
the thirty twenty ten rule. And

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you know, service businesses. Not
to sound sexist, ladies, but you

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know, my world, my wheelhouse
is guys trucks broken stuff, guys trucks

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building things, you know, guys
trucks doing something at a location. And

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I look at those businesses and it's
like, you know, you got to

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turn thirty plus percent minimum at the
gross profit line. You got to have

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SG and A at lower than twenty
percent, and you have to have a

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minimum a dime amount of dollar net
profit at the bottom. And if you're

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not in that thirty twenty ten wheelhouse, just by looking at one financial statement,

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I know where to focus my efforts. You know, if I'm under

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thirty percent gross margin, I got
to work on unit level economics, not

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charging enough, my service costs too
much if I'm if I'm over twenty percent

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SG and a I'm spending too much
money on the back office, and all

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of these things I think we learn
over time. Help us now just quickly

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get in evaluate a business, and
once we know where it's broken, we

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know where to fix. Yeah,
and usually it's a combination of those three

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things for sure. You know,
sometimes there are costs are just too damn

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high, right yeah. And that
could be the cost of goods, cost

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of service is provided. It could
be they got too many people working there,

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you know, could be a toxic
employee, that's uh the cause of

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it. There's so many potential causes. But like you said, you own

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in immediately and you know exactly where
to look, and then the and then

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it just becomes a question of implementing
solutions, right. Yeah. It's you

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know, strategic based, you know, initiative strategical, and you know strategic

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planning, you know management systems,
you know systematizing using KPIs. I mean

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all these things. You know,
I learned this stuff, you know,

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back at GE and the and the
Jack Welsh era, and you know,

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became a turnaround guy there and at
GE when I was was there for for

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the ten years I was there,
the company was growing so fast it was

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doubling in size every two point eight
years, and that equates to a thirty

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percent compound annual growth rate. So
the other thing that I'm known for a

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time game. Yeah, yeah,
that's changed quite a bit over the years,

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you know, over you know,
one of the things that I've known

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for is building strong culture and then
bending the growth curve and getting companies to

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achieve and hold a thirty plus percent
compound annual growth rate. And there's a

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lot of different tools to use to
do that, but you know, essentially

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it's like all of the experiences that
I've had across my career, you know,

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just kept you know, kept being
additive to each other and ultimately,

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you know, ideal ideal in cliff
notes. And so what I try to

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do with this book was to give
entrepreneurs, whether they were a startup or

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already had a business, or they
were a transitioning fortune five hundred executive is

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running a middle market you know company
for a pe firm, you know,

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try to give them the tool kit
then an entrepreneur needs to be successful in

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any size business and then to give
them, you know, kind of the

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tools that you use at different size
increments to help you then continue that that

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journey. And the problems I see
in companies that are call it between ten

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and thirty million a revenue very different
than the problems I see when they're one

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hundred to two hundred million in revenue. And so as entrepreneurs pick up steam

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as they learn, there's different tools
that I pull out that get applied and

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and and help them continue to scale. And so my goal and objective really

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when I rotated out of the CEO
C a couple of years ago, was

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instead of running and impacting one company
at a time, I wanted to have

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a positive influence and impact on multiple
companies at a time. And so that's

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what I'm doing today. I'm having
fun. I work more hours now than

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I did when I was the CEO, and by the way, I make

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more money now than I did when
I was a CEO too. So there's

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there's that risk reward quotients now you
know better aligned I think is you know,

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as a as an entrepreneur. Again, here's a question for you,

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Adam. When you walk into a
company that's maybe losing money, maybe circling

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the drain, and you're not doing
this for free, how do you get

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them to write you a check when
they're circling the drain. Well, generally,

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I try to start by focusing on
companies that have what I call are

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enough clay. There's enough clay on
the potter's wheel, so it's a big

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enough company to where I could instantly
redirect some spend to create some capacity to

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implement change. But when I'm talking
to shareholders or I'm talking to a board

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of directors, for me, it's
like, look, this is how I

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work. I'm transparent, I have
a track record, I've got billions and

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exits, you know, And this
is the methodology I go. I go

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about attacking problems, and you've got
to be able to sign up for that,

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you know, in advance, knowing
that, yeah, I am a

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turnaround guy. I usually come in
when others have failed or things have gone

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south, and it's like I quickly
need to arrest you know, I'm a

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pilot. It's like you can pull
back on the stick, but momentum keeps

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you going down. For some level
until you turn the corner, and so

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you know, it's like the patient
has to still have a pulse. Although

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I've done turnarounds in companies where I
thought, you know, potentially changed me

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up on the door here, you
know, but I managed to resurrect the

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patients. So patients, I think
is required. But you know, another

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place where I'm a maverick, I
just do not believe in the fact that

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profit and culture are mutually exclusive.
I believe that you can have a really

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strong employee culture, you can take
care of employees, and you can make

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shareholders a boatload of money. And
that's always been my methodology for success,

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and I think it's more popular today. It certainly wasn't if I roll tape

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back twenty five years ago when I
was a CEO for the first time.

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But you know, I think we've
evolved. You know, if you want

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to get employees, and everybody in
the world wants to be a TikTok star

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and a social media influencer. But
unless, you know, unless you can

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get people to work, if you
want them to come work for you and

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stay, you've got to have a
better culture in today's world. And so

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I really focused on strong culture gets
an engaged workforce. Engaged workforce takes care

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of clients. Revenue just kind of
rangs from the sky. So like,

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what sized business do you specialize in
here? So it depends. As a

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CEO, I was kind of a
guy who would come in at about two

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hundred million in revenue and take it
from there. And I was a buy

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and build guy. So you know, one of my empires was twenty three

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companies bought and put together. Another
one was thirty four you know, companies

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bought and put together. As a
coach and consultant, I'm finding myself my

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sweet spot is below the lower middle
market. So this is this is entrepreneur

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founded, not yet a private equity
backed portfolio company, haven't been sold yet

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for the first time, they have
aspiration to scale, to get bigger and

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then potentially see their first exit.
And so I'd say my specialty today is

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is I have clients as small as
a million in revenue. I have clients

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that have you know, four hundred
million revenue, but kind of you know,

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call it one to fifty million.
Is a sweet spot where I think

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my skills can have dramatic impact in
a short period of time. With that

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entrepreneur you know, helping them,
helping them get over those hurdles that have

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a stemy demp And part of that
goes back to Carrie too and buying fifty

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eight companies, I noticed something And
most of the companies that I bought would

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be average twenty to thirty million in
revenue. And I noticed that entrepreneurs just

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had this kind of plateau in analyzing
it. It's they were to be successful,

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they had to be anal retentive control
freaks. And what happened is they

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got bigger, is they ran out
of bandwidth. And I needed to teach

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people how to go from being the
first chair player in every section of the

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orchestra and to teach them how to
be a conductor, how to let go,

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how to hire people, how to
run and manage process rather than tax.

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And so when an entrepreneur finds that
gear boy, you know, a

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revenue starts to take off. Okay. So one of the things like for

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a company that's not doing as well
as it should be, especially when you're

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dealing with an entrepreneur, is the
psychological aspects here, the emotional aspects,

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because they need that, they need
that external view because they can't, you

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know, the old saying, if
you're in a hole, the first thing

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you need to do is stop digging. They're in that hole largely because of

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emotional reasons, whatever they might be. Right, So you've got to be

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part armchair psychologists here as well,
don't you. You really do. And

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I'll say even as common for me
to encounter in this size entrepreneur. I

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just wrote an article for Forbes about
it, and I called it the arrogance

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of success. And there are times, and I mean that in a loving

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way, not in a negative way, but there are times where, hey,

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we beat the odds, you know, we beat that we're one of

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the seven percent that got to a
million dollars in revenue. Maybe we're one

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of the four percent of the seven
percent who got to ten million in revenue.

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And so we start to think I
know everything. You know, I'm

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impervious to making mistakes. It's not
going to work good for you. No,

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And I don't need help from from
anybody else. And I think one

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of the things that's worked for me
is just you know, in life,

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when you have coaches and you have
mentors, sometimes they come at it from

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an academic perspective. I've walked the
walk I've been in their shoes. I've

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built multiple companies, I've had billion
dollar exits, and so I come as

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not not a theorist, but a
practitioner lived and walked in their shoes,

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and so sometimes I can break down
those artificial defenses that they have and really

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get inside and help them and be
helpful to them. And you know,

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my engagements clients do by the way, or a month to month, So

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when when if I, if I
don't add value, fire me, you

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know, And I can tell it
early on if someone is coach a bull.

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And that's that's the key to getting
help is you know, will they

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accept the help and advice? And
if they will, I can work with

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that kind of person, all right, And that is really are they teachable?

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And you know, but especially if
the business isn't doing well and you're

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the entrepreneur and maybe you're having trouble
making payroll, maybe you're having trouble making

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your mortgage payment, it gets really
emotional. And then oftentimes the entrepreneur will

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be totally enveloped in fear fear based
mindset. So you've got to like shock

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them out of that. Right.
You know, there's another group I'll tell

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you by the way, So so
what you're mentioning, I see again,

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and I see it again when entrepreneurs
get over at the age of fifty and

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so, they were successful early in
their careers, they were building a business,

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and they start to become risk averse
as they get older. They recognize

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that they've probably got too much asset
concentration their whole world's of business. They're

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starting to get older, and so
now they stop, you know, they

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stop making good business decisions because they're
afraid to monkey with you know, this

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thing called their company, which is
the source of their future retirement if they

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monetize it. And now they start
making mistakes because they're not taking, you

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know, taking the risks that they
should be taking in order to keep the

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business growing and going. So I
see it early when there's some struggle,

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but I then see it again as
people get to a certain age point.

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That's usually when I started to counsel
people. And again I wrote an article

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called the rule of one thirty.
And if an entrepreneur takes their age is

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a two digit number and their percent
of net worth tied up in their company,

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and you add those twos, you
know, two numbers together, if

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it equals more than one thirty.
Chances are you're making bad business decisions and

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you have too much risk in something
bad happening to that business. Think of

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all the things that are going on
in the world today. We've got wars,

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we had pandemics, you know,
good lord, there's just so much.

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You know, the economic cycles are
are happening much quicker than they used

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to, and it's a volatile world, and so we need to be concerned

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about asset concentration and diversifying risk.
And so I see risk everywhere, and

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I see people, you know,
kind of it at the start, being

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too nervous, you know, or
then at the end getting too conservative,

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right, and both yield the same
result, which is struggling business. So

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what can we learn from Elon Musk
when it comes to risk taking? Well,

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yeah, so Elon would be my
personal hero. Just from this standpoint.

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I call Elon the this generation's version
of Howard Hughes and and I think

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what makes Elon unique, whether you
like him, love him, made him

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whatever. You know, Hey,
here's a guy who has a serial entrepreneur,

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started three businesses and completely different industries
and had multi billion dollar businesses come

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out of those visions, and you
know, you think of of SpaceX and

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PayPal and and Tesla, and boy, any one of those companies could have

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imploded and gone south. And you
know, it was a stock trader.

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I think of Tesla and all the
debt they had, and it was kind

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of like Amazon too, you know, and all of the infrastructure investment that

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was required to build this behemoth.
Once it turned the corner, then you

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know, they become everybody's you know, everybody has a love fest with the

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potential of the stock. But boy, a ton of risk. But they

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took that risk, and they were
rewarded for taking that risk. You know,

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it's the old the thing. It
took me ten years to become an

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overnight success. Yeah yeah, it's
like people think like Tesla kind of it's

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been around for twelve years now,
I think, or maybe fourteen years.

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So, but downright miraculous when you
think of the auto industry, where we

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haven't had a new entrant, successful
entrant in the auto industry basically since before

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the Great Depression. Yeah yeah,
yeah, so you think, yeah,

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he's Preston, you know, Tucker. But he got it right, you

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know, and and he actually made
it work. He was a Tucker,

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who you know, but an ace
engineer, you know. So it's kind

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of amazing that he could pull this
off. And it's not done yet.

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You know, He's got other an
AI company going, Neurolink, which just

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think about it. All the millions
of disabled people around the world, spinal

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board injuries, everything, and if
he can somehow get these people to work

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walk again, I mean that made
maybe his greatest achievement. And I think

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AI ultimately so not just from a
health perspective, but I think AI in

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general will completely revolutionize the world as
we know it. And I think right

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now everybody's playing with it. We're
not really sure how to use it or

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how to put it into our businesses. But my wife was just telling me

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yesterday she was a drive through at
McDonald's and it wasn't no longer manned by

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a person, It was AI.
And the AI was really good at taking

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the order and understand she's Hispanic,
understanding her English, and and you know,

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getting her through to the first person
she encountered, which was the person

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who gave her the food, you
know. And so it's touching, it's

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touching everywhere. So I think Elon
is just a serial entrepreneur who knows how

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to think on a level that most
of us just can't comprehend or understand.

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And while he's yeah, and while
he's you know, there's some volatility around

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him and X and what have you. Again, I go back to he's

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the modern day version of Howard Hughes
in my mind. You know, it's

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like just their technology, you know, the wealth of creativity and his success

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00:23:14,000 --> 00:23:19,640
and multiple industries is just something that
really we we all should aspire to learn

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from, you know, because the
world's filled with one hit wonders, Yeah,

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00:23:25,559 --> 00:23:30,400
people who had one idea most people
at best, or one hit wonders.

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Yeah. And speaking of that,
I've been blessed, you know.

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So I'm a I'm a three hit
wonder now right on my books up there,

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three or fourth. So hey,
you know, when you were mentioning

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00:23:44,920 --> 00:23:48,519
Elon being the modern day Howard Us, it reminded me of the story when

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Howard Us went to Las Vegas and
he checked into the desert in and they

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00:23:55,680 --> 00:24:00,640
gave him the top floor, basically
the entire floor, and he's there for

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00:24:00,720 --> 00:24:03,559
like a couple of weeks, and
they go and send mister Us. You

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00:24:03,559 --> 00:24:07,839
know, you have to leave as
we got high rollers that want this suite,

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00:24:07,000 --> 00:24:14,039
and you don't even gamble and says, you know, let me get

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00:24:14,039 --> 00:24:17,319
back to you, give me a
little bit, and basically calls up and

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says, how much do you want
for the place? Yeah, he buys

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the hotel and I can see Musk
doing something like that, you know,

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I really could. Well, you
have to think about Twitter as being a

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good modern day equivalent of that or
X and so Musk wants to have a

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voice. So what does he do? He buys the largest platform that would

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give him a voice and says I
own it, you know, and now

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everyone hates them. Well, yeah, I think that the final chapter is

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not yet written there. So can
he make money at this? What's your

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00:24:48,839 --> 00:24:52,920
take? I mean, this is
a turnaround because that place was circling the

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drain because they were basically a government
organ and they weren't there to serve a

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market. They were there to provide
a platform for certain narratives, right stare?

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So do I think he can't?
Yo? Yo? What? I

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would not bet against him, And
I'll tell you why. He has been

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around the drain, as you said, multiple times with multiple companies and managed

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to take that I'll call it the
energy a circle in the drain and turn

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00:25:21,720 --> 00:25:26,559
it into something that was pretty special. So I would not discount I would

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not take the short, you know, on the over under. I wouldn't

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00:25:30,240 --> 00:25:36,559
take the under on anything that Elon
does. You know, maybe hyperlink,

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00:25:36,720 --> 00:25:38,640
you know, maybe I'd have to
think about that one for a bit.

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00:25:38,759 --> 00:25:45,000
But yeah, the Vegas loot.
But they're including it, you know,

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they're building these tunnels. Now.
People are looking at it and saying,

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can't possibly work. But once you
add a twelve or sixteen passenger van to

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the mix, and then you can
take you know, literally five times more

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00:25:59,599 --> 00:26:03,400
people to where they want to go
per hour. Yeah, well, of

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00:26:03,400 --> 00:26:08,400
a sudden, it starts like looking
pretty good. I think in his mind

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00:26:08,680 --> 00:26:14,279
most everything he comes up with is
visionary and it's going to push the envelope

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00:26:14,400 --> 00:26:18,640
of humanity and technology. And so
some things that fail won't fail because they

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were necessarily bad ideas. They may
fail because the technology wasn't there to support

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00:26:23,240 --> 00:26:26,119
it in today's world, or it
was ahead of its time, what have

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00:26:26,240 --> 00:26:32,680
you. But I would I would
never count him out and gently, all

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00:26:32,759 --> 00:26:36,240
right, I wouldn't bet against him, all right, So the book tell

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00:26:36,319 --> 00:26:40,799
us the name again, it's called
Empire Builder the Road to a Billion,

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00:26:41,400 --> 00:26:45,680
and essentially it's the tool kit to
take you from zero to a billion and

355
00:26:47,079 --> 00:26:51,759
the stages of growth, the tools
that are required, how you adapt,

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00:26:52,039 --> 00:26:55,319
you know. And again I'm a
CEO. I don't like long meetings.

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00:26:55,359 --> 00:27:00,559
And so this is the Cliff's Notes
of thirty five years of turnarounds and ze

358
00:27:00,599 --> 00:27:04,519
experience, and it kind of builds
off of the other ones which were more

359
00:27:04,559 --> 00:27:11,839
singular in their focus. This one
is broader and it's really intended for entrepreneurs

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00:27:12,039 --> 00:27:17,880
who are on that journey and hoping
to add some wisdom regardless of what stage

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00:27:17,960 --> 00:27:22,039
of growth they're at, to help
them be successful. Okay, well,

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00:27:22,079 --> 00:27:25,440
hey, I love it and definitely
going to get a copy. I'll have

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00:27:25,519 --> 00:27:29,599
you back on after I read it. Talk about some of your anecdotes experiences

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00:27:30,000 --> 00:27:33,079
which are the best of luck on
the book. And they've got a question

365
00:27:33,160 --> 00:27:38,319
for Adam myself. The email address
is kl at Carrie Lutz dot com.

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00:27:38,319 --> 00:27:42,279
Shoot me an email and the links, all the links you need will be

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00:27:42,319 --> 00:27:48,480
in the show notes to this interview
on Financial Survival Network dot com at a

368
00:27:48,519 --> 00:27:51,799
bit a pleasure. We will talk
to you again real soon. Thank you

369
00:27:51,839 --> 00:27:56,000
for having me. Thanks for listening
to Carrie Letz's Financial Survival Network. Your

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00:27:56,079 --> 00:28:03,480
solution to today's trying times or the
latest go to Financial Survivalnetwork dot com.

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00:28:03,480 --> 00:28:07,279
Financial Survival Network now more than ever,