This is an episode to review the most popular episodes of the 2022 podcast year. We had some amazing guests this year, including the then Steve Robinson, the former Executive Vice President from Chick-fil-A, David Sellinger, the co-founder of Redfin, and one of my longtime friends, Austin Rabine, CEO of the Rabine Group.
As we look back on 2022 there were five episodes you all thought were the best for the year. We will provide you with some highlights of the top 5 as well as include the most popular episode from the last 4 months.
LINKS FROM THE EPISODE:
- How Flewber Looks to Disrupt the Air Travel Industry—Marc Sellouk, Founder and CEO, Flewber
- The Employee Benefits Program No One is Talking About and Should Be—Frank Samson, Founder, Senior Care Authority
- How to Build Your Personal Brand—Jen Dalton, Founder, BrandMirror
- How to Define, Measure, and Achieve Goals—Will Pemble, Founder, Goal Boss Mastermind
- How Our Family Business is Still Growing After 40 Years—Austin Rabine, CEO, Rabine Group
- Redfin Co-Founder Shares His Next Big Idea—David Selinger, CEO, Deep Sentinel
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TRANSCRIPTION:
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (00:01):
Welcome to the Multiply Your Success podcast, where each week we help growth-minded entrepreneurs and franchise leaders take the next step in their expansion journey. I’m your host, Tom DuFore, CEO of Big Sky Franchise Team, and this episode is to review our most downloaded episodes of the 2022 podcast year. And we had some amazing guests this year, including Steve Robinson, the former executive vice president of Chick-fil-A, David Selinger, the co-founder of Redfin, and one of my longtime friends, Austin Rabine, CEO of the Rabine Group.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (00:35):
And as we look back on 2022 and just reflect, we take a look at those most downloaded episodes, and since all of them happened to occur at the beginning of the year, we also decided to pull one extra episode, so we’ll be doing a little snippet from six episodes, to take a look at the most popular episode that had the most downloads over the last, about approximately four months of 2022.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (01:04):
So the first episode we’re going to listen to is the interview with Mark Selouk, who is the founder and CEO of Flewber, which is that new air travel similar to kind of an Uber type setup. So let’s go ahead and jump into that one.
Marc Selouk, Flewber (01:21):
Well think about the ride sharing market terrestrially with a car. So before you have these ride sharing companies, you have these black cars lined up, picking up the executives and folks that are the top 1%, if you will. And so in thinking about the business model, I kind of built a parallel to that and said, hey, this is similar to what’s happening in the private jet space, in the private aviation space, that these jets are really associated with catering to that type of clientele.
Marc Selouk, Flewber (01:52):
And so I said to myself, how can we build this in a way where we know people want to fly private, we know people are sick and tired of going through what they go through with the airports, especially these days with the pandemic, every other day you’re about a fight on a flight. So how do we create this model where it works?
Marc Selouk, Flewber (02:11):
And so that’s essentially when the light bulb went off and said, hey, we can leverage technology, we can leverage relationships, and we can put things in place that can really create a marketplace that will bring a breath of fresh air to this industry.
Marc Selouk, Flewber (02:27):
And so we talk about makes and misses and multipliers. I think in business, you have to always have your misses in order to identify what the real model is. Essentially whenever you start a business, I would venture to say that it never ends up being exactly what you first envisioned it to be, right? And so when we first started two years ago, it was essentially a try and trial. You have to trial what works, what’s welcome to the marketplace, what gets good reception, what doesn’t. And those misses end up bringing you to what the makes are and ultimately what made us today.
Marc Selouk, Flewber (03:16):
And it’s challenging along the way. So you’ve got to make sure that you take those challenges and break those barriers. And off what I heard in the aviation industry is, you’re crazy. [inaudible 00:03:31] what you’re trying to try here because the way to make a billionaire or millionaire’s to get them into the aviation world. Well, I said to myself, look, we’re go creating really unique opportunities here. We’re creating a unique business model. We’re creating a marketplace that I think is going to bring a breath of fresh air into the industry. And so far the reception has been as we evolved and as we’re adapting to this market, I think the reception is, and I know the reception has been getting stronger and stronger and more promising.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (04:08):
Next up, we have Frank Samson who talked about new employee benefits program in his episode and we jump into him talking a little bit about how one of his unique services is helping families work through the challenges of an aging loved one.
Frank Samson, Senior Care Authority (04:27):
But what really helped expand our franchise network is adding what we’ve called elder care consulting. Elder care consulting is providing a number of different services to families that may have nothing to do with placement. For example, I’ll just give you a quick example, and this is pretty common, that we might be dealing with the adult children. And let’s just say there’s three of them, two daughters and a son. And one of the daughters that we’re dealing with feels that maybe dad should go to assisted living. And then she consults with the sister and the sister goes, “Nah, I think dad just needs a caregiver at home that he doesn’t have to go to assisted living. We’re never going to be able to get him to assisted living.” And then the brother goes, “Well, what’s wrong with dad? There’s nothing wrong with dad.” I mean, that’s pretty common.
Frank Samson, Senior Care Authority (05:28):
So it’s so important to get everybody on the same page. So many times we’ll have meetings, they may be Zoom meetings or they may be sitting around the kitchen table, but to get everybody on the same page and providing the best options for dad and for the family based on what the needs are financially and everything. So that’s just one example of so many.
Frank Samson, Senior Care Authority (05:54):
Another quick one is a company that we acquired last year called Beyond Driving With Dignity. And it’s a self-assessment program to help determine if it’s maybe the right time to, we like to call, retire from driving. We don’t like to say take away the keys. And I know a lot of families are confronted with that. That’s part of our elder care consulting program.
Frank Samson, Senior Care Authority (06:21):
So there’s a number of different services and we’re just there to support the family and help them through a difficult time that they’ve probably have never gone through before and may never go through it again.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (06:40):
The next on our list here is an interview with Jen Dalton, who’s with BrandMirror. And she talked about how to build your personal brand and give, she gave some phenomenal insight. It’s definitely worth the listen. So let’s go ahead and jump into midway through our interview.
Jen Dalton, BrandMirror (06:59):
One of the things that I find with CEOs or even solopreneurs or anybody in between, there’s challenges when you think about how am I representing the company. Whether it’s out at networking events, how am I leveraging my personal brand and a reputation to grow revenue? Are you out speaking? Are you part of the recruiting pipeline, right?
Jen Dalton, BrandMirror (07:24):
40% of millennials say that the visibility of the CEO and their purpose and mission will shape whether they want to work at a company or not. So every CEO tends to show up where they feel comfortable and they could think, “Hey, I’m doing my town halls, I’m visible. Internally, my people see me. It’s great.” And that is great. However, there are a lot of different audiences. Like your partners, your vendors, your clients, of course, your prospects, the industry, the medium, and going and looking at each of those audiences to make sure you’re not missing anything is really huge because it’s important to be consistent and to be seen. The last thing you want to do is realize five years down the road that, oh wow, my head was kind of stuck in the sand. I thought I was visible, but the visibility I had actually negatively impacted the business versus helping it.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (08:31):
Well, this kind of leads me into my next question is a perfect segue here, which is, what do CEOs or business leaders get wrong about branding themselves and their organizations? What are some kind of common things that you see?
Jen Dalton, BrandMirror (08:47):
I think there are a few reasons why people may not invest time in the personal brand front. One is just that, time. I’m too busy, I don’t have time to write a blog, I’m the CEO. I don’t have time to craft X, Y, or Z. And that could absolutely be true, in which case, I always recommend if you have someone on your team, if you have a new hire, it could be part of your onboarding program, have people interview you and write the blog. Have people videotape you or record you and create content. So I think CEOs sometimes think they have to be the ones doing it, you don’t have to be. That’s where delegation can be really powerful.
Jen Dalton, BrandMirror (09:31):
I think the second piece is people believe that personal branding is personal bragging and they don’t want to be detracting from the company. They don’t want to look like they’re out there sort of beating their chest. And that’s true, we don’t want to have you do that. But if you’re not visible, then people create their own story around the business or the company. And for a leader who walks the talk, it’s very important to be out, even if it’s volunteering with your team, be visible in the community. It’s important to talk about the values that matter, the culture that matters. So there are strategic initiatives that a company has every year and a CEO’s personal brand and the personal brand of their sales team, their other executives, anyone that’s client-facing, those all play a role in every client or prospect touchpoint. Which could either, again, keep someone as part of your business or help them leave.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (10:37):
Next up we have Will Pemble, who’s the founder of Goal Boss Mastermind, and he talked about how to define measure and achieve goals in his episode. And let’s jump in midstream where he starts talking about the rollercoaster that he helped build.
Will Pemble, Goal Boss Mastermind (10:54):
So once upon a time when my son was like 11 years old, we’d just come back from a summer vacation and school was going to start in a couple of days and Lyle was a little bit sad. And on our trip we had gone to a couple of different amusement parks and Lyle loves rollercoasters and he can name them all and he is got lists and he’s like a data kid. And we were just sitting in the backyard sort of bemoaning the fact that school was going to start again. And we were both a little sad about it. And Lyle says, “Look, man, I had so much fun at Six Flags, it was so great. I wish we had a rollercoaster in the backyard. Wouldn’t it be great if we had a rollercoaster in the backyard, dad?”
Will Pemble, Goal Boss Mastermind (11:30):
And any normal human being would’ve said, “Yeah, that would be really cool.” And he didn’t even ask me to do it, right? It wasn’t even an ask really. But I thought about it for maybe a half a second. And I do love to build things and I do have a lot of tools and I like to get more tools if I don’t have the ones I need. And so in about a half a second, what I thought to myself was, if I were to build Lyle a rollercoaster in the backyard, he’d just like a little rollercoaster, if we were to do that project together, he would keep that with him for the rest of his days. And he would tell friends at work and his career as an adult. He would share that story all his life. And maybe if he has babies, he might do something crazy like that for them. And so this might be a good thing to do. It might be a cool, awesome thing that Lyle and I could share. And that was the first thing I thought of.
Will Pemble, Goal Boss Mastermind (12:29):
And then the second thing I thought of, and these were equally weighted considerations, I want to be clear about that. The second thing I thought of was, if I do this, it really will prove just once and for all that I’m a much better father than my brother Larry. Just much better. And so I thought of those two things. I was like, yes, experience with Lyle, last lifetime; win against Larry. I love my brother dearly and we are very competitive.
Will Pemble, Goal Boss Mastermind (12:57):
And so we went about doing it and we made videos of it to show Larry how awesome I am and to show Grandma Lois the progress. And the videos started to get a little traction on YouTube and one day Good Morning America called and said, “Hey, we’d love to send a crew out there to film your thing and [inaudible 00:13:14].
Will Pemble, Goal Boss Mastermind (13:15):
And we’ve been on every bit of news. And then I built another rollercoaster for a friend of mine and then I built another one in the front yard because there was already one in the backyard. And then we moved to a bigger house because the kids were just too big for the house we were in. There was no rollercoaster there. And Liz was like, “Please don’t do it.” And I was like, “No, I’m not going to do it, don’t be silly.” And then Netflix called and said, “Hey, we hear you make rollercoasters, we’d love to do a show about you building a rollercoaster in the backyard.” And I was like, “Well that’s funny you should mention that because I just moved into a brand new backyard.” And they’re like, “Well, let’s film it.” And so that happened.
Will Pemble, Goal Boss Mastermind (13:53):
The takeaway from the whole thing is yes, it’s crazy and they’re real, full size, rideable, fast, monster rollercoasters and really cool fun stuff. For me, the takeaway is that because of that, I’ve had experiences and opportunities in business and in life that never would’ve happened if I hadn’t have built the rollercoaster if I hadn’t done that silly, crazy, stupid, ridiculous thing.
Will Pemble, Goal Boss Mastermind (14:23):
So what I always try to tell my clients, my friends, anybody who will listen is say yes to the crazy, don’t be afraid to let your freak flag fly. And it’s like whatever craziness you have, get it out there and show people because we’re not looking for a consultant to help us franchise our business. I’m not looking for that. I’m not looking for a coach to help me grow my business. I’m not looking for a person to build my camper van, I’m looking for a relationship. I’m looking for someone I can connect with who’s going to understand me and my dreams and someone who inspires me. And that’s the guy I want to do business with. I don’t want to do business with a robot, I want to do business with somebody who inspires me. And that always comes from the crazy, personal, weird stuff that we all have inside us. And so let it rip is my takeaway from that.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (15:29):
Next up we have my longtime friend Austin Rabine, who’s the CEO of the Rabine Group, and it’s a family run business that’s been operating for more than 40 years. And let’s jump into here what Austin had to say.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (15:44):
Which is this focus on technology in differentiation and a lot of the industries that you’re in are viewed really kind of as old industries or not fun businesses to be involved with. So I’d love for you to just talk a little bit about how you, as an organization, have integrated technology and what your maybe culture looks like a little bit as well with that.
Austin Rabine, Rabine Group (16:11):
Yeah, no definitely. You’re right. My dad even, early on, one of our early taglines or slogans was discover the difference. And what he meant by that was kind of what you’re talking about, what are our differentiators, what are the things that we’re going to do different from our competitors to set us apart? And for him, when he was starting it, there wasn’t really the same technology available. So for him, it was what kind of equipment are we looking at? We were one of the first companies to have a 3D laser screen for exterior parking lots. And so he was looking at equipment and what type of materials and all of these different things that we can really use to set our ourselves apart. And so that was always a focus.
Austin Rabine, Rabine Group (17:02):
Now today our kind of slogan instead of discover the difference is innovating to serve. And again, along the same lines, we want to continuously innovate within our industry. And I think that that was what you had mentioned about an old antiquated industry that’s slow to adopt new technology. That’s also something that really kind of got me excited about being in this business is because I saw that and I’ve always been really interested in technology and whether it’s a new app or a new service or I remember when Uber started and all these different cool businesses that came from technology.
Austin Rabine, Rabine Group (17:43):
And because we’re so slow to adopt those different things, one of the things that we’ve looked at is like, okay, let’s look at these other successful businesses and how might it be able to relate to ours that hasn’t been adopted yet. And I think that it’s always been something that’s been in our culture and that we’ve talked to our team about. So it’s been a pretty natural, I think it’s just a passion within the company. And it makes things exciting. We’re always looking at new things and they don’t always work. Sometimes they do work and it turns out great, but it’s fun. We’re constantly learning. We’re constantly trying to do things better and improve the way that we’re working within our industry.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (18:24):
Yeah, I love it. And just for a sake of a discussion, for maybe someone that maybe listens into this interview later on and they’re saying, “Boy, I’d love to figure out a way to integrate some new systems or technologies or take these what other industries maybe are doing or other companies and figure out how to apply it to my business or my industry.” What does that process usually look like? I mean, I’m kind of thinking in my head and is it you’re in a lunch lunchroom conversation or just a random off the cuff text message? Talk through something that may maybe goes on.
Austin Rabine, Rabine Group (19:02):
Yeah, I mean I could give a good example that recently happened and it’s happens in a bunch of different ways. It might be a new business model that I read about or I try a new service and I’m like, oh wow, that’s really interesting. And start to just think about our business, whether it’s how we’re managing equipment or how we’re managing trucking or materials or how we’re capturing data and just really start to brainstorm. And a lot of times I have two notebooks, actually, nope, I’ve got three notebooks with me. So I always have a few notebooks with me that I’m jotting down ideas or just making sure that I’m constantly brainstorming on these things. And that’s just fun to me. It’s kind of like daydreaming. So it’s something that’s fun and it might not always turn out into something, but sometimes it does.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (19:49):
And the final episode to recap 2022 is to share one from the last four or five months of the year where we interviewed David Selinger, who is the co-founder of Redfin. And he shared with us his next big idea that he was working on in home and commercial security.
David Selinger, Deep Sentinel (20:10):
I’m going to project this one back onto my family and I think everyone listening here has reached some level of financial success. And when you do that, you go through this really non-linear transition. And that non-linear transition is that before you reach that level of success, the most important thing in your life is money. Because you need money to feed yourself, to feed your family, to clothe your family, to put shelter over your heads. And then you reach some point whether your number is a 100,000 bucks in savings, half a million bucks, a million, 10 million, whatever that number is, there’s not a gradual transition around that number. It is literally from number one to money becomes number 999,000. And making that transition was one of the hardest things in my life for my family. Again, I mentioned kind of changing the way that I interact with my kids.
David Selinger, Deep Sentinel (21:03):
And again, I want to be careful because for some people they haven’t reached that point yet. And when you haven’t then it is the number one thing. And people that say money isn’t important are full of crap. Money is the single most important thing to most people, period, full stop, and don’t forget that. Don’t belittle people that are there. Don’t forget that you were probably there at one point if you’re not anymore. But recognize that once you are there, it is really important that you put it in its place in the context of your broader happiness. In the last five years, I have resigned from every single board of directors and board of advisors position that I held in my career so that I could focus on the one or two things that mattered.
David Selinger, Deep Sentinel (21:42):
I started Deep Sentinel. Deep Sentinel embodies the values of my family. We are helping people feel safe in their homes and that is something that we believe is really important. My family, we’ve been involved in the foster care program. I talked about my nonprofits. Giving back to society and being integrated into society. Creating, even if it’s in a for-profit context, value that benefits your fellow man, your fellow woman, your fellow child, your fellow family. That is so freaking important.
David Selinger, Deep Sentinel (22:16):
And the third part of this is not just doing that for yourself. My greatest success with Deep Sentinel is doing that with my family. My kids helped design our logo. If you’re watching the video here, you’ll see all the designs and potential cameras. They helped give feedback on that. My kids feel like Deep Sentinel belongs to them in the deepest parts of their essence. They understand that what we do matters to people.
David Selinger, Deep Sentinel (22:41):
I had a bad day once. I came down to dinner and my little daughter, Cecilia, who’s my younger daughter, she just turned 11 yesterday. She said, “Daddy, you don’t look like you’re very happy. Is everything okay?” And I said, “You know, I just had a rough day.” And she said, it was right at the beginning of the pandemic, so I had a bunch of rough days at the beginning of the pandemic, and she said, “But Daddy, did you save anyone’s life today?” And I was just like, bam. Right? That’s why we do this.
David Selinger, Deep Sentinel (23:07):
So that’s why that’s my biggest success was starting a business that meets my needs, I’m intellectually challenged and building a meaningful business in a multi-billion dollar market. It’s doing well. It’s aligned with my interests. I’m doing a business that benefits society because no one else has ever started a business that can stop crimes before. Like, hello, let’s go do this. And then number three, it’s aligned with the values of my family. I’m teaching my kids the value of work. I’m teaching my kids the value of giving back to society and it aligns. And so finding that synergy, man, I feel so blessed and lucky to have been able to do that and still live a reasonably balanced life for an entrepreneur.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (23:56):
As we draw this episode to a close, I just want to wish you and your family a very merry Christmas and a Happy New Year as we go into 2023. Keep in mind, we have some amazing guests coming up into the new year and our very first episode we’re going to launch with are our predictions for the new year and some trends and things we think we will continue to see coming forward in 2023.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (24:26):
That’s the episode today, folks. Please make sure you subscribe to the podcast and give us a review. And remember, if you or anyone might be ready to franchise their business or take their franchised company to the next level, please connect with us at bigskyfranchiseteam.com. Thanks for tuning in, we look forward to having you back next week.