Ep430: Dan LeFave – Chaotic People and Systems Rarely Create Value

Andrew Stotz 00:02
Hello fellow risk takers and welcome to my worst investment ever stories of loss to keep you winning. In our community we know that to win in investing, you must take risk but to win big, you've got to reduce it. To join our community go to my worst investment ever.com and receive the following five free benefits Say that three times the following five free. First you get the risk reduction checklist I created from the lessons I've learned from all of my guests. Second, you get my weekly email to help you increase your investment return. Third, you get a 25% discount on all a Stotz Academy courses. Fourth, you get access to our Facebook community to get to know guests and fellow listeners. And finally, you get my curated list of my favorite 10 episodes from this podcast fellow risk takers. This is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz from a Stotz Academy, and I'm here with featured guest, Dan the fav Dan, are you ready to rock? I am Andrew, thank you for having me. It's great to have you on and I'm going to introduce you to the audience. Dan love Fave as in my fav Dan has received life's second chance when he survived a severe car accident that sadly, took three lives. He struggled through brain injuries, business failures, heartbreaks running marathons, daily flights, with fear and doubt. He is a number one best selling author of living the life of your dreams, how to stop working insane hours and start living an awesome life. Dan helps businesses grow seven and eight figure revenues. In fact, he's known as this seven figure, high performance business coach, because online business owners hire him to establish self managing businesses in a few short months by upgrading their skill set mindset and systems to scale with ease tan Dan, take a minute in Philly for the tidbits about your life.

Dan LeFave 02:14
Well, certainly, certainly. What, what, what you're not hearing here is that I grew up in a family business. My father was a butcher. And so from a young age, I was in the butcher shop, the meat business. And, you know, started in the backroom, but worked my way up to customer service. Eventually I was in a store, a secondary store that we had with a butcher and a server and managing the business. Not really that I was 13. But you know, I'm the representative of the family. And so yeah, I grew up in that business and learn to sell to customers. In fact, I could relate to customers so easily that when it came to girlfriends, I could relate to the parents very easily, because I had all that practice, right, like a big Mr. polite and all that and everything, you know, but hey, if a teenager walked in the door to the shop, I would have a hard time serving, just, Hey, what do you want? so different, different conversation, but yeah, just that, you know, growing up that family business, work ethic, you know, six days a week, during the summertime, you know, just working all the time through the school year, never, you know, never really had a break and manage that between playing ice hockey and other things. So, but it taught me some good lessons, but just growing up in that family business handling cash, you know, because it was a cash business back then. And so handling cash, and, you know, depositing and so on, you know, there was a lot of advantages to it. But that's, you know, that's a little history that, you know, I don't usually share, but i think i think it had a pretty significant impact.

Andrew Stotz 03:51
I have to confess that I'm addicted to a what YouTube channel called the bearded butchers. And there are two, you know, brothers from Ohio that have a butchery and their whole business. And it's just fascinating. But what's interesting about your story is that you gravitated towards the front office, as opposed to feeling comfortable slicing things up in the back. So I feel more comfortable around you. Now. I want to tell you, I want to tell the audience, you know, I was just recently on the fav coaching.com slash focus. And I just thought you could tell us a little bit about what you've got there about 12 week focus productivity, and I think it's very fascinating. Maybe just tell us a bit before we get into the story.

Dan LeFave 04:44
Certainly, well, you know, that tool. It's a tool that I created, and I can't take full credit but I'm surrounded by some really technically inclined people. And so it's a plug and play tool. It's a system for managing your time and It's only in my life and available to you now because I studied the book that the 12 week, year 30 times, I do this kind of insane thing. For the past 10 years, I've been reading books like this, I studied the same chapter every day in a mastermind with my reading partner mark, and we study a book in detail. And as a result of it, I started searching and looking for solutions to implement it, I found one, modified it. And it kept getting modified as I met other people, and so on. Now, I have a complete system with a dashboard. And it's phenomenal. But it basically helps you remove distraction, which is huge today, it is so vague, like people do not realize how much distraction is getting in their way. In fact, I've surveyed many, many, many times, I've done polls on LinkedIn, people are distracted, it's not overwhelm, it's not stress, it's not multitasking, it is distraction. And that shiny object is killing everybody. So it's a distraction removal machine. And it's a lie detector. You know, it's basically making sure that you do what you say you're going to do and do it in a short period of time short as you can 12 weeks, ideally. But yeah, that's, that's the tool, and I'm happy to share it as well. So it's great.

Andrew Stotz 06:19
Well, we'll have it in the show notes. So any of the listeners that want to check it out, just go there. And the 12, the 12 week year is actually a book that I highlight in one of my short courses I do called don't read these 36 books. And that is one of the best books on a best 36 books on time management goal setting in the leg. In fact, I recently had a video discussion with the second author on that Mike Michael ludington. And the lead offers us is Brian Moran. But Michael and I talked about some stuff about it. But also hopefully I can get either one of those guys on the show. But what's great new Brian, by the way, okay, so let's get Brian on the show. And Mike Michael is also a pretty cool guy and lives in Kentucky. And we had some good conversation. But I think everything about that is very cool. And what's that book really, you know, helps me a lot. But I think the thing that you got is a little tool. And I know, I've developed my own little tools for things that I do. And I know that's valuable. So for the audience out there, just go to his website. Now you can also just go to the show notes. But you can also go to Dan, the fav coaching comm slash focus and download it and take advantage of something that he's created for us. So now it's time to share your worst investment ever. And since no one goes into their worst investment, thinking it will be tell us a bit about the circumstances leading up to it, then tell us your story.

Dan LeFave 07:48
Certainly, well, we're going to turn the clock back about 25 years. And so this was at a time when I was just trying to figure out my life. I had graduated from university, I had taken a run at becoming an investor. Well, I tried to become a junior investor for a financial investment firm and work for the biggest and best broker. But apparently I wasn't cut out for that. But you know what, what happened was, I was communicating with my brother and my brother was building a business in wireless Telecom. And back in the 90s. It was huge. It was booming. And it was coming along. And there was plenty of opportunity. It was almost like anybody could have gotten to that business. So he was doing construction, he went and studied under some folks that he got to know and met with them some kind of companies that are you know, maybe not so well known today, like Nortel, he knew some people there. So he was interacting with them, and visiting them with their offices. And so I learned that he had got this business started. And it was about two, three years in, and he was starting to gain some momentum. And so we started talking, and I was at a place where I was like, Okay, well, I'm done. I can't even pass the exam to be an investment advisor. So it just obviously wasn't met. It wasn't meshing. So. But here's the thing, and academics is not my thing, but definitely putting systems into place and, and tightening things. Definitely my sweet spot. But, but here's the thing, so I was talking with them and, and, you know, he was building it, you know, he had an opportunity to grow and I said, Well, you know, what, can I come and work with you and we started talking on that level. And so I did and I basically cut that job off, immediately went over, started working with my brother. I'm in the field with his crew, and we're carrying ladders and tools and equipment, everything this is predominantly working on rooftops, this isn't like all the towers and so on, but it's more See rooftops of buildings and for wireless Telecom, any, you know, if you've ever driven around, you see these little antennas sticking out the penthouses of rooftops, that's what we were doing, we're installing the equipment. And some of them were pretty big required, like big crane lift, and so on 20,000 pound equipment, shelter and so on. But anyway, two weeks of working in the field slugging around and fine, I can do the heavy lifting. I mean, I was working in a butcher shop, I remember lifting 200 pounds of meat on my hips, and I was probably 150 pounds wet, soaking wet. So so you know, I could slug stuff around, but I dropped a ladder on my thumb, spraying it, right. And then this is a bad sprain, like, I'm not going to go back to doing, you know, physical work for a little bit. So I end up going into the office, which at that time, is his home, it's his bedroom, actually, a desk in a filing cabinet is and, you know, in this little farmhouse that he rented out, you know, and so, here I am, for two weeks in there, I start going through the files, I started communicating with vendors. And next thing, you know, I'm managing the business. And I'm looking at the filing, reorganizing it, communicating with people, I have a natural skill for organizing and getting things set up so that they can flow and, and so that's what I did. And I didn't leave, I didn't leave the office, there was occasions where I did, and I'll get to that in a moment. But I was basically in the office, working away, getting things organized to end things in communicating with vendors, I started organizing documents for bid walks, you know, bid walk is basically when you go on the rooftop and, and you assess what the cost will be. And then you submit a quote. And so I was doing that. And, you know, I've done all sorts of things that I had no idea about. But there's one thing for sure, I'm very resourceful. And I have resources. And I was applying that to everything I did. So I'm, I'm just moving ahead figuring things out. And there even came a time when the bank because there was a loan. And I didn't know this until the bank called us and said, We need some financial statements, we need profit and loss statements. And I'm like, sure,

Andrew Stotz 12:15
whatever those are,

Dan LeFave 12:16
whatever, yeah, you can have no problem. So then, what do I do, and this is like the late 90s. I go online, and fortunately, I found a sample. So thank God, shortcut. So I find this sample profit loss statement. And I put in the data that I could put together, and I gave it to them, they accepted it off my plate done safe. But then the next year, same thing happened again, they come back, we need a new p&l statement, new profit loss statement, I'm like, great, right? I remember literally going into that statement. And for profits, and for revenues and expenses, adding percentages. Now I didn't go crazy. I didn't add double digits. I didn't say 10% more on revenue or something. But I just randomly added percentages randomly. Yeah. And we were actually went from 200,000, to 400,000, to 600,000 to a million dollars in a few years. And it just, it was amazing. And I began to wonder, you know, after the fact, was that just like, you know, guesswork, that actually, you know, was a prayer that just kind of happened. So, you know, so again, I'm just, you know, figuring things out. And, and my brother man, I mean, he's, he's a character. But you know, he just goes wherever the wind blows, wherever that shiny object is, wherever that brass ring is. So at one point, he heads from Canada to the US. And he opens an office in Naperville, Illinois. And he hires a crew, and he buys a $75,000 International truck to build these towers. And so like if you starting in two towers in the US, and he leaves me in Canada to operate the whole business, and you know, there wasn't much construction going on then thankfully, but I did some jobs. And I had you know, I'll tell you one quick story. There was one where I was on a rooftop, and there was a crane lift. So as a crane lifting a piece of equipment, the size of a double, like, let's say two big refrigerators put together, but it's about 1800 pounds, so it's heavy. So we get up there. Guess what? This is in Chinatown, the roof top, we cut it open. And what do we find? Not steel beams, wood. These are wood beams. Right? can't support that. Wait, no, no, they can. But guess what? They're not perpendicular to each other. So we cannot fasten what we wanted to to them because it wasn't designed for that it was designed for something that's perfect. And so guess what? caught my brother. He's like you need to move out. Well, they're right. We got to move out while they're there. We ended up lifting that equipment on the Because the crane is 400 bucks an hour, and I don't know who's going to eat that, but so, crane, lift up the equipment, lift the lever on the roof, we don't know what we're going to do to get it to where it needs to go across the roof. But we just got it there. Here's what happens. We open up the roof, get the mobile welder up there, he does all the welding, he does need to do put everything together. And thankfully, we had a crew doing some woodwork up there, they were doing a wood deck. And we basically took that equipment apart when we weren't supposed to, we took the door off, and we just jimmied the bolt, took the door off, and then carried the bass brought it over, slid it across and then lifted it up, maybe about a foot to the platform, set it on there and then took the door put it back on. So basically, you know, thankfully, six guys, we could do that it was 1800

Andrew Stotz 15:48
that piece of equipments probably still there right now.

Dan LeFave 15:51
It is no doubt it's Yeah, it'll probably there before or long after I'm gone. But so so here's the thing, you know, we're just figuring this out. I'm just doing things. And I mean, that job was 7am to 11 I remember a piece of pizza was delivered to the roof, you know, we had the guy come to the hatch to deliver the PIZZA. But, you know, and just figuring things out. And he heard a guy and you know, did you sales at a Florida, you know, paying him $100,000 a year? I mean, it's just, it was like the wild west of business. And I was, you know, in the office times thinking, How can I write a check to the landlord? In fact, I couldn't, you know, and if he came knocking, I would just I couldn't get my check. You know, that was it. And so it was really stressful, really frustrating. I was not being paid what I was worth, but I had no clue. You know, until I had a girlfriend whose father she I told her how much was he said, You know, that's not what?

16:51
Really,

Andrew Stotz 16:51
you gotta get a new brother.

Dan LeFave 16:53
Yeah, but you know, here's the thing, I'm great with money, I ended up saving $10,000 out of that and invested it and so on. And really, you know, so I'm really good with my money wasn't good with his money, because he was spending it. So. But ultimately, here's the thing, he wasn't going to share ownership with me. And that was the big deal. And there was excuses. He was building his house, he's buying his property or all these things. And, and, you know what, here's what happened. I did everything I could, and we built that business to where we could, but you know what, after those few years, the market sort of dip down, the demand went down. And, and I went, I went searching and I started talking to a friend who worked at a company, he introduced me to a guy in HR at this big telecom company. And I ended up getting recruited over there. But here's the thing, they recruited me for $25 million project. And they said, What's the most you've ever managed? But you know, budget wise? Fine. Like I really, you know, a project I said, or half a million I mean, we've never had a project that has this half a million they run 100,000 you see, you know, half a million. Right. But they welcome in. And you know, for a few years, I was managing a $25 million project, which I had no clue how to do. But what

Andrew Stotz 18:07
happened your brother's business?

Dan LeFave 18:09
Oh, that's the tough part to swallow. He ended up going bankrupt after Wow. Within a year within? Yeah, he went down. And but you know, what? It wasn't, wasn't me. It was it was you know, I had to make a decision that was best for me. Yeah. But the fact that I was gone, I think that was a key, I was a key role in the business and a key aspect. And, and that was missing, plus the market was dipping down. And, you know, there wasn't as much demand but, but I have to say it was three years of high stress, like just incredible amount of stress. And, you know, I showed up for work. And I think, you know, we can do today to get the business going or to generate more income or, or to deal with issues. You know, I'll tell you one other quick story. One time, there's always deficiencies on projects like these small ones. Now, I get called about a deficiency at a site where a bolt that you know, like, maybe a one inch bolt was not put in, when I'm there by myself. And you know, I'm fixing this thing. And I remember, I remember being so frustrated, this is summertime, it's sweltering hot, the humidity is probably as high as you can go. Right? And it's probably 100 degrees. And I'm out there. And I'm trying to drill a hole through the steel plates to put away and I literally remember, there was not enough room for me to fit in between the wall and the equipment. So I had to actually take my foot and push against the drill and hold the button with my thumb and push against it with my foot to get the drill going. And I managed to get it done. I was like Oh, my God. Like that was the kind of insanity that I was dealing with, like things miss things forgotten. I mean, I was organizing tools and trucks like systems for that and everything because, you know, I don't know, I just have a perception contractors are just not that well tuned. Going to organization, organizational management or keeping? Yeah,

Andrew Stotz 20:04
exactly. So what lessons? How would you describe the lessons that you learned from this?

Dan LeFave 20:09
Well, you know, well, definitely I, I recognize people that are totally chaotic and disorganized fast now. Right? In fact, I call them out. And I don't work with anybody who's like that anymore. In fact, I'm disqualifying them, I disqualify people from the outside, but then I let them prove themselves through their stories and experiences and, and how they manage things. But you know, discipline can be learned, but it's really well, it is learned, but it's usually learned at a young age, if, if a family hasn't been disciplined at a young age in the home, then you're going to see that, but, but there was definitely not a lot of discipline with my brother, but there was with me, and so that's why we fit well together, except there was lot of anxiety on my side. I was trying to fix that all the time. And, you know, I would, you know, I'd organize the whole back room and get bins and all the tools and everything separated, itemize and, and, you know, totally take counts and keep them in a spreadsheet, never. I would do all these things yet. You know, when it came down to, you know, them keeping organized, forget it, you know, they wouldn't write things down or whatever. But, but that was one thing. And then the other thing was, and I talk a lot about this now, especially with clients, I'm like, you know what your projections matter? People don't think so. But what they project outwards and forwards in the future matters. Like the fact that we exceeded our target revenue targets. And I was just randomly guessing, you might say that I wasn't, but I was just ran, I was adding percentages 6% 3%. But I'm just saying, you know, this is where the revenues were gonna go. And here we are, right. And it was just happening. So and it came back to haunt me, you know, I had a boss at one point in a company, I was contracting there. And the CFO projected 66% revenue increase, and we had about $20 million in revenue. And he didn't tell me until until the end of the year, and I was like, how was I supposed to help you achieve that when you didn't tell me anything about? So um, but you know, I think that if you can get into your future and predict and project and just, you know, keep that as your I mean, that's your goal. That's your objective, right. But then you have to take steps in between, but I wasn't necessarily focusing on that objective at all other than I just put it out there. But the fact that I told the bank that it was going to hit those numbers, that was probably, you know, a bit of stress, because I don't know if you know, this humiliation is bigger than the fear of death. So, you know, you don't want the bank to be calling you say, hey, you said you're going to hit six, and you're still at four. You know, are we going to get our money back?

Andrew Stotz 22:52
Yeah. So maybe I'll summarize a couple of things I take away. I mean, the first thing is about shareholding in companies. The first thing about that is that it's always a touchy subject. And here you have a brother where, you know, that makes it even more challenging. And I would argue, you know, there's a couple of points that I would make about shareholding in companies. On the one hand, you know, everybody wants to be a shareholder in a company. But I would also argue that there's many reasons why it's not such a great opportunity. For instance, if you somebody gives you 5%, or 2%, share in a particular company, you really have no voting power. At that level, you just end because it's not a publicly listed company or something you can't get out, you're just stuck there at the depending on whatever that person wants to do. If they want to pay a huge bonus to themselves, they can do that. And then there's no profit to be shared with you as a shareholder. So generally, you know, obviously, if you think or you believe or you know that this company is going to be a unicorn, well, that's bad advice to not have shareholding. But if it just a typical business, I would think twice, but I'd rather have cash like a cash bonus rather than hand shareholding. And of course, if you had shareholding, and you weren't able to keep the chaos together, then you may have just had to go through that bankruptcy just with him or the struggle of all that. The second point is chaos. You know, I would argue that chaos rarely creates value. People who are chaotic systems that are chaotic, very hard to consistently deliver, and what does it you know, how would most customers define quality, consistent product, I define quality for instance, we define it, you know, as in the cup quality, the quality of the taste of an espresso for my coffee business, that it's the same every time for a customer. And chaos can never produce a consistent outcome like that. And then that's the third point that I wrote down and said, people like yourself. I mean, from the day I've met you, you know, I can see that you're a structured guy and you help people build structure, but there are people that don't see the value in structure. And you've already talked about the fact that you just kind of walk away if there's, you know, just too much chaos in their life, but I would kind of reframe it, they just don't see the value of it. And but for people out there in this world, I know there's a lot of people that see the value of structure. You know, I think you're, you're the type of person through this story that can really help them along the way. Is there anything you'd add to those three things the shareholding chaos and not seeing the value of someone that really is good with structure?

Dan LeFave 25:31
Well, I think just on the point of chaos, from confusing comms order, hopefully, and, you know, and there, there is, order, at least from what I can see from the outside and my brother's life in business now. But, but you know, what, and there's definitely a lot of more order in my life in business, because of the things that I've learned. But you know, it's, you know, I think that people need to realize those experiences, the frustration, the chaos, the, the stress, that's heat, and I was able to take the heat. So if somebody can take that heat, and then convert those experiences into something better, meaning they look at those experiences and say, Okay, what did I like about those? And then reveal the contrast? What do I want instead? And then you go after what you want? I don't know if it's absolutely true. My mentor, Bob Proctor, I want to ask him about this. I said, do we always go through bad experiences before we get good? He didn't give me a solid answer. But you know, but I'm, I'm proving it I'm seeing in time I see with clients. It's like, I have to live through their bad experiences. And then once they get to the breakthrough, or the breaking point, then I'm like, oh, now you're seeing it right now. Okay, now you can see the possibility. Okay, good. All right. Well, let's take all that stuff that didn't work and convert it into what you want. Now, I have to let him live through it, though. There's no way no other way.

Andrew Stotz 26:52
So from chaos to consistency, I mean, there is the fact that the process of creating maybe chaos, the process of developing a business in a rising industry is full of chaos, but ultimately, to can to make lasting value, you know, there's this consistency. Alright, so tell me based upon what you learn from this story, and what you continue to learn, what one action would you recommend our listeners take to avoid suffering the same fate?

Dan LeFave 27:22
Well, definitely take a broader perspective and take some more time to think and absolutely know what you want. I mean, at that time, in my life, I didn't know what I wanted. So I was just fishing, I was just going out and testing and trying things, you know, but I could have just as easily asked myself some questions and done some soul searching, and taking some really, you know, taking some time just to realize get quiet and realize, do I want to work in construction? No, not really, I'm just going to because it seems like a next best option. But although it did lead me to landing that project management job, and then a real estate job and another wireless Telecom, and then you know, managing a $25 million portfolio, you know, and so, in. And also, I will say this, that, you know, the, the story didn't turn out too bad, like the fact that my brother went bankrupt, he did end up going back into business later on. He's successful now. And because of the journeys that I went on, over a period of five to seven years, I introduced him to one president of one telecom company, there was three new companies that came in, and he ended up doing $2 million in business that year alone. So and right. So you know, it wasn't, it wasn't all negatives live in loseley. Lesson learns.

Andrew Stotz 28:41
So last question, what's your number one goal for the next 12 months?

Dan LeFave 28:46
Well, you know what, that 12 week year really hit a nerve in me. And so I went ahead and created a brand called the three month year, and I am empowering people to take what they might look at, you know, 10 years out three years out, and then break that down to one year, and then take whatever that biggest school is, and then build it into a plan and do a sprint, like really focus, but not just business. Because without relationships, without health, without those three pillars, things are going to fail. And so this system is all about managing those three. And ultimately, people will transition from an intentional imbalance on their business to more health and well being and relationships. And so it's phenomenal. I'm so excited about it, because it's about lifestyle. I mean, people don't realize that they didn't start a business because they wanted to work all the time. It was not meant to be all work no play so under this system solves that and, and like I said at the beginning, it's a lie detector. It's a distraction removal machine. it's a system that if you can use it and implement it, it works and and you know you'll go like this woman Alice went from 1212 to 16 hour work. days, six days a week, down to three, and, and board board. So those are the kinds of transitions that you can make. And that way you create a life worth remembering, but also a life worth dying for.

Andrew Stotz 30:13
Hmm. Well, that's exciting. And I look forward to learning more about that. And ladies and gentlemen, you can go to the show notes. And keep in touch with Dan and learn what he's doing. And also go to the Fave coaching comm slash focus to get started into the mind of Dan Murphy. All right, listeners, there you have it another story of loss to keep you winning. My number one goal for the next 12 months is to help you mind listening, reduce risk and increase return in your life. To achieve this, I've created our community at my worst investment ever.com. And I look forward to seeing you there. As we conclude, Dan, I want to thank you again for coming on the show. And on behalf of a Stotz Academy, I hereby award you alumni status for turning your worst investment ever into your best teaching moment. Do you have any parting words for the audience?

Dan LeFave 31:08
Only that if you're listening to this, and there's one thing you take away from it, write it down and implemented today.

Andrew Stotz 31:14
Hmm. And that's a wrap on another great story to help us create, grow and protect our well fellow risk takers. This is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz saying. I'll see you on the upside.