Today's Guest

Tim Calise knows how to scale a business – and he’s done it in many different businesses with six business exits under his belt. Tim started young, and by the age of 25, he had successfully raised over $325 million through his first investment company. Tim later served as the “silent #2” at GymLaunch, a leading fitness firm that was recently acquired by American Pacific Group (APG). Today Tim is a business coach, investor, and advisor to over 15 privately held businesses with annual revenues from $250,000 to $10,000,000+. Tim says he was destined to be an entrepreneur from an early age – always looking for a different way to do just about everything. Tim is on a mission to drive up the value of small businesses by crafting stronger products and developing operational and financial systems to improve revenue growth. In this episode, Tim generously shares some of the key ingredients to his recipe for success in various industries. 

Resources Shared

• Jeremy Harbour
• Harbour Club USA 
• Unity Group | LinkedIn
• Thryv
  

Episode Transcript

(Please excuse grammatical errors due to transcription)

Tim Calise:                         Product market fit, when done right, is actually the answer to so many of the things that plague us. In just about every company I've ever had, we have turned acquisition from a variable expense to a consistent profit center.

Thryv:                                  The following podcast is brought to you by Thryv. Manage, run, and grow your business, all from one dashboard using one login. Small business runs better on Thryv.

Gordon Henry:                 Hey, hey, this is Gordon Henry at Winning on Main Street. And this week we're excited to have somebody who has been an Inc. 500 entrepreneur and a consultant to leading entrepreneurs and CEOs, Tim Calise. Welcome, Tim.

Tim Calise:                         Thank you so much, Gordon. Appreciate you having me.

Gordon Henry:                 Great to have you here. So, quick bio on Tim. He's a serial entrepreneur, husband and father, avid Formula One fan. Most of all, knows how to scale a business. He's done it in many different businesses with six business exits. Today, he's a business coach, investor, advisor to over 15 privately-held businesses with annual revenues from 250K to 10 million and more. In many ways, Tim says he was destined to be an entrepreneur from an early age, always looking for a different way to do just about everything. What could our listeners get out of this episode? Whether you're just starting out or well on your way to success, Tim has really kind of done it all in the small business world and can inform your journey and you may just want to try to hire him.

                                               Tim, super excited to meet you. Let's dive in. Can you walk us through your career journey and what led you to where you are today?

Tim Calise:                         Absolutely. And as you noted in that very kind intro, my journey started early on in my childhood. So, I was, to the great chagrin of my two sisters, the kid in middle school who brought a briefcase to school. So, I was definitely the cool kid, as you can probably imagine. But really, it primarily started in college for me. I always knew I liked numbers, I liked finance. My dad was in professional services, but I also knew that I was not destined to be a small cog in a big wheel.

                                               My kind of entrepreneurial mind, I think, had been formed at that point. And I liked the idea of using my art in a traditional sense of taking problems and figuring out innovative solutions. And so, my first primary company was in college. It was a late-night snack delivery business in the Washington DC area. And then after that, I created a textbook exchange program. So, as a college kid, solved some problems that were right there in front of me. And then, I stepped out into the finance world and started an investment company in my early 20s that had some great success. We were able to raise over $325 million between the age of 22 and 25. And then, actually voluntarily gave all that money back before the 2008 market crash.

                                               Took a leave from finance, got into technology and fitness and put my own money where my mouth was, and started to learn the principles of doing things on your own and scaling a team, and all the things that come with being a small business owner. And then, through that gym experience at fitness experience, I was introduced to a couple, Alex and Layla Hormozi, who started a company called Gym Launch, which some folks might be familiar with. And I came on and joined Alex as his partner and member of the executive team at Gym Launch and our sister companies through the sale about two years ago to a private equity firm. So, I've kind of done small business, done it on my own, built teams, raised capital. And so, I think I'm a little bit of a Swiss army knife in that regard. But I have such a soft spot for the entrepreneurial journey that I've dedicated the last two years in trying to help battle entrepreneurial isolation, if you will, as a number two and a guide and advisor and investor to the next round of entrepreneurs.

Gordon Henry:                 Wow, fascinating journey. And with all your varied success, I can't help but ask you, is there a formula for running a small business successfully? And I ask you that because you've done it in a lot of different ways, a lot of different places. And so, you're not specifically in a category. It's not like you've just done it in one industry. So, many people think, "Well, I'm in this vertical," or, "I'm in this category." You've done it in many. So, is there a general success formula that you can share for small businesses?

Tim Calise:                         Yeah, so a great mentor of mine, a gentleman named Alex Charfen came up with a concept called the five core functions of a business. And I think intuitively, we all know these things, but I think he laid it out in a great way. And so, the five are effectively lead generation, lead nurturing, sales or conversion, product delivery, and then resale and ascension, or retention on the backend. And I think that's really important because it allows us effectively a framework in which we can look at the business and its component parts to understand where the opportunities are. Where are those levers that we can pull to hopefully be able to move the business forward in the greatest extent possible with every unit of either capital, money, time, et cetera?

                                               And I mention that simply because I think the formula that I have found is, number one, understanding each of those component parts and having your finger on the pulse so you understand where those opportunities are. And the second is, I think one of the reasons why I have been able to do the various things that I've done is I'm not afraid of taking the small losses. And I think this theme comes out a lot. The number one thing that I would recommend to any small business owner, especially under even a million dollars in revenue, there's only one metric that really matters, and it's the number of offers that you make.

                                               I think we get wrapped up in, "What about paid ads? Should I be doing podcasting? What about the product? What about acquisition?" The only thing that matters in the beginning is to bridge the gap between where you are and where your customers are, and where they want to go. And by making offers, it will inform every part of those five core functions, what's working and what's not, and it'll allow you to be able to be iterative in your development. And so, number of offers made I think is the number one thing that I would recommend to anyone, especially starting out.

Gordon Henry:                 Right. So, let's talk a little bit about your consulting business. So, you get hired by entrepreneurs, CEOs to tell them how to do things better. Can you give us a couple of examples of where you've been hired recently or where you're working now, and what were the changes that you came in and implemented?

Tim Calise:                         Yeah, so I'm a product-first kind of entrepreneur and innovator. And what I mean by that is I believe, especially in the early stages, that product is the thing that matters most. And so, by taking a product approach... I'll give you a couple of examples. So, one is a gentleman who owns a non-medical home services business. Seems as far away from kind of e-commerce and brick and mortar service and things like that as you can probably get. But fundamentally, what they have is a core service and he had one level of service. So, we came in and said, "Okay, let's actually look at your customer base because not all customers are the same. And so, let's create the different personas of your current buyers. And from that, we can better understand how we can build products or tweak our product mix on our stack to better align with each of their needs, expectations, objections, things like that."

                                               And so, one of the things that I do almost across the board is to understand how we can use product to both be an acquisition tool. I believe in demonstrating or documenting over kind of creation in marketing sense. And then, using the product to actually lead the acquisition process. So, that's one. I have a gentleman who's in the podcasting space. He helps small podcast hosts and host platforms in getting their content out. So, creating audiograms and assets that they can use for distribution and using some technology around that. And one of the things that we worked on with him was he was positioned as having these great, call it a tool, but he wasn't providing a service. And I think we struggle sometimes in kind of bridging that gap. That's like selling features versus benefits. And so, I've helped him better position himself in a very competitive industry competing against the ChatGPTs of the world and all the other tools that are out there, in how can we actually create a long-term sustainable sticky process around the same kind of core ideas?

Gordon Henry:                 Right. Yeah, really interesting. And I think you've said somewhere on your website that you were often the silent number two, you said, behind talented CEOs. That you weren't always the number one guy.

Tim Calise:                         Yeah.

Gordon Henry:                 What's the difference in the skillset, do you think, between the number one and the number two? And for people who are listening, some may be number one, some may be number two, or three, what should they do to compliment themselves?

Tim Calise:                         Yeah. So, I have always likened myself as being a strong number two. And what that means for me is I personally believe that most entrepreneurs will thrive in a co-collaborative environment. How many of us have probably sat behind a computer trying to figure things out, tweak a model, do more research, reading. And when you're stuck in that vacuum, it can be very difficult to get the creative juices flowing. And how many times have we've probably been sitting there going, "I really wish I had someone I could talk to, bounce ideas off of," and things like that. And unfortunately, for entrepreneurs, we look to our friends and our family as primary targets in that respect, but they generally don't understand the way our minds work and what we're trying to do, and so they do their best.

                                               But I've fundamentally found myself in a position of being that co-collaborative partner. And so, I can both take what a CEO or a founder is thinking, I can kind of run it through my lens and say, "I see where you're going. What about this?" And then, when we go to execution, especially at the smaller end of the revenue range, I can help package that into an executing plan. And so, I sit in between the creative juices of a founder entrepreneur and turning that into an actionable plan that can then go down to the teams, and then be implemented thereafter.

Gordon Henry:                 Yeah, makes sense. Now, in your consulting business, you say you help entrepreneurs avoid six figure and eight-figure mistakes. So, those are big mistakes. What are the kinds of mistakes that you've seen entrepreneurs make or tend to make and how do you avoid them?

Tim Calise:                         Yeah, I think that the biggest one that I see is, again, getting back to this product-led approach, is thinking that they can outmarket a bad product. Product market fit, when done right, is actually the answer to so many of the things that plague us. Think about brand, he who has a bigger brand will generally win. Well, how do you build a sustainable, valuable brand? You're known for something out in the marketplace that is different, that is differentiated from everyone else. Well, how do you do that? And you can kind of see each step we go that by having an innovative and unique way to look at the product and positioning, we can actually create a better brand, better acquisition systems.

                                               In just about every company I've ever had, we have turned acquisition from a variable expense to a consistent profit center. And at Gym Launch, the example of that was we helped gym owners acquire customers at a profit. We introduced the six-week transformation challenge at $600. The rest of the industry, at the time, thought we were crazy because they were giving away free trials. So, at first blush, you would say, "How does $600 compare to free?" It just doesn't make any sense. And instead we said, "You know what? We're going to charge the most when the pain is the highest." And by charging more in an industry that is known for failure cycles, by charging more, we can put a better product on the field. And the better the product is, the better the success rate is. The better the success rate is, the more rabid fans we will have, and therefore our acquisition process will only get easier.

                                               Even if you want to run paid ads. I mean, at the end of the day, we're all kind of at the cashflow statement effectively, if you want to run paid ads, there's a cost to it. How quickly can you recoup that cost? The faster we can get our money back, the faster we can redeploy it, and that cycle therefore continues. And so we do everything we can to build a product mix from the front end, all the way through ascension, to attract and retain all the various different avatars that we might be going after.

Gordon Henry:                 How is it that you can go into the business and just spot what's wrong? I mean, we've all watched Shark Tank or seen Marcus Lemonis with The Profit. He goes in and he shakes his head and he says, "You guys are doing it all wrong." There's a certain skill you have to being able... Do you have a process where you go in and you say, "Okay, I'm going to look at the value chain," or something? How do you do that as a consultant?

Tim Calise:                         Yeah. So, the answer is yes, I have a process around it. I think it looks like it's sometimes gut feel, but very much so... Again, cash is king, especially early on. I look at using that product as how are we attracting people? What does it look like? And a basic framework here is I think many times we try to market to cold traffic, to the outside world, and try to very quickly convert them from not knowing anything about us, and at that point, they're problem and solution unaware. They might not even know what they don't know, and they don't know how to address the thing that is plaguing them deep inside, but they don't even know what questions to ask. We try to accelerate that process to take them from that point to I want to sell them a high ticket program that might be 12 months long. And you can almost see it's almost too big of a leap.

                                               So, the question is how do we put the building blocks in place where each one of the steps of acquisition allows us to both inform and create a rabid fan early on? But we can do it at a profit, typically. So, the three-step framework that I would use is you create a lead, and you can attract them with lead magnets, a free giveaway, something like that. Then, we take a lead who has expressed interest in who we are and what we do. We then create a customer from them, and a customer is defined as someone who has spent a dollar or more with us. And then, you can create a client. A client is someone who has gone through the optimization, call it the sorting process, and has now kind of been placed inside of our ecosystem in the right way, shape, form, revenue level, price level, et cetera, to solve the thing that they came to us for.

                                               And I think by doing that, the framework works because it allows us to compartmentalize each of those steps, look at them objectively, how do we build a process in here? How do we build profit in here? And then, how do we create systems and SOPs to be able to take somebody through that whole journey? Which at the end of the day, for small business owners like us, we need to take advantage of every leveraged opportunity that we can. So, how do we build systems? What is the platform that we're working with? How does that help us reduce headcount but increase efficiency?

                                               And the more linear we can make it, the more repeatable you can make it... You mentioned Marcus Lemonis. I remember I think they did custom camper vans, I think was the process. And he came in and said... Company was doing $2 million a year or something like that, but really wasn't making any money. And the first question he asked was, "So, do you have standard layouts or is everything custom?" And they said, "Yeah, 90% of our work is custom." He's like, "Well, no wonder... Because you can't build any momentum. You can't build repeatability through your process. So, it sounds good on paper, you can sell high ticket, but it's all very high cost." So, I think the more repeatable we can make the process, the better off we'll be and we can get that flywheel going as a small business owner.

Gordon Henry:                 Yeah, makes a lot of sense. Put you on the spot. You're consulting, you're obviously a very successful consultant. What do you charge or how do you charge? Do you charge a percentage or do you take stock in the company? How do you do it?

Tim Calise:                         Yeah, so I eat my own cooking. So, the meta thing about this is I follow the exact same framework I just laid out a minute ago. So, my first tier is I have something called the Co-Creator Community, which is a $250 a week, no contract, no obligation, stay as long as you'd like, but if you leave, you can't come back for a year. And that is a group of small business owners and entrepreneurs. We meet once a week for an hour, and every other week we either do a workshop, we'll actually work together, or we'll do some kind of training. And that's based on what I'm seeing with my clients and some of the mentors that I work with.

                                               So, that's call it step one, that is the first entry point and a great way for people to get into the world and start to see what that's like. After that, I do consulting in three ways. There's revenue share, there's cash and there's stock. And then, the last step from there is for those that I consult with, and many times I've actually been brought on as a kind of a partner or an investor for primarily equity and a board seat or something like that. So, those are the three stages that I just mentioned and recommended for folks here. I follow the exact same process and it's worked very, very well so far. Yeah.

Gordon Henry:                 Terrific. I hope some of our listeners will reach out to you. And at the end, I want to make sure we give them the place to go, the location on the web. You raised a lot of money. I mentioned at the beginning I think you raised something like over $600 million, you mentioned early on in your career you did that. What are some of the things people should be thinking about... I'm starting a business or I'm trying to scale my business, I know I need money to do it. How do I begin that process? What should I be thinking about?

Tim Calise:                         Yeah, so I'll answer it in two ways. So, the first is if you are thinking, "I can't move the business forward because I need to raise money," I want to give you a little bit of a different way to think about it. I've worked in a number of software businesses and I know, Gordon, you're in that world as well. So, many times we say, "I need to raise $1 million, $2 million to build my MVP, my minimum viable product." But imagine a world where you said, "Okay, I'm trying to figure out how I can build something that does this specific thing." Can you do it manually? Can you do it in Excel? What other ways can you at least validate the idea to a potential ideal customer of yours simply for no other reason than to learn and to have the confidence that there's a ready, willing, and able buyer when you raise the capital and build the thing?

                                               In just about every company that I now work with, especially startups, we will always sell before we create. And so, I would challenge you to think of what is a way to at least deliver part of what you're trying to do at a very, very low or no cost immediately. But let's say you do need to raise capital. Number one, not all investors are the same. So, you have to know what type of investor do you want? Do you want a purely financial investor? And that comes in a few different forms. Or do you want what's called kind of a strategic investor or strategic partner, someone who can bring not only capital but also guidance? The earlier on you are, the more risk there is, the more of the company you're going to give up. So, I try to encourage folks, even if you do need to raise money, to at least get some indications of traction of product market fit before you go and actually raise capital, because that extra little step, there's a lot of risk in there.

                                               And the more risk that's on the table, the more you're going to give up a percentage of the company you're going to give up ultimately. So, those are kind of the two things I would think about. You mentioned the capital we were able to raise. I raised over $300 million. And the reason why I was able to do that is because I knew what our unique selling proposition was. And for those that were around in kind of the 2004 to 2008 timeframe, this is when hedge funds were getting really hot and hedge fund managers were saying, "You should be lucky to be able to invest with me." And they had this false bravado that as someone new to the industry, I just didn't quite understand. And so, this sounds kind of basic, but this is what I did.

                                               I went out and said, "We're small. The big guys aren't going to give us money, institutions, universities. That's all out. That's maybe sometime down the road. I'm going to be getting money from mom-and-pop investors." Number one and number two, most of it was like retirement accounts. So, I simply went out, Gordon, and said two things. Number one, "I greatly appreciate the trust that you put in me. I do not take my fiduciary duty lightly, and you will never have to wonder whether your money is safe." That was number one. And number two was, "I'm going to be hyper communicative. I'm going to send out weekly emails. Here's my number. Whatever you need, I am here to help you." And that got us from a million dollars to over $50 million, 250, 500,000, a million dollars at a time. And then we were able to go to institutions. And so, as with most things, compounding is a real thing. Non-linear growth is something that we saw happen in that business as well, but you have to start somewhere.

Gordon Henry:                 So, it sounds like everything has gone well for you, that you've had success after success after success. Have you had any failures?

Tim Calise:                         Oh, absolutely. This is my favorite subject because I think you're absolutely... You picked up on it exactly right. It sounds like it's just been home run after home run after home run. The scars that I have having gone through this process are plentiful. And the times where I have led myself astray is when I haven't adhered to the things that I've mentioned a couple of minutes ago. I had an idea that I loved that I sold to myself, and then there wasn't actually a market for it. I've done that. With our fitness business, we started with one location and we got it to be slightly profitable. And I was like, "All right. I got this thing nailed. Let's go open another one and another one and another one." And at that point, I was basically in my late 20s. My ego drove me at that time.

                                               I wanted to be known as the guy who had the most number of units in this system that I was building. And I just should have stuck with one. And at some point, I realized that I was out over my skis. We had to shut some of those clubs down, we had to retreat to a position of strength. And the more clubs we opened, the less money we made. And it looked like I had the world at my fingertips, and it was just terrible. And the point when I knew that I had lost my way was I had a general manager who came to me one day and effectively quit on the spot and said, "I can't do this anymore," in no uncertain terms. And then, half my team quit after that. And my first indication was anger. It was like, "How can they do this to me? I've treated them well. Don't you know that I've funded payroll out of my pocket?" And after about a day and a half, it was like, "I am the sinking ship that they are saving themselves from."

                                               And it was such a painful lesson, but it showed me that I was not the guy... I didn't have the belief system and the traits and the characteristics to do what it is that I was trying to do. And those things are reconciled one way or the other. And so, I would just encourage anybody out there that you can be motivated, but make sure you're pragmatic in what you're doing. And I should have hired a mentor earlier in my career. I think I was so blinded to the idea that I can figure anything out, and I think in school I was the smartest kid wins, that kind of thing. And then, that turned into he who or she who can withstand the most pressure and hold the mantle will win. And now, after 20 years, I now realize a lot of those premises were wrong. And so, yeah, my own bravado has probably cost me more money than anything else along the way.

Gordon Henry:                 You had an interesting phrase in there when you were just recounting that. You said, "I should have hired a mentor." How do you hire a mentor?

Tim Calise:                         So, right now, I have two. One of them took a home services business, actually in the real estate industry, from $100 million in revenue to 3.4 billion in six years and exited. And then, the other one who's actually kind of in the coaching consulting space. But I'm a dad of three, just to be frank. And I have done the burn the candle at both ends. And I am building a life now where I can live my life and be able to have financial stability. And he has probably sold $150 million worth of product, but he's one of these guys who has figured out how to work 10 hours a week and do it on a leverage basis. And so, he and I have been working together trying to really crack into that. I'm good at high horsepower, just add more, do more. And I'm really trying to be cognizant of... He cracked the code for me or showed me the possibility of what it is like to build a very leveraged service business. It doesn't have to be done in the blood, sweat and tears, red ocean competition kind of way.

Gordon Henry:                 Right. I wanted to ask you... We just have a little time left. Today, I suppose like most times, there's lots of economic volatility out there. Somebody's trying to run a business and they're saying, "My God, I can't hire anybody. Labor is so tight. If I hired them, it's hard to find good people. Interest rates are high. Inflation is high. It's impossible to run a business." What's your view on economic trends and is it a good time or a bad time at any particular time? Because it always seems like there's something going wrong out there in the economy.

Tim Calise:                         Yeah, and I think that last part is exactly right, which is there is no kind of fair weather time where it's just going to feel like, "Oh, the world is going to be fine. I see blue skies. Now, is the time to put on risk." And I use that phrasing purposefully, which is I look at it simply as, and I do this on a quarterly basis, just a little kind of check in on do I want to be putting risk on or taking risk off right now? Right now, I'm kind of in the middle. I think we actually even saw inflation came in slightly below expectations this morning. Stock market, as of the last time I looked at it, was running pretty strongly. But I think some of those issues, it's less about enterprise value, like M&A, mergers and acquisitions, and IPOs, and raising capital, that's really affected by a lot of those factors.

                                               But we're building a small business. I care more about the health of the consumer rather than the health of the larger financial markets because really what I'm levered to. And I try to solve problems that are always going to be there, they're omnipresent. I've chased momentum before, it's just not what I do right now. Now if you were trying to build an AI product or something like that, lots of competition, got to strike while the iron's hot, early movers probably matter, but I wouldn't be taking out a second mortgage on my house. I would try to figure out other ways to do that. So, the long and short of it, I try to just look at the health of the consumer and continue to put a product on the field that will win even when budgets are tighter than it might be otherwise.

Gordon Henry:                 Yeah, great answer. Tim, we're going to take a quick break and we'll be back in 30 seconds with more from Tim Calise. Don't go anywhere.

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Gordon Henry:                 We're back with Tim Calise. Really fascinating conversation with a person who's been an entrepreneur, a coach, an investor, a hedge fund... I mean, kind of done it all. Incredible. Tim, you were just talking about small businesses and this idea of let's just find something that people need that's not dependent on trends so much. So, many of these small businesses do provide something, painting houses, or doing driveways or trimming trees, stuff that people always need, but they find it difficult to scale. So, many small businesses, you find the boss and maybe they got one person under that, and they just ever grow it to the point where they have a bigger thing. If you're talking right now, let's say, to somebody who's a roofer, an electrician, a plumber, and they're just like the boss and one or two helpers, how does that person get to be a big business?

Tim Calise:                         It's so interesting that we're talking about this, because actually, one of the companies I'm associated with, we just ran the largest or second largest roofing and solar convention in the country. I just got back a couple of days ago from organizing and helping pull off that event. So, I know roofing very, very well and home service. And so, there's two ways you can do it. Let's take roofing for example. By and large, it's a once in every 20-year buying cycle, effectively. So, the question is when the number one thing that matters is the acquisition of the customer, it's the hardest part of the whole thing and you can only monetize that relationship once every 20 years, it gets really, really difficult really fast to scale that business.

                                               And I was talking to somebody in the digital marketing sphere, and they echoed something very similar, getting quality leads and things like that. So, the first thing I would do is to challenge the idea of how do we smooth out the revenue curve for that provider? And there's kind of two ways you can do it. So, one is the idea of service contracts or other things that you can do. That's one way that you can go. And then, the second, which I think is very interesting is what other services does that person need and how can you either provide them in-house or through some kind of joint venture? And so, the example I would give you is I bought my house about five years ago. I was referred to a painter, we wanted to repaint our house before we moved in. And he said, "Well, not only can I do the painting, I can also do plumbing and I can do HVAC."

                                               And I know he didn't do all of that because I've seen his trucks, but what he figured out is he built a little consortium of when one of us gets a customer, we all get a customer. And I think that model is very, very interesting because if you think of all the entry points that that person has and you can have a shared value proposition, you almost build a competitive moat around yourselves. And so, I would think in those terms as both kind of depth of product and service and also breadth of product and service mostly through some kind of joint venture or consortium agreement with other people in your area.

Gordon Henry:                 Yeah, that's super interesting example. And I find the same thing. I'm a homeowner and we bought this house a few years ago. And I find one of the most surprising things is that the person who did the service on the house before never follows up with me to say, "Hey, can we come back?" We're starting to have some problems with our roof. I don't know the person who put on the roof originally and they're not calling me up, so I'm going to find somebody else. I think that retention effort of just try to stay in touch with your customers or approach people, it surprisingly seems to be very difficult for small businesses that they kind of do it once and forget to ever stay in touch. Bigger businesses I think are very good at it. Once you're on Amazon, they're always pinging you with reasons to come back. Not so much small businesses.

Tim Calise:                         But I think you bring up a really interesting point, which is, so Alex Hormozi, my partner, used to say, "Advanced people never don't do the basics." So, I think you're exactly right. The reason why big businesses are big businesses is not because they can necessarily throw their weight around, it's because they don't lose sight of those kind of core pieces. So, I would absolutely agree. And going back to that kind of five core functions, the second one is lead nurture. It is virtually impossible or impractical to say that someone is going to go from cold to being a buyer in one step all at the right time, and just the numbers don't just bear out that that's not the case.

                                               But even staying in front of your customers, having a system... A CRM is a great example of that. How do we have, we used to call it data warehousing, but one source of truth, is what we used to call it? So, the CRM usually acts as the hub and then you can build the spokes from there. Get everybody in one place, run an automation. I mean, we're in a world right now, I mean this stuff is low-hanging fruit. Find out their birthday, found out the day that they bought the house, whatever it might be, put it in the CRM, put it on an anniversary thing and send them a note. You can even do this now automated. They'll do handwritten notes out.

                                               I think so often we're trying to look over the horizon. Call it a silver bullet, call it the big win, whatever it might be, don't lose sight of that day-to-day blocking and tackling because it might not be sexy, but it's very successful by doing those things. So, I think you're exactly right. You're exactly right. And now, we have no reason and no excuse, I would even say, not to do those things because we have so many tools available to us to be able to do that.

Gordon Henry:                 Yeah, absolutely. So, Tim, we're just about out of time. What's next for you? Where's your next few years going to be? What do you see on the horizon for you personally?

Tim Calise:                         Yeah, I love working with entrepreneurs as that kind of number two and co-creator. So, my vision for myself is I want to create a pool... My vision is I want to help influence $100 million a year in revenue. So, I am building a universe around me with people who... I put out something called my intention statement about six months ago, which was I wrote in three pages where I was, where I am, where I'm going, what I'm willing to accept, and what I'm not willing to accept in my life personally and professionally. And I put that out as the number one thing that actually I send to prospects because I want to make sure our visions are aligned, our traits, our values are aligned before we take a step forward in working together.

                                               That, call it putting it out in the universe or whatever it might be, it has fundamentally changed the trajectory of my business because if you have certain beliefs that don't align, we're not a fit. But it has attracted people who say, "You know what? I watched your video, I heard you on this podcast. I just like the way you think. I think you could be helpful." Even just before this recording, I was on with a private equity firm who said, "You've got the kind of weird Venn diagram of skill sets and experience that a company that we have an investment in needs. Would you come on it as an advisor? We'll pay you in some equity and give you a little bit of retention option." And I love those opportunities. So, my next step is to find, and if you're listening to this, to find folks who I can bring my network, bring my experience, bring the way I see the world to be able to help accelerate growth in a completely value add performance basis.

Gordon Henry:                 Awesome. Well, I could ask you questions all day. You've got an incredibly original point of view, but unfortunately, we're out of time. I know people can hear you. What is the name of your podcast and where can they find you?

Tim Calise:                         So, my podcast is called Leveling the Field, but the best place to find me is either on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram. I'm on all three, and I do monitor my own DMs. So, if anything resonated with you, feel free to reach out on any of those platforms. You can DM me the word Gordon, G-O-R-D-O-N, and I will send you a special gift for being a listener and supporter of the podcast.

Gordon Henry:                 Okay, fantastic. Well, Tim, I really want to thank you for coming on this show. It's been great, and I hope people will get in touch with you.

Tim Calise:                         I appreciate it, Gordon. Thank you so much for having me.

Gordon Henry:                 And I want to thank our producer, Tim Alleman and coordinators Diette Barnett and Daniel Huddleston. And if you enjoyed this podcast, please tell your colleagues, friends and family to subscribe and please leave us a five-star review. We'd really appreciate it. It helps us in the rankings. Small business runs better on Thryv. Get a free demo at thryv.com/pod. And check out our new free product, Command Center, at thryv.com. Until next time, make it a great week.

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