What if your retirement plan could own your next business venture?
In this powerful episode of the Exit Strategies Radio Show, host Corwyn J. Melette sits down with Jeremy Ames, Co-Founder & CEO of Guidant Financial, a leader in innovative business funding solutions, to uncover a game-changing strategy for aspiring entrepreneurs: using your 401(k) or IRA to buy or start a business—without triggering taxes or early withdrawal penalties. Guidant Financial is a company that has helped over 30,000 entrepreneurs launch their own businesses by investing retirement savings through a structure called ROBS (Rollover as Business Startups).
With over two decades of experience, Jeremy is a serial entrepreneur, business coach, and former SBA Young Entrepreneur of the Year. His mission is to empower others to break free from traditional employment and create lasting legacies through business ownership.
Jeremy shares the inspiring journey of Spiro Eggdose, who left his corporate job to build a multi-million dollar trash bin cleaning business. He also breaks down the importance of validating your business idea early, truly understanding your customer from day one, and making the crucial mindset shift from simply working for money to strategically leveraging money to build a lasting legacy.
Whether you’re ready to escape the 9-to-5 grind, want to take control of your financial future, or are simply sitting on retirement funds with untapped potential, this episode reveals how to leverage your own money to build the life you want.
Key Takeaways:
- 01:52 What is Guidant Financial, and how has it helped over 30,000 entrepreneurs launch their businesses
- 02:34 Using Retirement Funds to Start a Business
- 03:58 Reasons to Use Retirement Funds for Business
- 4:03 How Peter Thiel used his retirement account to create a billion-dollar Roth IRA
- 4:48 Top 3 reasons people use retirement funds to start or buy a business
- 7:20 Why real estate investors should consider using retirement funds for better returns
- 14:02 Challenges and Success Stories
- 16:57 Final Thoughts and Contact Information
- 17:44 Jeremy’s Personal Journey and Advice
📞 Connect with Jeremy Ames & Guidant Financial
- 🌐 Website: guidantfinancial.com
- 📧 Email: info@guidantfinancial.com
- 📞 Phone: 888-472-4455
- 📱 LinkedIn: Jeremy Ames
Connect with Corwyn:
- Contact Number: 843-619-3005
Shoutout to our Sponsor: ROBYN COLLINS
Do you want something more? More Meaningful Moments opportunities, deeper relationships and memorable experiences? Do you want to make a difference? If you say YES, a career and real estate could be the opportunity you’re looking for guiding people to one of the most important decisions they ever made, the purchase or sale of their home can be both rewarding and lucrative.
Exit Realty has a revolutionary compensation model training and technology that provides you with the tools you need to start and build your successful real estate career. Call me today ROBYN COLLINS with REDROBYN HOMES at 843-557-5003. Again that’s 843-557-5003 or visit RedRobynhomes.com/join.exit and make your Exit today.
Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/corwyn-j-melette/support
ROBYN:
Do you want something more? More meaningful moments, opportunities, deeper relationships, and memorable experiences? Do you want to make a difference? If you said yes, a career in real estate could be the opportunity you’re looking for. Guiding people through one of the most important decisions they ever made, the purchase or sale of their home can be both rewarding and lucrative. Exit Realty’s revolutionary compensation model, training, and technology that provides you with the tools you need to start and build your successful real estate career. Call me today, Robyn Collins, R – O – B – Y – N Collins with Red Robin Homes at 843-557-5003. Again, that’s 843-557-5003 or visit us at redrobinhomes.com/joinexit and make your exit today
CORWYN:
Good morning, good morning, and great morning, guys. Welcome to another fabulous episode of Exit Strategies radio show. Hey, I am your host, Corwyn J. Millette, broker and owner of Exit Realty Low Country Group in beautiful North Charleston, South Carolina. Hey, if this is your first time listening to this show, guys, hey, you are in for a treat. Our mission here is very simple. That is to empower our community through financial literacy and real estate education, guys. We’re legacy building. That’s what we do. Got to give a quick shout out to those who listen to us faithfully. I got to always give a shout out to Elder Pastor Evans. He always gets me and tells me, make sure I put that senior on his name. Put some spec on my name. And I love him. I love them. So thank you guys for tuning in. Thank you for the folks out at Monk’s Corner. I also want to give, look here, a shout out to those who are listening to us in the PD and my hometown, M&M Mullins, Marin. Guys, thank y’all so much for tuning in. Thank you all for listening, for following, and most importantly, sharing the content that we created and that deliver here. Now, y’all know that we’ve been searching high, we’ve been searching low, we’ve been searching wide. And guys, we have been finding in those most remote and isolated places, the best people to bring to you, to help you shift the dynamic, to help you recreate, rewrite, so you can deliver a new narrative for your future starting today. So guys, I am super stoked for this conversation today. Look here, anybody who talking about money, quote unquote, is talking my language. And when they talking about how to figure out how to leverage, how to help people build and grow, how to build businesses and all that stuff, I get super giddy and super excited. So I want y’all to bear with me today while we are with none other than Mr. Jeremy Ames. Now, he’s the CEO, yeah, some of y’all heard boss, some of y’all heard that, of Guided Financial. Jeremy, how are you doing today?
JEREMY:
I’m doing great, Corwyn. Thanks for having me.
CORWYN:
You’re more than welcome. Thank you. Thank you for taking time out of your business schedule to be here on the show with us. If you don’t mind, give our listeners, if you will, that introduction, that 30 to 50,000 foot view of who you are, what you and what your company does.
JEREMY:
Yeah. So Guided Financial, we’ve been at this for 22 years and we’ve helped a few more than 30,000 people become business owners. And the way that we’ve done that is by helping people use retirement funds to invest in buying or starting companies where the retirement plan actually becomes an owner of the business, which means you’re not taking money out of your retirement and paying taxes and penalties. Instead, you’re just holding a different type of asset in your retirement plan and hopefully growing it so that you can use that for your retirement in the future. I always like to tell people there is a billion dollar Roth IRA on this planet. It’s owned by a guy named Peter Thiel, and it won’t take you many guesses to figure out how he got it. His initial investment into PayPal was done with his retirement plan. And that’s why he has such a ginormous Roth IRA.
CORWYN:
Man, look, he just gave me chills with that. So let me start with, just take it to the basement. All right. Let’s take it to the foundation. Why would someone want to use their investment account? So their retirement account, IRA or 401k or what have you, they may have with their employer. Why would they want to use that to start a business versus pulling funds from elsewhere or using personal funds, et cetera?
JEREMY:
Go ahead. You know, we find there are some different reasons that our clients do it. So I’ll give you two or three that really stand out because they come up frequently. One is clients who would prefer to use cash versus debt. As you know, if you go out and get a loan, you’re going to owe the bank and you’re going to owe the bank regardless of whether your business is actually making money or not. And that creates a lot of stress for some people to think about starting a business and having that cashflow drain and that payment that needs to be made. So that is one common reason that we hear. Another reason is people will use it in order to have the leverage to buy a larger business. So I’ll give you an example. We had a client who had a million dollars in IRA and 401k funds that he had saved up and he was able to use that as his primary down payment and then get a $4 million loan on top of that. He went out and bought a $5 million business that was big enough to actually pay him what he was worth to work in the business. A lot of what happens for people is they get these golden handcuffs. They’re successful in life. They’re doing really well, but they’re unhappy. They may be unfulfilled because they’re working in a job they don’t love, but it’s hard to make the leap. It’s hard to make the leap when you’ve got a mortgage to pay and you’ve got kids who want to go to college. And maybe you have aging parents like mine who didn’t do a very good job of saving for their retirement. And that all creates stress for how to make that happen. So that’s another core reason. And maybe the last one is a lot of people, because of the incentives that they’ve had during their working career, have put most of their savings into their retirement. And because they may have an employer that’s matching or giving some benefits there, they keep dumping all their savings into that. And so they don’t have savings elsewhere. They have it in this place where they can’t touch it until they’re 65. And then they get to a point where they’re 40 or 50 and they say, I don’t want to do this anymore, but I’m not ready to be done. I’ve got 10 years or 15 years or 20 years left. And I want to do something that matters and something where I can have some more control over my time. So those are probably the top three reasons I see.
CORWYN:
That’s interesting. So one of the things that I’ve been having as an ongoing conversation with folks is in the real estate space, as we talk to people that are thinking about investing or thinking about this or whatever, I always ask them, well, what is this for? Is this to fuel your day-to-day life or is it to you looking to set yourself up for retirement? And if someone gives me the latter, then I’m advising them or telling them, well, look, look at investing that money from your retirement and let that money funnel back into your retirement and save you and actually accumulate and make you a whole lot more money. So the next question I’d have along this same vein, understanding why people should look at this or consider this or may look at this as a vehicle or an option. What does the process look like? First of all, my imagination says you got to identify what type of investment vehicle they currently have, but what does this look like from, hey, I’m thinking about this. I like to do that. What is one of the first steps or the first few steps that someone would need to take?
JEREMY:
Yeah, I’m going to answer part of your question first and then we’ll come back to the logistics of how the transaction works because there’s really two points in time where people come to guidance. Sometimes people come to us and they’re early in the stage. They know they want to become a business owner, but they’re not sure exactly what that looks like. And they’re trying to figure out what their budget is, like how much do I have to work with? How big of a business can I buy? What should my deal box look like? And so when people come in here, what they’re trying to do is understand how does this work? What are the restrictions within which I have to live if I’m going to use my retirement funds as an investment? And therefore, is it going to be part of my strategy? Am I going to use just retirement funds? Am I going to use personal funds? Am I going to use an SBA loan? And therefore, how does that help me narrow in what I’m looking for? The second time that people will come to us is when they have a business deal they want to do. So they already have this business, they know they want to buy it, and now they’re figuring out how do I put together the right pieces? What’s the right financing structure for me? And at that point, we walk people through the logistics of what it looks like to use your retirement funds. And now I’ll answer the second part of the question, which is what does that look like? Well, it looks like you have funds somewhere in a retirement account that are eligible to be rolled. And in fact, it can be in multiple accounts. I think the record is we had a client who had 20 different retirement accounts, which is just a zoo trying to collect all those funds in one place. But if they’re eligible for rollover, you can use them in this structure. And what we do is we set up a new business entity. It has to be a C-corporation, which is a little bit of a mind bender for most people because when they think of a small business, they think of LLCs or S-corps. It has to be a C-corp because a C-corp is the only kind of business entity that can have an owner that’s not a human. And your 401k plan is not a human and they’re going to own a portion of this business. You start with a C-corp. We set up a new retirement plan. That’s what we do. We set up a specialized retirement plan that allows for an investment in the underlying business. And then those funds from your other retirement plan get rolled into this new retirement plan. And then a transaction takes place. The transaction is your retirement plan is buying some amount of stock from the business in exchange for dollars. And the dollars go into that corporation and then the corporation goes out and it buys the business it’s going to buy or purchases the assets it’s going to purchase or invest in the sales and marketing or the product development to get the product launch, whatever the things are that are needed to get the business rolling.
CORWYN:
Wow. One, you just gave me something I had. I did not know in regards to what type of corporation that you’re limited to do this under. So the question I have is because obviously some businesses, maybe some one person, you’ve got enough money, maybe two, three, or maybe a small group, a syndicate partnership, whatever it may look like. So I think I know the answer, but I want you to give it to me. Can multiple people partner together in all role or combined retirement accounts or money from a retirement account? I want you to give me a clarifying point here, Jeremy. Let’s say someone has $150,000 in their account. They need maybe a buying in, or maybe they are looking to start, but they only need 75. Do they have to roll all of it in, or can they only roll the portion?
JEREMY:
Yeah, you don’t have to roll it all in. You can roll, most of our clients don’t roll 100% of their retirement funds. They roll what they think they need for their particular business transaction that they’re going to do. And yes, you can have multiple owners. Those multiple owners can look like different things. It can be multiple owners of which they’re just bringing in personal cash and they’re not bringing in retirement funds, or it could be other owners that are bringing in retirement funds. The only restriction if you’re going to bring in retirement funds is that you have to be an employee of the business. Because if you’re not an employee of the business, you’re not going to qualify to participate in the 401k. And if you don’t qualify to participate in the 401k, then you can’t access the investment vehicles of the 401k to buy the stock of the company.
CORWYN:
So you just gave me a whole another, man, see this, I love this man. So what you just gave me is, so the person starts a business. You’re an employee of the company, which means as an employee, you can earn wages. So you can be compensated and paid by the business. But you also have a 401k or retirement plan that’s set up through the business that allows you to funnel money, your profit, if you will, back into that so that you can restock, if you will, your 401k or your retirement for later.
JEREMY:
Is that what I just… There’s basically three ways that money get back to the 401k plan. One is as an employee of the business, when you make compensation, you’re deferring some amount of your comp into the 401k. That’s one way to get more money into the 401k. Other way to get money into the 401k is that the business can do a shareholder distribution. It can say, hey, we made a $100,000 this year. We’re going to give that $100,000 back to the shareholders. And if your retirement plan owns 60% of the business, then your retirement plan is going to get $60,000 worth of cash that’s going to go in. And the great part about shareholder distributions to a retirement plan is a retirement plan doesn’t pay taxes directly. You pay taxes when you take money out of your retirement plan. So when you put that 60,000 back in there, or not back in there, when you put that in there as a benefit of being a shareholder owner of the business, then that money can continue to grow tax deferred or tax deferred, depending on what type of funds are used. And then the third way that it can go back in there is you can sell your stock at some point. Let’s say you build this business for 10 years and you say, Corwyn says, hey, I’m ready to go live in the U.S. Virgin Islands. And so I’m going to sell my interest in exit realty. And he says, hey, James, I’m going to sell this to you. James cuts you check for a million bucks. And if your retirement plan owns 60%, then 600,000 of that’s going into your retirement plan. And you’re rolling that off to wherever you’re going to roll it off while you’re sitting in the Virgin Islands. And then you’re drawn off like you would anyone that’s in retirement. You can actually control the tax bracket that you’re in because you’re controlling how much of the retirement funds you’re taking out and therefore what taxes you’re getting hit with.
CORWYN:
I love it. Look, I like the fact that you’re trying to send me to the island, bro. I preach that. Yeah, you’re welcome. Real right there. See, that’s the thing that so far listeners, guys, look, this is what I want you guys to gather, see as a construct. Oftentimes we’re always focused. And Jeremy, I know that you see this quote unquote as a day to day, but we’re always focused on, I was having this conversation just recently. I think maybe the last several days, definitely within the last week, how we’re always focused on working for instead of leveraging for meaning that you go and give your time to get this paycheck to go do this. When you can leverage retirement funds, build this business, cause all these things to happen. You’re getting compensated and you’re continuing to save for your future and your retirement. So we forget how to leverage because we’re so bent on, I got to do it. I got to put my hands on. I got to do this. I got to do this. I got to do this. You only get to spend money once. And if you get to spend, look here, a tax free dollar is a different kind of money. You see what I’m saying? When you able to defer taxes or otherwise offset them so you can build and grow your business. That is like, to me, let’s do that. Let’s get that every day of the So what is some of the biggest challenges that you’ve seen from people that you guys are working with or have worked with and kind of getting things together? And what does somebody need to know? What information they need to be able to either put their hands on access or otherwise be able to provide in order for them to get started?
JEREMY:
Well, to get started with what we help people with, it’s just as simple as calling us and having someone talk to one of our senior consultants who can walk through their individual situation. That’s not the bigger risk in this. The risk is the underlying business that someone’s choosing to invest in. That’s where all the risk lies. And so that’s where I would say most of the effort needs to go when someone is considering going down the path. And there are lots of ways to de-risk how you think about becoming a business owner. I have a funny one that came up today on a client that I interviewed that happened to be in the U.S. Virgin Islands. That was why it was on my mind core when they bought a bed and breakfast there about 12 years ago. And now they’ve just recently bought a 15 unit hotel that they’re essentially rehabbing. It’s been a core part of St. Thomas forever, but it’s been dilapidated and no one has kept it up. So they bought this thing and they’re restoring it and expanding the business into becoming really hotel owners at this point. And I asked them, because I’m always curious with our clients, as you were thinking about going down this path, how did you evaluate what the risks were and how did you figure out how to get past them? And they jokingly said, well, we watched all seasons of Hotel Impossible. And I thought to myself, that’s both insane and genius. They used reality TV for this business where this guy goes into hotels and just breaks down all these business owners on what they’re doing wrong. And so they got their little entertainment, but they also drew some principles out. And it was funny when they were talking about buying this 15 unit hotel on St. Thomas, they said, yeah. And so we started watching episodes of The Great Bar Rescue. And I think that’s what the title of it is. That was hilarious. All that is to say, the most important thing is to pick a business that’s going to give you a high probability of success, to stack the deck in your favor. There are no perfect certainties when it comes to business, but there are lots of things you can do to make sure that there is greater upside and that you’re reducing the risk when you’re walking in. And that becomes more important, especially if you’re using funds that have some tax advantages to them.
CORWYN:
That makes perfect sense. And I just got full clarity on the conversation that I was recently having. Yeah, it just came in crystal clear because the conversation was leverage the money that you’ve already set aside and the money you’re working for. Let that be what you still use on your day to day, but leverage that so you can grow it. And that’s what you’re talking about, what your company does. So, Jeremy, this is probably a very good time to make sure that our listeners know how to reach you, their contact information. So if you don’t mind, give us where can people reach you guys at? Where can they find more information or website or what have you?
JEREMY:
Yeah, you can go to our website. It’s guidantfinancial.com. That’s G-U-I-D-A-N-T financial.com. There’s tons of educational resources on there. We’ve got a complete guide to rollovers for business startups, which is what this particular approach is called when you fund a business using that. So lots of information on there. And if you want, you can reach out and we can get you set up with somebody who can walk you through your particular situation and help you understand what the implications would be so you can make the best decision for you. Also, I’m not much on social media, but I am on LinkedIn. So anyone that wants to reach out to me there, I’m happy to connect and be helpful in any way I can. I am personally super passionate about business ownership because I am a two-time college dropout that went to school to be a teacher and figured out pretty quickly that was not what I wanted to do. And I fell into business ownership. I got lucky. It wasn’t some grand intentionality. There wasn’t some rich dad that I had that was coaching me along the way. I just happened to fall into a couple of opportunities initially that then opened the door for other opportunities and paved the path to a pretty great life that I’m very grateful for, but also recognize that I got lucky. And I’d like to help more people put luck in their favor. Because I think being a business owner, it changes your life. It’s not just taking ownership of an actual asset of a business. It’s taking ownership over all of the outcomes you want for your life. And that changes you. It puts you in this place where you’re going to have to deal with challenges and work through obstacles that you probably would run from in your normal life. And it has a forcing function. It does one of two things. Either it breaks people, or it forces them to become a better version of themselves. And what I see more often than not is that better version of themselves. I think we live in a world where we chase comfort, but comfort is not what helps us grow. It’s not what helps us feel fulfilled. It’s not what helps us add more value to the world. And that’s what business owners do. They take ownership, not just of their lives, but now the lives of the people they employ, the communities they serve. And so anything I can do to help people who are on that path, I am stoked to do.
CORWYN:
Yeah, that resonated because I’ve been having some of those conversations recently. But for our listeners, guys, because Jeremy ain’t say it, but I’m going to say it. You know, Jeremy, you were SBAs. And so for those who don’t know, SBA, Small Business Administration, you Entrepreneur of the Year, right?
JEREMY:
Well, I was a young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2007. I’m not young anymore, Corwyn.
CORWYN:
Fair enough. Fair enough. We’ll take that. And you guys also, you have a platform, podcast platform as well that you guys share insights and things as well. Correct?
JEREMY:
Yeah, we have a podcast called Create the Life You Want. And really what we do on that is we just interview small business owners where I dissect their journey of getting started. Like how did they think about becoming a business owner? What were the risks that they came up against? What strategies did they use? And it pulls out such interesting things like these clients today who were watching reality TV shows in such a brilliant way, right? To think about how to learn a business that they had no experience doing. One of them was a lawyer and the other one worked in the chemical business. And now they’re hoteliers. So, you know, that makes total sense.
CORWYN:
It does. It’s funny. So I’m a little sidebar, a little segue, I guess, maybe behind it. But like I very seldom watch reality TV when I do watch it. Like I watch stuff like Ice Road Truckers. I’m like, OK, you know, because my former life, I’m a serial entrepreneur. And in my former life, I used to own an 18 wheeler. And every now and again, I want to get back into that particular thing. So I watch Ice Road Truckers because look, if you can drive a truck through that mess right there, you can drive one anywhere. And then I think there’s one in the mountains or something, too. You may be more qualified than to buy a Canadian freight business. I love it. And that’s an interesting concept. I didn’t realize it because some of the stuff you watch, OK, yeah. And you start trying to figure out or find out some of the opportunities and stuff that exist in there. But let me bring you back around to something that I think you got close to it. But I want to see if we can get the door open and get some context for our listeners, which is give me like the success story, like the rags to riches, because I know you got somebody like that, somebody who had maybe a smaller retirement, but they leveraged it or something or somebody who did something just so mind boggling and was such a success. Give our listeners that teaser, if you don’t mind.
JEREMY:
Yeah, I mean, I got so many stories. So maybe I’ll just pick a couple that I think are interesting because they’re unique. So I interviewed one of our clients, Spiro Eggdose. And this was a guy who worked in corporate America. I want to say he worked for IBM or something like that. And he got really disenchanted with it because there was so much travel and he felt like he was missing all this time with his family. So he decided he wanted to be a business owner, but he wasn’t sure what to do. And then one day his wife gave him a honeydew list. And on that honeydew list was, honey, you need to go wash out the trash bins, you know, trash bins that you pull out to the curb. Yeah, I haven’t cleaned mine out in the five years we’ve been in our house. So I can’t imagine what it is for most people, but Spiro hadn’t done it either. And he had no interest in cleaning out the bin. So he gets online and starts searching for companies that can come do his trash bin. And he finds this guy in Southern Florida. So he calls him and he talks to him. This guy says, yeah, I have this truck. It’s kind of like a mobile car wash for trash bins on wheels. And we do this. And he says, great. Can you come up to my place? And he says, no, I’m not going to drive two hours North for a $15 service. That doesn’t make any sense. He’s like, but I’ll sell you a truck. And so Spiro thought, wait a second, maybe this is the opportunity. And so being a dad of a Girl Scout, he went to the local grocery store with a clipboard and he stood outside of this grocery store. And when people came out, he started talking to him about this trash bin service and saying, would you be interested if I get this truck in signing up for three months, I’ll give you a discount. And if I don’t end up buying the truck, I’ll just refund you the money. He got 60 people to sign up. And so he went out and bought his first truck. It’s like a hundred thousand dollars when this thing’s all outfitted with this mobile trash bin wash deal. Well, now Spiro has three trucks. I want to say his business does like two and a half million dollars a year. He actually got an entire city signed up on his service. And I’ll tell you how he did this. Cause I thought this was brilliant. He figured out that what most people were doing when they were cleaning out their trash bins is they would take it out to the curb, they put the hose on it and then they just let it all drip into the natural, whatever the street, I don’t want to call it irrigation street drainage. Yeah. Well, this particular city was on this huge green initiative. And what he knew about that city was when you drained it down the normal drain, it actually went into the system in Florida. That’s all the swamps and lakes and everything around there. And so he’s like, this is a no brainer. I’m going to go propose this to the city. And the way that he did it, cause the way the city works is they require that you get three different proposals from three different companies. So he went to the three possible companies that would do the overall trash service. And he said, here’s what I’ll do. I want you to include this as part of your presentation for next year’s contract. So no matter who won the bid Spiro was going to win. And he actually went into the city to talk to the city. And when he first explained what happened, one of the main guys that was there said, nah, I don’t think people do that. And then like two people in at the table raised their hand and they’re like, that’s exactly what I do. And I didn’t even know it was wrong. So Spiro locked up a whole city. I think it’s something like 7,000 or 7,500 locations that his route runs just from that. So that’s one of my more favorite stories. Cause it’s such an unusual business that came about happenstance and he’s done some really genius things to grow it and create the life that he wanted to live within that business.
CORWYN:
I love that. I love that, Jeremy. So we’re quickly getting where I’ll say the end of our show this week and I’m loving the conversation, man. But I got to ask you that hindsight question, which is if you looking back over what you’ve done, what you know now, like you said, you dropped out of college twice, but your intent on being successful, you love business. If you could go back to one of those previous stages of where you shifted and went somewhere else, knowing what you know now, what would you have done differently to cause your success sooner?
JEREMY:
Yeah, this is an easy answer because I’ve started five different companies. I’ve had several others that have gone and I’ve had some bad failures as well alongside those. And in every case, the lesson that I keep learning and the most common lesson I see for businesses that don’t work out is they don’t start with a customer in mind. They have this idea of this product they want to build or this really cool service and they start spending money and investing in it and they never take the time to figure out who’s the customer, who’s the person that I’m trying to serve. So when I hear stories like Spiro’s where he’s being the Girl Scout dad and going outside the grocery store to validate this really exciting idea that he has, I go, man, I wish I would have known that when I was 25. I wish even with guidance, I wish I would have known how important it was to get deep with understanding the customers from the very beginning because it would have saved so much time and so much heartache and I think would probably be way larger now as a result.
CORWYN:
Yeah, that’s a profound answer. Essentially what I heard in there is just you would have went harder. You would have been more strategic, but you would have went simplistic as well because oftentimes we have these grand ideas and it doesn’t take all this. Somebody standing in front of this grocery store, hey, would you be interested in this service? Are you interested in this or whatever? So you can gauge where your market is. You got to develop your business, if that makes sense, and that’s how you do the same thing in real estate development or other development. You got to know who your consumer is and get that insight and feedback on the front end. So Jeremy, I want to thank you, man, for being on with us today. I want to thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule, but most importantly for dropping the jewels and nuggets that you shared with us on the show today.
JEREMY:
You bet, Corwyn. Thanks for the invite. It’s great to talk.
CORWYN:
You’re quite welcome. Now, for our listeners, guys, look, we keep bringing this stuff to you and I want to know when y’all are out here doing something with it, we always ask you to put a hashtag on that thing that says it’s your legacy building because what you’re doing today, what you’re taking this information to apply to today is meant to benefit your family for today and for generations yet to come. You are building and creating your legacy and we want to see the results of it. We want to know that you’re doing it because that’s why we continue week in and week out to go out and bring the best, the brightest, the most knowledgeable, but most importantly, those with the biggest heart to share and love on us guys and share their wisdom with us. So that’s what we have been focused on, what we’ve been committed to and what we’re going to continue or work to continue to bring to you. So guys, look, as we wrap up today’s show, y’all know how I feel. Y’all know what I say. I always put the two of those things together and I bring it to you this way, which is to tell you that I love you. I love you. I love you. And we’re going to see you guys out there in those streets.
