Brad Johnson: Welcome back to another episode of Do Business. Do Life. I have Craig Sullivan and Bonnie Becker from Sullivan Financial Partners here with us today. Welcome to the show.
Craig Sullivan: Thanks, Brad.
Bonnie Becker: Hey.
Brad Johnson: Bonnie, you’ve been counting down the minutes, so this one I heard. You were like super excited to get on a podcast and share everything, right?
Bonnie Becker: Yes. It makes me a little bit nervous, but.
Craig Sullivan: There’s no anxiety at all.
Brad Johnson: You will crush it, I promise you that.
Bonnie Becker: Thank you.
Brad Johnson: So, we were kind of chatting here before we went live. And what’s wild is you all have had an incredible year. So, as we sit here and record this just before Thanksgiving, November 25th, 2024, you guys are pacing to double from last year, which, by the way, wasn’t a bad year at all. 2023, you finished just north of 30 million of total assets, 32 million-ish with the team before. And this year you’re pacing for 60 mil, you’ve increased the team kind of doubled down on that up to 17 members, but insane gross. So, we’re going to get into that. But as we dive in, Craig or Bonnie, whoever wants to jump in, if you said, “Hey, this is the one thing,” like if we could go back and say a year ago and kind of whittle it down to the one thing, which I know is hard that’s kind of really led to this breakthrough year for you, what would it be?
Craig Sullivan: I’m going to say it’s her. The operational changes she’s made have been tremendous. I just try to stay in my lane and stay out of the way. And I’ve figured out that for me, that for our team, that works really well. When we transitioned over to Triad right out a year ago, I guess a year and a month ago or something like that, she took on the challenge of really changing the complete operational side, which is why I wanted her on this call as well.
Brad Johnson: Well, I love that. By the way, we were talking before we hit record. And as Michael Hyatt says in many of our coaching sessions, it’s not a big enough dream if it doesn’t require a team. And a lot of the conversation before we went live here, Craig and Bonnie, was how much, Craig, you as the founder had really, if we were joking, tried to render yourself obsolete to where it’s not just the Craig Show, it’s the team. And you’d mentioned, “I don’t want to do this podcast without Bonnie.” So, this is the first example of the Do Business Do Life podcast where the founder has basically said, “I’m rolling with the head of my ops,” whether that’s Director of Ops, COO, depends on the firm size. But I love that because your actions actually show the intention so that has to be a huge part of the growth. Bonnie, on your side, if you can’t name yourself, what would you say would be like the number one breakthrough for you this year as you look at the team and how you all have evolved over the last 12 months?
Bonnie Becker: I would say, for me, letting go of the reins too from doing a lot of everything to like hiring others to be a part of the team and letting them kind of take the reins and those areas. So, really just rolling downhill. Same thing.
Brad Johnson: Well, and we mentioned you’ve been with the firm eight years. But just a quick snapshot, so we went back kind of the five years prior to this year. So, it was 2019, 20 million. Primarily, these first 2 or 3 years were annuity focused, insurance focused. So, 2019, 20 million, three-person team counting the two of you, by the way. 2020, 15 mil. That was the year of COVID. I know public seminar is this big marketing funnel. So, that really kind of threw a wrench in everybody’s plans. So, 15 mil, still a three-person team. 2021, 21 mil, three-person team. 2022, out of the Series 65, got licensed to manage assets. So, bump to 26, 27 mil total assets, four-person team. 2023, starting to see some of that incremental growth, 32 mil, four-person team. And then 2024, as we said, on pace for 60 mil.
So, your team has essentially doubled, Bonnie. As you look on the op side of that, are you primarily looking at marketing, sales, operations as three divisions now? Like, what was the before? What was the after kind of going from 4 to 7?
Bonnie Becker: Before, we always had marketing kind of separate, but that was really it and then it was sales and operations kind of.
Craig Sullivan: Everybody else.
Bonnie Becker: Yeah. So, now just having the different funnels for everything. For client service work, we have Colton, so he’s handling that area of it. Lindy is marketing and we also have Zach who helps us in that area. And then Debbie, she kind of helps with the offsite, and she kind of floats so she helps with marketing and ops. But I think everyone just really specializing in what they’re doing has helped a lot and they’re excited about growing as well, so helping the team. I think we’ve got a really good team with who we have now who is excited to help us grow and multiple have said they just really love coming to work every day. It’s fun for them. So, it’s not just 9 to 4 kind of thing.
Craig Sullivan: Yeah. I think everybody having a direct ownership of what they do day-to-day and how they contribute to the success of the firm has been pretty tremendous. And to echo Bonnie’s point, we’ve got a really fun team. I mean, we have Nerf guns all around this office and it’s not something out of the ordinary if a Nerf bullet goes flying across the room at somebody. So, we have a lot of fun. And I think that’s important for me because I’m at a point where if it’s not enjoyable, I don’t want to be there. I don’t care about it anymore. I don’t want to do something that’s not bringing a good time to me.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. Well, and how important is that, Craig, as an entrepreneur? We hit that a lot in this show where you go, I mean, I was thinking this morning one of the common themes of being an entrepreneur, at least a couple of them. It’s like you’re almost a little bit naive when you get to it and a little bit crazy. Let’s just be honest. I think all of us are a little bit crazy where, “I’m just going to do this myself.” And I think oftentimes, unfortunately, entrepreneurs, independent financial advisors look up five, six, ten years down the road and they’re like, “I left that prison to just go build a prison around myself accidentally without intending to.”
So, I love kind of the line in the sand of, “If this isn’t fun for me, no thanks. So, I’m going to make it fun for me and I’m going to make it fun for my team.” If we go back in kind of that journey of the snapshot of the growth there, was there some moments where it lost fun for you? I know there was a lot of windshield time and a lot of sacrifices on your side, Craig, but were there moments or did you always kind of battle through and find a way to make it fun?
Craig Sullivan: I think we’ve always done an okay job of that. That was actually the biggest hesitation when I brought to the team that we were going to change our business and that we were going to scale up. I talked to each one of them individually and said, “Tell me your concerns. Tell me your fears, your excitements. Tell me everything before we take this journey.” And every single one of them, Bonnie included, the biggest thing to them was, “We’re afraid of losing what we have as a team as we continue to add people and making sure it’s the right people.” So, the windshield time, there was a little bit of a stress. It didn’t really bother me. It’s just I wanted to be home more. I was getting tired of being on the road. I wasn’t gone so much like others that I know that were truly living in a hotel room more than they were in their own home.
And so, I didn’t have it to that extent but there was, I think it was 2020, which with everything else going on then, I finally hit a wall and I said, “I’ve got to stop being…” I think I was focusing on the wrong things. And I finally sat down and just thought about it and said, “I have nothing to gripe about, even though I’m having a down year.” And if you look at where I am in life, I’m like, “I have no right to gripe.” And so, I decided at that time that if it’s not fun, I don’t want to do it. And it’s time to start having fun at work again. And I think from that point forward is where the business really started being more fun for us again. And there’s always challenges. There’s challenges today but it’s things that I can laugh through now. All right. Well, here’s our next little battle we’ve got to climb.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. I think there is so much in that last statement where so many entrepreneurs, it’s kind of like you, you get what you focus on, you get more of what you focus on. And I think unfortunately, our industry does a lot of the focus on the wrong things, to your point, very production-based like, “Oh, you’re at 10 mil. Now, you got to go to 20. Now, you got to go to 40. Now, you got to go to 100,” for sheer production sake like to be paraded across the stage for an award that takes 30 seconds to receive. And I feel COVID was definitely that for me too. It gave me a chance to pause a little bit where you’re like, “Wait. Why am I actually doing this in the first place? It’s like I kind of built a business so I could provide for my family and now the business is actually taking me away from the family. That’s kind of not why I did it in the first place,” you know?
Craig Sullivan: Right.
Brad Johnson: So, I love that self-awareness there. Bonnie, you mentioned something a little bit earlier that I’m just going to kind of frame as, I know Shawn calls it the “Advisor in Charge” model on his book, kind of the phases of growth where you go from an advisor in charge surrounded by a bunch of generalists to kind of the next phase, which is business owner, where you start to specialize and create divisions within the company. Do you feel on your side of the equation, that’s kind of what started to shift where you’re kind of a generalist with your hands in a lot of different areas of the business and now you’re able to kind of hone in and focus as Craig’s like, “Hey, here’s where we’re going and this is what it’s going to take to get there”? How’s all that impacted you?
Bonnie Becker: At first, it was hard to let go of everything but it’s made it easier and we’re still getting there like still trying to hire, I guess, more for each role to help too. But it’s helped tremendously. It’s fun watching the business grow and the team members grow like personally everyone having fun. So, it’s definitely helped.
Brad Johnson: Craig, you mentioned this. Going back to 2022, obviously, you went and got securities licensed that added another aspect of how you could serve clients. And how much of that has really impacted? And, Craig or Bonnie, whoever wants to jump in on this, kind of the team that helps build and deliver on that plan because there’s the sales side, which is obviously important, but then there’s the shift from kind of a sales approach model to a financial planning approach model. And I know a lot of offices struggle because it’s new, takes a deeper bench to be able to kind of follow up on those promises with a true financial plan. How much of that part or where did that part occur in that journey and how hard was it?
Craig Sullivan: I’ll let you know. I think we’re still on that journey. We’ve taken some good strides, but I don’t think we’re there yet. From day one when we were securities licensed, as we were offering that, we’ve always helped in all five areas. It was just never packaged as here’s the one thing that we do. It was, “Yeah. Let’s go ahead and take care of your safe money. Right. Let’s just go ahead and take care of that income bucket. Now, let’s go into your investment bucket, and then we’ll start talking about taxes.” So, I feel we handled them all, just not cohesively, if that makes sense. I wouldn’t say it was all put together well and that’s why I say I don’t know that we’re there yet but we’re making good strides.
Brad Johnson: Well, Nick, one of our coaches, he gave you guys a great compliment. So, for those that aren’t familiar that are watching or listening, kind of the five income, investments, taxes, health care, legacy, estate. And what we see with a lot of our members, obviously, annuities come in on the income planning side, wealth management on the investment side, and then life insurance starts to come into play. Obviously, tax planning, estate planning, sometimes health care planning, depending on the benefits. And what Nick said is he said you guys already if you look at kind of the standardized three-appointment process, fact find, kind of high level before and after, “What are your problems? Can we help you fix them?” and then third appointment asset allocation, he gave you all a compliment and said you have systematically added a fourth that’s kind of now starting to walk the way through that where I think most advisors do income and investments.
And he said you guys have bolted on that fourth appointment, really dipping into the tax planning, estate planning side of that. So, you just feel, Craig, like you’re like, “Yes, it’s tightened up, but it’s not where I want it to be,” because I will say that Nick on our team has like really complimented you guys. You have been one of the members that’s bolted that on the best so far.
Craig Sullivan: Well, I’ll make sure and send him a check. But, yeah, like I said, I think we’ve done a good job. We’re just not, to me, we’re not where I want to be yet as far as the whole process, getting it dialed in. We’ve walked through some recent clients where I felt really good about it and I feel like everything flowed smoothly. And maybe it’s more on the sales process side that I don’t have the full confidence that we’re there yet. The operational side, as far as here’s the steps that we’re going to walk them through, I actually do feel really good about buying. I spent a lot of time kind of dialing in. Here’s what we want the first to look like. Here’s what we want the second to look like. Here’s who’s involved in each of these steps in three and four. And it’s not an optional thing. You’re going to walk through all of these appointments.
Bonnie Becker: And if I could cut in. We cut back our seminars tremendously last year. So, I think that’s part of what he’s feeling too. Like, we did a lot less than we normally do. So, I think the amount of people that we’ve seen is just he’s not used to it yet, I think, is part of it.
Brad Johnson: Well, so on that note, this is wild. When you say last year, Bonnie, do you mean 2023 or kind of the last year like 2024?
Bonnie Becker: I mean, this year. Sorry. 2024.
Brad Johnson: So, you have cut back your seminars and you’ve doubled. That’s wild, right, from a total assets gathered, which I didn’t ask you to like have all your numbers in front of you or anything. But is part of that, your client size, the investable assets is going up? Because if you’re seeing less people but the numbers are going up, is that part of it?
Craig Sullivan: The average client has definitely gone up. A big piece of this is the Amarillo office. Our secondary office has exploded recently due to acquisition, which was a fortunate and unfortunate situation, I guess, way to put it. But that’s been a huge piece of our last month and a half has generated quite a bit of that 60 million. And that’s just bringing on that or onboarding all those clients as well.
Brad Johnson: And just for context, so I believe there was a firm in Amarillo that the founder passed away that you were able to acquire. And so, basically, you’re able to go in there and kind of flesh out some of the financial planning that maybe wasn’t like fully fleshed out before. Is that a simple way of describing it?
Craig Sullivan: Yeah. I don’t know how much you want me to get into it, but it was a scenario where Amarillo was always just a satellite location. I didn’t have an actual office there, but I’ve been going there for a decade. My wife’s from there. Her family still lives there. So, we’ve built a pretty good client base out there. I got a call from a client. When was that? The summer? Late summer? August?
Bonnie Becker: Yeah.
Craig Sullivan: And she said, “Craig, I need you to move over this account I have.” And I was like, “Well, what do you mean?” She said, “It’s the one you’ve always told me just to leave where it is because it was a good account.” I said, “Well, if I told you to leave it where it is, why do you want me to move it?” She said, “Well, my advisor just passed away.” So, we had some mutual clients in common. And so, I told her, “That’s fine. I’ll have the team send you all the paperwork so that we could keep an eye on it for you.” And then she called me back about a half hour later. She said, “Craig, you know this guy? It was just him and one assistant. And they had quite a few clients who were going to need some help. Is there anything you could do?”
And so, long story short, I got put in touch with the staff member that still remained and with the widow and we had some conversations. I basically told her, “I’ve got an amazing team. If you all just need help, let me know.” And then three days later, Bonnie and I flew out to Amarillo and met with her and with the remaining team member, and she basically said, “Would you want to acquire this and just run it? It’s too much for us.” And so, long story short, we worked out some details on that end and we’re able to now have a full brick-and-mortar office there. We’ve retained the employee and actually pushing her towards more of an advisory role, and excited to see her grow and kind of drive the relationships there.
Brad Johnson: Well, there’s quite a lesson in that story. In fact, it’s like as you said, it’s fortunate and unfortunate that situation. But what I’ve seen is there’s definitely a demographic trend happening in finance right now where there’s the, call it, the older founder advisor that doesn’t have an heir apparent that has really kind of built the business based on them, their personality, and maybe a small team, which honestly wasn’t too different from you when you first showed up at Triad, right? It was you and three others. And I’m assuming the bulk of the revenue was on Craig’s shoulders. Is that fair?
Craig Sullivan: If by bulk you mean all of it, yes.
Brad Johnson: Okay. I was trying to be politically correct, but I appreciate you correcting me. So, I don’t know how much seeing that play out, somebody that was further down the path than you and had kind of built a business of one versus a business built around a team. But, I mean, if there’s not a cautionary tale of what can happen if you build a business on yourself, and we’ve unfortunately seen that play out quite a few times in Shawn and I’s chairs where life will sometimes throw you curveballs you don’t see coming. So, let’s use that as a model. You had an advisor, an assistant. When you really got to Triad, it was you and three team members. And, Bonnie, maybe this is where you come into play because I know Craig’s given you a ton of credit on helping on the build-out on the operations on the hiring side. What shifted? Like, if you said before and after like we flipped on a light switch and we started building a different way, what shifted for you all with how you’re building now versus before?
Bonnie Becker: That really just acknowledging it can’t be all on him personality-wise. I mean, because we’ve seen it in the office even before we switched like clients they call. We try to help them or something, right? They just want to talk to Craig constantly. Like, you could tell them the exact same thing, but it’s got to come from Craig’s mouth. And so, I think just really taking a team approach for everything. So, we’ve kind of changed our verbiage. Talking to everyone now too, it’s like we’re a team, we’re doing this together. So, when people when they’re calling in, it’s not just all to Craig. So, help me out.
Brad Johnson: Well, let me just share what I hear you saying. It’s basically you’re protecting Craig’s time, but it’s not in like he’s the king on the castle way. It’s more so there’s no way we can build what we want to build if everything goes through Craig. And so, you’re almost… But do you have like a script that you change to help the team, help everybody versus it all going through Craig?
Craig Sullivan: I don’t even think it’s a script. I think it’s just in agreement. We’ve all got on this bus. This is where we’re headed. And it does not involve me being at this conference table every day. It does not involve any question that pops up operationally. It doesn’t involve immediately running to Bonnie. Everybody has to own what they do, come to us with ideas. If you’ve got a problem, I want three solutions that you have ideas to solve them, and then let’s talk through it. We’re happy to do that. But I think just as a whole, all of us have agreed that this is where we’re going to go and this is what it’s going to take to get us there. And, Brad, I don’t have a phone on my desk. I don’t do that. I don’t like it. I don’t want anything to do with it.
So, our teams got really good at not just protecting my time but making sure that when there’s something that needs to be done, it’s going to the right person on the team that is going to be the most efficient one to handle it anyway. Whereas, used to it would come to me and I’d be like, “I actually don’t know. Let me get you to the person who can actually help you.” So, why is this coming to me in the beginning?
Brad Johnson: Yeah. You had basically like if I look at it from a business standpoint because I think what I’ve seen over the years with financial advisors and this isn’t like they’re not doing this purposefully, but they become the constraint for everything in the business because they’re the founder, they’re paying the bills, all of that. But it’s almost like you take the highest revenue producer, which is what you are to the business, and then you turn them into kind of air traffic control reception if all questions come to you. It’s like, “Hey, what should you pay a receptionist, Craig?” Well, you’re paying them what a founder makes because you have become one. And that’s no offense to receptionists. Like, that’s a key role in the business but if you’ve got the founder bouncing back and forth between the chair of maximum revenue producer and receptionist on the daily, that’s not going to lead to an efficient business model.
So, Bonnie, as you were trying to shift and maybe we’ll get into mission control and launch plan here in a second, but as you’re trying to shift the trajectory from I, I, I on Craig side to ‘we’ team, what shifts did you have to make? Because those are hard behaviors to change. It’s kind of everybody defaults back to what they used to do. How do you start to turn that vote?
Bonnie Becker: We really sat down with the team when we did our planning and kind of explained it to them. And then really just making them feel empowered in the role that they have the answers. They know even if they’re scared to make a decision, they can roll with it and they can do it. So, really, and just reinforcing that, and like you said when they do come to us with questions, seeing what their ideas on it are before we actually, “Like, this is what I would do,” kind of thing. I let them take lead on it.
Craig Sullivan: And, I mean, we did this from the beginning but it’s not to say that things don’t start slipping back at times and they start coming to us more and more and we say, “Look, we can sit down and have these meetings again,” where it’s, “Hey, y’all need to quit coming to us for all the little things. Own it.” And if you need help, one thing we’ve recently tried to push is, “Hey, lean on Triad. We’ve got support systems in place where it’s not just us.” And I think that has been a big help for the team to feel like they can take ownership and really have the ability to make those decisions.
Bonnie Becker: Also, our weekly meetings that we do, if they do still have lingering questions, a lot of it’s brought up then. So, it’s not just every day, all day coming with questions as well, so.
Brad Johnson: So, I want to hit something that kind of marries those two ideas together. So, first off, Bonnie, you mentioned a weekly team meeting, which a lot of firms when they first engage with us, they don’t have one of that. So, there’s a reason they’re always going to the founder. There’s no holding bucket for the questions to get answered where it’s like, “Okay. Bring those to the Monday morning meeting.” Did you all run those sort of kind of all-team meetings before you got here? Or was that one of the changes you implemented?
Bonnie Becker: We did, but they were not consistent, so we’ve made them more consistent.
Craig Sullivan: You know how they made it more consistent? It’s not waiting on me to be there.
Brad Johnson: I know like you’re saying that with a smile on your face, but spot on 100% because I saw this at SHP with Michele. It’s like as a founder, you will have a busy schedule. Sometimes you’re traveling. Sometimes you’ve got things in life that pop up. And what kills those meetings is when the founder is not there, they don’t happen so there’s just this inconsistent like sometimes we have them, sometimes we don’t. And one of the biggest shifts I’ve seen is when it’s a non-negotiable. It’s like, no, the team will be holding the meeting every Monday at this set time. And then if you’re working and plugged in, you will be there. If not, meeting continues and you get a download of the notes when you get back sort of deal. I’m assuming that was a Bonnie thing like Bonnie would say, “Hey, this meeting is a non-negotiable whether Craig’s here or not,” or how did that shift happen?
Bonnie Becker: Yeah. He really isn’t here for a majority of them on Mondays, so.
Craig Sullivan: It’s worked out swimmingly for me. So, Bonnie and I instead have a weekly lunch on Monday. So, we go to lunch just one-on-one and she downloads anything to me that I need to know about. Otherwise, I don’t know much that goes on around here. I like it that way.
Brad Johnson: Well, when you start to empower team members, that’s exactly how it works. And one of the things, Craig, you mentioned just a second ago, “Hey, we’ve empowered the team to call Triad,” one of the things that I see when businesses start to mature that we work with, a lot of times in the early days, the founder calls us for everything. It’s like the founder always on the phone, “Hey, where’s this at? Where’s this at? Where’s this at?” As the team starts to mature and be empowered in specific roles, i.e., job descriptions and all of that, right, now, you start to say, “Well, that’s a new business question. New business person on our team. Call Katie. New business at Triad.”
And now it’s not once again all going through the founder but now we’ve got separate conversations going on depending on division of the business that where the problem lies, right? So, have you started to see that shift on your all side where now different team members are calling for different reasons?
Bonnie Becker: Yes, definitely.
Craig Sullivan: Absolutely. I find out because I’ll get randomly copied on an email response from Triad back to a question that somebody had asked and I didn’t know it was being asked, so.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. Well, before we get into kind of the launch plan/mission control, any other thoughts on just kind of the before and after of, “Hey, we were kind of in that 20 mil range. We added AUM. We kind of popped up another 5 to 10 million of AUM when we added that,” but, I mean, obviously blew the lid off that to 60 million this year. Any other big takeaways before we get into the launch plan?
Craig Sullivan: I really think it’s been all operational. It’s nothing I’ve done. It’s all on that side of the business. And I’ve just been here to take whatever they give me and we can run with it. And I think just having the team all pointed in the same direction with a vision, with a goal in mind has been very powerful for us.
Bonnie Becker: Also having templates and processes for everyone so they know what to do. So, it’s not like they don’t have to come to you for everything. They know what the system is. And empowering them since they’re in the day-to-day with it all, if they want to make changes to it or have ideas that will better help it, I think that’s been a key takeaway too.
Brad Johnson: I love that, Bonnie. We call that, like kind of jokingly, rip-off and duplicate. And one of the things that’s really cool with the Triad community, I mean, it’s 65 rock stars. I mean, independently, all of y’all would be like the guy or girl at your individual firm. And when you get a group together like that and start trading ideas, it’s pretty insane what can come out of it. And I’ve always tried to operate my business. It’s easier to edit a document than it is to create one from scratch. And if you want to put the Sullivan Financial spin on it, it’s not just like, “Oh, here’s the job description without any of your all’s personality,” but it’s like, “Okay, cool. Here’s one that’s got all the basics. Now, let’s just edit it to make it us.” Has that been kind of your approach, Bonnie, on your side?
Bonnie Becker: Yeah, definitely hiring. You all helped a lot in that aspect too, for having. I think that was another thing we really honed in on this year was like the client or the, sorry, team member onboarding process. We stole a lot of that from y’all. So, definitely processes and stuff.
Craig Sullivan: Borrowed.
Bonnie Becker: No. We stole it.
Brad Johnson: Okay. We gave it to you openly. We shared it openly with…
Craig Sullivan: I think one advantage, Brad, is when I came over to Triad, I came with my really close group of friends that all do their own thing as well. And we have a history for the last decade of sharing everything together. And I think that’s really helped us take big strides as we shifted gears a little bit and trying to scale our businesses individually. But we share everything every day. So, that to me is probably one of the biggest markers of success, at least for me, I think, that it’s been able to lean on each other and, “Hey, this is a scenario I’m running into. Tell me what’s going on in your office.” And, in fact, I think Bonnie and the other operations team members from those offices as well, they share a lot.
Bonnie Becker: Actually, doing a training next week, a whole bunch of them.
Craig Sullivan: Yeah. So, they bounce ideas off one another. I think that’s tremendously important.
Brad Johnson: There’s a quote that I heard at least a decade plus ago that I’ve just kind of made a mantra in business and life. It’s a Jim Rohn quote, “You’re the average of the five people you surround yourself with.” And what you’re sharing there, Craig and Bonnie, obviously, you’re benefiting too is you are plugged into a group that is all pushing each other to get better all in their own different individual way but crowdsourcing best practices and breakthroughs and what works. And it’s like life isn’t that complicated if you don’t make it that complicated. It’s like works in business, works on the golf swing, works in the gym, works on being a better husband, being a better dad. And it’s like whatever that pursuit is, just surround yourself by those people that are on that same journey.
Same on the op side for Bonnie, “Hey, here’s a bunch of amazing director of ops, COOs that are all trying to build amazing businesses where people love coming to work there.” I’m guessing we can learn from each other, right? It’s like it’s not that complicated. Any other thoughts on that? Or do we want to dive into kind of the launch plan?
Bonnie Becker: We can dive into the launch plan.
Craig Sullivan: Okay. Let’s do it.
Brad Johnson: Cool. All right. So, Craig, you said something that is very normal. But I think what’s interesting is most founders think that it’s just their own individualized problem. So, you mentioned just vision has been one of the big changes for the team and you’ve doubled in size. And as you double, that gets exponentially harder. You’re at seven now. When you’re at 14, it’ll be harder because now you’ve got a bigger group of people. You’re trying to all run in the same direction. And so, that takes increased communication. And one of the things I’ve seen from founders is they have a vision. It’s just typically right here between their ears. And you’re like, “Well, why didn’t you do that? This is what we’re trying to do.” And your team’s like, “Do what? We don’t know where we’re headed.”
And I love that you were like super honest and you said that was one of the hardest things for you doing the work with Kristin. And I know Ryan does a ton of work to kind of extract the vision from the founders so we can get it on a piece of paper for the team. But what makes that so hard, Craig, of just like, “I kind of know, but it’s kind of tough to put into words”?
Craig Sullivan: I wish I could tell you what makes it hard. That’s just not how my mind works. I’m more on the analytical side, and I’ve got all kinds of ideas, but it’s all about driving forward, right? Just go, go, go, go, go. I’m a ready-fire-aim kind of guy. So, when it came to what I would call the colorful language, the exciting, the… I don’t even know.
Brad Johnson: Aspirational.
Craig Sullivan: Yeah, aspirational. I still can’t even put the right words into place to describe that. It’s just not the vocabulary I have or the way that my mind works. And so, I mean, I was very straightforward with Kristin. I said, “This is going to be a challenge for you because I don’t know how to answer these things. I don’t know how to talk this way.” But somehow they were able to do it.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. I found and I know we talk a lot about the Enneagram at Triad, which is it’s one form kind of personality assessment. But you’re a 3 and Bonnie’s a 1. And I find different numbers have more ease with that than others. And I think one of the things I’ve seen with 3s, obviously one of the reasons you’re so successful very like to-do-list driven typically is my experience of a 3 where it’s kind of like, “Here’s my five to-dos for the list. I will crush all of them and I will end the day with this clean slate,” right? And then a 1 on Bonnie’s side is very process-oriented, which I’ve found that applies very, very well typically to the operations side. But I think sometimes the hard part for founders is being willing to get to that uncomfortable phase of just like ideation where you’re like you almost need time to think it through.
And I know some people are like go out in the wilderness and sit on a rock and stare into the sunset and come up with something. Everybody’s got their own different version of it. But how were you able to kind of battle through that tough part? I know we try to make it as easy as possible. We’re kind of interviewing you and putting your words down, but were there certain things looking back that would be advice you could give to other founders to kind of battle through that tough part of getting the vision out of your head?
Craig Sullivan: Geez, I don’t know. Work the process is the best I got because Kristin had it so dialed in. Like, to your point, it was such more of just an interview style that she asked questions I don’t even know what she was going towards, but she was able to put my answers into words. She goes, “Well, what I’m hearing is this. Is that right?” “Yes, that’s exactly what I was trying to say. I just didn’t know how to say it.” So, I don’t know that there’s any real advice there from me, other than just be willing to be open and walk through it.
Brad Johnson: I love that. And by the way, Kristin, who helps a ton with the podcast, she’s a master at this. And the cool thing is the experience you walked through had been refined for two or three years where founders would get stuck and we’d back, okay, we got to update this process because it’s not working. We’re making it too hard.
At one point, it was actually sending you all the homework and then we realized nobody’s doing the homework. So, now, then we turned it into an interview process just to make it more user friendly or member obsessed, as we say. Bonnie, I want to hear your side, if you had kind of– you’ve been at Sullivan Financial. Craig, does she have permission to be brutally honest from your side? Are you cool with that?
Craig Sullivan: She doesn’t need it. She runs the show.
Brad Johnson: Okay, cool. So, Bonnie, what was your experience, call it pre-launch plan, kind of the before and after? Did that add a ton of clarity for you? Did it change your perspective on what you all were trying to build and how to get there? How did that impact you?
Bonnie Becker: I think it gave a lot of clarity on where we were going and having everything dialed in. Because it is scary at first, like, when we’re going through this whole new change, it’s like you need direction and help and you all definitely did that. So, it was scary, I mean, at first, but you all made it so easy. It has made everything clearer vision-wise for me, and I think the whole team, it’s helped. And that’s really what’s driven everything, I guess.
Brad Johnson: Well, I know one of our goals for the team. We obviously do. One of the blind spots I saw in finance that Shawn and I, we were really fortunate because we grew up in the business and we were running alongside guys like you, Craig, that were building incredible businesses. They were just built on themselves. And so, you’d start to see these breaking points.
And one of the reasons that Triad exists today is we realize there’s no founder that can truly build a business that is built to last, that’s just built on them. It has to be built around the team. And so, we just saw our industry kind of sucks at building teams. It’s all founder focused. It’s wine and dine the founder, fly them all over these beautiful conferences, but then they get back to the team and the team’s like, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I wasn’t there.”
And so, for you, Bonnie, I feel like, I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but I feel like it went from a job to a career for your team. It’s like, “Okay, show up. I kind of am getting multitask all day long, but now I have a job description, now I have a career track. Now I know this is where I focus, and if I win, the firm wins.” Is that a fair assessment?
Bonnie Becker: That is, yep.
Brad Johnson: And how much of that, because I know one of the things is this is involved at Triad. We’ve actually started to see trends in what I would call org charts, where it’s like, okay, cool, when you’re at four or five people, this is kind of a pretty basic org chart that seems to be a trend. Okay, now you double to 10. Here’s how you kind of expand out and start to split roles based on growth. Do you feel like that’s starting to be a thing, where it’s kind of like we know where we’re going org chart-wise, so therefore, I can start to hire ahead and then plan for the growth versus be a victim of it, where I’m like getting bombarded every day? Or how has that shifted?
Bonnie Becker: We definitely try to take a proactive approach with that. So, we created our own articles a month ago.
Craig Sullivan: Yeah. Bonnie and I sat down together. And actually, was it when we were flying back from Scale Summit.
Bonnie Becker: It was, yeah.
Brad Johnson: Oh, wow.
Craig Sullivan: After we’d been in that last Michael Hyatt breakout that day, on our flight back, we spent the entire flight just scribbling on paper on the airplane. And we got back and built it ourselves and said, “First, here’s where we were last year. Here’s where we are today.” And I didn’t want to just go year by year, so I said, “First, let’s look at where do we actually want to be in three years.” And so, where we are today is at seven. I guess we were at eight. But we’re at seven.
And I think when we built out the three-year mark, we’re 20. We’re 20 team members. And so, we kind of backed into all our goals. Here’s where we are today with numbers. Here’s where we are today with team. Here’s where we want to be with both. What are the steps to get there? What are the most important hires first?
So, we kind of went through that together and then we brought the whole team in and said, “Here’s where we see things going. Here’s how each of these roles might transition into leadership roles and having a team underneath you or underneath these positions.” And we asked them individually after that, “Where do you see yourself three years from now on this org chart? Is this something that excites you? Is there a shift in direction?” Because I think, at this point, some of the roles as we get to that 20-team member mark are going to be separated and even more specialized than they are now. And so, we’re trying to get an idea of a path to take each one of them that they’ll feel more rewarded and successful at.
Brad Johnson: I love that you’re involving the team in that. Actually, I just hit this on a podcast recorded last week, but there’s been a shift in my thinking. And I look back, in the early Triad days, when we were at five, six, seven team members, now we’re approaching 100. And I wish some of what you’re talking about right now, we would have thought about when we’re at five, six, seven. And it’s almost like building the org chart in advance.
And I just call them forks in the road. You’ve got kind of a leadership. Let’s just use new business. You might have a leadership track where you’re going to oversee people. Once that division gets big enough, you might have more of a just, hey, I want to be nosed down in a spreadsheet path and just do the job because I don’t want kind of the stress of overseeing people or the additional requirements that that entails.
And the cool thing is you’ve got seven co-founders right now, or six, I should say, Craig, because the team at this stage, it’s like if you had a pie and split it into seven pieces, everybody has a pretty massive impact on what happens at the firm at 14, at 20. Now, individually, you’ve got less impact, but now, it’s more important to have better direction and better clarity in role, so that all works together seamlessly. And so, I love that you’re kind of almost treating that team as like six other co-founders and like, hey, here’s where we’re going. Which track do you see yourself in three years?
From my experience, one of my favorite quotes is if you help plan the battle, you don’t battle the plan. And that’s essentially what you’re doing and you’re getting ahead of that. So, you can start, okay, well, they’re probably going to go right here, which means we need to hire for this maybe more technical role if they’re going leadership. So, like, if we future cast 2025, Bonnie, what do you see? And I don’t know if you’re there yet, but what do you see as far as what the team will look like at the end of 2025? Do you see yourself adding a ton more team members based on the growth you all plan on?
Bonnie Becker: Yes, we’re going to do at least two more sales advisor positions for the role or looking at a Medicare, we’re trying to figure out how we want to position that in there, and then another admin role for Amarillo office.
Craig Sullivan: And a new business here.
Bonnie Becker: Yeah.
Craig Sullivan: Yeah. So, we’ll add at least five to maybe seven before the end of the year is my guess, end of 2025.
Brad Johnson: And then do you have an idea on growth numbers as far as total assets you’re all shooting for in 2025? You’re going to unveil it here publicly?
Bonnie Becker: We haven’t told our team yet. We’re doing this in our meeting tomorrow.
Brad Johnson: Okay, well, we might hold off then, so they don’t hear it before you’ve shared it with them. But I’m assuming it’s an aggressive number.
Bonnie Becker: It is.
Craig Sullivan: I don’t remember what it was. I’ve always had a feeling that we set goals as a team, but we all bring them individually. And I want to know what everybody thinks we should shoot for the next year. And I’ve always had the lowest number.
Brad Johnson: Interesting.
Craig Sullivan: This one’s always pushed harder than I have.
Bonnie Becker: Which is crazy, because I thought the number this year was, it seems so far away and now we’re already almost there.
Brad Johnson: What was your number at the beginning of 2024? I didn’t ask.
Craig Sullivan: It was 50. And we’re going to crush it.
Brad Johnson: Wow. Well, congratulations.
Craig Sullivan: Thanks.
Brad Johnson: I mean, that’s what I love sitting in this chair for me. It’s so rewarding when I see a firm like you all’s come in and want something bigger that they just hadn’t had the blueprint to build before. But by the way, we can give you the blueprint all day long and if you’re not willing to do the hard work and change to implement it, it’s no good. So, I love the fact, I mean, that’s what we call a partnership, where we’re leaning in, you all are leaning in. And so, it’s congratulations. That’s a great way to go into Thanksgiving week. Lot to be thankful for there.
Craig Sullivan: It is.
Brad Johnson: Well, let’s go to– well, speaking of, I wrote this down as we were prepping. You guys have a really cool tradition with your clients around Thanksgiving. Do you call it Pie Day or what? What’s the official term?
Bonnie Becker: It’s Pie Day.
Brad Johnson: Will you share that? Because that’s such a fun idea.
Bonnie Becker: Our clients love it and it’s so easy. We’ll send out mailers and our clients can sign up for a pumpkin pie. And then we do it the Tuesday before Thanksgiving every year. And we’ll go to Sam’s or Costco and grab them. And it’s just a good time to see your clients where they come in. We also do like a canned food drive every year to a place here locally, just right in Grapevine. So, everyone will bring cans and donate them and we’ll take them in afterwards. But clients love it and it’s such an easy, simple little thing.
Brad Johnson: So, is that a can drive in conjunction with Pie Day? So, they’re bringing canned goods.
Bonnie Becker: And that’s optional for everyone, but we’d like to throw it in there.
Craig Sullivan: So, I’m going to expand on this a little bit. Tomorrow, the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, every year for us has always been three pieces, I would say. We always do our kind of a review of how the year’s gone. We celebrate our wins, like by tomorrow, we’re going to, and we haven’t told the team this year, but we’re bringing out everybody’s champagne moments from last year and we’re going to celebrate those, celebrate the business wins, set our goals for next year. Then we do Pie Day and have the clients come in in the afternoon and pick up their pies, which, Brad, it blows my mind that people will drive past 18 Sam’s and Costco’s can pick up a $6 pie from us, but okay.
Bonnie Becker: I love it.
Brad Johnson: It’s the tradition you’ve created, Craig.
Craig Sullivan: And then after Pie Day is over, our entire team and their spouses go out to dinner to celebrate. So, this is something that we’ve done for the last 10 years.
Brad Johnson: Wow. And let’s share a few stories because I’m guessing, doing this for 10 years, you’ve seen some cool kind of client stories play out. And I’m also just thinking, I always like to switch it and I’m like, okay, I’m Craig’s and Bonnie’s client. Okay, I show up. Is it built in kind of an open house situation where it’s all in your office? Okay, so I show up, I bring my canned goods to donate. I’m already feeling a good vibe right there. I’m giving back. I get my pie. I’m sure it’s kind of like an open house situation. You’re mingling. Your teams, they’re kind of having a cool day.
And then I take the pie home. And Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, like I’ve got multiple Thanksgiving. So, somewhere, I’m assuming this pie is sitting in the middle of the table and it always happens, at least in our family, hey, who brought the pie? I have to assume that you’ve had some cool stories play out, where it’s like you had a client. And now, your firm is the conversation piece of family Thanksgiving. Have you seen any cool things play out over 10 years of doing this?
Craig Sullivan: Yeah. And I mean, we label the pies, and I think we’re out of them now, but we used to give away with them a little pie server.
Bonnie Becker: We do jar openers now.
Craig Sullivan: I don’t know what’s there, but it’s good fun. Some clients pick up their pie and leave immediately and just thanks, I’m off the bait now. And some of them will stick around and talk for half an hour and chat and just hang out.
Bonnie Becker: And Craig, my comment for this, but he dressed up as a turkey one year.
Brad Johnson: I love it. Hey, you got to get into it.
Craig Sullivan: Yeah, we had– what were you that year?
Bonnie Becker: I was an Indian and Terry was a pilgrim.
Craig Sullivan: Terry was a pilgrim, and I wore an inflatable guy riding a turkey.
Brad Johnson: Oh, nice.
Craig Sullivan: So, yeah, we have a lot of fun and to your point, yes, it always gets passed around at the Thanksgiving dinners about who brought the pie. And so, I’m sure they’re sharing our name a little bit, goodwill, if nothing else.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. You don’t do a program like that, say, “Hey, what was the ROI on the pie spend?” Because just if nothing else, you’re showing appreciation and love to your clients, but I have to think doing a version of that for 10 years, asked to have created a conversation that probably let somebody into your office at this point.
Craig Sullivan: I would assume multiple times, yeah.
Brad Johnson: Yeah, cool. And then so, Bonnie, how many pies are we dealing with this year? What are we at?
Bonnie Becker: I think she said we’re at 98 a couple days ago. So, we’re probably a little bit over a hundred now.
Brad Johnson: And so, if you were kind of teaching another advisor how to kind of incorporate this into their plan, do they need to kind of RSVP for the pie then that they’re responding back if they want a pie?
Bonnie Becker: Definitely. And we switched that to email because we were having people saying they thought they called in because we have done it so many years. So, people probably thought they called in the year before, and then they end up showing up. So, we always have a couple extra pies just in case. But definitely, we did email RSVP this year just to keep track of everyone on the list a little bit easier.
Craig Sullivan: We’ve always got little snacks and stuff around here, too, when they show up, cookies and drinks and that kind of stuff. But I mean, there’s not a whole lot to it. I think some of the guys that I know do it have a U-Haul set up in their parking lot and they do more of a drive-thru service and you still get the goodwill and pick up your canned goods and all that.
Bonnie Becker: Yes, if you have smaller office space that’s been there.
Craig Sullivan: Yeah. And then I’m sure some go way more all out than we do.
Brad Johnson: Yeah, I think a lot of firms I’ve worked with over the years, I mean, typically, you’ve got some form of a parking lot outside, so you can always do a little fall festival, assuming it’s not ice cold out. Well, let’s drive into the do life side of this. One of the things I’ve gotten from you, I always like to kind of dissect these conversations on the podcast. I think one of the things from my side that I’ve seen that’s led to your all’s success is a complete lack of ego.
And what I mean by that, in order for you to say I want to render myself obsolete from the company’s standpoint, there’s a little bit of selflessness to that that, unfortunately, not every founder has. Some founders completely build a business around them, kind of their own personal ego, and then that honestly holds them back once they hit a certain level because at some point, Craig has no more hours in the day to do anything else, right? And so, if you build the firm that way, then you will reach some capacity at some point. It’s just a matter of when.
And when you say, I want to render myself, or I said that, that was my version of it, that hey, this company doesn’t depend on me to show up for it to grow. There’s a selflessness in that. And I look at kind of the growth trajectory. We talk about advisor in charge, then goes to business owner, then goes to CEO, then the fourth version of that, that honestly, I don’t think we have a firm today that has hit, is board member, where I have shares in the company, but I am not required to show up on the daily for it to operate.
So, let’s talk about that thinking, but then how that’s applied over the do life side as a husband, as a father. I know you’ve got a ranch with 800 acres that gives you plenty of space to roam around and you like to spend a lot of time there. But maybe, talk about the thinking and how you’re building and how it applies to the life side, if you would, please.
Craig Sullivan: Woah. I mean, how I’m building the business is I want to be here less and less. I want this place to be successful, to continue to grow, to serve more people, to serve our team. But allowing me to have more and more time to do the life things that I want to do, which is generally, either I’m in a gym watching jiu-jitsu fights or I’m at my ranch, the easiest way I’ve made that transition and made it not optional is I only see people Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. It’s the only days I’m required to be in the office anymore.
If I’m here on a Friday, it’s an extreme rarity and it’s just because I had nothing else going on. And maybe I had something going on that weekend where I couldn’t go to the ranch, so I might as well just pop in for an hour and say hi. Mondays are our days just to get prepared for the week. So, I’ll sit down with Colton, our planning advisor, and touch base on any planning appointments we have coming out, second appointments, third appointments, those kinds of things. And she’s running the team meetings, and then we go to lunch on Mondays and that’s generally my schedule. So, it forces that time where I have the ability to back out.
I know one of my champagne moments was I wanted to maintain no more than 20 to 25 hours a week in the business. And as we’ve made this transition and pushing for changing everything, it’s actually been a challenge to be here that little, but I think I’m enjoying the running the business side so much more that I don’t notice that I’m here a little more than I was previously, and because I’ve still truly just separated Monday and Friday to where the team knows that I don’t take calls, I don’t take anything on those days.
Brad Johnson: When did you change that? How long ago?
Craig Sullivan: Pretty much, it was last year, I didn’t Mondays and Fridays. Or was it just this year?
Bonnie Becker: No, it was more towards the beginning of this year.
Craig Sullivan: Okay.
Brad Johnson: Wow. Okay, that’s really cool. So, that’s interesting insight. So, 2024, like I said, we’re end of November as we record this. So, here’s what I heard you say, Craig, you started to work in a way, building a business bigger than you, but then you shifted your calendar, and the framework I used is in the business, which would be appointments, right? Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday driving revenue because you’re still a big revenue driver for the firm. And then Mondays and Fridays, it sounds like you reserved either one to work on the business. You’re doing team meetings with Bonnie, meeting with, who is your planning advisor again?
Craig Sullivan: Colton.
Brad Johnson: Colton. And so, now, you’re working on the business, prepping for the end of business days. And then Fridays, you’re almost, sounds like it’s an optional, okay, if I’m around, I’ll maybe pop in and work on the business a little bit or I’ll be off the business and enjoying time at the ranch or time with the family.
Craig Sullivan: Most Fridays are off the business. I would say, my Mondays, a couple of hours, so I might be here a couple of hours and then go to lunch and I might go home after lunch and I’m probably going do that today. So, it’s just one of those, I don’t want to be tied down on Mondays. I want the freedom to– we’re going to get the things done we need to, but if we don’t have a lot of planning stuff, I mean, it’s Thanksgiving week, we don’t have any second appointments this week. I don’t have to meet with Colton. I came in to do this podcast with you and Bonnie. And then we’ll go to lunch, and then I’m going to call it a day, yeah.
Brad Johnson: That’s a good Monday right there. How long ago did you become not the only advisor in the firm?
Craig Sullivan: Technically, I still am, sales advisor-wise. I’ve got a service advisor. I’d almost call him a sales advisor to a point. He’s been able to do quite a bit of business on the insurance side. So, I think he’s closing in on 15 million this year as a service advisor. So, that’s been really helpful. But I’m looking forward to Bonnie’s point earlier, we’re going to bring on at least one more sales advisor here, plus a sales advisor in our Amarillo office, and just let the team take more and more of this off my plate. If I can do four meetings a week in 2025, that’d be more than enough for me.
Brad Johnson: Well, I think what often happens that kind of gets in a founder’s head, and it sounds like you’ve gotten through this, is almost a little bit of guilt where it’s like, “Oh, I have to be at the business because it depends on me.” And I think what’s missed in that thinking is, it’s almost like if you create a void in the business, it allows others to grow into it and empowers them like the career track.
And so, as you start to step out of planning service now, you’ve opened up spots on the org chart for others to step in. And then to your point, with your service advisor, now you’re even saying, hey, he’s showing some aspects of he can grow into sales now. So, now, that career track opens up and he trains his replacement. And I’ve just seen, once you kind of start to create these advisor pods, we call it the Triad advisor model, sales, service planning, right now, well, when you got to us originally, Craig, you were all three, right? Craig was wearing three hats. Then you kind of opened up the planning service. And now, you’re like, wait, there’s a path here where I can actually step completely out of sales in the future if I choose to, which is a beautiful, beautiful model. And that’s more of entrepreneurial thinking than financial advisor thinking. You know what I mean?
Craig Sullivan: Right. And by the way, that whole when I was doing all three of them, I was really terrible at two of them.
Brad Johnson: What’s so funny is on that note, it’s like every great founders typically, I mean, the reason the firm grows is you have to be decent at sales or you’re just not going to get off the ground, but most are completely horrible at service. They’re like, yeah, my desk had stacks of papers on them because I was like, meant to get to it, but I never had time. And when you bring that first service advisor and it’s like, wow, the clients are 10x happier because they’re actually getting responded to so quickly. And does your service advisor sit in on every appointment with you typically? Is that your model? Are you still kind of going into that?
Craig Sullivan: Absolutely. I don’t do meetings by myself. I learned that a long time ago. In fact, Bonnie used to sit in all my meetings and take all my notes because I was terrible at notes.
Brad Johnson: So, now, we freed it up. So, Bonnie can actually go do ops because now, you’ve got a service advisor riding shotgun with you, coordinating the planning.
Craig Sullivan: Yeah.
Brad Johnson: So, Bonnie, that had to be a good move for you. I can go get some stuff done now, then just sit in on appointments all the time.
Bonnie Becker: Yeah, we can do the apps and the appointments, too. So, we were…
Craig Sullivan: Yeah. She was good. She was very efficient. She could tell where we were headed before I knew and she’d have things ready to go as soon as people said yes. But hold it for models, here we are.
Brad Johnson: Very cool. I love to see it. Bonnie, any thoughts on just the operation side or team side on what Craig just shared there? It would just be helpful for other teams that are going through this just to get there quicker.
Bonnie Becker: I would say just trust the process.
Craig Sullivan: She doesn’t give herself enough credit. She doesn’t believe in what she’s done, but it’s been tremendous here.
Brad Johnson: Very cool. Well, I’m definitely catching a theme of humbleness and humility just running through your firm. I mean, that’s who people tend to want to work around is not ego maniacs. So, I’d say just stay on that, stay on that trend. It served y’all well.
Well, Craig, I want to get to a little more on the life side. So, I was fortunate enough. So, your son, Case, he needs jiu-jitsu in his life. That kid has unlimited energy. And I saw that from the Founders’ Retreat when we were all together in Florida. But it’s interesting. I had this question the other day, like, why is Rener Gracie showing up at the Founders’ Retreat doing jiu-jitsu? I was like, honestly, as a dad, I read Jocko Willink’s book, Way of the Warrior Kid, and he just talks about jiu-jitsu at an early age and the fundamentals and kind of the discipline it requires.
And so, we brought Rener out because I’m like, I want my kids to be exposed to jiu-jitsu. And honestly, I want to do as well. And it was really cool. We’re starting to see– we’re a couple summers into this now, we’re starting to see a really cool little jiu-jitsu community inside of Triad. And I would say Case is leading the pack because he’s actually been doing it for a while. So, would you share kind on the dad side, like, why did you get him into jiu-jitsu? I think I know your wife has done it. Have you done it? I don’t know about your daughter, but who all is involved in the jiu-jitsu circle? And how did that come to be?
Craig Sullivan: So, it started just with Case about five years ago. He’s severe ADHD, to your point about unlimited energy, doesn’t know how to sit still. So, we did it more of a– we wanted something where he could focus all of that energy, help us in discipline, things like that. And he immediately took to it. Within a month, his professor was already telling us that he needs to think about looking seriously at competitions because he sees something in him. He already gave him a nickname at that point, a month in. And it’s unfortunately stuck with him for his sake and he took to it.
Anything else, he played soccer and some other sports and he was pretty decent at soccer, but as soon as anybody would say that you’re good at something, he would just, okay, I don’t want to do it anymore. I can’t tell you why, but this, he took to, and he enjoys it. And man, I love watching how excited he is and how skilled he is. It’s just fun to watch. It blows my mind what he’s able to do.
Now, my daughter has done it off and on. I will say she is a social practitioner, so she does it to have something to do and to have some exercise. She’s not competing. My wife, she just started a couple of months ago, three or four months– no, I guess it’s been longer than that now because she was doing it at DBDL retreat. So, she’s like six months. She goes a couple mornings a week and she just enjoys it. It replaced a couple of gym days for her. And now, she goes and rolls. I’ve never actually stepped on the mats, so they’re all better than me.
Brad Johnson: Watch out. Watch out down the road. Now, it’s funny, as your kids get older, you’re like, uh-oh, I may be losing a little leverage here. You got to be careful as you get older there. I have a very specific memory from the Founders’ Retreat. Rener brought out his buddy, Brian Ortega, who is a world-class UFC fighter, for those that aren’t familiar. And I remember we kind of set up a little match there at the end between Case and Brian, and Case was kind of like hanging back. And then Brian kind of grabbed his leg and pulled him out on the mat. And then it was like, boom, it’s on. And he jumped on his back and had him in a rear naked choke or something. So, what is it, what have you seen it do for your children’s confidence, maybe Case, specifically, kind of before jiu-jitsu and after?
Craig Sullivan: So, Case has severe anxiety about things, but you can even see it when he goes out, when he’s fighting in a tournament. When he knows he’s about to go on stage or on the mat, he is completely stoic, has no expression, you can see just pale. He looks scared to death. In fact, there’s been multiple times where Kayla will be standing behind his opponent’s parents just because of the way people get staggered up on those fences and she’s heard multiple times, well, doesn’t look like we’ve got to worry about this one because of how scared he looks when he’s about to walk out.
And then when that referee says fight, it’s like a switch flips in him. And it’s similar to what you saw when he was being dragged out there by Brian Ortega as he did not want to be in front of everybody. So, he was trying to hide and he knew that everybody there knew that he practiced jiu-jitsu. And you and Shawn and everybody had asked him about it. And he’s like, I don’t want to.
And so, when Brian just came up, I just handed his foot to him and he dragged him out there. And once he got past that, we saw what happened when his switch flipped and he was no longer worried about everybody else, it was, I’m in my element now and I’m going to do what I do. So, confidence-wise, when he gets to that point, he’s able to shut everything else off and just focus on his job at hand. And that’s fun to see because I see what he’s like walking into that and watching him having to face those fears because he knows that once he takes that next step, he’s fine. But it’s been a challenge. He’s actually got some pretty big fights this weekend. So, you’re starting to see those nerves hit him already.
Brad Johnson: Well, that’s such a parenting lesson. And one of the things I love about the show is, if you’re going to talk Do Business, Do Life, I’ve started hearing like wives are starting to listen to this show as well, which is like an awesome compliment because I want this to be able to serve everybody on both sides of that. And one of the things we say in our house is Johnsons get uncomfortable and do hard things. And I will say, like as much as parents, sometimes you want to put a cocoon around your kids, that won’t serve them in life. I can tell you that. If you’re kind of helicopter parent your whole life, they’ve got to get out there.
And it was just really cool to see that play out and how you, as parents, you and Kayla, had just kind of seen something to where you’re like, hey, maybe this is the path for Case that will kind of unlock this thing inside of him that you see there and you’re just trying to figure out how to get it out of him. So, it was really cool to see that. And I mean, hopefully the next one, like that’s what’s been really fun about the Founders’ Retreat is like you start to see these kids grow up a little bit. And my guess is the next one, when we bring Rener back again, I bet he doesn’t resist it for quite as long on this next one. I bet he’ll hop out there a little sooner.
Craig Sullivan: I think you’re overestimating that.
Brad Johnson: Okay, okay. Well, we’ll see. We’ll see.
Craig Sullivan: I hope you’re right, actually, but I think you might be overestimating that. His anxiety is real.
Brad Johnson: Yeah, yeah. Well, the thing is, the more times he does it, the less– it’s like the first time you go and you speak in front of people, I know, that’s one of the greatest fears. And most people, it’s like, oh, gosh, getting in front of a group of people on stage. And then, Bonnie, did that strike a chord there?
Bonnie Becker: Yeah, I did that a couple of years ago. I didn’t think I had anxiety, and so, I did that one. But it was good once it was over with.
Brad Johnson: Yeah, but my guess is, like if Craig said, “Hey, change your plans. We’ve got a seminar tonight. I need you to open for me,” my guess is it would just be a little bit easier this time because you’ve done it a few times before. Is that fair?
Craig Sullivan: Not a chance she’d know. Not a chance.
Bonnie Becker: I find someone, though.
Craig Sullivan: Yeah. She would delegate.
Brad Johnson: Okay, fair enough. Well, yeah, that’s what she– now, she’d be like, we’ve built a business in a way, I don’t have to do that, right? I love it. Well, hey, as we wrap here, this has been an awesome conversation. Appreciate you both jumping in here on a Monday. I just have one final question for each of you and whoever wants to jump in first, it would just be what is Bonnie or what is Craig’s definition of Do Business, Do Life. What does that mean to you?
Craig Sullivan: You go first.
Bonnie Becker: Mine’s just making sure your work is reflecting what truly matters to you and that you’re living your best life inside and outside of work.
Brad Johnson: So, I’m assuming and I’m just expanding on that a little bit, Bonnie, I’m assuming this new blueprint for how you all are building the business has to have unlocked a little bit more of that for you all, where it’s like, okay, now there’s some structure that we can kind of say, here’s when we’re in the business, here’s where we’re on the business, here’s where we’re off the business. Is that fair?
Bonnie Becker: True. And seeing that our whole team like that here, just watching them grow has been awesome.
Brad Johnson: Love it. Craig, what’s your definition?
Craig Sullivan: I think at the end of the day, for me, it’s about building a business that empowers a better life, not just for me, but for everyone it touches. So, for my team, for our clients, and most importantly, for my family, just allowing us to do those things that we want to do.
Brad Johnson: I haven’t mentioned this, but it’s been hanging right behind you, this whole conversation, so I’m assuming some of that. Is that your promise right there, kind of the Sullivan Financial promise behind you?
Craig Sullivan: It is.
Brad Johnson: I’m assuming some of that is written on that, as far as kind of your commitment to the team, to your clients, what the thing is all about.
Craig Sullivan: Yes. Absolutely. Yeah.
Brad Johnson: I love that. It’s cool. Like, as you start to going back to, I love the realness of you, like, hey, this wasn’t the easiest thing to get the vision up here out and onto a piece of paper. But that’s the power of it once you do. It was cool to hear Bonnie say, this is the path we’re on now, that’s very different than the path we were on before. And that, I think, as any founder that’s out there kind of resisting that deep, hard work, once you get that out, it just unlocks this whole new kind of another mountain that you didn’t even see on the horizon, so I love. Congrats to you all for doing the work. Now, it’s awesome to see some of the benefits start to play out. So, thanks for being part of Triad.
Craig Sullivan: Thanks, Brad. I appreciate it.
Brad Johnson: All right, you all. I’ll let you get on to the rest of your day.
Craig Sullivan: Take care.
Bonnie Becker: Bye.
