Kyle Baxter with Big Bulldog Consulting

Intro: [00:00:07] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Woodstock, Georgia. It’s time for Cherokee Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Stone Payton: [00:00:24] Welcome to another exciting and informative edition of Cherokee Business Radio. Stone Payton here with you this morning. And today’s episode is brought to you in part by our local small business initiative, the Business RadioX Main Street Warriors, defending capitalism, promoting small business and supporting our local community. For more information, go to Main Street warriors.org and a special note of thanks to our title sponsor for the Cherokee chapter of Main Street Warriors, Diesel David Inc. Please go check them out at diesel. David.com. You guys are in for a real treat this morning. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with Big Bulldog Consulting Mr. Kyle Baxter. Good morning sir.

Kyle Baxter: [00:01:14] Hey, good morning. Good morning. So I really appreciate the opportunity to come on with you this morning. I’ve just been really excited about it. I mean, you know, the radio is just really huge. When I found out about it, I got lucky. And the more I got looking at realizing just how big it actually was and the impact it has, and I’m probably your biggest fan. So. So from here forward, I am the mouth of the South. It will be put out there.

Stone Payton: [00:01:39] Well, it is a delight to have you in the studio. I got a thousand questions. I know we’re not going to get to them all, but I think a good place to start might be if you could articulate for me and our listeners mission purpose, what are you and your team really out there trying to do for folks?

Kyle Baxter: [00:01:57] Man Well, let me tell you, Stone, I am a ten X business advisor. I partnered with Cardon Ventures, which is owned by Grant Cardon and Brandon Dawson. And, you know, Grant, if you don’t know Grant, it’s kind of shocking. But if you if you do, you know, Grant Cardone is the biggest, biggest promoter that they’ve got in the world, or at least in the United States. You know, number one sales guy rated by Forbes and everything, and Forbes even rated the number one influencer on social media. You don’t believe me? Get on there and check it out. He blows up Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. I mean, he’s on all of them. And it’s just crazy. I thought I posted a lot. I’m nowhere close to Grant Cardone, but that’s part of his promotion thing. Of course, you know Brandon, he’s a he is the West guy, came from Wall Street and you know, his last company he had he he sold that company for 77% EBITDA, which was set a record in Wall Street for. I bet it did. Yeah. For I mean for a private company, he sold it for $151 million. This guy is what I call the master guru of growth and scaling businesses. And that’s one of the reasons I partner. I was already sold a grant. You know, I was a grant licensee for a while where I helped businesses, you know, grow the marketing and the sales.

Kyle Baxter: [00:03:15] And then this opportunity came on and they combined because they want business advisors to get out and help get the word out to everybody. And I thought, Are you kidding me? Yeah. Where do I start? Are you kidding me? This is just it’s really been an opportunity of a lifetime to me. I’m like, and everything you do with Cardone, I got to tell you, the licensee, the support in the background, dude, it’s. It’s phenomenal. I don’t care what anybody says. I couldn’t complain. I had to lie to complain. I mean, anything you want. Boom, boom, boom. And same way with Cardinal Ventures built the same way. It’s amazing. But anyway, our goal, you know, Cardinal Ventures goal is to right now they want to get 100,000 businesses kind of up under their wing. They’ve trained and instructed and assisted and and in five years be $1 billion company themselves. And I’ll tell you, you know, the the first year they started zero capital and excuse me and they they made $2.4 million and last year was year four there were 84 million. Wow. That’s crazy. And this year they’re on track to probably exceed 150 million just this year alone. So it’s crazy.

Stone Payton: [00:04:27] So tell me a little bit more about exactly who you guys are serving and why is there a an industry, a segment, a level of of advancement that a company has reached? Tell me a little bit more about them.

Kyle Baxter: [00:04:42] Well, let me tell you, our baseline customer is one at the first break point where they’re hitting, getting ready to go on to the second break point at $1 million a year revenue. Okay. Now. Don’t don’t take that as I would not help a business that’s under that, because I do. I’ll do them too. But that’s our main line to go from Breakpoint one to Breakpoint two. You know, the breakpoints go from 100,000 to 3 million breakpoint, one 3 million to 8 million breakpoint to 8 to 15 and 1525 on up scale. And typically when a company gets towards that end or they’re getting ready to go break out of that breakpoint to the following One is when it gets the toughest and the hardest for companies. Yeah, that’s what we do. And as far as the industries. Brandon. Has done tons and tons of information and studies all across the industries. There’s no set industry. We work. We work on it doesn’t matter from anywhere. If you’re an insurance company to HVAC, to a roofer, to any contractors, a dentist for that matter, you know, because Brandon’s company was actually a audiology company. It was audiology hearing aids. You know, I’m a hearing aid guy, and maybe if I’d have known him sooner, I could save some money, you know? But but, yeah, and that’s kind of our target market. But any business that wants to help us in that place or they’re wanting to grow and scale. I’ll go out of my way to help because Big Bulldog itself, our goal is to help as many businesses as we possibly can. That’s our personal goal. You know, our motto is we don’t succeed unless you succeed. And that’s just why that works. And I mean that.

Stone Payton: [00:06:23] Well, I’m sure there are a number of idiosyncrasies, specific, unique challenges in any single business. And I got to believe, I’ll say in the same breath, I’ll bet you see patterns, some of the same pathologies may be a little bit strong, but some of the same challenges and patterns. I don’t care if they’re manufacturing surfboards or pulling teeth, don’t you?

Kyle Baxter: [00:06:43] You know, you really do. It’s it’s crazy. I see it everywhere I go. All kinds of different businesses, you know, work with. You know, I ran my own business for about about 11 years in Michigan to a little convenience store. After the first year, I’m sitting there going, Man, this ain’t going to work. It’s not enough money because I didn’t do my research and I sure didn’t have Brandon Dawson backing me. I didn’t have the knowledge he’s given me then. Or maybe I could have boomed up. But I’m thinking this is not going to work. So I expanded 2500ft², you know, added food, put it in a full deli and catering. And of course, my wife was the boss. She ran that. She she’s the one who made all the money for us. I was the the face, the front man of the company. But she is the moneymaker, you know, Thank God. And but, you know, if I’d have had the knowledge then that I do now, based on working with with Brandon and Grant and, you know, them being my mentors, Speedway is a big convenience type outlet up north in that area. And I’d have been their competition. I’d probably put them out to beat them because if I did that, I’d have dominated my market. And that’s what businesses need to focus on now. They really need to quit worrying about their competitors and they need to focus on dominating the market. Who cares about your competitors? You need best practices, set your goals and go in and do what you got to do. It’s your marketing, it’s your sales. I mean, you know, hit the four, the four pillars of business and be structured and have a goal and go and do it.

Stone Payton: [00:08:06] So now that you’ve been at this a while, what are you finding the most rewarding about the work? What do you enjoy the most about it?

Kyle Baxter: [00:08:14] Let me tell you, the the most reward I get is when is when I’m dealing with a company. And they come through us and they’re dealing with myself or Kadon ventures. And you see within the 12 month, 18 month time frame that advancements they’ve made, you know, their their growth and their scale and just that amount of time. And to see the expression on these owners faces, it’s like life changing for them. It is for me too, because, you know, I make a crazy amount of money and what I do and I really think I can’t believe I get paid to do this because I love it. You know, we’ve got 53 million small businesses in United States today, and unfortunately, about, uh, probably about 25 million probably be out of business 3 to 5 years. And I don’t want that because people don’t understand that our economy is driven by small business. You know, it’s not the big guys, you know, and I’ll tell you this, and somebody may argue with me, but we’re going to argue. Go ahead. But I’ll tell you, I’m right. As you know, Apple, you know, I’m an Apple guy. I’m not one of those that are time Apple comes up something new I got to have because I’m not that techie. It’s just all my stuff talks. And I think Apple’s for idiots because you don’t have to be a computer guy to use it. You know, their software to me is easier than Microsoft. But you know what? If Apple or Apple were to go out of business today, it wouldn’t be a blip on economy. You know, and Apple’s got $90 million cash reserves. They do most of their stuff with debt. And as big as they are and what they do, you’d think if they went out of business that impact our economy wouldn’t even notice. It would not. You’d hear about it in the paper. But money wise is economy of scale goes up and down. Wouldn’t be a blip.

Stone Payton: [00:09:52] I agree with you 110%. Everything I read says that. But just also just anecdotally, you know, I hang out with business people a lot. I really do believe with all my heart. We’re the backbone of this country financially in a lot of other ways as well. Let’s talk about the work a little bit. I’m particularly interested in in the early stages of the work. What are some of the things that happened early on as you’re getting an engagement off the ground?

Kyle Baxter: [00:10:22] Well, you know, I’ll tell you what. Say, for instance, I get a get a business owner. We sit down and have a discussion. And there’s a few things we do. I have a small three page form. It’s no major deal. All you do is color in the little circles. It kind of gives me a background on, you know, what their chief personal, professional and financial goals are tied to the business. Because I need to know that. And because what are we going to do is once I know their ultimate goal, we’re going to go out. And Brandon does it with a lot of business too, goes out a ten year time time frame, then reverse engineers it back. So you put all the steps in place. So so you know where your targets are every month, You know, every quarter. Da da da on down. So you’re hitting that to get to the level of your goal. And then, you know, we review a lot of things with owners. You know, one of the things I do is I go over the seven forces of impact that drive value owners. You know, the first one is process documentation, performance management and enhancement, best practice, duplication, you know, high accountability standards, peer to peer benchmarking, financial alignment based on the impact and market opportunity. And of course, you know, each one of those alone is probably, you know, excited to talk about for an hour.

Stone Payton: [00:11:39] Well, I’ll make an observation real quick because I am a representative of this species that you’re out there trying to serve. And I have read about those things. I intellectually understand how powerful and impactful they are as an entrepreneur. You know, I own 40% of the Business RadioX network. I run one of the studios. I get so buried in the weeds and managing the day to day, putting out fires, celebrating, wins, you know, recovering from from challenges that it’s easy or at least for me personally, I won’t speak for the whole population, but it’s easy to let those seven things fade, isn’t it?

Kyle Baxter: [00:12:15] Oh, you know, it really is. And I think that’s one of the issues that affects business owners that I can help them out with. You know, as a business owner, you know, you get busy, you get your priorities. Say you’re really pushing, you’re really promoting your side, your salespeople over here, if you’ve got a sales team, maybe you only got a couple of sales team that’s still a sales team guys, you know, doing theirs. Maybe you got somebody doing your marketing, so you’re kind of leaving that to the wayside and you’re focusing on what you’re doing and you could miss some of those key things. Well, the way we structure businesses with Cardinal Ventures their way, Brandon Dawson’s Way, all those things are inputted, are part of the day to day operations. Your structure, your business is going to be arranged where every one of those elements are impacted in place. Structured. We do that for companies. It’s like a blueprint from start to finish where it’s not something you have to think and focus on every day. It’s part of the business atmosphere. It’s part of the culture.

Stone Payton: [00:13:15] So how does the whole sales and marketing thing work for a practice like yours at Big Bulldog and a process like you’re beginning to describe here? Do you yourself have to get out there and shake the trees a little bit? Is it all coming in through this own brand equity? Is it a mixture of the two? Do you find yourself having to eat your own cooking? How do you get the chance to start having those conversations with the people who should be seriously considering engaging you?

Kyle Baxter: [00:13:46] Let me tell you, I do a lot. You know, I am all over social media, and that’s one of the things that some of the businesses I deal with that may not be at the million dollar revenue yet, you know, the 100,000 between that era, because typically if a business has got their marketing and their sales side pretty much laid in pretty good, it’s not perfect, but pretty good. They should realistically be able to hit that million dollar a year revenue. You really should. And I could show them stats and data to back that. And so that’s usually what happens. I talked to some of the business owners that’s in that lower scale. The first thing I ask them, hey, you know, what’s your marketing budget? Well, I really don’t have one. You know, we got a website. I’m like, Great. How many leads? You know, are you getting on that website? Well. Couple a quarter, right. That’s not marketing. So, you know, there’s some rules. There’s the Ten Commandments of marketing. And the first one is money follows attention. That’s right out of Grant Cardone’s mouth. He’s absolutely correct. Number two is best known. Always beats the best. Assume nobody sees. If you post stuff on social media, just assume nobody sees it because you’d be surprised.

Kyle Baxter: [00:14:53] You don’t know that. That’s why if you want social media work, you got to post regularly 4 or 5 times a day. I mean, I mean, it can be time consuming. That’s why you hire somebody to do that. And then attention is the most valuable currency businesses have today. Okay. You know, and in the end, I want to come back to that, too. But speed is senior to quality. And somebody says, well, I got to have this perfect product. I got to have all the bugs out of it. I don’t want get it out there, Dave, You’re going to lose. You’re going to lose you pocketbook book. Put it out there. Here’s a prime example. Every time Microsoft puts out software, how many of those little emails you get from going, Hey, we got an update. Apple does the same thing. Yeah. Why? Because it wasn’t perfect. If they waited for it to be perfect, it never hit market. And the goal is to get your product or service to market and whoever gets to market the quickest, that’s the guys win. Guys or gals, you know, it doesn’t matter. And frequency comes before greatness, you know, And and I have to say this, this is part of marketing. It’s also for sales. No one thing can blow a deal.

Kyle Baxter: [00:16:01] Okay. You know, I’ve had people say, well, yeah, I sat down. I didn’t close that deal. You know, and I think it’s because well, you know, I show enthusiasm. No, that’s not it. No one thing will blow a deal. It’s going to be several. See, their value wasn’t built and price is nothing. I don’t care what anybody says. Price means nothing. Price is made up. It is. It’s just made up. And but if you build enough value in there, then price is no longer an issue because what you are is a salesperson. That’s what I am. I saw people’s problems. And if you go and figure out, get the nitty gritty, get to the baseline problem your customer wants to wants to solve. Price means nothing. They’ll pay whatever it takes to get rid of that problem. Not that you’re overcharging, you know what I’m saying? But. But it’s really just a made up number. It’s not it’s not the quintessential I hear sales people say, well, you know, we just lower the prices around here. You know, my sale, my closing ratio would go up. No, it’s not. They used to back up and look the mirror. You’re just not a good sell. What part of your salesmanship are you lacking in? Is it your greeting? You know the presentation.

Kyle Baxter: [00:17:11] Do you know how to close? Are you handling objections? Right way and all that? All those are processes. And Grant Cardone has mastered those, you know, and that’s one of the products that I have for my customers is Kardan University as a sales training program. Best in the world. It’s a little little snippet, videos, 2 to 3 minutes long and you know, you know, Khalil started out in the automotive business, you know, and I’ll tell you today he hated sales, didn’t want it sucked, couldn’t talk. Nobody. He didn’t want to deal with nobody, but he couldn’t get a job. He had an accounting degree. Nobody would hire him. And so. Well, well, he figured he said, well, I’ve got to do something. So he said, You know what? I’m just even though I hate, I’m going to be the best sales guy. There is. And so he put his mind to it. He did. He really turned There’s probably over 300 auto dealerships today, if not more, that have have Kardan University. I guarantee you any car dealership that’s Kardan University or sales are far beyond anybody else. Let me ask you this. What’s the worst experience anybody’s ever run into? The one to a car, Right. You know, that’s me.

Stone Payton: [00:18:18] I’m raising my hair.

Kyle Baxter: [00:18:19] Oh, let’s go buy a new car. No, honey. 4.5 hours back and forth. Back and forth where Cardinal took that whole method and turned it upside down first thing out of mouth. Here’s a price. Because back in the old days, you know how much we’ll get to it. Don’t. Don’t tell them the price yet till we get the close and you’re taking people off.

Stone Payton: [00:18:37] And that’s all they’re thinking about the whole time. You talk about anything else, right?

Kyle Baxter: [00:18:40] They don’t care about the doodads, the gadgets. I want to know the price, price and payment. You go to dealership today and go, Hey, what payment would you like? I don’t care about payment, dude. I want I’m a tough sale because I’m a sales guy. I’m a hard sale and I love those guys. I’m going to tell you why I like hard sales because I can close a hard sale. They’re easy to close, believe it or not, that hard sell. They’re a lot easier to close than the regular Joe.

Stone Payton: [00:19:04] Well, no, the easy sale is the one I get concerned about because. Because then they have a tendency to backpedal when. Yeah, right. Has that been your experience? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. You’re saying everything you want to hear, right in the first two thirds of the conversation and then. Yeah, that’s been my experience too, you.

Kyle Baxter: [00:19:19] Know, when you do that too. And plus price, you know, Grand will tell you he never lowers price. I don’t. I don’t lower any price for any of my products and my price is higher than my competitor. Yeah, they are. There’s a reason for that. Yeah, absolutely. But I guarantee you you’re getting twice the value for me than you are from that competitor. And that’s what I used to tell somebody. I had somebody I speak with the other day in sales call and the guy says, you know, I just like, I just I may have to go down the road and talk to that other company. I said, Well, go ahead, feel free, but let me explain something to you. I don’t come with the guy down the road, you understand? So you want me. Let’s just get the deal done because I don’t come down the road. You sign a paper. Thank you. And that’s what I see. A service as part of sales to. People don’t believe that it’s service really supersedes part of the sales process. And that’s the mindset you got to have in. And that’s the same way I do with the with the business advisor. You know, I care about my clients. They got to be successful. I do, but they do too. And and maybe to a fault, but I’m passionate about that.

Kyle Baxter: [00:20:23] And I’ll give you an example of this. I had a guy I’m doing some business coaching. I do that too. And so we’re doing weekly calls the guy, so I’ll get him on. We’re doing a little zoom call, so I’d give him some homework, if you will, some items, you know, tasks to complete at the last call to be accomplished this call. So I said, Hey, how’d you go? Did you get your list finished? Did you get everything? Well, no, I didn’t get it all done. Why didn’t you? Well, here we go with excuses. Well, I had to watch my daughter a couple of hours while I went shopping. I said stop. Stop. Help me understand why I care more about your business than you do. Okay. Now, some people might say, but wait a minute. He’s. He’s taking care of his family. No, he’s not. He won’t take care of his family. He does what he’s got to do to get his business to the level where he always has that security and financial stability to take care of his family. That’s how he takes care of his family. Not worried about his wife going shopping because she’s going to shop a little while because when he’s broke, her shopping day is over with. Yeah.

Stone Payton: [00:21:25] So do you find early on with prospective clients or even early on with a client who’s written a check and said, okay, we’re going to take a swing at this, that they sometimes bristle with some of these ideas or do they typically embrace them pretty fully right out of the box, you know?

Kyle Baxter: [00:21:43] Overall, most of them really kind of grab hold of it because you see, you know, or you don’t know and you only know what you know. And so what we bring to that table is the knowledge that business owners need. But we break it down to what’s real simple. It doesn’t have to be rocket science, you know, it doesn’t. It’s just baseline principles. And and I believe today that’s why a lot of businesses kind of kind of pull back or hold back. They think it’s money, but not necessarily. Sometimes it is, but they don’t scale or they don’t want to grow because they really don’t know how to go about it. And of course, you know, they watch the CNBC and the Fox business, all those ya-yas on TV. Turn that off. Yeah, Yeah. This breed. That’s my.

Stone Payton: [00:22:26] Couch. I know.

Kyle Baxter: [00:22:27] It. Yes. Breed negativity. The world’s coming to an end, Lord, I listen to them. I’d be on drugs. Which big pharma would love that you would just make more money. You got. You got to stay away from the noise. And I even tell people I had a client, a doctor, and she said, Well, you know, I hired a consultant, you know, a couple of years ago, but he didn’t do anything for me. I said, Well, really? I said, And I don’t really care who because I don’t I don’t rag on anybody. There’s some really good consultants out there, don’t get me wrong. But there’s no one else out there doing what I do today. What? Cardinal mission? No one. There’s no other company out there that’s doing what we do. But I told her, I said, Well, what did you do when you screened your consultant? Did you ask me the questions? Well, no, I said, let me tell you, there’s three questions you need to ask you. Anybody you’re getting information from, especially when it concerns your business. One What’s the largest company you’ve ever grown to? What’s the largest amount of revenue in a company you’ve built? And three, what’s the largest exit of a company you’ve ever accomplished.

Stone Payton: [00:23:31] That would weed out a lot of coaches and consultants? I think those three questions.

Kyle Baxter: [00:23:35] It does. It’s amazing, you know, and it’s kind of funny. I had to do a seminar. The guy said, Hey, let me ask you a question. He’s paying attention. I love that. How many businesses have you taken to? 150. 1 million? I said zero. I said, Largest business I’ve ever grown to date has been 1,000,005 years. And I know your next question is what makes you think I’m qualified? So I said, because I got Brandon Dawson that did that and he has taught me everything he knows and it’s his principles and his policies that I’m teaching you to blow your business. Up next question. You know, I’m not here. We’re totally transparent and I want you to succeed. I’m not here trying to get you money. It’s all about. It’s not. It’s about your success. But nothing’s free in the world, you know? Nothing is. And. And for what? What you pay to be part of our system. And what I do for you is really chump change. Compared to what your business is going to see at the end of the day. I’m talking about within 1218 month time frame. I’ve seen it. We’ve got business now. That’s fast. Yeah. Let me tell you this. I got to say, this guy. He owns a God. I forgot. I just went brain dead on. I’d say his full name.

Kyle Baxter: [00:24:46] I apologize. But he owned. He owns a SWAT roofing out of Texas. Okay. Here’s a guy that was stuck at break point three. About 4 million. About 4 or 5 years steady. Good God. A good business going. He just couldn’t get past that. Well, so he comes across Brandon, you know, the ten and grants, marketing and stuff. He comes to a 360, which was one of our big glasses two day event. That’s just phenomenal. I recommend everybody little a little pricey, but you get ROI on this in under 90 days I guarantee you. So he gets there goes through it takes four items he got from a 360 back implements them into his business and within a 18 month time frame, he went from 4 million to 8.5 million. And let me tell you what’s really mind boggling about that. The guy had double bypass surgery. Good Lord. Yeah. And a brain tumor removed, for Christ sakes. And he went all through because he used the principles he learned from 360, restructured a little bit of his business, got everything in place. So. So he wasn’t working in his business. He’s working outside and managing his business. And that’s another thing I think business owners really some don’t understand. And I was the same way. Am I? I’m right in the middle. I you can’t do everything.

Stone Payton: [00:26:07] Well, I understand it and I still do it. That’s right. And there’s that crowd, too, right? At least I’m self-aware enough to know that it’s a challenge for me. But it’s such an easy trap to fall into, at least for me personally. You know, it is.

Kyle Baxter: [00:26:19] I was the same way. I was the same, you know, because I’m in a hurry. I’m impatient. Want everything done right.

Stone Payton: [00:26:24] Now and I can do it quicker than she can. But if I start doing something quicker and better than she and he and her, then I’m not doing my job well.

Kyle Baxter: [00:26:32] That’s true. Yeah, but, you know, that’s part of the structure. You know, we’ve got we’ve got a two day event. It’s called People Essentials. And it’s amazing because you watch, you learn after that two days is really intense on how to hire, you know, fire terminate employees but really how to set your your your employees personal and professional financial goals and align them with your company business goals. That’s really the secret. You don’t see that in a lot of businesses now. I worked for one years ago, Prince Corporation of Michigan, that was kind of similar to that. They kind of had that that that mantra, if you will. But other than that, it’s not everybody looks like, well, we got to have this got to have this money, got to, you know, hey, I want a promotion. Well, forget it. You know, we’re not making enough money, not get promoted. Well, what happens is you can lose good employees because your employees say, well, why should I stay here? You know what’s long term? What’s in it for me? You know, What about me? Oh, I’m just making the business owner rich, and I’m over here starving. You know, I can’t make my house payment. And that’s what we go in and get rid of. You have to learn to incentivize your employees. There’s ways to do it. And I’m telling you, it doesn’t cost the business more.

Kyle Baxter: [00:27:38] You want to you want your employees engaged. That’s how you do it. Because let me tell you right now, they think might did the survey. 78% of employees are disengaged on the job right now. Okay. God, isn’t that scary? That’s two thirds, man. You know, I’m surprised we don’t have more businesses going out of business. You can’t run an efficient, effective business if your employees aren’t engaged. And and this kind of reverts back to what I was talking about a few minutes ago. If your employees broke, he’s not going to be engaged at work. Okay. And somebody goes, well, that’s not my responsibility. Yes, it is. There’s a business owner. That is your responsibility. Each one of the employees ought to be your responsibility because you’re bringing on board the board, your ship. You didn’t make sure that they’re right, because those employees are what’s going to build your business, not you. And that’s why I suggest we tell people, hey, you need to sit sit employees down when you first hire them. Your onboarding process. Hey, what’s your personal professional financial goals? I guarantee you 98% say, well, I don’t know. Nobody’s ever asked me that. I have never and I’ve worked W-2 job, you know, manufacturing over over 16 years. I’ve never had an employer ask me that what are my what are my goals? Never. You know. Have you ever had yours?

Stone Payton: [00:28:56] I have, and I feel incredibly blessed by that. And it’s one of the reasons that I learned to make money and learn to hang on to it. I had a mentor early in my career by the name of Steve Brown. He ran a sales training and development company and we also did Leadership Development Company. And he did ask me that question very much that way. And I think it set the stage for a very productive career and a marvelous relationship and a great deal of loyalty. But that has got to be rare.

Kyle Baxter: [00:29:27] Oh, it really is. You know, I think today I think Corridor Ventures has had a little over 50 companies go go through our full program. That’s from, you know, all our all our events 360 through then maybe through a platform. We have a platform review, which is a this is this is what’s amazing about this. This platform is about this thick. I ain’t kidding you about this thick that’s that long. You flip through it and this is a ten year, okay, a ten year plan, detailed blueprint for you to grow or start a business. I mean, it didn’t miss nothing. I’m talking about by the numbers. And I give you an example that we had a engineer guy out of. He’s out of Texas, young guy. He’s Oriental. Because I was kidding him. Because my Korean from the military is kind of awful. He is Korean. And I ask him, you know, you always learn the bad words first. And I think I used one. And he laughed. He said, that wouldn’t even be a good bad word because you said it wrong. Okay. That’s why I just stick with English because, you know, I’m Southern. I’m authorized to butcher the English language, you know, just because I’m Southern. But but he had went to the 360 and and spoke Brandon and after the 360 he called, got Ahold of Brandon. He goes, Hey Brandon, I’m getting ready to start my business and I don’t need all this other right now. I want a platform. And a platform is a couple hundred grand. Okay. But that’s really a dirt cheap. That’s like one 190, 190,000. And Brandon looked at him and said, Sure. He said, We already know what I’m doing. I got this background, I got this. He said, But I want to start it from the ground up the right way, perfect every time. And that’s what he got. First year after you got the platform done, $4 million. Uh, spoke with him two months ago. And that put him at about. 20, 20 months. He’s going towards $8 million.

Stone Payton: [00:31:29] Well, that math works for me. Tell me more about this 360. And you don’t have to dive into a lot of detail unless you just want to. But I’m trying to get a picture of how a client can take full advantage of all these resources and the expertise and experience that you and your team have in this domain. Is that often an entry point? The first place where someone sort of enters into your world is this 360 thing or.

Kyle Baxter: [00:31:55] Well, that’s one way, you know. You know, you can you know, if you see it on social media or have you been on my list, I might send you an email. I may even call you or my business development team could call you and offer that to you. You know, you know, I have to tell you just a quick thing. I won’t go into all of it, but I do want to hit the 360 because that’s one of the biggest, I would say. Well, it got my.

Stone Payton: [00:32:17] Attention, which was one of Grant’s rules. Right. Get my attention.

Kyle Baxter: [00:32:21] Let me tell you that that is the most amazing. It’s two days because what are you going to learn in two days? You’re going to be surprised. It’s so intense. It’s out of this world, but it’s great. You know, we have we have a basic three day business boot camp, which covers marketing, sales and some business strategies. We’ve got a marketing execution workshop, a sales execution workshop that I think anybody with a sales team needs to attend because you want to increase your sales and have a better sales team. You got to go. You got to do it. I’m telling you, trust me, it’ll work. People essentials. We have a leadership essentials, which I think a lot of business owners kind of, you know, some of us, I was kind of that way when I ran. I knew it all. You can’t tell me I’m the business owner. Don’t tell me I don’t know how to run my business, dude. I know how I felt. I was an idiot. Okay, but. But, you know, even part of that leadership essentials what it does. We kind of opened up and it shows you where your gaps are that you may have in leadership. There’s nothing wrong. None of us are perfect. Nobody is. There’s always room, you know, for more knowledge and learn. Then we got the finance essentials, which I would say if you already got a business going initially, I’d say the first two you probably want to come to or the People essentials and the finance Essentials because the finance, you know, it covers, you know, the baseline how to interpret basic financial statements, you know, PNL balance sheet stuff.

Kyle Baxter: [00:33:39] But it really gets gets more into, you know, the quality factors that affect business valuation. How do you incentivize your team at a bunch of other things? And you know as well as I do, it is about the numbers. A business has to make money to survive and especially got to make it to grow. And so you want to have those basics in place so you’re effective in your efficient and then, you know, then we get to the 360 and that really just they hit we hit really hard on the four pillars of business, you know, And then at the end of the end of the course, day two, you’ll see it a 90 day plan for your business based off a 360 degree look at your business. Because because when you go, you’re going to say, oh, wow, I didn’t know about that. Oh, I’m not doing this, or, hey, at least I’m doing that, right? But oh, you know, and it’s amazing. And it’s just such an eye opener. We’ve had over 400, over 400 people go through the 360 as of the date. You know, and like I told you, it’s about 40 grand. Round it off.

Kyle Baxter: [00:34:42] Someone goes, well, that’s a lot of money. Not really. We may think it is, but I can tell you this. Every business has gone through the ten x 360. Have recouped that money within 90 days, everyone. Some even sooner than that. And so you’re going to take away about 40 or 50 new things back to your business. You’ve learned from 360. All you need to implement is 2 or 3. You know, and you’re going to because if you were my client, I’m going to be calling, following up, going, Hey, did you do that? Because you don’t have an option. We kind of push because we care about car don’t venture us. If it’s not me or somebody else, we’ll be pushing. Hey, you get that done. I don’t spend money for nothing. But. But, you know, they really ought to charge them. You know, I shouldn’t say it three times what to do for that course. Not that they going to jack the price up, but they should. The value is is unbelievable. And then, of course, the I guess I’m at the platform. The next thing is the platform, you know, and I explained kind of what that is. And then we got a you’ll hear him talk about SBU and Strategic Business Unit. And I do want to kind of cover that because that’s you’d hit that level after you go through the platform system, so to speak.

Kyle Baxter: [00:35:52] You know, so you’ve got your platform now, you’re implementing it, getting it going, really starting to scale. And our SBU comprises about five functional experts, all dedicated to the fields marketing, finance, human resources and people, you know, training, you know, they worked cross functionally to help the business owners implement that strategy. The platform review, you know, you know, they have weekly calls, they have monthly calls, and they’re kind of the kind of acts, a bolt on pseudo executive leadership team, you know, to guide the present business decisions based on the future outcomes. You know, if that makes if that makes sense to you, you know, for their predicted for the ten year growth plan. And so, you know, say for example, you’ve gone through that you hadn’t hired a HR manager yet. You really don’t have one. But guess what you don’t have to Cardoen Ventures. Sbu could take care of that for you. Those things that you don’t have to necessarily you may not be ready at that time to to bring it in-house. Or maybe it’s not profitable for you to bring it in-house. A lot of times it is. But, you know, that’s just strategic business decisions. And each industry is a little different. You know, there’s not one size fits all. It’s all it’s all a industry specific to what it is. And but they do so much for the business. It’s just crazy.

Stone Payton: [00:37:11] Well, I’m glad you brought up the SBU and describe some of what happens when someone participates at that level, because it strikes me and it’s an assumption I want to test with you that as powerful as all of these different things you’ve been sharing with us, from the impact factors to the the Ten Commandments and that kind of thing, that that competency and high performance. It’s even with all of that knowledge and even with some operational practice, it’s still a moving target. Right? Things can fade. You got to you got to circle back. So there are these these events and there there’s this injection of content and principles and all that. But but there seems to be real process to what you do and the ability to to have people tap in and with an objective lens and help you stay on track. You’ve got to you’ve got to there’s a there’s a process, a process aspect to your thing. It’s not just a series of events. Is that.

Kyle Baxter: [00:38:11] Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It is not. It is. We have a we have a secret of events that we can do. Now, you don’t necessarily have to do a few of them in order. There are some that you should based on, you know, the people, the finest stuff you could do that, you know, one before the other wouldn’t really wouldn’t really impact you. But I would say the 361st prior to the platform boom, then you get into the SBU if you need them, do it that way. Structured.

Stone Payton: [00:38:37] But these calls, these this ongoing interaction with someone who has has a vested interest in my success, I mean, you can’t just do it and then be done, right?

Kyle Baxter: [00:38:47] No, no, no. It’s ongoing. Yeah. Yeah. You know, once you do those things, you’re going to have interaction with either my team or Cordon Ventures team. Yeah, that’s going to be assist you the whole way. If I’m your business advisor, you don’t get rid of Kyle. You don’t get rid of Kyle until you close your business or I die, and then I’ll come back because I’m not done with you. Sorry. I’m a pain because I’m going to be there, you know? And I do business coach a lot of my clients. I do. And part of the business coaching is, you know, people say, well, what do you do? Well, let me explain to some people because some people don’t understand the difference from a consultant, even though it’s big Bulldog Consulting, a consultant and a business coach, a consultant usually comes in and does everything themselves. Okay, boom, boom, boom. Here you go. There’s your thing. Lease. Of course, a lot of them. You leave runs. Okay. In about six months later, now it’s back to where it was. And you call them back and they go get some more money, do the same thing. I don’t believe in that because I believe in coming in. We set up systems, strategies and information formulations. You’re going to implement that something you keep, it doesn’t disappear. It’s you have it forever. But when I’m coaching coach is more of accountability. You know, I’m helping keep you on track. That’s a helpful.

Stone Payton: [00:40:03] Distinction. Thank you. Because because I come from the training and consulting world and I still get this consulting coaching thing, it kind of morphs for me.

Kyle Baxter: [00:40:10] Yeah, You know, people really need to understand this. Because there’s there’s tons of coaches out there. I mean, life coaches, you know, the kind of coaches. Yeah. Well, you know, as a consultant, you all you have to know what you’re talking about because say, for example, the only thing I could be technically a consultant about would be sales, okay? Manufacturing and leadership, period. Because I spent ten years in the military covers my leadership sales. I’ve done that for about 12 years. And then I was in manufacturing for 16 years because if you don’t know that and something goes south, somebody can go sue you. Because you want a true consultant. Where’s the coach? You don’t have to be. Technically, no. Sean, about. I know it sounds bad. I don’t mean that. You know what I’m saying? You don’t have to have, you know, 50 years worth of experience to be a coach and still be a valuable good coach. But that’s a significant difference. But Coach, I really enjoy you know, I’m I’m not really hard. I am sometimes it’s just because I care.

Stone Payton: [00:41:09] But there’s this accountability dynamic that’s a critical component of the coaching relationship, right?

Kyle Baxter: [00:41:14] Oh, absolutely it is. And, you know, I’ve got a coach, too. Mine’s the big guys and I have to answer to them. And I love it, though, that.

Stone Payton: [00:41:21] You eat your own cooking. Oh, yeah. You are a walking, talking example of these values that you espouse and these principles that you are recommending people engage.

Kyle Baxter: [00:41:31] Yeah. You know, how can I tell you, Hey, you need me to be your business coach? I don’t have one, dude. I’m not perfect. You know, I have to have I have a wife and she’s.

Stone Payton: [00:41:39] Over there nodding her head, too. She’s not on the air, but she’s in here with us.

Kyle Baxter: [00:41:42] Yeah, that does a real good job at keeping me accountable. But then I got, you know, I got Brandon and I got Grant be all over me. But you need that. But because, you know, as a business owner, like you said earlier, you get busy, you get a lot of things going on and you may well miss something or put something aside or like, well, I don’t know how important this is. I think in the moment this is more important. No, it wasn’t. So if you got that accountability part in your coach, go, Hey, wait a minute. No, this is your priorities. You and I set these together. We agreed on these. And, you know, I don’t go in and tell somebody how to run a business. Know it’s not up to me. I will give them proven strategies and systems to implement, don’t get me wrong, but I’m not going to come and say, Hey, you just need to do this, do that. Don’t you know, like I said, I’ve been there. Don’t come in and tell me how to run my business. Now, if you got suggestions to show me how my business can get better, I’m all ears. But don’t come dictate, you know? Because. Because maybe. Maybe I’m not ready for that yet. And that’s true. Everybody has different timelines for different people. Some may want to get it and go. And we do push. We push. I’ll push you. I want you to go quick. I want that. I want those dollar bills flushing out your pockets as quick as I can. But, you know, maybe you’ve got a little bit more of a conservative mindset and you want to pull back a little bit. I’m not going to let you retreat. I’ll let you slow it a little bit, but I want you to get there because that’s the way you got to. You got to be quick about it. You got to make quick decisions, make the right decisions, move on, move forward.

Stone Payton: [00:43:09] I’m going to shift gears on you as we begin to wind down here. You are clearly incredibly passionate about the work. You are obviously invested in your client’s success. Every time that you begin to talk about the work, your eyes light up and and it permeates the room. I know it makes the journey across the airwaves. My question is what passions outside the scope of this work do you pursue what do you have a tendency to to nerd out? As my kids would say, for me, my listeners know, it’s hunting, fishing and travel. Is there anything outside the scope of this work that you just really enjoy and dive and dive into?

Kyle Baxter: [00:43:48] You know what, some people say you’re crazy. I don’t. I’m all about building this secure network for my family. You know, I’m not the youngest guy. I’m 59. And I should have been at this level, you know, 40 years ago. But I didn’t have the mentors or the training that I do now. And I’m not looking back. It’s no poor, pitiful me, no victim. You know, it is what it is and it’s never too late. But I’m on this this track to leave this legacy for my kids and grandkids and I want a financial position for them. So if something happens to me, if something happens to me, I don’t care if the economy drops like zero eight or politics goes south, They get stupid that I want my family and the 5 or 1% model because middle middle America is broke. Society tells you hey just get yeah be part of middle America. Yeah and be broke guys. That’s a myth. It’s all bad stuff. You gotta get out of your head. You need to be pushing for the five and the 1%. I know people rag on the one percenters, you know, the Elon Musk and all those guys. But you know what? And, you know, actually, Grant’s one of those actually, he’s a one percenter. But, you know, he could go by the island belief, build a house, sit there and, you know, Bvds drinking Bahama mamas smoking cigars and and don’t have to do anything else. And his family, kids, grandkids are probably great grandkids. They’ll be taken care of. You know, some are brave. Those billions of dollars. You don’t have anything to worry about. And see, to me, that’s true freedom. And that’s what I’m after. I’m after freedom and financial freedom for my family.

Kyle Baxter: [00:45:27] And that’s the goal. Until I get get there, there’s no stopping. And I don’t feel like it’s hard because I really enjoy what I do. Oh, I can tell. So, you know, and I will say, before I really got pounded into this, you know, a lot, a lot of guys hunt and fish and I’m not ragging on them. You know, Michigan was was a hunter’s Paradise. But I spent too many years in the woods in the army, and my idea of camping out is a five star motel dude. Hot water. I’m sorry. That’s just me. But. But, you know. You know, Mr. Exciting. I don’t do any of that. I read books, you know, in school. I hated school, period. High school. The only reason I went for girls. Because they wouldn’t let me make money. Finally, my senior year, I got to go to a prom. You know, where you get out early and go. I’m like, Thank God I can make money because I hated school. I didn’t want anything to do. I was all about making that money. You can’t be a millionaire going high school. I was thinking, you know, but yeah, and that’s what I do. So I read and I really like it. The is one that got me reading. I hate it. But in the army it’s hurry up and wait sometimes. And so you always carry around the book. And that’s what kind of got me into reading mode. And now, you know, history books, you know, self-help books. I just I love reading. So that’s what I do for, you know, excitement, if you will, on when I’m not focused on my business and growing it.

Stone Payton: [00:46:44] Before we wrap, I’d love to leave our listeners, if we could, with a couple of actionable tips. And look, gang, the number one tip, if any of this is striking a chord with you, reach out, have a conversation with Kyle, somebody on his team and learn more. But between now and that phone call or that note, if there’s something that they can be reading, if there’s something they should be thinking about doing or not doing. But a couple of things just to begin to set the wheels in motion. Let’s leave them with a couple of tips if we could.

Kyle Baxter: [00:47:15] Yeah, absolutely. You know what I think every business owner today needs, if you don’t have your goals, your personal and professional goals written down, you need to write them down. You need to have your mission statement. And it needs to be right in front of you. Okay. You got to have it. You’re not going to be successful without it. Your core values. You need. What are your core values? And your business should be run off the core values. That’s something you need to look at and you don’t. You may not have them. May not be in stone yet. You really need to sit down and spend 30 minutes or an hour and think about them and put them there and then implement them in your business. That’s just something you can do on your own. Because when you talk to me, that’s the first thing I’m going to ask you. Let me see your mission statement. How are you going to do it? Let me see your core values. Let me see your goals. Because without any of that, you don’t have any path to know where you’re going. And guys, let me tell you, confusion guarantees failure.

Stone Payton: [00:48:14] Well said. Well, Kyle, it has been an absolute delight having you in the studio this morning. I knew it would be after we had a brief phone call. Thank you for your insight, your perspective. Thank you for sharing your experience. Keep up the good work, man. You’re doing important work. And I want you to know that. That we appreciate you. Hey.

Kyle Baxter: [00:48:35] Hey, Stone. I appreciate it. I appreciate you having me on here. And just so everybody knows, if you got any questions or anything, feel free to go to Big Bulldog consulting.com or you can call me straight at (770) 733-3470. Or you can email me at Kyle B at Grant Cardone team.com. Either one of those ways do it give me a call if this has something I could put a link and maybe I will later on where you can see it. Put a link where you can hit a button to set a calendar link for me. And if you’d like to have a 15 minute strategy, call no obligation, no charge. Just give me a call and we’ll set it up and be more than happy to do it.

Stone Payton: [00:49:19] What a marvelous way to invest a Tuesday morning. And yes, we will put that link on there where we publish. And again, this has been terrific, man. Thank you, guys.

Kyle Baxter: [00:49:28] So I really appreciate it and thanks for allowing me the opportunity to get the ten X mentality out to all these businesses because I just want to see them all grow and blow this world up.

Stone Payton: [00:49:39] My pleasure. All right. Until next time, This is Stone Payton for Kyle Baxter with Big Bulldog Consulting. And everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying we’ll see you again on Cherokee Business Radio.