Show Notes:

Scaling impact through team, not ego. “A big part of it’s the team. Anything over $3 million — really like $2.5 million — your team is going to be the thing that drives that. You can carry it on your back. You can work the long days until you get to that in a lot of estate planning, but if you want to go above that, you got to have a team… Once your house is paid off, once you get to buy all the cool stuff you want to buy — me as an owner, as someone driving the firm forward — the visionary has to really look beyond the dollars and about the impact, because you can only have so much cool stuff.”

Culture is about showing the impact. “I think that’s the biggest thing that we’ve done at culture — is what’s in it for them, as far as the employees, to go along with Josh’s vision. Before, I would say, ‘Hey, I want to go help 10,000 families. I want to go help 50,000 families.’ And I think the team would look at it as like, well, Josh just wants to be rich. But being able to really show them, here’s what that is — using storytelling with the team, the same way you do in marketing — marketing to your team internally, making sure they understand… Even doing that with salespeople increases their conversion rate.”

True leadership means letting go. “I love sales. I think sales is one of the most ego-driven things that I can do in my firm. It’s immediately people saying, ‘Oh, thank you for fixing this problem.’ But I know that if I do that, that’s probably the lowest use of my time right now. I can go make things that guide the leadership, I can put forth the vision so that my team of 40-plus people has security — when the markets crash, or when there’s a new presidency, or whatever little news story is freaking people out at the time. I want my team to know that we’re safe. I want my team to know that they have a future with me.”

How hiring strategy became a turning point. “We hired a hiring manager — even whenever we were struggling a little bit with profitability — and within weeks it changed the business. People feel so exhausted from applying to jobs and not hearing back. If you wait to hire until you’re behind the eight ball, it takes too long to respond and you miss out on A-players. She created a system where we’re forecasting 24 months out what we anticipate needing. Now we build rapport with great candidates before we even have the opening — so when we need to make a change, we already have someone lined up.”

Why your systems won’t get you to the next level. “The systems that got us here aren’t the systems to get us to the next level. One of the things that hurts my ego super big is this year, we’re taking it as kind of a rebuilding or foundational year… So traditionally, if we are growing 50% year over year, I see that as a failure. But the leadership team said, ‘You can do that, but you’re going to lose profitability. You’ll end up with the revenue number you want — but not the profit.’ That was something I had to acquiesce on. I still don’t know that I buy into it 100%, but I think it’s the right choice.”

How a car obsession fuels purpose. “I have a 15,000 square foot warehouse filled, door to door, wall to wall with cars. Not all fancy cars — some of them are, but some of them are just wild… I’m working with Dre Norman to get groups of people — teens, people with addiction issues — out on the racetrack to learn how to drive these cars. I’m really looking at: How do I take my passion for things and not only make cool stuff, but utilize it? How do I give the experience to other people? One of the things I hope I never lose in life is the ability to put in hard work in the heat and get dirty.”