Joe Rare, tell me about your vision.
Well, my vision really is all about just building businesses and creating impact
for the people who work with us, for the clients that we serve,
and then most importantly is providing freedom and essentially time for my family.
That's really what I'm all about.
When you mean freedom, what do you mean by that?
Freedom? Yeah, so most people when they go to build a business,
most entrepreneurs have this idea that they're going to have freedom.
They're going to have time freedom. They're going to have financial freedom.
And the reality is very, very few people ever get it.
Most of them all, they work in their business 12 hours a day.
They grind. Their phone is in front of them at all times,
and they're spending so much of their life in their business
rather than being outside of the business working on it.
And so my kind of claim to fame is that I build businesses that are run by other people.
And I've been really, really good at doing that,
and it gives me genuine freedom with my family, my kids, and all that.
That's amazing. When did you come across all this,
and when did you go from working in your business and working on your business?
After I failed a whole bunch of times, and I had a business that was doing fairly well
as far as it would appear for all intents and purposes.
It looked good. We had good revenue, but we weren't making any money.
I was working 12 hours plus a day, and then eventually the business failed due to lots of circumstances.
But I realized that that wasn't the recipe to success because I was never happy.
My team, they were always feeling that.
And I realized that we weren't providing the best service to our clients because we couldn't,
because of just the structure of the business.
And I realized that there were so many areas where I could have handed things off to somebody else,
and it would have improved the results of the business.
It would have improved the morale.
It would have improved everything that we did for our clients and even in my own life.
And I didn't know exactly how to do it then.
And so I realized when I was restarting another business, it was like,
I can't do it the way I did it because that didn't work.
And now I got to do it this other way.
And then when I built the first business that way, I went, oh, I got it.
And then I was able to replicate it.
That's amazing.
Too many entrepreneurs don't see that or they see it too late.
And too many of us learn from our mistakes instead of learning from someone else's mistakes.
For sure.
That's our biggest mistake.
Yeah.
That's amazing.
So how did you get started in all this?
Tell me the original story of what got all of this together?
What business were you doing and what failed, what didn't work?
Because a lot of times what you don't realize is there is so much wisdom
in learning from someone else's mistakes.
For sure.
And it takes a great amount of leadership for someone to admit, hey,
I tried this long time ago, someone didn't teach me, but I failed doing that.
And I learned so much from it.
I would love to just hear your thoughts on that.
Yeah.
So I knew I wanted to start businesses from a decently young age.
I knew that there would be no getting jobs and working the nine to five.
That wasn't my personality.
My kind of origin into business was literally reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad,
understanding the concepts of that book, which led me into the cash flow quadrant.
It opened my eyes to so many ideas that I didn't really know existed.
And my parents weren't doing it.
And so it really took me kind of uncovering a lot of this knowledge just through a ton of reading,
going to seminars, doing all that stuff.
But so I ended up dropping out of college to start a business.
And I started my first business, got it up to about 40 employees,
doing about $2 million a year.
And then I sold the company when I was 22, almost 23 years old.
And so that was like, and it was a door to door sales business.
So we had products and we literally sold door to door.
And it was as simple as that.
And it was, but, you know, I sold the business.
The profitability of it had super low margins, but it was still like my first endeavor,
having employees, having a team, understanding how to run a business and manage inventory and do all that stuff.
So when I sold the company, I probably could have made more money if I wasn't 22 and ignorant.
But they wanted the contract that I had for the product.
They didn't really care about the business.
And so it was, I mean, weeks later, every employee was gone and they just wanted that contract.
But nonetheless, that was the first step into actually owning my own business.
I got to really taste what that was like.
However, I worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week.
I had no life.
And sure, there was some money at the end, but that wasn't, I'm like, well, that didn't, that wasn't how I wanted it to go.
But that was kind of like the first step.
OK, I controlled the thing.
I, you know, I managed the money.
I managed the inventory.
I had these relationships.
I had an office lease.
I had all this stuff.
And so that was kind of like the first step into it.
And then I from there, I got into real estate and then I got into some other things.
But that was kind of the origin was rich dad, poor dad, cash flow quadrant and then dropping out of college to start a business.
That's amazing.
And if you could summarize, and it's a hard question, you can take time to think about it.
If you could summarize one hard lesson you learned from that experience, what would that be that you would not do it?
Again, I most likely I probably wouldn't get into the office lease that I got into.
That was a huge one.
I didn't learn them.
I didn't learn the lesson because I did it again.
And the second one was way worse than the first one.
So, you know, sometimes there's there's lessons that don't show up until you're ready to to learn the lesson.
But I think that understanding leases and contracts and what you get yourself into is super important.
A lot of people don't.
Then I guess the only other lesson would have probably been to understand if I'm going to sell something, understand what I'm selling.
And so if I were to look at what the profits were of the company today and then go, well, what could I sell it for?
I mean, I didn't get close to what I should have.
And so that was probably a stupid move.
But I didn't have anybody around me that was mentoring me or guiding me.
I was kind of doing it.
I pick up a book, I read a book and I'm like, oh, OK, this is how we do it.
And that was it. That's how I was hiring.
That's how I was recruiting staff.
That's how I was running my front office.
That's how I was running my marketing and all those things.
So it was really kind of flying by the seat of my pants.
Joe, how old are you right now?
I'm 43.
43. So it's been 21 years.
Yeah, pretty much.
And since that time.
Yeah.
I cannot imagine that at that time we are flooded with so much information right now within this age that everything is at fingertips.
Like I can Google something, find someone, save so much of my time, throw some money at them and they can come and work for me.
I cannot imagine at that time building a business even at 22, getting to 40 employees.
That's very impressive.
I mean, door to door, I know what that means.
I've been a solar rep for a while.
I did. I used to do solar.
And I've seen companies rise.
Oh, for sure.
Yeah, it's a grind.
But I mean, now that you say that, probably one of the greatest lessons I got out of, it wasn't from a failure standpoint, but probably one of the greatest lessons I got out of the entire business was learning how to sell.
And now to this day, I can say like there's no chance I could ever go broke because I could sell whatever I got.
Right. I can always sell stuff.
So that lesson alone was worth probably more than I received out of the sale of the company.
So I'll go with that.
There's another thing you learn in there that most people don't realize when they're doing so.
Sailing gets you out of your big shell that you can go and talk to anyone openly without me.
You take the fear of rejection, but you can talk to anyone about anything.
Literally.
So that opens so many doors for you.
The fact that because I've seen so many business owners and entrepreneurs and employees and just people, they're not comfortable talking about their vision or what they want, what they're like to other people.
And that's what sailing did for me.
It's not like I was shy or anything.
But when I sold, the first week after I sold, I was a different person altogether.
I might not believe it because that everyday practice of just talking to random strangers and getting your door shut in your face or rejection or whatever, or even healthy conversation when people just want to talk to you,
I think that gives you some other kind of effect in your body where you open up, you become who you are.
It really is a superpower.
And I think that people, honestly, if anybody wants to be successful in careers of any sort, one of the easiest things to do is to go learn sales.
Yeah, because you could sell your way into a conversation.
You can sell your way into gaining information that you need to get.
I mean, they're really you need something done.
And even if you're an employee and you work in an office and you need somebody to do something on your behalf, that's a transaction.
So you've got to be able to sell.
And so whether it's just the ability to persuade, the persuasion techniques and all that, there's value in learning it.
Most people don't have any clue, and they don't.
Yeah, you're absolutely right.
Joe, what would you say is your buy of what you do now?
I know you mentioned that building businesses is kind of in your DNA now.
Like you since the early age that you were you're meant for doing business.
I'm kind of the same way.
But you're way far ahead than I am right now.
You're building businesses.
I guess you're more way far ahead than I am, I would say.
But let's go to what is your why?
Why you get a better every day?
And it's just family. It's easy.
It's family. It's you know, I have two daughters and my wife and like that's that's it.
Like that drives me enough.
And it's the lifestyle I want to create for my kids.
It's them understanding and learning the lessons that I am going through right now.
And I'm learning myself to build a past that onto them so that they don't have to go through the same struggles.
I hope that I can give them the quantum leap by them capturing knowledge from me that allows them to gain success in the future.
And so if I can help them mold their future just simply because I'm doing what I'm doing and they get to watch me, you know, they're right here in the house.
They get to watch me. They get to be here.
They jump in and they listen to Zoom calls and they're around me and they're nine and eleven.
But they still understand.
And if you ask both of them what they want to do when they grow up, they want to run dad's businesses.
They always say it.
And so what how that plays out in the big grand scheme of things.
That's the why. That's it.
So I always say family above all.
And that's that.
That's amazing. Thank you for sharing that.
Yeah, you got it.
I have two more questions for you before we get to this segment.
The first question is why do you think leaders hide from funding their vision?
And the second part to the same question is how can leaders lean into funding their vision?
When you say funding, what do you mean? Are you talking actually capital or what?
It could be whatever you mean.
Some people answer it as little capital.
Some people have answered it as effort.
A lot more can go a lot more.
So it's whatever you want to take it.
The first thing that comes to mind when I hear that is they don't even know what their vision is.
Because if your vision is so clear and you know exactly what it is that you want,
exactly where you want to take whatever this dream is that you have,
you can't help yourself but go towards it because it literally like sucks you towards it.
So I would say that for anybody who's trying to figure out how to start something, grow something, do something different,
they have a goal, they have a desire.
I would call it an intention.
Whatever that vision is, if you make it so crystal clear, you can't not be attracted to it.
And then what happens is as you get clear and you document more and more of what does it mean,
write it down like literally pen and paper, write it down physically.
And as you tell the story of yourself of what this vision is,
the how, the things you need to physically do, the actions will start to just kind of show up.
Okay, I need to go do that.
Okay, that's the next thing in the list.
And all of a sudden, like everything starts to come towards you simply because you're getting clarity.
And I see it all the time with people that, you know, our clients and they, you know,
hey, I'm trying to do this, but I'm trying to do this.
They have no clarity in what they're doing.
And without clarity, you can't lead people.
You can't lead a team.
You can't drive revenue if you don't even understand what you're, where you're trying to go.
So I would tell anybody who is trying to do anything, it would be simply get clear first
because then everything else gets easier.
Right. And so that would be it is, is give vision.
Where for you, Joe, I'm assuming this clarity and I know it and I know a few people that know it.
I know you know it.
For you, what was that?
What was, if you could think about a time like you figured out, okay, from this point onwards,
I'm moving forward, I need clarity in my life to move forward else I'll be failing.
What was that time and what did you learn from that time?
Well, I mean, it's after you fail and you realize that it hurts and it's not fun.
And there's better value and more joy and happiness when you actually have success, when things work out.
So then you start to go, okay, well, if success leaves clues, what was different about this thing than that thing?
Okay, well, I kind of I knew what I wanted more.
I knew what we were doing.
And it could be some as simple as like, I'm just more educated now.
And so things are way easier because I failed a whole bunch of times, figured out, learned the lessons,
and now I'm really good at it. And here we go.
And now things are successful.
But I think the clarity piece of it is just that, well, maybe I wouldn't have made that mistake if I actually knew what I was doing,
or if I actually knew where I was going.
And the reality is that most people just don't.
And you can see that in every aspect of their lives.
It's all over.
They don't know what they want.
So they don't get the thing that they're after.
And so sit back down, get very clear about who you're trying to be, what your vision is,
and then you will attract exactly what you need to do.
It'll show up in front of you.
And I know that sounds like very metaphysical and probably, you know, kind of, you know, foo-foo,
but that's the way that the universe works.
That's the way that energy works.
And the more attention you give to something, you know, energy breeds energy.
And so you'll have you'll have greater success.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is going to get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show.
And thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision and becoming a vision pro yourself.