Let's Learn from Someone Who Has Started 18 Companies
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Mr. Biz Radio: Let's Learn from Someone Who Has Started 18 Companies!
Unedited transcription of the show is included below:
(00:03):
Welcome to Mr. Biz Radio! Biz Talk for Biz Owners. During the next half hour, Mr. Biz, Ken Wentworth, a leading business advisor, and two-time best-selling author will cover topics that'll help business owners run their companies more profitably and more efficiently. If you're ready to stop faking the funk and take your business onward and upward. This show is for you. And now here's Mr. Biz, Ken Wentworth.
(00:28):
All righty. Welcome to another episode
(00:30):
Of Mr. Biz radio with me, Mr. Biz, Ken Wentworth. And we are gonna talk this week about something that I know will resonate with all of you, because we've all been through some of this. We've all dealt with this and we have, as we always do an absolute expert that is going to educate us, that's gonna teach us. It's gonna help us be better at some of these things. And, and, and we're gonna talk about a whole bunch of different things, but one of the things that we're gonna touch on is we're gonna talk about how to create a successful, why that can help guide the how and what of creating a powerful business. And it's not a bunch of fufu things, right? <Laugh> so stick with me, but we have someone who, so you might be thinking, okay, who's the expert here, right?
(01:13):
Who's who's gonna come and talk to us about this. Oh my gosh. I've heard this type of topic a bunch of times, blah, blah, blah. Well, we have someone with us this week that has started 18 companies over a 45 year career 18. Do you think maybe he might know a little bit about this? Okay. So our guest this week is Mr. David Meine. He's a co-founder and co-author, he's a cancer survivor. Talk about a battler, right? Competitive road, bike, cyclist, pickle ball athlete. He's an experienced career entrepreneur with a long list of successful launches under his belt when he is not out winning athletic medals, boom, holding motivational talks or advising business boards, David dedicates his time to furthering the mission he and Carla are most passionate about, and that is eating to live over the past two decades. David's work books and remarkable journey have inspired thousands of people to transform their health in the same way. So without further ado, David Meine, welcome to Mr. Biz radio.
(02:14):
Thank you so very much. I love your handle, Mr. Biz. I think it's so cool.
(02:21):
<Laugh> well, thanks. So I guess, gosh, look, let's get started, right? So 18 companies talk, talk to me about your entrepreneurial journey. I mean, I, this is gonna be amazing. I, I gotta take some notes here.
(02:33):
<Laugh> so I started my very first company actually, while I was going to college. One of the things that as people think about their why, how and what is for me was always about solving a problem. So while I was going to college, I was actually working for a company that had multiple retail stores and they were in home electronics. And back when I started my company in 1979 video recorders and those great big, I don't know if you remember those great big video cameras that used to, to sit on your shoulder. And so anyway, they retailed those things, but they also had a rental business where they rented because we were in college towns, we rented refrigerators, micro waves and all these different things. Well, people would come in and I was managing two other stores and people would come in and say, do you rent this?
(03:27):
And I'd say, no, do you rent this? They'd say no. So I got this bright idea. Since the company I worked for didn't do it. I'd start outta my garage and buy things and rent things to these college students. One day, the president and owner of the company called me in. And he, I was one of their up and coming best store managers doubled the profits in their two stores. They gave me and I sitting across and Steve looked at me and said, Hey, Dave sounds good. And I looked at him and I knew I was busted. Cuz that was the name of the company had started, was called sounds good. Oh geez. And he said, I I'm really sorry. I don't have a choice, but I have to fire you. And I said, why are you firing me? I'm doing such a great job at these two stores.
(04:11):
He says, your company is is in conflict with what we're doing. So it was unfortunate. But then I just went full time into building that company. And I actually built that company into 110 stores in 28 states offering. I was one of the very first companies in Utah that did video movie rentals. And I was passionate about movies. We brought in later pizza in our stores. So when people walk in, they'd smell pizza baking. So we'd put deals together where they could get, you know, pizza and movies. And it was quite the business. And I sold that in 1988. That was my first of the 18 companies I've built.
(04:53):
Wow. So you were like pre blockbuster
(04:57):
Blockbuster was who bought most of my stores.
(05:00):
Oh, okay. You,
(05:02):
It was pre blockbuster.
(05:04):
Yeah. Cause I was trying to think, I can't remember exactly. I actually did some research on blockbuster actually trying to learn from their demise. Ironically enough later, later on in their life lifespan of their company. But I'm trying to think when they were founded, I want to say it was 85 ish. Something like that. Maybe it was so yeah, right around
(05:26):
There. 84, 85. Yeah. So yeah. And what's interesting is through that 18 companies, I mostly focused on consumer goods, focused on solving problems in different areas. And then my next big company I did in the 90 was a home and residential and commercial security system business where I would come in and install security systems and help critique businesses and protect people's homes. Built that up. Then in 1994, my wife started a company and we had a call center where we took inbound calls for companies that would do infomercials. And so when we sold that company in 2007, we had over 600 employees. That was an amazing business. We sold to a private equity company. And then we started in 2009 with my son. We started a company called ideal shape and we built that to 40 million. And then the big C attacked me in 2015.
(06:34):
That's when I found went in for surgery and they found three tumors embedded in the bladder wall. Fortunately it hadn't gone through the wall or you and I wouldn't be talking today. And so we had a company chasing us outta Europe. And so they, my wife says, we gotta sell the company. We gotta focus on your health. I don't wanna lose you. And so, and the reason being is I, over that next couple years, I ended up having multiple surgeries. They removed a total of 21 tumors into two rounds of chemo. And so we sold the company and we came up with a why and we wanted to really focus. You know, we had lots of whys with our business, a us now we had a why that we needed to do with my health and seeing if we could save my life.
(07:25):
And then our last company that we just started was in 2020 and which is, we started off as eating to live. And we've just in the last four months we changed our name to more than healthy, which really does more what we want. And let me just share with you really quick. And I, when we can wrap this up so you can go into your commercial break, but we really worked hard on our why and the why for this new company more than healthy is we coach individuals on how they can achieve optimal, which is something that we're super passionate about.
(08:05):
Yeah, no, it makes perfect sense. Look, I've got hearing the journey and I know you summarized it for us and made it concise, which is great. I've got, I've got so many questions but I know we're up against we're up against the break here. So I wanna be mindful of the time. I don't want producer Allen get mad at me. <Laugh> so so I gotta mind my Ps and Qs I can't have producer Allen mad at me, but so again, we're talking this week with Mr. David Meinie. He, his book is called "Eating To Live", but you can go out to morethanhealthy.com or I would also recommend not, or, and I would recommend going out on social media. So they're on so more than healthy living, you can find them on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, et cetera, go out and follow them. And again, go out to morethanhealthy.com and to find out more about a lot of the things that they're doing. Of course, we're gonna continue talking with him during the next segment. Come back after the break. We'll give the Mr. Biz tip of the week and we'll get back in to talking with Dave
(09:01):
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(09:31):
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(10:01):
Check out both of Mr. Biz's national bestselling books, pathway to profits and how to be a cash flow pro on Amazon. Now, once again, here's Mr. Biz.
(10:13):
All right. Welcome back to
(11:09):
And he said, that's the primary reason that people lose self-confidence because you don't even keep the promises that you make to yourself. And that just erodes that confidence. It erodes that self-esteem because you're not even holding promises to yourself that you make. And as I thought through it, and I had one of those, you know, deep thought moments and really started to think about it. I thought, man, that's very powerful. I had never thought about it in that way. So I, I said, let's make that a tip. I wanna make sure we share that as a tip. So again, build self confidence by keeping promises you make to yourself, give that a try, would love to hear feedback on that. If you guys have tried that, or once you do try it what kind of results you get out of it? All right. Let's get back into talking to David this week. So David, so number one, back from the first segment I, I gotta ask this because it's always interesting to me when I hear people's entrepreneurial journey, especially people who have been super successful. Like you have. So as you transition from you know, sounds good and building that up to a massive business and then selling that, you know, what did that look like? Did you know what you wanted to do next? Or did you start looking for another why,
(12:15):
You know, I didn't know what I wanted to do next. I knew I wanted to own my own companies, but one of the things I found is I needed to finish my bachelor's degree. And so when I graduated, I wanted to get that degree, get that done. So I had that credibility and then that's when I tried a couple of business concepts. So of those 18, you know, I had four that were tremendously successful, you know, six of 'em were were okay, you know, but I just wasn't, couldn't find the passion long term with them. And then, you know, the, there was six that were just as duds, right? No matter what I do, I couldn't figure out how to make 'em successful. But you know, when you look at the national average that, you know, only 10% of the businesses make it, and I'm at 22% success rate and I've employed thousands of people and helped millions of people, you know, with goods and services and helped people get healthy. I, I think I have been pretty successful.
(13:15):
Heck yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, this is just part of the entrepreneurial journey, right? You're not every idea you have is gonna work out yep. For a variety of reasons. Maybe there's just not an enough demand for it. Maybe you're not ready. You're not mature enough in your business career. I'm not talking about you specifically, but just people in general to run that type of business, you know, there all kind of different factors that could factor into that to, you know, whether the business works or not long term, but no, I was, I was curious to that because, you know, going from, you know, kind of, you know, like you said, you know, video rentals and things like that, sort of a blockbuster kind of a feel to, you know, residential security type thing, like that's kind of a big that's, that's kind of a big difference there. So I was curious if there was, as you were wrapping up, you know, sounds good. Were you like, man, I know I didn't get into next or is that just an evolution of the process?
(14:02):
It's just an evolution of trying different ideas, seeing what's out in the marketplace, you know, where there, you know what I started off with, it's all about solving problems, right? Mm-Hmm, <affirmative>, it's all about, you know, you see something, how can you do it better or is this missing in the marketplace? And like with the commercial security and residential company, it was, you have all these homes that you can't wire. And so I was like, I ran into, you know, a security system that was wireless. So if you think about it, you know, way back then, you know, in 1994, you know, I started doing wireless security systems so that people could secure their windows and doors that you couldn't get wires to. And then, you know, and, and it, you know, the list goes on and on and it's really to be a good, so entrepreneur, the why statement when you get your why statement, it's about what you're passionate about, right?
(15:01):
It's about, I really wanted to protect people when I would go into people's home and they would tell me these horrific stories about people breaking in their home and getting assaulted or getting their heirloom stolen or their house catches on fire. You know, I was a, I was passionate about putting together something that would help stop those kind of things or alleviate it or get the fire department there faster. And I have so many stories like that. And when we did the company we started in 2009 and sold in 2016, we helped tens of thousands of people, you know, lose 200 pounds, 50 pounds. We would completely change their life. We were so passionate about improving their life. And so, and the reason that came about in the, that 2014, you know, we had a vendor that was gonna produce a bunch of videos for us.
(15:57):
And as he was in our executive meeting, you know, it was so interesting. Jacob looked at us and said, Hey, I'm not gonna go any further with you guys, because until you figure out your why I can't produce the quality of video series that you need. And I was flabbergasted, I was like, do you know who you're talking to? I've built multiple companies here and you're telling me we don't know our why. Well, luckily I cooled down, talked to the executive team and then we went out, he gave us Simon Sinek book, "Start with Why" executive team. We read it. We did all the steps in it. It took us six months. And we came up with our passion statement. And at that point, our company completely changed. We were about 4 million, 2014. And once we understood or why, and then me as the CEO, I then our why with our customers, with our vendors, with the employees, our attorneys, advertisers, everybody, I came and taught contact. I said, this is our why, and this is what we believe. This is what we're gonna do. And what was interesting Mr. Biz for the next three years, we grew it 200% a year
(17:16):
And oh, wow.
(17:17):
We couldn't even keep, keep up with it. And then I got cancer. Then I had to go work on my health. Why to get where I'm at today.
(17:25):
Yeah. So I wanna get into that as well, obviously. So now it's a good segue. So we've got, and we've got just about a little over a minute left. So I, we can at least dip our tone water on this, but I wanna talk about that transition. So first of all, congratulations for kicking cancers behind. I just put it that way. It's a little personal right now. My, my brother's in the final stages of of treatment for himself. And so, you know, that's, that's hit home and we've got another potential issue in our family. I just found out about literally earlier today. We're still waiting to find out more about it, but you know, it's one of those things, cancer seems to impact all of us at some point or another, unfortunately at one point or not, or another, whether it's ourselves or someone in our family. So, so obviously that moved you from that to, to, you know, taking on that battle, winning that battle and then creating where you're at now with more than healthy. So I want to, I want to,
(18:23):
I hate to say this. I hate when people say this, I wanna
(18:25):
Put a pin in that one, David I, because we're gonna hit a break here, but go out to morethanhealthy.com, and then follow them on social media, More Than Healthy Living on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and YouTube, to find out more of what they got going on. Some of the content they have out there, We're gonna come back a promise. We're gonna find out more about David's transition into morethanhealthy.com on as well as him helping us create that
(18:52):
Successful,
(18:53):
Why
(18:53):
To
(18:54):
Drive our, how and our, what
(19:01):
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(19:30):
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(20:01):
To submit questions to the show, email them to
(20:10):
All
(20:11):
Right. Welcome back to the show. And I wanna dive back in, we've only got nine minutes left here. I wanna make sure we get the most outta David's time. So David, you transitioned after kicking cancer's butt and you started more than healthy. So, you know, what did that look like? How what's that look like now? What are the types of things that you guys do? How do you help folks?
(20:32):
So let me just share with you my personal wife for my health 20 years ago, I blended two families together. My wife and I I have four kids. She had three kids. We now have 18 kids. And one of my dreams, my why for working so hard on my health and building this new company is that at 95 years old, I wanna celebrate my 50th anniversary with my wife. I wanna be lucid. We love to dance. I wanna be able to dance on the dance floor in front of our family and friends <affirmative>. And so that was my why. And then from that, why I had to figure out, okay, what's the how, and what's the what's. And so, you know, for me, I had to learn that I was eating things that was making my immune system go bad. And let me explain it this way.
(21:29):
I had what was called a leaky gut. And so what that means is in my small intestine, those Villa, there's all these little finger, light Villa, that's all through your small intestine, they were compromised and these openings happen. And so bacteria and food sensitivities go through getting into your bloodstream. And then it compromises the immune system. Cuz the immune system is attacking those foreign substances, ah, that are not supposed to be there. And that's why we wrote this book, eating to live unlocking the leaky gut code is that we found out that I had 30 food sensitivities, things like salmon. We ate salmon every week cuz we wanted the omega threes. Well unfortunately because of my compromised gut that was getting through into the immune system and then the cancer and everything was the immune system. Wasn't able to fight the cancer cells. And then another big issue was I was addicted to sugar, cancer loves sugar.
(22:31):
And so I've been able to, since 1999, I was on 10 medications, serious pain medications. And so with this strong, why I wanted to figure out how can I fight this cancer beat this cancer, but I had lots of other health issues. And so what I did is as in 2020 from May, 2018 to October, 2020, I went from a pain level of eight to 10 every day I was on all these drugs, Lyrica for neuropathy in my feet, Laura tab, ibuprofen. I can just go down this list still an eight to 10 as of October, 2020, with everything we've learned, I no longer take any medications at all. I'm back to my high school, weight of 180 pounds. And now our focus is we wanna live longer with optimal health and not grow old. Whereas you know, a lot of people accept arthritis. They accept Alzheimer and dementia and all these health issues and insulin resistance.
(23:34):
You don't have to do that. And so my wife and I have learned over the past four years, how to turn all these things around. She went back to school while I wrote this book and she became a certified functional nutrition coach. So now what we're doing with more than healthy is we're helping people with a foundation and six pillars. We have this more than healthy model where we are helping people experience the quality of life and health that wife and I have. And it's probably gonna be the best business that we've ever done. Cuz we truly want to coach individuals on how they can achieve optimal health.
(24:15):
I love it. And the thing I love about it the most, and obviously I can hear your passion <laugh> with it. But, but one of the things that frustrates me with a lot of the health and wellness is gosh, big pharma is so involved with it and I don't wanna get down that road too far or anything, but I feel like too often people want to treat the symptom instead of fix the problem.
(24:38):
Exactly.
(24:38):
So, you know, as you were mentioning like, oh, well your knee hurts. Well take ibuprofen every day. Instead of fixing the knee, like what's causing my knee to hurt every day. There's, there's something that's causing it. Oh, well you tore your ACL. Well let's get surgery and fix it. So I don't take ibuprofen every day and I feel like people and it sounds like you went through that with taking 10 different medications every day. Yes. Cause you just pile on one after the other, after the other. And next thing you know, you're like, holy crap, like I can't even keep these darn things straight.
(25:04):
Yep. And you have all the interactions that go on and I, you bring up a really good point Mr. Biz. And it's really the way that business works is that I loved what you brought up with your comment about the promise. I have a friend that Jason Hewlett wrote a book about keeping your promises to yourself. It's called the promise. And the thing in business is when you start a business or you start a health journey, how do you solve the problems and the successful people, whether it's in business or with health, just keep at it. There's this mindset, cuz we can talk about the, you know, here's, you know how you do this, this is what you, you do it. But unless you're passionate, you get that statement of like with my wife, I'm gonna celebrate our 95 90 fifth wedding anniversary, right. Or 95 years old, our 50th wedding anniversary.
(25:58):
But I'm gonna do all the whys for that. And then because there's multiple whys and then there's all these hows and these whats, I have a new graphic I'm building right now. It's a series of mountain peaks. The tallest peak is why on both sides of the tallest peak is the house. And then four smaller peaks are the whats. And so when you got that, why, and you've summited and you know that, then it's easy to do the house and it's easier to do the what, because you're always gonna run up to challenges. And it's when you've got that passion statement, when you know the why of why you're doing your business, your health, when you run up to an obstacle, then it's like, okay, how do I solve this? What do I do? I can do this. This is what we're gonna do, how we're gonna do it because we know our why.
(26:48):
Yeah. And I think that's super important because it's, it, it leads to, you know, when I talk about all the time and I call it consistent perseverance, and I feel like without that, why without that passion, you don't have consistent perseverance or don't have it as strong. Right. You're more likely to cave. You're more likely when you get knocked down to just say, ah, the heck with it, I'm done with this crap. Right. and so I think you need that. And that gives you that passion to build that consistent perseverance, which is so, so important in business and in life.
(27:19):
Let me share one last example. I get the opportunity to lecture at multiple universities. And typically they bring me into the business schools and I'll lecture to a hundred, to 150 students. I always ask and talk about the why. In fact, you can find it. If you look at my name, David Meine, you can see some of these videos of these speeches that I give at the univers. And what's interesting is when I get done talking about why, and I'll ask the kids, I said, by a raise of hands, I want you to tell me how many of you know your company's why? And do you know that as of yet, I have never run across any of the business schools, any of the students that have been able to raise their hand in, tell what their company's, why is they have no clue?
(28:07):
Not even one,
(28:08):
Not even one. And I've dones. So creating a why is so critical for the success of a company.
(28:17):
Sure. Because think about it as an employee. If the employee doesn't know, then it's gonna lead to, you know, less transparency with communication, at least how they interpret it. Right? Because they're gonna say, you know, my CEO just made this decision to do X, Y, and Z. Why the heck are they doing that? That doesn't make any sense because they don't know the why they don't know that, you know, this is what needs to be done to get to this why.
(28:38):
Exactly. And since we're out of time, can I just tell you how grateful I am that you've brought me on your show that you've listened to this asked awesome questions. I really appreciate you and your team that's puts these Mr. Biz programs on
(28:56):
No, David, look, I, I appreciate you coming on that show was amazing. Again, go out to morethanhealthy.com. Follow them on social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube. David. Thank you. You so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. I learned a lot. I know people will love the show.
(29:10):
Thank you so very much.
(29:12):
Absolutely. Well guys, thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. Go out and check out David and what he's got going on again, morethanhealthy.com. Thanks for listening. Have a great week. And don't forget as always cash flow is king.
(29:31):
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