Escaping Wall Street: John Browning’s Path to Solo Success and the Power of Networking

Brett Trainor (: 00:00

John Browning, welcome to the Corporate Escapee Podcast.

John Browning (: 00:04

Hey, it's good to be here. Thank

Brett Trainor (: 00:07

My pleasure. believe this is going to be a first. We haven't had the money guy on the program yet talking about, and we'll get into how you help small businesses with financial planning, those types of things. So definitely been looking forward to this one. And I think your journey's really interesting as well. So I always love when we can double dip and learn from your experience, show us what's possible and also some tips and tricks for our small businesses.

As I usually do, if you wouldn't mind just sharing with the audience what you're doing today, who you work with, what your business is, and then I'm going to take you back in time a little

John Browning (: 00:46

Sure, yeah, it's been quite an interesting journey. It is not a journey that I think a lot of people would have expected me to take if they had known me when I was, say, running around in high school and all that. But long story short there, it was highly suggested in high school that I not go to college. I was a solid C -minus student. But yeah.

Brett Trainor (: 01:06

Hahaha

Same.

John Browning (: 01:12

Well, what I what I ended up finding out is because I was like, well, shoot, I just kind of wanted to prove them wrong. So I did go to college. I learned how to study, which was the first time I had ever actually tried that whole crazy idea ended up after the first struggling the first year doing OK and then graduated and got into a place was owned by Morgan Stanley and then eventually became Morgan Stanley. Just done

And then from there, they in: 2009

layoffs and then worked for a few other large firms then went and worked for a guy by the name of Tom Ricketts if anybody's a baseball fan out there they'll know him Chicago fans will know that one it was really fun to work for him and he had a small business that I helped build a portion of that business and it's so much fun to watch a baseball game with the owner of the

Brett Trainor (: 02:10

So

Brett Trainor (: 02:22

Coggro fans will know that one.

John Browning (: 02:38

Never forget that experience. So that's That's right. Yeah, exactly. And from, from there, he sold the firm then to Nuveen, which was another gargantuan firm. And then after about a year there and talking about being a corporate escapee, I went to another, little bit smaller firm, but I had already decided, you know, I really wanted to go out, use what I learned.

Brett Trainor (: 02:39

Yeah, it's not what you know, it's who you know sometimes, right?

John Browning (: 03:08

in big wall street, all the things that we use, the strategies, the tactics, all of that to help individual investors because they kept running into advisors. I would go around the country and I would speak to and train advisors, financial advisors. And invariably they'd say, I'd say, well, look at this portfolio. You could do this, that, or the other thing. Invariably they would say, well, I can't. So why can't you? My firm won't let

I'm not allowed or whatever, whatever the reason was. And so I really wanted to be independent. So I have, you know, five years ago, I broke away and started trying to do that on my own. And I am completely independent of the big Wall Street firms. We clear through Schwab and custody all the funds there, but I small businesses and small business owners as well as individuals and families. I call it build your best life.

not your portfolio. And that's what I do every single day. And I've always loved it. I always loved the portfolio management and everything I did on Wall Street. Now I just do it on a much smaller scale, but a more visible and real relationship type of person that I'm dealing with. So I have a great time doing

Brett Trainor (: 04:31

Yeah, I love that slogan, right? It's so true. It is build your best life. It's actually wrote about something like this this morning that, you know, we had a chance, you know, when you escape corporate to redefine what's the 2 .0 version of your life look like it, you know, when we're in corporate, it's all right. How do we run our life? Especially I can imagine the hours you were putting in, right? Your life revolved around the corporate job. And now you want to flip that switch and how do you incorporate your job or your work into, into your life? So

It can be daunting at first when you first do it, but it's super freeing. that, that's awesome. And by the way, do you know what my heart we shared similar path? didn't go into the financial side of it, but you know, my, goal before entering college was to become a game warden, right? And patrol the lakes of Wisconsin, not knowing anything about business. I was the first one in my family who went to college. So I'm like, I don't even know what business was. My dad was in the trades. My mom was a dental hygienist. So,

John Browning (: 05:19

Nice.

Brett Trainor (: 05:29

Yeah, took the crash course, but once they got into the business, then it was, you can't get out. Some days I definitely thought, man, what a life would look like if I was a game board. Anyway, completely down our first rabbit hole. So, all right, so let's go back to maybe the post, the Tom Ricketts era. That's an interesting and a new bean. wasn't, when was it? When did they sell that? That was 2016, 2017.

John Browning (: 05:53

goodness. I want to say 2016 they sold that part of Incapital, was the name of the firm. They sold that portion of Incapital to Nuveen.

Brett Trainor (: 05:57

Maybe not.

Brett Trainor (: 06:07

yeah, okay.

Naveen, that's where, man, seemed like it wasn't that long ago, interesting. All right, so back to the tipping point, you saw the writing on the wall, you wanted to be independent. Did you have a plan when you left? What was, cause that's the number one question I get is, right, do I have to have it for my first customer before I leave? How deep do I have to meet a two year business plan or do I just leap? And there's every answer in between. So what was, how did you get to that tipping point?

you know, what was the planning process

John Browning (: 06:42

Well, when I left New Veeam, my plan was to really do something on my own. Another firm gave me a call, Smart Trust out of New Jersey. And at first I said no, I didn't want to get back into the corporate world. And then eventually I said, because I didn't have a plan.

Brett Trainor (: 07:07

Bro.

John Browning (: 07:08

Then somebody I used to work with gave me a and said, hey, what if? And we started thinking about it. And we did start to come up with a plan. And the way we did it was we purchased a small firm. So we had something to start with. Good and bad with that. There's a story there. And something that I learned that will probably be one of the most valuable lessons that

ever took away from anything. But that's how we got started. And we had a plan to, first of all, modernize this business that really was still doing a lot of work on spreadsheets and things like that, and really apply what we learned on Wall Street to these individual clients. So that was our big plan. And we had planned to continue acquiring smaller firms and build a business that way. And that, by the way,

we did not do. So we've been, we are growing organically and I am now the sole owner.

Brett Trainor (: 08:08

Hahaha

Brett Trainor (: 08:14

Okay, so what was, you teased the one thing that you didn't do, you did do, what was the big takeaway from

John Browning (: 08:22

So the big takeaway is when you leave big firms, big Wall Street firms, it used to be I would sign contracts all of the time and no one would dare violate a contract agreement with Morgan Stanley or Guggenheim or Naveen or Tom Ricketts. Nobody's going to violate that contract. It's not the same when you sign a contract with as John

So I learned a very, very valuable lesson. another lesson that I learned was when I was signing that contract, I got pretty excited about it. It was a new thing. I was going to do it. And my wife of 30, almost 34 years now, next month, 34 years, I thank you. It's only because of her.

Brett Trainor (: 08:52

Hahaha

Brett Trainor (: 09:12

Congratulations.

John Browning (: 09:17

She went with me to a meeting with the individual and she said, after we got done with me, she said, I don't think you should do this. And I did not listen to her. So another lesson I learned is, is, you know, she's a better judge of, of character than that. am. So, so just be careful as a corporate escapee, if you're going to sign those contracts and you're going to buy that business, we had lawyers involved in everything else. Still, you know, we're still battling those issues today.

just be very careful and be cognizant of that. think just being cognizant of the fact that may, know, contracts are great, but they may not mean the same thing that they did in the corporate world.

Brett Trainor (: 10:01

Interesting. did you have any experience with back in the financial service days of acquiring companies that, or was this just something you figured you, how did you, you know what saying? I mean, I, when I left corporate, wasn't thinking, how do I acquire a small consulting firm to, get started hindsight? may have been the right idea. It just, that just never even crossed my mind. And I'm thinking a lot of folks in the audience, it probably isn't, but it's an interesting idea.

John Browning (: 10:27

Yeah, it's a viable option, I think, for a lot of people. I think I had done it, like I was a big part of the process, right? During the process where N Capital was selling that business to Nuveen. So I had been through that. I understood kind of what needed to happen, how it needed to happen, some of the things you needed to plan for.

When you take over a business, there's always your personnel issues and like, so I kind of knew about it and it's not the same when it's you signing the checks, by the way.

Brett Trainor (: 11:03

Yeah. You and your wife, right? Because that's one thing I learned. Corporate, we've always been a team. But when it went solo, we're really a team, right? It just changed the dynamic that she's used to be counting on the paycheck every two weeks, right? And knew we had the health shirts covered that we didn't. She may not have known exactly what I was doing, but she knew to expect that. When I went solo, now she had none of it, right?

John Browning (: 11:15

That's right.

John Browning (: 11:21

It goes away.

Brett Trainor (: 11:32

didn't know what I was doing, didn't know where the checks were coming in. yeah, we, I've talked about in the podcast kind of formed a new type of partnership where we do business reviews quarterly and I keep her up to speed on everything. We recalibrate on what do we want to do in the next six and 12 months, just so, because there's enough stress, right? Going solo, let alone trying to fight the, the, the, the home base portion of that as well.

John Browning (: 11:57

That is really good. I'm glad you brought that up because that's true. I mean, if you're you're married, they may not be involved, involved in your business. They may do a whole separate different thing, but they're involved and they take on that stress and everything else. So if you don't have a really good relationship before, it's not going to get better. it can be tough. That's a great point.

Brett Trainor (: 12:22

No. Very good point. It's going to put some more strain on you until you figure out. And the other thing I found is, I know she listens to me, but it's amazing what she remembers. But you said you were going to do this in the next 12 months. But remember, we pivoted the business and we said, do you remember all the steps leading up? No, this is the number you said that we were going to hit. But yeah, it's funny. It's worked.

John Browning (: 12:46

Brett Trainor (12:48.474)

It's definitely brought us closer in that sense after we got through some of the growing pains and still have them, right? As we don't always agree on strategy, but it's definitely easier. You don't want to be fighting that or doing really don't want to do that alone. So.

John Browning (: 13:04

Yeah, I can't imagine doing it alone either. That would be brutal. You need somebody to complain to at the end of the day and somebody to celebrate your wins too.

Brett Trainor (: 13:14

Exactly, just had, or maybe I was on somebody else's podcast and one day it was a husband and wife or the wife is in business, but same thing. So they did their quarterly business reviews, but annually they do a two day retreat. I'm like, that's genius. I don't do that. And I'm like, that's really good. fantastic. I was late to that. didn't even think about putting that two together, anyway, so yes, make sure you're at home. You guys get

John Browning (: 13:31

We're doing a retreat. We're doing a retreat next month. So.

Brett Trainor (: 13:42

bring them up to speed, go into this together. It's just, it's a lot easier. So, all right, so now you've acquired this company, you've got some customers kind of walk us through that, you know, first quarter or first year, what was, I mean, like I said, there's always the good, the bad and the ugly. were you thinking? What did I do? Or was it always kind of smooth enough sailing that you knew you weren't going back?

John Browning (: 14:08

no, it was not as fun as sailing. Yeah, yeah, it's it started out, you know, the first like month or two is fine. And then then it became started to become more and more clear that things were not going to go well with the seller. I won't get into all that happened, but essentially from a business perspective, what what we did is we took a lot of the things that were very expensive

And I had done this sort of once before I had bought a business with a partner out of bankruptcy, paid 40 cents on the dollar for it and didn't know a thing about that business other than, my goodness, there's a lot of expenses here that don't need to be here. And there's a lot of accounts receivable that need to be received. And so I had kind of done one of those things before with this one. There weren't any accounts receivable, but a lot of expenses.

that we didn't think necessarily needed to be there. And also a lot of modernization in terms of systems and processes and that type of stuff. So we put a lot of that in place and not realizing what was gonna happen on a contractual basis, we felt like we had some time. We retrospect, we did not have that time. So.

So basically after doing that, we began to really need to figure out our marketing. And that's a big difference between doing your own thing and being in the corporate world as an executive on wall street. I just ran the sales team and I, you know, I helped them and I nurtured them and tried to train them. And eventually the, you the clients came to me. Well, when you're on your own.

They don't do that anymore. You no longer have a team. You're the team. And you got to figure out how to get this stuff done and how much money to spend on different things and whether to spend

Brett Trainor (: 16:03

All right.

Brett Trainor (: 16:12

Yeah, did you go through, because again, this is another one of the big questions is getting those first customers and it sounded like you may have had a few just based on the process that you went through. So put those aside and say, all right, I've got to go get new net new customers. it through networking? When you say maybe you have to invest in it, did you do kind of walk us through what what did you do to find those early day customers?

John Browning (: 16:35

Yeah, it was slow going to be perfectly frank with you. It was it was difficult because I had never really done that on my own before. We got some through referral. It's really interesting. You think that friends and family? No, no, they're like, you're nuts and no, we're not going to do business with you. I don't know. I think that tends to be

often happens or maybe they'll give you a little bit of business but not much. And you know to this day I don't have any family members that do business with me which is fine. I've got a few but it was more through referrals and then what I learned over time you know I tried all of the I tried paying for leads I tried Facebook you know marketing courses and etc etc all the things that I just dumped money into

I just found out that for me, I wasn't very good at it. I'm really good at managing money. I'm really good at putting those puzzle pieces together for people. I'm not very good at the marketing and all of that. So over time, you start to learn what works and what doesn't. And a lot of it for me is networking, introducing other people to other people rather than a really hard sales approach. Cause I, it's just not my nature.

If I'm helping somebody and introducing them to somebody else, maybe they'll remember me when they know somebody who needs what I do. So that's a lot. I'd say at this point, I do do the metrics. So I wouldn't say I'd say I know about 75 % of my new clients come from networking with other business owners and individuals.

Brett Trainor (: 18:11

Yeah.

Brett Trainor (: 18:26

Yeah. And maybe we can, drill into that a little bit because I tend to take the networking thing for granted now, cause I've been doing it for awhile, but that's a challenge for a lot of the newbies or the folks that are thinking about getting out. there's, there's two, the, there's the escapee that's out that can leverage network and you can be more aggressive going back. But then there's the ones that are still in trying to get their feet wet, validate that they can do this, those types of things. So I.

Like I said, you are a master networker. There's such a title. So maybe share some of your best practices of how to, cause again, if you're coming from corporate, most of our network is, was for jobs, right? Or, you know, next opportunity, maybe a little bit with some other stuff, but the whole networking just to connect people is, is a new, is a new skill.

John Browning (: 19:18

It is. And I didn't do it well at first. cause, cause a lot of what you, you learn is, is not good. You learn that, you're supposed to, it's a leads group. You're supposed to exchange leads and you only exchange leads with that group and all this kind of stuff. The truth of the matter when I've learned is that it's all about introducing, making introductions for other people. So like when you and I first met, the way I went into it was.

I didn't know you at the time and I was like, what do do? And let me learn a little bit more about you. And you know what? Now, because I know so many people, I can almost always say, you know, if there's somebody I think you should know that maybe could do business with you and, or maybe they know somebody who could do business with you because of what they do. who from the person that I'm talking to, what's their vendor down here? And and for those of you listening,

And not seeing this on video, I'm holding my hands in a pyramid because there's the person at the top of the pyramid that you're talking to. But then down here, there's the vendors that they talk to in one corner. And then there's the people that they sell to in another corner. Plus the one at the top. And it's all about making those introductions. And it is not about having the idea of I want to lead. I want business. It's about if you

those people and then you start making connections. And eventually it just happens. It begins to happen that you find your clients because people remember you because they appreciate you introducing them to somebody else. And then they remember you every time you do it again. And eventually you prove yourself that, I'm not going to go away. I'm going to keep referring clients to you. I'm going to keep referring, you know, just introductions to, you that might be helpful. May not be a client, but just might be helpful.

And I think that's where most networking groups go the wrong way is they see it as a leads group or a, friends group that gets together for to exchange stories or something like that. And I think it's introductions. And then I love having a learning minute in those networking meetings as well as where, where one of the people in the group, you know, Talks about or teaches about what they do and why they do it. Not as a sales pitch.

Brett Trainor (: 21:30

That's good.

John Browning (: 21:41

but so you can all learn more.

Brett Trainor (: 21:45

Yeah, it's definitely the anti sales sales pitch is counterintuitive, but it works a lot better. Right. And when you, when you don't, it is.

John Browning (: 21:52

a lot less stressful too and so for me I don't really like the whole salesy thing

Brett Trainor (: 21:59

Yeah, I joked that sales finally caught up to me because like I I was never the used car salesman. I'm not going to give you that, my God, if you don't buy the next 24 hours, the deal is going to go, that's just, that's not comfortable for me. I don't like to do it. And you can almost get it to the point where people are like, no, can I really work with you? How do I like, well, let's do the free stuff for a bit. Then you can see if it makes sense. And, you know, it's, it just, it just comes back to building those relationships and it takes time and it's just hard, right? Do you go from a standstill

just starting to have conversations. And that's what I keep telling them, just do, just go do it. It's going to get, unlike corporate where you could get in trouble, especially if you made a mistake in corporate, it could end well, right? It doesn't end well, but you know, we had our box, don't rock the boat, stay in the, don't color outside the lines. You'll be fine. But here it's okay. You can go have conversations. So you have a bad conversation. It's okay. Right? The world's big. And again, I think taking that, that approach of who can I connect will come back.

John Browning (: 22:51

Yeah,

Brett Trainor (: 22:58

If you just keep going that way. yeah, I love that. And then two, I know you've got the podcast and a daily newsletter. How, when did you start those? Is that a lead source for you? How do you, how do you approach those and, any advice on that? Those channels.

John Browning (: 23:17

I think that's one of the so the bulk of the rest of my business comes from there. People because I I believe that you put as much as you possibly can out there for free. And people will listen, they'll share it. You have it in your back pocket. The first thing that I one of the first things I did was I wrote a book. I kept talking to people about my experiences and they said, you should write a book. And I was like, no, I

Brett Trainor (: 23:23

Okay.

John Browning (: 23:47

write a book because I don't have time for it. And then I spoke to the great, great guy, Michael Milan. He's fantastic. He's got a podcast as well. And, and he said, no, you should write a book. Why don't you just tell me what you want to write? I'll have my editor put it all together for you. And it was a project, but it wasn't that bad because these guys know what they were doing. This is the whole thing about developing your own personal board of directors, which is another important thing that, that I think people should do.

Brett Trainor (: 23:48

Ha

John Browning (: 24:16

And also, even as an individual, what we say at Guardian Rock is we may not know everything you need to do to build your best life, but we know all the people you need to talk to. And we're happy to make those introductions so that you build a personal board of directors around each of our clients. But he helped me write that book. And then he said, you know what? You should totally do a podcast. And so I started doing the building your life podcast every

And he helped me host it for a while. And now we do it with a different gentleman, Doug Sandler. And from all of that, now if somebody calls me or I have this conversation, like we're just meeting, say, and you say, well, I was wondering about this. I've got 200 plus, 225 different episodes of my podcast.

If you say, yeah, you know, I was really wondering about estate planning or I was really wondering about how do you roll a 401k or should I roll into a Roth or what does this mean in the marketplace? Why probably have a podcast for that and I can send that to you. You can listen to it. They're short, sweet. And suddenly you're like, well, that was helpful. And then maybe later on you listen to another one or something like that. And then eventually, hopefully you give me a call and you realize, Hey, you know what? really.

shouldn't be doing this on my own. It's kind of like a doctor operating on themselves. When you're fighting with your financial situation, I don't do my own financial planning. You know, that's a crazy. you do your that's probably the biggest thing that I learned from Wall Street is we all think because we work on Wall Street that we don't need a financial advisor. And so we get it all screwed up, right? So we think we know better. So it's that's that's kind of the.

Brett Trainor (: 25:48

Right.

Brett Trainor (: 26:00

Yeah.

John Browning (: 26:06

The reason that I do those things and then the daily update came from when I was on Wall Street, I did it morning update. And I used to do it for a small group and then it grew and grew and grew at Morgan Stanley. And suddenly I got a bunch of people in the company that I didn't even know were listening in or reading it. And then when I went to a different company, I did the same thing. And so I was like, why don't you do that for clients and non -clients to cut through all

normal stuff that you see on CNBC and Fox News or wherever you get your financial information and really boil it down to what you need to know. And you can do that in about five to 10 minutes in the morning. You don't need to listen to it for hours.

Brett Trainor (: 26:48

Yeah.

Yeah. And I think it's genius. I mean, I subscribed last week and it's audio. It's an audio newsletter, if you will, that you get in my inbox every morning. get, you know, John's update of what he's listening for, what he's looking for. It's, and again, I'm like, you do this every day and it's, yeah, you just get in a habit. It's, it's so smart. it's funny that you're talking about the book and the podcast. I was five years ago, I was in the process of writing a book.

had an editor and the editor kind of the same thing said, man, you should start a podcast. Cause then when the book's done, you'll have an audience. I'm like, what's a podcast, but okay. You know, five years later, 250 episodes, got the podcast going in the book still not on the shelf. re re brought it out to do it, but haven't launched the book yet. So a few folks I've had on the podcast and inspired me to, get it done. I mean, it's just done

better and perfect. I've got all the content written. Everything's there. It's just I haven't gone that last mile. So it's coming up. So do you have a funnel with what you're doing? Again, because I'm more of a simple, give me the Pareto principle, 80 -20, do the foundational stuff. So with the podcast and the newsletter, do you just then push them to LinkedIn or do you have a follow -up strategy?

I mean, we don't have to get super deep, but I'm just kind of curious if there's another level of execution on that, or does it just all kind of flow into

John Browning (: 28:20

It really all kinds of kind of flows into it. mean, I've set up the, you know, the, very specific funnels where, know, somebody subscribes and I put them into that funnel. And I really don't do that as much as that. Maybe I should, maybe I should get back into that, but, I don't really have that type of a funnel. really just taking, you know, incoming calls, making outbound calls to other business owners and people I can network with. And then I introduced them.

to my book, my podcast and the daily update. And from there, I try and keep in contact with them. And that's really my funnel. That's how I get

Brett Trainor (: 29:01

Okay. I like it. Simple is good, right? We don't have to over -engineer this to work. So thinking back, you said five years, was there any major pivots as you went, or is this just kind of organically gone the way you thought the business was going to go? So I talked to some folks that, yeah, it's just generally trending and growing. Others like, no, it was more like a path. I was here and then hopped over here, then here. So just kind of curious from your journey, how that looked.

or how it's looking, I know it's not over.

John Browning (: 29:33

Yes, not over. Let's hope not. Right. Yeah. I really like what I do. So I hope it's not over. But I think it went, it didn't go like I expected it to. Certainly really rough first couple of years. Started to try and figure out what I wasn't good at. I mean, that's really important. Figure out what you suck at. Right. And then don't do that. The people say, you got to get better at your weaknesses. I don't think so.

I am kind of the opposite. I've learned that if I don't like it, I probably won't do it. And if I do do it, I won't do it well. So outsource those things, pay what's necessary to get that done. And, and that's of course, you know, a difficult thing too, when you're writing the checks, that's coming directly out of your pocket in your paycheck. So you got to be selective on

But there's a lot of things that used to cost a lot of money that don't anymore You know, I the phone service when we first started the business when we first bought the business was over $400 a month My phone service now the way I have it set up is $25 a month I Was paying at one at one point I was paying $9 ,000 a month for for office space I

Brett Trainor (: 30:35

Very true.

Brett Trainor (: 30:47

Beautiful. Yeah.

John Browning (: 30:55

for the most part out of my house. I've got a small business up in a small office up in Illinois that I can go to. I have office space here I could go to, but most people don't want to come see me. And if they do want to see me in person, I'm happy to go to them. Or I have a small office space I can go to. There's no reason to pay that for me. So I cut, you cut out those expenses and then you pay for stuff that really matters. Like your bookkeeping.

and your IT stuff that I don't know anything about and things like

Brett Trainor (: 31:30

and don't care about, yeah. Have you ever read the book, Not How? I mean, it's, yeah, all right.

John Browning (: 31:35

No, it's like the four hour work week or something like that. It's like it sounds like

Brett Trainor (: 31:39

A little bit different. So Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy kind of combined in this. Dan Sullivan has been a business coach for, I think he's 80 something now. He wants to do it till he's 110. But wrote this book and it's like business owners get hung up on the how things get done when you really should be thinking about who does it. It's the exact point you made, right? If we're not good at it or we don't like it or it just doesn't get done. But guess what? There's a who out

that loves to do exactly what you don't want to do, let them go figure out how. Like we over engineer it. So find those who's, I mean, it sounds like a Dr. Seuss story after a bit, but find the who's they do the how's and let you focus on what you want to focus on. And it just, makes perfect sense. Like with the VA's and some of those things. And you may have had the same experience as I did when I did it early, I hired VA's, but I didn't know what they wanted them to do.

And they're really good at executing, but you have to be crystal clear of telling them what you want them to do. And if you're both sitting there staring at each other and like, I don't know what to do. You're just paying somebody not to do. Side track it a little bit, but yeah. So check out who, not how it sounds like you've already figured it out, but anybody in the audience, if you haven't listened to that, I mean, that's kind of the. The value out of these solo businesses is you become the who for these business owners and an area that they're lacking. And that's how you can provide the value to it. So, yeah.

Interesting you're a good case study for that book

John Browning (: 33:03

Well, it always fascinates me that people actually like to do things like accounting. You know, that's terrible. Horrible for me. just can't stand that. And people really love to do video editing. I really, really hate doing that. Other people just love it. And I used to almost feel guilty about telling people and this happened in corporate too. I used to feel a little bit guilty about, you know, I had my staff.

around me and I feel a little guilty about telling them to do stuff that I didn't want to do until they realized they wanted to do it. That's why it was their job. So I got over

Brett Trainor (: 33:39

Right. Exactly. I think the equivalent in corporate is doing expense reports. That was the bane of my existence is I just hated expense reports beyond. And I'm sure at certain companies, they owe me thousands of dollars because I wasn't very, Eventually though, eventually I figured out how to pay one of the admins on the side just to take care of everything for me.

John Browning (: 33:57

Because you didn't do one. Yeah.

John Browning (: 34:09

-huh.

Brett Trainor (: 34:09

the early lessons of who, not how, but excellent. All right, time's flying by here, John. So anything that we didn't cover, right? Any, I don't know, best practices, but any advice for folks. Most of this audience is either still in corporate or just exiting. So what are some words of wisdom you want to share with everybody? No pressure.

John Browning (: 34:33

No pressure. I guess for those of you who are thinking about it, be careful, but don't shy away from it because I think your audience has been in corporate for a while, right? So yeah, I I spent 30 years on Wall Street and people begin to discount that experience, but they shouldn't.

Brett Trainor (: 34:49

Yes, 20 years for the most part, 20 plus years.

John Browning (: 35:01

Like you'll have trouble frankly getting a job when you turn a certain age. I don't care if there's age discrimination laws or not. That's reality. And your experience is irreplaceable. Same thing with blue collar workers by the way. You know their experience is irreplaceable. So you can go out there and get things done. What you have to be careful about is remembering that you will not have a staff to help you and you'll be writing

paycheck if you do want to have that staff or that VA and figuring all that out and also remember that if You've never done sales before or you know as a very specific thing that you were in charge of Spend some time with this a really good salesperson Get to know what they do how they do it get yourself some training because that's real because if

can't get sales done, you will not eat if you have exited and you don't and you can't live on your savings, which is, course, what I help people do. I help people set up their cash flow so that they can live off of what they have put away and arrange things that way. But those would be my two biggest things. And then that point about be really careful with your contracts, even if it's ironclad.

Brett Trainor (: 36:10

Yeah, there you go.

John Browning (: 36:26

Sometimes people just decide they're not going to follow it and then nobody wins in lawsuit but the lawyers. That is the biggest advice. Nobody wins in a lawsuit except the lawyers.

Brett Trainor (: 36:32

Yeah, it gets expensive.

Brett Trainor (: 36:38

Such a good point. And I like the idea of the sales, because I've been around sales teams, you know, last 15, 20, or least last 15 years in my corporate, that's where it was. And there is a difference between good salespeople and not good salespeople. And I would even say the modern salespeople, right? Because just echo your point that.

With my last corporate role, we were building out a startup direct marketing agency, but going direct, right? We had internal customers that was supporting, but wanted to go direct. And I don't know, maybe 12 months into it, we had an outside Salesforce inside and a strategic. So I went and interviewed the top salespeople and each of those to see what were the common characteristics. Every one of them, the customer believed that they could, this person, the salesperson could solve their problem.

End of story. There was a relationship and they felt that they could solve their problem. They weren't trying to sell them something. It was the trust and the belief. And that's the beauty of what we've done exiting corporate. We know how to solve those problems. it's, again, there's a big leap from problem solving to superstar sales people, but the process is still the same. think when the

training companies or the pitches we get in LinkedIn, say, hey, do this sales technique 101 and you'll get more business. It's still fundamental, right? And if you work with those really good salespeople, it's all about their process. It's all about the relationships and it's about solving the problem. So, took us a little down a rabbit hole, but I thought we haven't had anybody really talk about this sales like that. So I appreciate you sharing that.

All right, so to wrap things up, I'm sure you've piqued some curiosity from folks. So what's the best place? I'll put them on the show notes. The best place to actually track you down. What's the name of the podcast, the newsletter, all those good things. move, like said, I'll put them up at the top of the show notes. Anybody's listening so you don't have to Google search it. We'll make it easy, but where can people find you?

John Browning (: 38:44

The easiest way is just go to Guardian Rock Wealth with a TH, W -E -A -L -T -H, guardianrockwealth .com. That's our website and there's a contact us form there, super easy. I will get the note and I will personally respond. So far I'm able to keep up with

Or you can go out to, we've got a YouTube channel. We've got the building your life podcast with John Browning, which is anywhere that you would ever want to get your podcast. And on sub stack, it's the at sign build your life. And that is my daily market update. So those are the, some of the best ways to get, I'm on Amazon. It's the building, build a life, not a portfolio as an Amazon bestseller.

grab a copy of that or talk to me. And the other thing I'm able to do that I wasn't able to do on Wall Street is I'm able to manage for attitude under management instead of assets under management. So I like to be available to those who may be struggling a little bit. I'll give you some time, even if it's not a good fit for us to work together. So please reach out. I'm here

Get you started, I'm here to get you finished. Whatever you need.

Brett Trainor (: 40:06

Love it, love it, And you kept the consistency across all the branding, is phenomenal. Sometimes I'll talk to folks and the podcast is this, the business is this, Substack is that, and it's confusing. Yours is Build Your Life. You got a really good name for that too.

John Browning (: 40:23

thank you. I blame Michael Dillon for that. He came up with that, actually. After reading what I put in the book, he's like, here's a good title. What do you think? I was like, OK, done.

Brett Trainor (: 40:28

OK, kudos.

Brett Trainor (: 40:34

Yeah, sold. You don't have to push me too hard on that one. Yeah, for everybody out there, I'll put those in the show notes. But take John up on it. Good guy. Again, a little bit further down the path than some of us in this solo business, but a lot of great lessons. So John, I appreciate you spending some time with us today and look forward to catching up in the future.

John Browning (: 40:55

All right, sounds good. We'll see you soon.