1 (2s):
Light that spark, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Inclusion and marketing. Today we'll be breaking down the new, era of entrepreneurs, doing good while still making money. To drop these value bombs I brought Kurt Long into EOFire Studios Kurt believes in business as a force for good. He has grown and sold three successful businesses and serves as an investor, advisor, and board member for others. He is currently the co-founder of BUNKR. And today Fire Nation, we'll talk about doing good and making money.

1 (42s):
We'll talk about some specific questions that Kurt believes you need to be asking yourself, and then we'll talk about aha moments and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Kurt and our sponsors sales evangelist hosted by my friend Donald Kelly is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Each week Donald interviews the world's best sales experts, successful sellers, sales leaders, and entrepreneurs who share their strategies to succeed in sales. Right now, a recent episode you should definitely check out is The Five Ways to Do Daily Outbound with LinkedIn. Listen to Sales Evangelist wherever you get your podcasts.

1 (1m 22s):
Many EOFire listeners have launched non-food franchises and FranBridge Consulting has guided them. FranBridge ISS founder and frequent EOFire guest, John Austinson, has done more placements than any other in the country, and his service is free, free. Sign up for a consultation with John or get a free copy of his book, Non-Food Franchising at FranBridgeConsulting.com. Kurt say What's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with.

0 (1m 52s):
First, thanks for having us, having me on today, John Lee, and it's a pleasure to speak to Fire Nation. I know you have a a lot of entrepreneurial minded people out there, and I love entrepreneurs. You know, you on success. I think that people only have half of the definition of success, correct? They think in terms of, and, and it's the definition, I I I kinda looked it up, you know, it's getting what you want. And that might be fame, it might be notoriety, it might be a girl, it might be a project. Whatever it is, it's getting what you want. And it turns out that the, that's a missing definition because the second half of that is wanting what you get.

0 (2m 41s):
And A, lot of times those are unexpected things, and all too often I see very successful entrepreneurs reach a phase within their business or when their business sells and you realize they've been really unhappy and they've been under a lot of of stress, and, and you, you think about this thing, you say, well, how do we get, how do we get what we want and what we get? When you start a business, you think about, and when you start a business, every day you walk into your business is starting a new business. That day is a new day. So it could be at the beginning or it could be in the middle of the journey. And you say, what, how do I wanna spend the next 10 to 15 years of my life?

0 (3m 23s):
And how can I construct a business to support what I want out of my life in terms of travel, partner, children, anxiety, not anxiety? What kind of people do I want to hang out with? What do I want my health to be? How much emphasis on wealth creation do I enjoy notoriety or I do? I like being behind the scenes. And if you get in touch with that upfront and build a business around it, it turns out you can do both. Get what you want and want what you get. John

1 (3m 54s):
And Fire Nation. That's why we're talking about The, New, Era of Entrepreneurs doing good while still making money. And I wanna talk about what it looks like when it comes to doing good and making money in today's day and age.

0 (4m 10s):
It's hard first off, and I'm only gonna touch on a couple of terms. You might've heard of B Corp, you might've heard of ESG, you might've heard of Social Impact investing. And I've been involved with all of those things and more of trying to align, doing good and doing well. And I gotta tell you a lot of the, this is my opinion, a lot of the academic treatments of these topics just undervalue how hard it is to start a business, get revenue going, get profits, and really, it's really hard to think about, you know, I'm gonna do really good in the world when you're, when you're trying to figure out how to sell your product or, or make money.

0 (4m 53s):
So you, you kind of get back into this definition that I've used for a long time, which is my definition of an Entrepreneur is Transforming a vision into a sustainable reality, creating value for all involved, beginning with the life of their customer. So if we start that journey with the life of the customer, and then as we, as we do better and better, you know, it gives us a chance to share with our employee team members. It gives us a sha a chance to share with community. It gives us a chance to share with shareholders. It gives us a chance to share with the families. But if you start the journey of good intention for the customer and focus maniacally on creating value in their life, it creates an abundance that can be shared with everyone else involved.

0 (5m 41s):
So that's a, that's a high level. And then I have some specific things to go into, John, but before I do, is there any, any follow up on that first concept before I kind of get into the meat of the thing?

1 (5m 53s):
Let's dive into the meat right now.

0 (5m 55s):
Okay. There used to be a term called eating your own dog food. And it was a Silicon Valley term, and it meant that you use your own product. And, you know, it may kind of famously came out of Apple when they were using the Mac, and believe it or not, people were still using typewriters instead of using their own product. And, and famously management at Apple, I don't know if it was Steve directly, but it was executive said, listen, stop it. We're going to eat our own dog food or we're going to use our own product to make it great. And you kind of get into this idea of whatever I'm selling, whether it's a service, whether it's a product, do I use that product myself?

0 (6m 39s):
And A, follow on to that is, would I, or do I have loved ones using my product? And you can do this in most businesses at the earliest stages. You know, listen, if you're doing a pharmaceutical drug or something that might, that might take a little while, but most businesses from day one, you can use your own product or ask loved ones to, and here's an interesting reflection. If you don't, well, well, why don't you? Is it that it's not aimed for you or you, you, you just don't, you don't think it's healthy or you don't think it's productive? Or, or why wouldn't you ask the loved one?

0 (7m 20s):
So if you can get into that concept of using your own product day one, not only do you build a base of users in a base of belief, in your own product from the core out, you also align your interests and the customer's interests, which is the first departure point on doing good. Like, listen, if it's good for me, then I believe it's good for them. And, and I love that as a first rule. and we certainly use that rule, you know, here at BUNKR, which is the next, you know, the, the business I'm building right now

1 (7m 53s):
And Fire Nation, I really hope you're understanding that this process is doable, especially when you're hearing from people who have been there and done that and are laying out the roadmap, which is what Kurt is doing right now. So Kurt, keep it going.

0 (8m 5s):
Yeah, so that's the first question. The second question is, do I invest my own money in this thing or do I want other people's money? And, and if I get other people's money, do I put my money alongside it? And A follow on to that is, this is a little higher bar I think is, would I take, and I'm presuming we all love our mothers, would I take my mother's 401k and put it into this business? Oof. And if the answer to either of those is no, that's okay. You know, it, it, it might be just, well, it's a, it's an early stage of the business and I don't wanna risk my mother's 401k in this, it's just not the right time.

0 (8m 49s):
Or maybe it's, I don't have a repeatable sales cycle. Hopefully it's not because you think the business is unsustainable due to, you know, ethics or due to the way that you're treating your suppliers or your teammates. So that the second part of it is, would you put you your own money or your dear loved ones money into the business? And if you've answered yes and yes to the first two questions, you've gone a long way to doing good in the world. I've got a third question to, to set the final basic bar

1 (9m 30s):
Setter, brother,

0 (9m 31s):
Does my product attract a criminal element that is core to their business? And you might say, what, what is that? What does that mean? Well, let's take opioids, you know, well intentioned, I'm sure I don't wanna, I don't wanna question the intent of the inventor of it, but we all know that there became a criminal element that got involved and it did a lot of damage. And still to this day, it's derivatives, you know, take a lot of lives in the country, say, well, well is that because of the product? Is it because of my supply chain? It's somewhere between the product and the supply chain that you have to evaluate and tighten that up.

0 (10m 15s):
Another example might be end-to-end encrypted messengers. Today they are used by criminals to conduct all kinds of nefarious affairs. Now, are both of these products good in some way? Yes. But do they attract a disproportionate of criminal activity that does a lot of harm in the world? Unfortunately yes. To, to to to, to both. So now you kinda look at this and you go, if I answer yes to the first question, do I use my own product? Second question, would I invest my mother's 401k or my own money? And you got yes and then no to the third question.

0 (10m 58s):
My bar is, you are doing really good and you should like, expand that business. You're doing good in the world. You're, you're, you're gonna employ people, your interests are aligned with your customers. You're making the world a place. So that is the basic bar, John. And then I've got a couple, you know, I've got a couple follow ons to that.

1 (11m 17s):
And Fire Nation, you have been learning a lot from somebody who has been there and done that. We're even gonna be learning a little bit more specifically about Kurt's story as well as other value bombs when we get back from thanking our sponsors. Happy 2024 Fire Nation. New one is here and that means new goals, more growth in upgrading your day-to-day workflow. While most sales folks are stuck in the mud of manual scheduling, digging into data and tracking down leads. Let me share a better way to win so you can get a jumpstart on your year. The new Hubspot Sales Hub is smart sales software for today's multitasking reps. It's built to help you manage every stage of your sales pipeline with ease. It's filled with easy to use and powerful tools that make closing deals and collaborating across departments a breeze.

1 (12m 1s):
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1 (12m 44s):
High lucky for you. John Austinson, founder of FranBridge Consulting and a frequent EOFire guest is here to help you explore the premier franchise opportunities. Today John and his FranBridge Consulting team are part of the largest brokerage in the US and have vetted the market thoroughly. FranBridge is hands down the premier source for the best opportunities in the franchise world, including both active and passive opportunities from TRT to insulation use, soccer to pets, senior care to health and wellness and more. John has served as an Inc 500 franchisor and a multi-brand franchisee himself, and he does more placements than any other in the country. Set up for a free consultation call with John today or get a free copy of his book, non-food Franchising at FranBridgeConsulting.com.

1 (13m 29s):
That's FranBridgeConsulting.com. Alright, Kurt, we're back. You have a couple follow-ons that you wanted to tack on to what you've been sharing so far. And then we're gonna be talking about how you've done this specifically. So take it away.

0 (13m 43s):
I would call this kind of next level. I mean, and this is all within the context of we all know how hard it is to start businesses, make 'em profitable. So, you know, you've gotta find a compromise between doing good and and and profiting, right? And so that's the balance we've struck with the first three questions, which should be yes, yes, no. The next two questions I'll call kind of next level questions of if you really wanna put yourself, kind of differentiate yourself out there. It's to say this, the next question is, do you live near or in the community of your typical customers and your employees?

0 (14m 27s):
And you might say, what is, what is that all about? Well, there's been a tendency over the years for very successful business people to live far away from their, from anyone that looks like a customer to them or, or, or might be an employee of their company. And they get detached from the impact that their products and services have on nor, you know, just everyday people, which I think is important. I'm not saying that you have to live right beside them. I'm not saying that you have to be there all the time, but you should have a deep invested connection to a typical em, em employee, And A typical customer so that you can see the results your business has in those communities.

0 (15m 20s):
Like I said, it's next level, but that's a, that's a belief. And then kind of, you know, Nobel Peace prize winning level is to say the first four you've passed the first floor. The fifth question is, do you stand up for the human rights that are given kind of like, let's just say the US Constitution and at least in the first 10 amendments and then say United Nations human rights laws. And do you treat people with decency on a consistent basis? And it's not perfect. We all know that running business is not perfect and often we agonize over some of these decisions and that's a good sign if you're agonizing over the decisions, but that you respect people's rights, your suppliers, your employees, certainly your customers.

0 (16m 9s):
And if you're doing all five of those, I I feel like there should be a business category for the Nobel Peace price. John, that is basically my version of how to do good while you're doing well. And I can tell you, if you take that definition of entrepreneur, focus in on the customer and then as you grow and expand that out to say, well, I can reward employees, reward community, respect my suppliers, it, it, it grows out. And, and then those five tenants really take care of a lot of it. And maybe when you're a bigger business, you can go look at your environment, social governance score, your ESG score and you know, you can, you can figure out maybe if you wanna be a B Corp or, or all these other kinds of metrics out there.

0 (16m 57s):
But those five are what I stick by.

1 (16m 60s):
So Kurt, I wanna end by talking about what you're building over at BUNKR. Like what was your aha moment for this specific company that led to the birth of BUNKR

0 (17m 10s):
BUNKR iss, the fourth business that I've founded, been part of multiple other ventures as like a formal advisor. And, and during that time we've generated a billion over, well over a billion dollars of shareholder value. So when I give these ideas around, hey, doing good while doing well and being a decent human being in today's market is an advantage. People want to work for companies that at least try to do well and treat people decently. So I want to, before I kind of segue to BUNKR John, I wanna give a little more context of I'm not not here to be a charity.

0 (17m 50s):
I'm here to make money for the shareholders and I love building profitable businesses and I love having customers around the world and all these things. And I just see these tools to get there. So in the Covid Era here, and we had sold fair warning, multiple hundreds of millions and that was at the end of 2019. And we're looking at what to do next. And it's a digital, you know, it's a, we're living digital lives. And what I noticed is that the tools that we use most commonly, which are email and text and social media, messenger and cloud storage and password managers, not only were they and IIII hadn't used any of these myself as much for a long time 'cause they had staff around me.

0 (18m 41s):
You know, after the businesses gone, you're like, oh wow, I have to do all this myself. And they were cumbersome and they frustrated me and everything I went to do, like just finding an attachment, an email thread or printing out a document or getting spam or I, I was just so frustrated by it all and worse, I was in undated with imposter kind of people, people that were trying to, to conduct fraud or, or, or like I said, spam or different kinds of scams. You know, the Amazon package, fill this out 'cause your Amazon package there alls we need your credit card and let alone on social media.

0 (19m 22s):
And it turns out, meaning those messengers, it turns out there's billions and billions of dollars of losses because these tools that we use are open to imposter attacks. And I had been involved in AI a lot and knew that these imposter attacks we're going to get worse and worse. There were gonna be video fakes, there was gonna be voice fakes, the, the phishing attacks of, of how they, it won't be as simple as the Amazon package. And I'm just sitting here looking at going, you know, listen, we just did a great thing in healthcare where we drove privacy, changed the industry protected human life. I know we can do better than, than this collection of tools.

0 (20m 6s):
So let's build a platform for people, families, entrepreneurs, people who have a lot to lose in their lives. And, and, and quite frankly, that turned to everyone. Let's build a platform that has absolutely secure and private messaging while respecting the rules of the law so that criminals can't use it. And let's, let's have secure cloud storage and let's put a password manager in place and all of the essential elements all working together in one seamless package that's hyper secure but still easy to use that people could use around the world. And it took us a couple, two And A half years to build that.

0 (20m 47s):
And as we've introduced it, we've got customers now in 29 different countries, it's been a very exciting journey to see the lives, the, the people that are using the product and to see the quality of people they are and how it's transforming their lives, making them more secure, making everything easy to travel, saving them time. And now we're, we're in growth mode and, and we're in hiring mode. And, and that's the overall story. John

1 (21m 16s):
Fire Nation, the origin story of companies like these are always inspiring because, you know, what I wanted to do is plant a seed about what you can do to do good and make money in this world and also surround yourself with a lot of people who are having that same mindset. So Kurt, if you wanted to end with just one short 32nd concise point, you wanna make the Fire Nation around the topic of doing good in making money, what would it be? 30 seconds go

0 (21m 46s):
Big isn't always better. Two of the greatest businesses I've ever seen or been a part of are both just family businesses. One XPT in Kauai, Hawaii, run by Laird and Gabby Hamilton Small Business, amazing impact. Another one is just a Michelin star restaurant family owned in Florence, Italy. I'm so jealous about those businesses and they are not big, but they're beautiful.

1 (22m 7s):
Fire Nation. Let that be inspiring for you and be inspired because you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with KL and JLD today, so keep up that heat and Kurt. Where do you want Fire Nation to go to connect with you to learn more from you? What call to action do you have for our listeners today?

0 (22m 26s):
The easiest is to find me on LinkedIn, CEO, BUNKR and philanthropist, entrepreneur, philanthropist on LinkedIn and that'd probably be the easiest. You can also visit our website at BUNKR.Life. It's a great product. I love it. Using myself all over the world. I've used it in probably 25 different countries myself personally,

1 (22m 44s):
And that's BUNKR.Life and Kurt, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation. For that we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side.

0 (22m 55s):
Awesome. You're doing a lot of good in the world. John.

1 (22m 58s):
Hey Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our Sponsors and Kurt for sponsoring today's episode and Fire Nation's. Successful entrepreneurs are great at three things, productivity, discipline, focus. That's why I created the Mastery Journal so that you can master these three things, productivity, discipline, focus, And, A, hundred days, and we're talking step by step. So visits the mastery Journal dot com and I'll catch you there. Or on the flip side, Sales evangelist hosted by my friend Donald Kelly is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Each week Donald interviews the world's best sales experts, successful sellers, sales leaders, and entrepreneurs who share their strategies to succeed in sales.

1 (23m 39s):
Right now, a recent episode you should definitely check out is The Five Ways to Do Daily Outbound with LinkedIn. Listen to Sales Evangelist wherever you get your podcasts. Many EOFire listeners have launched non-food franchises and FranBridge Consulting has guided them. FranBridge ISS founder and frequent EOFire guest, John Austinson has done more placements than any other in the country and his service is free. Sign up for a consultation with John or get a free copy of his book, Non-Food Franchising at FranBridgeConsulting.com.