John St. Pierre on Building a $100 Million Business with Intention

Speaker 1 Hey there folks. Welcome to today's episode of the Strategy and Leadership Podcast. My guest today is Jean St. Pierre. What you just say, John St. Pierre who is the Co founder and chairman of the Rhombus group. Through our pre call we recognize that we have you know the six degrees of Kevin Bacon. We have 1° of Kevin Bacon. John, such a pleasure to have you, such honored to have you share your $100 million journey, which started off with some very well organized intentional strategic planning. Thanks for being on the show. I want you to tell our listeners a little bit about who you are and how you got to here. Speaker 2 Yeah, thanks. I think it's great to to connect with people like yourself and find all these different connection points that we have, right. Never even met each other before. So no, it's fantastic. I'm originally from Canada as well, so that's where we get the French pronunciation done well. So thank you for that. But yeah, you know where this whole thing started. I've been an entrepreneur my whole life and always sought to build nice, big companies that, you know, growth for me was the driver. I always wanted to grow companies and build them as big as I possibly could. And, you know, I always saw that light until one day it hit me. And it wasn't the end of the tunnel. It was a train. And you know, in the process of trying to grow a company to $100 million after 15 years of building it, Anthony, I was fired from my very own company. And that was a devastating moment in my entrepreneurial career. Right after after thinking I had this whole thing called business figured out. This is easy, you can grow businesses, let's just keep building. I really had to pick myself back up and, and introspectively figure out what I was trying to accomplish as a person or my learnings as an entrepreneur. I never repeat again and successfully kind of took all those learnings and introspection and self reflection and applied them to what I today call the seven principles of entrepreneurial success that I now apply to another business and grew a company to 100 million the right way this time without facing the, you know, the the insurmountable feats that sometimes come with growing a business. Speaker 1 Awesome. I love that I I also wrote a book on entrepreneurship called I wish I knew Entrepreneurship Lessons I learned the hard way so you don't have to so born out of fire. I will say I never grew my business to $100 million. I think that, you know, a lot of people that we meet, we talked to you, they might be starting at, I don't know, three and a half million dollars and saying, hey, we wanna grow it to 10 or from 10 to 2020 to 5050 to 100. You know, obviously there's or, you know, maybe not, obviously, you know, the stages along the way, but you know, like take us back, take us back to from getting hit by a train proverbially to being able to put those systems in place. What did you tell yourself? What are the things actually, here's my question. What are the things that you wouldn't do again, that you didn't do again, that you would caution our listeners to be aware of as they kind of move forward on this path? Speaker 2 Perfect. Well, I'll start with the the big one, Anthony. I never actually had a life plan for myself. I had a strategic business plan for our company, but I never had a life plan for me. I would sit down with our company, we'd go on two day off site to figure out where we want to go with this business. I never went and sat by myself and thought what do I really want in life? And so my life was going this way and I think they're going well in my life. I don't have any complaints about my life, but my business was going this way and they were completely disconnected. And it wasn't like this major failure in my life where I spent some time with myself. I spent some time writing. I spent some time walking and thinking and what do I want 30 years from now? What am I actually trying to achieve in my life? And once I figure that out, now I'm going to do business that ties to that plan. So to me, that was the one thing that was like the aha moment. I wish I knew before I, you know, got going too hard because a lot of people, you know, they start running and building their companies and next thing the tails wagging the dog, they're working 100 hours a week, They're stressed out, they're not in shape, they're eating unhealthy, they're not spending enough time with their family and loved ones. They're not building good relationships. They're not spending enough time on themselves. And they wake up 1520, thirty, forty years later and go, what did I just do? So that was a big aha moment for me that I that I really hope entrepreneurs can grasp onto and, you know, figure out what you want to achieve in your life and then connect your business to it. Speaker 1 Yeah. And I think about it as you're explaining it is the foundation like it'll work. And I think that that's where what what allows entrepreneurs and unfortunately I've seen it where they have grown their businesses and because they have success in that area of their business, it's OK or it doesn't hurt bad enough. Meanwhile, the other things start to suffer and but it's like good enough, whereas like I am of the belief that you can have that like holistic, like you can have everything, but also like not having to have those sacrifices. So what, what was the process that you went through? Was it a matter of saying, OK, you know, how do I being bring in alignment? Did you say, here's what my priorities were like, Hey, I need to be healthy. I need to be there for my kids. I need to be there for my partner. I need to like be in tune with self. Like what were the questions that you asked yourself, I guess more practically? Speaker 2 Yeah, Well, first of all, I just want to say you and I align on a lot of things in those conversations since we've met, you know, a few moments ago. But you know, there's no, in my opinion, it's not work life balance, it's work life abundance, right? Just like you just talked about, right? You can have it. You just need to properly structure it so you can have abundance in your life. And so, you know, trying to figure that out. I, I deploy a few different methodologies, right? There's the book The one thing by Gary Keller. Love that book. Like, what is the one thing? What is your one thing? And when you ask yourself that question, like, well, I don't have one thing. I have my kids, I have my family, like, no, what is the one thing, Anthony, we are trying to do in life, We're trying to accomplish? What is that? You know, and that kind of comes to deeper question, what is my purpose? What am I trying to achieve? Who do I want to be? And So what I did there is I said, OK, 30 years from now, if I'm sitting here, what is the one thing I want to accomplish 30 years from now? That's a long time. Speaker 1 From when did you ask yourself this question? I'd. Speaker 2 Like, this would have been five years ago, OK, five years ago. And this was, you know, at, you know, in this point of failure, right? So first I have to pick myself off the ground, stop feeling sorry for myself. Like, so, you know, there's that period in the morning, right? But when you pick yourself up, OK, what am I going to do here? And I basically put together a 30 year life plan is what I call it today. And I really work with entrepreneurs on putting that together, which is 30 years from now. What's that one thing? Now that I have that one thing, I'll break it down into five or six categories, 30 years financially, where do I want to be? Health, where do I want to be, family, where do I want to be, relationships where I want to be like all these different categories. Spiritually, maybe for some, you know, different things, but put it together 5-6 things like literally exactly where do I want to be 30 years from now? Then I bring it down and go, OK, well, if I want to be there in 30 years, where do I need to be in 10 years in all these different areas? OK, where do I need to be in three years in all these areas? Where do I need to be in a year in all these areas? Each quarter, each month, each week, each day, each hour. Right now, Anthony, I'm doing what I need to do for my 30 year plan. That's what I'm doing right now here with you. And that's the way I structure my days now is am I aligned to my 30 year life plan? And that helps me drive my business and what I'm going to do in my business. Does that drive my life plan as well? And so that's the structure that I put together that work really well for me. Speaker 1 Awesome, I love that it's I mean, talk about strategic planning and I'm curious, you know, like strategic planning for self and when people say like, Hey, how did you end up doing this? In my business? I have my funny, it was just clearing out moving and I have my 10 year goals and I just ticked one off the list cuz we're well soon too, cuz we're expecting our second kid. But I say, look, it's like 10 years. I want to have written two books. I got two books, I got two kids, I got, you know, all of this stuff. I didn't hit my, you know, gajillion, bajillion dollars yet. But like as you look at like, Hey, what are the most important things? Like that wasn't the most important What is your one thing? What is your like one thing? And how can we continue the conversation in pursuit of that? Speaker 2 Yeah, so, so to me, it's to maximize life's offerings globally. You know, life has so much to offer. I wanted to maximize all that that has to offer. And I'm throwing globally there 'cause I love international aspect of things and, and travel and experiences and traveling with family and just seeing everything the world has to offer. I want to try and grab as much as that as I possibly can over the next 30 years. Speaker 1 I love that and I so for those for you listening, because I have to remember there's only like 1 purpose. One person is like, hey, like you, you run a business, you aren't a business. Like you work in a company, you aren't a company and like separating that, but like the intentional life design. So I like I say for me as an example, and I say the example to support you in asking yourself the questions. And for me, I was like, what do I want to do? I want to get travel, I want to travel and I want to get paid to travel. And so now, you know, working across 20 States and other countries and that kind of stuff. But I think it's important to say like, hey, intentionally, what do I want for myself? What do I want for my business? So looking forward now, you built this $100 million organization, you've been involved in a lot of cool projects. You're experiencing all that life has to offer. What are you looking forward to most? Like, what is your next challenge? What is the thing that you are? Maybe you haven't solved it yet, but you're in that like exploratory phase of like you're chewing on it, if you get what I mean by my question. Speaker 2 Yeah, no, I love it. And you know, you gave a really good example, Anthony's conversation. I think it was Bill Gates who said this, that most people overestimate what they can do in a year. They really overestimate, but they underestimate how much they can do in 10, right? You said that very, very well about you 10 year goals. And look, now you have your two books written and now you have your second child. And so when I look into the horizon of the future and what my purpose is, another methodology I use is Jim Collins hedgehog concept, right? You have these three circles, what you're most passionate about, what can you be the best in the world at and what drives your economic engine, right? What are those three things and where those three things intersect, that's what you should be doing. That's really purpose driven life and in terms of you feeling fulfilled and finding success. So for me, long term, B hag big hairy audacious goal is I want to impact a million plus entrepreneurs and help them build the business of their dreams without falling off the Cliff like I did. That's my wish. Speaker 1 Awesome. I love that. Well, let's get to a couple couple thousand, if not 10s of thousands out of this. What what strikes me about your approach and your mindset is it's a good amount of introspection. Like if you look at my desk, I have diagrams, I have stuff that I'm writing and thinking and you know, canoodling on. You know, we started just before the call. We talked about like 2 day off sites, three day off sites, which is what we specialize in facilitating because it gives teams an opportunity to, to do that together. But but how do you do it? Like what is your practice of introspection? Is it daily coffee? Is it a weekly walk in nature? Is it you're going to the gym and that's when you do your best thinking like what is the process that you've put in place to consistently and I'll say reliably draw those circles or do the mapping or check for alignment? Speaker 2 Yeah, well, I'll preface this that before this failure point, and sometimes failure has a really good way of teaching you lessons, right. I had never journaled. I had heard you should journal. I didn't need that. I was too arrogant. I didn't need to journal. I got this thing going. I know I got this all figured out, right? Didn't journal. I didn't really do a lot of introspective thinking or thinking at all. I never spent time with myself. Daily visualization. I don't need a daily visualization. Why are you? You're going to read to yourself who you want to be. I don't need that. I know what I want. You know all that, all that just completely changed for me, right? Today I start every day with 20 minutes of thinking time. Blank sheet of paper, It's actually a remarkable pad, but none the less, it's blank. And I start with a blank sheet of paper. What am I grateful for yesterday? What am I grateful for today and what am I just thinking about? Blank sheet of paper. I could think anything. Maybe it's the meeting I have this afternoon with Anthony. Maybe it's just I got nothing to think about. So how am I doing on my goals this year? I just think spend time with yourself. And the other thing that I've done, this came from one of my podcast guest, John Mitchell, who teaches the science and success at University of Texas Austin. And he talks about how 95% of your daily actions are subconscious, they're already preprogrammed. Only 5% is conscious, 95% is happening before you can wake up. It's already preprogrammed and what you're going to do based on how you prepare. And so today I read a daily visualization of exactly who I am and who I want to be in the areas I need to improve in my life. And it trains your subconscious mind on who you actually are and who you actually want to be and how you actually want to represent yourself when you're out there. And so I do all that stuff today that five years ago I was like, I don't need that kind of stuff. And today when I think about it, think about all the top athletes in the world, right? They have a mindset coach, a strength coach, a this coach, they have visualization techniques, they have all these different things. But yet sometimes us as entrepreneurs, we just keep running. I mean, sometimes we just run right off the Cliff because we don't even know where we're going. And any path we'll do just we feel if we're running that we're actually heading in the right direction. And so that time to sit back with ourself is something I'd never done before that now I'm the biggest fan of. Speaker 1 Yeah, I love that. And it's interesting that you can as an entrepreneur and call it CEO's, they're inundated, but stuff. And so you have to be discerning and the only way that you can really kind of like try stuff on is by trying it on yourself and and seeing what works for you. When you were talking about like the mindset performance coach, you know, for a lot of folks that watch F1, like each driver has their like buddy that like hangs around them because it's all about mindset. It's about strength, mental and physical. For us as a practice, what we do is we have a coffee budget because we don't have an office. So everybody, every quarter you get 75 bucks, although it should probably be more now so that once a week you can have a $5.00 coffee, take an hour to do whatever. So whether it's writing every single day, looking at that, you know, doing that strategic time or going off on a 2 day off site, you know that strategic work is super important. OK, one of the last questions I'm going to ask you. Speaker 2 Yeah. Speaker 1 You talked about, I'm going to use the word intentionality and you talked about programming your subconscious. And so I kind of want to layer that with you are on this journey and this journey takes time and sometimes things happen in a roundabout way. So how have you found many? Is the word coincidence? Because that's the closest word that I have. But you know, you have your intention, your attention doesn't always manifest itself right away, but life has its sneaky way of coming back to you in weird paths. How have you found coincidence, Fortune, happenstance playing a part in the self actualization of where you have become today, John? Speaker 2 Yeah, I have one big secret for entrepreneurs and leaders and almost everybody in the world that I had to learn through this journey. And it's something that that I, I, I really, really connect with. And it's this concept of patient ambition. A lot of people are very ambitious, but they don't have the patience. A lot of people are very patient, don't have ambition either. That's not who I'm talking about. I'm talking about people who have strong ambition. They want to achieve greatness, they want to do great things, but they expect it to happen next week. They expect it to happen maybe in a week from now. They're not willing to go the 10 years like we talked about, of just grinding and working themselves on getting the failures, getting the small successes, the small wins, the small losses, you know, waiting for luck to find you. Luck doesn't. Luck finds you when you're working at it. You're when you're grinding, that's when it will find you, not when you're not, you know, working hard at it. So for me, this concept of patient ambition, which is almost like oxymoron, how can you be patient ambitious at the same time? Once you can find that spot of patient ambition and you know, you just keep plugging away and taking the next step and the next step in the right direction, that luck, that happenstance, all that stuff will find you exactly where you want to be in the long term. And that's why you know, back to that you overestimated when you do in a year, but in the long haul of things, you keep heading in the right direction, doing the right things, being the right person, it will find you. Speaker 1 Yeah, all of that. And so for our listener, for you is, you know, what can you do to, I mean, I guess it's like trust, it's faith, it's belief, but it's also action. Like you have to do the work to make it happen. But you know, I, I make the joke when we do our mixtures like most folks. And I think, John, you had alluded to this ready fire aim. And so like making sure that you take the time to aim and aim incrementally big and small and then back it up with action. But also like last kind of quote I like in this, I think is John Maxwell and is don't judge the success of your day, but the harvest you reap, but rather buy the seeds that you plant. So looking at how many seeds you can plant on a day-to-day basis. And then in your case, John, you know, today planting a seed, so to speak, so that you can support folks in our community, in your community the world over. And ultimately like moving forward towards your mission of supporting those, you know, millions of people. So where can people get a hold of you, John? Where can they learn more about the work that you're doing? And if there's, is there anything else you want to say in closing? Speaker 2 Yeah, sounds good. So yeah, I got had the book $100 million journey that came out in November of 23. So recently out. You can find that on Amazon or you can go to 100 M journey, so 100 Amazon million journey.com. I have a free workbook there for entrepreneurs videos and you can connect to all my social links there as well. Speaker 1 Awesome, fantastic. John, thank you for chatting with me today. This was fun, valuable, encouraging, inspiring, and I just wish you nothing but the best as you've before. And I look forward to connecting offline so we can look at all of our other interconnections that we have. Speaker 2 Awesome. Thanks, Anthony. Appreciate it. Speaker 1 Folks, my guest today, John St. Pierre, who is the author of the $100 million Journey. I believe that John is here so that you don't have to learn things the hard way. And really reflecting what I take away from this is, is really those those practices, the practices of self reflection, whether that's on A1 page sheet, you know, printer paper works great or a remarkable pad, whether that's reflection to check for alignment in terms of is your life aligned with your business? Are they going to the same place and ultimately focusing on that. And then alignment with your purpose, what are you doing and why are you doing it and who are you doing it for? And I think if you can institute those three things over the next three months and approach both a long term and a short term view to your own strategy, anything is possible. So I hope that you leave with that message today. I appreciate you for watching, John again, thank you for the conversation and just who you are in the world. It's very pleasant to me. So thank you for that, folks. It's been the strategy and leadership podcast. I hope you enjoy it. I hope you keep enjoying it, and I look forward to seeing you next time. Bye everybody.