WAYNE BROWN: Hello, I’m your host, Wayne Brown, and welcome to the ET project. We’re delighted to be delivering this podcast for executive talent all over the world, whom we’re affectionately referring to as Team ET. Today we’re flying into Dallas, Texas, the land of the Longhorn and so much more, and we’re chatting with the founders of TD Pine Advisors, Brandon Moon and Rafael Pino. Brandon and Rafael help founder-led businesses gain the structure, insights and strategy to grow with purpose and build lasting value. Whether stabilizing, scaling or exploring long-term options, they meet you where you are and connect you to a trusted network of CPAs, wealth advisors, legal experts and M&A professionals. From operational clarity to financial visibility, this duo will guide your climb and help you build the right team for what’s next. Team, I know many of you are entrepreneurs slash business owners, and I guarantee our topic today is going to resonate with you. I’m hoping it triggers an inner awakening that maybe there’s something missing with your business. That missing element may well be an understanding of whether you’re building something that in the end is transferable or something that may end when you walk away. As always, the discussion is lively and engaging, filled with some heartfelt experience-based insights on how you can take stock of where you are today and immediately put in place actionable steps. So, get ready now to learn and grow. 

INTRO: Welcome to the ET project, a podcast for those executive talents determined to release their true potential and create an impact. Join our veteran coach and mentor, Wayne Brown, as we unpack an exciting future together.

WAYNE BROWN: Hello, team. Today, we’re addressing a crucial question for all entrepreneurs that they must address at the commencement of their journey, although sadly, many never do. What’s the question? Well, imagine this, you’ve left the corporate world, or perhaps you never were even in it, but you’re now an entrepreneur, and the marketing agencies you hire, the coaches you follow, the gurus on every platform, they all tell you the same thing, build your personal brand, become the face of your company, let people connect with you, your story is your differentiator. So, you do it, you show up every day, you build an audience that trusts you, your face is on every video, your name on every post, your personality is literally woven into every sale. And it works, for many, it works. The business grows, the money comes in, alas, you’ve arrived. But here’s the question many aren’t considering, what have you actually built? If you wanted to sell this business in 5, 10, even 15 years, if you wanted to walk away and let the company fund that next chapter of your journey, what would you be selling? A thriving enterprise with systems, teams, customers, loyalty, and brand? Or would you be trying to sell yourself? And if the buyer can’t buy you because you’re leaving, what’s left? So, this isn’t a hypothetical, we’ve seen it happen with billion-dollar empires, Bill Gross leaves PIMCO and $5 billion vanishes overnight. Donald Trump, there I mentioned the name, has business partners flee when his personal brand becomes somewhere of a liability. Tony Robbins could retire tomorrow, but who buys Robbins Incorporated or Robbins Enterprises without Tony Robbins? The impact of owner dependence isn’t just a problem for traditional businesses, the personal brand empires, it’s even more magnified, it’s amplified, it becomes the difference between building wealth and building a trap. So, during this podcast, we’re going to address some hard questions; what is transferable value really? What do markets punish or why do markets punish founder-dependence so severely? And for the entrepreneur building their brand right now, like many of us are, are you building a company that can outlive you or are you simply building a very successful job? So, with all of that, let’s begin by welcoming our guests, Brandon Moon and Rafael Pinho. Gentlemen, welcome to the ET project. Sorry for the long introduction, but this is a topic I’m excited about, I’m really looking forward to getting deep into some of this. Welcome.

RAFAEL PINHO: Thanks for having us and we’re excited about this topic as well.

BRANDON MOON: We’re very excited, this is a great conversation I’m excited about.

[00:05:00]

WAYNE BROWN: Well, let’s start by finding out a little bit about both of you and the company. What are you doing and where do you hail from?

BRANDON MOON: So, we’re out of Dallas, Texas and TD Pine Advisors is the partnership between Rafael and I. And we started this to help business owners grow the value of their business and really turn their job into an asset, that is our primary focus and so this topic is very well received. 

RAFAEL PINHO: Picking up from where Brandon left, we feel like a lot of people build what you just described and what they’re building is a job, it’s not an asset, it’s not sellable, it’s not something that you can package and say, okay, I can leave tomorrow, someone will come in and will continue from where I left off. As you described, that won’t happen in those businesses built around the founder. And oftentimes, as you described, built around the founder’s image. So that’s something we do need to work on and have a process of detaching that and becoming transferable, becoming an independent asset, independent from the founder.

WAYNE BROWN: Right. It’s one thing to be out there doing public speaking and putting a name out there and everything, but if you’re not seeing a bigger picture, I think that there’s not a very happy ending in sight, unfortunately. So, with that, let’s maybe try and define a few terms before we get too deep in the conversation. One that I know you both talk a lot about, and you’ve mentioned asset growth, but we’ll come to that, transferable value, what do we actually mean by that?

RAFAEL PINHO: It’s the value of your business, the value of the cash flow, because business value is basically a discounted cash flow of sorts calculation, it is what’s left when the founder is gone. So, to put it very simply, if 100 percent of the sales or 80 percent of the sales comes from the founder, all else equal, I could presume that 80 percent of the cash flow is going to vanish. Therefore, 80 percent of the business vanishes that day, the transferable value is just 20 percent of the actual value of that original cash flow.

WAYNE BROWN: Right.

RAFAEL PINHO: So, in a nutshell, it is the value that is left in the absence of the founder.

WAYNE BROWN: So, if we don’t expand on that, do we talk about personal brand versus company brand, that’s essentially the trap, if I try and paraphrase what you just said.

RAFAEL PINHO: Exactly. We try to think there’s nothing wrong in what you described, I don’t think that that’s wrong, that’s just the way business is built.

WAYNE BROWN: Right.

RAFAEL PINHO: Brandon has a neat way of explaining that. He says, okay, so what you do first, it’s your family and friends, right? People who know you and it’s the whole know, like and trust side. Meaning they know you, they like you, it’s people that you know, and they’re going to hire you, fine. What’s phase two? That’s normally when you already done some work, you put yourself out there, you did well on marketing, you’re doing all those posts, all the speaking engagements and all those things and you get to that second next step, which is normally when the referral networks start working for you. So, people know you or former clients are going to start referring business. And it’s great, but the trap is, and that’s where most people stop, they have a nice paycheck coming from that. And some people are going to go a step further and try to diversify as much as possible their client base, which definitely creates value. And some people are going to just say, okay, I’m comfortable with my X number of clients and they’re going to stay right there, just maintain that status quo, fine. Regardless of which of those you are, you’re getting to a point where, well, basically business comes because people like you, they don’t like what you do or they like what you do because it’s you doing it, right? So that’s where the danger lies. We are a service-based business, too, and very centered right now, we are sort of in that second phase, referrals are working, the word is out there, and that’s great between me and Brandon. But right now, as we speak, we are investing pretty much 50 percent of what we’re making in creating a system that brings business regardless of knowing Rafael and Brandon from the get go. 

[00:10:00] 

RAFAEL PINHO: So, they don’t have to know us or like us to hire us. And we’re trying to crack that formula, because if we don’t, we are going to be trapped in that same trap that we’re discussing here today and we definitely don’t want that.

BRANDON MOON: And just to build upon that, right? I mean, let’s say Tim Robbins, Tim Robbins is a brand, he has a personal brand and he has a business brand. And the way that he has built it, they’re one in the same, which, again, there’s nothing wrong with that. However, there needs to be an engine that’s happening behind the scenes where he’s not the one who’s picking up the phones and doing the things and doing all of that stuff, right? So obviously his personal brand is not going to carry over. But I mean, look at all these corporations that have a person’s name and they are150 years old. So, having a household name doesn’t necessarily have to be disconnected from a person, that can actually live on as long as the systems are built to continue on. And we always talk about, especially as we’re explaining to people what we do, there’s a difference between a successful business and a significant business. And so many people, whenever you talk to about this, they say, “oh, I have a successful business now and so everything’s going to be fine.” Yeah, but that business is dependent on you, a significant business is whenever you know that it’s going to outlast you, it’s going to continue to live on. And that’s our goal, it is to help more business owners create that significant business that is going to create that legacy that we all want. 

WAYNE BROWN: Thank you for that distinction, Brandon. I’m feeling a little bit more at ease, I was feeling a little bit uptight for a while because my own company is very much started, as Rafael explained, like, the phase one was really built around personal brand. But we’re very heavily into building systems and the processes, building the scalability of the business empire itself, so, I’m happy to hear that. One of the people that I often look at and wonder about with this question is Oprah. I mean, Oprah has been and is very successful and she has tried to pivot on many occasions, she’s got Oprah production, she has got different brands that she’s built that aren’t Oprah. But she’s still very much the center of all those businesses. And, whenever you think of Oprah, you sort of visualize her, not necessarily the things or the TV shows or the podcasts or everything she’s doing. I’m just wondering, early in this conversation, probably too early because we haven’t gone deep enough into it, but if somebody is looking to exit a business and they have this system, they have everything in place, but they are the face of the business, how does a buyer distinguish and make a judgment call that I’m going to have they remain in this business when this person steps away? How do they really assess that?

BRANDON MOON: So, I want to take a quick jump into this one before handing over to the financials which Rafael will talk about. But, as we coach, I use coach in a very loose term in this case, but as we help our founders and owners understand that we have to disconnect themselves from the business, one of the things that we focus on is understanding what they like to do within the business and then making sure that everything that they don’t like to do, that we get off of their plate. Because really creating an asset is a lot of work, it’s going to take a lot of time and a lot of energy. And so, we want that owner to be focusing all of their efforts into what brings them joy and everything else we can find somebody else to do that. And I bring that up because, you know, just speaking about Oprah, I’ve never spoken to her, so, I don’t know what she enjoys doing within the business. But I’m sure she has settled in to where she has brought in all these other people who have closed her gaps. We all have weaknesses, and understanding what your weaknesses are and making sure to bring in people who can amplify your strengths and close the gaps of your weaknesses is how to really grow a successful empire. And I’m sure that she has done that within all of the different sub-businesses that are under her umbrella. 

[00:15:00] 

BRANDON MOON: But that’s what we always try to focus on owner to do is understand what you do well, understand what your weaknesses are, understand what you enjoy doing. Hopefully, what you enjoy doing is also what you’re good at, sometimes they’re not one and the same, and that’s a whole other conversation. But as soon as you get to a point where, okay, I’m ready to divest this, then you need to find somebody who then does what you have enjoyed doing all that time and replace yourself from that. All of these things can be systematized. Does it matter whose name is on the top? Whose face is in the commercials? None of that matters as long as you know what the runway is going to be and you start making the steps to close that gap before going to market or before going and trying to find who that successor is going to be. But I think that’s why it’s so important to know where you’re going. You mentioned at the very beginning that at the beginning of starting a business, you should be thinking about the exit, and there’s not very many people that do that. But that’s exactly how this should be, is every decision that I make today is getting me to what that future is. And so, I hope I know what that future is. 

RAFAEL PINHO: I will go back to where Brandon was, because I think there’s a fascinating point there that people don’t think about and it is financial. But I want to start with your question: How would an investor know and look at this and say, “okay, this is sustainable beyond the founder.” You kind of mentioned it and alluded to the fact I’m going to go back to the Oprah example. There’s a point where to sell Oprah, Oprah doesn’t need to be there, because Oprah became a household name, it became its own brand. You say Oprah, people think of Oprah. So, at that point, well, if I’m an investor, I know I’m buying Oprah. I probably know or I would put into numbers that there’s as Oprah ages and just takes on a more backseat role, that name brand will fade away. So, I’m going to somehow bake that into my future projection, there’s a way to price that. But then it’s just… it’s Oprah, it’s a brand, now it became an asset and I can deal with assets in a pragmatic way. It’s completely different from I’m an owner and I’m the primary salesman and I’m selling myself, I’m not selling that brand name. Going back to Tony Robbins or Oprah or any of those, they are brand names already, so, it’s completely different, that would be the key distinction. Back to where Brandon left, though, if I’m starting this today or I’m very early into this journey, one thing that I would do is say, okay, now I am at such and such level and in X years, this is where I’m going to be. Therefore, I’m going to put a number into that and say, that’s the valuation of that business if it were to be transferable down the road. Let’s say just for the sake of the example, that becomes five million dollars, ten million dollars, just to use a round number. Now, I’m like, okay, if I’m able to transfer this, if someone is buying this and I make one hundred percent transferable value, they’re going to pay ten million dollars. On the opposite, if I’m not able, I’m going to destroy that ten-million-dollar cash flow because it will be worthless if I’m not able to do. Well, I just gave you the answer on how much is the limit that anyone rationally should invest in making sure they detach themselves and they become a brand. So, in theory, my budget is up to ten million dollars, right? Because if I can still… even if I’m going to spend nine million dollars and have one left because now someone is paying ten, but I spent nine. Fine, I still made a million dollars, whereas the opposite situation makes zero. So, that’s an easy way to think about how to do that. So from the get go, I could put a number in it and say, okay, this is the limit of what makes sense to invest in detaching the business image from my name and my name became becoming a brand as opposed to just a name. Makes sense? 

WAYNE BROWN: Yeah, for sure. I was thinking of Warren Buffett as you were both talking, the guy has become a legend, Berkshire Hathaway is so tightly tied to him. And we’ve seen there’s been so much talk in the last, I don’t know, half dozen years about the exit strategy for him as an individual from Berkshire and who are they going to bring in to replace him.

[00:20:00]

WAYNE BROWN: It is such a critical question, even though we can we can put some finance numbers against it, but it’s still such a vital piece of the whole puzzle. 

BRANDON MOON: When it comes to money management and money managers in general, there are even rules around it. As soon as the portfolio manager changes, you shouldn’t be attributing any of the returns or the historical returns to the new manager, you should have a clear way of dividing there. And so, in that world, which is Warren’s world, there’s a solution, in a sense. It’s not about sales, it’s about performance of investment, although he became a brand name. But he did very well for himself on the way he structured this. I remember the day that he published the last letter to shareholders. He became an instant hit in the Internet because obviously everybody was, okay, so this is the last letter. Guess what? It was announced when he would be. It was expected to be the last. So, this is a very well staged process where all the stakeholders, if you will, were fairly in advance communicated about when and what and how. So, there you go. There’s an impact, absolutely. Can you reduce the impact? Yeah, if you structure things. 

WAYNE BROWN: Right. And I think… 

BRANDON MOON: I’m sorry, Wayne, just before giving it back to you. And that’s the opposite that people do, what they do, they hide when they’re going to leave or when they’re going to do things or when they’re going to go away because it’s time to enjoy more time with their family. They kind of hide it as opposed to communicate it openly and then it becomes an even bigger event when it does. Sorry. Back to you.

WAYNE BROWN: That’s fine. I was just going to add that for me, there’s two camps, there’s the business buyer who is trying to divorce the emotion and look very logically at the whole process. And then you get the investor who may be the mom-and-pop investor, and they tend to be more emotionally driven. And I think they’re the ones that are really connecting with that personal brand versus the buyer who can look past that, in many cases, maybe not all, and look really at the detail of the business and how, you know, what the business offers outside of the individual. Would that be a fair comment?

RAFAEL PINHO: And I think that that is just the nature of how large this ecosystem is, is that some people have shared experiences with the investment, and then you have others that are just financial buyers. That are only looking for the financials of the… whatever the financials are saying, that’s what they’re willing to invest in. But then you have operators who have spent time running businesses like that, understand the day-to-day fires that they’re having to deal with, understand the emotions that a 30-year-old family business has gone through and how on the surface what decisions look like they’re irrational decisions because they’re not necessarily money-driven, you understand the stories that led to why that person thinks that the way that they think. And from that perspective, there’s a lot of people that view business that away and there’s a lot of people that view the business from the financial lens. And like I said, this ecosystem is so large that you get a mix of people that have just different backgrounds. And I want to piggyback of that and build on top, which is another big mistake, deal with it when it’s far too late, because so much you could do if you start work on this early. And let me give you an example, now, I’m a solopreneur type of guy who is single shingle, the company is his name, practices what he knows and all that, a complete opposite of what we’ve been discussing. However, it is it is what it is, it’s there, and we’ve seen it and I’m pretty sure you’re going to see it again. What would I advise at that particular situation? As long as we have time to work, start working today and probably we are not going to go and find a financial investor, because given their playbook, they won’t play there. 

[00:25:00] 

RAFAEL PINHO: But back to where Brandon was, if I’m able to find an operator within my space, someone that understands my business, is a clear successor to my business, he might be a buyer, not a simple, here’s your money, you go, I move. That’s not how that’s going to work, but it could be a staggered, structured phase transition where you’re going to start to pass along that cash flow, you’re going to start to pass along that knowledge, you’re going to start to phase out and bring this new buyer in. And what you can do, again, it’s not going to be a transaction, it’s a, okay, staged transfer of the business to that. Can that be done? Absolutely. But I’ll go back to where it started. Only if I do it with proper planning, only if I know, I’m going to stop in five to ten years, I’m going to have to find that person between now and three years, train them over such and such time, offer them that opportunity as we go. It’s not going to be a phone call away, unfortunately. But is it doable? Yes, if you prepare. Sorry, go ahead Brandon. 

BRANDON MOON: And I think that that highlights the fact that the sky is the limit on what options there are. If you know where you’re going and how you’re building and what you’re building. If I say, okay, I want to maximize the cash in my pocket, the only way to do that is to go after that financial buyer, the one who is looking for all of the boxes to be checked, their motions are completely out of it, it is all about the money. And, that’s right, some people have that mindset, some people are on the complete opposite side, that I’ve spent 40 years of blood, sweat and tears and my kids were in this business and I have a life expectancy and I’m quickly approaching that, but I want to make sure that my kids are taken care of. It’s not going to that financial buyer, it’s finding somebody who has the right mindset, maybe it’s a management buyout where your team is coming up and they’re going to be your successor. But every one of these options to be realized has to be built in a certain way. And they have to be systematically laid out so that they happen, you can’t let life happen to you in this instance. You can’t react to what the environment creates for you, you have to be proactive and create the environment that you want to happen. And the only way to do that is to understand where you’re going and why you’re doing what you’re doing and start putting in the systems in place, the right people in place, all of those things. 

WAYNE BROWN: Let’s talk a little bit about assets, we’ve used the word, it can be quite a broad term. When you talk about asset growth, are you specifically thinking about systems and processes or when you work with your clients are there other areas that you’re referring to?

RAFAEL PINHO: There are absolutely a few areas I’m going to start and Brandon help me out if I forget anything here. But revenue generation as an engine, as something that runs on its own, as opposed to, again, just referral or very concentrated. Another trap in the B2B world with services is this client loves me, he’s 40 percent of the business, I’m just going to have him forever because he loves me. Well, that’s your biggest fragility right there, because what if that relationship doesn’t survive a transition in the business? There’s more. So, okay, I have systems for sales, I have systems for delivery of whatever I do, but then I also use my business as a way to minimize taxes. So, I don’t have good governance around finances in the business, I commingle personal and business expenses in the same place, I do all those. Well, that’s not going to pass the test of an experienced financial investor or even a serious operator, because don’t get me, you might fool an operator that’s not financially sophisticated, but all you’re going to get is a business that’s going to fail down the road. Because if the homework is not done well enough, you’re setting yourself for a disaster down the road. Guess what? A lot of those sales normally have some… there is some form of seller finance or some form of future receivable, depending on a successful transition. 

[00:30:00]

WAYNE BROWN: Right.

RAFAEL PINHO: If the financial diligence is not done well enough and that transition fails, I’m setting myself for failure, too, as a seller. So, I’m thinking of those as the key ones. Brandon, anymore? 

BRANDON MOON: A good management team, somebody who can make decisions that are beyond just what the owner says. If all the decisions are coming down to the owner, it’s a bottleneck. And that bottleneck is going to prevent the growth from that business. And any kind of investor who is looking at the business as an asset, they want to make sure to de-risk all of the decisions that are happening, whether that’s how to attack new markets, how to increase capacity within the production line, how to bring… it’s one thing to be able to focus on top line revenue, but what happens if I get that new client, but I all of a sudden cannot service them anymore? And so, you have to make sure that the capacity is going to be able to increase just as quickly as it takes to ramp up sales. And so, whenever you think of asset and yeah, we’re talking about the business as an asset, not just the real estate or the machines or whatever from an asset perspective, but the business itself has to be an engine that when I put more fuel into it, it gets more horsepower. You know, there are so many businesses out there that when I put more fuel into it, it just bogs it down and gets worse and worse and eventually the engine might die, that’s not what an investor is looking for.

WAYNE BROWN: I was just thinking about AI as you guys were talking there and wondering for many, we consider it as the word trending now, with AI able to support us and do so many things like build systems and build apps and do all that sort of stuff. How much do we factor into that as an asset for the business? And how would a buyer assess or differentiate between whether the business is built too heavily on AI or whether it’s sort of using it successfully and to the right extent? 

BRANDON MOON: If I may jump here, the best explanation I read about AI so far is somewhere in the late ‘90s, early 2000, the cost of information decreased rapidly, that’s what we experienced when we had Google. So, now anything and everything in the Internet, assuming I’m clever enough to find it and search it, it’s there.

WAYNE BROWN: Right.

BRANDON MOON: Fast forward 20 years, what AI gave us is now the cost of doing things is now zero, because before anyone could do things and have access to the information that allowed them to do things. Now, AI can do things for you, so, the price of that work just has gone down substantially. So, what’s the effect of that tying up to our conversation here? Well, even for very small businesses, they now have access to that kind of power. So, if they really invest in understanding how they can harvest that power and put that in service of the business, I’m pretty sure that today it’s much more likely that an organization with not a significant head count of people is going to be able to reproduce and have the structure we are talking about here, because if I employ this correctly, I’m going to be probably ‘creating’ so many more hours of work and deliverables as opposed to what we had just five years back. 

BRANDON MOON: And you ask how would an investor look to see if it’s too heavily weighted on AI? That’s the thing, it is that there are so many different investor appetites out there, it is some investors want something that’s AI and there’s a lot of investors now that are shifting their focus into HVAC and plumbing and things that AI is certainly not going to replace anytime soon. 

[00:35:00] 

BRANDON MOON: Yeah, sure, there might be a robot someday that goes and replaces your sink or whatever, but it’s probably not going to happen in the next 20 years. And so, you have just this varying investor appetite that’s out there that you just need to know who you’re trying to impress and do the things that they’re going to look for. 

RAFAEL PINHO: That’s very important, understand going back to know your plan, have your game plan, understand who you’re selling to if you’re selling. Because there is now a movement of investors looking for AI-resistant industries or AI-resistant models. At the same time, there’s a number, there’s a plethora of investors that are willing to pour all the money they got on AI. So, who you are, who is your go find and go talk to the right investor. There’s a way, there’s a certain way of priming and preparing your business to be presented and looked upon by the right people. And that’s one of the things in any space we see people getting wrong all the time. Oh, I heard about this financial guy, okay, what do they do? What type of investment have they done in the past? Do they understand the industry? Do they know what they’re talking about here? All those questions, sometimes you should know your investors better than you know yourself when you’re sitting to have a conversation with them.

BRANDON MOON: And I think that’s what’s very interesting about this. And it might sound like I’m digressing, but business owners start their business because they’re good at something, right? And then they’re going to grow their business to whatever their capabilities are and whatnot, but they feel, we’ve seen it a lot, where they’ve created this very successful business and so they believe that transitioning out of the business is going to be easy. In reality, that is a completely different set of skills to transition out of your business, whether it’s to sell it, whether it’s to find investors, whether it’s to shape it up for a management team or whatever it is, the transition out is significantly different than running the business. And so, to think that you can do that alone is very challenging and you’re not setting yourself up for success. That’s where knowing the right advisors and the right people who understand what you’re trying to do from a transition standpoint and who you’re trying to transition to is very critical for that actually being a successful transition.

WAYNE BROWN: Right. If somebody comes along and they said, “guys, I need help, I’m just starting out.” I’m sure you have a playbook that you use that sort of can help the new entrepreneur get established, how would you guide them in the early stages?

BRANDON MOON: The thing that I would always say is, start with the end in mind, start with where you’re trying to go. Just because you start with the end in mind, it doesn’t mean it’s set in stone. You can absolutely pivot whenever new information is saying, hey, I should go down that road instead of that road, that’s fine. But start going into a known direction, which means start with the end in mind. And start by understanding if that’s the goal, then I need to create these milestones to get there. And that means that at the end of year one, I need to hit this. There’s probably can be a range, right? Maybe you didn’t get there, but you’re showing some momentum to get there. Great, keep on going. But be very honest with yourself that if I didn’t get there and it doesn’t look like I’m going to get there, then why continue going down that path? I need to really pivot, maybe this wasn’t the journey that I should be on to begin with, whatever that is. And so, create that map of where I’m going. Everybody talks about a business plan and doing the SWOT analysis and doing… that’s all fantastic, you need that, you need to be thinking about who my competitors are and how I’m going to make sure that I have a competitive advantage and all of those things. But be very honest with your runway, too, that this is how much time I have to invest into this and if it’s not going that way, to pivot. The other thing that I would highly encourage, especially from the beginning, is know and talk to people who have done what you’re trying to do. 

[00:40:00]

BRANDON MOON: There are so many people who create a support network of friends and family that have never tried to start their own business and would never imagine themselves and that’s where they’re getting their advice from. Obviously, the advice that they’re going to get is negative support and not any enlightening information that’s going to take you to that next level. And it’s so easy to build a mentor group of people that you can ask questions to that have been to where you’re going. But there’s some vulnerability, right? You have you have to actually start asking questions and recognize that you don’t have all the answers. And I highly encourage anybody who is just starting out is to start networking and finding a mentor or somebody who has done what you’re trying to do and just start asking questions, you’d be surprised on how willing somebody who has succeeded is to help the next person. 

WAYNE BROWN: Yeah, great advice, gentlemen. Anything you would suggest for our listeners that they should be considering in in our world today with the craziness going on?

BRANDON MOON: I would just reiterate, you shouldn’t do this alone, being an owner, being a founder, being just a business owner in general, it’s a very lonely place, you can’t talk to a lot of people, sometimes it can feel like a lonely place. And what makes it worse is that owner pride that makes it feel like you have to go on the journey alone. And that’s not the case, there is so much support out there, there are so many people out there that can help. They’ve probably already gone through the challenges that you’re facing and can at least give you a three-sentence explanation of, you know, this is how you should do this differently and it could change your world. But it all starts with leaving the pride at the door, checking your ego and just being willing to seek out the help that you need. 

WAYNE BROWN: Where can our listeners find you if they’d like to learn more about what you guys are doing and how they can sort of progress? 

BRANDON MOON: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for asking that question. Our website is tdpineadvisors.com. We have a wealth of information, we have a media page that has some really good content, we have a blog page that has some good content there. But we also have a few assessments that if you’re a business owner, if you’re thinking about, how do I start thinking about that that long journey and where I’m going? The assessments are a great place to start because it’s asking questions that really spur a lot of thought, I highly encourage that. And then we’re on LinkedIn, that’s the social media platforms that we’re on. And we’re just two normal guys, we want to talk to people about business, so, definitely reach out and ask questions.

WAYNE BROWN: Well, guys, a great conversation as expected. We’ve just literally scratched the surface as usual, but a really interesting topic. I think it’s something that we all need to be thinking about, even if we, as you said, if we’re not looking to exit the business, you know, this is a life journey and it’s something we have to leave as a legacy to the family, it’s still something we need to be thinking about. And hopefully, the listeners will connect with you and start the journey. So, all the best for a pretty ‘26 and what lies ahead.

BRANDON MOON: Thank you, Wayne. 

RAFAEL PINHO: Thank you, Wayne. Thank you for your time and thanks for having us.

OUTRO: Thank you for joining us on the ET project, a show for executive talent development, until next time, check out our site for free videos, eBooks, webinars, and blogs at ‘coaching4companies.com.’

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