April 9, 2026 – Ultra-High-Net-Worth Clients Richard McWhorter and 4 Forces of Growth Kevin Lawrence

0:04 Intro 1 : Broadcasting from am and FM stations around the country. Welcome to the Small Business Administration award winning school for startups radio where we talk all things small business and entrepreneurship. Now here is your host, the guy that believes anyone can be a successful entrepreneur, because entrepreneurship is not about creativity, risk or passion.

0:24 Jim Beach : Jim Beach, hello everyone. Welcome to another exciting edition of School for startups radio. I hope you’re having a great day out there riding the roller coaster. Life of being an entrepreneur is the ups and downs, the twists, the loops, the turns, all of the fun and excitement and a little bit of throwing up because you are scary or scared, or maybe you’re both. You are scary and scared. I am very excited for a great show today. We have first up Richard McWhorter. We will bring him out in just a minute. He is a money manager in Beverly Hills. I think that kind of speaks for itself. We will ask him all about business and how he built his firm. I’m excited to learn all about it. Then we have Kevin Lawrence, who has just published a new book called the four forces of growth, which we need to know all of us entrepreneurs, that’s the whole game, right, getting out there and growing that business. Somehow, some factor, some key indicator, you need to be pushing every year for growth. It used to be station number here. Now we’re on something else. I’ll tell you about it later. Anyway, let’s bring out Richard. He’s already laughing at me. And again, thank you so very much for being with us. I’m very excited to welcome one of the men that keep the wealth of America. Please welcome Richard McWhorter to the show. He is the guy that runs SRM private wealth out of Beverly Hills. He works with ultra high net worth clients and manages their financial situations for them, the taxes, all of that, charities, and he has been ranked as one of the very best in the country. Where was it? It’s 2024 when you win, what’d you win the award for? Last year?

2:14 Richard McWhorter : Richard Forbes, I think it was Forbes. Yeah, that’s right.

2:22 Jim Beach : Money manager. He has been quoted in Forbes Financial Times barons, us, news, world, report, Business Insider, and he’s on the member of the Fast Company executive board, Richard. Welcome.

2:34 Richard McWhorter : How you doing good? How are you doing? Thank you for having me do

2:39 Jim Beach : The ultra net worth your clients care what’s going on in the economy in Iran. Does it even affect them at all?

2:47 Richard McWhorter : Yes. Oh, simple answer. So, you know, a lot of the clients get concerned with the state of the economy in general. How it impacts them is different, and it depends that depends on the wealth and how they’re allocated, and items like that that you have to kind of review with each one of them. But overall, it is a constant part of conversation that you know what’s happening, what’s happening at gas prices, things of that sort.

3:23 Jim Beach : Yes, all right. And do most of your clients make their most of their money now from their income, their vocation, their job, or from their investments in all of the other things that they’ve done now? That’s a

3:38 Richard McWhorter : Great question, a little bit of everything. We still have a lot of people that are especially real estate, people that are still owning, purchasing, collecting the income. So a lot of that has to do with their investment, slash vocation, and so that’s definitely several of our clients. I would say on the other side of that there’s several that are retired and are living off of the investments and the monies that they’ve saved over the years. So we do have a mixture of both.

4:18 Jim Beach : All right, just give us a rundown of your clients, are they superstar athletes and celebrities from the movies and television, or producers behind the scenes, or none of the above? We think. Beverly Hills and so you know, the rest of the country, ooh, excited. Burt Reynolds. You know what’s it really like?

4:42 Richard McWhorter : Richard, my clients are kind of some of those are part of this practice that we’ve built. You know, we do have people that are well known, either entrepreneurs, well. The people that are in the public eye. We have some athletes. We have some musicians, I primarily play in 1984 to 1995 space within that music area. And then, you know, we have some people that have built nice net worths, and no one will really ever know their story, unfortunately, because those stories are brilliant in themselves.

5:31 Jim Beach : Yes, I just wrote a book about someone like that who’s worth $150 million you know, an amazing story, but not going to make a movie out of it.

5:41 Richard McWhorter : Karen, it’s kind of sad to get some of these people when you I’ve been fortunate enough to sit down with them for a long period of time, and, you know, and they’ve done amazing things over their life. And it’s unfortunate that we hear about the, you know, the guy that made a billion dollars, but the person that came from very little or poverty and has made 20 million or 50 million or 100 million, that’s amazing what they’ve done. So yeah, that is an unfortunate situation that we probably will never hear, but I’ve been fortunate enough to hear that that story.

6:22 Jim Beach : So what is the low end for a client that you would take

6:29 Richard McWhorter : Really don’t have a low end, to be honest, we have so our practice is basically 36 families, and when we look at our practice, it’s kind of vertical, and then now it’s becoming more horizontal, meaning that you have the matriarch and the patriarch that I started with, and and then you have their kids and their kids and their kids. And we have one family that were four generations deep on that, and that would be vertical, and then horizontal would be the cousins and the aunts and the uncles and and that whole side of family. So we kind of spread. Someone told me a long time ago, I’m becoming like an heirloom that gets passed down generation after generation that’s just means I’m getting older, and I’ve been with them for quite a while. But you know, the it is nice, and a lot of those accounts are not, you know, as grand as the patriarch and the matriarch of the family, and that’s fine. I treat it all as one big family. In those respects, new clients that are coming on that don’t come on that way and come through different sources. You know, I really am at the point where I want to be around people that I enjoy and that I like to work with, and we spend a lot of time with our clients and the families that we’re part of, because it is such a small unit. So I really do appreciate a person that I resonate with. I think in the athletics and music world, I have varying ways that I deal with those, deal with people in those industries. So most of the time, I come in as a fixer of some sort, for lack of a better word. And I think a lot of those you know, athletes and musicians are, you know, we’re trying to help them gain footing and move forward with their finances, and in some cases, we get more involved in that. So, you know, it really depends on on so many different factors, but it’s interesting how that all comes together when we make that decision to work together.

9:04 Jim Beach : So I think it’s been fascinating families over generations. Of course, you have the Rockefellers, who seem to have done it better than anyone else, and the Vanderbilts who seem to have done it the worst of anyone manage generational wealth. I was fortunate enough to be at a 25th birthday party where the birthday boy got access to his money, and he got 75 million that day his family. There are cities in Ohio named after his family, and they own hockey teams and baseball teams and things like that. And he has since then been a fireman, a ski lift operator, a ski instructor, Pilates instructor, a real estate agent, a boss. Barista. And I’m sure I’m missing some how, go ahead, go ahead. You seem like you already

10:09 Richard McWhorter : Know I was, I was gonna say that. So how did I’m more fascinated with the idea of how that came about, right? I mean, was he doing those different occupations based on his love of those occupations was because he obviously didn’t need the money or or he did need the money because it went away. Yeah, that’s a fascinating story.

10:37 Jim Beach : He’s looking for purpose, reason to exist. Okay, that has no clue what that is. So how do you help the third generation, the fourth generation? Here in Atlanta, there’s a famous family that were in the third and fourth generation now, and the third generation got a divorce, and it turned out that it was just disgusting, and everything at all, it was just disgusting. How do we prevent our wealth from destroying our kids?

11:12 Richard McWhorter : It’s a great question, you know, listen, you know, the one thing that I always start off with is in understanding the next generations, for when they inherit money, or they are given money in this situation, for example. And I think that, you know, some of them, some kids, come out of it, and they, they do wonderful things, right? They they make it bigger and better, very rarely. The other side of that is, is that, from my perspective, this is that, how do you create that to your point or your words to purpose, and how do you take away, you know, one thing, one thing with kids of wealth, is, there’s, there’s a natural insecurity behind it, right? And that natural insecurity is that, you know, why are people in my life? Are they here for the money? Are they here for the access? Are they here for musicians and athletes? I deal with this quite a bit, right? Is that what? Why are people in my life, and why am I allowing them in my life? And, you know, there’s a lot of psychology that goes into those types of conversations about, why those, why am I letting certain people into my life? First of all, so there’s a natural insecurity to that. Second thing is, is that I think that once again, if I have all the money in the world, and all of a sudden I’m supposed to now do something. I have all these choices, and I all these choices become overwhelming. I don’t have any direction. I don’t have anyone giving me direction necessarily. Maybe there’s lack of guidance or mentorship. So then, what do I do with that? And how do I, how do I make that choice right? And do I have to? Because it’s much easier not to right. I can just live off of my money. But then to your point is, is that once again, there is a time in there where they start to worry about or start to what am I about? Who am I? Right? And that’s a tough

13:24 Jim Beach : Conversation so themselves to their fathers and grandfathers and don’t like what they see,

13:31 Richard McWhorter : Maybe right, or maybe, let’s say that. Say they don’t even, let’s say that’s not even an issue. Let’s say they have a strong relationship. But still, right? It’s, it’s still just internal, right, that you’re going to have some kids that will just love every day, getting up at 11 o’clock and and spending the day, spending money and doing whatever, other kids there’s, there’s the the need for to have that feeling of purpose, right? Some, some kids, I mean, I’ve met kids that don’t have that, right, or don’t want that. So, you know, I think the misnomer with a lot of these, lot of people with of wealth, is just that somehow they’re different. And the reality is, they’re just human beings, and they’re all looking for the same feeling, or some have that, and some don’t, right and and some need, need that purpose, and some don’t. So you really have to treat these people of wealth with or these musicians or these actors or these athletes. You have to, you have to, you have to treat them as they are, human beings underneath it all right? And that’s, that’s where we all come back down to the baseline of where, like in my practice, that’s where we start, is to get to know them as human beings.

14:56 Jim Beach : And it’s. Popular to think that they have money and so their life is easier. I don’t think that that’s true at all. I perhaps think of guy about the guy sitting on a mobile home on the front porch, and just as content as could be sometimes having less, it’s actually much more,

15:23 Richard McWhorter : You know, it’s in behavior, right? For example, if I only have the option of going to McDonald’s or Burger King to eat, right, that’s my options. That’s pretty easy, right? I only have those two to go to, and I have a certain venue within each one of those, because that’s all I can afford. But what if I had all the money and I can have a choice to anything? Well, now my now, now that’s wide open. And it sounds like a, by the way, a first world, world problem, but it really is daunting. And if you, if you extrapolate that idea into every decision you make, it does become something. And I know that might not resonate with a lot of people, but these are just the types of conversations we’ve we’ve had many, many times in trying to figure out who this person is or wants to become. It’s fascinating. It’s a fascinating world of behavior, for sure.

16:30 Jim Beach : So let’s switch the conversation a little bit. Tell us about the history of SRM, private wealth, how one builds a firm that you get to hang out with celebrities and stuff.

16:45 Richard McWhorter : Yeah, so, so I started 30 trying to do the math in my head, 34 years ago, almost 34 years ago now, at UBS. Prior to that, by the way, I was when I started, I was 17 years old as an intern, receptionist secretary, and then became a financial advisor in 1992 so I was at Smith Barney for about 16 years, and then went to went to Merrill Lynch, about 2008 March of eight, proper timing, and went there, and then left Merrill two years ago for various reasons, and opened up SRM, and we opened it up, and just kind of continuing what we’re doing, or What we’ve been doing for the last 32 years and servicing our clients on a very high level and and then how we hang out with celebrities. I don’t, to be, to be completely frank, I don’t hang out with many celebrities. There’s a couple that people would maybe know or not know, I play play a lot of golf, and I play a lot of poker, and I enjoyed both those games. And if you know either one of those games, you’re going to play and hang out with people for four or five or six or seven hours and and that’s what we do. And being in Beverly Hills, you’re going to run across those guys, and a lot of the people I know out here, those are their clients or their friends or whatever, and it’s just this random mix of being around and doing these different activities. So that’s, that’s how we kind of built SRM, you know, in all reality, when I was at a big firm, I do have a disagreement with large firms, and that I don’t I think they’re limited in being advisors. And the reason for that is there’s a lot of inherent conflicts of interest within these large firms, especially ones owned by banks, where you have a lot of upselling that’s going on, and if people get bonus for those upsellings, and if you, if you don’t sell their products, you you get busted for something called selling away. So that’s not really advisement to me. That’s more of the sales process. And so for me opening up, SRM, we wanted to have a practice that took away all those inherent conflicts of interest to the best of our ability and and so we don’t have, I can go out and get 10 quotes on a mortgage, and instead of only giving my my bank’s quote, We can do a lot of different things that we can advise differently now that we couldn’t do before. And so it’s it’s been a liberating and a liberating experience to to set up.

19:54 Jim Beach : SRM now, did you have any sort of agreements with Merrill Lynch that you were. Allowed to poach clients? Where did you get your bed or your group of 36 families that are with you? Do you have to market now? You just have your group, and you don’t need to expand

20:13 Richard McWhorter : At all? Yeah, it’s a great question. So when we let when you leave a firm of any sort, Meryl, in this case, you know your clients have a decision to make, right? So you have the ability, there’s a protocol, but you have an ability to reach out to them. You can’t take documents. There’s all these things to the protocol. And so you can reach out to your clients and say, Hey, we, you know, we’ve we’ve left Merrill Lynch, and we’ve gone someplace else. And you can either stay with Merrill Lynch and they’ll give you an advisor, or are you can come with us. And so when we left Merrill, we were managing about $1.88 billion we brought over 1.8 billion of that 1.88 and then I think we’re sitting around 2.1 or so, two to 2.1 depending on the day of assets that we manage for these families.

21:13 Jim Beach : Okay, so a lot of them were able to go over with you.

21:16 Unknown Speaker : Yes, a lot of them were nice enough to come

21:25 Jim Beach : And then you operate on a percent of what you manage, and everything out of that correct. So it’s an easy financial business to run, isn’t it?

21:40 Richard McWhorter : Very, very it’s we. We have a, it’s a one fee shop. So we have one fee. It covers everything, everything that we do. There’s no additional fees for, you know, being involved in their financial planning or estate planning or whatever. It’s just one fee for it all. And there really is, it’s basically about the same fee for just about every client. There’s a little bit of wiggle room. We have a couple clients that are in the billion dollar level. So those guys are a little bit different, but the majority of the clients are in the 25 to 100 million dollar range, and so for the whole family and and that’s those fees are all about the same. So we, yeah, but we, I don’t like having the I was on a I went to go look at going on to an airline recently, and the ticket was one price, and then you have all these search these other charges. If you want to sit down in the seat, or you want to put your bag up, or you want to bring a bag on, or you walked funny, all those types of things was an extra fee for so I don’t like that model, so we have one fee that covers everything.

23:01 Jim Beach : Have you seen now that cars are coming with subscription model add ons?

23:08 Richard McWhorter : $39 a month. You can buy the car, but you don’t get the key until you pay this extra fee. Yeah, I can’t stand, cannot stand that. So, yeah, we, you know, I’ve been doing this a long time now, and I’ve been in the business even longer. And, you know, one of the nice things about kind of coming up through the internship program that I went through was that, you know, I met so many people along the way, and I saw the good businesses, or what the ones that resonated with me? I saw the salesman, I saw the advisors. I saw, you know, I saw so much during that period of time, and then when I became a secretary, I think they call a client associate. Now, when you become a client associate, you’re dealing day to day with the clients and and the advisors and and all of that. So you know that education for me was so important in creating who I wanted to become in my practice. So it’s, it’s interesting. I one of the guys that I worked for 36 years ago. I just had lunch with a couple weeks ago, and I told him that I said he was one of the he was one of the guys that I really looked up to as an advisor, and he was shocked by that, by the way, so I love, I, you know, I love that education that I was able to get during that period of time.

24:55 Jim Beach : And are you able to pass that on now?

24:58 Richard McWhorter : Trying to, we have, we have five. Interns right now, working working here, and, you know, we have four of them are college graduates and either economics or finance, and we’re trying to guide them and show them the business. And if this is something they want to do, a couple are going to grad school now, but the others will see if they decide that this is the road they want to go down. You know, one thing I will mention is that the business has changed dramatically over the last 30 years. I mean, just dramatically. And so today, there’s my practice is, you know, I spend 60% of my day reading research all day long. And a lot of people, that doesn’t resonate for right? A lot of people are an advisors or analysts or whatever within these firms, whether it’s RIA or with a bulge bracket firm, either side of those is, you know, there’s, there’s the selling process, which a lot of people are very good at. I’m not a very good that’s not who I am. I’m much more. I like to have the research. I like to do all the I like to do the work behind it. I like to understand as much as possible, you know and critically think through different situations or different what happens if you know, you know, just not to get political in any way, but to say that you know if, if you, if you look at terrorists, or you look at immigration, or you Look at the war, you look at oil prices, whatever that is, we kind of have to understand the ramifications from each one of those to the best of our ability. And so I spend most of my days is doing that stuff, you know, to find people that would be interested in doing that is, is really the trick at this moment. And we’ll see, we’ll see how that goes.

27:01 Jim Beach : Well, it’s a fascinating business, and I appreciate the insights that you have given into it. Richard, it looks absolutely fascinating because, you know, you’re Beverly Hills, so the assumptions there are, you know, I remember one time we hired one of the LA big PR firms, Perkins or Cowans. You know, I’m talking Perkins, yes, yeah. And when I came home and told, you know, the group about it in Atlanta, one of the things that they had used to sell us, this was 30 years ago, was that Clint Eastwood was one of their biggest clients. So everyone in the office was like, when do we get to meet Clint? You know? Obviously we get to meet Clint because of it, you know. And we never met a single celebrity, and they bill those are the type people. I like your billing model by the first thing that went through my mind when you mentioned that was a consultant that we hired one time, and through all of the strange things that happened in life, we ended up having a meeting in my mother’s dining room, which was quite luxurious and such, And he sent her flowers to thank her for using the dining room. He then billed us for the flowers plus 25%

28:31 Richard McWhorter : That’s, yeah. Listen, it’s, you know, the Beverly Hills model and all of that. It is different. But I also do think that it’s how we navigate this world out here. You know, there is this concept of what it is, and then when you kind of, I’ve been doing this here for 30 years now. I don’t live, I live an hour away from here. So when you come, when I come to Beverly Hills, you know, there is an absolute navigation of what’s going on here in the little microcosm I live in, right? I mean, Beverly Hills is grand, but this is, you know my little microcosm within Beverly Hills. I know where people are at I Know where you know on different nights. I know what’s popular, what’s not popular, where the you know, if you want to go see celebrities, we know where to go, right? If you want to see where the other financial advisors are and where they’re hanging out, I know where to go. You know, it’s all of that type of navigation of the kind of the inner workings of my little microcosm. So, you know, Beverly Hills is a being in itself, and there is such, there’s such. It’s a wonderful movie that’s a reality show. Going on at all times, for lack of a better description, but, but I do think that, you know, navigating this world out here and and the the perception and the misperception of what it what it really is, is, is, is a whole nother game.

30:19 Jim Beach : So how do we find out more. Follow you online, get in touch.

30:23 Richard McWhorter : Yeah, so I’m on LinkedIn. We’re at Richard McWhorter, mcwaters, MC W, H, O, R, T, E R, or you can go to our website. It’s S, R, M, Sam, Robert Mary, private wealth, calm and reach out if you have any questions.

30:39 Unknown Speaker : And that’s why,

30:41 Jim Beach : Fantastic, Richard, thank you so very much. Great information. We’d love to have you back.

30:45 Unknown Speaker : Thank you so much. I appreciate the time, and we will be right back. You.

31:00 Intro 2 : You. Well, that’s a wonderful question, actually. Oh my gosh, I love the opportunity to do this. Thank you, Jim,

31:10 Intro 2 : Wow, that’s, that’s, that’s a great one. You know, that is a phenomenal question. That’s a great question. And, and I don’t have a great answer,

31:18 Intro 2 : That’s a great question. Oh, that is such a loaded question, and that’s actually a really good question. School for startups radio,

31:27 Jim Beach : We are back and again. Thank you so very much for being with us. Very excited to introduce another great thinker. Please welcome Kevin Lawrence. He has spent the last three decades cracking the code on how to keep companies growing. He has worked side by side with CEOs and leadership teams across North America, Asia, Middle East and Europe and even Australia to develop a proven approach to help companies go from 10s of millions to hundreds of millions in revenue. He is author of your oxygen mask first, which sold very well and has now got a new book out called the four forces of growth. Defy the odds and keep your company scaling. Kevin, welcome to the show. How are you doing today?

32:13 Kevin Lawrence : I’m doing great. Thanks for having me. I’m looking forward to our conversation.

32:16 Jim Beach : I am too. I love your first book title, the idea of the oxygen mask and putting it on yourself before your kids and so just briefly tell us about that, because I get, I just think it’s such a brilliant title.

32:33 Kevin Lawrence : Yeah. Well, lots of you know, lots of entrepreneurs, founders, executives, you know, they work really, really hard, and usually they’re successful because they effort more than other people. Well, they’re committed. They work hard, and they make things happen, and in that journey, it works really well. And every once in a while, they push a little too hard, they drain their batteries a little bit too much, and they start to get burnt out and frayed at the edges. And so all of us do that’s just part of the game, and you’re watching your mask first is about, how do you keep yourself, you know, energized and charged up in situations where you’re likely to get drained so you can avoid, you know, melting down or burning out or or just kind of getting in your own way. So it’s just strategies to to keep going when you’re up to big things,

33:19 Jim Beach : And it sold enough to generate 375 five star reviews on Amazon. That’s a really, really successful book. I don’t ever see them up that high in non fiction. You do, but not in fiction. This is a very successful book.

33:38 Kevin Lawrence : Kevin, don’t thank you. Yeah, well, you know, we, we’ve shared it with a lot of people, right? The principles, like, none of this stuff is rocket science, but a lot of it is reminders and permission to remember. Like, if we take really, really good care of ourselves and are strong and energized at our best, we radiate better stuff at work and with our family too.

34:02 Jim Beach : Yes, can you give us a couple of the habits just to refresh?

34:08 Kevin Lawrence : Yeah, like one of them is called resilience rituals. It’s knowing, what are the things that you do that charge you up and make you feel your best? And we look at, you know, things related to your body, your mind and your spirit, like, why was your body? People know exercise and eating well. And almost every executive and CEO we work with has that on their goals, some sort of discipline to stay strong and then for your mind, people, at some point, especially as they get into their 30s and 40s, have some sort of practice to keep their mind calm and grounded seems to be when our 20s, it doesn’t matter as much, but people have a practice to mentally stay clear and and seeing opportunities and the possibilities around them, and then spirit. We all just have things that really make us feel great. And people have different habits, or, you know, hobbies or passions, or. We were talking with some some friends about this on the weekend, and, you know, one of them, he loves to carve. The other likes to write. And this guy’s feel carving wooden, you know, Wooding, wooden sculptures. Somebody else likes to cook, like everyone has their someone else’s playing guitar. We all have these things, and we just it, just it just makes us feel right. And we call it resilience rituals, where these rituals you got to keep doing. Unfortunately, you know, when, when things go rough, or we get a little bit overburdened, we often stop them, which leads to us getting more likely to get, you know, burnt tone and drained. The other one is just continuing to learn like, learn like your life depends on. It’s one of the chapters, and the curiosity to keep learning and expanding what you know and how the world works is another one of the major habits, and finally, is about just building an incredible team, and it’s called The chapter is called Make Yourself useless, is building a team that’s stronger than you need, and can thrive without you, which is a very, very high bar as well. But generally, when people are exhausted and work is not going well, usually it’s because their team isn’t strong enough, and the team is kind of dragging them down.

36:15 Jim Beach : All right. Well, congratulations on that again. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a book with that many reviews tell us about the new book, the four forces of growth, defy the odds and keep your company scaling.

36:31 Kevin Lawrence : Yeah, well, if you look at the old your oxygen mask, first that was about, how do you scale yourself as an individual, and this one is about, how do you keep a company that’s scaling? Most of the companies that we work with are already very successful, but they want to continue that pattern for the next decade or two. And what we’ve seen again and again within our own clients in the past and prospective clients that call us, they have like, beautiful, detailed strategic plans, and they work really hard, but then they stop growing, or the growth slows. And it’s not because it’s not an opportunity. Usually what happens is they work really hard on the wrong things. So you can have a beautifully documented plan, it can just be the wrong plan. So the four forces we’ve taken the principles of flight, which is the theme of the previous book as well, but what, basically, what makes an airplane fly, and then, you know, translated that to the world, the business. And how do you actually keep the growth engine strong? And of course, the bigger you get, the more issues you have, so the harder it is. But how do you continue to make sure you’re making the right investments in growth and and not doing things that inadvertently kill your growth, that you don’t even realize that when you’re doing it interesting.

37:47 Jim Beach : I’m trying to think of the four pieces of air, or aeronautics, that are going to be in the book. So obviously you have some sort of lift, some sort of power. I’m not getting the others real fast. So go ahead and dive in and tell us you’re there, you’re

38:01 Kevin Lawrence : There, you’re there, you’re there. So yeah. So basically, if you go in the simplest version of all the four forces of flight, our lift of the shape of the wings, takes the plane up, and the thrust of the engine takes it forward. And when you combine the lift, right, yep. So when you take the thrust of the engine, combine it with the lift, the plane goes forward and up, not makes the plane fly, but the lift of the wings is fought or pulled down by the weight, and the thrust of the engine is counter or offset by the drag along the fuselage. Those you have to kind of fight the negative forces to get the positive. So we look at lift that you know, that takes the plane up in the world of businesses opportunities. Those are the possibilities for new customers, new products, new services, new territories, whatever it happens to be. So that takes a business up all the new opportunities, and then the thrust of the engine forward is like courage. So you can be surrounded by opportunities, but you have to have the courage to act on them, to actually make something happen. The challenge is you can have all the courage in the world, which is hard to sustain, but those opportunities that take the business up are fought by problems that pull the business down and and the simple summary of the cheat code is, as businesses get bigger, there’s more problems, and most leaders and CEOs get pulled down by the problems, and they get distracted by them, and they think they’re doing the right thing, because it feels good, and people are happier when you fix a bunch of problems. The challenge is, problems never go away, and you could spend all day, every day, for years on problems, and you could always be fixing them. That’s great, but then nobody ends up spending any time on the opportunities, and the opportunities drive growth or the problem. Problems generally drive improvement or efficiency or profitability. So if you if you really keep fixing problems, you get an efficient, profitable business. But generally, nobody pays attention to the actual growth, and the business slows down. Although it’s nicely, it’s very strong and profitable.

40:20 Jim Beach : Is part of what you’re seeing. Just the stages of growth that businesses tend to slow down around 1,000,001.5 and then they tend to have another peak around four and a half or five, and then, yeah, maybe at 10 or not. So much

40:36 Kevin Lawrence : That that’s different. I know exactly we talk about. We talk about that in scaling up a book that I was a key contributor to. So, no, not that at all. That is as you definitely, as you outgrow your systems or your people at different levels. And that is, you know, true and common where people get stuck at different levels of growth. This isn’t that. It’s something different. This is why most companies never double in size. They get to 10 million, but they don’t make it to 20 or 50. It’s a different factor is that that all businesses face this at every stage. It’s just because there’s constantly so many problems that are distracting and rewarding when you fix them that people so I’ll give you an example. So many CEOs have a hard time staying focused on growth. Ideally, a CEO would spend 50% of their time, five, oh, percent of their time focused on growth. That means that they’re in the market, talking to customers, vendors, being connected with where the company is going, and laying down the foundation of the track, you know, for for the next few years, not so much this year, but, you know, a few years down the road and and so those types of habits are very hard to stay focused on, because there’s so many day to day problems with the people and the processes and the customers. So essentially, most people just won’t end up spending enough time on it, because they’ll be pulled by these other things, and they’ll be tricked into thinking they’re making the right moves, when inadvertently, they’re actually hurting. They’re helping today’s performance, but they’re hurting tomorrow’s growth.

42:25 Jim Beach : All right, I like that line. So can we go through the four forces? I feel like we kind of cheapskate them a little bit because we are obsessed in the airplane analogy. Can you go through one by one and tell us what we need to work on there, or what we need to focus on one.

42:42 Kevin Lawrence : Yeah, if we convert it to the quadrants, it actually might be be helpful. So if you take the first two forces of of lift, which we call we convert it to opportunities, and then courage, which is like the thrust of the engine. So you have, if you have courage to push ahead and you have opportunities, that’s where you get growth, because you’re doing new things. And we define growth in the book as driving the core x, or the unit of the business. And this is this really helps people to see more clearly. People talk about growth, and people have their own definitions, but in our perspective, growth only counts as more x’s. So, for example, we’re a strategic growth firm, so number of clients that we work with on a quarterly basis, like as long term partnerships, that’s our x. If we’re a SaaS software company, it’s number of users. You know, if we’re a bank, it would be a number of customers. You know, if we’re a real estate developer, it’s the number of units that we sell. If we’re a manufacturer, it’s widgets. So real growth is when those core X’s grow. So that’s what happens in that growth quadrant. You have opportunities. You have courage to act on it. You get growth, which is measured by more of your core unit in your business, the quadrant below it, you still have courage, but you’re pulled down by problems like we talked about before, and we call that the improvement quadrant. It’s a critical, critical quadrant. You need to continually improve things, but if all you do is improve things. There’s not going to be any resources left for the, you know, the growth quadrant above. So improvement is streamlining things, improving customer service, leveraging your costs better all of those, you know, quality and speed and efficiency type things. So that’s improvement, and that drives your profit for each of your exes. And it’s, again, it’s very important, but you can’t just do that. So if we, if we switch in behind that quadrant, you’re still focused on problems, but instead of having courage, you’re fearful, and fear has kicked in, and that quadrant is agony, and that’s where your, you know, your your your, your fear. Full about problems, and you need some of that. You need to be thinking and worrying about things. And this is where, like compliance and legal and all that stuff kicks in to make sure that you are indeed doing the right things. Now, if you do too much of it, then you’re just, obviously, you really hurt the business. And then the final quadrant in the top left corner is when you’re fearful, but you’re focused on opportunities. And we call this analysis, and we all know analysis is great. You need to do some of it, and enough of it. And if you do too much of it, if the fear kicks in way too much, then you’re just analysis paralysis. You’re over analyzing and just going in circles. So the ideal quadrant, the one we have to pay attention to is having enough time in growth. Every business is different, and again, growth is when you’re opportunity focused and you have courage. And the place that people don’t have to worry about we all spend more than enough time on, is that improvement quadrant, where, again, you’re problem oriented, but you’re having courage to do something about it.

46:03 Jim Beach : Tell us about Lawrence and CO and the type clients you have there. I’m on the website. You have a big team, 10 people or so more than that.

46:16 Kevin Lawrence : Yeah, there’s 12 of us that do the work. Yeah, yeah,

46:18 Jim Beach : That’s quite well. We’re just not to, you know, of salary every month, you know, so talk to us about building that kind of advisory firm. To so large. How do you build an advisory firm to 12 people?

46:35 Kevin Lawrence : Yeah, well, I don’t think it’s that large. I think we’re just getting started. Like I always, you know, feel like we should be better, but, you know, we I’ve been doing this for 30 years. So I did it 20 years on my own, you know, with clients around the world. And I love the I love helping organizations grow and thrive and seeing the leaders become more capable at the same time. So our clients stay with us a long time, and then they were for others. So I couldn’t keep up. And then one of the executives I worked with at a client, he had left and gone on his own to consult. And then he approached me and said, hey, you know, he said I would do some work with you. I’d like to do more of this. So his name’s Dean, so he started doing work, and then one just led to another led to another. So we just brought on two new people so far this year. And you know, we’ll probably add one person a quarter, but in our space, it’s lots of people want to help companies grow. It’s tricky because it’s very, very easy to work on the wrong thing. So we just keep we’re obsessed with doing a great job for our clients and continually getting better. And we have, you know, intense learning internally, like we have at least a day, a month, of our own internal development. So we stay sharp. We love doing it. We love helping people. So just, you know, it keeps growing because we’re trying to do the right thing for our clients, that’s at the end of the day, and for me as a leader, you know, spending time in that growth quadrant, writing the next book, you know, speaking, teaching, sharing these kinds of tools, which we try, as we say, to eat our own dog food and and do what we teach our clients. But we love it. We really, really enjoy this work.

48:10 Jim Beach : How do you determine what to charge a client?

48:15 Speaker 3 : That’s a great question. There’s sort of general, you know, market rates for doing the kind of work that we do. A couple of things. One is, you know, based on the experience and capability of the advisor. Is we have advisors that have, you know, varying degrees of of experience. That’s one and two that we always have this philosophy. We always want to leave some money on the table. We don’t want to charge for 100% of the value. We have to leave room there for the client to be thrilled and for us to also do some things that are above and beyond. But generally, there’s, you know, we have some guidelines that we use, and I’m sure that we could do a much better job of that, of getting that number right. We kind of have guidelines we use, and, you know, clients tend to stay a long time, so we assume we’re in the right neighborhood. I’m sure there’s places that we could charge more, but we do believe in leaving some value on the table the best we can.

49:17 Jim Beach : Okay, but give us some more detail. I mean, do you ask them if you can afford $100,000 are they too small or the size relevant? Do you have a method to justify the costs that you

49:30 Kevin Lawrence : Ask for? No, no, we just basically have like we generally with our clients. We work with them, where we’re in person with them, usually one day a quarter or two. Our approach is very simple. And if they’re a smaller company, you know, if they’re under, you know, 10 or 20 million of revenue, they might be more likely to do one day a quarter. And then if they’re, you know, most of our clients are, you know, the top end of small or in the mid market. And for most. Of them, we do too, so we don’t really justify it. We just tell them what it’s going to cost and if they want to do it, and we have set fees. So usually they’re referred by other clients, so they already know what that client is paying, and having to have an idea of cost. Okay, so the reality, the thing, the thing about our work is our contracts are open, so our focus is, look, if we do a good job, you’re going to invite us back every quarter, and if you don’t, we have two things in it. One, you’re not locked into a contract. And two, if you’re not happy, don’t pay the bill. And that’s our policy. Is that we just we don’t want people to pay if they’re not happy.

50:39 Jim Beach : Wow, that’s quite a policy.

50:42 Kevin Lawrence : Well, I guess we’re supposed to be in service of the customer. We want to be their partner. So why? I don’t want I don’t want someone to pay if they’re not happy, that’s not good for them. It’s also not good for our business. We need to know if, and again, we do a lot of work to make sure we’re plugged into our clients and other happy. Yeah, we’re serious. Again. We do this because we love it, and we believe that our work should speak for itself, and they should want to invite us back. You know, just, I was just in Singapore two weeks ago with one of my clients, and we’ve been doing this together for 16 years. You know, I’d had a dinner in January with one of our clients who’ve been working together for 24 years. And, you know, we’re in this to do long term relationship. So there’s, I don’t like any of that, Bs, where they should feel forced, like they need to have to have to work with us.

51:28 Jim Beach : That’s very impressive. I don’t know that many consultancies would do that. And I think you’re right.

51:40 Kevin Lawrence : Yeah, I think you’re right. We have a different philosophy, though. So it’s like we, we can’t help but do that, because I don’t, yeah, I want long term our clients, keep building our business for us, and we want to keep it that way. We do not want to take that for granted.

51:55 Jim Beach : Is there anything, does that have anything to do with the fact that you’re a Canadian company? Is it just dollar better than us Americans again?

52:06 Kevin Lawrence : No, I don’t. It’s not about, it’s not about Canadian or or, I mean, it’s just, it’s the way we are. I think it’s just a philosophy of creating value in partnership. It’s, it’s, you know, at the end of the day, I always look at, what would I want if I was the customer? So I think it’s just obsession with what a customer wants. All right, very impressive. Yeah, I’ll just again. I’m sure there’s lots of better ways to do it. It’s just the way that we do it, right? We try to keep it as simple. Everything we do is to make it simple. One simple in terms of the strategies we use, and also simple to work with us.

52:39 Jim Beach : Well, obviously it’s worked as well. So obviously it’s worked.

52:47 Kevin Lawrence : Yeah, it seems to it can always be better. Probably like, oh, we always, we always think we can do it, but do better, but we do some things.

52:54 Jim Beach : Well, how do we find out more? Follow you online, get in touch.

53:00 Kevin Lawrence : Yeah, just Lawrence and Cole. Lawrence, a, n, D, C, o.com, you can search up the four courses of growth, or your oxygen math first, or any of those resources are available everywhere. Yeah, and if we can help, we’re happy to help again. We love doing this. And after 30 years, growth is simple. Growing a company is hard work, but it’s so simple and so predictable. There’s patterns of all kinds of people that have done it before, and the biggest thing is not doing the things that that actually slow your growth, which people don’t realize. So yeah, but something we can do to help. We’re we love doing this. We’re happy to help.

53:40 Jim Beach : Kevin, thank you so much, and we’d love to have you back. Thanks for being on the show. Good luck with the book.

53:46 Unknown Speaker : Yeah, yeah, thank you for having me. Appreciate it. We are

53:49 Jim Beach : Out of time, but back tomorrow. Be safe, take care, and go make a million dollars by now. You.