Episode 284 with John St.Pierre: Aligning Business Goals with Life Ambitions

Join me on this episode of the Ready Yet podcast as I chat with John St. Pierre, CEO of the Rhombus Group and author of 'The 100 Million Dollar Journey'. Discover how 'patient ambition' can transform the way you build and scale your business. We dive into the importance of aligning your business goals with a long-term life plan, avoiding instant gratification traps, and navigating the messy middle of entrepreneurial growth.

GUEST RESOURCES

A seasoned entrepreneur, John boasts a 25-year career co-founding and leading businesses. He jump started his journey with College Pro Painters, then thrived in leadership roles at startups before co-founding two successful companies exceeding $50 million. Today, John leads BrandPoint Services, a flourishing $100 million+ commercial contracting firm.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnstpierre

https://100mjourney.com

https://brandpointservices.com

https://entrepreneursunited.us

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Transcript

Episode 284 with John St.Pierre: Aligning Business Goals with Life Ambitions

Transcribed by Descript 

Erin Marcus: All right hello, and welcome to this episode of the Ready Yet podcast. I'm excited about today's guest, Mr. John St. Pierre, because number one, I rescheduled on him like a million times because evidently all the chaos in my life aligns with when you're on my calendar. But you said something to me right before we got started, it's a phrase I think I'm gonna Have to paint it on a wall or something.

Erin Marcus: It was that excited about it. But before we get in all this, why don't you tell everybody who you are and what you do? 

John St.Pierre: Yeah, absolutely. Are you ready yet, Aaron? You ready? Okay. Cause I've been waiting for weeks to talk to you. So are you ready yet? No. I appreciate have you having me here on, on your podcast.

John St.Pierre: My name is John St. Pierre. I am a chairperson, CEO of the Rhombus Group. We're a private company with five small, medium-sized businesses during about $110 million in revenues collectively. And I'm also recent author wrote a book called The a hundred Million Dollars Journey which is your guide to growing the Business of Your Dreams without falling off the cliff.

John St.Pierre: Why did I write it? Because I fell off the cliff trying to grow a business too quick, too aggressive, too fast. And so now I help entrepreneurs, across the globe when they get to certain sizes of their business, get past the messy middle phase, the growth paradox phase to find themselves in a spot where they can still build the business of their dreams the right way and not the wrong way.

John St.Pierre: Like I did before. 

Erin Marcus: I had a coach once say to me, the best thing about you is you'll get on stage in front of a thousand people and go, look, just don't do what I did. You'll be ahead of the game. 

John St.Pierre: Exactly. 

Erin Marcus: It's really not that hard. Just don't do it that way. I love it. I really love it. And I, so the phrase, it has me all excited because.

Erin Marcus: As I was, when you said this to me, as I'm getting older, and I feel really weird saying that because I don't have kids, so I think because I don't have kids, I still feel even more like a kid, right? I don't have that external, visual, Whoa. Reflection of the fact that time is passing and I'm getting older, according to any Facebook quiz I take, I'm still a 13 year old boy.

Erin Marcus: I don't know. It's really weird, but I have noticed a shift in perspective as I've gotten older. Maybe I've gotten wiser. And the phrase that you talked about that you said was Patient ambition and as someone who grew up saying just hit the nail harder, taking pride in my ability to handle the chaos identifying as a problem solver with their pants on fire, which means I'm only proud of myself when my hair is on fire and I'm solving ridiculous problems, right?

Erin Marcus: Having my identity wrapped up into that and. The fall apart that seems to be part of the shift from that to what I feel you're talking about is brutal. And yet, I think it's the only way you get to survive this craziness. So with all that, tell us, tell me more. 

John St.Pierre: Yeah, so I can go in a bunch of different directions, so you direct me where you want to go.

John St.Pierre: But we're living in this simulation called life. And if you think about it as like a, just as long video game that you have to play I think we, as people. Have goals and ambitions. And then you see things on social media and you see these entrepreneurs having their unicorn businesses and selling for a billion dollars.

John St.Pierre: And you think, Oh, me too. And you start building, but if you don't, 

Erin Marcus: yeah, 

John St.Pierre: if you don't have the right level of just reality about how much time we actually have, which is a long time. Like we're in our fifties now, but we still got 30 years ahead of us. If not more than that with advances in biomedicine and AI and everything else, we may live to 120.

John St.Pierre: We got a lot of, like lanes in front of us here to keep growing, but yet we want to get to that goal next year. We want to get here now. We want to have, our goals and dreams. So we're trying to get to the destination as opposed to enjoying the journey. But in this simulation journey that we're living in, things are going to happen.

John St.Pierre: We're going to have illness. We're going to have different situations happen to us. We're going to have positive events. We have all these different things that happen to us. They're all meant to challenge us and have us grow as humans. But if you look at it as a long game, And not a short game, your perspective starts changing because now you can have a little bit more patience within your ambition and not raise the capital.

John St.Pierre: Maybe you shouldn't have raised, maybe you should have kept all your equity in your business. You shouldn't have raised that equity to dilute yourself. And now I have people you have to answer to make sure to just run your own business the right way. Or if you're okay, putting the block, block by block in your business, keep building the right processes and steps.

John St.Pierre: So you can generate the right cash flows to reinvest in your business, to grow, If you have that patient ambition and realize you're playing in a long game, your perspective on everything starts changing. And you have that still that level of ambition of wanting to achieve your goals and dreams in life, but not feeling that you've got to do it next week.

Erin Marcus: And I think social media, regular media makes it seem normal, expected. And truthfully, you're a failure if you don't. instantaneous. 

John St.Pierre: 100%. I used to 

Erin Marcus: call it the microwave life. Now it's the Amazon Prime life. I get mad if Like I don't even have to leave my house and I get annoyed if the thing that I want from anywhere in the world isn't on my doorstep the next day.

Erin Marcus: That's absurd. 

John St.Pierre: It's the instant gratification life we live in for sure. It goes back to, you can do the eight minute abs or the six minute abs. the six minute abs. That one's good. That one's going to get me there faster. So I completely get it. I think we all get it, but I think we all know what's happening.

John St.Pierre: We all realize. What is going on in that, but yet we still fall victim to it. We still keep scrolling, still keep dreaming. But I guess my point that I try and make Aaron for myself first, and then with others is a lot of time. I'll speak to entrepreneurs for a minute. I always had a business plan. I always had a business plan.

John St.Pierre: I had a three to five year business plan. Here's where we're going to take the business. Here's where I'd be in year one. Here's where I'd be in year three. Here's when you're five and everything else. What I didn't have was a life plan. I did not have a life plan. And so I was building my business, trying to achieve certain business goals that weren't really tied to what I wanted to achieve in life.

John St.Pierre: And so then I asked my, after I had this massive failure, In my life, in my business, excuse me, it had me come back and go, what is he trying to do? What was I really trying to do with this business? It wasn't even aligned to what I want in life, but wait, what do I want in life? And so then when I opened up that box, I said okay, what do I want in life?

John St.Pierre: What in the next 30 years of my life, what do I want? And I created a 30 year life plan for myself. Having that 30 year life plan, what happens next week is not that critical to the 30 year plan versus in my business plan. Oh my gosh, I can't believe this happened. There's so much stress. So I'm able to overcome some of those minor bumps and bruises because I'm, I have a longer game plan in my life.

John St.Pierre: And now I align my business plan to my 30 year life plan and it's a whole different perspective. 

Erin Marcus: It absolutely. And one of the things, one of the challenges I think people have And I've been writing about this a lot lately is you can't put together a 30 year business plan or life plan if you don't know what you want.

John St.Pierre: Yes. 

Erin Marcus: And I think one of the challenges That is happening that I see over and over again. I've done it myself is when you don't know what you want, you become susceptible to other people's marketing, other people's highlight reel, right? Like you be, 

John St.Pierre: yeah, if you don't know what you want, any path will do 

Erin Marcus: any path will do.

Erin Marcus: And so you look at the shiny version that looks good for you. And I say the word susceptible because I don't think the people creating the content and delivering the messages are doing it with any maliciousness. It's just you're susceptible to it now because you don't have your core and your foundation.

John St.Pierre: If this was a live session and there was 100 entrepreneurs in the room, and I said, raise your hand if you have a 30 year life plan. How many hands you think are going up out of a hundred, right? Very few. If I said, okay, maybe that's too much. How many of you have a life plan? I don't care if it's 30 years, 10 years, doing 

Erin Marcus: for Christmas.

John St.Pierre: Then of the entrepreneurs I sit down with, when we first start our, coaching arrangement, we work with them. We sit down in my conference room. I said, the first thing we're gonna do the first day is we're going to develop your 30 year life plan. And it's like a deer in headlights. 

Erin Marcus: Yeah.

John St.Pierre: Okay. What drives your passion? It's all external. It's my business. It's my kids. It's my family. No, you like, what do you want? You'll start there. And then ultimately at the end of the day, we look at the dry erase board and the sheet in front of us. And we're like they're like, Oh my gosh, I have a 30 year life plan.

John St.Pierre: And so now making decisions of what they want to do is somewhat now easier because they have it. And yeah. It's I thought it was interesting for me. I would take my entire management team and we would go away for two days to develop our strategic business plan, but I had never done it for myself, Erin.

John St.Pierre: I had never sat down myself and had the introspection and just the self reflection of what do I want? And we don't do it because we just get dragged all over the place to your point, not maliciously, but we just let it happen, 

Erin Marcus: we let it happen. We're we live in reaction mode because the other thing that I have found, and I just went through this and where your story started. I went through because I fell off a cliff, not because I was brilliant enough to figure out how to do it. I should do this, right? This is the catalyst is never fun. The catalyst is seldom a fun thing. But last almost a year now, as we're recording this last November, a series of things happened and I just, it was chaos.

Erin Marcus: And I, instead of setting goals, Which I was always good at. I decided, what did I want more of in my life? What were my intentions? And interestingly enough, what I realized is if I stopped chasing all of the external things, I realized so much of what I wanted in my life, I actually already had, I just wasn't slowing down long enough to realize it.

Erin Marcus: And because of all this external pressure to more, or you suck, I was chasing things that, period, I was just chasing things. 

John St.Pierre: Yeah. And I think there's a, there's also a premise. John Mitchell, he teaches the science of success at university of Texas, Austin. And he really ingrained this in me.

John St.Pierre: And it was look, 95 percent of what you do every day is subconscious. It was already pre programmed before you woke up. It's already pre programmed. And if you know how to train your subconscious mind and what you really want in life. It will start magically appearing. If you know exactly what you want, it will start magically appearing.

John St.Pierre: But if you don't know what you want, to the point you just made earlier, any path will do, and you end up all over the place and unfortunately. Unfortunately, it takes some people, most people, you and I and others, a wake up call to be slapped across the head and go, Whoa, you need to know what you want and be very intentional about what you want.

John St.Pierre: And then it will start appearing because if you don't, you're just going along. 

Erin Marcus: The other thing that's been interesting on my part over the last year, as I got clear on what I wanted. I wanted more freedom of time was one of the things. I didn't want to be working eight hours. I wanted more freedom of time.

Erin Marcus: And so I did a couple of technical things where I wasn't working on Mondays and Fridays anymore. And I just started to truncate my calendar. I, no appointments before 10, no appointments after four. And I started moving my calendar in. And what was, so I would have this freedom of time and I would, Create business practices that gave me freedom of time and here I was with exactly what I wanted and when I tell you my nervous system had a meltdown, right?

Erin Marcus: Because your brain is screaming no, this isn't how it works. When the thing you realize you want feels like it's the opposite of what I've done for decades. You're body is not takes your subconscious a while to get on board. 

John St.Pierre: It does. You're like, people don't know this or think about it, but you have to train your subconscious mind and that takes repetition and repetition.

John St.Pierre: As we know, you habit is 21 plus days or even longer, right? You need to do absolutely. The mind needs to be trained. It, It takes time to adjust and your body and mind will let you know when things aren't quite the same, right? We're creatures of habit, is the big thing there. And yeah I agree a hundred percent.

John St.Pierre: I think that's the one piece, when I talk to entrepreneurs, like have patient ambition what is your long term plan? Align your business to your long term plan. And. Stop being shiny object. We got to do this tomorrow. We got, we chasing it all over the place because once you achieve certain milestones on that planet and you'll start seeing the game a little bit differently.

John St.Pierre: So I look at it, I mentioned it earlier, see like a simulation. And I have used it recently a little bit more than maybe I feel comfortable using the word simulation. So I don't mean that there's a puppeteer up top. Who's I don't mean that what I mean by it is. If you're in this game and you're playing the game, hit a level, then you go to the next level and you go to the next level and you may, die.

John St.Pierre: And then you come back up and you're trying to get the next level. And if you think about it, as you start learning more about the game, you start seeing it a little bit clearer and you start seeing things before they happen. And I'm sure, we have this thing called gut feeling. It's not really a gut feeling.

John St.Pierre: It's that intuition of experience and seeing things of that, when, as you go through all your experiences in life. And to me, that's the joy of living. It's the joy of building a business and achieving. I just 

Erin Marcus: said you have to fall in love with the puzzle. 

John St.Pierre: Yes, with the game.

John St.Pierre: Fall in 

Erin Marcus: love with the puzzle, not just, people talk about letting go of the outcome. Don't hold on so tight. You have to let go of the outcome. This or something better. But fall in love with the puzzle. Fall in love with the process. Fall in love with the journey. And the outcome to I, I hesitate to say this because one of the questions that I have for you, because this all sounds great, except when you got to pay the bills.

Erin Marcus: And so how do you continue to practice your. Patient ambition, how do you continue to intentionally, that's one of my big words lately, intentionally create your life the way that you want it, not the way that you just happenstance by accident, reaction when the very real feeling stressors are looming above.

John St.Pierre: Yeah, I can give you a few examples and I'd love to hear yours as well, but I have had a few friends recently who were making significant income in corporate America who said, Hey, you know what? I'm tired of this. I'm going to start my own company. Left their cushy income job with a family and a house and everything else to go start their startup business.

John St.Pierre: Which, startups are not easy. Not all of them succeed. It takes four or five, maybe 10 years to get this thing going. And they just assumed without any patient ambition whatsoever, just driven ambition. This thing's going to work. And then six months, a year later, you meet with them and they're like, Oh my.

John St.Pierre: Gosh, what did I do? I was just like, when in reality they should have stayed in their role, maybe started their little business on the side, start growing it over the course of the next five years or so, get it to the point where it's making enough income and then make the changes. That's patient ambition versus just supposed to 

Erin Marcus: burn the boats.

John St.Pierre: And if you're an entrepreneur, okay, it's too late, John, thanks for the advice, but I'm already here. How do I have patient ambition? That may be a different track, which is maybe you need to reset your expectations. So a lot of, the one problem with startup entrepreneurs is they show you their forecast.

John St.Pierre: Here's how I'm going to do next year. And you look at their forecast. You're like, I appreciate your optimism. But the 300% 

Erin Marcus: It increases not the norm, that's 

John St.Pierre: not happening. I hope it does. Great. But what do you need to do to make it happen? And it's either you gotta, I'm not, when I say patient ambition, I don't mean work four hour days.

John St.Pierre: You may have to put in. 14, 16 hour days to get to the income levels, if that's really what you want to do. But if that budget's unrealistic, maybe you shouldn't have hired that admin. Maybe you shouldn't have gotten a nice office and you should have worked in your basement. There's a function.

John St.Pierre: If it's a money function, like I, all the startups I had were on milk rates, trying to figure it out until we had the income to then spend it. You got to live within your means as a startup. Cause if you don't, what ends up happening is you go to the bank to loan money and put a personal guarantee. You go to investors.

John St.Pierre: I got this great concept. I need some more money and then you lose your equity. So I'm a big keep your own equity, but you have to have this very smart patient ambition goals that you know what you need for income to live within and then manage your expenses accordingly and or work harder to go make the sales.

John St.Pierre: So I think that's the way I view it. And then as your business starts growing, If you're in a different stage, let's call you in your lifestyle stage of the business. But your business still isn't making the money that you needed to make. Now you potentially need some expert coaches that can come alongside you, like yourself or myself or others who can help you get your business out of this messy middle.

John St.Pierre: Because Aaron, you and I know, five, 10, 20 million, our businesses that don't make any money. 

Erin Marcus: That was one of the first things I saw in this world was people going on and on about making half a million dollars, but not talking about the 750 they spent to make it like you. And I think, to your point, though, I think you get to reset.

Erin Marcus: If you're paying attention, the money can ebb and flow and Learning how to pull back without being crushed by the fact that something didn't work. I think in addition to one of the challenges is in addition to thinking, everything should happen instantaneously. We think. There should never be a failure.

Erin Marcus: Correct. Ray, we're terrified. One of my favorite Gary Vee videos, it was a short video, is he said, the problem is most people are out there trying to make three decisions and they're all perfect. 

John St.Pierre: Yep. 

Erin Marcus: They're trying to be three and O. He's at the end of the day, I'm trying to be 117 and 82. Most things don't.

Erin Marcus: That's right. And that accepting failure And accepting that and not having it mean anything more than, Oh, look what I've learned. One more thing that didn't work. It has to be part of the process. Even if you're, even if you've gotten out over your skis financially, you can adjust back to exactly what you're talking about.

Erin Marcus: It's not fun, but going back to your patience. Wait, we've been there. You never want to tell the person who's doing a great job that you can't afford to work with them anymore and that they, have to cut corner, have to cut back, have to do that, right? But to your point earlier, if you're working a 30 year plan instead of a six month plan, Those temporary situations no longer feel like permanent circumstances.

John St.Pierre: There are bumps in the road. 

Erin Marcus: There are bumps In a 

John St.Pierre: 30 year plan. You have that so uglily said, because they seem so monstrous. 

Erin Marcus: It's horrible. 

John St.Pierre: But in the grand scheme of the 30 years. A little bummed. 

Erin Marcus: Yeah. And I think you need to give yourself space for it to suck and be okay and stop. I, the, one of the biggest lessons I've learned in the last 18 months in particular is when things feel like they're not working, maybe instead of trying harder, I need to just stop for a minute.

Erin Marcus: That was not normal. 

John St.Pierre: Twist your tongue seven times like your mom used to say, right? 

Erin Marcus: That was not normal for me. 

John St.Pierre: No but it's true. Think, just think about it. Like when you're agitated, my mom told me twist your tongue seven times before you say anything, because you need to just, when I get an email that I want to viscerally respond to, I wait until the next morning and my response is a lot more eloquent.

Erin Marcus: Right. 

John St.Pierre: When you're in a situation as an entrepreneur, You should take that time to just really reflect, think through, and then not be afraid to make the decision that although very difficult in the time will be a bump in the grand scheme. And I also struggle with that because we all have a heart. We all don't want to, make the wrong decision or ruin a relationship or whatever it may be.

John St.Pierre: It's very difficult. And by the way, there's a lot of people in business, private equity firms specifically. They don't have that bone, right? They'll come in and clean house in your company if you bring them in, right? But we as founding entrepreneurs don't have that same thing in our blood, but at the same time, we still need to do what's right for us, our families, our employees, the business, our customers, vendors, everybody.

Erin Marcus: And we were chatting just catching up before we hit record. And one of the things I said is, If what you're doing isn't in alignment with what you truly in your soul want, the universe has a way of making sure you don't, it doesn't work out. 

John St.Pierre: It absolutely does. The universe will always send you smoke signals some way, shape or form.

Erin Marcus: I said the universe, I, who did I say this to once? I'm like, the universe is a border collie, right? It'll bring you exactly, right? It'll keep bringing you things, but if you don't get clear on what you want, you're going to end up with this whole big pile of mess. And Sometimes it knows you better than you know yourself.

John St.Pierre: Awesome. No question. 

Erin Marcus: So if people want to continue this conversation with you, and I highly recommend they do, what is the best way to find out more information and get a hold of your book as well? How do I find it? 

John St.Pierre: Yeah, I certainly you can get the book on Amazon The 100 Million Dollar Journey.

John St.Pierre: My website is 100 M as in million, 100 M journey. com. And you can find all my social links and everything there. I do have a free workbook that goes along with the book that I think helps entrepreneurs walk through what I call the seven principles of entrepreneurial success. You can walk through those principles and see how your business is doing according to that.

John St.Pierre: And I also offer free consultations. Anybody ever wants to talk about their business situation they're in. My mission is to help entrepreneurs build the business of their dreams without falling off the cliff. So if I can help in any way, shape or form, I'm here. 

Erin Marcus: Awesome. Thank you so much. And we'll make sure all those links are in the show notes that everything you just said is just one click away from everybody.

Erin Marcus: So thank you for hanging out with me today. Above all else. I know time is the one thing we can't get back. So thank you for giving some of yours to me today. This is amazing. I love chatting with you. 

John St.Pierre: Awesome. Thanks, Erin.