EP.21 - The Courage to Scale: Geoffrey Gallo on Vision, Strategy, and Impact

In this episode of the Dynamic Business Leaders Podcast, host Roy Richardson and co-host Sean Murphy interview Geoffrey Gallo, Partner for Client Relations in the Central Florida region at H&CO USA. With a strong background in strategic advisory and business development, Geoffrey co-founded CEO Leadership Forums to tackle hiring and retention challenges faced by privately held companies. He shares insights on building resilient leadership communities, aligning talent with growth, and the evolving needs of mid-market businesses. Join us for a conversation that blends practical strategy with visionary leadership. 

Key Takeaways

Don't miss the opportunity to be inspired by Geoffrey's story. Tune in now to hear about his incredible journey.

Connect with Geoffrey Gallo

• Website: H&CO
• LinkedIn: Geoffrey Gallo

Connect with the Dynamic Business Leaders Podcast Hosts:

• LinkedIn: Roy Richardson
• LinkedIn: Sean Murphy

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Guest Introduction
• 2:35 Personal Backstory And Values
• 6:10 Facing Fear And Forming A Leader
• 11:15 Family Business, Global Expansion, Eastern Europe
• 17:50 Slowing Down To Inspire Across Cultures
• 22:20 Entrepreneurial Shift And Strategic Alliances
• 28:30 Houston Move, Setbacks, And Resilience
• 34:10 Creating Opportunity In Oil And Gas
• 39:50 Faith, Perseverance, And Identity
• 45:10 Vision, Goals, And Accountability
• 50:20 Advisory Over Compliance And AI
• 55:30 Tax Planning Mindset And Incentives
• 1:02:00 Practical Credits And Employer Benefits
• 1:06:40 Real Estate Strategy And Risk Management
• 1:12:00 Real-Time Intelligence And Fractional Talent
• 1:17:30 Rapid Fire: Books And Leadership
• 1:23:00 Dream Board Of Advisors
• 1:27:40 Stillness, Gratitude, And Daily Practice

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:03

Hello, I'm Roy Richardson, and this is the Dynamic Business Leaders Podcast. Welcome to the Dynamic Business Leaders Podcast, brought to you by Aurora Infotech, cybersecurity firm helping businesses keep their technology healthy and secure in today's digital world. I'm your host, Roy Richardson, and with me is my co-host, Sean Murphy. Sean, always great to have you here. And today we've got someone very special joining us.

SPEAKER_01: 0:30

Absolutely, Roy. This one just hits very close to home. Jeff, as I like to call in, he goes by Jeffrey, but I'm gonna call him Jeff. And I go back a little bit over a decade. Every time we get together, it's just insightful, thought-provoking, and I just feel like I come away just energized. You know, we just had the conversation before we went live here, just about you know, living and purpose and why and stuff like that. And I can't wait to go into his background and especially, you know, I'm looking forward to sharing this with our audience, especially around the Houston stuff. I remember the conversation when we he and I, the very first time I met Jeff, we were at the Starbucks in downtown Orlando at the Grand Bohem. And he told me the story about Houston, and I had heard it through the grapevine. And uh man, I cannot wait. Looking forward to to this session or this episode, and I can't wait to share with the the world because you know, just the local people, but anybody can can listen to this. So I just can't wait, man.

SPEAKER_00: 1:34

Anyway, there you go. And and I couldn't agree more, Sean. Jeffrey Gallo, who's our guest today, is a partner at H Co, and his career spans over 40 years in professional services, international business, and real estate investment. His mission: helping people move past fair and achieve their dreams. He's led companies across borders, built strategic alliances, and now guides business owners through growth and successful exits. Jeffrey, welcome to the show. We're thrilled to have you here, not just as a guest, but as someone who's inspired us personally. Welcome, my friend.

SPEAKER_03: 2:14

I am so grateful, and that is the word of the day, because it's right before Thanksgiving that I have friends like you, and it's very humbling to hear about yourself from your friends, and I am eternally grateful. So I'm I'm looking forward to a great time during this next hour or so.

SPEAKER_01: 2:33

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Well, before we dive into the incredible journey, let's start with something light and funny or fun. You go, Sean, go take it out. Well, what's one thing that people don't know about you?

SPEAKER_03: 2:48

That is always a fun thing. Right. I married my high school sweetheart 19 years later. And it was one of those things where we were set up on a blind date. My best friend was on a football team with me at Shawn High School in Manyola, New York, and and and I didn't have a date for the junior prom. So my sister has this birthday party at my house, and and he brings his girlfriend and there's a host of others. So she brought her best friend, Anne Marie Fiorentino. So she and I met in my living room at the age of 17, dated for a couple years. I was definitely not ready for the the power pack that she is, continues to be. She is an inspiration in my life. But long or short, you take it forward 17 years later, and we miraculously come back together again. She calls me, okay, because she was doing per diem work at a law firm who the partner of whom, the senior partner, just happened to live right next door to where my parents lived. I had moved back home for a period of time because I went into the family business. Long and short, we meet again. We basically at that time, my family business, I was going over to Eastern Europe a lot, and and we had a 5,000-mile courtship, which then basically I came to the moment of truth. Okay, I'm gonna follow her to Florida because that's where her family decided to relocate and came down here and I was commuting between here and New York City, Warsaw, Poland, and we got married with a specific vision in mind. We got married at the age of 36 years old. We said, okay, you're gonna take this forward. And what's so funny about it was that we're both from New York, Long Island, grew up eight miles from each other, and here I was a snow skier for 30 years. 30 years snow skier. I was a ski instructor for 10 of those years. And the last time I skied was the first winter I spent here in Orlando. We went up to Banner Elk, North Carolina, and that was the last time I set foot on a mountain skiing. So call it what it what it is. You came for love. I came for inspiration because just like you guys were talking, we're talking about how people inspire. And I truly believe my wife and her family and her mom, and I'll talk about her uh dur during this session, but were my guardrails for success, for guardrails for keeping me focused. And and you know, God put us together, you know, and we became parents at 40 years old, you know, when we adopted two kids from Siberia, Russia. So destiny works amazing. God works in very funny ways because, you know, we went through some tough times to get to that point, but I'm thanking him every step of the way at this point.

SPEAKER_00: 5:47

Amen to that. Amen. So so how how do you, you know, looking back on on giving up your skiing and and and moving to Florida and and you know, everything that that has transpired since then, how have those personal choices, you know, shaped or helped shape your leadership style today?

SPEAKER_03: 6:06

It's a very interesting comment there. Because when you make choices, sometimes they're made with the wrong intention. Everything I was about early on, I grew up in a family business. It was successful, but yet I never thought we were, you know, we had made it, right? Everything was based on running. Every vacation was a business thing with my father, okay. And everything, unfortunately, was based upon self-defense, dealing with your fear. I mean, that's right. Everything was dealing with that. So when I talk about my why, it is because I personally dealt with the with the phobias of failure, right?

SPEAKER_01: 6:57

But I gotta, I gotta say something. I remember when we met and had coffee that day, or it may have been a cup, you know, a couple of months later, uh, somewhere in that time frame, but you had talked about you're the youngest, right?

SPEAKER_03: 7:09

No, actually, I well, in the scheme of the families, yeah, yes. I'm at the younger thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 7:17

You were like, you were like Sean, I got the scrap for the the food, man. I'm like the youngest one in here. So I got a scrap in. And so that's where I get some of this this tenacity from. And I just, you know, I I thought that was so cool when you said that to me.

SPEAKER_03: 7:30

Do you do you know what's so interesting? A lot of people don't realize this or don't know this, and they they're shocked when they hear it. I was the little fat kid growing up, no athletic skill, was afraid. I stammered my way through elementary school. I was afraid of everything. My father got me going into sports because I had nervous energy. So the more contact sport the better. So, what did I ultimately do? Football, lacrosse. Okay. You know, I love skiing and skiing fast. So I wasn't afraid to fall. I got into the martial arts. A lot of people don't know that. I spent 10 years. I got it got to become a second degree black belt after college. You know, it was all of those, it was all of those things. But I but it it it it was dealing with my fear. Who am I? Right? You know, I grew up an overachiever, right? I grew up an overachiever in athletics. And I, you know, I went to went to Bucknell University, you know, I I played football across there. A lot of people go, oh my God, at your size, five, five, nine and 200 pounds, you were you played a college sports. Yeah, I was a way overachiever. However, what drove that was ultimately, and and you know, there's pros and cons of growing up in a business family. All right, my father was a was a driven guy, but in the scheme of things, he was the masochist, and my my uncle, his his his brother was this sadist. What does that mean? It was a yin and a yang. And my father was always having to run, run, run like hell. So that's all I ever saw. So when you go back to how did it shape things, I grew up in a clothing manufacturing business, a sweatshop in New York, Brooklyn, okay. And then we ultimately went modern in the mid-70s, and we came to Long Island and we bought an air-conditioned factory. Okay. So all of my times were in a factory warehouse environment. I learned everything that had to do with manufacturing and doing inventory on the last day of the year and you know, and all of this stuff. And I and say, you know, what's missing today, and this is part of what's causing my passion, is the education of our young people. They lack a warehouse experience. Okay. What's a warehouse experience? So, Sean, you and your sons, and you know, you're you were student athletes, right? So, so for for me, if it was during the summer, I was always having to prepare for the football season that came, right? I'd be getting up at five o'clock in the morning, you know, I'm in the factory at 6:30. At 5:30, I have to go in 95 degree heat and work out, all right. Every every week we had to send back when in college, I had to send back a written plan of accomplishment, right? Of all the miles that I ran, right? All the 220s and 440s and all that stuff. I mean, you you had to be disciplined that way. I say my experience in the family business and the way we had to operate clothing business margins are like razor thin. Okay. So there was great risk. I mean, growing up, we had millions and millions of dollars, you know, stretched out on lines of credit, hoping that we'd get paid six or eight months after we made the stuff. Okay. I mean, that's a that that's the environment that I grew up in. So I'm like, okay, you know, what what was I having to deal with as a young manager? Young manager. So, you know, there's a story we'll get to, but how I got into this world from from the world that I was in was simply because my father said 1982, I was on a ski lift with him, and we're going up up for eight minutes. I said, Dad, I think I want to go into the family business. And he goes, now we know what 1982 is like, right? You had the worst economy since the Great Depression. He's like, no, I think you should go and find a job. I'm like, find a job in this environment. So the long short there was, he said, and he told me why. And he was exactly spot on. He said, Jeff, you know, we're we're a manufacturer, a lot of the stuff we're doing is overseas now. A lot of our customers, like JCPenney, Montgomery Ward, you know, um Sears, and and Brawling to Code Factory, all these folks are starting to go direct to factories. So we're gonna get cut out somewhere along the line. Long and short is that's exactly what started to happen. But what but we made the switch ultimately where we moved a lot of our production from from the Far East to Eastern Europe, where we're we ultimately set up a trading company, and then we actually bought a couple of plants, okay? And that was late 80s and uh early 90s. So I said, okay, all right, now that was a time to go in because now we had this big investment. We needed gallows in in the picture. I understood the business. So a lot of my time was was going over there. And mind you, when I was there, you go, okay, this is a former communist country that loves America. So the so the young people love the idea of capitalism, cutting ahead, and all that stuff. So what did this guy have to do? Who was who was always like like his like my father's brother, just put the pressure on him, he would perform, I would have to do that, and all of a sudden I found geez, I'm running too fast, I'm being too intimidating, I gotta stop. And it was my wife who was traveling with me at the time, said, Jeff, slow down. These people are are are looking up to you. They want your they they want what you have, but you've got to be able to do that. Yeah, they want your leadership and your slower, more peacefully. And I'm like, and I did it. I caught them like, okay, my job is now to inspire them to use their their their newfound freedom. Use the newfound freedom that that now working for an American company in a former communist country will give you. And that literally helped it. I could tell you a story there about that situation that was just really amazing. Ultimately, we impacted over 2,000 people who worked for us at the time. Okay. That that were involved in so and we all had a role, and I'll talk about the five, the five different roles that that came out of a book that I once read, and I realized what my role was. And and I it and I got the first touching of it in 1994, five, six, and seven, but then it didn't really hit home till 2012. But that's a whole nother story.

SPEAKER_01: 14:10

So so Jeff, you, you, you took that that's great as far as how you came up with like your leadership style. And we know Ann Anne Marie, she she is an incredible woman. Every time you bring her out to the events and things like that, it's awesome to spend some minutes with her. Tell tell me, you know, I have known you for a decade plus. You've been doing entrepreneurial stuff. So you you left the family business, you moved down here, and basically you've become an entrepreneur because you came, you you basically created the CEO leadership forum stuff to bring as an add-on to CPA firms. You you went out to Houston with that. Tell uh tell tell me where you get that entrepreneur because that's a great point.

SPEAKER_03: 14:56

You know, it's funny. I'm gonna step back to Poland because this is where it all started. Okay. Okay, this is all started there. Back in the day in the early 80s, we were there in 1983, okay, and we and we and and we set set up companies there in 1988 and 89 and so forth. When I first went there, there's only a couple of American companies that were doing business there. So it was part of this club. Everybody knew each other and then did business together. So the whole idea of strategic alliances came to bear there. Short story. Okay. We invested in a dairy plant. We were making Parmesan cheese. Okay, this is a funny story, but it's we were doing clothing, we and we got into the cheese business. Long and short is here. I am okay. So they've got these this first Walmart type store called Macro Cash and Carry. It's a 200 and square, 200,000 square foot this thing right in the center of Warsaw. And you can imagine a Western store back in 1993, 94, 5. This was like candy to baby. You had people who were just coming in, shopping like crazy, you know. And in here, in in my case, I had a challenge. People had no idea what Parmesan and Mozzarella cheese was. They were using, you know, Swiss cheese with pizza or cheddar or something like that. So now you hear you're you're talking about, oh, geez, buy some Parmesan. Well, long and short is one of my first store sampling experiences. We had bought a booth, I dressed up some high school kids, and on a Sunday, on a Sunday, my father's there, my mother, my brother, and I'm in the back unloading pallets of cheese to bring it out. My brother comes running, and this is at four o'clock in the afternoon on a Sunday. I'll never get this. And my brother comes in and says, Jeff, come on out of here. You're not going to believe who's here. I go out and I see a high school buddy of mine. I played football on lacrosse with him. Chris Delaney ultimately became the chairman of Goodyear. At the time, he was the senior director in charge of Procter and Gamble's Eastern European operations. It was the example of American capitalism. They had spent over a half a billion dollars in a in a supply chain. They had three or four hundred employees in there, warehouses all over the country. It was like wow. I go and say, Chris, how you doing? And he says, you know, and we're when we exchange, and you know how somebody is is talking to you, Sean, and they're kind of thinking, you know, their eyes kind of go above your head. And he was thinking, he's like, Chris, what's on your mind? He says, you know, I think you might be able to help me with something. And I and he says, you know, I've been trying to get our Vic's cough drops into the food channel, which is what this is. We can get it in into the pharmaceutical channel. You know, they got hundreds of pharmacies and small kiosk and things like that, right? But we can't get into the food channel. I was thinking, I'm like, oh my God, we could have this cheese for cough drops deal. Okay. Or vice versa. He says, yeah. So here's what happens. They have 300 sales reps around the country. We had 15 of them multi-league. Right. Got together four days later, and we're talking about now. I had four people on my team at the time. Okay. So we set up these joint meetings to go around to all the Polish wholesalers, all the Polish food channel things. Guess what? I could pre-position a ton or two of cheese in their warehouses. I didn't have to pay for anything. Their trucks, all I had to do was sell their product to our contacts. Birth was the strategic alliance plan of Proter and Gam on Pulsar, Pulsar Smoker, which was our cheese plant. And that's not a polish joke because it taught me there's no way in heaven that you can do anything yourself. When you're talking about distributing a service, a product, whatever, the logistics costs alone are too much. You need people around you that can actually facilitate that. So when I look at CEO leadership warrants, when I went into Houston, I did not know a soul. And we'll talk about the wilderness experience later. But in in Houston, when you're a New Yorker, you're a foreigner.

SPEAKER_02: 19:26

Yes, that's right.

SPEAKER_01: 19:28

Yes, absolutely. So you barely are not a foreigner here in Orlando. What are you talking about?

SPEAKER_03: 19:33

Yeah, right on. So I had the opportunity there and I said, you know what? I had met a guy who was a graduate of Bucknell University, what I'm my undergrad. He was the executive director in charge of the Wolfe Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Houston. That is the number one, two, or three undergrad school for entrepreneurship in the country for the last 15 years in Princeton Review, if you look at it. Okay. So we started. Talking and I meet Dave Cook and again these these people. I'm like, hey, let's do something that showcases the students, showcases the school. All right. Because University of Houston was very much like a community college. It was a commuter school. They had 5,000 people that lived on campus. The other 40,000 were basically there. That's right. So the thing is, if you're dealing with them, and and believe me, at the time, they were the low end of the total point. That's right. That's right. They used to be called in the 90s Cougar High. Can you imagine?

SPEAKER_01: 20:35

Yes, yes. You're bumping up against rice. I'm sorry about that.

SPEAKER_03: 20:39

All that Baylor, you know, T what do you call UT at Austin? I mean, you're you're running all these folks. So I've so we said, okay, geez, let's set up a series of events and we'll get a bank, we'll get, you know, we'll get a benefits company, we'll get a PC company, we'll get an IT company, and we'll band together and we'll have these events on campus. So it started with with me leading that with the CPA firm and starting that. We then attached scholarships to it. Right there, over a period of several years, I met hundreds of second-stage business owners at your$150 million company, connected them to students at the Wolf Center for Entrepreneurship and their school of business, of our school of business. And what happened was I basically started to connect with other members of the Houston community through the students, through the effort that we started there. In that context, we had we raised over$80,000 over a four-year period. We duplicated the exact same thing at Sam Houston State for the banking industry about four years after that. That whole effort, while I was there, we raised about a quarter million dollar scholarships, connected students to small businesses or banks and so forth. And then, you know, we mean in the long and short is we were my plan was actually, you know, work for the CPA firm that I was working with there, and then do the same thing here in Orlando because they were planning on on uh growing to across the Gulf Coast. So the CEO leadership forum's concept of a strategic alliances where you bring like-minded professionals together to put on events and all these things, that was that could be managed from anywhere. So the idea here was well, geez, we're gonna try to do that. But what happens out of this? Giving back mentality, philosophy, attitude, servanthood, okay. That just begets people who just want to be with you, okay, because it's it's part of a larger purpose. It's educating, okay? But then you the whole key is connecting them to their next business opportunity. And that's where the CEO leadership forums thing came in. And it went on steroids. As you know, I mean, we we have been doing this for uh 10 years. We've raised almost$150,000 scholarships. Now we're really trying to connect the students well, right, with those small businesses instead of getting all recruited away to the big guys, right? Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 23:11

So tell us, yeah. So tell us, I'm gonna I'm gonna, I'm gonna you you hit on some stuff in there that I think is very critical in being an entrepreneur, right? It's it's not just setting up a business, but what you did was you forged some strategic alliances that helped you while you were in Poland with your buddy from high school. There's so much to uncover with that, right? It's your network is your net worth, right? You have that. You hear that adage out there. But you you you what what happened in Houston that caused you to come back and not do what you thought you were gonna do, where you were gonna bring it here, still do the stuff in Houston. Something must have happened. Well that yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 23:59

Thank you for asking that. But so going back to what brought me to Houston was an opportunity to go run an office in the financial services world. Because at the time I was involved with that. 90 days later, the whole thing blows up. Now here, my family's over in Houston. What do I do? Come back. I said, you know what? And and and my wife and I, and and her mom, Frances, who was my mentor, we had a little family meeting. We said, you know what? God called us here because there's something. We're gonna start over. This one thing I learned is wherever I wherever I was planted, okay, God had a plan for me. Okay. And I didn't I didn't realize what it was at the time, but he gave me resilience and an upbeat attitude. Though I may have had the fear of God in me inside, like, oh my God, I I can't believe I got to deal with this. So here I l here I lose my job after a month, right? You got expenses. I've invested in real estate over here, right? There's a ton of stuff that is that is causing you, hey, let's just pack up and go back.

SPEAKER_01: 25:02

No. And backless to Orlando. To Orlando. Because you had come here working financial services, they sent you to Texas.

SPEAKER_03: 25:11

So 11 years I was in the Orlando markets. I'm like, you know what? No. So herein becomes an interesting deal because I was in a CPA firm at the time for about, I don't know, about 14 months. Did great, didn't like the firm. It was just, it was not right. I had met somebody who is in the outsource bookkeeping business, who's a steer still a great friend today, Stephen. This is in Houston, right? This is in Houston. A guy from New York who set up a business in Houston that now who works a lot with inspirity and all that stuff. But long and short is is he and I met. We had done a presentation together at one point. And he said, hey, you know what? There's an opportunity at TR Moore, which was a local regional CPA firm. I talked with the CEO and founder, Tim Moore, and who who at the time was very much involved with the strategic coach. He would go, if you know that group, it's a CEO peer group, very, very high-end. Well, he, you know, his peer group had said, you know what, you need to hire a sales executive if you're going to scale the company. Long and short is he meets me. I'm the I'm the I'm literally the first guy he meets. And he was like, every time.

SPEAKER_01: 26:26

After the conversation about scaling. Correct.

SPEAKER_03: 26:29

All of it works. And here's a guy, you know, at the time, I'm 48 years old, right? 48. I'm there. And and like, and I've had this world of experience. So I'm like, I could speak on any level. Business speak, the language of business. I'm not an accountant, but I speak it because I had to deal with it my entire life. I had to deal with attorneys and all this stuff. So I'm like, okay, here we are. I'm me. My first year, I hit it out of the park. And see and the CEO leadership forms concepts drove all of that. So it's like, oh wow. Right. I didn't, I wasn't supposed to live. Now here's what's interesting. Because you're talking about a wilderness experience, right? Then it's like, all right, who is my identity outside of my family business? Who is it? Because Jeffrey Gallo was so heavily influenced by his prior life. What did God have in store for me going forward? So there were a number of sleepless nights that ensued that caused me to stop. I mean, you talk about be still and surrender, give up self in order to truly hear where God wants to place you. Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 27:44

So let me because I'm I I'm I I want to make sure that it's clear that that that this incredible story that you have is being uh heard correctly. So you you you move to Houston within a couple of weeks, months, you lose your role with the financial services. Then you said, hey, I got the CEO leadership forum thing, I can start that, and then you bump into somebody.

SPEAKER_03: 28:12

Yeah, so so I was with a CPA firm doing well, but the culture was all wrong. So then I had to find this next place down. Where am I gonna go?

SPEAKER_01: 28:21

That was the place you were at for 14 months, right? Correct. Okay, got it, got it, got it.

SPEAKER_03: 28:27

Yeah, so so it's just amazing how when you meet and you did something with somebody, and he was trying to create a strategic alliance with me in that CPA firm. And we even met with the managing partner, and I said to him after this meeting, I said, This is not the right place. Okay. I love the opportunity to work with you, but this is not the right place. Within three months after that, I see this is not working. It's it's there's too many clients being lost. There's things I couldn't control. I'm like, this is not good. So I start looking, and then all of a sudden, he says he has a long-term contact at this other CPA firm, which basically is where I went for the following six years. And what's so interesting is I had excellent success there. I was going to become a partner at that particular firm, but I had this yearning to come back to Florida. So I told this to the managing partner there. Well, let's try to make that happen. Yeah. He said, You're you've you've developed this concept. Now you've got you've got it going here. Let's just create it so you can manage it from over there in Orlando. Because I promised Ann Marie, I promised mom, I said, in 2012, because we would come back here for three weeks a year for vacation. I said, you know what? We're gonna come back, and it'll be by it'll be by 2016. Long as short is, okay. Here we are in the CPA firm. Everything is doing beautifully. And then all of a sudden, I am my largest client in the oiling, oil and gas business, okay. And I'm talking about, I struggled through who I am, where am I going, and running, running, running, you know, and I thought, okay, the CPA firm, it's where it's at, and that's going to be my vehicle to go to Houston. Uh-uh. To go to Houston? I meet the CEO of a large privately owned oil and gas company doing around$300 million a year, okay? And I'm in there with the CFO, the CEO, and my audit partner. And we're talking about things. And he says, you know, I just lost my C O L O, you know, my chief operating officer. He was there for a year. Okay. And he and he's explaining the issues and so forth. And then he had to leave the meeting early. And and I said, Mike, I'm gonna walk out with you. Now, Mike is all of five seven. He's an oil, he's an oil field wildcat type guy. Okay. All right. And now this company, 426 people in 26 countries. Okay, you know, I mean, you're you're you're talking it's sprawling. Right. All right. And I go out to him and and I said, it sounds to me that you need somebody that's going to, you know, bring some the right kind of inspiration in and remove some of the fear out of your people because it seems, because he was the type of guy who who would who would who would manage 25 vice presidents or presidents with an email every morning at 6 a.m. I mean, that was so he didn't trust me then. I said, I said, I think I would be able to, I get, I have no experience in the oil and gas business, none whatsoever. But I run a global supply chain business in all the countries that you that that you're currently in. I said, I I would like to put raise my hand, okay, and say, I think I might be able to help. And he looks at me for like 15 seconds, he smiles, he says, I think you could help. That Saturday, that Saturday, we meet for four and a half hours. I put together a plan. Um I interview 20 of his people from Singapore to Edmonton to Houston. I put together this whole plan. What I saw, well, first of all, a diagnosis. And I said, here are the things that I see. Let's do this. He says, Great. He he paid me a signing bonus. Okay. This is 10 months before the oil and gas crash.

SPEAKER_01: 32:22

Right. 10 months before. So you had left the the CPA firm. CPA. Correct.

SPEAKER_03: 32:27

To go into this. So so I made a transition from that firm to here. We had this, it was big time touching a lot of folks in an area I had no clue whatsoever. But what I had was a tenacity. I had I had an experience of dealing with folks in the manufacturing and distribution space because that's where I grew up. I also had a sophistication because I knew what sales and marketing was. Okay. At the end of the day, did all of this, and then November, was it right at right at Thanksgiving? The oil and gas market collapsed. Now, if you want to talk about breathtaking collapse, okay, you you talk real estate here. In in oil and gas, you could be out of business the next day. And that's how fast the adjustment occurs. Long and short is, long and short is is we uh we parted ways at the end of that year. I was able to pocket enough money because of the arrangement that we made to come here sight unseen. We just came back on pure faith. And we said, okay, I'm gonna come back. We've got our got our start. I even there was even another client that I had who hired me for 60 days, and then I worked with him remotely from Orlando for 15 months doing a I was I was uh fractional CFO, COO there, and I basically helped in a structured liquidation of his upstream company. But the long and short is here I am back in Orlando, and I meet Russell Slap, right?

SPEAKER_01: 34:02

Which you were supposed to be back in Orlando anyway, so that's not the wilderness experience. Well, I'll happen. You were supposed to be, you had promised your Miss Frances and Anne Marie that you were bringing them back, and you got greedy. No, you got greedy, and you like, you know, I'm gonna be the big dog here, I'm gonna be the seal. Oil tycoon had an oil tycoon and the Lord said, No, buddy. No, sorry. Get your butt back to Orlando like you're supposed to. That's exactly what happened. So there you go.

SPEAKER_03: 34:35

And and it's funny because I use this example years and years ago. You may have heard heard the same thing. You know the analogy of the turtle on the fence post? Oh no, I don't know that one. Okay, so you walk down, you walk down a farm road and you see a turtle on the ground next to a post and rail fence, right? Right then you come back an hour later and he just happens to be sitting on the top of the of of the post. And the question is, how do you get there? Somebody put him there. Right? So for me, it was a combination of people and sheer grace of the Lord Almighty. Literally, that's exactly the way I feel. And so when I speak to people about this experience, I say, trust in the Lord, He is your refuge in your fortress, your ever-present help in time of trouble. And whenever I have to face these things, and I've had many times of anxiety, we've all had them. All of a sudden, I stop and I reflect on those words. I say, I'm never alone. Right. Okay. And here's here's something that I live by. And Paul says it in the New Testament, of course. Everyone will have trials and tribulations. Oh, that's right, that's right. But through those trials and tribulations, you will have perseverance.

SPEAKER_04: 36:01

That's right.

SPEAKER_03: 36:02

Perseverance be begets patience. Patience begets character, and character begets hope. If somebody doesn't go through that cycle and live in hope, you can't be used. It's impossible. Right? So people get stuck in all the things that happened before it. Oh, I went through all this, now I've got patience. But you haven't developed the character trait. You haven't taken it and executed on it. And that's the thing where I'm like, okay, that's something that we all have to deal with. And I face that you know, you know what? It's the revelation of that every second I'm measuring myself up against it, and I fail half the time at least. Well, what's why I surround myself with guys like you.

SPEAKER_00: 36:50

What's interesting in all of this, and you know, we we've covered in in some previous segments the the concept of creating your own opportunity. And and with that, with that oil, you know, and and gas uh um situation there, you actually created that opportunity. You saw you saw the opportunity, you seized the moment, which then you know moved into a uh an engagement, you gained experience there, which helped you and your you know further consultation with other companies and to be able to do the things that you do today at the CEO leadership forums, right? That's right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 37:24

Mom, well, you know what? You know, Roy, mom, who lost her son in 2004 to cancer, her husband to cancer in 2005, Thanksgiving. Actually, his 20-year anniversary was yesterday. Mom, Frances Fiorentino is the most courageous woman I've ever met. Most courageous person. And because I never saw her lose hope, because she's always had to deal with the trials that God put in front. And you go, well, why is God allowing that to happen? Everybody asked the question. Because he's interested in your ripple effect. And I use that the ripple effect of your action or inaction will change lives for the good or the bad. And so for her, so in our case, I was motivated because her grave site is here at you know at Glenated Cemetery in Winter Park. So is mine and Anne-Marie's. We were going to come back here, and I was not going to let her not have her roots back here. Yeah. And that was a driving force, and literally the rest is history because God provided friends like you and others that have made my destiny helping people in the Central Florida area.

SPEAKER_00: 38:38

Yes. Perfect segue, my friend. Because, you know, I was gonna ask you here, and from all those formative experiences, you've built a career advising and helping others. And I want to dig into that a little bit. And so, how do you today help CEOs rediscover their passion and purpose during challenging times? And you you've shared some some of the challenges you've gone through, but how have how have you taken those times and enabled that to be a resource for others?

SPEAKER_03: 39:11

I'd say never lose perspective, be intentional in everything because God puts the horror and trials in front of you because he knows that you're gonna deal with it. Right. What's very interesting is that he's equipped you for it. And I use this example, and Sean, you may have heard heard me say this. There, there's an old story where a sinner is talking to Jesus and he says, Lord, I can't take these cross. I can't, I just can't take the the trials I'm going through here. I just can't do it. And so Jesus says, Well, here, here's this field of crosses, go and pick one. Right? So he goes and he looks, and he's very, very diligent, and he comes back because here's the one. And Christ says, That's The one I had for you all of all. So the the so the point of this story is God has you going through these things. Never lose hope. Never give up. I'll never forget. Remember Jimmy Valvana? Oh yeah. I'll never forget it. Never forget it. Was it 92, 93, right? Just a few months before he died. I will never forget it because shortly after that, I was, this was before I remet Anne Marie, 1993. I was on a ski trip. Okay. And I was with four couples, my two cousins, their wives, and two friends, their wives, me.

SPEAKER_04: 40:42

Okay.

SPEAKER_03: 40:42

This is okay. So I was singing. And here Jeff is Jeff is wondering, where is this next part in life? I was still working at New York Life Insurance Company after 11 years. Okay. I'm all right, dude. What do I do? Because the family business was right in front of me. I literally had a spiritual encounter where I did not sleep for 48, 50 hours straight. And I realized after that point, I'm like, it hit me because I was going through this personal rehab experience where I'm like, okay, I don't have a vision. I talk about a vision and mission for a business, but I didn't apply it to myself.

SPEAKER_01: 41:24

That's right. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 41:25

So I'm like, I've got to write something down. Right. So here I got so excited, I call my father at four in the morning that day. I was at dad, I just had to tell you this. I'm coming on Sunday. This is a Thursday morning. And come pick me up. I'm gonna so I spent five hours, which today I still have it to this day. I have got a four-page vision and mission statement. Okay, and my professional, spiritual, and civic goals. I attain in a period of two years 95% of those. Jimmy Valvano, okay, in his impassioned plea, don't ever, ever give up. And whatever you do, do the very best that you can. Because you you were all in. The thing is, when you're not all in, and that's what I found. Half ass here, I'll go 90% there, reservable strength. There's a book that I read years ago. Remember Miles Monroe?

SPEAKER_01: 42:33

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 42:34

Miles Monroe.

SPEAKER_01: 42:35

Yeah, the late Miles Monroe.

SPEAKER_03: 42:36

One of the great pastors, preachers, and he wrote a book called The Glory of Living.

SPEAKER_01: 42:42

I can't believe Jeff. So, first of all, he started talking about you know the Lord on the podcast. Like, hey, black people are on the call, so we're gonna start talking about Jesus Christ, right? This is podcast. You you are from the same blood. No, listen, bro. When I saw you had Miles Monroe on your on your stuff, I was like, all right. I love you know, you know, God rest his soul, man. He was a good guy. Yes. Right on my desk. He spent a ton of time here in Orlando back before he passed. So anyway, back to you.

SPEAKER_03: 43:13

I'll speak to that because all he said was, and it reminds me of the Vince Lombardi talk about lying on the field of of the field of battle victorious, exhausted. Because the glory of living is all about this. God wants to stretch you, pull you, hurt you, force you to do so that when you ex when you breathe your last, you lie in the field of victory, victorious, and and you come on, well done and faithful servant. We've heard that so many times, but that really made an impact because we as business owners, and I'll say this we as business owners may have every reason to complain, to give up, to tear into somebody. Okay. And my wife taught me this. You have no right. As a leader, you have absolutely no right to create a ripple effect that destroys. You must always build up. So, therefore, if we have that and a grateful attitude, knowing that God's going to take care of us through all of this, as horrible as it might be, blessing occurs out of that. And you'll get your way out of it, whether it's in your current field of endeavor or it's something else that pops up all of a sudden, like the like the oil and gas thing that I share with you.

SPEAKER_01: 44:33

I I know Roy was about to ask another question, but before he does, let me let me ask you a quick question about your uh about your your goals, right? You mentioned four areas that you created it that that coming out of that 48-hour sleep deprivation, and you journaled everything. Incredible. And you said that you accomplished. Do you go back to that? What you use that as a as a so so I can imagine. So my wife and I used to do it. So a good friend of mine gave me a book around that years ago when I first married Dana, and and and we would go away and do personal retreats, right? And so we would have goals and things like that. And we we don't do it as often, but we still have those goals. Do you use that as a foundation to continue to drive forward?

SPEAKER_03: 45:21

Thank you for that too. So, yes, I do. And here's what's interesting. I have shared it selectively with myself. No, that's cool. With myself, I was just gonna ask you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And with my daughter. Yes, I do. But herein, what's very interesting is I is I say, I said, look, nothing happens without being accountable to yourself. More importantly, it's even better if you're accountable for what you put in writing with somebody else. Okay. But I said, I said, look and see. This was a period of my life for daddy and his, you know, I was literally 33 years old at the time, right? You'd lived a lot of life already. You realized a certain measure of success, and you had lots of bumpy roads. Don't be afraid of the bumpy roads because the younger generation is not as thick skinned, right? Right. It's like, hey, this is gonna happen. But but but refer to something like this. Create something like this. It doesn't have to be dad's your hero. It could be somebody else that all of a sudden becomes a hero of you, and now you want to emulate that person. But I will guarantee you one thing that person wrote something down to guide them through it. Okay. And so what so what we've done with our family is we have home church all the time. So we're so we're speaking it and encouraging as much as we can. Now the thing is, take that legacy, move it in whatever way you want in your life and with the people that you touch.

SPEAKER_00: 46:57

Amen to that. Amen. And and and Jeff, you you said, I mean, first of all, that there's a lot to unpack there, a lot of great stuff. A lot of great stuff, right? And I want to go back real quickly about the idea you said about Miles Monroe, about living with person, you know, with purpose, sorry. And that really resonates because in business, purpose is evolving too, right? Mentioned the in in our previous, you know, discussion prior to coming online here, that the industry is shifting from compliance to strategic advisory. Help break that down for business owners and what does that really look like in practice?

SPEAKER_03: 47:36

Look at it, it's very interesting. And I've been sharing this little fun fact, it's not a fun fact, really, and you've heard it too, I'm sure. Over the last two months, we had a senior leadership partner meeting, then there was another venue where this very study came up. Over the next five years, nearly a hundred million jobs are gonna be displaced in the United States. Okay, so you think about that.

SPEAKER_01: 47:56

100 million.

SPEAKER_03: 47:58

100 million, and um, and about 150 million are gonna be created. So this thing, so there's stuff that's it's being transformed here like never before. So, what is H ⁇ Co doing? Well, they're driving artificial intelligence into our into our service delivery system. Okay, so so everything from an accounting standpoint is gonna be done by machine. We've already developed an accounting system that will teach itself, and we're and we've just launched it. And we're able to literally cut the price of accounting and doing a tax return by half. So you go, okay, what does this mean for the aspiring accountant? That means that the advisory services component, people are gonna be starving because of all this machine stuff going on. Where's my human being that I can relate to, press the flesh with? Clients, customers are gonna be looking for that person that can speak to them in plain language on fairly sophisticated things. So the advisory model, okay, where's where you're gonna have the old-fashioned way, but in a bigger way than ever before. You're gonna have AI is gonna create the ability to leverage information. So, me as an individual, where it took me 40 plus years of experience to get all this stuff stuck in my head, we have access to it with just a quick lookup. And now it's the ability of communicating it. So, soft skills, this is something I've been speaking with the folks at Valencia College about. And Sean, you were there, you know, last last meeting for the business advisory council. Short, you mean the the soft skills, the ability to communicate, the ability to sell. Oh my God, no accountant wants to sell anything, right? Right. And we're like, hey, buddy, hey, every single person is going to have to communicate something, whether internally or externally in the future. And you better be comfortable with it. Right. So the so the one-on-one person, okay, and the person who has the ability to plug in other advisors, Sean, like you on the lending side and strategy side, Roy, IT, cyber, plugging those folks in, then that's a very important component of everything we do from a risk management and financial standpoint. Okay, so so AI is going to replace all the people that that just do the back office accounting. So if you are an AI-enabled person, you will replace those accountants who don't embrace it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 50:32

That's right. That's right. Nope. Soft skills are incredible. I'm glad I did not think that you were going to be talking about soft skills. I got my my my truest leadership institute shirt on. And, you know, that's that was a big focus of ours, right? Is is helping executives with those soft skill people skills and moving the puck forward. So anyway, let's let's talk a little bit about growth and planning. You know, what's the most misunderstood aspect uh on tax planning that CEOs need to know?

SPEAKER_03: 51:08

Oh my goodness gracious. Make it an everyday event, not year-end. I will tell you this, and you've heard me, I mean, Sean, you um you were at the CCIM event uh a week or so ago, and we had a hundred brokers in the room, right? And I'm throwing stuff out about how the importance of the one big beautiful bill app here is a strategic, it's a strategic gift, if you will. Right. Because the cash flow that's going to come out of all of these tax benefits is going to allow investment, deals, people hiring, all these things to happen faster. So if you're not on top of all of these tax incentives, which which combine with$20 trillion of global capital flows that's coming into this country, which never before ever happened in any way, shape, or form. So you got the combination of that plus tax incentives and you're onshoring a million manufacturing jobs. That's the other thing. So you go, geez, a million manufacturing jobs begets a 10 to 1 ratio. So you got 10 million jobs that are going to be flying flowing into this. You go, well, how is all this going to be paid for? If somebody builds a new factory$10 million, nearly 80% of it can be paid for by tax breaks. You think about that. Oh my God. So if I'm not planning to invest appropriately, then I'm going to be replaced by somebody who does. So that means you need very you need people who know what's going on in the global economy, capital flows, economy, interest rates, and now right down to the fiscal and monetary policy that we deal with here. If you can bring and synthesize all those things together, now people can think strategy. I mean, when when the 174 issue with amortization of RD tax credits, you know, when when that started to phase in, all right, where you couldn't write off RD expenses, you know, in one year, you had to do it in five years. You're talking about projects that were delayed because it was too expensive to do it. Now you get all of these stuff in up front with bonus depreciation and and uh things like that. Here's another thing, I'm gonna throw throw this at you. I mean, when when I say this, folks are like, oh my God, I have no idea.

SPEAKER_01: 53:26

So Jeff, you know, the the president needs you, he needs to hire you, man. Because I've seen you talk about the big beautiful bill multiple times now. This is like the third or the fourth time I've heard. And every time you do it, man, you're like you're you're like, you're like the guy on the street corner, you know, talking about Jesus Christ. Yeah, and and and it makes sense, man. It's just there's so much good in that bill that is like ridiculous for small folks for the folks that we serve in our markets all day, every day.

SPEAKER_03: 54:04

I had a meeting with you were there. So when when uh after the meeting, I was talking with that older guy. So I met him and his daughter yesterday. Okay, so here's a guy, you know, I met him a f um a few years ago. He he's got sizable portfolio, various other things, you know, and he's like, God, you said this, this is I had no idea. And and he's with a he's with a national firm. I said, I I had no idea that this was there. I said, Well, that's part of our job. We need to be educating you folks, okay, uh about this. One of the things that I that I brought up is is the whole area of child care credits, okay. Folks had no idea, if you're a small business, you can get a 50% credit. If I invest$400,000 in somebody coming into my facility, okay, I can get a credit for$200,000. Think about that. Okay, and then you go, oh my God, um, if I build it, if I build a room okay, for my for my for my employees' children, and I hire somebody, it might be a third party, most of that cost is a write-off. So you go, okay, well, the government just gave me a way to incent and recruit people to come work for my company because I care about them. Folks, folks laugh all about Trump accounts. And I and I say this because it's just one of these things. Trump accounts, oh, it's Trump. I'm like, well, hell, for every child born after January 1 of this year, after July 4th of next year, everybody's gonna get$1,000 put into a special account, right? The employer can can contribute$2,500 into that account, and from all sources,$5,000 a year. What's what's the reason? To give young people a head start on affordability. So you think about the compounding over 20 years, what that means. And all of a sudden you say, oh, geez, if me as an employer am offering this to my people, it's not just about the tax benefits on tax return. It's helping me have the best people in place so I can grow my business.

SPEAKER_01: 56:08

You, you, you can, you, you're, man, Roy mentioned it earlier about the last segment or two before, how you know there's so much to uncover, right? Yeah. The stuff that you mentioned, right? A couple of those are very specific, right? Because not everybody has a building. And yes, there's some folks that do have, you know, we have we you and I, uh, there was a relationship that you introduced me to a few years back, and they have a beautiful piece of property, and they have a ton of staff. I could see them, you know, taking advantage of something like that just because they're family business that care about their people, you know, and I and I can see them taking advantage of it, but not a lot of people are going to take. Give give me give me something that the broader market would benefit from the new legislation, something that's broad that most companies. You talked about like the 172, 178, or whatever that number is. I forget.

SPEAKER_03: 57:05

Yeah, the the you have the one the the 179, you know, the bonus depreciation.

SPEAKER_01: 57:11

All again, that's specific to folks that are investing in real estate that or equipment, or you're buying cars.

SPEAKER_03: 57:18

I mean, I'll I'll use something as simple as this. A lot of people don't realize that they can buy a US content that's that's that's that's that is basically a car that is assembled here. Okay. There we go. You got all this stuff made overseas. But if the assembly is done here, yeah, you can if if you're making less than$200,000 a year, actually$250,000 a year married following jointly, all right, or$150,000 single, you can do an above-the-line deduction of the interest up to$10,000. So my interest, so it can't be used for business expense, but here's the thing: I don't have to itemize. I've got an above-the-line that's above AGI, right? Okay, so so I it's above the line. I could say, all right, I can buy something at a 6% rate of interest, five-year loan, that's a$165,000 vehicle. I can write off the interest.

SPEAKER_01: 58:12

Right. Okay.

SPEAKER_03: 58:13

And I don't have to itemize.

SPEAKER_01: 58:15

Yeah. Well, I again, these are that that's that's incredible knowledge, right? And so the moral of the story with the big beautiful bill, man, there's so many opportunities within it that the to the listening audience, please get with your CPA and get, you know, take advantage of it, man, because these are it's it's almost like we need we need to have Jeff back on a segment just talking about the big beautiful bill because the way that he breaks it down.

SPEAKER_03: 58:45

I say we sit, you know, Roy, we sit at the crossroads of global capital today. It's not New York City. It's not London. You're talking about Orlando, Florida, Miami. I mean, you're talking about we're at a crossroads of major investment that that is coming in here simply because we're a state easy to do business with with no state income tax.

SPEAKER_00: 59:09

So I I think I think, Sean, what we're gonna do here in January, we'll we'll have Jeff back. And we're just gonna dedicate a segment to that to that big, beautiful bill so he can break it down. Because I I agree with you. I think he does a much better job than the authors themselves.

SPEAKER_05: 59:25

Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_00: 59:26

Because I mean, look, you know, it's it's like it's like in in in our world, right? And and in in my my cyber and it world, we train our staff members not to speak geek. But you know, what what you have there is is a bill that probably has a lot of great, great, great provisions in it, and nobody really knows everything and how it benefits them because it's been so politicized. Right. Um, and so having somebody like like Jeff to be able to come on and break that down would would probably bring you know incredible value to our listeners.

SPEAKER_03: 59:58

And Roy, I I would Second too, that I I would have if we're going to go there, I would have one of my CPAs join me. Okay. So that so that if because I don't have a CPA after my name, I've got I've got a lot of other designations, but you know, I speak, I speak the inspiration. That's nice. I could speak the inspiration, I can be evangelize, but then somebody's got to take over the whole execution part of it. And we have a great team here.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:29

Perfect, perfect segue here because we talked about tax planning. That's very important. And we're going to get you on that segment, Jeff, and with your CPA, and we're going to break it down for folks. But, you know, let's talk a little bit about your passion because I know one of your passions also is in real estate. Both, you know, you've made investments in commercial and personal real estate, and and that also plays a huge role, right? So, you know, why are you passionate and help us understand a little bit why you're passionate about helping real estate investors and developers, and how does your own experience influence your approach with that?

SPEAKER_03: 1:01:08

Great question. So, what was so intriguing when H Co and Grennin Fender, my prior firm, came together back in April of 2023, and we merged in in November of 23, was that H Co has about 80% of its worldwide clientele that own real estate here in the United States. Okay, so you think about that. We have hundreds of thousands of entities owning hundreds and hundreds of thousands of properties. And their focus is doing that really, really well. So as Brandon Fender, we probably had 30% of our clientele that were in real estate and construction. Okay, and then the rest of it look like Central Florida. Agent Co. has developed a model to serve the international community who's going to invest. It used to be just in the United States, make it easy to do business in the United States. Now it's anywhere in the world. So we have built a service suite that's everything from the entity formation or trust formation. We can literally set up an entity or trust anywhere in the world. We could do the accounting for that. And so often that the accounting is not right because people don't properly put the share capital of the investors into the proper chart of accounts and things like that. So we have to redo everything. So I'll say this you know, as an early real estate investor, my first multifamily house in in Queens, New York, well, was in 1987, right? Right at the heels of the stock market crash. And I did an 11.5% mortgage, and you know, I leveraged myself, right? Back in those days, right? So I so I go, okay. The way I did it back in those days is you started with a pe with a piece of ledger paper, right? And then then when I was introduced to Lotus 123, which is the Oh my god, you're going back into it now to itself, right? I'm like, oh, okay, let's just put all this together, right? And I'm like, all right, well, well, so anyway, back in 200 you know, three, four, and five, I'm like, oh, geez, all this real estate stuff is happening, right? And and me, I was was tracking things the way I had always used to do it. Well, fast forward, you had a lot of things that that that transpired between 2002 and 2012 here, right? So everybody went through it. I went through it. I suffered through it. Okay, so so part of the wilderness experience was rebuilding wealth when you had to pay off all of your credit, right? You know, during during that time. So I say, okay, all right. This has to be done the right way. So I speak to this, and you both have uh heard me say this as a family business owner who was in business for 80 years, and then we were had then we had to sell parts of our business one time, and then the other part. So legacy, it was a legacy. We sold our legacy business in 2003 to a public company. We were not ready. You can't imagine what it's like to go into a public company environment. Folks, you know, folks who have done it before were the were the CFOs who advise businesses and you know, they know what that's like. But in in the issue of succession planning, I'm like, okay, if you don't surround yourself with the right people and then plan accordingly, things are not gonna work out right. Well, the same thing is with real estate. You've got to have a beginning plan, you've got to have a strategic wealth building plan. You gotta take it, take, you've got to take note of all of the tax advantages that are in play. You've got to make sure that the right accounting system you're using, you're capturing things properly. And then you've got to be able to substantiate things just in case your audits it. Things to things in the future, and and you know as well as I do, a lot of the systems that the government is using are are being supported by artificial intelligence. They're tracking, you know, oh geez, what is customary for a revenue like this in in real estate? Are you are you, you know, you know, you know, pigs get fat, honks get slaughtered, is the old saying, right? So so here, what motivates me is plan ahead, build scenarios, surround yourself with the team. That means the lawyer is going to help you set up the entity, okay? All right, proper entity. What's the value of a Florida LLC versus a Wyoming LLC or or something that's based in Nevada? Does it make sense? Okay, you know, all these questions get asked. A lot of people don't realize the state of Florida is the only state in the country where if you own something by entirety, if you're married, right? If you own a piece of property by the entirety, do you know what that means here in the state of Florida if you're sued? A lot of people don't don't know this. Tenants by entirety means if if if Roy, you get sued and you own a joint and you own not jointly, but tenants by entirety with Alessika, they assume she owns the whole thing. Okay, so therefore, bulletproof married couples tenants by entirety. Shoot, who knew that? My God, if I knew that, me on so I pass that on, and my passion is making sure that in this order protect. I heard this in Houston by an Exxon executive. We are all in the risk management business. That's number one priority. So now risk management, it's asset protection, estate planning tax. In that order, that's how it goes. That's the wealth building profile. And if you're not taking care of that, making sure that the dots are on, you know, that the I's are dotted and the T's are crossed, something will happen which will destroy your life.

SPEAKER_00: 1:06:44

Yeah. Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 1:06:46

Spoken like a CPA, Roy.

SPEAKER_00: 1:06:48

Like a true CPA.

SPEAKER_01: 1:06:50

Even though he's not a CPA hanging around and he's giving us all this information, and it's like, Jeff, love it.

SPEAKER_00: 1:06:58

You're up, Roy. So speaking of transformation, you know, here, technology is changing everything here. And you touched on AI before and how it's transforming accounting and real-time decision making, etc. But you know, how does that real-time business intelligence play a role in the decision making for CEOs today? Oh, goodness gracious.

SPEAKER_03: 1:07:26

You know, we talk about you know, as a member of CEO Nexus, we're very much involved in, you know, the peer group. You know, the EOS traction system is something that's used. Scorecards is very important. Okay. And then who's accountable for those numbers that are on the scorecard, right? So the so the accountability funds are very important. Well, in small businesses, you may not have a person for every seat that needs to be dealt with. So that means you need a very good scorecard. And if you need to hire somebody fractionally, okay, like a fractional CFO or fractional controller or somebody along those lines that could help you build a predictive cash flow, okay, that can build you a scorecard that you can keep track of trends and catch them before they become a problem. This is what artificial intelligence can can do. This is what's really cool because now there are tools out there in the marketplace, commercial marketplace, yeah, where in construction in particular, because I'll use that as an example, where there are tools that can actually read your project management calendar, okay, and the and all of the input costs and so forth. And it will compare what you're doing on a current job, compare it against all the similar jobs you've done in the past, and then catch it, put up a red flag and say, Stop, we've got an issue here, you've got to check this out. That wouldn't happen until months later. Oh, yeah. A year or two ago. Right, right. Now you've got these things where if it happened at all. Correct. Correct. So now artificial intelligence can make us very astute and aware. You know, my people perish for lack of knowledge, they say, right? Okay. Well, the knowledge is now there because you've got a technology that when backed by a person who knows that their job is to bring this to your attention, because right now the mind wallet is absolutely tap. So you hire people like us, or you hire fractional folks or advisors to bring this forward because you're utilizing the technology that's going to allow you to see this stuff, you know, as it happens. So that, so the, so they used to have something called, you know, it was called just in time inventory. Remember years ago? So here, here's like, here we, we, we used to have to have to you know make inventory months and months in advance, and you take the risk on it. Now it's like, oh, geez, when there's a need, the the the notification automatically comes to the supplier, and then all of a sudden you just find what you need. I mean, you know, now we're light years ahead of that. So, so the managing of the inputs, okay, and then the then this is where the key is, because artificial intelligence will not replace the empathy or the emotional intelligence of the advisor that's in front of you. You know, I was at a meeting today, and and and a friend of mine gave an example of data in Star Trek the next generation. You think about that personality, right? He could not empathize. Yeah, so in the best of situations, you may have that, but you'll never replace what we're dealing with, what we're doing here.

SPEAKER_01: 1:10:41

That's right. That's right. Well, listen, Jeff, we've explored some serious stuff, and uh that that tends to be what we do when we get together. We have these spirited intellectual conversations. I know you just can't get back from vacation. Um, so let's have a little bit more fun before we leave the podcast and get ready to go and have some family time for Thanksgiving. But I want to do a quick round of um rap-your-fire questions. Just go with your gut with these. Uh tell me the favorite or tell us a favorite book that shapes your leadership. I think I have an idea, but let us know.

SPEAKER_03: 1:11:18

Oh my gosh, that is so good. And I've got so many there, and I gave you several of them. But the very first one, and although I went to Catholic school and right through high school, I never took the Bible from cover to cover. Mom, that's Amory's mom, bought me a Bible in 1996. This is what's left of it. Okay, and so I say that is, it got me in touch with my maker in a way that I never did, and he walked me through life. The glory of living, Miles and Monroe, crystallized everything about trial and pain. Okay, and we had been through deaths and sicknesses and all that stuff. There's one that I will say is one of the most influential things. I read it about, this is about 2008. It's a book, it's a small book, hardcover book called The Fivefold Effect by Gregory Pilcher. Now, why is that so important? It literally crystallized everything about leadership and management, and I employ every aspect of that today. And essentially, it's from Ephesians 4, where Paul is talking about what it takes to grow the church, and there are five types of personalities. You've got the you've got the apostle, right? You've got the prophet, you've got the evangelist, you've got the pastor, you've got the teacher. Yes. Okay, we all play some of those roles. The apostle being the CEO, right? Okay. So I say, all right, where am I on that spectrum? I'm Billy Graham.

unknown: 1:12:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_03: 1:12:54

Okay, okay. My job is to plant the seed. Right. Somebody's gonna water it. But my job, do I have the ability to water it? Yes, but that's not Jeffrey's highest and best use.

SPEAKER_04: 1:13:05

Right.

SPEAKER_03: 1:13:06

Okay, so I speak to that. Another one is called The Science of Success. This is a book. That is this is big. It's written by Charles Koch. It is about 130 pages.

SPEAKER_01: 1:13:21

Is that is is that Charles Koch of the Koch brothers, or is that Koch Brothers, correct?

SPEAKER_03: 1:13:26

Okay, got it. So you go, oh wow, what does that mean? It literally gave me the idea to blend the five-fold effect in with continuous improvement because essentially he had created this concept called MBM, market-based management. Essentially, it is a continuous improvement model where he literally created a inside Coke Industries, a standalone company that was responsible to make the company better. So that was everything from the way things run to the attitudes and cultures within each of the various departments and so forth. So when I when I was in Houston working with the oil and gas company, I transformed the leadership, I transformed the organizational structure from hierarchical to circular. So we we created what we created a customer service, a customer-centric model, which was based upon the five personalities that I mentioned in the five-fold effect. Okay. So the idea here is you surround the client and the customer with the best minds. And there's no ego here because in that organization, we have people making$60,000 a year that that that that could outweigh somebody making$500,000 because they they're because their perspective was on track. So I so I speak to that. And then the last book, which Steve Costino from Raymond had had mentioned, because Steve, I'm I'm a fan of Steve's, and he and I, I mean, a book that changed my life back in 2011 was written by Eric Mataxis, and he and he mentions this, Bonhoeffer. Okay. I literally read that 800-page book from Thanksgiving to Christmas Eve. I was on a media fast. I did not watch television at all during that period. So you can imagine all the playoff games, all the role games. I read that book and I digested it. And and Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a book during his life called the called The Cost of Discipleship. Okay. So without getting political, you know the martyrs that have uh that have come before us, the one most recently being Charlie Kirk. You stand in the midst of fire because you're being obedient to your to the destiny that the Lord has given you. Okay. Jeff. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:15:38

I am so you listen to Steve Castino's podcast. I why would that's great. Why would I doubt that you didn't do that? That's what the that's what I'm talking about.

SPEAKER_03: 1:15:47

Yeah. I'm a perpetual student like like uh you are and and and Roy. I mean, I I find that the older, you know, I'm 65 years old, the older I get, the the more you have to read, more you have to listen because I forget, you know, more and more. So I gotta keep keep plowing it in there.

SPEAKER_00: 1:16:04

So let me take the next rapid fire here, Jeff. And once again, go with your gut. Coffee or tea?

SPEAKER_03: 1:16:09

Coffee. My wife wants tea, but I'm coffee.

SPEAKER_01: 1:16:12

Awesome. This is supposed to be short, but there's no way this is gonna be short when I ask you this. I again, like like I like I thought with the book, uh, the one difference is I've never read Bonhoeffer, which is amazing that I haven't. I knew I know historian who he is. Yeah. We talked about him throughout my especially my early days in the church. Dr. Eddington at first press used to talk about him all the time, but uh Taxis, he wrote The Wilburforce.

SPEAKER_03: 1:16:41

That's the first book that I read. Yes. Because I'm a big fan of Eric Metaxis.

SPEAKER_01: 1:16:45

Yeah, I am as well. Wilbulforce is the the the politician who abolished, led the abolishment of slavery in England. An unbelievable story. And and so Eric Eric is a good guy. I used to see him on an annual basis. I haven't seen him in years. But tell us um, tell us quickly your leadership style.

SPEAKER_03: 1:17:06

Well, goodness gracious. I am, if you if you were to read my predictive index, okay, so that's that's that's that's one of the personality traits. I am in extreme, I am off the charts the worst in impatience. Okay. But what has what has, but as you remember, I don't have a right to be impatient. I must be patient. My my Lord is patient with me, God thank you. Okay, so so for me it's inspired leadership. Everyone has the ability to inspire, even the most introverted. They they can connect with somebody a certain way. And I always say, connect your passion and your purpose to what you're saying with everything.

SPEAKER_01: 1:17:56

And that's not what I was gonna think, which is surprising that I didn't think that that would yeah. Got it. Makes sense though. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:18:03

Yeah, no, and and and that's that's those very, very powerful words there. And so, Jeff, I I gotta ask you, and I ask this of every every every one of our guests here, but you know, if you had the opportunity to, you know, assemble a dream board of advisors from any particular, you know, taking people from any particular era, whether they're here or not, who would be on that board and why?

SPEAKER_03: 1:18:29

Okay, so there are so Jesus Christ is the chairman of of the board, but you're gonna be very surprised at who I say is his is his general, and that's the apostle Paul. You've mentioned Paul before Paul was a terrible person before he got saved. And boy, when you read the Acts of the Apostles and all the epistles, he repeats the same story of how he was saved many times in all of these different segments. All that told me was a great sinner needs a great savior, which means a great, I mean, in your case, you you it's in it's incumbent upon you to surround yourself with people that are going to keep you honest to that. Okay, very, very critical. Very critical. So I'm gonna use the five-fold effect that he's the apostle, he's the CEO, right? Because he was able to stand up to Peter, right? In the New Testament and basically tell him this is where you're wrong, man. And he told him so, okay. Who's who's the pastor? Bonhoeffer. Okay. He presided he was a pastor, but he was also a martyr at the same time. But he before he got imprisoned and put to death three three weeks before the Allies freed that concentration camp. Okay. I mean, everything about him was managing the people around him so that they would. Be able to stand against the Nazi regime that was taking over the Christian Reformed Church. Evangelist, I've already said the name, Billy Graham. It was his was a one no matter when you spoke, he spoke, he said the exact same thing. Okay. Charlie Kirk, I got to know him over the last 15 months. I probably watched the podcast. He's a teacher like I've never seen. Okay. And so he caused me to be able to think through things that are hard to talk about. Okay. And not to do so in a in a confrontational way, but really very patient way. Okay. And that to me, the best teachers had great patience.

SPEAKER_02: 1:20:46

Patience.

SPEAKER_03: 1:20:46

And then I'm going to agree with Steve Castino again because he said Von Hoefer on one, but he also mentioned Steve Jobs. Okay. And Steve Jobs to me is the prophet. Okay. He's the guy who foresaw all of these things and was able to come in even after he was fired and transform the world with the with with the products, just with the vision that he had. And so the most important thing here is when you assemble a dream team like that, listen.

SPEAKER_01: 1:21:22

Yep. Well, look, great, great answers for Jeff. And I am so happy for you, man. I've known the Grinning Fender, you know, George Fender and I went to church together for decades. And I remember when he in the 90s, he he brought an African-American young man to church that he had mentored for years. And George is a good guy. And uh we we didn't really we had a lot of mutual relationship friends, but we didn't have, you know, I I could text him right now and he'll text me back. We had a friendship from afar, but the one thing that I love about what you all have accomplished, and I and I know you didn't expect this to happen. When we ride through downtown Orlando, we see this big old sign that says H and Cole on the top of the field. Yeah. Very humbling. Right, right, right. So so let's do some reflection here and and give our audience some advice. And you know, I know through CEO leadership forum that you really care. You mentioned earlier about us on the advisory council for the colleges, where we, you know, there's UCF, Valencia Rollins, I believe, has has a representative there, where we have tried to and we've given, you know, Valencia over a hundred thousand over the last 10 years. Let's speak to not only the CEOs that that we want to touch, but to the students that are future leaders in our town. But you've talked about stillness, you know, clarity. How do you practice that daily?

SPEAKER_02: 1:22:54

Uh-huh. That's a beautiful question.

SPEAKER_03: 1:22:59

For those people who over the years have struggled with having to run and know they gotta slow down, I found that God will cut your legs off and force you to your knees and right onto your face if you don't do it. And that has happened probably a dozen times in my life from 1983, 1984 to most recently about 10 months ago where I will have sleepless nights for weeks. And you never know it. You never know it. But the most important thing here is you must take time. You must slow down. And when and when you look at Psalm 46, 10, he says, Be still and know that I am God. What does that say? I know the beginning from the end, all you gotta do is trust in me. And even though I may I may scourge you with life's tribulations, it's for a bigger and better purpose. So, what have I done? I've taken walks as early as 3 30 in the morning, raising my hands and thanking and being grateful for the family I have and the people that are around me. Reflecting quietly, I can't tell you the number of times that you've gotta stop your day and then just speak life, speak positivity into the air. And there is there's sometimes when when I'll be driving and and and and people will seal me, will will see me talking. And I actually had a friend of mine who says, Who are you talking to? I said, I was talking to myself and and my creator. Okay, you know, so so and and here's here's the interesting thing, Sean. Your destiny is never fully revealed until you're gonna breathe your last. Right. And so that means you've got to continue to persevere through whatever it is you face. So for my young friends out there, okay, who are in in school or looking to make a job change, hey, I've been through it and you have too. Everyone has had these life-changing experiences where they're wondering, what's next? How am I going to feed my family? What is what is going on here? And here I say take the time to spend with yourself your your spiritual life is the most rounding thing because when you do it, your children will see it, they will emulate it, they will, and also when you're in your office space, I don't hesitate to have my Bible out on my desk and I bow my head. And there are others who are in my office who do the same. Say your prayer of Thanksgiving before your meal in front of other people. What it does is it puts your humility. That's why the Jews wear the yarmulkes. Because I am but I because they are subservient to the Lord. When you and okay, so no man, but if if I'm subservient to the Lord, I surrender to the Lord, I will have humility.

unknown: 1:26:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:26:20

And that to me is the most important component of being a human being is that humility and compassion.

SPEAKER_01: 1:26:27

Great, great, great insight.

SPEAKER_00: 1:26:29

Let me uh before you jump there, Sean, let me just say something because I I often reference this, you know, and I and I I I tell the the the I would say the the new generation that many, many years ago, if you were driving around and speaking to yourself in the car, people would think that you're, you know, you're you're losing. And today, you know, we're we're speaking to the electronic devices and we're we're speaking to many, many other things. So Jeff, you can get away with it today.

SPEAKER_05: 1:26:56

There you go. Right, right, right, right, right, right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:27:00

I love it. Listen, powerful vision. Let let's let's wrap this thing up. And so, Jeff, it's been, man, a pleasure. I I did not I I've I know most of it, and it's good to get to let the world know about most of it. Your passion, though, for guiding business owners through growth and successful exits, and your commitment to helping leaders overcome fear and embrace opportunity are truly inspiring, man. I believe our listeners will walk away with a deep understanding and how strategic planning, clarity, and courage can transform not only businesses, but lives, man. You know, I I know me personally, that that's been a passion of mine coming from the projects of New Orleans. You know, most of the cats that I grew up with in that environment would kill to be in a position. So, you know, I'm all about changing lives, man. And so to hear your story. Thank you for sharing your story, your wisdom, and your vision with us today.

SPEAKER_03: 1:28:18

Well, I love you both as friends, and you know that. And that's what makes this such an important time together, right, right, Roy? I mean, I mean, I you know, it's like if if if we had a beer here, we we'd probably be done with the six-pack because we just because we're we're we're just sharing it and loving you know each other. And things shared in the spirit of love is is is really what this world is all about. So amen to that.

SPEAKER_00: 1:28:45

Amen to that. No, no, and and you know, I I will second everything that Sean says and you know, and echo the sentiments. Your journey, Jeff, from building businesses across borders to guiding leaders through growth and successful exits is a powerful example of what's possible when you lead with vision and courage. And you've shown us, not only through this segment, but to Sean and I personally, with our involvement with the CEO leadership forums, through our friendship, through you just being you, that creating impact takes, you know, a lot of clarity, resilience, and a deep commitment to helping others succeed, putting others first. So thank you once again for sharing your story and for being a dynamic business leader and for being you, Jeffrey Gallo. You know, and and Sean and I are cheering you on, not only, not only as you, I would say, continue to inspire and transform the business community, but as you continue to transform and inspire us, your friends, family, and everyone else. So thank you, my friend.

SPEAKER_02: 1:29:48

Thank you. Yes, yes, yes, it really was an honor to be with both of you. Likewise. I'm so so thrilled to have had a chance to share my story.

SPEAKER_01: 1:29:56

Awesome, awesome. And to our audience, thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Dynamic Business Leaders Podcast.

SPEAKER_00: 1:30:06

And if you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who would benefit from Jeffree's story. Sean, wrap us up.

SPEAKER_01: 1:30:17

Well, until next time. Man, I love this close. Stay curious, stay driven, and keep leading with purpose. Amen.

SPEAKER_00: 1:30:34

Hi, I'm Roy Richardson, host of the Dynamic Business Leaders Podcast. Are you a business owner or leader of a successful business? If yes, we'd love to have you as a guest on our program. Our goal is simple: we provide a platform for leaders to share their experiences to benefit others. We want to hear your story, how you got started, the challenges you faced along the way, and your passion today. If this sounds like you're you know someone who fits these criteria, then be sure to get in touch with us by visiting our website linked in the episode description below. Also, don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel and click the notification bell to be notified when our next episode goes live. Or if you'd rather listen to us during your car rides, you can also follow us on your favorite audio channel using your podcatcher. Thanks again, and remember, keep crushing it.