Justin Ricklefs on Niching Down, Scaling Up, and Staying Grounded

In this episode of The Heart of Business, Mo Fathelbab sits down with Justin Ricklefs, founder and CEO of Guild Collective, to explore the entrepreneurial journey behind building a successful customer-first marketing agency. Justin shares how early ventures—including selling concert tickets in college and recovering from a costly $30,000 business mistake—taught him resilience, accountability, and the importance of learning from failure rather than avoiding it.

Justin reflects on the pivotal moments that shaped his career, from navigating debt and difficult job transitions to launching Guild Collective with a clear mission: helping brands tell stories where the customer—not the company—is the hero. He explains why focusing on a defined niche, simplifying service offerings, and staying relentlessly customer-centered have been key drivers of the company's long-term success.

The conversation also dives into the realities of leadership, including managing payroll anxiety, adapting to client changes, and recognizing when it's time to bring in complementary leadership. Justin discusses the impact of hiring an integrator COO, joining a CEO peer forum, and surrounding himself with trusted advisors who challenge his thinking and help him make better decisions.

Throughout the episode, Justin emphasizes that sustainable leadership extends beyond business strategy. He shares how prioritizing family, cultivating strong support systems, and resisting the constant pressure to chase "what's next" have helped him build not only a stronger company, but a more fulfilling life. It's an honest conversation about resilience, purpose, and leading with both ambition and perspective.

Please visit www.internationalfacilitatorsorganization.com to learn more about Mo Fathelbab and International Facilitators Organization (IFO), a leading provider of facilitators and related group facilitation services, providing training, certification, marketing services, education, and community for peer group facilitators at all stages of their career.

Transcript

Welcome And Meet Justin

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Welcome to the Heart of Business podcast sponsored by International Facilitators Organization, the Marketplace for Facilitators. I'm your host, Mo Fataban, president of International Facilitators Organization. And today our guest is Justin Ricklift, founder and CEO of Guild Collective. Welcome, Justin.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Hey, thanks, Mo. It's uh I've been looking forward to this whole week and appreciate you having me on.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Well, I'm excited to have you on as well. I I've heard bits of your story and I want to take advantage of this time to share it with our audience because uh because I think they're gonna learn something and get

First Hustle Selling Tickets Online

SPEAKER_00 0:46

inspired. So I want to I want to go back to the beginning, Justin. What was your first your first entrepreneurial venture, the first thing you did to make money, maybe it was a job. Where did it all begin?

SPEAKER_01 0:59

Oh boy, yeah. I mean, the the very first was I went to the University of Missouri and I was there from 1999 to 2003. And at the time, you know, this is pre-we had cell phones, but they were flip phones and you had buttons on them and all the stuff, right? But at the time, we you had to literally go to a computer lab to access the internet because nobody had MacBooks. I mean, again, dating myself here, obviously. And uh at that point in time, this is pre-SubHub. Um, there's no like major online ticketing broker accounts or platforms. And I had a part-time job for this company called Show Me Tickets. And so on Saturday mornings, we'd go to the Mizzou Computer Lab and we would they would literally hand out strips of paper with credit card numbers and we would buy tickets for them. And so we'd buy whatever Tim McGraw or Kenny Chesney or whatever and Madonna, and we'd use their credit cards, we'd buy tickets, and then they would uh do they'd sell them. And at some point, I'm like, wait, I should just do this for myself. And so uh I did. So we started buying concert and sporting event tickets on the internet at the computer lab, and we would sell them on eBay. And uh that was a good little, we had my and my wife and I got married in 2003, right as I was finishing up college. And so we did that for a while, kind of, you know, quote unquote side hustle, until I way overextended on a Madonna show at Madison Square Garden in New York. And we it didn't go great, it ended poorly. But that was the first taste of like, oh, you can you can have a thing, you can and then sell a thing for more than you bought it for. And that was my first uh entrepreneurial journey at right, you know, kind of middle, middle college and through the end of college.

SPEAKER_00 2:44

You know what a great story. And I also love the part where it didn't go well because that's where we learn, that's where we

The $30,000 Madonna Lesson

SPEAKER_00 2:52

grow. So what happened? You bought too many tickets?

SPEAKER_01 2:55

Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, the the fuller story is that she and this was it was oh, we'll have to Google it to find out exactly the dates. It was 2003, 2004, and she had not been on tour for a long time. And so she announced these tour dates, and it was like one show at Madison Square Garden, one show in Chicago, one show in LA, or whatever. And so I was like, dude, we're buying New York, we're gonna get whatever tickets we can get because she's gonna sell out fast, right? And so sure enough, she did sell out Madison Square Garden fast, and we bought, and Mo, I might get the numbers a little bit wrong, but it's pretty close to like $30,000 of uh face value tickets. And then all of a sudden they released another show, which they the tour promoters probably all knew in advance, but the general public was like, you know, to create demand. So the first show sells out and then she launches the second. And it's like, well, okay, we probably should buy some for the second one too. And so we buy some for the second. And and again, I'll I'll I'll get the details a little bit wrong, but I think she ended up playing like five to seven shows at Madison Square Garden, and the and the secondary ticket market just plummeted because all of a sudden there's a ton of demand and not as much or a ton of supply and not as much demand. And so we were we were selling, you know, uh again, rough numbers, call it a $200 face value ticket that I thought we were gonna sell for like a thousand. We were selling for like 30 bucks. And so it was it was, I mean, honestly, bad news. Like we were 30k-ish upside down, and most of that was on a credit card, and we were I was a newlywed, and my wife was like, wait a minute, man.

SPEAKER_00 4:27

And just graduated from college as well, right?

SPEAKER_01 4:31

Yeah, great, yeah. Graduated from college. I had a full-time job, but like this was kind of the side hustle money. And and yeah, I mean, I remember it was it was it was tough for me to tell the truth in that moment because it was not great. And it was a lot more fun when it's like, hey, we made you know 200 bucks on a Cub game or whatever. But in this particular case, it was like, this is this is actually really bad. This is a devastating reality. Uh and man, she's she's hung in with me through a lot of twists and turns over the 23 years, but um, she's my much better half for sure.

SPEAKER_00 5:04

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Debt Payoff And Facing Reality

SPEAKER_00 5:05

And uh, how long did it take you to recover? So this is a big, this is a big hiccup early on.

SPEAKER_01 5:12

This is so funny. I've actually haven't told, I don't think I've told this story much. I've written about it before on my blog way back in the day, but um it it took it took a long time. Like I think the the the day job I had was at the time I was working for a catering company and we I was I was helping him do everything from events to his fraternity business. And so um, and then I I broke into the sports industry and I worked for the University of Missouri. And so it was somewhere in that landscape where honestly we just started chipping away at the debt. We started just if the minimum payment was 200 bucks, we paid 300, or we we did what we could to to try to accelerate the debt. Or we'll probably listen to a Dave Ramsey show or two of the debt snowball, you know. Um, but but at some point you had to fake, we had to face the reality that it was messy, that it was not an awesome ending, that there was some level of you know, shame and embarrassment and ugh, this didn't go great. Um, and then she saw the best parts of me, and I uh received her grace and compassion, and and we just started digging out of it. And I do think we'll have to remember uh some of the specifics. I do think we we took a couple calculated risks again on some tickets because there was at that time a lot of upside to it. I'm sure there still is, but I'm not in that business anymore. Um, and so there were a few wins that we could accelerate that snowball. But yeah, the long and short was we you just you keep, you know, this the sum keeps coming up, and even when it's uh a pretty tough reality, there is there is a way to create a different future. And so we just dug out of it.

SPEAKER_00 6:48

Well, that is the entrepreneurial mindset, right? The sun's gonna come up again, and I'm gonna try again, and we're gonna keep going until we make it work.

SPEAKER_01 6:56

That's right. That's right. I I do think, yeah, I do think it's so true about the entrepreneurial journey, and and there's some level of intentional avoidance when you're an entrepreneur where you're like, yeah, that's gonna be a problem, but these other things I've got to deal with right now, and so we'll we'll push this one down a little bit down the line.

SPEAKER_00 7:12

Uh yeah, it is that's very true, Mo.

Side Swings And Getting Fired

SPEAKER_00 7:15

So, what was your next venture after that? What was your next entrepreneurial venture?

SPEAKER_01 7:20

Well, the the next one, you know, I I think we did a we did a couple, man, it's funny you're pulling all these old stories out of me. The uh so I had a corporate, you know, W-2 job all the way from graduating college all the way up until I started what we're doing now at Guild Collective in 2017. So from 03 to 17. So there's 14 years of of what I would consider steady paycheck work, W-2 work. Um, and in hindsight, that feels good. It feels good to get paid no matter what every two weeks. And so people, people with those jobs, uh uh it it's a it's a great reality for sure. And but throughout the way, you know, we did the ticket thing, and then I mean, I always had these ideas that in hindsight, some of them I'm like, man, we we did some crazy stuff. We we tried a couple network marketing companies that was like, oh, this is a sure bet thing that you can sell this social media platform and all of your friends will buy it and everybody will make a million bucks. Um, and it didn't work out like that. And so there's there's some in my late 20s embarrassing things that I'm like, I'm not really proud of all of those swings, but uh they are again, I I wrote a LinkedIn post at some point about all the different things that I've tried to do to make a buck. And and and a lot of those are you know silly or they didn't work or they're bad ideas, and they all mattered though. They all are part of the of the broader story of leading me to to where I am today. And certainly even this will lead me to something else. And so um, yeah, so we did a couple network marketing things, and then my first actual um swing was a little bit of a hybrid. It was I got a steady paycheck, but I was invited in to to be a partner of someone else's business that they started, like a minority, you know, equity partner. And it was actually in that business where I got to see firsthand what it what it takes, like what an actual entrepreneur goes through and what it's like, and the uh, you know, all the levels of the human experience, both from the positive experiences to the negative ones that are really tricky and and fear-producing. Um, and that that didn't go great. And again, another example of I thought it was gonna be a certain way, and then the reality of it was a lot trickier than that. And that was in 2015. Um, no, it wasn't. It was 2014. I ended up actually getting fired from that job. And and and there's a longer story about why. Uh, but ultimately it's it's my responsibility to take that that that particular engagement wasn't the right fit. And but it gave me this taste of, oh, there is a way to build a business that's based on care, that's based on value, that's based on connecting to other humans. And it took me, you know, after that experience, two more years of of working full-time for somebody else, that then I got to uh get clear on launching this business, Gilb. And guild is now almost a decade old. So it's it's uh it's been a good journey.

SPEAKER_00 10:28

So I want to talk about guild in a second here, but it seems like uh the seeds of entrepreneurship were always there.

Family Roots In Entrepreneurship

SPEAKER_00 10:35

Did you grow up with entrepreneurs in your family?

SPEAKER_01 10:38

Yeah, yeah, also a great question, Mo. Um I didn't have the appreciation for it then. I mean, we grew up very lower middle class. Um money was was tight. It was never, it was never in doubt, but it was also never in abundance. And my my mom and dad both um had had normal had jobs or had W-2, you know, steady, steady income. Um, my parents got divorced. And and I, as I traced back some of their story, though, they both have entrepreneurial backgrounds. So my both families came from agriculture backgrounds. So farming is definitely entrepreneurial in its very nature, right? Um, there is no, you cannot predict how much it will rain or if it will rain or how much the crops will grow, but you can till the soil and pray, pray that it rains. Um, and so the agricultural background was for has for sure been in my both sides of my family's heritage. And then they actually, early on in their marriage, they started a uh, they it was a it was a publication, it was a as a written newspaper for people who owned horses, and they called it the horse paper. And and in my childhood, it wasn't part of their um financial structure, but when they were early on in their marriage, they had taken a swing at building a trade publication. And for several years, they built it. And like my mom was the the editor and the did the layout, and you used to literally have to like clip pictures out, and then you know, then all these weird printing things that that nobody would understand today. Um, and my dad would go chase the stories and do the interviewing and take the photography, and then my mom would do the layout and the design. And uh and again, as I got into my adulthood and started to hear some of these stories, I was like, oh, there is, yeah, these seeds were not mine fully. They've been they've been sown from generations in the past in these, you know, fields in Kansas and in my upbringing in Kansas City. I love it,

Why Justin Started Guild Collective

SPEAKER_01 12:37

I love it.

SPEAKER_00 12:37

So, Guild, tell us about Guild. You started it 10 years ago, and what was the motivation to start that business in particular?

SPEAKER_01 12:48

Yeah, the the the story, you know, I was at a spot, we've got my wife and I have five kids, and uh we it's the they're the center of our world. And it's such it's the best job ever is to be a parent, I I think it's just such a wonderful and challenging privilege, right? And responsibility. And and I had uh I had an amazing job. I was working in the front office of the Kansas City Chiefs, um, had you know access to really cool stuff, and we went to Super Bowls and had awesome clients and did really, really amazing things. And I love I genuinely loved it. And what's also true is these, you know, these seeds, I love how you said that, these seeds were kind of springing up. And I was like, gosh, it's not that I don't like this job. I feel like there's something else for me. And I feel like there's an ability for me to chart my own course, hang my own shingle, whatever the analogy, you know, cut the cut the ropes from the dock and like see if this boat will will sink or or stay afloat. And I didn't really, clearly I told you a bunch of other swings and misses I had. I didn't really know exactly what the what the ex what the specific business was, but I started to pay attention to what I loved to do, what I was kind of naturally inclined and you know, quote unquote good at. And stuff that I saw was painful in the just normal common relationships I had. And so when we were in in these chief client meetings with these big brands, these brands would say things like, Hey, we're having a hard time telling our story, or we're we want to really connect to our clients. And I had read the book Story Brand by Donald Miller, which is a wonderful book that everybody in in in brand or leadership or marketing, whatever kind of language, um, should read. And the and the, you know, in its most simple form, that book centers on this premise that the customer is the hero of the story. The brand, the company is not the hero of the story. The customer is the hero of the story. And so I read this book and I again had a wonderful job. I wore uh not as nice of a sport coat as you have on, but I was like wearing sport coats and and playing, you know, playing them um at a high level in terms of like the corporate audience that we were selling to. And these humans who are in these very impressive positions kept saying things like, we're really struggling to connect to our customers. And I was like, why is I don't understand. Quit talking about yourself, company, talk about them, connect to their experience, connect to what they want, get to their desires, understand how your product or service or thing makes their life better. How's this that difficult? And and and it took me honestly, a couple years of of seeing that conversation unfold to then get to the point where I had clarity of like, oh, that's how I see it. And they they can't see it. They're not bad people, they're not working not enough or whatever. Like they just they don't have that awareness. And I think I can help them shift the story just a little bit uh into the lens of how their customers experiencing this word, phrase, website copy, social media copy, whatever. And so all of that long-windedness to say like the the white space was this pain because these companies were working really hard and throwing real budget at trying to solve the problem. But I was like, hey, if we can just take this story and turn the prism a little bit back to who's engaging it instead of who's telling it, I think you might sell more of your stuff. And sure enough, uh that's that's been the journey we've been on. And our business has evolved and and frankly transformed and evolved several times in iterations through the almost 10 years. But it all started with that one seed. I love your I love your language. It started with that one seed of hey, companies have a story to tell, and most really struggle to tell it in a way that's compelling to the person receiving the story. Um, and so we now have like a whole product and methodology and process that we can talk about if it's helpful. But um that's where it all sprung up, was kind of in this um interesting landscape where I was like, I I want to be around my family more, I want to have some flexibility, I want to see if I can do it. Um, because I tasted it a little bit with that other company that I referenced that I ended up getting fired from. Um, and I think there's a real need in the market for corporate entities to tell stories that connect to their customers in a better way.

SPEAKER_00 17:28

Love it. Love it. And so powerful. Just just to just that phrase alone is is really uh so poignant. Um sometimes one phrase does so much and and we take it for granted. But this is uh one not to be taken for granted. So thank you. Yeah, of course. So I guess uh you've been doing this for 10

Highs Lows And Resilience

SPEAKER_00 17:50

years. Uh I'm sure there have been ups and downs. What are what's the high point? What's the low point?

SPEAKER_01 17:56

Um goodness. Yeah, ups and downs for sure. Uh uh it's it's such a it's such a gift, really. It really is a gift to be entrusted. And you know, in in many ways, I feel like this thing found me um every bit as as much as I found it. And I think the the the journey of entrepreneurship is such, if you allow it to be, it's such a interior work. You that the leader, him or herself, gets invited into this process where you um change, where you face some stuff that's like really scary. Cause there's there's no one, you can't blame the boss anymore or the board or the client. Like you kind of have to look in the mirror. You know, the old Michael Jackson song, like the man in the mirror is the is is the is the thing that that um is most likely most of the time the greatest strength of the business and the greatest problem in the business. Um, and so to answer your question as directly as I can, the the low, the low points most of the time is centered around areas and you know moments in the journey when it was really scary, when payroll might not that you might run out of payroll or money to make payroll. Big client fired you or moved on to a different thing for whatever reason. Um, a really key team member left unexpectedly for a different opportunity, and you're kind of left going, oh my gosh, like are we ever gonna be able to replace that person, right? And so there have been plenty of those low moments. And and I think what happens, and and at least it's it's been my experience, what happens is that you don't know it at the time, but what starts to show up is you build these the reservoir of resilience starts to get a little bit bigger. And so when you when you encounter those hard moments, which keep coming, you just you just take a deep breath and you're like, Yeah, of course, like of course it's gonna be hard. And and we're gonna get through it because that's what we do. We get through it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and then on the on the flip, you know, there's what a what a gift just to to see the high points of um especially when people that you employ grow and have opportunities and they start to flourish and they start to show up in ways that they didn't when you first hired them. And there's so many examples of our current and past team that have come in at some level, right, in their career organization, and then they they blossom into this other thing entirely. And you're like, My gosh, can you imagine what you what you're able to do now? And and then a lot of times that ends up getting them recruited away. Uh which I used to take really personally, it used to be really hard because my ego would flare up and be like, Oh my gosh, like I'd be scared and afraid. And we just we we had this happen a month ago. One of our one of our uh the guy leading our client group got approached by bigger agency with bigger budget and they recruited him away. And and it and when it all shook out, I'm like, dude, you should definitely go do that. Like, that's a great opportunity. And he didn't he didn't need my permission. He was gonna go do that anyway. But um, but it but instead of this kind of fearful scarce mentality, it's it's hard work for me, but it's starting to open up into this more abundant belief that man, there is enough, it is okay, life is good, there's a bunch of oxygen for everybody. And um, I think that's you know, I don't know if I answered your question, Mo.

SPEAKER_00 21:31

No, I I think that's uh, you know, I was asking about high points, low points. Yeah, and uh, you know, I think caring so much about your people is is uh and seeing them thrive being a high point is is really admirable because that you know that's who you're with every day for for 50 hours a week, maybe sixty hours a week, right?

SPEAKER_01 21:52

Yeah, yeah. And I think it I'd I'd be remiss to to say to not say, you know, there are such so many moments when We're, you know, we're in a professional services organization that's in service to our customers. We call them partners, our clients. Um, but every single time we just today got a renewal on a 12-month agreement when a client has been with us many, many years, and we're also, we don't take it for granted that she said yes again. Um, and so those deeply, you know, trusted relationships where another human on behalf of an organization says yes to our business, it's like, they they value us and we're a partner to them and their business growth and their business clarity. Those moments, you know, we've got a bunch of examples of different clients who've said yes to us, but it's like that's really special. Because you, you know, you took it from something that didn't exist to now at a point where these brands are saying, like, hey, we want to work with you. We have a lot of other choices, but we're choosing guild. That means a lot. Yeah.

COO Integrator And Niching Up

SPEAKER_00 22:54

At what point after starting guild, did you finally take a deep breath or a sigh of relief and say, We've made it. This is working. This is my life's work now. I'm I'm I'm good with this business. I'm not worried about it going out of business.

SPEAKER_01 23:13

Oh boy, Mo. I yeah, I don't I we definitely haven't made anything in terms of like the final end result. Um, so I don't, I'm not sure if I could say like, oh, we've made it. I I do think there have been these big moments where, you know, the first two or three years, I would always answer the question if someone said, like, hey, how's the business going? I would be like, Well, there still is one, you know. I'd say like some version of that, like, oh, there still is a business, and it's you know, it's kind of a chitcho internal, we're figuring it out. Um, and then, you know, we went through the pandemic and actually our business took a big dive initially of the first couple months, and that was a that was an embracing moment of like, oh, this is this is when I have to go get a job, right? Like that's what I thought was gonna happen. And then we actually had a big spike after that for about 18 months, which is a whole different story. Um, but I'd say, you know, when when a couple couple big moments come to mind. One is on in July of 2022, we named Rachel Burnett our COO. And Rachel had started as a freelancer. She's one of the ones who blossomed and become this like entirely other individual. And it's like, holy smokes, she's insane what she's able to accomplish here and just who she is. But she started as a freelancer, and then we offered her like a you know mid-level job, and then she became a director, then a VP, and she just went on this path. And I read a book called Traction and also joined, um, and I know we'll talk about this at some point. I joined a CEO group, a round table. And I back to the Michael Jackson Man in the mirror, I realized that I was creating lots of unnecessary mess in the business by holding on tight to things that I'm not very good at and I didn't find joy in. Yeah, that's a bad combo. If you don't get energy from it and you kind of suck at it, that's a bad mix.

SPEAKER_00 25:11

And then you hold on to it, that's even worse.

SPEAKER_01 25:13

100%. And and and again, when I think it's all it all happened the way it needed to happen. But for me to have the clarity of like, oh, I need an integrator. That's the like EOS language, right? I need an integrator to free me up to be a visionary. Vision is actually fairly, you know, there's a bunch of people with ideas and vision. It's really difficult to be a good integrator. Um, and and we just happen to, thank God, have one of those, her, in our business. And so my wife, Brooke, my wife Brooke, and I started having these conversations of like, ooh, okay, I've made some messes here, all of which are able to get cleaned up. And there's a lot of really good, healthy things growing, but I need to get out of some of this day-to-day stuff that I'm not very great at anyway. And so, long and short, Rachel became uh Guild's first COO on July 1 of 2022. So we're actually we're we're at the four-year mark um right now, and that's really great. Um, so that was a key moment. And then, and then another key moment, and it's probably not like a day it happened, but over the last 24 months, we've done the really difficult work of simplifying our services. And you know, some would say like niching down. I actually I heard it, I heard another leader say niching up, and I was like, I like that better because you actually have grown and we've gotten more abundant in our thinking by the ways that we've um said no to stuff, which I was I was very much against early on. I was like, no, no, no, we don't need to niche. We'll keep, we'll add stuff, we'll add people, we'll just sell more things, we'll get wide, we'll do a bunch of things because everybody's needing all these different services. And and it and again, ultimately that for me was based a little bit more on fear and scarcity, which sounds paradoxical because you think it's adding more to your business and it's actually diluting it. And so if if any early stage entrepreneurs are listening to this or watching this, if people, if you consistently hear things about niching down in your environment, listen to them. Because for me, like that has just been such a freedom producing and and and in its most practical manner. Like I sleep better at night now that we have less things that we're selling. Um, because we've just we've gotten really clear on our process, our methodology, and we've we've created this really cool momentum that um has benefited the business, but it's also benefited the people here because we're not in this constant like chase and scramble mode for the next deal or the next service or whatever. And so anyway, those are a couple of big moments in the business that have um uh been been pretty pivotal over the last few years.

SPEAKER_00 28:03

I I think that's a great lesson. And then, you know, it's just one of those things that comes up over and over. It's uh you're starting a business and you want to grab every piece of revenue that you can, but you're not focused in the process of doing that and you're not defined as a brand. I get it. I get it. Yeah, absolutely.

CEO Forum Support And Big Decisions

SPEAKER_00 28:21

So you mentioned your uh CEO roundtable and uh and those uh the uh you know incredibly powerful groups. We call them forums in some uh arena, they call them assemblies in other arenas, but whatever we call it, um what is the effect? What is the forum effect on you? How has it impacted you personally, professionally? Uh and then we'll talk about the broader effect. How have you benefited it?

SPEAKER_01 28:48

Yeah, I I I knew and I was so excited about talking about this particular part with you because I know this is this is your love language, um, and you're so gifted at this area. Ours is called a forum. It's called the Leadership Forum. It's a gentleman named Joe Edwards who has built and sold a few businesses, and he's at the what I'd say maybe like the elder or mentor stage of his career, where he br he gives such, he gets such energy and he gives such good counsel to people like me who are in still in the trenches building the thing, right? And I got connected to Joe through a a client and a mutual kind of connection between the two of us here in Kansas City. And I'm sure it was all over my face at the time in in not awesome ways, because it was in that transition of, hey, I think I need to put Rachel in charge here of the COO stuff. And so it was it was about that same period of time. And this gentleman was like, hey, you need to go have lunch with Joe Edwards. And I remember we met at the um cheesecake factory in Oberland Park for lunch, and I ran, I literally was running late. This is actually a very uh it's it's it's very practical how I was just operating at such like frenetic pace, right? I was just like bustling all the time, pushing, you know, make trying to make it happen. And so I remember I didn't even have his cell phone number at the time, I just had his email from the calendar invite. And I sent him an email like while probably while at a stoplight or whatever. And I was like, Joe, I'm running five to ten minutes late. I showed up like 13 minutes late. And he's sitting there and he he looks like you, he's all dressed all dapper and you know, uh, had his sport coat on, and I like jump into the booth. And uh I was just just running ragged. I was exhausted. And he asked me a few questions in that lunch that I was like I was able to take a deep breath and say, Yeah, I think I need some help. I've never done this before. I the first time you know I've done it at small scale, right? I screwed up the ticket thing or whatever, but uh I've never done this. I've we got 12 employees, and we got you know a lot of revenue coming in, and I don't really know what the balance sheet looks like, actually. I don't know what our our AR looks like. I got you know, he was asking enough questions that I was like, I don't know the answers to that. And then he, you know, he's like, Well, here's what this forum looks like. There's a group of 12 to 16, depending on the year and the quarter, uh, other people like you who have been part of this connectivity, you know, this fabric, this this mosaic. They're not your employees, they're not your spouse, they're not your kids, they're not on your board, they're fellow sojourners in the on the entrepreneurial path. And none of them will be in your business. Um, but if you want to consider this road, here's what it looks like. You get coaching from me and wisdom from the group, right? The collective. And and frankly, the very first move, I was like, how much is this gonna cost? I was like, what is this gonna cost? It's not gonna be cheap. And uh he, you know, he talked to me about the pricing model, and I was like, can we pay quarterly? Um, and he and I actually I think to this day we still pay him quarterly instead of biannually, which was his normal terms. All that to say, uh he was like, come check out the group. We meet at whatever, you know, second Thursday of the month, and here's where it is. Um, and I went to that first group, and and he alone, Joe alone, was would be worth the the price of the coaching and the conversation. Um, but when I walked into that room, I just felt like I could let down, I could be myself, I could say, like, hey, there's some there's some stuff here about this business that's kind of messy that I wouldn't put on the website, but uh talk to you guys about because you feel like you know uh you've been down this road. And and the way I uh relate, the way I talk about that group now, like they've they've literally become like dear friends. Um several of them become clients, they're all mentors to some degree or another. And and and I I like to you know joke that I'm the smallest house on the block of a really beautiful neighborhood. And I've just learned it so much that you don't, you don't really get to, you can't, it's tough to put that like on a marketing piece, right? Of like, hey, join this group and here's all the benefits. But when you experience it over the last several years, you're like, man, I would I would do anything in the world for these people personally, and the way they've shaped me professionally and through the business. Of course, it's all related. We're the the human being in us is not able to separate personal and professional. Um, it's just been a really beautiful gift. And and I'll leave, I'll I'll try to end the long-windedness with one specific moment. Last last year at this time, we were um being courted by a bigger group that wanted to have conversations about acquiring our business. And that's again, first time there's been some other, you know, loose conversations, but it was the first time that it had some significant interest on my part. And I brought it to first my wife and then a couple good friends, and then then to this group. And I did talk to Rachel, because she's a partner now in the business. And uh I'll never forget this gentleman in the group. After listening to me say, like, here's what's going on, here's what's happening, here's where we're at. He looked at me and he was like, Do you again keeping in mind our five kids and the stage of life we're in? He's like, Do you remember what it was like the first several years of building guild? And I was like, Yep. All the stuff we just talked about. And he said, Do you think the version of you that your family is getting now is something that they enjoy? And I was like, actually, yeah, I think so. I think that my presence, my ability to have some flexibility, um is is real is is really helpful and good. And he's like, if if this thing happens, do you think your the version of you that they will receive will be more like the first part of your entrepreneurial journey or this current one? And the reality was like part of the reason they wanted to acquire us is because they want us to be a piece of a thing that needs to get bigger. Which again, it's not bad. It's not a bad thing, and that may be a road we walk down someday. But in that moment, I was like, oh, that that exact phrase, like you said earlier, that exact phrase. He said, the version of you your family receives right now is a gift to them. And we had kids in college and high school, and you know, just last week I got to go to Indianapolis for five days to spend time with our youngest daughter in her volleyball tournament. And Brooke was there, and it was just, you know, it's great. That's like that's I get to live my life. So that's a long-winded answer to like people should join forums for sure, because it's such a it's such a gift to the full human experience of uh being an entrepreneur because you can't, and nor should you, you can't talk about that stuff with your team members, your your wife or husband or spouse or partner, like they already hear it enough. They're living it. And and you need those fellow builders or sojourners to help you see what you literally can't see because it's blind to you. You've never done it before.

SPEAKER_00 36:40

Absolutely, absolutely.

Mentors Brooke And Leading With Care

SPEAKER_00 36:42

Um, Justin, who's one person that has inspired you or one person you've looked up to for most of your life?

SPEAKER_01 36:52

Uh great, that's a great question. Um I mean, personally, no question about it. Like, number one big circle around is my wife, Brooke. She just has transformed my life in so many, so many ways. She's intuitive, she sees, she's discerning, she's wise. Um, my mom and dad, 100%. My brother and sister. Um, professionally, like in the work context, um you know, I wrote this book called Give a Damn. And the the protagonist in the book, it's like it's a nonfiction story, it's real stories. But the protagonist in the book is this gentleman named Clyde Lear. And Clyde uh started, built, ended up selling this company called Learfield Sports, based in Jefferson City, little old Jefferson City, Missouri. And Clyde was the first person, you know, in a in a traditional corporate context that I saw with true authority as a CEO, he's the founder, right? He's true authority, big business, a lot of things happening, you know, right for his company. But he matched his power or authority with this incredible care. And I didn't have the language for it at the time, but now I talk about that as having care as your competitive advantage. And Clyde would puff on this big old cigar, you know, and and he would ask real questions about me or about my wife or about our kids. And I was like, man, of course he wants me to be good at my job, but I think it's something deeper than that. I think this guy actually cares about me. Uh and so yeah, Clyde is five is up there in terms of, you know, my Mount Rushmore of mentors. He's he's number one. He's George Washington.

SPEAKER_00 38:35

And uh, and we got to give a shout-out to Brooke, but how has Brooke influenced you?

SPEAKER_01 38:41

Oh man, I in infinite number of ways, but it's specific to the to the to the business. She's and and again, I I've been a work in progress on this. I I think I think maybe, maybe not everybody, maybe it's just my my my own experience, but generally, you know, visionary type people, building-minded type people, I think they see pretty clearly. Um and sometimes, at least for me, become stubborn to dissenting viewpoints or discerning viewpoints in Brooks' case. And there was a period of time, I'm not proud of it, but there's a period of time where I would hear her and be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, cool. This is what we're doing. And I've learned that now, now a funny joke around our house. I'm like, hey, what do you know now that everybody else will know in a decade? Like, will you just tell me now? I'm because I'm gonna listen now. I used to not listen very well. Um, so she's just been such a such a gift to um her literally just her voice. Like she, I don't know if you've done any of the working genius uh profiling, but she's got discernment as kind of her one of her core strengths. And I don't, discernment's in my competency. And so I'll have a bunch of ideas, and then I'll like get the people going around the ideas, and she's like this beautiful bridge of her discerning instincts are so good. Um, so yeah, she's helped shape so much about just the way she helps me slow down. She helps me see like other perspectives and her, she's got her master's in counseling. So her her her therapy-mindedness is sometimes frustrating when you want to run fast, but when you want to do it well and right and be discerning and thoughtful about it, she's she's been such a gift.

SPEAKER_00 40:32

Love

Silent Retreat Presence And Closing

SPEAKER_00 40:33

it. Last question, Justin. What does the future hold for Gilden and or Justin Recliffs?

SPEAKER_01 40:41

Oh boy. I it's it's an awesome question, Mo. I I I think where I'm at right now is can I tell one more story? Last last summer I went to this monastery in northern Missouri called Conception Abbey. And it's a it's a Catholic monastery. I'm not Catholic, but they were incredibly welcoming. And um, a good friend who's actually on the other side of this window, his name's Gary, he had been there, and Gary was like, hey, at some point you should go spend a few days there. Um and you know, one thing led to the next, I get busy, whatever. And then last July, I got to go up there for two days. And they have a they have a program they call the really straightforward silent retreat. So you have 48 hours, no phone, no map, no laptop, no meetings, no talking. You can't talk, which as you can tell from our time together.

SPEAKER_00 41:38

Challenge for me.

SPEAKER_01 41:40

Yep. And you get to just be in the environment and listen and receive and you know, process and journal and read, whatever. Anyway, all I have to say. I I realized how exhausted I was, one, and then also how much, which again, there's there's just both and and all this stuff. There's some really lovely parts of being future oriented, and it also has some dark sides to it. And and typically, Mo, it's so simple for me to be like, oh yeah, five years is what we're gonna be doing, and I maybe write a couple more books and hopefully the business is grown to a certain point. And and again, those answers aren't bad. But for me these days, I'm just like, I have no idea. I want to be fully to the extent that I can, I want to be present. That's become one of these core values for me as presence. I want to be in the moment. I want to be grounded, I want to be here, I want to be grateful, I want to be abundant in my belief right now, um, not just always banking on the future. And because that's, I think, again, it's there's pros and cons and good and bad, and helpful and unhelpful to all this. But um for so many years, I was just was so future focused of like, yeah, yeah, that chase this, do this, go build this. This is gonna be what it's like at some point. And now I'm like, man, we've got a 22-year-old at the front of our line and a 14-year-old at the back of the line. Like, life is amazing, like today, like right now. And uh, and that that is shifting in me towards how do I just show up with more presence instead of some like, hey, I gotta go chase or accomplish. Um, and I'm hopeful that the byproduct of the presence is that we get to build a big, healthy, beautiful thing. Um, but I I I'm learning that I don't I don't need that to be okay today.

SPEAKER_00 43:33

Such wisdom. Thank you, Justin Rickleft. Thank you to our audience. And as a reminder, podcast reviews have a real impact on a podcast visibility. So please leave a review to help others find the show. Uh finally, you can find all our episodes on our website, Mofottle Bob. That's our gateway website, mofottlebob.com. Thanks for listening and have a wonderful day.