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The Personal
Injury Mastermind

The Podcast

49. Sean Magennis, Capital54 Entrepreneurship At Scale & The Power Of Professional Networks

Sean Magennis (@Magennis_Sean) is living the entrepreneurial dream. The CFO of Capital54 and former global president of YPO spends his days helping entrepreneurs take their businesses to the next level. He knows exactly how to cultivate success. How? Because he’s been there himself.

 Today, we hear Sean Magennis’ incredible entrepreneurial journey, from his first sales pitch at school in South Africa to his first million-dollar company in Canada, all the way to his current role as the ultimate investor and mentor for entrepreneurs. He shares his insights on how candid professional networks help personal injury attorneys scale with ease, and how a solid capital strategy will ensure your firm can withstand any eventuality.

Links

Want to hear more from elite personal injury lawyers and industry-leading marketers? Follow us on social media for more.

What’s in This Episode:

  • Who is Sean Magennis?
  • The story of Sean’s first million-dollar company
  • What makes a successful entrepreneur?
  • How Sean Magennis spots an entrepreneur worth investing in

Past Guests

Past guests on Personal Injury Mastermind: Brent Sibley, Sam Glover, Larry Nussbaum, Michael Mogill, Brian Chase, Jay Kelley, Alvaro Arauz, Eric Chaffin, Brian Panish, John Gomez, Sol Weiss, Matthew Dolman, Gabriel Levin, Seth Godin, David Craig, Pete Strom, John Ruhlin, Andrew Finkelstein, Harry Morton, Shay Rowbottom, Maria Monroy, Dave Thomas, Marc Anidjar, Bob Simon, Seth Price, John Gomez, Megan Hargroder, Brandon Yosha, Mike Mandell, Brett Sachs, Paul Faust, Jennifer Gore-Cuthbert

Transcript

Chris Dreyer

There’s a certain type of entrepreneur that seems to exceed all expectations. They’re the rockstars that we’re all looking up to, who seem to take on and vanquish challenges on the regular all while scaling their businesses to incredible heights. So what happens when you get all of them in a room together?
Today’s guest, Sean Magennis, knows all about that. The CEO of Capital54 and former Global President of YPO spends his days helping successful entrepreneurs take their businesses to the next level.

Sean Magennis

There’s a saying that we don’t go through life alone. My experience has been that surrounding myself with people that are prepared to give and share their experiences was a massive help and is a massive help because I’m still getting that kind of support today.

Chris Dreyer

Today, we hear insights from Sean Magennis’ incredible entrepreneurial journey. Plus, how candid professional networks help personal injury attorneys scale with ease and capital strategy to ensure your firm can withstand any eventuality. That’s coming up on The Rankings Podcast, the show where founders, entrepreneurs, and elite personal injury attorneys share their incredible stories about what they did to get to the top and what keeps them there. I’m Chris Dreyer, stay with us.
Sean Magennis is extremely well-known in entrepreneurial circles – from Dallas, Texas to every corner of the globe through his work with YPO. But Sean’s success story starts back at his high school in South Africa raising money to fund a new community pool.

Sean Magennis

I was passionate about swimming. I got very fired up about going door to door and literally raising money. I was very successful at it. I’d literally go door to door after school, sometimes sort of twilight, dodge the barking dogs, and do my little pitch. And it just, it seemed to come naturally to me. So that was my sort of first sales experience. And then seeing the swimming pool being built in my final year in high school, my, my team won the cup, my house team, and they collected. And it was a very, it was, there was a sense of pride. And then I happened to work for one of South Africa’s foremost entrepreneurs, a fellow by the name of Robert Maingard who really enhanced that, that passion for being an entrepreneur. And that’s what sort of spurred me to start my own business at the age of 25 and a half, nearly 26.

Chris Dreyer

I think that’s incredible. And I think that those door to door, I’m sure you refined your pitch and you probably accepted rejection. Got used to it.

Sean Magennis

Got myself bitten by a German pincher once and that was my biggest sale. I said give me 500 because I had blood coming out of my jeans. It wasn’t a bad bite. I didn’t need stitches or anything, but she was so horrified. I’ll never forget it. So it was a very important lesson.

Chris Dreyer

That’s such an interesting story, that’s incredible.

Sean Magennis

I’m sure your audience on the personal injury side may have advised me to take a different approach, but I got my payment. Let’s put it that way.

Chris Dreyer

Oh, that’s awesome. That’s fun. That’s such a good story. So you started your first business and to be a member of EO, you have to hit a million in sales, so it’s that first, that minimum requirement. And you did that with your company early on. So, so tell us that story of hitting that first landmark million dollars in sales.

Sean Magennis

Yeah, that was fortunately for me. And I’m extraordinarily blessed. I was in Canada and I was selling a suite of psychometric, aptitude, math, reasoning, and I happened to secure some really good benchmark accounts early on companies like Minko Metals, Kelly Services, which was a big temping placement company, and several others, Standard Life and some big life insurance companies. And what I learned early, I was able to, I was able to increase my revenue there fairly substantially and charge a higher price than a lot of my competitors. And my model then became going after the Fortune 500, Fortune 1000 and that helped my accelerations. I didn’t have to settle a lot of business because I, so what I, what is coming to you called nonenterprise level model and that helped me get within two and a half years up to that level. And I didn’t know about EO. I’ve never volunteered for anything. I’d never been part of a community organization and Peter Thomas, who is the founder of Century 21 recruited me into EO, he was a YPO member, Chairman of Meritas, and he just a superhuman being. And he really shared the benefit of learning from a peer group being with other entrepreneurs, other business owners, and taking advantage of it. But part of it was giving back. We had to volunteer to run and when I joined EO, there were about 400 members worldwide. There are now over 15,000. And each of us early members had a role to play in developing our chapter and getting speakers and resources and working collaboratively together in small groups. And that gave me a very important step up because I was able to figure out through watching others who’ve made mistakes that I didn’t need to make and having very sort of candid, confidential, honest discussions about how to fund the business, how to scale the business. It was a great experience and I’ve never looked back from that time. Yeah.

Chris Dreyer

I completely agree with all of that. So when I have a history education degree, and somehow I became an entrepreneur, started my own business and I joined Vistage and I got immersed in this with other business owners and I got to see how they were accepting challenges and dealing with employees are growing and so it was very powerful for me. And you went on. Then to YPO and you became the global president and it’s one of the most powerful groups in the world. So why do you think YPO is one of the most powerful groups in the world?

Sean Magennis

I think it goes back to what I was sharing earlier. 70 years it’s been in business. It’s uniqueness is… I call it the trust formula. I think probably the same. I haven’t belonged to Vistage, but I know a lot of Vistage chairs and people that have been invested in several of my teams at YPO, we would put through Vistage because it was very valuable for them operationally, but I think trust and this concept of authentic judgemental sharing with each other. So that whole concept of a peer. Now, YPO is very broad, so it’s any business imaginable. And I think it’s when you have those, that kind of candid trust-based relationship where you kind of take your mask off, I experienced early on. We layer masks on ourselves in order to compete and a lot of it’s made up in our minds because there are whatever insecurities and fear factors we think we need to operate a certain way and so we build these masks. One of the things YPO does in a very sort of confidential setting and enables you to take those masks off. And really when you’re sharing, sharing the facts, sharing the personal impact, sharing the concerns, the insecurities, and when you don’t get any criticism coming back at you or judgment, you develop a confidence that enables you to move forward, to learn, to grow, to adapt. And I think that’s part of its secret sauce. YPO has a concept called forum and they called masterminds or different things that exist, there are small group curated sort of coaching. Coaches do a great job at this, but the element of trust in those is really what makes them work. And then if you are truly prepared to divulge, to discuss, to share some of the challenges that you have, and when you get feedback and you get other people sharing from experience, the key here is sharing from experience. It’s not giving advice as such, it’s really sharing your own experience. Because in your own experience, chances are, you will have a direct impact on the person receiving that story, that experience, and they can take from that or the nuggets that can help them be that that they can use in their own situation. I’ll give you an example and it’s more of a personal one. When my mom was diagnosed with motor neuron disease, Lou Gehrig’s they call it, it was obviously a major shock to the family, to myself. None of us had ever had experience with it, but I shared that with my forum group and one of the members of my forum had a relative who had gone through it. And they were able to put me in touch with, imagine you’re on society here in the United States. And within 24 hours, my mom had a nurse at her door. And for the six months of her life that remained with her, she was able to be cared for in a manner, which I probably would have found it, but it could have taken a couple of months, but this was a way to get it provided me the kind of help and confidence and solution. That was really powerful. And I have a thousand stories like that, personal and through observation, this is with community groups today. I think the ecosystems of these are profound and they’re growing. And that’s why I’ve invested through Capital54 in a new venture called Collective54, which is, kind of like a YPO, but very deep for owners of professional services firms because that’s a unique demographic. It’s your demographic, it’s the owners and the entrepreneurs that are your audience. And where do you go to get help to grow your business to scale? And how do you create an exit for you so that you create generational wealth for yourself, your family? Whether you want to buy a boat or we really want to give it away to a worthy cause. It’s how do you create a community around helping you and helping each other get that?

Chris Dreyer

I love those stories and I think that the big part of being connected to individuals and access to connections that were incredible and helping deal with that situation with your mother. And the other thing that I was just interested in it, and I want to jump right into Capital 54 after this is.
Being the CEO of this organization, you spent a ton of time with entrepreneurs and you saw many CEOs, the CEOs that were successful, the ones that weren’t successful, maybe that ruminated, or didn’t take it to the next level. So what makes a great CEO. And in your mind?

Sean Magennis

There are so many different varieties. So it’s not a silver bullet answer because it’s very nuanced. I would say some common characteristics, curiosity, and learning as an underpinning of successful CEOs. I don’t think you can run a business today, whether it’s a small business or a medium or even a large size business, unless you are developing an, unless you have a curiosity to learn and grow and understand people and markets and the product, um, principles. I think today, if you’ve got a purpose and principle, I love Ray Dalio, for example, popped into my mind, but you know, having a north star in whatever business you’re in, that’s not only representative of you as a leader because you have to be able to walk the talk. But having a north star that’s attractive to yourself and people that work for you. Now you have to, when I say, walk, the talk, being authentic, and being able to be measured on your accomplishments on doing what you say you’re going to do are very important ingredients. And then I think it’s dependent on, I don’t think there’s one leadership style. Each event have a different composition of personality, life experiences, worldviews, but if you are leading… leaders really take on the responsibility and the accountability to their stakeholders, if they’re running publicly traded companies to their stockholders, but most importantly to themselves. So that’s important. I think courage and authenticity, courage to take a risk, to get up there and make payroll, hire a group of people, pioneer, create impact. I see so many interesting businesses today. There are wonderful NGOs, nonprofits, being in business. To me, the entrepreneurship aspect of it means that you’re creating something worthwhile, whether it’s a product or service or widget, there’s an exchange, but you’re also perpetuating the ability for people to live and do things that they required. There’s a monetary aspect to it. And then finally, I think leaders who extend themselves, who are prepared to make mistakes who have compassion for others, not, not apple pie compassion, but true, genuine compassion to understand what it takes to, to get up in the morning and do the best one can I think are the core ingredients. And there are others too. I mean, I have my own. So the core pillars, I have six core what I call my own personal pillars. Communication, powerful communication is key for me. And part of that is candid and truthful communication. I try and be positive because today positivity is really important in the face of the difficulties that we all, that we’re all facing. Reputation. So reputation for fair dealing. You can deal hard, which I think is appropriate in business, but fair dealing. And then passion, I think without passion, why are you even bothering? Vision. Leaders without vision who can think uniquely and push the envelope and explore the realms of possibility or key. I mentioned courage and then action. I think. Words without action are just that they’re words. And so verifiable action. Those are the sort of the six things that I try and live up to every day. And it’s a challenge, nobody’s perfect!

Chris Dreyer

That’s such an incredible answer. Well-rounded answered is such a broad question that I have, and I’m glad that I asked it because it is incredible. And I a hundred percent agree with all of those, even though the statement at the end, the wantrepreneurs versus the entrepreneurs. So let’s jump right into Capital54. As many individuals have great ideas for companies, but what does Capital54 do to help turn those great ideas and its successful businesses?

Sean Magennis

So, Capital 54 is the family office of a fellow YPO, my business partner, my boss, Greg Alexander, who is just one of those extraordinarily gifted, talented entrepreneurs who had his own boutique consulting firm called SBI had a very successful sale several years ago. And he approached me. He wanted to invest in boutique professional services firms and in entrepreneurs who are wanting to make an impact, particularly in our industry. So our goal is to make strategic investments in entrepreneurs that are in the growth phase of their businesses. And in order to do that, our first portfolio company, it’s a membership group for owners of professional services firms in three specific tiers. Those companies and owners are going through growth. So they’re small, they’ve got a handful of clients that are big first team put together, but they need business development. They need to get out of survival mode. They need other individuals who’ve been there and done that can help them on that journey. And so that they’re not alone. The first time entrepreneurs, it’s very difficult. There’s something called the imposter syndrome. How am I really capable of doing this? Am I going to succeed? Am I going to fail? And then we focused as well on the scale aspect. So, people that are past the growth phase, they’re in the scale phase, but they’re working 80 hours a week. Like they’re working too hard in their business. They’re typically the rainmaker-owner-partner. And how do we help them spend less time on the day to day more time in strategy? So that’s about making sure you put the right people around you, the right senior team, maybe bringing in a partner, maybe expanding your reach through, through some kind of a merger or ecosystem partnership.
And that is a very important group because 95% of owners don’t get past that scale group to enterprise value and that’s the other piece. So the third aspect of what we’re doing is those people that are two to three or four years away from selling, how do you make sure that, that their organizations, and then they’re prepared to be super attractive to a strategic buyer or a private equity buyer? And there are a lot of little things they have to do. They have to separate, for example, the personal finances from the business finances. So many entrepreneurs, their lives are wrapped up in their business but come the day they need to sell in business, it has to be pristine from a financial standpoint the quality has to be great. A good monthly recurring revenue model needs to be in place. And it’s even small professional services, businesses like boutique law firms or accounting firms. They truly want to create an exit, a substantial exit. Maybe it’s a roll-up that they consider and maybe there’s some intellectual property that they can digitize that becomes their unique IP that has a value in excess of their fee-based value. So are all those little nuances. I’ve been in professional services for 30 years, and Greg’s been in that business around the same, a little bit less than me, but we want to take our experiences, our successes, and pay it forward. Now, selfishly, and one of my principles is candor, so by creating Collective54, we want to be able to find those owners of businesses whose values and whose business resonates with us. And we’re putting our own money into those companies to help them grow. So that’s the purpose of Capital54. We are going to do a couple more startups that we’re looking at right now. And our long-term plan is to, is to go side by side with some really gifted owners and help them have the kind of success that Greg and myself have had. So that’s the game plan and we’re patient, both of us are in the middle phase of our life. And so we’re at a phase where hopefully with our perspective, our networks, uh, willingness to sit and spend time with entrepreneurs will accrue positively to both us and the people that we invest with

Chris Dreyer

Sean’s work at Capital54 helps entrepreneurs do exactly what many PI firms are attempting: scaling. Many attorneys I speak to talk about a kind of plateauing where they reach a certain level, but they can’t push through the wall no matter what they do. If you’re listening and that’s you, then good news: Sean McGinnis breaks down his methodology to help you get over that hump. First up, perfecting your networking.

Sean Magennis

They need to dedicate time to the process. I think one of the big observations that we’ve had is professionalizing your outreach and your business development processes. Manet MIS. It’s not something that you, that, you know, just via osmosis or your innate ability even to network individually, but there are some phenomenal digital marketing businesses, for example, today that leverage platforms like LinkedIn. But when I say that, when he goes, yeah, we know that and these other things, but there is a way to go about marketing in a very specific way to your target audience. So firstly, understanding your customer, understanding what drives them, what the. And what the needs are, where you’re getting referrals, and then making sure that you develop the kinds of relationships and touchpoints with those groups through communities like that. So social media marketing is very important today. Not ignoring the face-to-face, unfortunately in this pandemic, it’s very difficult to get up in the bottom. A lot of people are, are resistant to that, but it’s building in those touchpoints that create A trusted relationship in your top of mind going up. So that’s an element, joining organizations, the collective with people, for example, very important because, or associations where you are leveraging into a multiplication event through that new group. And that’s very important because then people have your back. There are groups specifically that are good for doing that, but having a strategy measurement on a daily basis, because this is your lifeblood. Having some really good tools to monitor and make sure that you’re you’ll follow-ups and your touchpoints are automated. I’m a huge Salesforce fan, but I also, like HubSpot and these other tools, which are relatively inexpensive, but they take a lot of the administrivia off your plate. And if you’re, if you utilize them well, that can be very effective. Then there are a whole group of organizations that you can outsource to today. As a small personal injury attorney, and you’ve got the ability to dedicate some financial resources on a monthly basis to a group of people. There are some fantastic companies, one in particular that I’ve been using out of Atlanta, Georgia called Uproar. They’re spectacular. You give them a defined list of targets and they’ll go off and they’ll actually book appointments where you see, you can have the face-to-face. You can have that conversation with somebody that needs your services, or that is a good referral source for you. So, I think some of those tactics are useful. It is important to work your plan, to make sure that you’re constantly prepared to pivot. But you got to have a really nice top pipeline that can come through the funnel. Yeah. And that’s going to be unfortunate even for a small business if you’re not doing that effectively. You’re going from one deal, you’re having to, you know, bounce back and fill your pipeline or relationships. So you can automate some of that. That’s a way to scale and grow quite nicely and you can manage it. You can put the pedal down and accelerate. You can pull it back. These are the things, by the way, that on a weekly basis, we teach our members sentence at collective with before, and we have a whole series of templates. So that’s just top of mind, right?

Chris Dreyer

I love the multiplier effect that you’re talking about with the networking and definitely with Collective 54 for our audience listening, we’re definitely going to link that up so that you can get the help there. And another, so another little area for personal injury attorneys, particularly small personal injury law firms to get in these situations where maybe they’re going to litigate a case and it just drains their money, their funds, or they need a cash injection. So how should they go about and prospecting potential investors? Does it just come back to networking?

Sean Magennis

No, I think there’s a very specific strategy to adopt them. One is they’re all terms now sort of private equity models that provide litigation support depending on the case. That’s a burgeoning industry and I’m sure a lot of your listeners know about these. A friend of mine, John Garvin, was a managing partner of a very large firm, K and L Gates that’s gone on and put together a pool of capital to do exactly what you’ve just asked. So, there are pockets like that. It is important, you’ve got to have your own set aside with just that eventuality and in that business, I would be building as part of my capitalization strategy. The pool to take care of exactly that type of eventuality. If you’re going from deal to deal, it may be very difficult to do that. So lining up with a capitalist source may be good, but you know, again, I think defining what that looks like, getting ready for it. Maybe aligning with some of the bigger firms that wouldn’t support them and doing a fee split or again share type model could work as well. So again, I think it’s important that your listeners set things through identity what those potential challenges would be, and then proximal solutions through networking through our reach, the bones that are specifically designed for that type of contribution.

Chris Dreyer

Yeah, I completely agree. I think that’s a very well-rounded answer. And I think that you covered it much better than I’ve heard. I think a lot of, some of the stories and I’ve interviewed a lot of a personal injury attorneys. The thing that I hear is they just load up the credit card and they accrue all this debt, but I think kind of forecasting, maybe those financial needs are incredibly important, particularly when that just perfect case lands on your plate. And, but, you know, even then there are some firms that may be able to, you may be able to partner with the can actually help try the case with you and extend the value because they’re experts in that particular area where you might try that, try the case and not get very much. And so I think there are some opportunities there for collaboration.

Sean Magennis

I do too. And I think, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head and I think. But people get dollars in their eyes. And I think this case is going to be that groundbreaking wealth creation event. Sometimes grief gets in the way in place of really thoughtful. How do I extend my ability to be in business for a while? If you’re not a one-trick pony and you’re thinking long-term, it’s what sorts of relationships will help me along the way because there are peaks and valleys in every business. We’ve seen that right now. Some businesses are doing extraordinarily well today. Others like the hospitality industry or the meeting and event planning industry are really hurting, but they’ll come back and it’s all they ready for those eventualities nobody’s ever been through anything like this today.  And so I think the big lesson that I’m taking away from this the last six months, or maybe the next six months is how do we get ready to handle these types of, and there may not be as big a crisis, but how do we plan for different scenarios coming up. And what you’re talking about is really a scenario planning mentality to deal with certain events in your business. And are you ready for them? Do you have the relationships in place that you can go to help you get through them and thinking about them taking the time to plan, to strategize, to work with this? How have you dealt with this in the past? Who have you managed to go to that would share, not try and take the lion’s share of the revenue from a particular case, or maybe a way to go about thinking about it.

Chris Dreyer

I, I love that and I, that immediately makes me think of niching. The riches are in the niches and big con… there are so many pros to niching- you’re a thought leader, you’re an expert, you stand out in a crowded space, I could go on and on about the benefits of efficiency for operations and you’re maximizing your marketing spend. And the con is that a lot of times people list is but smaller market cap and risks an industry downturn. Right? So a lot of people won’t niche because they’re just afraid that maybe they picked the wrong industry and it goes, or they pick hospitality. But I think what you mentioned is being aware that you have an extreme focus you’re planning for that potential. Like what if at the very beginning?

Sean Magennis

Yes. Yes. And the reality is it’s specialized, it’s a specialized world today. It’s highly disruptive and a lot of big organizations, mid-sized organizations. They don’t know what they don’t have the talent in house. Where do they go? So you have a niche specialty. If you have certain intellectual property, you can make that very worthwhile to your clients. We’re working with so many interesting member companies right now, Chris counter-intuitively you would think that retail is getting habit today. Some of our retail consulting members are 40, 50% up on the revenues over the last year because they’re helping in bankruptcy. They’re helping in inventory. They’re helping him with logistics, the supply chain. And it’s when companies are faced with calamity and a massive reduction in revenue, where do they go for help? And this is where the niche players who have developed a specialty will always play a role. And we’re seeing that every day, it’s remarkable, but it’s having the mindset not to put yourself in, in a backward-looking position. And you need to be prepared at any given point in time to be able to toot your own horn and say, this is where I specialize here’s my, here are my credentials. Here is, here are my artifacts of professionalism. This is what I’ve done. And give me a chance to do this for you now, again, going back to what we talked about very earlier, you’ve got to be able to credibly walk your talk and deliver that value. But if you’ve got a proven track record and you feel confident. And you can evidence your ability to provide value you’ll always be able to get business.

Chris Dreyer

Three excellent concepts there to explore from Sean Magennis: networking, a strong capitalization strategy, and openness to collaboration. Be sure to check out The Rankings Bblog for a closer look at some of the themes from today’s episode. It’s clear that Sean Magennis is truly passionate about what he does, but even the most dedicated entrepreneurs need to take time off. So I wanted to know how he achieves the perfect work-life balance.

Sean Magennis

So I’ll use the well-trained phrase: life is a marathon. It’s not a sprint. So that is kind of like a red flag for an entrepreneur because we all put in 80 hours a week. Unless you’re physically and mentally healthy, you won’t be successful long-term you may be able to push it through for a couple of years. But I have that balance. I try not to take work home. I’ve hated being home during, COVID not that I’m anti-work from home. I think that the outsourced and the work from home model is here to stay and it’s fantastic. Right? But I’ve tried to separate throughout my life. The time I dedicate to work and the time I dedicate to refresh Dan Sullivan, who owns a business called The Strategic Coach. He has something called focus days, free days, and buffer days. And it was really difficult for me initially to get my head around. What does it mean to take a totally free day? And so I try and have my weekends to the extent I can be totally free. Work now there may be client calls, relationships, and YPO. It was a seven day week because we have. We had a member cluster in 130 different countries, all different types of religions, all different types of time zones. So you’ve got to balance that. I literally try and organize my week in my life so that I’ve got pockets of free time, buffer time to do administrivia because today it’s important that everything is ticked and tied from an administration standpoint. And then when you really want to be really on. But that for me, by the way, personally, that requires getting a visa eight to ask even I don’t respond well, if I’m not rested and they’re little hacks that one can use that I’ve developed personally overtime to make sure that happens. Family is very important to me. So time with my wife and daughter is key, and that’s why weekends are pretty much off-limits, but the reality is as an entrepreneur, we do what it takes to get things done. And so ignoring. Your physical and mental wellbeing is dangerous. And having again, a structure, some kind of structure that helps you just disconnect.

Chris Dreyer

The word that’s resonating with me is balance. And one of the things that’s been a struggle for me personally, is I like, even though I have a remote company, I like to separate work and home life. And it’s like, well, my living room’s over my left shoulder. So I always feel like I’m at work. I exit the room and I’m still at the office. So it’s kind of like a mental shift. That’s been hard to adjust. So I completely agree. And as we close up, we have, we have a new segment called our three for three. Yeah, it’s a quickfire round. Which entrepreneur do you admire the most?

Sean Magennis

Wow. Which entrepreneur do I admire? The most? There are so many, I would say classic in the financial space would be a Warren Buffett. And I would say Bill Gates for his, his total sustaining, I mean, he’s just a rockstar and just, he’s a marathon guy, extraordinarily amazed by what he’s done, but then there are some entrepreneurs that nobody’s heard about. And I know you asked me for only one, but I’ve got some really good EO and YPO friends, people like Rand Stagen, and Rick Sapio who I just so admire and who epitomize true entrepreneurship, but you wouldn’t know who they were because they’re not the Gates’, or the Buffets of the world.

Chris Dreyer

That’s perfect. And we’ll have to give them a shout out. They’ll love this. And the next question, being a search engine optimization company, I got to ask this to every guest. What is your top search engine optimization?

Sean Magennis

Very targeted. Try and be as specific as you can.

Chris Dreyer

Perfect. And then the final question here. What is the next thing on your bucket list?

Sean Magennis

I want to travel again and we were my wife, daughter, and I were, we had a trip planned in August, our first river cruise in Europe, and we were going to go down the Rhine and we were so looking forward to that, my daughter’s 17, the two more years high school left. So I’m looking forward to the world to come back. And to do that trip next year,

Chris Dreyer

It was a total pleasure to speak with Sean Magennis for this episode. He has such a profound experience in every facet of entrepreneurship, and I’ll be keeping tabs on Capital54 to see the results of Sean’s incredible mentorship and business development. You’ve been listening to The Rankings Podcast, I’m Chris Dreyer. A huge thanks to Sean Magennis for joining us today. You can find more information, as always, in the show notes. And we want to hear from you! How did you get over the hump when scaling your firm? Drop us a review and let us know. Thanks for joining us. We’ll see you next time.