Stop Growing Your Business (Start Growing Your Profits) | Ep. 39

Episode Summary

Latane Meade joins Brian Spear to examine what entrepreneurs and investors can learn when growth, liquidity, and personal wealth stop moving in the same direction. Drawing on his experience building large sports and event businesses before founding Allied Title & Escrow, Meade explains how rapid expansion can look successful while consuming cash, management attention, and team capacity. His central lesson is to pursue profitable growth, take distributions, and avoid letting revenue become the only scorecard.

The conversation then shifts to where a founder should spend time as a company matures. Meade describes prioritizing high-value relationships through EO, YPO, and TIGER 21, arguing that the right rooms can create opportunities that would be difficult to reach through sheer activity alone. He also discusses capital allocation after liquidity events, including his preference for professionally managed retirement assets, long-term ownership of established companies, and caution around angel investments and other opportunities where he has little control.

Brian and Meade connect these ideas to family wealth and the next generation. They discuss teaching children to work through adversity, learning from failure instead of quitting, and building persistence through real responsibility. The episode closes with Meade’s operating principle of continuous innovation: keep testing small improvements, retain what works, and let those incremental advantages compound over time.

Key Takeaways

• Pursue profitable growth, not growth for its own sake. Revenue that requires excessive staffing, reinvestment, or complexity can make a business look larger without improving the owner’s cash position.

• Take some profits out of the business. Paying yourself, reducing obligations, and building personal liquidity can create both financial resilience and better decision-making capacity.

• Allocate founder time toward the activities with the highest potential result. For Latane, relationships with experienced operators and investors created opportunities that routine management activity could not.

• Distinguish between risks you can influence and risks you cannot. Concentrated ownership may be rational when you deeply understand and control the operating business, while outside investments require a different standard of caution.

• Treat persistence and innovation as compounding advantages. Teach the next generation to work through setbacks, and keep improving the business through small experiments rather than relying on a static playbook.

Key Topics Covered

• Profitable business growth vs. revenue growth

• Cash flow, founder distributions, and personal liquidity

• Entrepreneurial scaling and operating complexity

• Founder time allocation and executive networking

• EO, YPO, and TIGER 21 peer networks

• Capital allocation after business success

• Public-market, retirement, angel, and private investments

• Investment control, concentration risk, and diversification

• Family wealth and teaching children resilience

• Persistence, adversity, and continuous innovation

Episode Chapters

00:00 Intro

Latane reflects on a fast-growing events business that looked profitable on paper but consumed cash, setting up the episode’s larger question: what kind of growth is actually worth pursuing?

01:13 Becoming Mark Cuban’s Apprentice

Latane traces his early entrepreneurial path, from leaving a corporate marketing role to joining a sports and social club and earning a spot on Mark Cuban’s reality show.

04:41 Growing (Way) Too Fast

He explains how the sports business expanded into obstacle races and Electric Run, reaching hundreds of thousands of participants while operational complexity and costs became harder to control.

07:49 Boring, Fun, Profitable Businesses

After seeing how easily competitors copied event concepts, Latane deliberately looked for a more durable, “boring” industry and brought a differentiated customer-experience mindset to title and escrow.

10:57 You SHOULD Take Profits

Brian and Latane distinguish revenue growth, accounting profit, and actual cash. Latane explains why founders need to distribute profits, pay themselves, and avoid reinvesting every dollar indefinitely.

13:40 Every Founder MUST Do This

Latane describes shifting his highest-value work toward relationships and peer networks, including EO, YPO, and TIGER 21, rather than spending most of his time on lower-leverage operating tasks.

17:39 Share Everything of Value

The discussion focuses on contributing inside high-level rooms instead of being intimidated by them. Latane argues that experience becomes more valuable when it is shared openly and used to help peers.

20:10 Growing Your Personal Wealth

Latane walks through his approach to investing after building businesses, including professionally managed retirement assets, long-term ownership of strong public companies, and lessons from private and angel investments.

26:22 Be Careful Where You Allocate Capital

Brian and Latane discuss concentration, diversification, and the difference between risking capital in a business you control versus an outside investment where you have little ability to influence the outcome.

28:25 Teaching Your Kids the Struggle (for Greatness)

They turn to family wealth and the challenge of raising children who understand work, persistence, and the value of money. Latane shares how he used a neighborhood power-washing business to give his son real responsibility and adversity.

34:55 Create Your Own Luck!

The conversation returns to persistence: keep doing strong work, keep showing up, and stay ready long enough for timing and opportunity to intersect.

36:31 Latane’s Sage Principle

Latane’s closing principle is continuous innovation. He encourages businesses to keep testing small improvements so the playbook evolves instead of becoming fixed.

Full Transcript

[Transcript begins]

Latane Meade: And I remember someone in Australia said to me, Oh my God, you guys are going to make so much money on this. And I was like, you know, I don’t think you understand how much costs go into these things. Like, do we hold on this business for another year or do we just kind of move on and take the cash? And looking back, I think we should have taken the cash. And that’s something I learned. You do need to take your profits. You need to take them, you need to pay yourself, you need to pay off bills. If you never get a reward, it’s a very demotivating life.

Brian Spear: Growth gets a lot of attention, but bigger is not always better. Over time, most investors and entrepreneurs, they learn that the bigger question is not simply how much you can build, it’s what kind of growth is actually worth pursuing. how much control you want to keep, and what do you do with the wealth once you’ve actually created it. Welcome back to The Sage Investor. I’m Brian Spear, and my mission is to help you generate cash flow and build legacy wealth in a tax-efficient manner, because that’s what I’m trying to do for my family, and I’m sharing all the secrets I learn along the way. Today, I’m joined by a friend, a great serial entrepreneur and investor, Latane Meade. Latane, welcome to the show, bud.

Latane Meade: Good to have you, man. My man, it’s great to be here.

Brian Spear: I met you a few months ago, and I said, this is the kind of guy I like to hang out with. You have the best story in the game. One day you’ll be in 60 Minutes. So I’m just happy to be here early in your career. All right, let’s go. Love every bit of it. Yeah, for those unaware, we met up at the Harvard YPO real estate event, which was absolutely wonderful. Became fast friends, given a background overlap, so much more. It’s absolutely wonderful. I appreciate you carving out some time, buddy. You’re a busy guy, so carving out some time to add some value to our listener base. I’m certain that that will be the case. But let’s bring it back. Let’s talk about your story. Let’s bring it back to the beginning and kind of how you got started. You are a kind of guy that ultimately creates your own luck. I love your background. I love your story. And in order to kind of walk through this entrepreneurial journey, you got to tell the story of kind of early on in your career, how you got started, how you got Mark Cuban’s cell phone in your pocket right now, and ultimately how you kind of went into business with him, buddy. You got to tell the story.

Latane Meade: Yeah, no, absolutely. So I mean, in high school, I wasn’t great in school. I was always like interested in entrepreneurial story. I was reading like Mark Cuban books and Richard Branson books, and I didn’t like reading. So I thought that was maybe I’m interested in this stuff. And I used to always have like the smart people in my class. I’m like, yeah, but I feel like they can’t start a business or do this. So anyway, I had a little chip on my shoulder my whole life because I wasn’t very good at school. So anyway, I worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers right at college for a year and a half. I was doing marketing for the tax division, most boring job in the world. I was like, I just can’t do this. So I was playing in a sports league in D.C. And I was like, this would be fun, organizing sports leagues. Randomly, I went to San Diego on a trip to visit with friends. And we’re like, this is the greatest place in the world. We’re moving here, whether we have jobs or not. And six months into my journey, right before I was about to move out there, some guy I went to elementary school with had started a sport and social club and was looking for a partner. And I was like, I’m in. And I never asked what I was going to make. I can tell you it was $18,000 a year, which is not much. Big money. Hard to survive. Big money. I lived in a room with a friend. So I had two people in a room. We had beds next to each other. And we figured out how to survive. It’s amazing what you can figure out when you really have to, right? We’d find the bars that had the dollar, you know, the dollar beer special each night. So, you know, dollar tacos, dollar beer. So anyway, did this sport and social club. And it was interesting. One of my friends, a couple years into it, was like, hey, Mark Cuban’s going to give a million dollars away to – 16, one of 16 people. And I was like, what are the rules? And it says, there are no rules. It’s like, oh, I love it. So I jumped on, I just came back from playing basketball. And I was like, oh shit, I’ve got like two hours to get this video in. So I was like, I think I did something like turn on the camera and say, hey, Mark, how’s it going? I’m sure you’re going to just, you’re going to just, you know, have someone kiss your ass, tell you how great you are, and you’re going to pick him. So anyway, this probably isn’t going to work out. Hey, go fuck yourself. And I sent that in. So anyway, they called me back. And I went through the interview process and all that stuff. And I didn’t think I got on the show. They told me they were going to call me by Friday. And then we went out Friday night. And at like 5 a.m., my phone’s ringing. And I was like, what is this? I was not in a great state. And it was Cuban. And I was like, I thought he was telling me I wasn’t on the show. I was like, Mark, you made a mistake. Let me on. You got to trust me on this. He was laughing. Shut up. And I was like, what? He goes, you’re on the show. I’m like, yeah. So anyway, I was probably like 25 or 24 at the time. It was a really cool experience. Went to Dallas for a month. Put us through all these different challenges. I made it to like the final six out of 16. I did something pretty stupid at the end that I don’t think he got. They kicked me off the show. But, you know, he’s been a really cool guy. Stayed in touch with a lot of us over the years. A very responsive guy. Like you can email him and anyone can really email him. And he will respond pretty quickly to a lot of people. So he’s a good guy.

Brian Spear: Yeah, absolutely wonderful. And I mean, that kind of points to the fact of creating your own luck, right? You’ve parlayed that sort of go-getter attitude into multiple businesses over time. And you’ve had a wonderful story. Maybe expound upon that individual business that you built at the very outset and kind of that evolution of your actual entrepreneurial career and kind of how big that sports business ultimately became. Yeah.

Latane Meade: So we started with Sport and Social Club and we were doing, you know, 16 to 20 different sports, kickball, dodgeball, soccer, softball, anything you can kind of think of. Then people will go to the bars afterwards. We had 100,000 people playing in San Diego, some kind of sport, one or the other. And so we’re like, hey, we have this database of people like what else can we do? Tough Mudder and Spartan Race have become popular in the obstacle game. And we didn’t see anything that existed that was similar to Wipeout. And so we were like, that’s like the most fun game show in our opinion. So we kind of used that inspiration and created ridiculous obstacle challenge. So we started with that and it did very well. And then Wipeout actually reached out to us and we’re like, oh God, we’re going to get sued here. And they’re like, hey, we like what you’re doing. Would you like to license our name and rebrand the Wipeout? We’re like, oh, this is awesome. Yeah. So we actually ended up doing that. I would say it was harder than we thought because you’re dealing with ABC, Disney, animal productions. Everything you do has to get approval from like all three of them. And so it kind of slowed us down. Whereas when we were entrepreneurial, we were able to be like, hey, We’re going to Houston, Texas now in our next race. Pop up a Facebook page and let’s go. And, you know, when you’re dealing with, you know, Disney and stuff, it didn’t happen quickly. Everything required a lot of approval. So, you know, it was a cool experience and it was successful, but it wasn’t probably as successful as I thought it’d be. But it was really cool. We also got connected with a guy that founded Ragnar Relay. And we launched a night race called Electric Run. That was a rocket ship. That was pretty crazy. We had 300,000 participants in our first year. We did 30 cities in our first year, so we averaged about 10,000 people a race. That was just exhausting looking back. We didn’t know what we were doing. We had 30 people that were traveling with us, and we had 400 volunteers per race, and it was just a mess, but a really cool experience looking back. So we kind of grew almost too fast, and we really couldn’t even control what we were doing. We didn’t keep track of the cost as well as we should have. We had a really good offer for the business at one point that we should have taken that we didn’t take. And eventually, all said and done, I ended up selling the company to my business partners. And my takeaway from that was, man… I want everything that we did. Everyone in our space was amazing at marketing. Like we’d pop up a new race and then someone would just do a copycat with us in another city. Like they wouldn’t even have anything. They wouldn’t own any equipment. They kind of take our pictures. They pop it up. I was like, how do I get in an industry that’s boring that, you know, I can, you know, my, my advantage is good at marketing and video. So hopefully we can use that and we have some type of competitive advantage. So I was actually looking for a boring industry, and I moved back to the East Coast where I’m from, and I bought a house. And I was like, man, that was a boring experience there with the title company. And I started talking with a friend of mine who had owned a title company before, and he was like – You know, explain to me, you know, your clients are loan officers and builders and real estate agents. I was like, man, we went to JMU. All of our friends are loan officers, real estate agents and builders. Maybe we can break even off our friends and grow from there. So long time ago, that was 10 years, 2016. You know, we started this company with that kind of concept and we’re like, let’s make this a fun experience. If people are buying a house, it should be the most fun experience of their life. So I took those ideas from my sport and social club and we got super soft tees with funny slogans on them, ping pong tables, arcade games, music, beer on tap. And we put that in all our offices. We made it a celebration and it’s been a fun journey.

Brian Spear: No, man, it’s honestly wonderful. Love every bit of it. You know, as the old adage goes, boring cash flow wins. That’s one of our 21 sage evergreen principles. Because, you know, when you’re doing a partnership with Disney and ABC, it’s really, really sexy, right? That’s what a lot of entrepreneurs dream about. But being tied to that organization ultimately creates problems. And I think it would point to, you know, for the listener out there. An entrepreneur, somebody growing a business, you know, are you are you pursuing growth because it improves the business and improves your life along the way or just because growth itself has just become the score and what you’re actually seeking? It’s a great question.

Latane Meade: And we have a very clear definitive answer on that, which is we’re only going to go after growth if it’s profitable. You know, like imagine putting tons of time to do 50 deals a month, you know, and not making money. Right. Like why? It’s you’re going to burn out your own team. It’s not good for anyone. And so we’re very, very clear. We will not do anything. In fact, we turn down a lot of business because if it’s not profitable growth, it’s not worth it. Yeah, everyone wants to make more money. Your employees want to make more money. As I tell my employees all the time, yeah, I’ve got to make I got to find $400,000 of additional profit every year just to pay raises, you know? So like you think, why do we focus on growth? We focus on growth, number one, because we want to keep you here. And we have to go out and give these people raises, and if we don’t go find growth, then they’re not gonna stay. And so growth and profitable growth is extremely important. It makes people’s lives better. It makes your employees’ lives better. That’s a big focus of ours.

Brian Spear: Love it, love it. I’m gonna dig in a little bit more, double click into that. So there’s also a huge difference between growth, which I would say is revenue, and profitable growth, which is really NOI or net income, et cetera. But I’d say there’s also a difference between making money and generating cash, and making money is like the profit, so the NOI, et cetera, but generating cash to me is the ultimate, because it’s one thing to just even generate profit, but from there, are you actually generating cash, cash flow? Because if you just take all that profit, reinvest it, you’re not generating any cash. Like there’s numerous businesses over time that have just grown, outpaced their growth, scaled to the moon, even though, quote, profitable, and then ultimately became defunct because they run out of their cash along the way, man, so.

Latane Meade: Unfortunately, I have a very good example of that in my first business. So we were doing these obstacle races. We eventually went around the world, went to Australia, went to Malaysia. So we went to Australia and we sold out 26,000 people in two minutes. It was like the most successful thing ever should have raised prices. We had all this cash. We were doing really good. The problem is in our industry, these kits, they cost a million dollars. You know, they cost a million dollars to put together these obstacle kits. And I remember someone in Australia said to me, oh, my God, you guys are going to make so much money on this. I was like, you know, I don’t think you understand how much costs go into these things. Like I and then the other thing was we had a choice for like, do we hold on this business for another year? Or do we just kind of move on and take the cash? And looking back, I think we should have taken the cash because what we did is we held on the business. We held on to 35 employees. We tried to figure out the next thing eventually, and it sucked away all that profit. So it was very profitable on paper, but that money never got distributed, never had the cash in the pocket. And that’s one of the problems with businesses, and that’s something I learned, is you do need to take money. your profits. You need to take them, you need to pay yourself, you need to pay off bills. And when you take those profits, you end up not holding on to 30 employees that you shouldn’t hold on to anyway. You make up cutting costs somehow to survive. And you have cash in your pocket and you can pay off bills and it’s motivating. If you never get a reward… It’s a very demotivating life. And that’s something I learned in my past business was like, you need to pay yourself. You need to pay yourself profits. And it’s motivating. It allows you to invest in your own employees. There’s a lot of benefits.

Brian Spear: I agree. I think it frees up your mind as well. Once you actually have more liquidity in your personal account, right? Where you extract some cash from the business. And you have more liquidity in your personal account for you, your family, your kids. And you kind of reach the level of success that you’re not having to worry as much. You’re not stressed out as much. The additional stress that you’re layering is like a choice. And it becomes more for sport. Like the additional growth is really for sport instead of like for family needs, et cetera. And once you get to that level of threshold and it’s different for different folks, whatever their family needs are and whatever annual expenses they feel that they have or whatever. But, but once you get to that level of having real legitimate, you know, uh, liquidity in the account, multiple years, I would say of living expenses, it frees up your mind to be able to operate the business more efficiently and make the right decisions as opposed to chasing the, you know, some sort of, uh, uh, focusing on the, the outer scorecard as opposed to the inner scorecard is another example that I like to use. Like what everybody else thinks in the growth, as opposed to like, what are we doing for you know, the family and what we’re trying to do for all the stakeholders involved. Yep. All good stuff, man. Well, let’s go to like, you know, some of the lessons that you learned along the way, all these unbelievably wonderful lessons and kind of how that changed the way in which you manage your current business, right? Allied title, right? I’ve been doing it a decade now, grown wonderfully, kicking butt and taking names. It’s beautiful to see. But as, you know, the companies have matured over time. how did you decide what only you should be doing? Like you said, free up your time, get better mind space. And what are you currently focused on as you grow this new venture? Yep.

Latane Meade: No, that’s a good point. So one thing, there was a time period when I had the Sport & Social Club where I walked away for a year or two and then bought back my old partner. And I went to work for a company called Active.com. And they eventually sold for a billion dollars. So they were successful. And I remember… you know, seeing the CEO who was very successful. And I was like, you know what? I’m gonna spend time getting to know him. Like, you know, like that could be a great mentor maybe. I don’t know if he’d be willing to be a mentor for me or not. And I saw the value of that relationship. I became friends with him. What happened was eventually I went off back to my own company And I went and met with him and he’s like, I’m going to connect you with this guy I know is the founder of Ragnar Relay. We then launched Electric Run together. And when I step back and I look at, all right, over the last year or two, out of all the effort I put in of, you know, calling people and managing people and doing, you know, reports. Hey, let me tell you how your progress report over the last quarter. All of that was kind of wasted time, in my opinion. And I look back, I was like, if I can create relationships at a high level. that’s going to move forward the business more than anything else I can do. So I actually made an initiative of mine over the last like 10 years. I was in EO, Entrepreneurs Organization in San Diego and here. And the next level up from EO is called YPO, Young Presidents Organization that you’re in with me. And basically I was like, man, everyone I talked to was like, you need to get into it. It’s a different level of connections. So one guy told me, you know, hey, the guy in my group is the owner of the Chargers. It’s like, Wow, that’s impressive. You know, it’s like that kind of level versus, hey, I’ve got someone that owns a business doing a million in revenue. They only have three employees. They don’t see a lot of problems. So I can’t give you experience shares that might be able to help you out as much. So I made an initiative. I want to get YPO. That’s been extremely successful for me, for our business. I’ve created a lot of joint venture opportunities on a national level in the title industry through YPO. Then I started, what else is out there? There’s an organization called Tiger 21, very successful people of all ages, which I think you’re familiar with now. And that’s been wildly successful for me too. So I’m surrounding myself in this room of people who are way more successful than me. And they have connections that open up opportunities that can happen like that versus I could go door knock and I could go sell and spend thousands of calls and get nowhere in a sense. And so that was the biggest takeaway. And that is where I try to put my time. I spend over 50% of my time in networking groups with, you know, very successful, influential people just creating relationships because those will lead to something that I have no idea what it might be.

Brian Spear: That’s beautiful, man. Love every bit of it. I share the sentiment, and I’ve kind of gone through that similar journey over time. I’ve learned a hell of a lot. The way that I try to explain it is, for those that are not kind of in the entrepreneurial world, but once you step into it, you understand and realize that there’s a difference between living in the time-based economy versus living in the results-based economy. A lot of guys that do a W-2 job, they go to work for a certain time, right? Eight-hour workday, they go to work. You have an hourly wage or even a salary. You just break it down of how much time you must spend there. And ultimately the income that you’re going to receive for, for, for your efforts, as opposed to an entrepreneur, that’s eat what you kill. It’s results based. And the easiest path to ultimately get the results is where you should be spending and allocating your time. And to your point, about networking, massive, massive value add by virtue of getting in the right rooms along the way. But maybe can you point to a specific decision that you might have made differently because of the room that you were in, whether it was EO or YPO or, you know, now Tiger 21, unbelievably wonderful, successful folks. You know, what is something in your life, be it personally, professionally in the business, something that you literally did differently based on feedback from that peer group? No, that’s interesting.

Latane Meade: Yeah, I’ll throw this example because basically I kind of got into this room of people and my wife said, like I was telling her about the room. She’s like, why are you in it? I was like, that’s a great point. I was like, but I want to point this out. If I take that mindset of why am I in it, it’s not going to be affected for me at all. If I’m just scared that I’m in that room, you know, then it’s going to be a useless situation that I’m even there. And so one thing I’ve tried to focus on is be like, look, these people are way more successful than me. But I’ve got some examples to share that I’ve learned. And maybe those examples can provide value to these guys on a much bigger level. And so, you know, one thing I’ve tried to do is like speak up and be like, hey, this is what I learned when I was doing the wipeout run. And this is what I learned when I was doing XYZ. You know, and, you know, I feel like from the feedback they provided, you know, I was happy to report that they were like, hey, that’s really helpful to get that feedback. And so, yeah, I think the biggest thing is when you do get in these rooms, you know, if you get into them, like, look, everyone’s a normal person and everyone’s, you know, has their own fears and anxieties. Like, you know, speak up and like share what you got to share and whatever happens, happens. Yeah, beautiful.

Brian Spear: Love every bit of that, man. Love every bit of that, of course. Just diving in, networking headstrong. You’re only going to get out of it what you put into it. And again, it does need to be a two-way street, which is the interesting thing. Again, every time I’ve leveled up in the same vein, you get into the room, moving from EO to YPO. And initially, it can be intimidating because you might have just kind of crossed the threshold to get there. And there’s guys running billion-dollar businesses, et cetera, et cetera. And then beyond that, you know, you get into the room with the Tiger 21 guys and these guys are, you know, sent to millionaires and the like, unbelievably phenomenal billionaires, et cetera. And it’s, it can be intimidating. But again, they’ve got the same sort of experiences. They put their pants on one leg at a time in the morning in the same thing that you do, you know. So it’s, once you, once you, once you spend a little bit of time, it gets more, more comfortable. And you know that you’ve got a ton of value that you’ve, you’ve added along the way because nobody’s walked in your shoes and all the experiences that you’ve had over the course of your time on this planet decades. Like you’ve got value to add to the other. individual across the way as well, across the table. So, Let’s maybe pivot to maybe the capital allocation side of the house, right? You know, one aspect of this crazy universe is ultimately building the wealth along the way. You know, we walk through some of that entrepreneurial journey, some successful exits along the way, absolutely wonderful, and actually building that platform. But then ultimately at some point, you’ve got to kind of pivot over to deciding what the wealth should do once you’ve created it along the way. So give me a little color in terms of – Once you’ve built a little bit of wealth, had a little bit of liquidity, walk me through your capital allocation strategy, some thoughts on investing and what you’re seeking to achieve. Where do you stand right now in your journey? That’s a good question.

Latane Meade: I would say I’ve always been a big risk taker, I think, in a sense of sometimes as an entrepreneur, depending on – kind of entrepreneur you are, a lot of people are, you know, hey, I’ll put everything into this. And if I lose it all, I don’t have anything. So the problem with that is it’s not a very good investing strategy at all. Right. And so I’ve seen some examples and I’ve had this happen over time where I’m like, oh, you know, whether I’m in my 20s or I don’t have a lot of money, I’m going to try some stock options. I’m going to do this horrible long term investment strategy, unless you know what you’re doing. So I’ve had some very bad examples over time. So knowing that I’m not necessarily a great investor, I’ve tried to protect the money from myself in ways. So like, hey, all my retirement is actually going to go to a professional manager. Some people might say, oh, hey. You know, they take too much in fees. They do whatever. You know what? It’s forced savings for me. You know, I don’t want to be too risky with it. One time I called my guy one time. It was like, hey, you know, the weed companies have all gotten approved. Let’s go ahead and invest in the weed companies. I don’t like doing this. I like doing my own allocation. I go, let me just do it. And so anyway, that went to zero, that company. Okay. I was like, I’ll never do it again. I’m out of it. All right. You’re in charge. If I ever call you and tell you to do something, hang up on me. And so anyway, I like that model where all of my retirement is in stuff that other people manage. I have no control over it. And it’s had a nice fine return year after year. Nothing crazy, but I’m happy with it. Right. Then I have stuff I distribute to myself where I’ve tried to take the approach of the smartest people. And it’s very basic, but it’s like buy the best companies in different industries and just hold forever. And that is the one thing that’s worked for me is like don’t try to get the company no one’s ever heard of. Buy the best company and just don’t think about it and hold it and do that. And that’s probably been the most successful thing looking back that I’ve done. I’ve also invested in a lot of private opportunities and other opportunities. I don’t think I’ve ever seen cash back from one of my angel investments ever. And I’ve probably done 30 to 40 of them. Now, with that said, they’re still out there. They still have a chance. Some of them have high valuations on paper. They haven’t gone public yet, so I hope they will. I have a couple that are soon to go public, hopefully. that will be hopefully make it worth it all. But, you know, I will say, you know, there’s certain funds that I’m friends with, the owners of funds and like some of them like, yeah, we don’t invest in anything until it has 20 million in revenue. I think that’s a smart way to look at things, you know, because, you know, it’s easy to get to one, two, three, four, five million in revenue ish from time to time. You know, it really has to go to another level to get there. And so there’s a lot of funds that just don’t touch anything until they get to certain levels. And I think that’s really smart and something I’m looking at and stuff. So, you know, I try to, you know, I’ll invest in things like something like your company. I mean, I know you, I trust you. I love the model. I love all that kind of stuff. You know, I’ll do stuff in funds like that. And, you know, I’ve done stuff like that with friends of mine and, you know, it’s kind of too early to see how they’ll do over time. But that’s another thing I’ve done. So I would say I don’t have a great strategy, to be honest with you. Listening to really smart people in the groups that I’m in and what they’re doing. And I’m trying to take as much information as possible over the years.

Brian Spear: It’s so interesting and so wonderful, right? I’m running it back to the very beginning, the same sort of entrepreneurial kind of journey that we’ve heard, the same arc, entrepreneurial arc that you hear over and over. The guy that builds the business, oftentimes, especially first gen guys, right, that are building the wealth. it comes from concentration risk of putting all your time, effort, energy, burn the boats, I’m going to make this happen come hell or high water, and you end up creating your own luck and becoming successful and generating a wonderful windfall, and it’s so wonderful. But then ultimately, all that massive concentration risk, it might not be, as you’re outlining here, maybe not the most prudent strategy. Time will tell, right? There are different schools of thought on this. I don’t know if it’s a… Every individual situation is going to be different and unique given their trajectory in life and their personal family dynamics and their personal situation. But I’ve always historically conveyed, right? I kind of feel like I’m still in my builder phase. And I’ve used the philosophy of Andrew Carnegie’s philosophy on diversification of putting all my eggs in one basket, just watching that basket. I know me. I know our business. I know what we’re doing. I just trust it because of – And it’s also that stage of my life. But I also know as we grow and I grow my net worth and liquidity, et cetera, that it does become prudent, as you’re talking about, to take chips off the table, allocate and find ways to ensure that you set your family up and protect yourself from – yourself, but not even, not even really, you know, I’m not necessarily worried about me, uh, in that regard, but rather let’s say it’s the hit, get hit by a bus problem. Let’s say that that occurs. And ultimately now my wife is in a situation where I haven’t diversified the estate in such a way that she is in a good spot or the kids are in a good spot. And that’s really kind of where I’m going through in the growth of my personal, personal journey at this phase. But, uh, yeah, very, very interesting feedback, especially regarding the venture capital stuff that you’ve done over time and all those bits of insight and wisdom along the way. Yeah.

Latane Meade: And I would say one thing with yourself, and I think this is important to think about, the companies I’ve started, most of them have survived. And some have done well, some have done very well, and most of them have survived. But when you’re investing in a venture that you have no control over, that is very different than something you’re thinking about 24-7 and you’re like, I’m going to make sure this survives. Yeah. So that’s one thing I’ve learned too is like, you got to be careful of how much you put into something you have no control over. Right. And so, you know, I’ve been, Oh, this sounds like a really good idea. I’m going to put a lot of money in this. So, you know what? I have zero control of that versus a company that I am running and I, I, In a sense, I will figure it out if I have to. And so that’s one thing in terms of like, I like you having lots of eggs in your basket for your company and your fun because you know it. You know it’s actually a safe, safe company. It’s safe return. And you’re in charge versus, you know, hey, I’m going to go put a huge amount in this thing that I have zero control over. That’s one thing also is the ability to control your fate in a sense.

Brian Spear: We’re massive proponents of controlling your own destiny. It’s just a philosophy that we have here that we want to, you know, if something is going to go awry and an investment is going to go off the rails in some way, shape or form, I want to know that at least my hands were on the wheel when the car went into the ditch. I was responsible, owning the outcome, extreme ownership, Jocko Willink, as opposed to just tossing the capital to some situation where you’re throwing it. My personal contention is to XYZ financial advisor who’s allocating or diversifying in a broad basket of different things. where I have no insights in any way, shape, or form. I struggle with that personally because the way that I view it is that that individual on the other side of the table is never going to know my family situation better than me and what we’re trying to achieve. So that’s just the way that I view it, right? That’s just my personal contention. But, yeah, I always want to have my hands on the wheel. Even if it fails, I know it was because of me, right, as opposed to somebody else driving off the bridge, man. All great stuff. Well, let’s talk about the family dynamic, being that you’ve built an unbelievable journey, unbelievable entrepreneurial background, so much success along the way. It’s been wonderful. Let’s talk about the next generation, right? As a guy who’s done some amazing things, let’s talk a little bit about the family dynamic, right? I will share, and I’ve said this before, but my biggest fear in life is, is ultimately spoiling my kids. I’m a guy, you talked about my story at the beginning, of who’s found a way to become successful in spite of himself along the way. And I’d say successful in the eyes of society. But I would never change that upbringing where I started from nothing and ultimately built it along the way because my character and all the things that, all the success that we’ve created I believe that a huge portion of that is because, not in spite of, but rather because of the way in which I was raised and the struggles and all the adversity that was faced along the way. And I wouldn’t want to change that. I would never want to change that. And so now my kids, they’re not going to have that same experience, right? They’re going to be, you know, raised in a world of not knowing for want. And so I struggle with how to go ahead and instill the best morals and get them to understand the value of a dollar when they don’t know the price that was paid to ultimately get it. Give me your feedback on you, your family, your kids. You know, I know that you’ve built a wonderful family. How are you thinking about that now when your kids are kind of going through the adolescent phase?

Latane Meade: So I think you and I have a very similar perspective. It’s one of my biggest fears. Like I remember growing up and you see these, these kids are just spoil rotten. I mean, I see it a lot with like very successful people and their kids, they don’t have jobs or they don’t work. And I’m just like, that is my biggest fear. Right. And so I’ve always thought about it. And it’s a conversation that occurs a lot in Tiger 21. And it’s something I’m very focused on and I don’t know the right answer. But my thought is, I guess, kind of lead by example and make them suffer slash make them work. Right. So so for example, this summer, I have a 12 year old and a 10 year old and a seven year old. But my 12 year old, you know, I’m like, you know, here’s the benefits of starting your own company. You know, there’s pros, like there’s some flexibility there. But I was like, what you probably don’t see is the pain of me sleeping in the room with another person in my room when I was 23, making $18,000 a year. You know, five years in, making $30,000 a year. You know, like that is a tough time. You know, so why do you do all that? I’m doing all that in the hopes there’s a bigger payday one day. There’s some flexibility in my life, et cetera. Yeah. Um, so I want them to learn the struggle versus just seeing like the positives. So anyway, I had my 12 year old, uh, to start a power washing business. I was like, look, I’m going to help you. And like, I was like, it’s going to be hard. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but it’s going to be hard. And you’re never going to give up. You’re not allowed to give up. And on top of it, you’re going to pay me back for the power washer. Okay. So basically we went and ordered a power washer on Amazon and first job we get, it breaks. Yeah. All right, so it actually breaks. He comes four houses down. He’s like, I’m never doing this again. Power washer broke. I was like, you bought some cheap power washer. This is what I was talking about. It’s going to be hard. We’re going to figure it out. Well, we go to the store. We buy, we go from the shop. You know, $150 power washer, we buy the $550 one. I go, you’re going to pay me back for this. I go, but because I’m going to use it, you’re going to pay me back $300. So I’m going to get, I’ll pay for something. So he had to work. So anyway, we get the DeWalt power washer. Thing’s amazing. Works really well. has a good experience. He’s out there for five hours in his first job. And the owner’s out there with me. We’re having beverages on his front lawn while the kids are working. We get photos with him. In fact, I’ll show you the website we’ve created if you want to pop it up on the screen. Unfortunately, we don’t do any travel outside the neighborhood, but very successful so far. Anyway, he’s had to learn it. They’ve had to put in the pain. They’ve had to clean up. They’ve found the pain and suffering. They wanted to give up that first day for sure. And they were yelling and screaming at me and crying. But, you know, I do think that’s a, you know, giving up is a muscle. You know, if you give up, then you’re going to give up on the next time you have something bad. If you fight through that, then you’re going to learn to keep fighting through. And so for me, I’m just hoping that I can put them in examples where, you know, They’re not given a lot. I literally had this conversation with my wife this morning because we’re in a neighborhood that has a private school. Our kids go to public school right now. And, you know, I want them to I went to public school and I had a cousin that went to private and he went to UNC and he was in a fraternity where the kid’s dad was a billionaire and they all worked for him. And I was like, look, there’s no doubt that the private school provides connections. But let’s just say you’re a spoiled brat and you’re in that and that billionaire sees you. Does that billionaire want to hire that spoiled brat that’s not willing to work? I’m guessing no. So one way or the other, the benefit of me not being in that network and having to build that from scratch is I had to work harder for it. And it created a muscle where I had to work harder. And I think that’s the benefit of being in a place that’s not as privileged as maybe some others is like I’ve learned to figure it out. And I don’t think I would have learned that if I hadn’t had to start from maybe a place where I didn’t have as many connections. Figure it out.

Brian Spear: I love that. When I went to the University of Kentucky, played baseball in college, when I arrived on campus, the very first week, the very first day, the coach handed us one of those little bracelets. You know, like the Livestrong little rubber bracelets or whatever? He gave us a version of that. It was blue. And on it, it only had three letters. It was an acronym FIO. I love it. Figure it out. It was, I’m not your mommy. I’m not your daddy. I’m not going to, you’re a grown man here. You got to, you’re going to have to figure it out on your own. Okay. I’m not going to overlook your shoulder in class. Like you’re an adult, figure it out. That was kind of the theme. And the additional piece in terms of like the adversity and finding a way to overcome and push through. This is a huge theme in our current firm and everything that we do, and like my family as well. It is the following phrase. It is win or learn, we never lose. You only lose when you quit, and we’re not going to go ahead and quit. We will either find a way or we’ll make one. We’re just going to keep on iterating and improving. You fail forward. It is not a failure. It’s a reversal of the mindset. You know the difference between a successful person and an unsuccessful person? The successful person just didn’t quit. He failed over and over and over and over again, but he just didn’t quit. He kept on rolling. And that’s all it is. It’s just continuous persistence over long periods of time.

Latane Meade: I’m going to take that to the dinner table, win or learn. I love that. And I heard someone say this recently, and I’ve actually, I’ve had a couple of missed exits where I was going to sell for a lot of money. It didn’t happen. And I was always like, what did I do wrong? And I’ve talked to quite a few people who’s like, it’s not necessarily you did something wrong. A lot of it has to do with timing. And a lot of, a lot of it also has to do with certain people will just continue to fight through and push forward. And then the timing gets good, you know, and then opportunities open up. And so, you know, hey, how did you, this company was very successful. The guy was asked, how did you make this and get this partnership? It was like, we just always did a great job and we kept pushing through and we did for a very long period of time. And then those opportunities opened up and we’re starting to see that in the title business. Almost all of our competitors in our market have sold. We’re one of the few companies left that are found our own. And those companies, those big clients have been like, all right, I’ve been watching you guys for five, six years. I see what you’re doing. All right, let’s go meet. And it’s like, yeah. And I was like, this is a good example of just kind of doing a great job, being there for a long period of time and being ready. Hey, look, there’s no secret sauce here. We’re going to do an amazing job. You’re going to be thrilled and we’d love to work with you and let’s go. And that’s starting to happen more and more.

Brian Spear: Kudos and congratulations. And I would bring it back to the very beginning of this interview when I said, you’re the kind of guy that ultimately creates your own luck. And that’s what we’re talking about. It is going out every single day, putting in the hours, putting in the work, doing the right things over and over again, and eventually somebody notices. It doesn’t happen in day one. But if you do the right things over and over and over and over again. eventually success becomes an inevitability. You’re creating your own luck, man. So love every bit of it. Let’s round out with one final question here, buddy. It’s the same question that we ask everybody the first time that they come on the show, and it is the following. If somebody could only remember one lesson, one piece of sage investment advice from your entire life experience, man, what would it be?

Latane Meade: All right, well, I’ll say, I mean, obviously I would say we’ve just talked about never quit. But what I would say, the other thing that we’ve done and I’ve always believed in is they’re like the other title companies. They’ll kind of, Oh, I see what you guys are doing. I’m going to offer nice t-shirts. I’m going to do this. And I’ve never been concerned with the competitors because I think innovation is an ongoing cycle that never stops. And so we actually have a team here, client experience division who they have to bring new ideas to the table every month. And then we’re going to, try to innovate them. And if they work, they work and they stay with us. And if they don’t work, we move on and it’s fine. And so the continuous cycle of innovation never stops. What is that for any business? How do you constantly think about how to do something differently or better? If you have a client that comes in, hey, what if we added fresh baked cookies? This is an idea from one of our clients, one of our employees. We bought these little ovens that do fresh baked cookies and now every client gets them. And we literally like, oh, you’re the company that does the fresh baked cookies. You know, like it doesn’t seem like much. But let’s say you add one thing like that a month or 12 months. You have 12 ideas where people remember you by. And you do that over two years, you have 24. And so I think constant innovation and continuous innovation never just be like, this is the playbook because the playbook should always change.

Brian Spear: Love that, man. Great way to round it out. Compound interest is beautiful. Money compounds, but so does knowledge. The small edges compound over time and ultimately create wonderful results, be it in the business, be it in the investments and a million other things. Love every bit of it, buddy. And again, appreciate you carving out time in your extremely busy schedule to spend some time with me, man. What I really took away from Latane’s story is that growth alone Isn’t the goal. A business can look successful on paper, but if that growth isn’t producing real cash, creating freedom, or improving the lives of the people involved, you have to question what you’re actually building. The same applies to investing. As Latane learned, there is a big difference between taking risk in something that you understand and control versus putting capital into something where you have no ability to influence the outcome. And throughout your entrepreneurial and investing journey, there is peace of mind and taking some chips off the table along the way. And maybe the thread connecting all of it is persistence. Keep learning. Keep innovating. Keep putting yourself in rooms that challenge the way that you think. If you enjoyed the conversation, please like and subscribe to The Sage Investor. And if you need some title work done, go ahead and reach out to Latane directly. You can find his website and LinkedIn in the description. Until next time, you be great.

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