Profit vs. Purpose: Why the Future of Business Isn’t What You Think with Jeff Hilimire | Ep #796

Profit vs. Purpose: Why the Future of Business Isn’t What You Think with Jeff Hilimire | Ep #796 Speaker 2: Hey, Jeff, welcome back to the show. Speaker 1: Hey, thanks for having me. Speaker 2: So I don't know if you realize this. So I've been doing the podcast almost seven years. You were actually my first guest even though I put you in position two. Speaker 1: I did not remember that. Speaker 2: You were my first guest ever on the podcast. Speaker 1: Is that right? Well, who beat me out for? Speaker 2: Sim Jenkins. Speaker 1: Okay. Yeah. Well, that's I'll take it. He's awesome. Speaker 2: Well, I think what it was because I was doing all the editing back then. I think it was just how I had it in the folder because I had like five of them. And then I don't know why I put him in position one or two, but you were the first one because I actually remember I was on vacation in Myrtle Beach with my family. And I remember seeing a post that you sold your agency. And I was like, Oh, I should actually, you know, interview you. And it was over Google Hangout. Like it wasn't even called a podcast then. And it's crazy though, right? How old we are. Speaker 1: That's a lie. Yeah, exactly. It's kind of crazy how old we are. Speaker 2: If you all will link it up, but it's an easy URL. Jason swank.com slash two. That was the URL. But for the people that have not checked out that podcast interview or the other one that will link up, tell us who you are, what you do. Speaker 1: Okay, I'm Jeff Hilimire. And today I run, along with Raj Chowdhury, a holding company called Purpose Group. Speaker 2: And what does that do? Speaker 1: So we started in October of 2022. And the idea, I've written some books, and I think we're going to talk about my latest book today. And the first five books were all about building purpose-driven companies, how to operationalize purpose, how to let purpose like lead you through crisis and so forth. And eventually, When I was running Dragon Army and just sort of putting all this into place with Dragon Army, and then I had a few friends who had agencies, I was just sort of helping on the side. And I was just like, this is really what I want to be doing. I want to have more companies that operate with heart and take care of their team members and make their community better. And so along with David Cummings, started a fund basically where we buy what's going to be mostly blue collar businesses and put The Purpose Playbook, which is my operating system for purpose, put that into these businesses. So we bought our first company in 2023. It's a print apparel and signs company in Bowling Green, Kentucky, 70 employees, hardworking folk. And now we're running the Purpose Playbook with them. And then last year, I always wanted to have an agency in my portfolio because I felt like that agency could help all the other companies, right? And because that's like the only thing I know how to do is build an agency. So, Raj Chowdhury, who was my college roommate, we started our first agency together back in the day. He had been building Alloy, which had acquired a couple of different agencies in Atlanta. And so, we acquired Alloy, which brought Raj to me. And so, he and I are overseeing Purpose Group, and we've got an agency and a print company, and we'll see what we do this year. Speaker 2: That's awesome. Yeah. Is it a roll-up play or is it just... Speaker 1: It's a Berkshire Hathaway model. So it's like hold forever is the idea. Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 1: So let the cash flow from these businesses by the next, by the next, let the snowball roll downhill. Speaker 2: There you go. That's awesome. Well, let's talk a little bit about Dream Small. You know, kind of tell us the premises of that or how did you kind of develop that? Speaker 1: Yeah, so launched the book dream small on February 28th along with a TEDx talk also called dream small so. You know, as I said, those five books that I wrote are all focused on helping leaders build purpose-driven teams and companies. And I sort of felt like, okay, I've said enough. Maybe I've said two books too much about that topic. And one of the ideas I've been playing with is that I really want people to find their way to Feeling proud of the work they do and feeling like they're psyched to go to work and whatever their skill is that they can use that to do good and help others if that's the way. So I've always felt that. So when I started my first company in college, ever since then, I've loved what I do. Not that I always help people, but that I loved what I did. So that's the nucleus. I used to have trouble going to sleep Sunday nights because I was so psyched to go to work Monday morning. And I was the only person I knew that did that. So as I've met other people who've found a way to use their skills to do good or at least feel pride in themselves, I've been exploring that over the years. And so my companies I've tried to help, my team members find that. So Dream Small is really, the concept is like so many people get to a point where they might have an idea of what they want to do that would fill them up and give them purpose. Oftentimes it feels too big and too large to start and so they never get to it or they have an idea that seems too small and it's not really worth doing. And so Dream Small is about, look, take your dream and make it a little smaller and then get started and just get out there. And if it's helping one person or smiling at one person today, it just starts that momentum and that can be enough, you know, that can be enough to make you feel good. Speaker 2: So obviously you've been very successful in the agency business and And all of that and especially with the ups and downs, you know, from what was the year you guys started Spun? Speaker 1: Oh man, 1998. Okay. Speaker 2: Yeah. So I started in 99, you know, so we went through a lot of heartache, a lot of times that I might have even thought about applying for Spun Logic while I was running Solr. So how did you stay passionate and focused and all that? How did you think small? Because everyone always goes, think big, dream big, right? It's kind of the opposite. Speaker 1: Well, it's interesting when you must have been 12 when you started in 1999. I'm old. Speaker 2: I was 37 or something. Speaker 1: Yeah, I just turned 49. So, no, I think, you know, back then I just was too Too stupid to know that statistically I should not have started that business and should not have kept going, right? It's like there was probably five straight years where I was just loading up credit card debt and making mistakes. So I don't know if there was any grand vision there. The story that I think resonates most with Dream Small for me and still connects to that agency world is the story of 48 and 48. And that was basically the talk I did at the TEDx event. And essentially, it was interesting. When I had the idea for 48in48 back in early, call it early 2015, and I'll sort of explain for people who don't know what it is, but I had been looking for ways to get my team at Dragon Army to do more good in Atlanta, and so we helped a nonprofit. We built a website very quickly for a nonprofit, and I saw that, like how my team reacted to that, and they loved the process of doing that. And we did it quickly and I had been to, you know, hackathons at Georgia Tech and stuff. So I knew things could be done very quickly. And once we did that, I thought, gosh, you know what? The joy that they had in doing that, maybe some of them for the first time getting a chance to use their skills to do good. I might be in a position where I can try to get others in Atlanta to use their skills to help nonprofits. And I tried some different things and eventually landed on, well, the best thing for a small nonprofit would be to rebuild their website. That's the most impactful thing. And it can be live the next day. And so, and once I wrap my head around, well, maybe I'll connect five or six people, put them on a team, and they'll build a website. And I know nonprofits, I know the agencies, let me do that. And I thought, well, if I'm going to do that once, Why not do it again and why not do it again? And so I kept saying, well, gosh, if like five people can build a website in a weekend for a nonprofit, then 10 can build two websites and 20 can build four websites. And I kept doing that until I got to 48 websites and thought, now that would be something interesting if you brought hundreds of people together. For a weekend and they built 48 nonprofit websites in a weekend. And as I started talking to other agency leaders about the idea, they all thought I was insane. Speaker 2: Adam did it. Speaker 1: Adam did it. So here's what happened. Many, pretty much all the agency leaders I went to before I went to Adam, they were all like, no, it's impossible to build one website in a weekend. Like that's not possible. So 48, that's ridiculous. But because my team had done it, I saw that it was possible. So I had started theoretically by dreaming small, starting small, and I could see a bigger picture. They couldn't. And yes, Adam Walker's crazy enough to immediately go, sure, let's do it. So together, we started 48 and 48. So then we did the first event and even I thought, okay, that's enough. That was great, but it was insane. And it was the volunteers there that said, Hey, can we sign up for next year? And Adam and I were like, we never said anything about any next year. What are you talking about? And these were people at the end of the weekend that had worked all weekend away from family. Speaker 2: How many Red Bulls were consumed or monsters? Speaker 1: Oh, gosh. Yeah. I mean, I think we calculated 340 pounds of coffee have been consumed over the 10 years of doing 48 and 48. But, you know, that's also where Dream Small came in because I'm like, the reason they want to come back is because they feel pride in what they did. They got a chance to use their superpowers or their skills to do good. So fast forward. So here's some numbers for you, Jason. So did that first event October 2015. Since then, we've had 35 events. We've built 1,300 non-profit websites with 7,500 volunteers around the world, and that equates to about 300,000 volunteer hours. All because, if you go all the way back, because my team built a website quickly and I saw the possibility, but if I had started and said, hey, Jason, let's start an organization and our goal is to build 1,300 non-profit websites in 48-hour increments. Never do it. It's crazy. So that's sort of the nucleus of the talk and why I wanted to write the book. Speaker 2: Hey, agency owners, if you're sticking with one platform for every project, you're probably stuck in a growth bottleneck. More clients means more hires, which adds noise and cuts into profits. To break the loop, you need a more flexible tool that doesn't stretch your resources. Now, Wix Studio is a smart addition to your agency's toolkit. Intuitive by design, your team can quickly master the platform and focus on the work that matters the most. Now, with robust native business solutions, Like booking, e-com, and events, you can take on any project at any scale without adding cost to third-party plugins. Plus, Wix Studio is a low-maintenance platform, meaning you can redirect client budget toward real growth initiatives. Think more value for your clients, steady income stream, and stronger relationships. Scale your agency at wixstudio.com. That's awesome, you know, because I talk to agency owners all day long and a lot of them don't have a purpose where their purpose is. Money-driven. And I go, look, you're going to laugh at me because I always used to laugh at people that said this to me. It's like, never make a decision based on money. And then I would always tell them, well, that's easy for you because you have money. But it is so true. Like when you actually start thinking going, you know, especially going back to what you were saying about doing these nonprofit websites. You can do how many websites for free in what amount of time? That's awesome. I love that because like when you and Raj started the agency, was it by accident? Speaker 1: Yeah, 100%. Honestly, this is what I think happened. We were at school together. The internet was new. This was like 96, 97. We were building websites. I was a programmer. He was a graphic designer. We were just building like joke websites and anything we could. And I swear, I think we said, well, if we started a company, we'd have another website to build. And so then we built, you know, we just started and we didn't know the word agency. You know, we're just like, oh, And then, you know, eventually I convinced my aunt in Chicago to let us build her website and she paid us $250. That was your first website? Speaker 2: Mine was $500. I beat you. Speaker 1: Okay. Okay. You doubled me. That was the first one we got paid for. We did a ton of free ones. But yeah, it was just by accident. Yeah. Speaker 2: My first one was A website called InShit, and it was on a Geocity URL. And it was me and three of my friends. One of my friends looked like Justin Timberlake, so that's why we called it InShit. And it was a fake band, fake website. And then people started seeing it, and they reached out because I had like Designed by Jason or something, or maybe I even called it Swenk Technologies. So I'm stupid. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: And then people start reaching out for websites. Speaker 1: I love that. I love where were you when you started? Speaker 2: I was in Atlanta. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 2: You know, I just moved up to Atlanta to work for Arthur Anderson as a computer programmer. Wow. My time was limited because I outsourced all my programming in college. So I didn't know how to program. And I was like, there's only about our time. Speaker 1: Yeah. Right. Eventually, did you learn or were you always just your sort of sales and growth? Speaker 2: Well, I have ADD and dyslexia, so coding was always hard because I understood the logic, but just like I would leave off a semicolon or, you know, or I just like I'd have this grand idea and then I would just struggle with it. And my program would never work. Like I could make it say, hello world. But it actually helped me out in the agency because I understood the code or understood the logic so I could talk to the programmers. And I understood from their perspective what they needed from me, you know, in order to, you know, bring the right clients and that kind of stuff. Speaker 1: I also think what probably helped you in that was that you never got sucked in to doing the work because you really couldn't do the work. I think we both have friends. It usually happens more on the creative side. They're like a great creative person, so they start an agency, but they hit a point where they can't grow because they just get sucked in. They get a new account. They got to get sucked in. I always felt like, same thing, even though I could program, we hired our first programmer and I was like, oh, I'm nothing. I'm terrible compared to this person. So I never dove back into the work again. Speaker 2: My first employee I hired was a graphic designer, and I was a graphic designer. I was more a graphic designer. I like that. But I realized in order to scale, I couldn't just be sitting behind a computer all day long. And then it just took off. It's amazing how it just It takes off with, you know, going back to your point, I didn't even really have a vision. I didn't have a vision probably for four years. And we grew to like, and at that time, I think we grew to a little over 2 million. And then that's when I was like, do I want to do this? Want to go apply for a job? Do I want to shut it down? And then I was like, well, here's the vision of where we're going. And then it, you know, it took off. Speaker 1: Yep. Well, our vision was almost what you said earlier. It was just, we wanted to sell. Again, we were 23, 22, whatever. We were just like, gosh, let's sell. And then that got a little more sophisticated because we're like, all right, well then, what size makes sense once we learned how valuations work and how taxes work? And we just sort of modeled it out like that. But it wasn't really until actually 10 years FundLogic sold it to private equity. They merged us with two other agencies and it was now called Engage. And then we had 150 or so people in Atlanta at Engage, sold that five years later. And it was only at that point that I started actually really thinking about a bigger purpose than just making money in your business. We always, I think like you, like we always had a heart for like, We wanted the business to be a place where people loved coming and we wanted to take care of people and do right by people and that always wasn't at the top. But I don't even think we used the word culture. We didn't know anything. We never were. Speaker 2: No one ever talked about culture. Everyone always applies for all the awards, right? Like the Addy Awards and all that kind of stuff, especially what we did. And the one award we won, we actually missed the reception because the Atlanta Journal said, Hey, we want to make sure you're there because we're in the finalists or whatever for the best place to work. And they go, Yeah, just make sure you're there before seven. We're like, okay, I thought seven at night. Guess what? I'm like, what? You won. I won what? Speaker 1: That's amazing. Speaker 2: You won the best place to work. I was like, what? It's tonight. They're like, no dummy. It was the morning. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: I was like, man, the best award we've ever won. And I missed it. Speaker 1: That's really funny. Speaker 2: And I think we were like supposed to do a speech on stage or whatever. I was like, oh my God, I was like, were those people? Speaker 1: Yep. Yep. You just did a no-show. Speaker 2: And we didn't win it the next year. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: I found, you know, it's funny about that particular award. I found over time that it was almost like teaching to the test. We would have things that were important as we were building our culture. And yet we were looking at that list and seeing what they thought was important. And then trying to model that and at a certain point, it was like some things we wanted to do were juxtaposed against things that the criteria of the and I'm like, what are we doing? So that was Dragon Army because it was the first time I really had developed values and things and we stopped and we've never applied for it again because it was I felt like it was a trap. Look, I mean, it's great and I have a bunch of my friends that get it and everything and that's awesome. But it just wasn't right for us. Yeah. Speaker 2: Yeah, we don't go after any awards anymore. Because I always feel that they're rigged. The one thing I always liked about The Best Place or how they did it back then, you'd have to send it to your employees to fill out a survey. And then they chose based on that. That's how it worked back then. But I always found the Cobb Chambers, who donated the most? Like, you go to those Addy Awards and you're like, all right, come on, it's the same people over and over again. They're bored numbers, for Christ's sake. Well, this has been a lot of fun to catch up and have you back on the show. Is there anything I didn't ask you that you think would benefit the listeners? And then please tell us. Speaker 1: I'll just talk a little bit for a second about what's different about this book. There's a couple things that are different. One of the things, when I wrote my first book back in 2018, the concept of that book is for non-entrepreneurs to think entrepreneurially. And it was mostly because I have a lot of... Speaker 2: How did that work? Speaker 1: Yeah. I sort of broke it down into five things that I thought, you know, a good entrepreneur has. But it was mainly because I had all these CMO friends that were just like, you know, when we would try to get them to do something interesting in marketing, they're like, well, we can't take that risk. We're not like you. I don't run my own company. I just can't, you know, take those risks. And I finally was like, what are they talking about? Because if I take a big risk and mess up, I lose my life savings. I lose my friends. I disappoint everybody. If a CMO messes up, they probably are fine. And even if they're not, they get another CMO job. So I was like, there's just a mentality here. So anyways, point is, as I started to write that book, I realized I hate business books. Like, don't give me a, here's the nine leadership traits. Like, I freaking hate those books. But what I do like are stories and biographies, company stories, all that stuff. And I actually like the fable style books like Patrick Lencioni, Five Dysfunctions of a Teen. So he writes a story and, you know, they can be cheesy or something, but it's still to me, it's way easier to read that than some thick business book. So anyways, as I was writing the first book, I was writing it like a normal book and I was like, this sucks. And then I was like, let me just try my hand at You know, creating some characters and writing a story. And what happened is I ended up loving the process of writing a book like that and then loving the characters. And so each of my books is in this world where there's these characters. There's Will, who's sort of like me. There's a mentor called Charles. So this next book, Dream Small, is in that universe. So there's some familiar characters and stuff. So it's a story. The other thing is it's my first attempt at what they would call a novella. So it's a shorter book. So it's like a 100-page book instead of a 250. Because I also hate books that like you get it in 70 pages and you're like, do I need to read another 200 pages about this? Like I get it. So I thought, all right, let me write essentially a shorter story type book. So it's, you know, it's not expensive. You can read it in an hour or two, but I think it hits the point. So it's just, you know, I'm taking a different stab. It's a little more of an emotional story. So, you know, I've had some people really enjoy that part of it. So it's just different. So yeah, they can find it. Best places may be on Amazon to find it. Yep. Dream Small. Speaker 2: I like that there was a book someone told me to check out and I checked out. It was like Think 10X or something. And so I started reading it and everything was like Think 10X. I was like, I could have just read the book or the cover. Speaker 1: I have this debate with Adam Mucker all the time about these long books that just like I taught him finally you can bail on a book, like you can be 15% and bail on a book because he was reading everything to the end. And I'm like, dude, your time is precious, man. Don't do that. Speaker 2: I like your approach to for creating it as like a story, not just a business book. That's really creative. I like that because I mean, at the end of the day, why do people listen to podcasts or anything, right? They want stories. That's what we're going to remember. That's one thing I always tell, you know, agencies. I'm like, look, when you hand off sales, you got to make sure you tell your salespeople the stories that will make them successful. I mean, that's what we knew, right? Like when we were selling at the agency, like we know all these stories. Oh, this is when we worked with Aflac and this was the challenge and blah, blah, blah. Give that power to the salesperson, right? Like we're going to remember stories. Speaker 1: That's exactly right. Yeah. The other thing I should mention real quick for anyone listening is, so when I wrote that first book, I ended up starting my own publishing company really just to do my own books. I couldn't get a real publisher interested in me and I got jaded by that industry. I don't know if I ever told you this, but I got turned down by all the big publishers and the number one reason they told me, did I tell you this? Speaker 2: No. Speaker 1: The number one reason they wouldn't take me is because I'm in Atlanta. Speaker 2: What? Speaker 1: Yeah. They're New York. Atlanta is like a farm to them. It was so ridiculous. I heard that over and over. And it was like, it's too small of a market. I'm not even writing a book about Atlanta. What are you talking about? So I started my own publishing company just to do my books. And then some friends in town were like, Hey, I got a book idea. So now I've got a team of three running it. It's a full-on business. We've got 25 authors. So if anybody is interested and wants to write a book, I'd be happy to connect them with the team and see if there's something there. Speaker 2: Oh, that's fantastic, man. That's awesome. You know, the funny thing, you'll make fun of me and I don't know if we'll launch it because I'm almost kind of scared or maybe I need to take the concept out of your book, Think Small, right? We launched a book Eight years ago, it was really successful for agencies, and I wanted to create an updated version of it, but we just haven't had time to put the marketing behind it to launch it. We did it on Amazon, the self-publishing there, but now I'm kind of scared to put it out because I don't want people to think AI wrote it. Speaker 1: Oh, interesting. Speaker 2: Right? Because everyone's creating a book. And they're using, you know, AI to create the whole damn thing. I'm like, no, this is me. Speaker 1: Big topic in publishing is AI. Yep. Absolutely. Yeah. Here's what's funny is the way that I used AI for my book. So as I said, it's now six books in this universe, but I can't remember all the details of all the characters, but in, in, I use Gemini, I was using ChatGPT, but I load all the books into there and then I can ask it questions like, Has Shara ever been to this coffee shop? What does she order when she orders coffee? And it'll go, oh yeah, in this book, she ordered a certain, I'm like, oh, of course. It was so awesome. Like, it was like, I had, you know, a little, little brain next to me. I knew everything about every care. How tall is Will? Oh, well, we infer that he's 5'10 because of these things. You never actually say it. I'm like, oh man, this is, that's awesome. Speaker 2: We were talking in the mastermind. We were, someone was saying, I'm about to launch a book. And then other people were like, well, how did you create it? And I was like, and we started going and brainstorming ideas, right? Like you can use AI in order to create the, you know, the chapters, like which chapters do we need to talk about? But then I was like, well, what if you just started recording? Like a lot of times I'll go for a run or I'll be driving back from a car and I'll have an idea. Just record it on your phone, put the transcription in there and be like, make this sound smart, not like Jason or whatever it is, right? Like, and then, you know, you can do it, but it's, it's pretty fantastic what AI can do now. Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. But you got to be careful when you're creating content like that. You got, you do have to be careful. You're right. Yeah. Speaker 2: Yeah. We were chatting about some of the use cases, like we had someone create an answering service for roofing companies. So they call in, and I called it. They're like, what's your name? Cornelius. And then like, it does every, I couldn't even, I didn't even know it was AI. So yeah, wow. Pretty cool stuff, but well, Jeff, thanks so much for coming on the show. Everyone, make sure you guys go check out his book and books. We'll link up to jeffhilmire.com to check all that out. And until next time, have a Swenk day.