A CFO's Diary - Pathways to Growth

A CFO's Diary - Pathways to Growth Trailer Bonus Episode 4 Season 1

Making opportunity out of a challenge: Removing barriers to creating a pathway with Joe Wilson

Making opportunity out of a challenge: Removing barriers to creating a pathway with Joe WilsonMaking opportunity out of a challenge: Removing barriers to creating a pathway with Joe Wilson

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Working your way up in the industry is often seen as a straightforward path to success. But what happens when you reach the pinnacle of the corporate ladder? Sometimes, when you're climbing up, your definition of success changes. That’s what led Joe Wilson to become the owner of Sonitrol Western Canada.

Starting with side hustles, and climbing the corporate ladder, Joe's journey led him to become president of his workplace at the early age of 32. However, his restlessness in unstable and monopolized industries pushed him to continue challenging himself and pursuing other avenues, transforming his obstacles into stepping stones.

In this episode of A CFO’s Diary - Pathways to Growth, Joe shares the importance of embracing change, pushing boundaries, and charting our own course toward success.


Chapters

1 - Joe’s early business hustles and first jobs.
2 - How climbing the ladder in the alcohol industry led Joe to the security sector.  
3 - The importance of analyzing your surroundings, adapting to changing circumstances, and remaining proactive in the pursuit of new ventures
4 - Understanding your value and pursuing growth opportunities, even through lateral moves or exploring new markets.
5 - Joe’s journey from Sonitrol client to employee, to president.
6 - Demonstrating commitment to your customers. How Joe uses transparency, fairness, and value to grow business
7 - How Joe created his own definition and formula for success.
8 - Joe’s advice for those getting started in business.


Links

What is A CFO's Diary - Pathways to Growth?

In each episode, we take people through what we call a ‘discovery call’ during which we learn about their business, its opportunities, potential areas of development, and strategies to move forward, including those they may have missed. Using this discovery call format in each episode, I speak with folks I’ve met over the years whom I’ve learned from, to revisit these journeys. We won’t hold anything back and will reveal crucial strategies, insights, and potholes to avoid—all vital for the success of any business, regardless of its size.

Joe Wilson:

I'm confused because I don't understand why people aren't wired that way because it's the way I'm wired, so it just seems normal. People have to clue into what it is they enjoy doing, and then they have to put the effort together to figure out how you're gonna package it and sell it. Because at the end of the day, whether you're an accountant or you're, an investigator, you gotta sell yourself.

Don Cameron:

Every leader has a pathway to leadership. A journey that likely needs to include advocating for their plan and themselves along the way. Plotting a course takes effort, dedication, and vision. But how do you establish your route? One that is true to who you are and is effective when bringing others along with you.

Don Cameron:

Joe Wilson's path saw him moving his family across the country to set up his own business despite already achieving success on the corporate ladder. His decision to take his well proven sales skills and become a business owner for a product that served him greatly as a customer was critical to his pathway to success. In this episode, Joe demonstrates how a challenge can be viewed as an opportunity and how playing to his strengths created even more. Let's meet Joe Wilson. Having worked with Joe for many years, I knew he would have a great story to share.

Don Cameron:

But I've also realized that Joe has a 6th sense, a superpower almost, an innate ability to find opportunity and build on it. And it turns out his superpower was discovered at an early age.

Joe Wilson:

My parents were smart enough not to just give me what I wanted and trusted me to go out and figure out how to make some money. And so my first job as probably an 8 year old was to start cutting lawns in the neighborhood and and shoveling driveways in the wintertime. And, you know, I had maybe 4 or 5 places that I I was cutting these lawns. And, of course, I was using my father's equipment and his fuel, so it was straight cash to me. And, you know, I was probably making 10, $15 a yard.

Joe Wilson:

And I kinda clued into that I could make some more money because my buddies were hanging out at the beach and riding their bikes around the neighborhood and not doing anything. And so, you know, if it was a $10 yard, I would say to my buddies, hey. How about you start cutting some lawns for me? And they're like, what would I get? I said, I don't know.

Joe Wilson:

I think you'd probably get about $6. And they're like, oh, that'd be awesome. And so I grew my lawn cutting business into probably 30 or 40 yards a week that we were cutting, and and that made it. So I was making $4 for every every one that my buddies did at least. So that was the start of my entrepreneurial career.

Don Cameron:

Many of us will probably relate to Joe's blossoming business efforts. Finding the funds to get the latest must have toy, records, a bike or even something more substantial. But Joe's drive, which was remarkably mature at an early age, went way beyond a fleeting juvenile scheme. By the time he reached university, amid his studies, he found time for numerous side hustles.

Joe Wilson:

At university, I started going to old hotels and motels that were selling their TV sets. I think they would give them to me for free for picking them up, but maybe I paid a $100. I don't know. But at the university, I would sell that TV for $200. And so, again, I was making 1 or $200 selling these used TVs at Holiday Inn and didn't want anymore.

Joe Wilson:

And then I got into selling the fridges and all that kind of business to students. You know, I'd go and buy a little bar fridge and and mark it up by $50 and sell it again. So, you know, you know, you had your own little, room that you shared with somebody likely, and the each gave me $25 or $100 or whatever it turned out to be because they wanted to have beer and they wanted to be able to watch Saturday Night Live. And so, you know, it's kinda how how that got started.

Don Cameron:

Joe's keen sense when it came to unearthing opportunity extended beyond his self made revenue streams. He also saw value and opportunity in employment. Sure, a steady paycheck is helpful when it comes to working your way through college, but a part time job provided him with skills and experience. And it also provided a shot at getting a foothold on the corporate ladder with Brewers Labatt and the beer store consortium.

Joe Wilson:

So I worked in the beer stores part time. And then when I went to university, I continued to work for the beer stores in the cities that I went to university in. And long term, it worked out that the Molson and the Levats that owned the beer stores had a management training program. And because I had worked part time all the way through from, you know, working the counter, sorting bottles, I ended up driving beer truck through through university, so I was delivering to liquor control store board stores and to bars. They hired me because I knew the whole process short of the management side of things.

Joe Wilson:

And then, you know, through my willingness to move around the province, they made me a manager of security.

Don Cameron:

Imminently resourceful, once on the corporate ladder, Joe was on the way up. After promotion, he was faced with the challenge of taking on a role that was plagued by a grave external issue, crime. Unsurprisingly, it was a challenge that Joe turned into another opportunity. His role meant dealing with large quantities of cash as restrictions placed on liquor sales meant that credit and even debit cards could not be used by customers looking to buy alcohol. With daily sales at outlets being upward of $50,000, many sites were vulnerable to organized crime, especially armed robbers.

Joe Wilson:

And so they would show up at the beginning of the day when our staff would arrive to start opening things up, but no customers. Or they would arrive at the end of the night, sit in the parking lot, wait for our staff to leave, and then march them back into the building. And then they would just crack the safe out of the floor, and they'd take it away. And they you know, they're getting a laundered fund that they they could do whatever they wanted with, and it's better target than a bank. Banks really don't have any money in them.

Joe Wilson:

They might have $5 sitting there. We had up to 3 100,000. So friends of mine, ran Metro Toronto Police Hold Up Squad, and they called me and said, Joe, you have this huge problem with armed robberies. And I'm like, yep. Then they said, well, you need to talk to Sonitrol.

Joe Wilson:

And I said, well, who the hell is Sonitrol? They said, oh, it's a specialty security company that can eliminate your armed robbery issues. And I said, okay, what do I do? And they said, oh, well, we've got them set up to come see you on Thursday. I'm like, okay.

Joe Wilson:

Be there. So so in they came, and, you know, at the time, I think there really wasn't much of a Canadian operation. They were running out of Buffalo, New York. And they came and gave me this dog and pony on Sonitrol that they use audio, and they can listen to everything. And they have a duress functionality in their touchpad where your staff can actually look like they're disarming the alarm, but they're not.

Joe Wilson:

They're actually leaving it on and sending an alarm through to us, which now allows the Sonitrol operator to be able to listen in. They can tell exactly what's going on as long as you train your staff properly to not fight an armed robbery, which, you know, we did. You know, give them the money. Don't get hurt. It's not your money.

Joe Wilson:

Don't worry about it. We put these things in, and the 5 armed robbery stopped, Don. It was, like, surprising. So I called my buddies back and I said, okay, who's the investor in Sonatrol that's trying to make a whole bunch of money because we don't wanna be cops? And they said, no, no, no, no.

Joe Wilson:

We're not invested in that. So it it was very, very successful. And then I started running some numbers on what was my next largest cost, and the next largest cost was broken windows. Because inebriance, when they ran out of beer, would show up to a beer store, break a 4 by 8 sheet of glass, and steal a 6 pack. Now, beer to Molson and Levats is water.

Joe Wilson:

It becomes expensive when you start adding all the ad valorem taxes and then you add your your profits into it and all that kind of business. So I was spending $1,400,000 a year in a 100 of 460 stores to broken windows. We had to bring in the glacier in the middle of the night to put a board up, and you had to have a United Food and Commercial worker arrive in the middle of the night at triple time. Then he couldn't work the next day because he'd been there for 3 hours, and so he had to hire somebody else and on and on and on and on. So we swapped out these 100 stores, and my losses dropped from $1,400,000 a year to $37,000.

Don Cameron:

Through his law enforcement connections, Joe was presented with an opportunity, an alarm system that used real people to verify active break ins and alert the police. Implementing what he saw as a great product, his armed robbery and vandalism problems were effectively solved. Not being the type to rest on his laurels, he spotted further opportunity. One that he could exploit to solve another issue. Being cognizant of restrictions on the sale of liquor and the market at that time, Joe felt his unique circumstance could give potential employers pause for thought if he looked to work anywhere else.

Joe Wilson:

As a senior vice president at 32, I always kinda thought, you know, how do I market myself if this monopoly goes away? I I can't go and say, look, I got a $300,000,000 budget and look at how well I run the company. They'd say, it's a monopoly. How could you mess that up? So I was always concerned about what am I gonna do if this ends, and how am I gonna get employed?

Joe Wilson:

So I was always looking for something to do entrepreneurial outside.

Don Cameron:

Working inside a monopolistic system where the threat of policy and regulatory change is very real and hovering around the horizon, Joe realized his long term job security was uncertain. He made the decision to leave a well paid role for another business venture supplying truck bodies. A venture he shrewdly exited after that proved to be unstable. Throughout it all, Joe's analysis was astute and it acts as a clear guide to anyone in business to know their business. Knowing your dirt as Joe describes it.

Don Cameron:

And while searching for a solid venture, he thought again about Sonitrol. Deciding it was time to pivot into the alarm business. The challenge now though was to go from former customer to new employee.

Joe Wilson:

And so I I went, that Sonitrol thing that's being run out of buffalo is not being run very well. Bet you, I could run that thing pretty good. So I contacted the owners of Sonitrol in Toronto, and I said, I'm gonna come work for you. And they said, we don't want you to come work for us. And I said, I get that, but I'm gonna.

Joe Wilson:

And they said, no. We really don't want you to come work for us. And I said, yeah. I understand. And, you know, reasoning would be that they would clue into the fact that I'm actually gonna try and put them out of the pasture, and I'm gonna take over.

Joe Wilson:

And I didn't they didn't know me other than being their largest

Don Cameron:

say, did they know you at all?

Joe Wilson:

Well, they knew me, but they knew me as their largest customer who was a pain in the ass because I I wanted to make sure things were done correctly. Anyways, I said, well, I'm gonna start on Monday, and you can pay me or not pay me. And, they said, well, you know, we'll pay you. And so my starting was $25,000 salary and a car allowance and 10% commission on anything I sold. And so the 1st month there, I think I sold about $50,000 in in new stuff.

Joe Wilson:

And their sales guys who worked there were maybe selling 12,000 a month, maybe. So we're like, how are you doing this? And I said, well, I just go out and I knock on doors, and I get business cards. And then I you know, they had an inside salesperson who was just calling off of Rand lists or whatever you could buy, which is useless. And I was bringing in real cards of people that this person could call, and they were selling an appointment for me to tell the client about Sonitrol.

Don Cameron:

Joe was certain that he could make an immediate impact by joining Sonitrol in Toronto. His work ethic and salesmanship resulted not just in a huge increase in sales, but also a substantial uplift in recurring revenue for maintenance of and monitoring on installed systems. A healthy bottom line is an objective for just about any business venture, but success for Joe met that his medium and long term goals were also in jeopardy.

Joe Wilson:

I was there for probably a year and a half, 2 years, and then the owners, they didn't want to, but I said to them, I'm gonna start running this business, and I'm gonna grow the sales staff so that it's it's more profitable and better for you, and you're gonna give me a a bonus structure that, you know, the more I make for you, the more I make. And we put that in place, and we started that everybody was starting to sell 50 to a $100,000 a month in new business. So it was lucrative for the owners, it was lucrative for me. The downside, again, on this reoccurring revenue model was that I was cluing in that I was making this company worth a bunch of money that I probably couldn't afford down the road to buy them out. So I tried to create some numbers that I thought made some sense.

Joe Wilson:

So if you go backwards, their reoccurring revenue was probably $12,000 a year. So it was it was, in in my mind, fairly low. They're happy with it, but it was low. And, in the 2 or 3 years after I went to say that I needed to buy some ownership in it, we're at $200,000. And I went to the owners and said, okay, I've got 2 proposals for you.

Joe Wilson:

Proposal number 1 is that we create Sonatrol Canada, and I take a 51% ownership, and I'll pay I'm picking numbers. I'll pay you $8,000,000. And, you know, not thinking about how I'm gonna get $8,000,000, just Sure.

Don Cameron:

We'll figure it out after.

Joe Wilson:

Yeah. And they said, no. And so then I said, okay. We create new code tomorrow, you keep all of the $200,000 in reoccurring revenue, but then I become a 51% partner in NewCo, and I'm gonna pay you $2,000,000 or whatever the valuation should be for that. And they said, no.

Joe Wilson:

And I said, well, what are you gonna do if I leave? And they said, we're gonna cut coupons. We're gonna live off the they had 700,000

Don Cameron:

Thank you very much for getting us to 200. Yeah.

Joe Wilson:

They had $700,000 a month in reoccurring revenue at the time with all their other centrals. And and I get it. Like, today as an owner, I would have told the guy the same thing. But what that forced me to do, which is good, is where could I sell Sontrol that was the furthest away from them that they couldn't have any influence over me.

Don Cameron:

What may seem like a reaction to circumstance was also a carefully considered decision. When your path forward is blocked by an immovable object, what do you do? Joe's desire to progress and move forward meant a literal move. Relocating to a new market where he would be the player in town. But that move presented new and different challenges, not least moving his family across the country.

Don Cameron:

News he had to share with his young daughter and his wife.

Joe Wilson:

My wife didn't wanna leave. Obviously, her family were all in Ontario. My family were all in the States in Ontario, but on the East Coast. I actually took her out for dinner and plied her with wine, I think, and just said, here's what we're doing, selling our house and gonna move out west.

Don Cameron:

We're on an adventure.

Joe Wilson:

Yeah. Yeah. You're gonna love it. When I looked at Calgary and I looked at Edmonton, I looked at Vancouver, just environmentally, Vancouver was the place to go to. So we moved out here in 2000.

Joe Wilson:

I brought a technician that worked for me at Sonntrol Toronto with me and his wife who was a office administrator, and I made them both employees. And my wife who was a nurse and worked in organ transplant at Toronto General Hospital, she became my bookkeeper. We started with really no accounts other than Canadian Tire was a corporate client that I had developed, and they were doing a major expansion of Canadian Tire stores at the time. That was good timing for us. That was the first three that we could get.

Joe Wilson:

And and I just repeated the model out here, Don, where it was like it was Joe. Joe was going out and door knocking and finding out who was building new buildings and just repeated what I'd done in Toronto and then grew a sales force to do the same thing. And so we're 23, 24 years coming on being in Vancouver. And so that's kinda how Joe got in the Sontrol business.

Don Cameron:

Now, having his own business success was not just about selling alarms but providing a service to his clients. Their satisfaction meant ongoing, recurring revenue just like the business back east. That recurring model, one that Joe has used for 3 decades, is now the holy grail for most organizations. Some have used it successfully, others have failed and far too many have left their customers frustrated with the constant demand for payment. But how has Joe found it?

Joe Wilson:

So that it's a system that works is is the main thing. Right? And then we're not gouging our clients, like, we have clients and they're paying the same rate as what they paid in the nineties. And and and when I came to Western Canada, you know, our minimal monthly is $75 a month. I've never raised it.

Joe Wilson:

Some of my business mentors would say, but you should. And, you know, you might lose 1%, but you're gonna gain 10% or whatever the ratio is. I've never done that. So I don't I don't gouge the customer. I make a solid return on what I do.

Joe Wilson:

The product is very robust in the sense that it doesn't need to be replaced all the time. Again, we have systems that we sold 25 years ago. They're still just as good. Whereas, my industry, the stuff is crap. Like, it that's why it's cheap.

Joe Wilson:

And so, you know, you do need to upgrade the panels, and you do need to do this, and you do need to do that. And, you know, when we talked about how do you pick a business to be involved in, the reason I picked the Sonitrol business was because we're a proprietary product. You couldn't buy from me and then tomorrow decide that, you know, the monitoring center is going to monitor it. It isn't that somebody else couldn't create a Sonitrol listening device or a Sonitrol monitored camera. They could.

Joe Wilson:

The problem is the back end when you talk technology. They don't spend the money to create the central station to be able to do what we do. And then ratio of a monitored account to human in the conventional alarm industry, they run 12,000 to 20,000 accounts per person. And, again, it's just a red light flashing that says it's a motion sensor or it's a door contact. There's no verification.

Joe Wilson:

Whereas, we run, probably, 200 accounts per operator, but we're listening to the building and we hear the break in happening before they get in the building, or we're watching the compound and we see the human get in the compound and start stealing copper or whatever they're doing. That's why I picked Sontrol. I I wouldn't be in the alarm business. You wouldn't find me being an independent alarm guy. That's dumb.

Don Cameron:

Apprehension figures speak volumes when it comes to why Joe picked the business. Since the late seventies, close to 200,000 criminals have been apprehended breaking into buildings or sites that are monitored by Sonetrol. An average of over 4,000 a year or over 11 a day. But for a product to be truly effective, it needs to be a central component of an effective strategy. From his experience as a customer, Joe knew he had a reliable and effective product.

Don Cameron:

And by maintaining a good ratio between operators and customer accounts and resisting the gravitational pull and perceived wisdom about price hikes, his proposition was both highly stable and trustworthy. Joe also made a conscious decision to operate in a market that offered a business advantage, having few like for like competitors and room for growth. That takes careful deliberation and planning to identify strengths and align those with opportunity. Another example of Joe knowing his dirt. I mentioned his innate ability earlier, his superpower when it comes to planning and successfully executing.

Don Cameron:

How did he develop those skills?

Joe Wilson:

My parents were pretty successful people, and my mom always wanted me to be a doctor or a lawyer. And, scholastically, I was I would say I was uninterested. It wasn't that I was lazy. I was I couldn't see how putting the effort in was gonna make me a lot of money. And so we had a friend that was a psychologist and ran all these, I think they're called McQuag tests, which would would tell you what your

Don Cameron:

What you'd be good at or whatever?

Joe Wilson:

Yeah. What what you are. And so Yeah. I had to do these things every year. I hated doing it.

Joe Wilson:

The guy's name was doctor Littrell, great guy, and a family friend. And so, anyways, I do these things and and my mom would come back after meeting with him and she'd be upset. And it's like, you're not gonna be a doctor and you're not gonna be a lawyer and you're gonna be a salesman. You're gonna be a salesman. And, yeah, you got I'm a salesman.

Joe Wilson:

I'm I'm selling whatever it is I'm selling. You know, in school, the principals and the guidance counselors would all say to him, don't worry about him. You know, he's gonna be more successful than all of us, but he's he's not gonna be a lawyer and he's not gonna be a doctor. He's that's not gonna happen, but he's gonna be a salesman, and here I am.

Don Cameron:

You've mentioned a few challenges today, things that you had to overcome in order to move forward. Do you feel like those roadblocks were a setback?

Joe Wilson:

So I never ever had any roadblocks because I never believed that I would fail. And so, you know, again, when I was in the breweries and, you know, I was a young executive at, like, 32, I had people that reported to me that were, like, 55. I didn't even clue into that that was wrong. I never clued in to the fact that were jealous of me or whatever because my focus has always been laser in the sense that I'm gonna be successful doing what I what I gotta do. Because I had the wants, that I wanted whatever.

Joe Wilson:

And it wasn't about title or ENS, that was about money. I I wanna have a boat. I wanna have jet skis. I wanna have a couple houses. I wanna I wanna be able to travel if I wanna travel, you know.

Don Cameron:

So those are some of your measures of success is your ability to have achieved, obtained what you've wanted.

Joe Wilson:

Yeah. And when I quit my brewery job and went to the truck body company, people are, are you crazy? No. And when I left that and and went to Sontrol where they didn't want me, you crazy? When I quit Toronto and came out here, it's like, man, you worked so hard to be so successful.

Joe Wilson:

I'm like, I don't perceive that I did work hard. I I did what I enjoyed doing, so it's not work. And I had a great product that nobody else could compete with.

Don Cameron:

And it wasn't a reactionary decision to leave Toronto and come to Vancouver. It was a conscious decision because it was a step forward.

Joe Wilson:

Opportunistic, They gotta say, you know, my wife was very supportive of me. She didn't say, no, we're not going. She had lots of faith in me that when I quit my my big jobs that, you know, we weren't gonna be destitute and lose our houses. There was never any of that kind of stuff that went on. So that, you know, you gotta have the support of of people.

Joe Wilson:

I guess, confidence is the largest thing that's not an egotistical thing. I never felt there was gonna

Don Cameron:

be an opportunity to fail. Every business leader plans to meet their objectives and having a plan for unwanted outcomes is often what separates great leaders from the rest of the pack. You could say that Joe's self assured planning and execution is a key component of his success. Having cutting edge market research, strategic analysis and real time dashboards will provide business advantage. But even the best tools are blunted by decision paralysis.

Don Cameron:

By prudently aligning his strengths of competitive advantage and opportunity, Joe created his own formula for success.

Joe Wilson:

I'm confused because I don't understand why people aren't wired that way because it's the way I'm wired, so it just seems normal. And I I don't think that I'm special, or I'm certainly not brighter than anybody else. People have to clue into what it is they enjoy doing, and then they have to put the effort together to figure out how you're gonna package it and sell it. Because at the end of the day, whether you're an accountant or you're an investigator, you gotta sell yourself on what you're gonna do and show the benefits. And you know me well enough that if if this path didn't work out for me and, you know, I was gonna have a sub a Subway restaurant, which I I wouldn't, but or I was gonna have a Pizza Hut, You know, it'd be the best Pizza Hut or the best Tim Hortons or the best whatever, and I'd always be thinking about how do I grow the business and how do I add more opportunities so I'm more successful.

Joe Wilson:

And and when you do all those things, of course, then whoever your corporate mentor is notices that, like, woah. This guy could recreate things. Like, he shouldn't just have a store. He should have a district. And that's

Don Cameron:

Let's figure out something else we can get him to do.

Joe Wilson:

Always what's kinda happened. I remember taking a computer course in university when you used to have to fill out those those little cards with, you know, yeses and noes. Remember those? Or you had to punch them? And, you know, if this, then that, and if that, then this, and and that stuck with me that, you know, here's my plan.

Joe Wilson:

I'm getting to there. And if this happens, I'm gonna do that. Or if that happens, I'm gonna do this. And it's So

Don Cameron:

that's why you end up with no roadblocks.

Joe Wilson:

Probably. Like, there is and there's no failure, so I don't get bummed out about it. It's like, well, yeah, that's gonna happen. Now what do I do? It's that whole pivot thing.

Don Cameron:

And what's next for you, Joe? Would you ever consider selling the business?

Joe Wilson:

Absolutely. It's about surrounding yourself with the right people. I wouldn't know what a good deal is, and I wouldn't know what I need to live the the way that I live today. But what I can tell you is that, yeah, if if my financial people came to me and said, here's an offer that you're gonna be able to live the same life that you live now, yeah, I'd sell out tomorrow.

Don Cameron:

None of us can really claim to know it all, but Joe has learned a lot on his journey. From an entrepreneurial child to a canny corporate operator and a successful businessman, he has a wealth of knowledge and experience. Yet his advice to others setting out is refreshingly straightforward.

Joe Wilson:

I think that, our young society need not to think that it's doom and gloom. Because I like classic rock, and if I listen to the rock of the sixties and the seventies, they all say the same thing. We're living in the streets, we don't have any opportunities, we you know, it isn't any different than what it is, but you gotta figure out how you're gonna get what you wanna get, and you gotta get at it as soon as you can get at it, and not just wait for somebody else to give it to you. And money isn't the end of the world. You know, at the end of the day, we think of all these billionaires who die.

Joe Wilson:

So health's important, but we can't control health. So pick something, get at it. If you find out that it's not what you wanna do, get out of it. Move on to something else because that's a good learning curve for you to find out I didn't like that, but I wanted that. And live life the way you want without expecting someone else to give you, your success.

Don Cameron:

It's been great to hear Joe's philosophy and to share his fascinating story with you. Thanks again to Joe for being on the show and to you for listening to a cfo's diary, pathways to growth. You can follow and learn more about this podcast at savvycfo.cpa, or wherever you get your podcasts. Also, make sure to rate and review. I'm Don Cameron, and I hope our pathways cross again.