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Welcome to The Legacy Investor Podcast, where we talk money, investing, business, and what it means to leave a legacy for generations to come. Hosted by Cameron Philgreen, this show dives deep into the intersection of entrepreneurship, investing, and legacy-building, all while keeping God at the center. Whether you're a seasoned investor or just starting out, you'll discover how to align your financial journey with your faith, grow wealth with integrity, and create a lasting impact for generations to come. Join in, as we explore practical strategies, real-world stories, and timeless biblical principles to help you honor God in every step of your journey.
Paul Whitten on the pod today started a tour company in Nashville with $3,000 just working on weekends and grew it to a multiple six-figure business that gives 1% of revenues to veterans and hires veterans and it's veteran-owned. Super cool business and super cool concept. And we dive in today on lessons learned and what to do in entrepreneurship and what not to do and some lessons that he's learned from leaders in the Army and in the Peace Corps. Really great show today and also the importance of passion and being passionate about your business and what you're doing. Paul is an inspiration and I loved talking with him. And if you're ever in Nashville, guys, hit up NashvilleAdventures.com. I know I'm going to be doing it and check out all their tours. They have a lot of offerings. If you just go to NashvilleAdventures.com and hit them up. All right, we'll see you guys in there. Welcome to the Legacy Investor with Cameron Filgrin. All right, Paul Witten, welcome to the Legacy Investor Podcast, man. How are we doing today? Man, I can't complain a bit. Beautiful day here in Nashville. How are things in your neck of the woods? Wonderful, sir. I'm in Waco, Texas, and it just got chilly. Man, so we're going to talk about Nashville Adventures, your startup that started with $3,600 and you grew it. Just start us from the beginning and everything you've learned along the way. Give us a few tips and tricks that you've learned along the way through starting this business. Yeah, man. So based on your listener base, I'm kind of a little bit older. I never knew any entrepreneurs when I was growing up. So I think these podcasts are a really good platform for people to be aware of things that necessarily weren't around for us older millennials, to put it mildly. So the things I've learned is everything I've done in my life has led to this moment for me. I was a weirdo and I imagine some of your listeners might be in the same realm I was. I didn't know what I wanted to do for the rest of my life until I was damn near 37 years old. So anytime I hear a young person in their 20s who wants to be an entrepreneur, I applaud them. I did not know that was even an option for me. But the combination of serving the US Army, especially in combat arms, the combination of being the United States Peace Corps and Republic of Armenia, the UK Parliamentary Fellowship, and the grind that is Amazon, all led to lessons learned that led to this company. And I like to think that led to the efficient launch of this company. So for all these folks listening, you learn just as much from the day to day reality of whatever you're doing, because you have great examples of what not to do and what to do. You learn just as much from bad leaders as you do from good leaders. So the ability to hyper focus on that at a young age and take lessons where normally people don't perceive that to be a classroom environment to learn from, is going to greatly increase the likelihood of someone succeeding. So if I got a guy listening who's 25 years old grinding at a restaurant, trust me, there's an MBA in that restaurant. You just got to take advantage of those lessons. Really, God's honest truth. Awesome. Especially when it comes to talking with other people. Yeah. You mentioned good leaders and bad leaders. Tell me a story of a time you learned from a good leader and then from a bad leader. Oh, well, that's a great one. The United States Army has an abundance of both, my friend. So when I first joined, I enlisted before I went to the Citadel, which is a commissioning and military academy. And I had a horrible set of NCOs who were not living the be-no-do philosophy. So basically, what I learned from that is parents jokingly say, do as I say, not what I do. And what that leads to is kind of a double standard and a perception of favoritism or an environment that fosters favoritism. He doesn't get to do what we do, but he's in this position. That is cancer. That is toxic in a culture. And the Army is unique because you inherit a culture in the Army. You don't create a culture in the Army. Whereas I've had examples of people who've created a culture And they built that culture on a foundation of the values that they prioritize. And that just spread and it be permeated across teams. The great example of that is, believe it or not, the Peace Corps. When I was in the Peace Corps, there's no brand to inherit. There is no culture that you are adhering to as per the army. You just they drop you in the middle of somewhere and say, go figure that out. And I had great examples and horrible examples of people who had that opportunity to do what they wanted to do as they defined it and didn't succeed with it. And I've had great examples of people who did. The United States Army will give you great examples. I met some of the smartest and greatest leaders in my life over there. I've also met the dumbest people in my life in the US Army. usually there's both extremes yeah uh the peace corps was similar just a lesser degree i didn't meet much geniuses in the peace corps to be honest with you not say they're not there but i didn't meet a lot of washout failures there either and i think what both of those environments provided me was great lessons to learn and i i think there's one thing i had is I had the ability to kind of hyper focus on that. Oh, I don't want to do that. That's dumb. This guy's an idiot. And everyone listening to him is probably going to be an idiot to just having that ability to hyper focus on that EQ spectrum, if you will, to kind of see where the person is, you're going to learn the most from and be attached to that person as much as possible. Love it. Yeah. Some of the most, some of the best leaders I've ever seen are also really good dads. And part of the reason their kids grow up that I've noticed to be successful people and to be just like, you know, super kind hearted, servant hearted, run great businesses, do great ministry, whatever it is, is because their parents oftentimes did like what they did. Like they weren't two different people around two different audiences. So the kind of the person I think of even right now is, you know, Jimmy Seibert is the pastor of my church and he is like the same person on stage in front of 3000 people as he is at the dinner table. I think that that's what I kind of hear you saying, that you've learned both the how not to do that and how to do that from your leaders of the Army and the Peace Corps. And yeah, man, just like not being hypocritical in your business, in your parenting, in your marriage, whatever it is, it's like be the same person on stage as you are at the dinner table or, you know, putting your kid down to sleep, I think is really important. And will not only show who you are as a father or as a mother, but also as a business leader. So love that. Just wanted to throw that out there. So I'm curious, Paul, values and culture. At Nashville Adventures, how have you been able to build values and culture or instill those into the business? And how have you seen that affect your profits and revenues and numbers? Love it. Love it. And I got to bounce off what you're saying. The ability to be a good dad and be a good pastor, there is no drama like church drama. There is nothing in the world that compares to the drama of running the church, the business of a church. And anyone who can do that and be sane, be a good dad and still pastorize? Man, I tell you, that's a 0.1 percenter. If you want to talk about, and anyone who's been in church world knows what I'm talking about there. There is nothing quite like church drama. But to branch off your question about culture and norms, to be honest with you, for those who are starting business i tell people uh you gotta start and cheat do not be afraid to break rules there's you know when i was at the citadel there was a there was a one star who was retired in teaching classes and he had this great quote and there's some curse words in it i won't say it but it's a great quote there's two types of people in the world Librarians and pirates. The world cannot live without librarians. They create order and function. But history doesn't remember any effing librarians. And he didn't say effing. There's a certain reality of embracing the pirate culture of entrepreneurship. When I wanted to create a culture of Nashville Adventures, I cheated. And the way I did that is I hired people like me. And I know that's horrible to say, but I hired mostly veterans, people who I knew I could talk in a certain manner and they receive it well. People I knew their motivation, directions and desires and could kind of, you know, work with that a little bit. And so that's what I started with. So my attrition was non-existent. The loyalty factor was higher. And I also knew being that all these guys were, you know, combat vets like I am, you know, if I get a little, you know, testy with them and I put them under the fire, they're not going to buckle, cry and leave. And that's the way we kind of did that as we evolved and grew. The goal was to spread this out and let the opportunity speak for itself. The opportunity to have a job where you get to be passionate, talk about history, meet cool people and basically have the coolest job in the world. I tell people all the time I've had real jobs. This ain't one of them. And so we kind of built a culture that that kind of best of the military environment without the worst. And then as we enhanced that and opened up this company a tad bit more, we are now not veteran owned, operated and staffed or veteran owned, operated and majority staffed. We've kept those values and those values are we will always be the history nerds you want to have a beer with. That was important to me. We are the people who are not going to give you a librarian, English teacher, sixth grade lecture. That's not how we operate. And at the same time, we're going to be absolutely fanatical about making sure that this is one of the best tours you've ever been on. I've always operated, if you don't hear two or three times a week, this is the best tour I've ever been on, you're failing. The failure isn't the high five and a $5 tip. It's that statement. And so that's how we operate. And we started that pretty much a day one, even when it was just me doing it on weekends. And we've evolved into what this is now with five tours a day, seven days a week and multiple staff. That's super cool, man. I love it. What a cool story. And you said you started with a very small amount of money and, you know, grew it to what it is today. When was that? How did you start? You said you worked on weekends. I mean, give us the because there's a lot of people out there that want to start a business that with thirty six hundred bucks or whatever they have. So how did you do that? And like what what did you learn along the way? My man, let's go. So truth be told, the reason why I started this business is I hated my real job. I worked at Amazon, brother, and that was a grind. And I tell you what, you just have to look up the Amazon statistics on attrition. They'll speak for itself at the same time. amazon gave me the best gifts imaginable on running a business i was blessed with the opportunity to work at jfk8 in new york city with the southern redneck accent where i ran the outbound dock and i'd worked all these different managerial roles and i tell you i learned and then i moved into project management dealing with automation multi-million dollar projects The reality though, is I was gone from my house two or three weeks out of the month. I was grinding, I was miserable, I was just surviving. And without that, I would have never have jumped. So COVID hit. COVID's crazy. There's a mass exodus out of New York City. There's either Seattle or Nashville were my two options. And I was not gonna be the president of Amazon. So I chose Nashville. I wasn't gonna go to the Mecca of Amazon, which is Seattle. So I get here and I realized real quick, I'm gonna do six months of this and that's all I'm able to do. I just can't do more of this. So I started thinking, what do I love doing? No, the happiest I've ever been in my life professionally is when I got hurt in Afghanistan and I flew home and, you know, I had some back surgeries and stuff. And in my physical therapy timeframe, I did physical therapy in the morning and I gave free tours at the patent museum at Fort Knox. And I loved it. I thought that was the coolest thing ever. And that was like 10 years before that. And I still remember it. So I decided I'm gonna start National Adventures. And for some reason, no one trademarked or had that name taken. Don't ask me why man, more for me. So I was able to get that. I started doing tours on the weekends for tips only. And I created my website myself, all this stuff. And I remember I made $40 my first tour. I was so proud of it. I started that mid-November, did it December, January, and I realized, oh, this is actually something that makes money. So I quit Amazon and I went into this full-time February of 2024. And it's been a blast ever since. That's amazing, man. You've clearly got a great brand. You want to talk about branding and how passionate you are about that and just like about how important it is to have a passion for the business. Amen. I tell you, you take all these business classes and you do all this stuff. I've never taken a business class in my life, but I've been blessing up the guest lecture at some. And all of these profs who've never had a business before always kind of talk about the role of passion. And I remember hearing about that, you know, the role of passion at work. And I always thought that was the dumbest thing anyone ever said. I'm passionate about making money. That's what I was passionate about. The reality is, is they're 100% correct for a different reason than I imagined. The thing that's going to keep you going when you're barely making money is that you're having fun doing it. That's the reality. And that's where the service business really gets advantageous. If you're doing AI stuff and tech stuff and coding stuff, you're a 0.1 percenter if you enjoy that. That's just, you know, honest to God. You work at any of those guys at AWS, they do it for the paycheck and the bonuses and the additional stock units. Most of them. Very few of them are like, I can't go a day without coding. It's my life. That does not happen very often. Right. For history nerds, that exists. And I was blessed to be in a position where I was passionate about something that was a service-based industry that didn't require upfront costs. I wasn't creating the brand new app. I was giving tours. I don't have a retail location. I didn't have any of that. My margins, I didn't even know what margin meant. And so I always tell folks, passion is what's going to keep you going when your revenue is non-existent, when your spouse is looking at you like you're crazy. And being in a service-based industry is hacking the system because you don't need much capital to start and get proof of concept. And I tell you, I mean this from the bottom of my heart. Do everyone listen to this? The millionaires of the next 10 years are going to be your service-based industries. That's going to be your plumbers. It's going to be your painters. It's going to be all these guys who are going to take just, I love doing this. I like working with this group of people. And I got, you know, a thousand dollars to go to Home Depot down the street. Those are the guys who are going to be the millionaires. It ain't going to be the tech nerds. God bless them, but it ain't going to be them. All right, let's unpack that. I want to unpack that real quick because that's pretty controversial and I love it. Oh yeah, that's my hot take, brother. That's my hot take, my man. Unpack why that is and then I want to go back to the start and cheat and what that means for you. But let's start with the service-based and tech schools and electricians and plumbers and HVAC guys versus tech nerds and why you think they're going to win. Here's my thought on this. I run Natural Adventures and I've been blessed to work in tech for many years. I almost... I would say ChatGPT and Grok and all those guys, that's another partner for National Ventures. The amount of information I get from those platforms, how much data analysis, business analytics, down to my marketing procedures and planning, all this stuff. Hey, I need a list of emails for all these people. I need email contact for this program project thing I'm doing. There you go. The automation factor of this is immense. For the tech folks out there, it's not gonna take long for everyone to be able to do things that would normally take five months and $5 billion to do with one month and $100,000. When all of a sudden you have a flooding of that, it's gonna oversaturate the market. That's my 10 cent theory. And all of a sudden there'll be a thousand apps doing the same thing. There is a reluctance in America to become HVAC, become plumbers. There's no one fighting to get this an arena. In fact, it's really hard to, you know, you find a couple of guys trying to get plumbing degrees. That's kind of rare. And how many folks do you know get a degree in plumbing? Everyone knows those people. So those guys who are able to do the big three, show up on time, know what they're doing, and have some basic understanding of business, even down to like a basic QuickBooks level understanding, those guys are going to dominate a field in which everyone's going to need them that is irreplaceable by AI. I can't get a robot to get on their knees, to have their pants showing their butt crack, working on my sink, fixing that at 3 a.m. That ain't there yet. We ain't got the tech. Yeah, that's going to be, that's going to be the moneymakers. And you're going to see guys with six or seven trucks doing plumbing, charging a hundred dollars an hour plus, because they're the only dudes doing it. That's distinct. It ain't computer science anymore. All right, let's go back to start and cheat. What do you mean by that? Uh, Short of shortchanging the IRS and things like that, cheat. If you ain't cheating, you ain't trying. If you're not outwardly engaging different methodologies and procedures to accomplish your goal, then to be honest with you, you don't really belong in business. If you're not looking at things people tell you and be like, well, we did it this way. And you're not thinking that's dumb. I'm going to do it this way. there's a good chance business is going to be a little bit harder than you than everyone else. A differentiation point is your ability to get from A to B in a different way, hopefully faster, cheaper, and better. The best way to do that is to go contrary to different and same normal practices that have done previously. So for national adventures. I hired people that I created an environment that I knew that I and the companies could succeed in. Check that blocks. Second thing is, I tell you, there are some rules and regulations regarding how we operate or normal norms, norms of how tour operators operate. We don't do that. It's dumb. We're not doing that. We're not getting a retail space. We don't need it. We're going to partner with hotels and meet in hotels, meet in coffee shops. I love my margins too much. Oh, you know, if you're going to get a, you need to have all these specific things set up with all these different online travel agencies. Yeah, but I'm not going to do that. I'm going to do it all. I'm going to go ahead first in SEO and dominate SEO first, then go to OTAs. You know, certain things that are kind of different. And when you think pirate, you know, you think he's, you know, criminal. I'll be honest with you. It's not criminality. It's business acumen. And I tell people all the time, It's also being a pirate, too, because your competitors are the people you're trying to plunder. You're trying to take their customers from them. You're trying to take revenue that would be going to them and accomplish that. And the best way to do that is a sneak, sneak across, shoot a full broadside and take the plunder. And if you're not outwardly engaging and thinking in that methodology with business, you're often probably going to tread water for a while. You got to have a little pirate in you to succeed and you got to cheat a little bit and do things different from everyone else. So what's the difference between doing things different and a differentiating factor is what we would call it. You know, basically just like, you know, you serve coffee, but you do it a little bit different than everybody else. You know, you do latte art and you care about the craft and you, I don't know. Or every other coffee shop has just coffee and just drinks and none of the coffee shops have a bakery. None of them serve food. So, okay, we're going to serve food. See, I wouldn't call that... I would just call it a differentiating factor. We're doing things different than all the competition. So I guess why the word cheat? Well, let's say I would not say that's what I'm referring to, my friend. I tell you, I would say the best way if you want to open a coffee shop and not blow it out the water, I wouldn't say differentiation factors, unique value, unique value propositions and all these things like adding food. I would say go to a wholesale retailer, get coffee from them, start selling that and then partnering with other organizations around you. and different ways to increase the likelihood of not only having a continuity of business opportunity, preferably at a monthly rate, almost to like an MRR standard, but also advertising in certain ways that are gonna maybe directly go to their business. A good pirate way I would say this means, when you do Google ads, you can't use their name when you do a Google ad, but you can on the titles. So if you got, I'm looking outside, it's Christmas time. I got Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer in front of my house. If Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer is copyrighted, I can't say we are better than Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer on Google. What I can say is we're better than Rudolph. Now that is probably a tad bit unethical, but that's pirate. And certain things like that you go after. That's really what differentiates yourself. And I'm not saying stealing. I'm not saying being evil. I'm not saying any of that. What I end saying is that when you embrace and you have the win mentality, short of cheating the IRS or doing something illegal or profoundly unethical, you got to find the wiggle room. You got to find the gray. Maybe not add food into the coffee shop, but maybe differentiate your manner of marketing. Partnering with other companies that can help you and you can help them, not on a financial basis, but on a services basis. And all of a sudden, you're doing something different from everyone else. So slight differentiation opinion there, but maybe the term pirate isn't correct there. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think, you know, I don't usually steel man my interviewees on this podcast, but I got to tell you, I just disagree. Like I would rather honor my competitors and like honor the people that I'm in, whether it's real estate investing or business. I would rather like, you know, try to create community around these things than try to like cheat them and throw them out of the bus. That's just my opinion. And so, hey, I respect it. i don't think that's cheating or throwing them out of the bus that's just me though because it's the reality is and this is in my opinion and you're of course yeah you can disagree with me yeah i have won a relationship with my competitors and good yeah oh absolutely and we all meet up we all talk at the same time we're all trying to get customers we're all trying to win yeah what I have done with Nashville Adventures is I haven't we're all trying to take each other's business and if you can't have that foundational level of understanding you certainly someone should not be in business but I am not outwardly trying to steal from them. That is illegal. That is exactly what I'm talking about is you shouldn't do. But I'm doing everything I can to separate myself, be different, better, stronger, different, unique, special, and twice and do what takes 10 years and doing five years. And the best method of doing that is embracing that pirate mentality. Now, I think you heard what I said and you think I'm stealing from them. I'm not doing anything wrong. I'm not doing anything illegal. Trust me. There's a lot of people who have done a lot worse than National Adventures. I promise you that. I got to tell you stories about my competitors jumping on my tours, recording it, stealing the content of what we're saying. I mean, that's the dark side of business that I see every day. I'm just saying embrace different mythologies. Embrace different thought patterns. Learn from great leaders. Learn from bad leaders. Embrace it. I think what I like about what you're saying is that you are a lean startup guy. Have you read The Lean Startup? I don't remember who wrote it. But just like starting with as little overhead, with as little capital as possible to get proof of concept and just do things differently than like what – what the giants of the industry think you should do. And so anyway, I do appreciate it. I love, I love the, I think it's just a mentality and maybe just the nomenclature is different than what I'm used to. Maybe, but I stand by it and I, I really, and it's unfortunate when people, and I see this not necessarily in tourism, but I do see it. And whenever I go to chamber meetings, there's, I wish there were people to be more active, more like, let's try it, let's figure it out. How do we shoot this broadside on these competitors? How do we differentiate ourselves so uniquely to where we're gonna rock and roll? And instead you get shyness, you get reluctance. Anyone who's willing to outwardly engage the wild wilderness that is business generally succeed, at least has a greater likelihood of succeeding. Now I'm not saying burn bridges or anything, and you know this is business it's about making money and that's a harsh world sometimes embrace it don't run from it yeah hey so you mentioned in in your um in the form submission uh you know you want to build legacy businesses what does that mean for you and this is the legacy investor podcast what does it mean for paul to leave a legacy and to build a legacy Well, let's see. We donate 1% to veterans nonprofits, and that's 1% of revenue. That's something that's our hill to die on. At the same time, we just started the National Ventures Community and Leadership Scholarship. And that is the whole goal of this is And when I started this, we wanted to be the best of Nashville by embracing the best of Nashvilleian values. And part of that means we give back a little bit. Nashville is known as music city, but you can make a great argument that it started as entrepreneurial city. You're in Waco, right? Waco is known for some other things, but I'd like to think Waco should not be defined by a raid that happened in the 90s. Nashville shouldn't be defined by the fact that it's just Music City. It's an entrepreneurial city. The city started as an entrepreneurial venture. Fort Nashville as a fur trading hub. I mean, like really cool stuff. And so I like to kind of embrace that aspect of it and less of the bachelorette party headquarters of the world that Nashville is known for, you know, that kind of aspect of it. So that's the legacy I'm talking about. And also at the same time, I think we have something that's replicable. That's something that unique that has a proven working theory. We are the history nerds you want to have a beer with. We are not the librarian English teachers that give tours. We're kind of different in that. And we embrace who we are and we love who we are, just like Nashville does. Yeah. Awesome. Paul, I love asking people, you know, you're a passionate guy. I think we've already hit on, Hey, how important it is to, to be passionate about your business and to enjoy it so that it doesn't even feel like work. And I can tell, man, you, you love what you do and I can tell it's not even a work for you. You're just doing what you love. So, but what is the why behind your business? What's the why behind Paul and Nashville adventures? Would you say? But why? I wanted to create a service that went beyond the normal tour operating space. One thing the Peace Corps taught me, I did three years in the Peace Corps. And that was, I basically traveled making $300 a month. And that's what you make in Peace Corps, a little bit less than that, actually. And the lessons I learned from that allowed me to kind of operate lean a little bit way. I started a lean startup, but that's kind of those lessons learned from that. And I wanted to create a service that embraced everything that I've learned And at the same time, everything I've learned is different than what everyone else is doing. I wanted to create tours that are history-based, that are not scripted. I wanted to do something that could be someone shows up and all of a sudden they have a connection that they didn't know to Nashville. Whenever we give tours, we find out where everyone's from. And we make a connection from their hometown to the city. And the great thing about Nashville is that's not too hard to do. Even beyond the radio connection aspect. Oh, you heard this song? It's actually from here. Beyond that aspect of it. Nashville can provide really cool connections. James K. Polk is from here. James K. Polk was the president of the Mexican-American War, ended in 1848. That had the Treaty of Guadalupe. That's California, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas. All these states exist because of a Tennessean who operated out of Nashville until he moved to D.C. The connections here are great. There is no one doing that. And I don't see a lot of places doing that really around. And I take such pride that we're able to have proof of concept scale halfway decent. We're still in the process of scaling and create something that could be that others could be envious of, appreciative of, and be willing to go back and repeat services with, which is not something you get in tour companies. Yeah. Awesome, man. Love it. This has been a great show. Love chopping it up with you. Dude, if people want to find you or if they want to, obviously Nashvilleadventures.com is where you can find all the tours and book a tour. But if people want to reach out to you personally, I don't know if you allow that, but your Instagram or email or whatever you got. Yeah, they can find us at The National Adventures on Instagram, National Adventures on TikTok. And if they really want to reach out to me, they can reach out to Paul at nationaladventures.com. I'll answer anything they got. Love it, man. All right. Thank you guys for tuning in to the Legacy Investor Podcast with Paul Witten today. It's a great show. Have a good one, guys. Guys, thank you so much for tuning into this episode of The Legacy Investor. Hey, if you want to help us grow and support us, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. That really helps a lot. Please subscribe to my YouTube channel, Cameron Filgreen. It's still new and growing, but I am going to start posting on there more regularly. Follow me on Instagram at Cameron underscore Filgreen. And if you know someone who should be on this podcast, Go fill out the form on my website. It's CameronPhilGreen.com slash podcast. Fill out the form there. I'd love to have more guests on this podcast. It's been a blast. And music is by Eric Lopez Villaverde. Reach out to him for all your music needs. On Instagram, he's Eric Lopez Villaverde. Hope you guys have a great day and thank you for tuning in. Bye-bye.