Fulfillment In Business - Guest: Frank Fiume (#27)

In this episode Josh is joined by guest Frank Fiume, founder of I-9 Sports, best-selling author, and the nation’s leading franchisor of youth leagues and camps. They talk about business, life and transition.

Many people end up being very successful as they're  building their careers or businesses, so they have  attained the science of achievement.

But what about fulfillment? What about making that transition out of the achievement mindset to what's next in life.

This episode is poised to be a great benefit to a great many people of all ages.

Contact:
josh@keystonefinancial.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/keystonefin/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Keystone_Fin?advisorid=33004651
Contact Josh Nelson: https://www.keystonefinancial.com
Contact Jeremy Busch: https//www.keystonefinancial.com
Podcast Editor: Tim Leaman/info.primegen@gmail.com

Transcript

Hi, Everyone. Welcome to the Wiser Financial Advisor with Josh Nelson, where we get real, we get honest, and we get clear about the financial world and your money. 

This is Josh Nelson, Certified Financial Planner and founder and CEO of Keystone Financial Services. We love feedback and we'd love it if you would pass it on to me directly at josh@keystonefinancial.com . Also, please stay plugged in with us and get updates on episodes and help us promote the podcast. You can subscribe to us at Apple podcasts, Google, Spotify, or your favorite podcast service. Let the financial fun begin!

So, I had the chance recently to sit down with my good friend Frank Fiume, who is a pioneer in the youth sports industry, best known for being the founder of I-9 Sports which is the nation's first and leading franchisor of youth leagues and camps. He sold his business in 2017 and became the bestselling author of the book Running with My Head Down.

This conversation today is not just about business, it's also about life, and it's about a transition that a lot of people struggle with. Many of us end up being very successful as we're building our careers or businesses, so we’ve attained the science of achievement. But what about fulfillment? What about making that transition out of the achievement mindset to what's next? That’s what we’re going to visit about today. I think you'll enjoy the conversation and I look forward to hearing your feedback.

Josh: Welcome, Frank.

Frank: Thanks, Josh, appreciate it, thanks for having me.

Josh: Absolutely, yeah, I think it'll be a fun conversation today. A lot of the people that listen to this show are in a similar situation to you and I, people in their 40s and 50s that have mastered not only their finances but also some area of business, either their own business or they've been very successful in their careers, to the point that with regard to the science of achievement, they've got that down, as you and I have to a large degree. But then there's that whole other element of things: The art of fulfilment.

A lot of folks struggle with the idea of not running their business, or what it looks like to  “retire” or “financial freedom” or “financial independence” –whatever term you want to use. Once they have the financial success side of things covered; once they have the income coming in, then there's the question “Now what?” So Frank, if we could kind of back up a little bit, how did you even get into being an entrepreneur? What was that journey to taking the risk and stepping out there many years ago to starting your business?

Frank: Well, Josh, I was not raised in an entrepreneurial family. I was raised with the mentality of: You go to college, you get a job, you work at the company for 30 years, you get the gold watch and the retirement. That was the mindset I was raised in. But I knew deep down that was not me. When I graduated from Saint John's University in 1990 in New York, I honestly didn't know what I wanted to do. Like many college students who went to school for business, I ended up working in medical sales, which is really a very lucrative career that many people do, and for many people is very rewarding.

For me. I didn't have a passion for it. I was calling open heart surgeons in New York City—world renowned multimillionaire surgeons—and I was this young 22-year-old. I was making an awful lot of money doing this but on the weekends I was playing softball with college buddies. I stumbled on the fact that these softball leagues were really a business, but they weren't being treated like a business. I loved softball and saw there was a need to treat this as a business. So lo and behold, I started running a softball league of games on the weekends. My dad was dead against me going into that business because he was in the medical field. He worked as a cardiac perfusionist, the guy that ran the heart lung machine during surgery. For me to work in open heart medical sales was a perfect fit, he thought. But it just didn't wet my whistle.

I love sports and saw this great need, so I started this softball league, despite the fact that there were many leagues out there that said, “Hey, you'll never succeed.” I worked hard and grew this league out in New York. We were up to almost 1000 softball teams and doing about $750,000 a year in revenue. I was over the moon and quit my medical sales job. My wife and I moved to the Tampa Bay area and started running flag football leagues for kids. I started growing those leagues out and realized, “Wait a minute, I'm on to something here. We have leagues in New York and Florida for adults and kids. How can I expand this?” And for me it was by franchising. I thought that was the best vehicle so I became a student of the industry of franchising and learned everything I could. I went to a franchise consultant firm and they helped franchise my concept. I started the I-9 Sports franchise back in 2003 and the business grew to nearly 1000 locations in 30 states with over three million kids who played 99 sports. I was getting all this fulfillment, all this growth, all my hopes and dreams met. Then I got to a point about 2015 when I realized that although I grew this business bigger than my wildest dreams, I wasn’t fulfilled anymore. Then I started having an enormous amount of guilt because I thought my business was my purpose in life. So that was a crossroads I hit.

Josh: To back up, when you started making that transition early on, you were kind of moonlighting with the softball league and by the time you left the corporate job, you already had something flowing in and doing well. 

Frank: Yeah, I didn't quit the medical sales job immediately; I had both concurrently running. We’d been married just a couple of years and we had a baby at home. I was deathly afraid, Josh of going out on my own and doing this full time.

I had only heard of the failures and scary stories of other family members that went into business and why they failed. It was never they failed because of their own doing. It was always, you know, somebody else. It was discouraging. But I got to the point where I hit an emotional threshold. I was miserable in the corporate world and I started asking myself, “How will I feel five years from now if I keep doing this? And alternatively, if I go into this business full time, there is the potential it might actually work. I can't be fired if I have my own business. I control my own destiny.”

So fast forward all the way to 2015. I 9 sports is successful and I should be happy. I’d reached the top of the mountain and I felt like I wasn't fulfilled. So, I went to a Tony Robbins business mastery course to try to get my mojo back. And I heard Tony say, “Success without fulfillment is ultimate failure.”

It kind of hit me between the eyes when he said that. And the next thing he said was, “If you don't have passion for what you do, you owe it to yourself and you owe it to your company to get out and move on.” That was the turning point for me. The last thing I would have wanted to do was hurt my company. I loved my business, but I was no longer fulfilled. Fortunately, I had hired a great team of people who all knew exactly what to do.

You know, I started thinking about this.

Originally, I thought this business was my purpose. But wait a minute. I'm 47 years old. I can't be stupid here. I'm not going to live forever. This is not a business that I could just give to my kids who were teens at the time. The business was way too big to do something so irresponsible as let them manage a big franchise organization. So I said to my wife, “We need to be smart about this. I think it's time to take some chips off the table.” That was the first step in the process.

Josh: That must have been a hard realization to sell this thing that you created. I would guess a lot of your identity was wrapped up in it.

Frank: It was me. Me and I-9 sports were one. But I tell entrepreneurs this all the time: “If you truly love your business, it’s not about your ego. If you truly love it, you give the business what it needs. Guess what? Sometimes that means it needs something more than you. Maybe it's time to move on.”  So I had this realization that, “Wait a minute, that wasn't my purpose in life. That was just one step in the journey.” So I believe that our purpose in life is to be fulfilled and that our purpose consists of many missions.

I did a lot of soul searching to get to this point where I could, you know, actually speak to you about this and put it into words. It was a bit of a challenge as I was living through it. But as I reflect on it now, I see it was an amazing mission, but the mission was over and it was time to move on. Time to be fulfilled.

Josh: Yeah, absolutely. And so, you know, to fast forward to your liquidity event, not that we have to share dollar amounts at all but you were at a point where you didn't have to work. I mean, you really could be retired. You could be financially free and independent. But then, you're how old at the time?

Frank: I'm 49 when I sell the business to private equity. I stay on as a minority shareholder of the business, so I have a little bit of skin in the game on the Board of Directors. Selling was the most exhilarating two weeks of my life. Then I realized, “Oh crap, I got what I wished for, got the big payday. What's next?” After all, my friends are working. I can't exactly just start calling people up and say, “Hey, let's let's play golf.” Or you know, how often can you go to the movies or go to the beach? I mean, I'm too young and somebody would say to me, “Oh, you retired,”  and it would freak me out. No, I'm not retired. I hated the R word. To me it meant old and done and no purpose. It didn't translate into financial freedom for me. Retired was a bad word. 

Josh: Yeah, I use that word delicately because you're not alone. There are a lot of people—myself included—who don't like that word. I like financial freedom because it means that work is optional, right? You could be doing whatever you wanted to do, and it doesn't require an income coming in. I’ve probably had thousands of conversations with clients over the last 20 plus years that have gone through this same scenario of some sort, right? They either sell a business, or they've reached the point where they’re financially free just because they were diligent and put money away into 401K's and so forth over the years. They get to that point where they're retired or financially free, and that's really a struggle, that period after the first couple of weeks. And this is regardless of your relationship with your spouse and kids, 'cause I know you've got a great relationship with your wife and your kids. So, what happened after two weeks? Tell me about that next part of the journey when you were retired.

Frank: Fortunately, my wife and I do have a really good relationship and she was facing the same struggle in a different way. And I know that you have listeners that are in their 40s and 50s. They’re experiencing probably much of what my wife was. Busy with the kids. She homeschooled kids for a period of time. And guess what? Right around the time I was selling the company, our kids were finishing school. My daughter was off to college. My son wanted to finish his schooling at the high school. And now my wife is starting to ask this question: “What's next?” So now we're looking at each other. She's at the end of that part of the journey for her too. Both of us are at the end of a journey that had been so comfortable for 20 something years. Fortunately, we don’t just love each other but we like each other. We really enjoy each others’ company. But the problem was, we were asking: “What do we want life to look like?” It sounds exciting to go, “Wow, we have this blank canvas and we can do whatever we want.” But there's still discomfort because we had been living in certainty, the certainty that we had a business that was thriving; the certainty that she was getting fulfillment raising the kids and doing the schooling. I was home every night, so we spent time together as a family. But there are still big questions: “What's next? What are we supposed to do?” That became a question mark for almost too long—and then fear started entering into the equation.

Josh: Right, and pain is a great motivator. So, as you're both experiencing some of that, I remember being in a room with you during a Tony Robbins meeting and you raised your hand to say, “Tony, I have a question.”

Frank: I’d never raised my hand in a Tony event in 21 years, because I know that it often leads to getting a little intervention.

Josh: He’s an intense guy.

Frank: He is. And he had us do this activity asking us “What were some of the primary personalities that were your drivers say five or ten years ago?” You wrote them down on a piece of paper and drew circles on how big a priority they were. For me, five or 10 years ago it was about being this achiever and entrepreneur, and it was also being this husband and father. But I also had little circles that said unfulfilled and resentful because five or 10 years ago, I started feeling that I was no longer fulfilled. The second part of the activity was to rewrite all those primary personalities on where you are today.

I wrote all those priorities and guess what? Unfulfilled, resentful, entrepreneur—all those things were there. I had this epiphany that I wanted to share with Tony in an honest way. It was not for an intervention. I realized that I had been living like an entrepreneur warrior, so to speak, where I was looking for the next battle—and I no longer had a business, no longer had another battle to fight. And that was why I was unfulfilled. So, I raised my hand to just share my observation: Looking at the past and present me, they were the same person looking for this next battle, this next challenge. And as you know from being there, he noted to me that I had been an exhausted entrepreneur warrior, and that there was not a next battle to fight and that maybe I needed to look at not “playing small” as he would put it, but really ask myself what gives me fulfillment and what are the things that I hoped and dreamed for my life. And how I could maybe take what I'd done in in life to help others. Maybe it wasn’t about me anymore.

Josh: Absolutely, yeah, it's a beautiful transition. So tell me what happened next. Was your wife there at the event? Or was this something you shared with her later on?

Frank: I shared with her when I got home. She said to me, “Hey, did you have a chance to talk to Tony?” And I said, “Uh, yeah. I kind of had an intervention.” She knows what a Tony intervention looks like from being at past events. And I said, “Yeah, from what I was told it was about an hour that Tony was drilling me.” And the truth is, Josh, you know I really needed the kick in the butt, and I shared with her exactly what Tony had shared. And we thought about really, how are we living and what do we want life to look like? 

It was very motivating for me to have Tony say, “You know, you're better than this.” He also said, “When you sell your business, it's not like you're at the top of the mountain and you're going to start over again. You're going to take from what you've learned and where you are and grow from there.” That, to me, was really encouraging, because I realized life was always about fulfillment. I started the softball league because I wanted to be filled with my passion for it. I started I-9 Sports and franchised it not because I just want to make money. I did it because I was passionate about it and I forgot that the secret to my success was always about doing something I was passionate about. So that led me to coming back from the Tony event and asking my wife, “What are we passionate about?” 

My passion is helping others avoid pain. For me that happens in franchising. That's my wheelhouse. That's what I did, and I went through so many highs and lows that I thought, “I can create a company to help entrepreneurs that are successful in their own right and looking at how to franchise their business. I can help them avoid pain by contributing to them and guiding them.” And hence I started a new company that really does just that. It's about providing capital and advisory to people who are looking to franchise their concept.

Josh: And it's something that you and your wife get to do together too, right?

Frank: Absolutely, it's totally different , now that my wife and I can do this together. You gotta remember that I came home from running my business and she was an incredible support system for me, even though she wasn't in the office. And now we get to do this together. And if say, it’s primarily the husband running the business—which in many cases is what I've been dealing with—she's able to work with the spouse and help not just emotionally, but with how they can do this together and how as a couple they can be more supportive of each other and help grow the business. Ultimately, it's really about doing this together.  Doesn't mean both spouses have to be in the office together, but ultimately you have to have a great support system. 

Coming from franchising and being around so many franchisees, I've seen firsthand, Josh, that the most successful franchisees had support and had a belief in what they were doing. If there was a franchisee where the spouse was not supportive and did not believe in the concept, that spouse was the first one to say, “I told you so,” when a bad day happened. Inevitably, that business did not do well, so I can't emphasize enough how important it is to have that support through the spouse or significant other.

Josh: Absolutely. And you know, if somebody came along right now and wanted to write me a massive check for my business, that seems very scary, because a lot of my needs get met because of the relationships I get to have with my team and clients and everything like that. What advice would you give to somebody that is contemplating retirement or financial independence coming up? Not on the financial side necessarily, but on the emotional side, as far as how to get ready.

Frank: I think the first thing to do is to have a real heart-to-heart talk with yourself and reflect inside. Are your needs being met? Are you truly happy in that business or company that you work for today? Are you still in that business because it's what you do, and that's who your identity has been?

If the answer is yes, that you're not as happy, it is time to start thinking about making that change. Because look, you're not going to live forever, right? You didn't get into that business or work for that company just to make money. Some people do, but even if you were that person and you did it just for the money, chances are you sell it off and move on to the next challenge. But you're not going to live forever. Life is really about fulfillment, and I think if you have achieved that level of success but are not feeling that passion inside, you're gonna look back years from now and say, “Woulda coulda shoulda. . .  I shoulda left. I should have exited at the time where I hit that that breaking point where I was no longer fulfilled.”

And if your identity is tied up where you are and you think you and your business are one, I want to be that alarm bell to you to say, “Stop! You are not your business. Your business is not you.” If you really love your business, your business should outlive you.

So, for folks that are contemplating that change, ask if you are you fulfilled, and if not, maybe it's time to take a pause.

Josh: Yeah, absolutely.

And what about the person who's already made that transition? And of course, this is a weird year, right? Looking back over the last 12 months, so much of life has changed and so many people are not doing what they planned on doing in retirement if they may have been planning on doing a lot of traveling and so forth. So what advice would you have for the person who is trying to figure out, what is next for me?

Frank: OK, oh boy, this is my person. I can't wait to talk with this person. This is exactly what I went through. Josh, I would say the first thing is to understand and be OK with that there is a grieving process. It's OK. You'll be absolutely fine.

If you already left that job, you have some money in the bank or you sold that business and you're still not sure what to do, I don't care how long it's been, I want to make sure that you did go through that grieving process. If you had some depression, guess what? It's normal. You're OK, it happens to all of us. Why? You're a human being, right? So this is normal. Now it's time to do those things that you maybe always dreamed of doing that you just didn't have the time for. 

For me, the first thing I did is I wrote a book that I didn't publish. It was a family legacy book like 500 pages and I wrote about my life. My first 50 years. When I got to the end of writing that book, I realized it was something that I give to my kids, my future grandkids, future great grandkids, that they get to find out all of the highs and lows. I found success and achievement but I didn't come from money, I didn't come from having contacts,  I didn't have the knowhow,  I was not an A student. Yet I achieved something that I'm very proud of. That's why I wrote that book. Then I wrote the second version, which is that more condensed version that I published. It’s more of the business side of things, which does cover a lot of the psychology.

I'm not suggesting that you just go ahead and dive in and start another business. I did a lot of research on what happens when we sell our business and the depression we go through or the grieving. The common threads that I read about people who were successful in their transition, was that they did take a pause for a bit of time. They didn't go jumping into buying another business or starting a business. Quite often those fail. The follow-up business often fails if we don't give ourselves enough time. The people that were successful in starting another venture, in most cases it was between three and five years or even longer before they started doing something significant again.

For me, I'm in year four and now I've just started my new venture. So I'd say again, be gentle to yourself. Give yourself a little bit of freedom and don't put too much pressure on you.

Josh: I think that's a good way to phrase that too, because there is a lot of pressure. I haven't retired before so I don't know exactly what this feels like. But I have it on good authority from others that there is a lot of pressure when people retire, from their expectations of what that looks like or what that should look like, or how they should feel. A lot of people, especially guys—I've noticed that a lot of guys tend to attach more of their identity to their work, their career, their business, whatever it is. And allowing people time to be able to go through that whole process is probably the whole grief cycle, right?

Frank: It is. And you know, for me I hated the R word, saying retired. And when somebody would say, “Oh you retired,” I’d say, “No, I'm taking a break.”  I interpreted retirement as the end of life, and that's really not the case. As you perfectly put it, there's financial freedom, the ability to do what you want. For me, it was,  “How can I turn this around and make this a positive? How can I take this freedom that I have to help others?”

And maybe if you're listening to this podcast and you grew that business or you rose up the ranks and up the corporate ladder to the place you dreamed of getting to many years ago—maybe your next step, your next mission in life is to ask, “How can I help other people get there?” That’s what gave me the juice and the energy, realizing “Oh my gosh, I can help other people do what I did.” It re-energized me.

Josh: Yeah. So, what about the opposite end of the spectrum? If you were to look back at a young hungry college student, the Frank of many years ago, what advice would you have for our younger listeners? What advice would you have for them that you wish somebody would have told you back then?

Frank: Well, one of the things that I did was by sheer passion and energy. And when you're in your 20s I say work your butt off first. You know, I started this interview by saying I wasn't fulfilled in my medical sales career, but I can't also bite the hand that fed me. I learned so much from that medical sales career. So if you're in your 20s and you're working in a job and you're like, “I'm not happy,” maybe you are learning a skill set there. In my case, I had world class training in customer service and sales. I want you to know that you're not wasting your time. But I would tell a young Frank to go ahead, work your tail off while you have all this energy. I get to have that financial freedom now today because of all the hard work I did in my 20s. And believe me, when you get to your 50s, you're not going to want to work 80 hours a week in your business. Use that gas in the tank because it will reap the benefits long term.

Josh: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Frank for being here today. Thanks for sharing with our listeners. I think you're a great example to people of somebody who's made these transitions not without some struggle, right? The best stories always are people who go through challenges and struggles and come out on the other end of it. So thanks for joining us. And for those of you have not read Frank’s book yet, Running with My Head Down is a great read.

Thanks for listening. I hope you all have a good week, and God bless.

The opinions voiced in this episode of the Wiser Financial Advisor with host Josh Nelson are for general information only and not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. Investment advisory services offered through Keystone Financial Services, an SEC Registered Investment Advisor.