IDL65 Season 2: The Desire to Grow: Develop Your Leadership Style with Cody Foster

How do great leaders improve and develop the environments they work in? Why do healthy leaders multiply success? Can you dedicate time to connecting with the people that inspire you?

Cody is a co-founder of Advisors Excel and he leads an organization of over 700 employees who manage many millions of dollars of assets. Regardless of his success, Cody is easily one of the most humble, likeable, and approachable people Tyler has had the pleasure of meeting. In this episode, Cody shares what’s important to him as a leader; having the desire and heart to grow.

Meet
Cody Foster

Cody Foster is the co-founder of Advisors Excel in Topeka, KS - a financial services company. Since their founding in 2005, they have grown from the 3 original founders to over 725 employees today, making them one of the largest employers in Topeka.

Advisors Excel has been named a Great Place to Work for four straight years, and the Advisors Excel story has been featured in multiple publications, most notably Success Magazine, Darren Hardy’s bestselling book “The Entrepreneur Roller Coaster” and Tony Robbins #1 New York Times bestseller, “Money, Master the Game.”

Cody’s business successes have given him a greater ability to steward resources into impacting the health of Topeka and to invest in young people and faith-based initiatives through the foundation he and his wife set up, the AIM5 Foundation.

Visit Advisors Excel, and connect with Cody on Twitter and LinkedIn.

IN THIS EPISODE WE DISCUSS:

• “Leadership multiplies” (09:07)

• Seek fresh perspectives (13:22)

• Develop your leadership style (33:30)

“Leadership multiplies”

Great leadership multiplies success, growth, development, empathy, and evolution.

A great leader can help their team to become the best versions of themselves, and great leaders can support their businesses to develop beyond their limits time and time again.

The leader sets the example. If the leader is dedicated to their personal growth and development, then they can support that evolution in other people and other successes.

Seek fresh perspectives

Because you are the centerpiece of the business, you need to dedicate time to improving on and developing yourself.

Broaden your connections by spending time with people who inspire you, who work outside of your industry, and who motivate you to think bigger and beyond what you considered possible.

Take some time away from the business, to rest, and gain a fresh perspective.

Bring on people into your team or spend time in Mastermind groups that challenge you to push your boundaries.

Develop your leadership style

Old styles of leadership are often based on military-like control tactics, with reprimanding, mistrust, or punishment.

Leadership styles have changed over time and can be changed to suit the time and space wherein they function.

You can learn a lot from good and bad leaders. You can learn what is good to do, and you can learn what not to do. Develop your leadership style by embodying the strategies and approaches of the people that inspire you.

Become the leader that you wish you had when you were younger.

Resources, books, and links mentioned in this episode:

BOOK | Darren Hardy – The Entrepreneur Roller Coaster

BOOK | Tony Robbins – Money, Master the Game

BOOK | John Maxwell – 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership

BOOK | Jon Gordon – The Power of a Positive Team: Proven Principles and Practices that Make Great Teams Great

Visit Advisors Excel, and connect with Cody Foster on Twitter and LinkedIn.

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Connect with Tyler on Instagram and LinkedIn

Email Tyler: tyler@tylerdickerhoof.com

About the Impact Driven Leader Podcast

The Impact Driven Leader Podcast, hosted by Tyler Dickerhoof, is for Xillennial leaders who have felt alone and ill-equipped to lead in today's world. Through inspiring interviews with authors from around the world, Tyler uncovers how unique leadership strengths can empower others to achieve so much more, with real impact.

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If I’m positively impacting the environment where they’re at, I’m positively impacting a lot of other families.

Tyler Dickerhoof

Podcast Transcription

[TYLER DICKERHOOF] Welcome back to the Impact Driven Leader podcast. This your host, Tyler Dickerhoof. So glad you're joining in today, listening, whether you're a subscriber and you listen in weekly, or somebody shared this with you. Thank you for being here. If you're not a subscriber love for you, wherever you listen with Spotify, Apple, yada, yada, yada, wherever you listen to this podcast, love for you to hit that subscribe button. That way you're aware of every episode comes out every Friday. Glad that you're here. Thank you for all those that leave a rating, review. Let me know what your thoughts are, how you were impacted by each episode. I love to see it, hear it, but I also know it helps other people get the content information that comes from all the wonderful guests that I have. Today I get to share conversation I had with Cody Foster. Cody may not be a name you know unless you're a Darren Hardy fan. We'll talk a little bit about that. Darren has often referenced Cody in a lot of his programs. Cody's been a, I guess, a client, friend of Darren's for many years. He actually lists that as an impactful relationship he has. So we just wait for the rest of the conversation. Cody and his partner, David are founders co-founders of Advisors Excel. I've got to know them through the John Maxwell exchange program that I go to each year. It's relationships with guys like Cody, who leads this organization where they have over 700 employees. They benefit thousands of advisors and their organizations throughout the country. I think he shares over 8 billion that they are impacting over a assets of over 20 million in management, pretty substantial financial organization, probably one of the most humble, likable, genuine guys that you'll ever meet and thankful that I got to meet him. So glad to share this conversation because Cody shares what's important to him, what's important to him as a leader. And it's really leading the way. It's having the desire and heart to grow. So get ready to take some notes, be stretched, be expanded as your leadership role, wherever that may be, even if it's just yourself. You can use what Cody shares today to be a better leader. That's what this podcast, is about is to help other leaders get better, get healthy, desire to get healthy too. Glad you're here. I'll see you at the end. [TYLER] Cody, good to see again, man. It's been a little while. [CODY FOSTER] Good to be seen. [TYLER] Yes, I had such an enjoyable time spending with you last November and excited to chat with you here on the podcast and welcome to the Impact Driven Leader podcast. I know you've said that you'd listened to a few episodes, so hopefully this is one of the ones that is exciting to you because of the story that you get to tell. For our audience that maybe doesn't know who Cody foster is, which I don't know why they wouldn't know. I mean, you're bold --- [CODY FOSTER] I'm not sure why they would know. [TYLER] I mean, you're bald, good-looking guy. I mean, we're not just more of those in the world. I'd love for you to tell the audience about yourself, your firm Advisors Excel, and just go into that and we'll take it from there. [CODY] Sure. I'll try and give you the real quick version and then I can fill in any gaps if you want to ask. Started this company, my first job out of college was actually in financial services. So Advisors Excel, we wholesale products to independent financial advisors. That wasn't my first job. I worked for a company that did something very similar in 2004. So going back a little while now, about 18 years ago David, who's my partner still to this day, we decided we wanted to just go be financial advisors. So we did that for a year, left the company we worked at and candidly, pretty early into that new business career of trying to be a financial advisor realized there was a lot of things we just didn't know. As we were trying to find an organization to help us learn some of the things on how to build and run a successful advisory practice, just thought maybe there was an opportunity to create something around that. So in '05, we started Advisors Excel, which is really an organization trying to help good financial advisors become great business owners. That's what we talk about all the time and started that with another partner Derek. So the three of us started that and I feel like it's steadily grown. Other people would say it's grown really, really fast, but I've been living it for 17 years. So it just feels like a long journey from that standpoint, but started with the three of us. Today we've got about 750 employees. We support about 700 independent financial advisors across the country, sit in between them and the insurance and investment companies, the products that they would use to meet their clients planning needs. So yes, it's been a little bit of a crazy journey and probably a lot of leadership and growth things that we'll talk about along the way of that journey also. [TYLER] So do this for me though, then this will, to me tip your hat. Can you talk about the people that you serve, the size, the scope of that, but what number, what metric? As you're going through and, you mentioned it, some people have said you've gone, exponentially to you it's just been going along, going along. What number determines that? What number matters to you? [CODY] Well, obviously the way we get paid is when advisors sell stuff or gather assets is probably an easier way to describe that. So we make our money in a few ways, one insurance business that they sell, so annuities, life insurance, and then we have an investment arm, AE Wealth Management that manages assets on behalf of the advisors for their clients, so with Fidelity, TD, Amerri, the custodians that we would manage those through. So to maybe put in perspective our first year, all we did was annuities. So going back to 2005, and we did about 40 million in total premium, so just new assets coming into annuity products. Last year, we did almost 8 billion in annuity sales, which would make us in that our space the largest, as far as the distributor goes. Then we're managing right now about 20 billion in like assets under management. So from the size and the premium, it's grown a lot, but also we go from, that first year we probably worked with maybe a dozen financial advisors that we were trying to service to now about 700 offices. A lot of those offices have three, four, maybe half a dozen advisors working in. So just the size and scope of trying to serve and support those advisors has also grown substantial. [TYLER] So what part of that excites you? [CODY] What I went back to, we talk all the time about our mission or noble purpose of helping good advisors become great business owners so they can help people have an amazing retirement. It's probably that second aspect, watching someone who may have been a good salesperson, may have been good at the planning aspect, but really figure out how to build and grow a business. So to take someone who was maybe, I'll give you a real example, our top advisor last year when he joined us, probably had four or five employees, was doing about 25 million a year in new assets that they would bring in now has probably 35 or 40 employees, has offices in eight cities in six different states. Last year brought in about 500 million in new assets. So I think to see them grow and scale the business side of it has been probably the most rewarding, but I would say the other thing is just the relationships you build along the way. I think that's the best thing about being an entrepreneur. Business is the relationships and you get both sides. You get, it's probably the one thing I didn't anticipate. We're recording this today, last week, Thursday through Sunday, I was in Jamaica for one of our advisors’ weddings, which was a cool experience. I got home Sunday, yesterday. I actually flew to Traverse City, Michigan to attend a funeral of one of our advisors who had cancer and passed away. So you're there for a lot of highs and a lot of lows. That's probably not something I anticipated 17 years ago when we started this, but I think that's the, honestly, it's probably the most exciting, rewarding part, is the relationships you build, the people you meet, has been the most fun. [TYLER] Yes, I think to me that that comes across, in our experience the time, the little bit of time that we got to spend with each other, that intentionality to person, and something that David holds on too. You just mentioned it. It's not the assets. Whatever, it's the people. Both of us are John Maxwell fans and he talks about leadership multiplies. When you can multiply leadership, you can multiply the principles and that's when you make an impact. That's something I've appreciated from you and David and what I see you guys doing. So what have been some of the keys that you've said, Hey, not only having that as a mentality mindset yourselves, but how do you share that with others because obviously to me, that is what helps that top advisor you just described, go from what he was to what he's become. [CODY] Oh man, I don't even know where to start there. [TYLER] We got time, we got time here. [CODY] So you mentioned John, which is where we met for the first time. One of the things that he says that I just think is so true is that everything rises and falls with leadership. I think even as you look at my own probably growth and leadership journey over the past, not even say past 20 years even before we started this company and I was in a leadership role and probably some of the things I did poorly, it's one, I think just realizing how important it is. Maybe that's the first thing that we as an advisor moves to us and we always have new advisors joining our firm. That's one of the things that we stress more than anything else it's like for your business to grow you as the leader have to grow. That's just probably the fundamental thing. I think even if you were to use advisor success as an example of that, I tell people all the time like Dave and I have just constantly committed to personal growth and development because we know the leader that the organization's going to need as we continue to grow, looks a lot different than the leader we were even a few years ago. I use the example a lot. I say, if you hopped in a time machine and went back 10 years ago and picked Dave and I up in our, we were in the same exact role we're in today, kind of co-CEOs, co-founders. But if you picked us up 10 years ago and dropped us in today it wouldn't take long for us to run this place into the ground just because we weren't equipped as the leader. So I think that's the most important thing. For any business to grow the leader has to grow. The leader has to set the pace. The leader, we talked a little bit about Darren Hardy, he always says the best. He says the leader has to be the most. They have to be the hardest working, the most committed to personal growth and development, the most committed to the client experience. So I think that's one of the things is just stressing even within our own journey, how important that continued growth as a leader is. Then the other thing we do a lot of, I think we talked about this is we're constantly doing events where we're bringing our advisors together to learn and see how the other advisors are doing it. So just constantly putting them in those environments where they get to see that model not just leadership, but the growth that comes with that is a big part of it. [TYLER] Let's talk about that one real quick. The last two years have made that very, very, very difficult. What have you seen because of that? [CODY] Well, a couple things, one is I think the last two years made us realize how, in fact I say this now that the most valuable thing we do is bring people together in learning rich environments to be able to be around other great thought leaders, great business owners, great advisors. We went, we probably pushed the envelope a little bit more than other firms? So we had a big event in January of 2020. It's our big kickoff event that we do every single year. Then obviously Covid hit in March and we like, everyone didn't do anything for a while, but we did do a live event in December of that year. So we rolled the dice a little and brought about a hundred people together. We tried a lot of virtual stuff over that period of time like I think a lot of people did and it was okay. I just don't, it's hard to describe how getting away from your business and being around other people, you and I, it wasn't like a formal thing. Remember we're sitting on the river boat, just started talking and then just spontaneous conversation happened. So one, I would say the most important thing we saw over the last couple years is just how important that is. I would say, even before we started recording, I asked you if you're going back to the Maxwell event in November, how important for anyone in a leadership role, if you're not carving out some time to get away from your business and go put yourself in an environment where you're going to be able to learn from meet other people, connect with other people. I think that's maybe the most important thing I saw over the last couple years. You adjust, you figure out all the ways that you can deliver some of the content, but not having the people together, I think was a big impact. So if anything, it's probably made us double down on this a little bit. We're probably doing more events. In fact, I think we have our chief marketing officer just told me, I think, 57 live events we're doing this year. We actually one going on today in our office with about 60 here. So I think just the importance of was probably the biggest realization over the last couple years [TYLER] Now, as I've seen those events, as I've watched what you've done, especially had some mutual friends come and speak at some of those events, be involved in those events, how impactful is that to bring in outside voices from outside either the industry or outside of, from what you guys are seeing every day to offer a completely different perspective? I think about I've had, Shaquille O'Neal at an event, you've had David Nurse, the author, you've had Darren Hardy present, like really different. But yet people all committed to positively getting better, which I think is all part of that. It's all people of the same fold, but yet these are people completely outside of the financial advising industry, the industry that you guys operate in. [CODY] So I think there's something interesting that I think we've always done from day one, one you're always going to learn. At anything we do. There's always going to be a component where you're learning from other advisors who are still actively out there running a business very much like yours. So you can learn some of the things that are very specific to what they do and how they do it. But one of the things I think that we saw early on was that can become, I don't know if ancestral is the right word or not, but if everyone's doing the exact same things and you don't have these new ideas flowing in it can just stemmy the growth. So I think early on we said, we also need to bring in some of the best thought leaders from outside of our space to just challenge us. I think what's been neat is to watch how, use Darren, you bring in Darren Hardy who shares ideas from all these other businesses that he's had the opportunity to spend time around, to then watch our advisors figure out how to model that in their own advisory practice and tweak it and fine tune it. So I think it's, just part of the reason I think our advisors have grown at such mediocre rates is because we're constantly giving them new ideas and maybe a little outside of our industry, but they can figure out how to adapt and adjust that to it. Then there's just a component to it that, I think is, I don't know if motivational is the right way to describe it. It's probably not but just being able to spend some time with someone who can inspire you to think bigger, is the other thing. I think our industry in general has always had this certain way business is done but when you bring in people that challenge you to think bigger about it, I think it's why a lot of our advisors have businesses that they never dreamed of before because they constantly see other people, even if it's outside of our industry doing it. So I think just some different voices, some different perspectives is a really, really good thing. [TYLER] I want to jump real quick to as I'm thinking about it, how have you, obviously you and David have had this held commonly held and Derek involved there too, commonly held like, Hey, this needs to be a component because it's happening. So therefore, at some point you all had to agree that this is important, right? As a leader, as a co-leader, as people listening in, that are listening to this, they're like, man, okay, this is great. Yes. I want to bring in people and they walk into that, if they're the CMO, they walk in the CEO officer whatever that may be and they're like, no, we don't have the money for that. No, it's not going to happen. No, it's the middle of whatever pandemic and we can't do those things. How important do you now look back and see that being so aligned on one or two things has really allowed you to move with such fervor forward? [CODY] So a couple things, I would say. One, generally speaking I believe that the business that creates the best experience will always win. So a big part of what we try and do with our events, they're educational, I mean you're learning, you're inspired, but a lot of it is there's a certain culture and experience that we're trying to create that people almost look for and they do. I mean, people look forward to these events because of the experience that we've created around them. So you mentioned in January we had Shaquille O'Neal at our event and one, he was great. He was probably one of the, maybe the toughest interview I've ever done just because he jokes around a lot. You can't tell if he's joking or serious. But man, people were just, there was like a buzz about Jack's going to be at this event. So there's a little bit of that, just the experience and this, this loyalty with your customer in a situation, as you said. If I'm the CMO trying to explain this to my CEO, there's a big part of it that is about the experience as much as anything and just what that does to create this raving fan community in your business, I think is a big part of it. Then the second thing I would say is like, I don't know a better place to invest money than in the, at least in our business. So I don't know that this applies to every business, but in the personal development and growth of your people, like I just don't know a better place that you would invest your money as far as like a return on investment. So I've seen it the, I guess I would say the other benefit of doing a lot of these events is we usually have 75 to a hundred employees also who are growing also; so not only are our advisors growing, but the teammates that work here at Advisors Excel are sitting there participating, hearing this stuff. Also most of our key VPs have been through all Darren's training, got a chance to hear him speak a lot, Tony Robbins, a lot of those people. So just to watch the growth of the people, it's just a great place to be investing money also. [TYLER] Which one of those has helped you grow the most? [CODY] You mean people that we've had in? [TYLER] Yes, or anything that you're like, man, that was a catalyst for me. [CODY] I will tell you, I think Darren Hardy's and so I'm going to hit him up that he needs to pay me something. He used to call it high performance form. I think it's now called his business master class is probably the best event I've ever been to personally. Now I'll preface all this by saying it's structured in a way that I like to learn. What it is is it's a fire hose for three days of every idea he's ever captured around sales, marketing, leadership, culture. I like that. I don't like much fluff in my events. I like just hit me with everything you got. I'll take it from there and I'll dissect what I want to implement and what I do. So I would take, for me the way I like to learn that's been the best event I've ever been. I've been to it three times actually over the years but what I'll say has also been the best out of that. Darren put together this group, an elite group for I don't alumni group for a while and then he stopped doing that, but there were a dozen of us and Darren's one of those who have still continued to get together. It was twice a year, slowed down to once a year during COVID. That's probably been as beneficial of anything, just being able to get together with a like-minded group of people, all from different industries and just share what we're doing, what we're excited about, problems that we're having. A couple of the best leadership lessons I've learned over the last 10 years came from Dave Lininger, who was the founder of Remax. One of them was literally sitting at a bar in Napa. I was frustrated with a few people that we had here and just, I still remember vividly to this day. He goes, "Cody, I wish I would've learned early on at Remax that the people who get you here aren't the same ones who are going to get you here." He's like, "I remain loyal to some people who didn't continue to grow as the company did." So Darren's been a great friend and mentor but it really started, I didn't know, Darren at all until I went to that event and I've been to it three times. We've probably had 150, 200 advisors go through that event also. So that I would say is one of the best. Keith Cunningham's been another great mentoring friends. I met him at one of Tony Robbins business mastery events and all of Keith's stuff is just great too. Again, learning the way I like to learn. It's just no nonsense. He's going to give it to you straight and give you a lot of content too. How about you? That's an interesting question. What's been the best, and obviously I say all that, the last two years or last year and a half, I would say John Maxwell's probably been the biggest influence. We had him speak at one of our events and then going to the exchange event that he does been incredible. I went back and read pretty much, I don't know, I've probably got six books out since that November event. I forgot how good 21 Irrefutable Laws was. I hadn't read it a long time. So he's been a huge one lately too, but yes, how you would answer that? [TYLER] I'm going to say this real quick. So it's exciting. The 25th anniversary of 21 Irrefutable Laws is coming out in May of 2022. So look forward to that. That's a little wink and a nod to something exciting coming, but two individuals, I would say, have impacted me the most, the last five or six years. John Maxwell is one of them and the personal relationship, the impact of his whole entire organization, the ability, as you mentioned, this going to events, building these relationships. I look at the relationship that you and I have, too, numerous other people that have been guests on this podcast that have come from that experience to where, it's really hard wherever you live to replicate that. You can say, oh, I'm going to go meet together with business owners and leaders in my community. It's possible, but it's not likely to be as impactful as when you go to a certain part of the country. It doesn't matter. You bring all the different people together that have the same value set. I think that's, what's really important. You and I share this for the audience, we hit it off really quick. We were maybe one of three or four bold people in the crowd. Maybe that's a part of it. We ain't got to stick together, but really, you go into that room with people and you're like, okay, there's no longer this showboat of like, oh, this is who I am. It's like, no, you're here for all the right reasons. When you could find yourself into those rooms, man, the genuine relationships and wanting to add value to each other, man, that's when all of a sudden, great things happen. So John has done such a tremendous job of creating that. I think he really tries to encourage people to create that in their own organizations. The other person is another John, John Gordon. John Gordon from the standpoint of, and this goes into my personal history and I'd love, maybe use this as a, I'd say a tangent for you too. I'm going to preface it this way, the person that you've become started off in a much different place. You talked about that, you and David 10 years ago is not the leader you are now, much less understanding that 10 years ago, 2012, when you started in 2005, or when you were in college in the late '90s or before was not the leader you are today either. The greatest thing that I learned from John Gordon is that you can become a positive person and that probably did more to impact me than anything else. As his story goes, as he talks about in his power of positive books, all those line books is that he grew up a very negative person. His family's very, very negative and he's like, no, I'm going to be positive. I'm going to make that physical absolute change. That's something that I had to do too. So that to me has just, I mean, those two individuals, as I share here, huge impact and catalyst for all the additional learning. All the many of the same suspects that you bring up, yes, I follow along in that same vein, but those two are, are probably if I can incrementally say, well, this is a part of my character that changed tremendously and this is a part of my demeanor that changed tremendously, those two were most impactful. [CODY] That's cool. I don't think I told you this. John was one of our key notes at our kickoff event in January, our big advisor event. But then we also had him come in, we do a day for all our employees where we shut the office down. It's like goals for the new year. How'd we do last year, renew your goals and John came in and spoke to our, our entire team here at AE also. So I love him. He's awesome. [TYLER] Yes, and it's, I think those, here's the other part of that too, is sometimes, and I think you've mentioned this as well John Gordon's about, ah, 10 years older than me, I think he's early fifties, something like that. John Maxwell obviously is 75 now, but to me, both of those have given me a perspective of, oh, that's a person modeling what I can aspire to be. Being around John Maxwell, as close as I have realized that he's got foul abilities. We all do, but yet he's worked through those. When he writes in his books about, he was not a good leader in his twenties and thirties, he was very successful, but he wasn't the leader that he became later because of everything he had to learn through the process and the people pouring into him. What's been most noting to me, and I said this to John one day is as I've tried to catch up and read a lot of different things, whether it's Dale Carnegie, Norman Vincent, right now, I'm on a big Peter Drucker kick, is how impactful those men, Napoleon Hill, you go through the list, how impactful those men were on people like John Maxwell? Where I could sit there and I can listen to John Maxwell and I've done enough reading. Otherwise, I'm like, oh, Peter Drucker said that, oh Napoleon Hill said, oh, Dale Carnegie said that. To me, that's what's also encouraging to say, hey, these are people that have learned, implemented, taken it in and then be transformed. I want to do that, but I also want to help other leaders do that too. You've done that. You've talked about doing that. You're doing that. So I want to know about the Cody that what have you grown from, what Phoenix have you become? [CODY] Before I say, I'll share maybe a few thoughts. John, the thing about him that I just love, and I've shared this with a few friends is, I mean, here he was at, so take that event. I think John just turned 75 maybe and so these events, that first day he spoke most of the morning, not spoke like, I mean, he's pouring into us. He sharing everything he's got, then he interviews people in the afternoon. So he's on stage all day. You've done this too. It's exhausting. Then we went and did this cool experience at the Nashville House and went to that songwriter night. I mean, it was one in the morning when we got back to the hotel and I'm just wiped and the next morning I'm a little tired coming down there and John was there all day. He did the work all day, there all night back the next day. There was just something inspiring what I told people. So I saw John, I actually met him in an event with Darren probably six or seven years ago and I said, the last two times I've seen him he is the best I've ever seen him. Just to see him at that age, realizing like, he's just got so much to give and just how empowered it makes him is pretty fascinating to watch. So that's been fun and people always say that, why wouldn't you sell the business and retire? I'm like, and do what? I would rather do what he's doing. It's like, I think my best years are way ahead of me. I'm just starting to learn where I need to be. So I would say a couple things, so even have a unique story getting into this business. I was first in my family to go to college. Parents grew up in probably upper lower-class family, I guess, is what you would call it, kind of straddling in that line. So first person in my family go to college, because of the scholarship, a guy in my hometown endowed, and so came to school at Washburn University in Topeka. So that alone, just nothing in my background to prepare me for this. First person in my family go to college, went to a small division two school here in Topeka. My junior summer, my grandma who's one of my best friends growing up, her and my grandpa got divorced when I was probably fourth or fifth grade. They owned this restaurant together. She had taken it over and when I was a junior in college, she actually declared bankruptcy. So even part of my inspiration for being in this industry is, I didn't know anything about money, so that happened, and it was just this gut punch. So I went and got a job at a bank just because I wanted to learn more about money I didn't have any ever. So that got me down this path to financial services and really just wanting to do more there. Then honestly, it's even, what's been fulfilling about this job, I probably didn't answer this well earlier with this backstory is like being able to help other business owners so they never end up in that position my grandma was in is candidly the most rewarding, really helping them grow and build a great business. She knew how to run the restaurant and she didn't really know how to run the business side of it. [TYLER] I'm going to stop you there one, because I think it touches emotionally. That's why, really why. That's why, going back as you shared that story earlier about that advisor that went from just a couple people in his office to now 30, 40, 50 people. But seeing such a bigger performance and impact that he is a lot farther from those desperate days because it obviously made a huge impact on you and your heart and your family. [CODY] Yep. I say that like I, even when advisors come and they're struggling, like I know, I guess I don't know personally exactly what that feels like, but I live through what it feels like to have a business. We live in a small town, so it was like the town gossip, all that stuff. So I lived through that. The other thing I would say though, the positive of that is my grandparents moved to Kansas from Southern California in the mid-seventies because my grandpa was just this entrepreneur, always had owned, he's probably owned 10 different businesses since I've known him. So I always actually grew up around entrepreneurs too, and always thought it was really cool to own your own business. So I always knew I wanted to do that. That was one. I would say the second one, my first job out of college was at a company that does something similar to what we do or used to, went through a few ownership changes, and Dave and I both and Derek, our other partner when we started this, both got put in leadership positions at a really early age. I'd never led people. Actually, got right before we were leaving to start being advisors got removed from the leadership position I was in. I didn't really care because I knew I was leaving in a couple months but the reason why is because our boss was very much kind of an old military guy, not he was ex-military guy. So our leadership style was very much a command, control, employees are going to cheat and steal from you. So you've got to be on top of them all the time and every day you have to look at their phone reports and if they didn't make enough phone calls, you sit them down and discipline them. That's just not who I am. It's not natural for me at all. I was terrible at it, but I think what that has probably created at Advisors Excel is a leadership style that's very much the opposite of that and has shown it can work really, really well. What I've found over the years is that actually if you hire great people and give them some direction on what's expected and free them up and don't micromanage the heck out of them, that they tend to do a really, really good job with that. So it was funny to go from being removed from that leadership position to now leading the company that's about, I don't know, 30 times the size of that company was at the time I was taken out of that role, [TYLER] One of the things I want to ask you, and to me, this is very impactful for leaders to be able to grow from, you talked earlier about some of the people that have inspired you and you just mentioned a leader and how they, in a way inspired you. So what I want to ask is other than that story, have you been more, to me, I would say you've been more driven by how not to do things, necessarily how to do things. To me that's impactful. As I've recently just read and thought about this is like, there's something to learn from everyone. At first you glance, first you hear that, you're like, all right what am I positively going to learn from everyone? [TYLER] It's like, ah, yes, that is possible. But there's also a lot to learn, oh, don't do that. And if you share with people that like, hey, don't make the same mistakes I've had. Here's what to learn from me. Don't do what I've done and learning through that process. I think that's imperative to know too, is that you can go down a path and realize, oh man, this isn't the right way forward. Having humility to turn back and go the other way and find a better way forward is something I think leaders have to hold onto. That has to be a part of your mindset to say, I don't need to just push my head down and forward through everything because that probably is going to lead me to a bad place. [CODY] No, that's good. I think you said something that's spot on you. You can learn a lot from both the good and bad right there. There's plenty of things to learn from the good. I always say if I can shortcut my way to success by figuring out how someone else has done this and model that great, but probably I would say a lot of the culture that we've tried to build here, even at Advisors Excel is based on all the things I hated. It's the place I used store cats. Hate maybe a strong word, but I say and even there, we would do things like that's back then was like, Zappos was all the buzz, the early, mid 2000. So we would model things at that place that, so we brought in ping pong tables and all these different things, but ultimately I would tell you, most people would, if you asked them would tell you they wouldn't have felt like the company actually cared about them. [CODY] So I say, we don't do any of those things here, but I would hope if you asked any employee who works here, like the first thing they would say is like despite everything, I truly believe that Dave and Cody and this company cares about me as a person first and foremost. Now we try and do a lot of things to support that and tangible things too but I think at the heart of it trying to really make it about that is a big part of it. So yes, you can learn from both sides, for sure. [TYLER] Well, I think that's, I've seen you guys do this, I know you do this. I know you're a big proponent of Topeka. I think that starts in wherever your local, wherever your community, whatever your community is. if you're a leader that's willing to pour into community, I have a hard time thinking that's not going to spill over into everyone you lead. If you're doing it for the right reasons, if you're doing it for, I want the community at large to be a benefit for what we're doing, man, that's going to show to everyone around you to realize, okay, that's a value set that you hold. I better hold myself accountable to that and if not, well, then I'm disingenuous. You're like, why are you doing it? But I think that's one of the greatest ways for leaders to model a culture inside their corporate, by how willing they are to say, hey, as a business, this is how involved I want us to be in our community. I want us to be involved in youth programs. I want us to be involved in whatever civic, homeless, whatever it may be. I want to be involved in that. If we're involved in that, man, it's hard to find an organization that really struggles internally. [CODY] I had never thought of it from that perspective, but that's a great insight. So yes. I love that. I'm going to steal that. I'm going to start using that. [TYLER] Do it. It's all yours? I mean, it's all yours, whatever. But I think when you stop, here's the caveat to that, is if it's not genuine, if it's not authentic to who you are, well, then you're just showing all your cards. You're going to show all your cards. I'm not going to show you my hand. It's okay. But if I show you my hand and that's not who I am, well, it's going to come up and bite me. It's going to bite me hard. [CODY] That's good. It's something we've done a lot of. It's important to me, especially here in our community, we've invested, I don't say this in a braggadocious way. I'm not sure there's a business owner who's maybe invested more in the Topeka community over the last five years than I have; opened a boutique hotel, three restaurants, redeveloped a bunch of real estate as our downtown was trying to get going. People asked me all the time, like I don't get, why are you, investing in Topeka? So many people talk down on it. And there's two reasons. It's going back to that, the pure motives of it, one I live here and we have 700 employees who live here. So I tell people that all the time, I'm like why, if I have the ability and the means to do it, why would I not want to invest back in the community I live in to make it the best possible community it could be. So just taking pride in it first and foremost. The second reason I say all the time, selfishly, my son is 17. My daughter's 14. I want this to be a community. That's honestly what got me going down this path six, seven years ago. I would hear and see some of my friends who were a little older whose kids had left, maybe were in college or out talking about, they never wanted to come back to Topeka. I'm like, how do we change that? Because I hope my kids want to be in Topeka. I don't know if they will or not. I don't know where life will take them but I don't want them to say there's no opportunity. There's nothing to do here in this community. [CODY] So my selfish motive would be like, I want my kids to stay and spend time around us and be a part of this community too. So it's been fun, man. I'll tell you it's to see a group of people and it's not just me, there's a ton of great leaders that have really taken this mantle to transform our community and to see just in five or six years what's been able to happen is pretty fascinating. We went from people never talked about Topeka to CNN just named us the best town for remote workers in the Midwest? So it's been neat to see it happen so quickly and just being able to use some of the success that we've had here at AE to leverage that in some other ways in the community. I don't know that I would recommend people open restaurants or hotels. That's a tough business, but it's been fun to watch them work. [TYLER] I mean, from a guy who grew up on a farm who owned a gym, those are hard businesses. I mean, they're hard businesses. [CODY] They are. [TYLER] One of the things that I want to put a cap on this, that you said that I think is so important and you just talked about it and it's something that a value that I hold onto and I think for many other leaders that are our similar age. My kids are middle school, high school. Your kids are high school and very similar age's like, I want the community to be better for them. If that's selfish, that's fine because what I also realize is wherever my kids go, whatever basketball my son plays, whatever soccer, football, basketball, whatever sports, my other son plays, whatever dance and soccer my daughter's involved in, if I'm positively, in fact, impacting the environment where they're at, I'm positively impacting a lot of other families. So if that's selfish that I want to do that for my kids, then that's fine because I'm not doing it just for my kid. I'm doing it for everyone and anyone wants to be involved, great. Let's do it because I also recognize this. I can't affect the program they're in just by whatever happens with my son or daughter. They're on teams of five to 10 to 15 other people. It's like, well, however, that team succeeds, they're going to succeed. Well, it's also, well, however, that club or that organization, if the right coaches are there, if they have the right mindset and the vision and the passion, well, then all of a sudden it starts to become so much bigger. You said that, and I believe it, holy and I think more leaders need to be able to take that stance. And I think also here's another challenge for other leaders. I know you probably do this. If someone comes to you and said, "Hey, Cody, my son or daughter's involved in something. I want to be more involved in that. I don't know where that's going to leave me here in my job, but it's important to me. It's important for all of us in our community." You'd probably be like, great. How do I support you? How do we make that happen? To me, if we do that as leaders, well, that gets back to doing what you were saying before about when we build our community, it helps all of our employees. It helps all of our families. It helps everyone as opposed to, well, let's just stay on my little island. [CODY] Well, one other thing there that I've seen over the years, and it's probably a perspective that's changed is if you have people that are working with you on your team who are trying to take on some of those other responsibilities, like, let's say they're going to go coach their kids' little league soccer team or whatever club soccer team, the growth that creates in them as a leader, I mean, has his effect over in the workplace also. It challenges them to become a better leader too. So all of those things, I think are a huge when you look at maybe going back to almost, even where we started, right, as people grow and develop and they become better leaders, they're focused on their own personal growth and development, that's going to help your organization so much that you would want to encourage it in every opportunity that you had. [TYLER] One of the things that I'll share with you, I've had this opinion, I'd much rather be an incubator than an incinerator. I'd rather keep warm people so they grow and they blossom as opposed to, I'm just going to put so much heat and fire on them and burn them out and whenever they're gone, they're gone. I'll just bring in the next one. It's really this adage I hold on to be in an incubator, not an incinerator. [CODY] I'm going to steal that too. [TYLER] You can have it. It's good. When the next time when I'm on stage there at Advisors Excel, I can say, oh no, Cody said that. I didn't say that. I think that's, again, it comes back to that growth. It's leading the way. It's saying, hey, this is important to me and if you grow out of here, well, that's good for all of us because we all grow. If I'm afraid to grow as a leader, well then there's no way that I can be the leader that you need me to be. If I don't help you grow well, then I'm not going to grow and none of us are going to grow. So let's all grow together. If that means we grow apart well, so be it. That's fine. It's okay. [CODY] It's funny. So we've had some, during Covid, Covid's created this, I think everyone's like, what do I want to do with the rest of my life? We had some long-term team members and close personal friends that left and actually have started a business that in a way competes with us, does the same thing. I'll never forget, people ask all the time, oh, aren't you pissed about that? I'm like, no, actually I'm really proud of them. I mean, to say you want your people to constantly be growing and developing and to be naïve enough to think that would never mean that that growth doesn't lead them to opportunities outside of here, I think is shortsighted. I heard probably the best like description of this, I heard Nick Saban after he lost to Georgia in the championship game. Kirby smart, his old defensive coordinator goes to Georgia. They smack him in that championship game. He's like, don't get it wrong. I always want to win. So if I'm competing against Kirby, I want to win, but there's no one I'd rather lose to? It just hit me, like that's what a great perspective of like, he wants those people to go on to have a ton of success. Now he's going to do everything you can to beat them. Same thing. I said the same thing. I do everything we can to beat them, but I'm actually proud of the fact that took that step. They were probably had hit a ceiling here and it was the step they needed to continue their own personal growth and development. [TYLER] Cody, great with you, man. Thank you so much for sharing. I appreciate your time and your friendship as well and to know that I can just call you up and chat with you and ask these questions and have a great conversation and know that you're willing to support me as well. [CODY] Well, one, let's do it anytime. We should probably do it more frequently. Hopefully we can get together before November also, and keep up the good work, man. [CODY] Maybe I'll just have to make a trip to Topeka. [CODY] Let's do it. It's a growing, final thing I'll say, just to everything we've talked about leadership, the other thing I've just seen over 17 years is when you build momentum, like just not letting off as that momentum starts. I think early on in AE, we saw that and just kept investing back in and I'm seeing it right now in Topeka. Over the last five or six years, the momentum that's been built. I'm thinking 10 years, the city will look unimaginable to people just 10 years ago. So just, I think anyone as you start to have success, just whether you're in a leadership role, just continue to invest back in because man, once that momentum starts stacking it does some magical things. [TYLER] Totally. We could talk a whole nother 45 minutes about that. [CODY] Agreed. [TYLER] Thanks man. Appreciate it [CODY] Always, man. Great to catch up. [TYLER] If you're a regular listener to the Impact Driven Leader podcast, you'll probably understand when I say this that Cody and I share a lot of the same philosophies. We're too cut from the same cloth I believe. It's part of the mindset that for your business to grow, you have to grow. That's something I subscribe to. That's something I believe that's something that I've experienced myself professionally over the last 20 years is when I wasn't focused on growing my business wasn't growing. But when I was focused on growing, my business was going to grow. Now, it wasn't a always a direct. Sometimes there was a lag in there and that's just a growth phase. That means it's like bamboo. Bamboo grows underground. It grows this massive root structure and then all of a sudden, one day it shoots 40 feet in the air and people are like, well, how'd that happen? It's because of everything that happened below the soil that allowed it. To me, that is growing and going to events and being around people that can sharpen you, that can meet you where you're at and say, how can we get better? To me, that's the value of the round table. That's the value of why I have the Impact Driven Leader round table, as part of our book club, as a caveat, as a, I guess an add-on to this podcast. I'd love to invite you. We're going to start a new group in June. Would love for you to be a part of that. You can go to tylerdickerhoof.com. You can send me a message, email, let me know that you're interested in that. I'll make sure to save a space for you, limited in numbers, so that way you can get the biggest impact possible. I know the people that are a part of the round table now absolutely thrive on it and know that it is a key part of their development transformation as a leader. But selfishly, I get a lot out of it too. To me, that's, what's really impactful. I know you will, as well being a part of the round table. As I sign off here. One of the things that Cody said that I think is really impactful that I want you to stop, take a note of and how can you implement this in your business, he said, the business that creates the best experience wins? How can you as a leader, be a catalyst to impact, to make a change where your business creates the best experience it can. It's a challenge. That's something I want to leave you with. I'd love for you to shoot me an email. Let me know what you took from that. Thanks for listening in, appreciate it. As always love a rating, a review and a subscription. You can also watch this interview on YouTube. If you didn't know that love for you to catch us there. Until next time have a good one.