Parallel Entrepreneur with Mark Cleveland

Mark Cleveland (00:00)
A couple of weeks ago, I had the privilege of sitting down with Roger Brown, a true powerhouse in the world of parallel entrepreneurship. Roger started and sold four companies in the medical industry, focused on physician services, toxicology, and other highly regulated businesses. He created American Clinical Solutions in 2008, and ultimately brought that disciplined clinical approach to laboratory testing into the cannabis industry. That story started in 2015 when Roger co-founded a new company, of course, ACS Labs, and they achieved ISO accreditation by A2LA, became a DEA licensed and CLEA licensed facility, which means that they can also run tests on mushrooms, kratom, and other tier one drugs, and even run human trials. Roger's the mastermind behind the first cannabis testing laboratory in Florida. Now providing testing services in all 50 states,19 countries. Recognized as one of the 100 most influential voices in the cannabis industry, and for the last two years, one of Palm Beach, Florida's most influential people, he has grown organically as well as through acquiring companies. Roger is a man of few words, and his journey is packed with valuable insights about scaling businesses, embracing risks, making decisions, and staying creative under pressure.

Get ready for an inspiring conversation. Let's just dive right in.

Mark Cleveland (01:30)
Hey Roger, how are you doing?

Roger Brown (01:32)
Hey Mark, I'm doing great.

Mark Cleveland (01:34)
It's good to see you again. I think that a lot of people are interested in this topic of cannabis and all the various different America's market for alternative health. And I guess maybe I'd ask you to did you get into this business and what makes it the leading producer quality tests in America.

Roger Brown (01:58)
We actually started back in 2008 in a business that was a laboratory that was testing tested urine and oral fluid and we, oddly enough, we tested people for the presence of drugs for physicians so that they can prescribe schedule one narcotics for their patients. And that business took off like wildfire. It grew like crazy. And then it kind of went off a cliff. And once it went off, started going off the cliff, I started looking for different channels of revenue. Marijuana just happened to have started in the state of Florida and we entered into the marijuana testing and it was a unique experience. That's for sure. It still is.

Mark Cleveland (02:49)
So Roger, I feel most alive when I'm building something, building a company. I find entrepreneurs get a charge out of creating and building. Tell me what it is that makes you tick.

Roger Brown (03:00)
I have a bit of challenge all the time when it comes to different businesses. And I enjoy the challenge, but most of all, I enjoy the challenge of something that's not geographically constrained. If it's geographically constrained, then I think it doesn't offer the best opportunity. Like a perfect example is like if I was going to open a restaurant or a store, it's geographically constrained by whatever's immediately around it. Whereas if you have a business that operates in the entire state that you're in, or in the worldwide.

It just offers less geographic constraints and the less geographic constraints is what I look for. And I also look at businesses where you have to go to the customer rather than the customer coming to you. Because if the customer has to come to you, then they have to make the decision and the choice. But if you have to go to the customer, then it's all about your impetus going forward and seeing the customer and or hiring the right people to be able to go and see the customers. And it's all about action and activity.

Mark Cleveland (04:12)
That's a nugget right there. All about reaching out and creating value, but not necessarily waiting to receive that transaction.

Roger Brown (04:21)
Yeah. You know, an interesting thing when you talk about creating value, it's, one of the greatest subject matters that I always talk about is that somebody can have a business and, and I'll just make a simple example. I have a business generating $10 million in revenue and all the money is being taken out by the partners. So what value are you really creating? Because you've created a business that generates revenue, but you didn't create any value. So if you're looking to sell the business and the partners still have to stay to be able to create the revenue, then, and they still expect to get the same amount of money for their services.

Where's the money for the people that are buying the company? So, you know, a business has to be able to stand on its own and be able to provide value for or income for its owner. I mean, I don't think a business is a business unless it's generating value and income for its owners.

Mark Cleveland (05:24)
Right, right. A book I read, Rich Dad Poor Dad, talked about, you know, things that people think are assets like your car is an asset. No, that's a liability. Assets are things that pay you to own them. And when you put that filter on it, it does tend to help you think a little differently. So started and sold quite a few companies. Give us a rundown of which companies that you had the most fun building and selling give us some of those lessons that we want to learn from Roger Brown.

Roger Brown (05:53)
Well, I think the ones that have given me the most fun are not necessarily the ones that I've made the most money on. So it from that perspective.

Some of them were really a lot of fun to be able to build and I learned a lot, but I may not necessarily have made the same amount of money on those companies. So I've always been in the healthcare business for the last 40 some odd years. And it was been the mainstay of my business and I've diverted out of the healthcare business avenues and other businesses as well. So like right now I own a laboratory and the laboratory is theoretically in the healthcare business, but it's also not a physicians group like I used to own and currently own.

And it's not a medical device manufacturer which I used to own and so it's a bit of an adjunct to the healthcare I like healthcare is because healthcare is non-inflationary. It doesn't make a difference what the economy is, people still need healthcare.

Mark Cleveland (06:56)
What are some of the challenges of being in the healthcare industry?

Roger Brown (07:00)
There's a lot of activity in the healthcare industry that's good and bad. So there are good actors and there are bad actors. And the bad actors are always problematic in the healthcare industry.

Fortunately, there are laws that prevent people from doing bad things, but the wheels of justice grind quite slow. So they don't exactly stop the bad actors before they hurt the good actors. But the healthcare industry itself is in its basis and in its functionality a good business. The whole theory is to make people healthy, to provide good services for patients, to be able to make them better, healthier, stronger, and so forth. I mean, it's not something that tears you down, it's something that builds you up. And the healthcare industry is a widely beneficial business.

Mark Cleveland (07:56)
This may sound like a cynical question or maybe I'm just channeling some people's cynicism, where people are saying to themselves, well, the healthcare industry is just treat symptoms and it's all about keeping people sick and it's not really the wellness industry. I wonder on that sort of internal or external battle, where do you fall?

Roger Brown (08:15)
Well, first of all, most people don't appreciate anything until they lose it. Some people appreciate it while they have it, but most don't. They take it for granted. But in the healthcare industry, the overwhelming preponderance of everything in healthcare is treating a symptom because most people don't think that they're sick. So when they're not sick, they don't want to go see a doctor. They don't want to go do a checkup. They don't want to make sure that they have, know, that their blood is taken, that their levels are all good. So it's generally a symptomatic business.

In the theory of managed care, which Nashville, where you are, is the home for Humana, which is the biggest managed care company in the United States. Managed care is all about wellness and about preventative medicine and about keeping people healthy so that they don't get sick. So there's two different divergent views, whereas most people just treat symptoms. You know, don't go to a doctor, hey, I feel great. I feel absolutely fantastic and great. So while you're here, well, you know, I just wanted to come by and say hi and get some free coffee. You know, people don't do that really. They come by, they go, not feeling well.

Roger Brown (09:38)
Or managed care doctors will have a patient come in once a year for like a well visit to check them out, make sure that they're okay, know, just as preventative medicine. And the managed care companies actually reward doctors for doing that, for making sure that they see their patients once a year.

Mark Cleveland (09:58)
So you have a lot of lessons from these customers and from building these companies. all these companies you've started or have you been a co-founder? Most of them describe your experiences.

Roger Brown (10:12)
I think in any first of all, I think in any business there needs to be a boss as opposed to a committee. So I tend to run businesses like a benevolent dictatorship rather than a democracy. But yet in a democracy, you like to hear everybody's opinion and input and

use the intelligence and the information wealth to be able to make proper decisions. But yet somebody still has to make the final decision. I have started companies with co-founders. I have had co-founders that I've worked with. Some of them have been very good and some of them have not been that great. It's all about work product is really what it comes down to. You know, unfortunately, I tend to work 365 days a year and yearn for the day in which I can actually turn my cell phone off. Partners are great to have because it gives you a great a different perspective and also a different opinion if the partners work and if the partners are active and if the partners are productive. So you can be productive in many different ways don't necessarily have to you know physically work and physical work in the business, but you can actually be a great advisor and somebody who can input information and could be somebody that I can bounce things off of every co-founder that I have had is come from a different perspective. Probably some of the best businesses that I've run is where I've had a co-founder as a right-hand person that was able to help me and work with me and to be able to advise me on what they think is the right thing to do and whether and actually tell me that I'm wrong. I dislike yes, I would actually prefer that somebody disagree with me and then tell me why they disagree and to explain to me that my thought process and my decision and my vision is not correct. And this is why. So maybe I'm wrong. I've been wrong before and I have not I don't have a problem with admitting that I'm wrong. And I think that that's the first step in being an entrepreneur is understanding that you are wrong a decision and being able to pivot.

Mark Cleveland (12:37)
Mm hmm. Move into the better advice. My my father was famous in my own mind anyway for telling me, hey, Mark, choose your advisors wisely and then listen to them. Right. You're looking at employees as advisors. You're looking at investors and partners as advisors. Talk to me. You've had several exits now. You've started and sold many companies, talk to me about the role of an M&A advisor. Where have you really learned something you could share and where do you find wisdom within that complex process of merging and exiting and selling a company from your M&A advisor?

Roger Brown (13:20)
Well, I have several friends, probably three or four friends, and in that family relative that I use as advisors. And they really don't know everything about my business, but I present them with the situation in a very... non prejudicial way and and then they tell me what they think that I should do and and it's always been a very good thing for me to be able to have that. You know one of my greatest advisors was always my dad was a no-nonsense kind of guy and always taught me a great adage. He goes, effort doesn't mean anything. It's only results that mean something. And he says, yeah, people try and try and try, but it's the person that actually gets the results that really means anything.

So I've always thought that way, but I don't necessarily always say it, but I've always thought that way. And from, and I have used M&A advisors. I mean, we have a mutual friend that I've used in the John McDonald And, you he's just a smart and brilliant guy. And he looks at things from a very different perspective. And having that perspective, you know, everybody, everybody in the in any industry has their skill set and that they're known skill set. So like my dad has his skill set and what he has the ability to be able to do. And he kind of like just cuts to the chase and gets right to the bottom would have the skill set of being able to present a business in the best light and understand what the real value of it is rather than overvaluing it or undervaluing it. I think one of the biggest mistakes that I've ever made in my life was overvaluing my businesses and thinking that they were worth more than what they were.

And that's a true mistake because it's really only worth what somebody's going to pay for it. And that's what it's worth. And if it's not something that you want, well, then you wait and you either build it more, build it better, make a change, you pivot, but whatever it is, it's only worth what somebody's willing to pay for it.

Mark Cleveland (15:40)
So if you don't mind, let's dive into that question. Speaking from experience, I thought my company at one point in time was worth an awful lot more than it really truly was. Would have been better off having sold it for the number that was found that this might be something that happens to entrepreneurs. It happens to all of us, I think, but to entrepreneurs.

We get emotionally invested in something. We get really, really committed and then we lose our objectivity about what is this thing that we've built and what it's got to be worth more to somebody else than it is to me because they're going to do something else bigger and better with it because they're going to pay for it. They've got to have a plan. And then I've probably sold a little too low from time to time. Tell us your story that you got the great lesson out of.

Roger Brown (16:28)
So a great, absolutely terrific lesson. Deep water hides all stumps. It's great lesson. Deep water hides all stumps. So if you're making a lot of money, you don't see the things that are under the water.

Mark Cleveland (16:38)
Deep water hides all stumps.

Roger Brown (16:52)
And I've made some serious mistakes with that, where it's just like the money's falling from the sky and we're making a lot of money. And then you look and you just don't see the stumps under the water that could be eliminated or missed, or if you looked a little better, you would be able to see it. So that's a great adage that I always say, and deep water hides all stumps could be from people, could be from process, and it could be assets or liabilities. I mean, it could be from any of those perspectives. And one of the biggest lessons that I've learned, and unfortunately I've learned it twice.

And you know, when you learn a lesson, you're not never supposed to repeat the same mistake, right? But the lesson that I learned was always sell the business on the rise and not wait for it to hit its pinnacle. So like you just said, I sold a business and maybe I sold it at not enough, but maybe if you would have waited another year, you would have sold it for less. And the thing is, is that as you're rising, it becomes more valuable to other people because they see the potential and the perspective. And maybe you took too little profit off the table. It's okay. Nobody ever got, you know, got blamed for taking too little profit. You took a profit. So, you know if I if I like I sold Bitcoin at $25,000, I mean so today I look like a idiot that bitcoins at you know 93,000. Okay, so I still made money at 25,000. So

I don't sell what somebody else made more. If I sold a business at $10 million and then the business a year later was worth $15 million, okay, so $10 million is a lot of money. So it's all relative. So I'm not one of those people that thinks that there's never enough money. I'm one of those people who thinks, yes, there is enough money. And after you have enough money, things change, things change and then your needs and your wants change in life. So, you then you focus on other function as a businessman and still want to be able to succeed and still want to win, but your needs change.

Mark Cleveland (19:30)
So how are your priorities changing? You operate two businesses right now, right? ACS and the other company, Foundation Medical Group. That's a clinic, right? That has...

Roger Brown (19:38)
Foundation Medical Group. It's a physicians group that sees patients in hospitals.

Mark Cleveland (19:46)
Now that goes back to something you said earlier, going out to see the customer rather than having the customer see maybe not fair of me, but I want to learn more about this activity of going into the hospitals.

Roger Brown (19:59)
Well, the patients come into the hospitals, but our clients are really the community-based physicians, where they have their patients that they see in their offices, but when the patients go into the hospital, they don't see the patients.

Today medicine has changed. Back in the Mercedes 80s, as everybody calls it, in the 80s where everybody bought a Mercedes because they made a lot of money being a doctor, the doctor saw patients in their office and then they saw patients in the hospital. And if they went to a rehab facility, they went and saw the patients in the rehab facility. That doesn't happen anymore because they can't afford to do it because the insurance companies guide how

Healthcare gets paid and they keep driving the numbers down on get on the payments. So physicians have to specialize. So whereas a physician in the 1980s would see, you know, 10 patients a day in their office today, they're seeing 30 or 40 in a day and they've got it down to a very efficient process using staff and so forth and being able to come in and see the patients. So if they're only able to spend a few minutes with the patient, so if you actually see a physician in their office that can actually spend 20 minutes, 30 minutes with you, keep them because that's a rarity to be able to see that physician. But healthcare has become compartmentalized. So everybody has their small little compartment and community-based physicians want to stay in their offices. So what do they do with their patients? Well, they go to the hospital. It has to go to what they call a hospitalist. And I have a hospitalist business. So our doctors only see patients in the hospital.

Mark Cleveland (21:45)
And the handoff process and the communication and the continuation of care, you must have some significant systems that help you with that. How are you viewing the role of AI in health care and making you more efficient and delivering the level of care that you know is possible?

Roger Brown (22:03)
I haven't utilized AI in the physician's business yet, but I have started utilizing AI in our laboratory whereas we're using AI to be able to go out and find clients in the hemp business and the mushroom and kratom business and we're using AI to be able to sort through and to be able to find those clients and send them emails and send them information and so forth. I was actually, I was in Colorado about... four months ago and I'm sitting in a restaurant and I'm overhearing a conversation with this guy at the table behind me. And he created like, you know, 20 AI robots to go out and find clients for this business. in the first week he got like, you know, $20,000 in sales and all he had to do was take the orders. And I was like intrigued because I'm not a tech I'm more of a, you know, shake hands, talk to somebody,

get on a stage, have a conversation, and be able to motivate people from that perspective. So the technology today is so different and so enticing, and I'm not an expert on it, but to be able to get an AI robot to go out and find clients nationally and send them an email and have them call up and place an order or to go online and place an order.

It's like something I never heard of. It's like the Terminator, you know?

Mark Cleveland (23:34)
I'll be back. you know, I acknowledge that AI is perplexing. This conversation goes all over the place with parallel entrepreneurs. Some of them are embracing it and building business models around it. Some are studying it. In your case, you're using it for marketing and communication execution.

I'm curious to see how this plays out with the convergence of just ever increasing compute power and the decision making speed and accuracy that I think we're seeing possible.

Roger Brown (24:06)
For me, it's already played out. I it started to. I mean, we've already gotten business from the AI robots going out and and finding the clients. I mean, it scrapes the internet. It finds email addresses. It finds phone numbers. It does things that a human couldn't do or would take too much time or too costly. And it's a computer that's doing it. So the cost is negligible. So I think that from the perspective of reaching out to clients, that the world is changing and that AI is definitely in the forefront of it.

Mark Cleveland (24:45)
You talked earlier, Roger, about, you've probably owned three or four companies simultaneously. You're you're currently saying grace over two. How do you how do you recharge when when you get depleted? What's your. wisdom in the area of recharging.

Roger Brown (25:05)
Saltwater takes away all my stress. That's really the answer. If I find myself adrift in life or in business, I get on my boat, I go out on the water and I smell the saltwater and it just makes me think.

And it gives me perspective on so many things on life, on family, on business, on finance, on everything. So, you know, like I said, there are people that have like boats that have names that is never enough. I mean, I look at those boats and I think to myself, you know, what is wrong with you? Why? Why is it?

Mark Cleveland (25:46)
Your big boat says never enough.

Roger Brown (25:49)
I just don't get it. If it's never enough, if you have a lot of money, maybe you should start giving it away. Maybe you should start being charitable and share. I mean, there's a lot of people that are hurting in this country and anywhere. The greatest gift sometimes is giving.

Mark Cleveland (26:10)
I love it. So that really leads into a couple of questions that are important to me. You make a lot of decisions. You have a history of making successful decisions and patterns you recognize and you act. What's your North Star?

Roger Brown (26:23)
Two things as my North Star. I look at a decision that I make and I always take the high road. Always take the high road and always do the right thing. Whether it's to my own personal detriment or not. I do the right thing for whatever the situation is. And my dad. And I always seek advice from my dad. He's 98 years old.

Mark Cleveland (26:52)
You're so blessed to have him available to you. My dad passed 25 years ago and I talk to him more today than I ever have in the past. So you talked about gifts. What's the best gift that you've ever received?

Roger Brown (27:08)
I think the lessons that I've learned from my dad in my life have been the greatest gifts and my children have been a great gift in my family and my additional family of my wife's children. I mean, I just think that when you're introspective and you look at what you have in your life, family is always a core and the greatest gifts I think I had with my dad was he was always in business for himself. He was a developer in construction business and so forth, real estate developer and he would...

He would always have adages, always have statements, lines, experience, and being in business. It's like, I've been screwed so many times in business. My dad has been screwed so many times in business. And sometimes you don't learn your lessons from other people being screwed. And I hate to take this conversation to the negative, but it does happen. And sometimes other people have the experience and you don't learn from their experience.

Mark Cleveland (28:27)
Yeah.

Roger Brown (28:28)
And sometimes you have to experience it on your own.

Mark Cleveland (28:30)
My grandfather taught me, he said, Mark. Learn from the mistakes of others. They're the least expensive kind.

Roger Brown (28:36)
True, true, but you won't learn from them.

Mark Cleveland (28:37)
It is. So what is the best gift you've ever given?

Roger Brown (28:42)
I give the gift of trust. There's very few people in my life that I trust. And if you're in that inner circle of somebody that I trust impeccably, that's a great gift from me.

Mark Cleveland (28:44)
Mmm. Three words that define your life.

Roger Brown (29:03)
Three words that define my life. Always, well, three sentences, let's just say. Always take the high road. Family is rudimentally important. And if you always want to be treated like a king, you need to treat your woman like a queen.

Mark Cleveland (29:21)
There's some wisdom for sure. If you could talk to your younger self, Roger, what would you say? What's the first thing you would say to your younger self?

Roger Brown (29:30)
Take all your money and buy Apple, Google, Microsoft, Walmart, and Amazon. And then just go out and make more money and keep repeating it.

Mark Cleveland (29:41)
There you go. It's back to the future theme.

Roger Brown (29:43)
It's just, whoever thought that a guy selling books online would build such a business. I didn't think it, you know, back in the, back in the eighties, I had an opportunity to invest in a bottled water company and, and I said, who wants to buy bottled water when it's free out of the tap? I mean, of course, we all make horrible mistakes in life and decisions and I've had opportunities to be able to go into businesses, and I thought that they were bad decisions and didn't meet really the criteria that I was looking for. And some of them were terrible mistakes and not joining and going into that business. And some of them were fantastic decisions and that I was able to identify the pitfalls of the businesses upfront and say, how are you going to overcome this? How are you going to overcome that? How are you going to achieve this? How are you going to achieve that? Regardless of what somebody's business plan says.

You know, you really have to ask the questions in a different way because anybody could put something on a piece of paper and now with you know, Chat GPT you can write a business plan in like 20 minutes so and then just edit it and It just you have to really be able to speak to people and understand what their concept is what their goal is what their Vision is of what it is that they're going to do and then also be able to read the people to understand is this person going to be able to achieve this or not? Because they may not be able to. And that's another talent I think that I have is gut instinct. I have the ability to be able to read people really well by spending a little bit of time with them and looking at things from a different perspective and understanding where they're coming from.

Mark Cleveland (31:16)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And asking good questions is, I think, one of the least appreciated skill sets. So we get into this section of life where we say, what do you want out of life? You have two companies. I mean, one of them is setting the United States standard in accurate and precise laboratory testing for cannabis and and those types of hemp and mushroom products. You're in the forefront of something that some people would call the five D wave right there. And you're you're also helping you know, deliver quality healthcare to people who need it. What is it that you are seeking out of your life today? This life experience as a parallel entrepreneur that got you here, now what?

Roger Brown (32:21)
So from my perspective, I want to do the right thing. I want to do the right thing for the people that are involved in my business, for my investors, for myself and for my family and doing the right thing. May not always, like I said before, it may not always be the best thing for me.

There is enough money in life. I don't need to be Jeff Bezos or or any of the other affluent people like Elon Musk or or so forth. I don't need to be those people. But what I need to do is have people around me that are good people. So what's the legacy that you want to leave? You know, I think that I've built some really good businesses. I've made a lot of people, a lot of money, a lot of investors, a lot of money. And I've been very fortunate to have been associated with a lot of people that were good people. And I think maybe one of the legacies that I really would like to leave is being a good dad.

Mark Cleveland (33:24)
I'm going to pop into a little section of the Parallel Entrepreneur I enjoy, which is sort of the rapid fire question. What's the first thing that comes to mind? You know, what is the book that you've read most recently?

Roger Brown (33:36)
Going to infinity.

Mark Cleveland (33:39)
What? Tell me about it. What did you like about it?

Roger Brown (33:42)
It was about that the guy that ran the FTX exchange, the crypto exchange, and that he was just a bad guy. I read it and I thought it was very interesting that that kind of behavior was allowed to go on because deep water hides all stumps.

Mark Cleveland (33:52)
Yeah. There you go. What's the next book you're going to read?

Roger Brown (34:07)
I don't know. I try to read only nonfiction.

Mark Cleveland (34:13)
And that's because.

Roger Brown (34:15)
I like to learn. think that life is all about learning. when you stop learning, you're in trouble. And I like to learn from other people's experiences and hear about other people's strategies, whether good or bad.

Mark Cleveland (34:30)
What's the question that you thought I would ask that I have not asked and how would you answer it?

Roger Brown (34:38)
I don't know that I know a question that you haven't asked. I'll probably think about it right after the podcast, but you know, my perspective, I would just share with you that my perspective on being a parallel entrepreneur is that you can run multiple businesses at the same time, but you can't do it in a 40 hour work week. It doesn't work. And you have to put in the time and you have to put in the effort to be able to give proper support to every single business. But the most important thing in my opinion is to have somebody who's a right-hand person that you can trust and that you can depend on and that they can actually do what needs to be done in the business and execute the plan properly. If you don't have that, then it depends on you. And if it depends on you, it's very hard to do parallel businesses if you don't have additional people to be able to execute. So there's a philosophy there, choose your partners carefully, choose your employees carefully, and choose the right people. I'm very fortunate to have a really good Chief Financial Officer for my laboratory business. He's like oddly a genius and kind of really, really smart and looks at things from a completely different perspective than I do. And I appreciate his perspective and the way he looks at things. So the people that you surround yourself with is very important. So the person that's in a meeting that does the least amount of talking, in my opinion, is generally the smartest person in the room. Because he's listening more rather than speaking. And I tend to listen more to what people say and what their input is rather than just telling them, this is what we have to do and this is where we have to go. Gathering people, it's kind of like government.

A president of the United States is like a CEO of a company and you have to surround yourself with the right cabinet in order to be able to make your presidency successful. And it's the same thing as an entrepreneur. You have to surround yourself with people that are honest, hardworking, thoughtful and not afraid to tell you, hey, you're doing the wrong thing. Change what you're doing. And if you can have people that are like that, that are willing to say that, it's a blessing.

Mark Cleveland (37:17)
Mm-hmm. I can't help but connect the dots. You're speaking about mentoring. You're speaking about listening. You're speaking about recruiting. You're speaking about perspective, really consistently talking about your perspective. And you've been right, but you're OK when you're wrong. You're listening so that your perspective can broaden and you'll take in new information.

And you use the word pivot a few times. And I always think the word pivot is like overcharged. It's almost like, well, what I would call it is maybe a course correction. It's like when you're in the ocean, you know when it's time to turn around and go back to sea. Now that's a classic pivot. You've just turned all the way around and you're headed in. But until then, you're just making course corrections. And I think it's important in my experience, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, but I've been listening to you speak about your broadening perspective and where that broadening perspective comes from. These sources of insight and feedback, brave feedback sometimes, truthful. And they're giving you their best shot. As my perspective has continued to broaden, I make better decisions. How does that land with you?

Roger Brown (38:41)
100 % 100 % change is good. Anybody that that wants to keep doing things the old way, they're wrong. I don't I don't agree with that. When somebody tells me well, you know, I say, why are you doing that? And they go, well, that's the way we've always done it. Well, I don't accept that answer. I think change is good.

And I think that change could bring clarity and change brings perspective. And I think that people that are not agents of change or agents of wanting change are roadblocks in a business. And you have to be able to change. Doesn't necessarily mean you should change, but you have to be able to change.

So there's always a better way to do something. There's always a more efficient way to do something. And the way you're doing it, whatever it is you're doing, it's not always the best way. And it's not always the best perspective. So be open to change, be open to change. And that, when I find people that are not open to change and not willing to... look at things from a different perspective, they're probably better off working someplace else.

Mark Cleveland (40:00)
Wise words. Roger Brown, thank you for joining us today on The Parallel Entrepreneur, where we study wisdom, we learn and we roll with the punches because everything is changing. Have a great day and get back to that saltwater life.

Roger Brown (40:16)
Thanks, Mark. Appreciate it.