Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign welcome to the Victory Show.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: Hey victors. Welcome to this episode of the Victory Show. If this is the first time you're joining us, I'm Rachel League with bestseller By Design. Our founder Travis Cody is the bestselling author of 16 books and we've had the privilege of helping hundreds of business consultants, founders and entrepreneurs write and publish their own bestselling books as well. Through that journey, we've discovered a fascinating pattern. Most businesses really struggle to break past the seven figure revenue mark. On this show, I sit down with some of the world's most successful CEOs, leaders and business owners to uncover the strategies they they used to scale way past that mark so you can do the same. So get ready for some deep insights and actionable takeaways that you can implement in your life and business. Starting now. Today's guest is Patrick Rood, the founder of Rude Financial Services, Cortex Advisors and Rude and Coughlin Roofing. Patrick is a six time international best selling author, Guinness World record holder, and Ramsey trusted ELP. He's helped thousands of entrepreneurs from scrappy startups to $100 million companies build structure, stay compliant and retain more of what they earn through smart financial strategy. He's also a 10x coach, Forbes contributor and national speaker known for making complex topics accessible. Patrick, welcome to the show.
[00:01:35] Speaker A: Thank you so much Rachel. It's great to be here.
[00:01:37] Speaker B: Patrick, tell us what initially sparked your interest in entrepreneurship?
[00:01:42] Speaker A: Well, I have to say it's a trait that I inherited from my father. We don't play well with others, as my mother used to say. I never liked the idea of the 9 to 5. I always knew that there was more. But that again going back to my father, that was sparked by him as he was an entrepreneur while I was growing up.
[00:02:02] Speaker B: And when did you first begin to explore the entrepreneurship space?
[00:02:07] Speaker A: From the time that I was about 16 is when I joined the entrepreneurship space.
Officially I was still working at the time, but I was working as a landscaper with someone in high school. Actually he was a rocket scientist. He worked with NASA and U of M and was responsible for putting a rover on Mars. He owned a landscaping company. I worked for him.
Well, eventually he got moved to Texas from Michigan, where I'm originally from and his landscaping company was not going to travel with him. So that was my first opportunity into landscaping or into business ownership in that magnitude. And I, I worked hard for it, made it my own, then went off to college and was an entrepreneur even while I was, I was constantly working even when I was going to school.
[00:02:59] Speaker B: What Kinds of projects were you working on at school?
[00:03:01] Speaker A: Anything and everything that I could possibly get my hands on. Please do not Google rude. And family jewelers don't. Again, landscaping. Anything from digging ditches to like making fine jewelry. Honestly, if I could sell it, I sold Cutco knives door to door for a little while. Literally, you name it. If I could sell it and market it, find somebody who needed it, I'd sell it to them.
[00:03:27] Speaker B: A hustler at heart. And it sounds like a true salesperson. What's your approach to sales in general?
[00:03:32] Speaker A: In general is getting to know the person that you're talking to, right? Everybody has needs. Everybody has something that they're looking for. And I think it was. Was it Napoleon Hill or Robert Kiyosaki? It might have been Napoleon Hill. But regardless, somebody said, if you help enough people get what they want, you'll get what you want. And that sort of was a philosophy that I adopted from early age. So networking, talking to people, getting them to form a deep connection, even a little, little while. Obviously some people could use that skill for nefarious purposes, but I was always like, well, if I help you, then, you know, you'll be more inclined to help me or do business with me. And I, you know, subscribe to the mantra of a rising tide raises all ships. Right. So if I can help you become successful, that'll help me become successful. And if I can become successful, that'll other people become successful.
[00:04:29] Speaker B: An abundance mindset that makes a lot of sense. And so after you were doing these variety of odd jobs, it sounds like at some point you transitioned into a pretty different pivot with your financial services. Tell us about the transition from the big portfolio of things bringing cash flow into a more focused approach.
[00:04:48] Speaker A: All of them failed. There was very little money coming in from starving, starving college student. So the transition was a seed got planted in my mind and my heart early about money. And that came when my father, as I said, he was an entrepreneur. He had a 78 figure business in the manufacturing space. And because of a bad accounting.
Bad accounting and a bad professional in that space, he ended up losing his business. The IRS put a lien on everything he owned. He had to sell his business out from underneath the irs. It was a very big to do in our family.
He was in the hospital with a mild heart attack and many strokes.
But we were afraid we were. I was going to lose my dad. You know, it was also a business that I grew up working in whenever I was, you know, back home, when they got in trouble with the irs. There was no one in the profession that could help them navigate the situation and stay in business. And so that planted a seed in me at that very young age where I was like, there has to be a better option than, you know. One of my other multi, multi odd jobs in college was I worked for a payroll company.
And every single company I talked to hated their accountant. I was like, this is bad.
That's really bad. Half of them don't know what they're doing. The other half you can't ever get ahold of. Most accountants are not good business people, but it's just not. But that's neither here nor there. But that, that brought me into the understanding eventually that this was where I wanted to go. And the path to get there was tumultuous, to say the least. I ran away and joined the circus when I was in college, did everything via correspondence. At that point, literally it was a traveling repertory theater company that traveled all over the globe. We had a repertoire of over 3,500 different plays ranging anywhere from two minutes to two and a half hours in Leng. And essentially this is also where the entrepreneurship spirit carried through is that I was put in charge of a team that covered most of the mid Atlantic and East coast region. And we operated like an independent, almost like a franchise. So we would literally carry around our repertoire with us. It was old, so we didn't even have it on thumb drives yet. Like literally travel size filing cabinets with us on the road. And we had an itinerary and we would book shows, shows and you know, we would travel around to these shows and plan them. And we were in charge of the finances. Each program would basically get us to the next one. And it was my responsibility while I was doing full time college on top of all of this to make the area profitable, otherwise we would have to shut down.
And so we maintained one of the top producing units in the company, in the world for all, all of my college career. And at that point I decided that it was time to stop being a traveling pauper and settle down and, you know, make some money. And that was a headache all in of itself. So I graduated from university and went right into entrepreneurship with my accounting and business management degree and opened my firm in 2008. Great time to start a company. Then went once we survived in 2013, after things had calmed down with the great Recession, we eventually moved out to Philadelphia, reestablished our operations there. We lost a lot of business clients when because I opened in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where I'm originally from lost a lot of business clients out there. Still maintained our personal clients though. Everybody's got to file taxes. That's why I went into accounting and taxes, because everyone's going to need somebody to count their money. But then 2013, 14 opened in Philadelphia. Made Philadelphia and South Jersey my home. And in 2018, 2000. Yeah, 2017, 2018 followed the jersey shore traffic from the Jersey shore down to Tampa where all the shore businesses winter. And I was like, I can't blame you. People in Tampa are happier, especially happier than people in New Jersey. Then 2019 moved up to Atlanta and that's when the pandemic hit and we were one of the few firms in the country to stay open throughout the entire pandemic.
We stayed up to date on all the legislation that came out for years to come. I'm still literally fighting with the IRS over loans and tax credits and things.
I feel, you know, I should have been careful where I made my base of operations, not Philadelphia. I didn't want to be rocky, you know what I mean? But literally, congressional cases, dealing with the IRS directly, advocacy cases, like it's such an absolute nightmare. But we were there for it all, you know. 6 ABC Philadelphia proud did a piece on us during the pandemic and that was really cool. I have had not until that point gotten a lot of clout or credit or had even, you know, thought that that would be a possibility just because I was, I was working, you know, did, did a lot of really cool things during the pandemic. We saved over 2,000 jobs, you know, saved many, many companies in the tri state area by helping them stay open and pay their.
Had a good impact through that. And then now fast forward to today. We're doing everything from tax planning, individual tax, corporate tax, nonprofits and trusts to fractional cfo and created a community for tax and tax education called the Dirty little Secret Society based off of my international best interest. Don't know why it's international, but the international best selling book the IRS is Dirty Little Secrets.
So yeah, that was fun. Yeah. Yeah. So that brings us, that brings us to today and we have clients in 15 states across the country and people keep trying to get me to come to Canada and I'm like, nope.
[00:11:14] Speaker B: Wow, Patrick, what an incredible journey. And thank you for taking us through all of that in such an entertaining way. I mean, it's so clear that your theater experience, you're a true storyteller. Very captivating in the way, you know, you take us through the highs and lows of everything thank you also for sharing about the personal challenges with your dad's health. I'm glad that he recovered and it's incredible to me that you maintain such an abundance mindset despite seeing those early challenges with the family bankruptcy. And I having done theater myself, wonder if some of your involvement in the traveling troupe didn't add to your ability to see the positive and everything because it's such a joyful community.
[00:11:53] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure, for sure. You learn how to make fun of yourself real quick. I've often been told that if anything else doesn't work out for me, I've got a career in standup on the, on the horizon. And I was like, I, I don't really want to be a standup comedian. I'd rather be a sit down one.
[00:12:10] Speaker B: Yeah, perfect. Perfect. Well, it's also amazing to me how much you were juggling along that timeline. As you detailed, you had the traveling troop, you were doing college, you were also managing, you got sort of an early entrepreneurial experience with that troop and the ownership mindset of working in the business and also, you know, trying to manage it at the same time. And I think it was, it was really interesting to me as well when you transitioned to sort of coming back to your eventual market need that you saw growing up and something that had sort of been on your heart for a while, how you were able to sustain during a really challenging period. And I think a lot of times people get their business to a certain point, but they break when they hit their first challenge. So what was the secret to staying.
[00:12:52] Speaker A: Afloat during COVID Always be ready to pivot. That is probably the buzzword today is agility. Right? You want to be agile as an entreprene or as a business owner, as a startup, da yada yada. And that has a lot of connotations, has it a lot of different meanings now than it did. But really the real, the real root of it is being not being married to what you're doing. And that's the one thing that makes business owners probably the most successful is, is, is three aspects. One, we're not going to do anything unless we think the chances of us succeeding are extremely high. If we don't think, if we don't believe we're going to come out on top, we're not going to do it. Right.
Excuse me. The second thing is that we're used to taking what normal people would consider risks, right? So we're not risk adverse. In fact, we understand most of the time that you have to go through the hard stuff in order to get to something on the other side. But then the third thing on the flip side of that is we're not, most of us aren't going to bang our head against the wall until we pass out. We're going to bang our head a couple times. Okay, that's not working.
And then the questions start, well, how do I make it work? How do I get around the obstacle? You know, is it an over, around or under issue, or is it a. Well, this path is blocked, obviously, while the door's closed and locked, there must be a window open somewhere.
Right. And maintaining that level of curiosity is something that a lot of people, in my experience, that I've seen a lot of people fail to be able to do. That is ultimately the difference between success and failure in entrepreneurship. Right. I've heard it said many times, and I couldn't even point to a single person that said it. Just many, many people, and through my own experience as well, is that the difference between success and failure is that we just tried one more time. Right. You know, when you give up, that's, to me, that's when you fail.
[00:14:59] Speaker B: Well, it's clear that you have staying power through all the various different projects that you tried, and you admitted that some of them didn't work out, but you were going to continue to pivot where you were placing your energy until you did. And I also think back on when you mentioned that fine jewelry business and how so much of what you described sounds like really leaning into your creativity for finding unique opportunities and flipping the risk of risk profile on its head, really taking a different approach and perspective to how people typically see the world. And so how do you continue to hone your ability to think creatively and find the windows when you're only seeing locked doors?
[00:15:36] Speaker A: I appreciate that. Thank you, Rachel. Most people would have called that add. It's. It's. To me. So. So one of the things that I learned from my time as a 10x coach and speaker is the business cycle. And there's a.
I shorten it down to an acronym, which is ccd, which stands for create, close, duplicate. And that's basically the cycle of business, right? You create something, product offering service, whatever it is, then you duplicate the processes and things that you did to create it, and then you duplicate the process over and over and over again. Right. And that's sort of the basis of the business cycle. And to me, the funnest part was always the creative. Right. What, what do. Did I enjoy doing as a young person? I didn't have a lot of answers for that. And the only way that I was gonna be able to figure that out was to go out and experience things I was never gonna be able to learn what was going to make me passionate, set me on fire, get me excited about life in a classroom. I knew that. But the classroom still needed to happen because, you know, some things you can't learn the hard way.
Traditional learning does have a purpose. Does have a purpose. But yeah, that would, that would be that it. That's why I believe I stayed. I ended up doing so many things over and over or so many different things is because I was like, I know something is going to work. I don't know what it is.
You maybe could say I had a lot of hobbies, which ironically. Little, little interesting tax nugget is that if you take a loss for more than five to seven years on your business, the IRS can declare it a hobby, which means you lose the ability to claim certain deductions.
[00:17:25] Speaker B: Wow. Good to know. Learning little tax tidbits along with scaling this, it's all important. Right.
Tell us a little bit about your business model and how you apply CCD in ROOD financial services.
[00:17:37] Speaker A: Sure. So I really took the aspect of a cloud based business or a business that didn't have physical location because we were one of the first completely virtual firms in the country. Right. So we were using Zoom and Slack before. It was cool. And I really wanted that because I was trying to build a business that was predicated on my life and the life and the vision that I wanted to have. Right. And so that meant mobility, that meant connectivity anywhere. That meant my clients didn't necessarily know if they were on Zoom with me in the US or in Africa. And I was like, I want to be able to provide consistent service across the board.
So that way it doesn't matter where I am. People are getting educated, people are getting problem solved, people are getting their needs met and most of all they are getting, getting put at ease. And that's really, if I'm really honest, that's probably one of the biggest things that that Root Financial brings to our clients is just a, we're not alone, somebody's got it, somebody's there with us, going through it together. The business model was a service based business model with sort of bits and pieces of all the other different businesses that I was a part of. So a little bit network marketing, little bit E commerce, little bit, you know, service industry, a little bit hard labor, very people centric. So one of the, one of the things that I was very passionate early on about was okay, what people group needs flexibility as far as the workforce goes and then how can we build a niche around them to help them meet their needs, to give them the lifestyle that they want to have, but then also fulfill all of our needs on our client side as well.
So that's how we started going after talent acquisition, which then led us to outsourcing some things overseas, but keeping a lot of things here domestically.
[00:19:37] Speaker B: It sounds like you were able to figure out how to provide your clients with that 24,7 relief that they knew they could access you or one of your international team members at any time and that they didn't have to stress about that. So that was really meeting a market need and then also figuring out how to scale your business in a way that was both efficient and sustainable by finding people who could work at odd hours and find a way to build a business model that also worked for them so that they would stay on. Because one of the biggest costs to businesses is when there's turnover and then you have to go out and hire again and do the training. So how did you think about creating that sustainable work environment that enabled you to have this fully remote distributed team that, that you're managing? As the leader of the company, I.
[00:20:22] Speaker A: Saw a need, I saw a people group that we could help that, that needed us as much as we needed them. So we, we built a family. All of my businesses, all of the businesses that I have been mostly a part of have been family oriented businesses. And that's who I am and that's how I wanted to keep it. I wanted to make sure that nobody felt like that there was no grace for life happening.
But also like there's, there's standards of operation, right? So you have to maintain integrity.
And I really don't know any other way to say it than sometimes the trash takes itself out. And that's hor. It sounds horrible to say, but people eliminate them, People eliminate themselves. I have had to do very little firing in my entire career because we've set up a system of like, hey, this is the expectation, like it's A, B, C and if not B, then D. And if the, if you don't follow this process and this procedure, it's, then it's not going to work. And one of the things that was very helpful in that, and just to correct you a little bit from what you said before was that until 2022, no, 23, I was the only client facing portion of my business in 2023, I started incorporating our bookkeepers into the meetings with our clients just so that they could have a little bit easier access of communication.
The big push behind that was me, because I didn't want too many cooks in the kitchen.
I wanted to make sure that the information getting to the client was coming from one source. So there was one area of accountability. And I essentially stood in the gap between my employees. Anything they did wrong, if they did something wrong, and then likewise on the client side, if there was something that we did wrong, there was always there was. The person at the top was taking accountability for that.
And to its credit, to its detriment, because it was not easy, got shot in the back and in the front a lot.
Not everybody is built for that. I don't recommend sucks sometimes, but ultimately, it's what, again, helped build that rapport. And if it wasn't for my time on stage, getting used to being a public speaker, being forced to network and do door to door and all of the other stuff that I did while I was in college and even before college, if it wasn't for that, I wouldn't have been in a position to where I could take it and keep on going.
Right. So being mentally tough was a necessity sense. And so that was part of the culture that we built in is like, hey, we're here. There's no room for nonsense. If you're not going to play by the rules, then, you know, keep it stepping.
And so far, I mean, I've maybe had three people since.
Three people quit or be fired or, you know, whatever. And all of it was to go on to bigger and better things. One of the most recent ones was in 2023, and she got hired by the district attorney's office.
So I'm like, thanks, take all my employees, why don't you? But no, I've been very fortunate in my ability to retain people. And I think that that just this stems from treating people fairly. Even when there were times where we couldn't pay people what they were worth, we made sure that they knew that they were worth it. And then when we were able to, we corrected those issues and et cetera.
[00:24:19] Speaker B: So incredible. Patrick, what does victory look like to you today?
[00:24:24] Speaker A: Victory looks like making sure when I really break it down, victory for me is being able to take care of the generation that came before me and the next two generations that come out after me. That is. That is my victory. The more lives that I can touch and I can impact and I can provide for the better. But the trick is being able to do that sustainably. And that is the juggling act.
So I want to make sure that I'm taking care of people for a considerable while from here and not for anything for my own, but just it's. I find it really nice to see people be able to, to have the means to chase their dreams.
[00:25:07] Speaker B: And what piece of advice would you give your younger self?
[00:25:09] Speaker A: Put down the video games and go make a fricking friend, kid. I mean, if I'm honest, If I'm honest, really, really and truly, when I was in high school, I was such a nerd and I had to learn all of my social skills as a teenager and that sucked. Sucked so bad. But really and truly, never. The advice overall is never stop making friends. You know, there's always. You never know who you're going to meet and what connections they're going to lead to.
When you stop saying hello and involving people in your life and being involved in other people's lives, it gets really sad and it gets really lonely real quick.
[00:25:46] Speaker B: And I wonder too, again, back to your theater experience. I know from my own personal play in the theater space how much it can bring you out of your shell and it really does help make you much more open and much more of a people person. So what a beautiful journey that you and a transformation from the video game playing high schooler to the cross country, you know, theater troupe player. Patrick, thank you so much for taking the time today and sharing your very entertaining, interesting story about how you have scaled your businesses.
[00:26:18] Speaker A: Appreciate the opportunity. Rachel, it's been lovely to meet you.
[00:26:22] Speaker B: Thanks. Lol. You're like, it's so nice to meet you.
Yeah. Patrick, we've never met before. Funny. Too funny. But that was great. I mean, I was not surprised. I knew from knowing your theater background that this was going to be a fun one. So you definitely brought the energy and the hilarious stories and just the light heartedness and your jovial laugh, which I honestly think sometimes people are too serious on these things. So I appreciate it.
[00:26:49] Speaker A: I actually. So I used to have a podcast back in the day. It was called Coffee and Accounting. Don't look it up. I have a radio voice and it was very serious and I was like, no. My friends were like, why are you talking like that?
[00:27:04] Speaker B: Stop it. Yeah, right.
Well, it's funny. I know. I, I feel like over time, as I've continued to do the intro for this show, it's sort of gone from me just like saying it to being like, welcome to the Victory show. But I'm like, what the heck this is a role. It's so much fun. I love leaning in and just, you know, just doing it and then I go a little bit more normal for the actual conversation. But, you know, it's kind of fun, you know, you're playing a role, so.
[00:27:28] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, you've got your intro voice. It's fine.
[00:27:30] Speaker B: Yeah, we gotta jazz it up. We gotta get the hook, get people locked in, so.
Well, great. This was so much fun. Excited for our listeners to hear a story. It'll probably be like four to six weeks or so for the editing team to get this going. You know, the wonderful challenge of having so many great interviews in the cam. So they're just working through those right now.
I know you are already an international best selling author, but if you had any interest in connecting with Travis, the guy that I co hosted host the podcast with, he is a hoot and he was a Hollywood screenwriter, so he's gonna love the, the theater background and all that. But he's just a fun guy to, to chat with and he also sometimes helps people get their thoughts down on paper. I don't know if you necessarily need that, but like I said, it's always good to meet more people. So if you have an interest, I'd be happy to find time for you to connect with him.
[00:28:15] Speaker A: Yeah, that'd be great. Thanks, Rachel.
[00:28:17] Speaker B: It was so nice to see you to hear some of these stories again, told just as entertaining and yeah, I look forward to our next catch up and sharing more about the project.
[00:28:29] Speaker A: It'll be a good time. Thanks, Rachel.
[00:28:31] Speaker B: Thanks, Patrick. Talk soon.
