Empowering Entrepreneurs

Growing a business? It takes more than just a founder to make it happen. Learn how to build an internal and external team that will keep the business going strong.When you start out as an entrepreneur, you probably are going to need mostly an external team. And the external team would be the people that you've hired to navigate the spaces that you just have no idea about. And that would be legal, your business advisory, and accounting. You've got to have insurance people, you've got to have banking relationships. These are things that you may think as an entrepreneur, you can't afford to pay for that and you can do yourself. I assure you. The sooner you engage those individuals to help you, the quicker you'll reach your successful point.How about the internal team?It's based on a need, not necessarily a want. So what do you need? What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses and can you bring in someone to take you to the next level? Should it be exactly who you are? And they should think exactly like you, a clone? That's what everybody I think thinks, right? If you could just have a clone of yourself, this would be great. But if you get someone with a little bit different mindset who can see things in a little bit of a different light, has a little bit of a different experience, is able to bring a little bit something different to the table, you start to grow in scale. And also you're able to have two different conversations and see things a little bit differently as you go through hiring even more teammates.Here's a link to the episode we mention featuring Janel Sykora - CMO | Entrepreneur | StoryBrand Certified Guide.Running a business doesn’t have to run your life.Without a business partner who holds you accountable, it’s easy to be so busy ‘doing’ business that you don’t have the right strategy to grow your business.Stop letting your business run you. At Harper & Co CPA Plus, we know that you want to be empowered to build the lifestyle you envision. In order to do that you need a clear path to follow for successOur clients enjoy a proactive partnership with us. Schedule a consultation with us today.Download our free guide - Entrepreneurial Success Formula: How to Avoid Managing Your Business From Your Bank Account.Copyright 2025 Glenn Harper

How can structure equal freedom?Dave Lukas is our guest, and he dives into this and more.You'll find with a lot of successful entrepreneurs and even those that you see and look up to as top entrepreneurs and visionaries and founders. Structure equals freedom. And a lot of people don't understand that. They hear that and like, what do you mean structure equals freedom? The more discipline and structure you have in your regiment, the more you can get done, and the more productive you can be. So I'm highly structured and how I do things.But there is a second part to structure equalling freedom...It's one thing to be structured, but it's another thing that you hit the ground running and know what you're going to do. So the other side of it is planning. So every Sunday I sit down and I actually am old school. So I actually sit down for half an hour and I write out by the day for the week coming what I'm going to do and what I need to do. So my top things that I need to get accomplished every day.How does he put this in play when he coaches leaders?I sat down with about a $100 Million business a couple of weeks ago with their leadership team. And we went through how they run their business and their day. And it was just all over the place. There's no plan. There wasn't any structure for how they even do their meetings or any of the type of stuff. And by the time we were done with a day session, you know, they had things dialed in and set.When it comes to planning and structure, what can entrepreneurs do to help themselves?One of the most important things that an entrepreneur can do for themselves is to learn to play the long game. And so you have to take the step back and you have to be able to sit there and say, okay, what do I actually need to do? Three months ahead? A year ahead, right? And how do I start putting things in place to get that in process today?We all experience the "highs" and the "lows" of being an entrepreneur. But where is the sweet spot?As entrepreneurs, we spend a lot more time in a series of peaks and valleys. But we spend a lot more time in the valleys than we do the peaks. But the valleys are where the gold is. The peaks are sweet, they're so nice. But that's where you really get better and you learn is in the valleys. And so, you know, advice to anybody out there, embrace those valleys that you go through and everything. Because that's where I learn these things. That's where I learn to be better discipline.Dave dives into what he calls DCPIt stands for discipline, consistency and persistence. But what does it really mean, right? Discipline is doing the things that you know, you need to do even when you don't want to do them consistently. Consistency is doing that day in and day out without fail. And then persistence is no matter, no matter what, even if you're disciplined and consistent, you're going to hit these walls, you're going to hit these insurmountable things that don't seem like you'll ever be able to pass them. And if you're not willing to persist through that and persevere through it, that's we're going to stay, that's we're going to plateau.Misfit Entrepreneur PodcastDave M. Lukas is a serial entrepreneur, best-selling author, investor, and Founder of the Misfit Entrepreneur Podcast. His companies have been ranked on the Entrepreneur 365 and INC 5000 List 7 times. He has been featured on radio, TV, and many top trade publications and web such as Forbes, INC, Yahoo! Finance, BTN, BTE, and others.Dave is also the author of the amazon best-seller “The Ten Year Career, The Fast Track to Retiring Young, Wealthy and Fulfilled.” The book is a culmination of 5 years of dedicated research into the mindset and habits of high performers, and gives the reader the missing links and path to greater success and fulfillment. He is also the founder and host of the Misfit Entrepreneur, a top-rated podcast devoted to giving the audience incredibly useful and unique insight from the world's top entrepreneurs and highest performers with a focus on their non-traditional methods for achieving success, their Misfit side. The show is listened to weekly in over 140 countries and reaches over 90,000 per month.An accomplished investor in real estate and stock investing, through his 12 Minute Trading System, Dave has mentored, educated, and trained thousands of students worldwide on how to create income from the stock market. He has spoken extensively in front of a wide array of organizations from many of the Fortune 500 to top Universities and Trade Groups with an emphasis on teaching individuals the strategies to reach their true potential and deliver exponential results. He lives with his wife and daughter in Columbus, Ohio.Running a business doesn’t have to run your life.Without a business partner who holds you accountable, it’s easy to be so busy ‘doing’ business that you don’t have the right strategy to grow your business.Stop letting your business run you. At Harper & Co CPA Plus, we know that you want to be empowered to build the lifestyle you envision. In order to do that you need a clear path to follow for successOur clients enjoy a proactive partnership with us. Schedule a consultation with us today.Download our free guide - Entrepreneurial Success Formula: How to Avoid Managing Your Business From Your Bank Account.Copyright 2025 Glenn Harper

Will Hill Consults was started from a passion for seeing firms and firm leaders make positive change come to life.Will has spent over 20 years working with firms to operate more efficiently, and in ways that drive value to their customers. This experience combined with a passion for truly seeing change take place led Will to launch Will Hill Consults in 2022. As Will explains in this episode, the coaching and consulting services from Will Hill Consults are separated into 2 categories: What they can do for your firm, and what they can do with your firm.So for any firm I'm able to help with working through their processes and being kind of technology independent in that regard, but really saying what do we need to do to fix that process? A lot of it around things that touch both the staff and the clients.Here is what Will sees in his clients...They have hearts of teachers and they actually care about their clients and the welfare of their clients. And that's why I enjoy working with them and knowing that if I can help them, they're going to truly turn that into the benefit of their customer. When we talk to entrepreneurs who go from corporate to being on their own, there's a little piece of you that misses a little bit of that collaborative culture that sometimes corporate breeds.I had already been used to very much remote interactions now that were still the team that I worked with in the office and some other peers that were there. But I've been quite used to forming and building relationships when you're not sitting right next to each other for quite a while. And so that that to me was not as big of a step.Do you feel like when you decided to ultimately make the jump and go full entrepreneur, do you have any thoughts like, "Oh man, I wish I'd have done it earlier"?I would say, if you are married and you're going to pull this trigger, the spouse has to be in agreement that the time is right enough that it's time to go and do it. And you've got to jump before it's no longer a great choice and you've just got to feel comfortable with the downside. As Glenn states about making the jump into entrepreneurship...It seems like this holds true. That if you wait until you can afford to buy a house. Wait to afford you can have kids. Wait to afford to be an entrepreneur, wait to do everything. You can spend a lot of time waiting and a lot of inaction. And again, the best, worst case scenario. Everything's going to work out. It always does. It may not be what you wanted, but it's going to work out and you will be fine.Glenn continues...What's the worst that can happen? The longer you wait, the less confident, perhaps the less fire you'll have, the more doubt will show up. And those things are not conducive to a healthy entrepreneur relationship with yourself. I mean, you have to be mentally in a place where you have the eye of the tiger and you're ready to roll.There's a huge difference between "owner-operator" and "owner-investor" as an entrepreneur. Will explains the steps he sees that get you from operator to investor in your business.As an entrepreneur starting out, we tend to say yes to almost everything. But Will has some great advice on that challenge.So I need to say yes to things after we're deep into conversation. But I need to consistently represent where my strong core value is that I'm bringing to my target customers and not try to guess at to what their needs are and shift how I portray my value. I want to come in consistently and let them interpret how that extends out to their needs. Because if I try to guess how my skill extends to their needs and I get way over to the side, I'm going to swing and miss. And later, when they say, well, that's not really our need, our needs over here, I'm going, well, I can do that too. At that point, I don't sound like an expert. Now I sound desperate. So you've got to be consistent in that messaging, even though you're going to say yes to a lot of stuff, whether you can outsource it or not, you have to stay really consistent with that initial messaging.Learn more about Will on his website. All his contact information is there at your fingertips.Running a business doesn’t have to run your life.Without a business partner who holds you accountable, it’s easy to be so busy ‘doing’ business that you don’t have the right strategy to grow your business.Stop letting your business run you. At Harper & Co CPA Plus, we know that you want to be empowered to build the lifestyle you envision. In order to do that you need a clear path to follow for successOur clients enjoy a proactive partnership with us. Schedule a consultation with us today.Download our free guide - Entrepreneurial Success Formula: How to Avoid Managing Your Business From Your Bank Account.https://empoweringtheentrepreneur.com/ Copyright 2025 Glenn Harper

She's a driving force for promoting and helping individuals identify and achieve their physical fitness, nutrition and bodybuilding goals. Her social media platforms have been growing and influencing countless followers. We welcome Lexie Maitland as our guest.You're a fitness fanatic, which is kind of exciting. How did you get involved with that?I've always been athletic. Growing up, it's kind of been like my identity. Everybody has always known me to be a very active, sports-driven individual. So I was a competitive gymnast starting when I was seven. And then throughout high school I was I joined the cheer team. But on top of that, I also started running with my mom and we did a couple of half marathons together. My dad basically one day was like, Lexi, you need to try something else out. So he got me a personal trainer at the local gym, and so I started with that. He started teaching me the proper way to actually weight lift, I just grew to really love it and started doing my own research and kind of went towards that route where I was doing more weight lifting rather than just cardio and it was just really something I enjoyed.When you're coaching these girls or, you know, people from all walks of life, how do you get these people to get out of their own way? Because essentially you are coaching them to get out of their own way. How do you help change their mindset and help shift some of those mental blocks that people have in regards to that?All of my coaching is done virtually. How do I make it personable? So I always send video responses back to my clients so they kind of see me on their computer screen talking to them. So they get that personal aspect. I also think like as a coach. I have to make sure I'm extremely upfront and direct right off the bat before somebody wants to sign up with me. Not only what my expectations are as a coach, but also telling them what to expect.Is there anybody else, or were your parents the driving force that kind of gave you the confidence to say, I can do this?I joined an entrepreneurial group in high school and they held pitch competitions a couple of times per year, and I, on a whim, just decided to enter one. And so when I did the pitch competitions, it really pushed me outside of my comfort zone. I had to like publicly speak in front of all of these like high-level entrepreneurs in St Louis. And that really gave me the confidence to actually like fulfill public speaking.As Glenn notes, what is really key for our entrepreneurs is you have to get uncomfortable to then get comfortable to achieve anything. If you sit in your safe space, it's just never going to happen. You have to get uncomfortable.Lexie Maitland LIFESTYLE & COMPETITION PREP COACH SUIT STYLIST YOUTUBER @lexiemait on Instagram Lexie's Website Running a business doesn’t have to run your life.Without a business partner who holds you accountable, it’s easy to be so busy ‘doing’ business that you don’t have the right strategy to grow your business.Stop letting your business run you. At Harper & Co CPA Plus, we know that you want to be empowered to build the lifestyle you envision. In order to do that you need a clear path to follow for successOur clients enjoy a proactive partnership with us. Schedule a consultation with us today.Download our free guide - Entrepreneurial Success Formula: How to Avoid Managing Your Business From Your Bank Account.https://empoweringtheentrepreneur.com/ Copyright 2025 Glenn Harper

Contract Diagnostics is a nationwide consulting company, not a law firm, and the ONLY company that specializes 100% in physician contract review. Jon's team of contract review specialists has served many thousands of physicians in all specialties across all 50 states.Contract Diagnostics was formed in 2011 and has been Jon’s passion ever since. He is dedicated to the education of physicians in the non-clinical (business) aspect of medicine. Had you been an entrepreneur before? Growing up as a kid?Oh, funny enough. So I started a stereo company Car Stereos when I was 17, not because I wanted to have a big company and make a lot of money. There were certain brands of stereo equipment that we wanted in Brookings, and there was one, one small stereo company, and they didn't have the good brands and we didn't feel like they gave the customer a good deal. And so my friend and I started a company at 17 just so we could get our brands, and it did well. It's still going successfully under separate ownership.How did Contract Diagnostics start?I was looking at this market, you know, 12 years ago or so, there really wasn't like there wasn't like a national brand. And I had lots of friends who were physicians who could kind of give me guidance. I said, Well, who'd you use for this service? And, you know, they didn't know they should, or they called some local attorney who didn't understand physicians and physician contracts. But how do you sell a service or product to someone who doesn't even know they need it?Now we have a new product that I feel hundreds of thousands of physicians need. And now we're back in the process of telling them, you know, teaching them that they do absolutely need this product. And I mentioned to my team all the time that I feel like we're trying to sell an iPhone in 1984, you know, and you should try it. You need this in your pocket. It's going to revolutionize the way you live. And people would say, What are you talking about? There's no way I need this thing, you know? So it's it's fun and challenging at the same time.So what does your team do to help physicians?So we've got great attorneys that work here, but we don't operate like a law firm, so we don't give legal advice. We're consultants if you will. So we understand the way that a physician should understand risk in a contract so we can go through it with him or her and really kind of explain it in plain English.And what Jon sees as the "secret" to success...It's still one of those things that, you know, you find something that you really enjoy. You put your heart soul into it and and you work it till you're blue in the face. And you don't give up and you provide good products and then and things happen.In an unusual growth pattern, Jon hires his first employee for his "side gig" before he even left his corporate job. Why?The business was strong and my time was was kind of capped. And I realized that it has to get bigger than just me.Do you have any regrets or son of a moments that you wish you could do it over again, that you would have changed to get you where you are quicker?Maybe the one thing that I would change was, is the the way that you that you prioritize initiatives. I think still 32 ideas on ways that we can make the company better. But I think I would have maybe started prioritizing that list maybe a little bit different years ago.What's been key to Jon's growth is relationships. They have been the key to where he is today. No matter if it's been in his business and corporate, in and around that area, it seems like he's really been able to solidify, grow all the relationships that he has to in order to get to where he is today.My team ensures physicians and their families get the best possible employment compensation through information, consulting, and coaching on their employment contracts. Jon's Website Jon's Facebook page Running a business doesn’t have to run your life.Without a business partner who holds you accountable, it’s easy to be so busy ‘doing’ business that you don’t have the right strategy to grow your business.Stop letting your business run you. At Harper & Co CPA Plus, we know that you want to be empowered to build the lifestyle you envision. In order to do that you need a clear path to follow for successOur clients enjoy a proactive partnership with us. Schedule a consultation with us today.Download our free guide - Entrepreneurial Success Formula: How to Avoid Managing Your Business From Your Bank Account.https://empoweringtheentrepreneur.com/ Copyright 2025 Glenn Harper

As she notes on LI, Kristen Deese is ..."Systems Genius, Business Coach, CBC and Co-Author of When Your Business Partner is Your Spouse, I am the brains behind the Braun of our plumbing, HVAC and remediation company. I’ve been in the trades, running the behind-the-scenes functions, serving all our businesses as the CFO, for nearly 20 years."She continues - "What really gets me FIRED UP is coaching and training other business owners in our industry how to make more profit. There are plenty of people out there to help these businesses generate higher sales – that’s not what I do – I teach them how to make more money."As a business coach, she goes beyond the typical CPA numbers and looks at business' growth areas.You celebrate the wins and then you also mourn the losses when you're going over that information with those business centers. But it is also really exciting to be able to see growth in the business and in the leadership capabilities of owners when you've spent the time with them to teach them how to read their numbers and how to look at their reports and how to use that information to make good business decisions.She goes into detail about the work she does with her clients...We definitely talk to the business owners a lot about the difference between strategic tasks and tactical tasks. The tactical tasks are the minute things that have to be done all the time, every day. The strategic tasks are is that higher-level thinking? Let's look at this from the big picture. Let's step back and see what does the future look like and where did we where have been and how do we get to where we want to go?In her opinion, this is the best way for entrepreneurs to grow...There are a lot of times that they don't realize that they're being the bottleneck in their company until you pull them back a little bit. Sometimes you have to pull them back by the collar, pull them back a little bit and be like, "Get out of the way. Let your business run. Look at it from the strategic level. Make the decision from that level and just get out of the way."How did she decide business coaching was for her?I don't necessarily like being in the day to day, you know, solving problems and putting out fires and all of those things. But I do really enjoy working with business owners and showing them how to get out of that spot. And so after working with our own business coach for quite some time and kind of seeing that transformation in us, I was like, "Man, it would be really cool to be able to do this with other business owners."Very few entrepreneurs like to look at their own numbers. They want to grow their business the way they know how. And looking at numbers isn't very sexy. But Kristen looks at it differently...I think that your numbers hold you accountable, and if you don't look at them, then who is holding you accountable? So I think that it has to do with the desire to not look at them. I've got a saying that "if you don't pay attention to your numbers, they're going to get your attention." And probably in a way that you don't appreciate. You want to look at the numbers when it's a good month and you want to look at the numbers when it's a bad month.And her thoughts on mentors...I had a mentor in my I had a job when I was in college and it was at a hair salon actually, of all places. The manager took me under her wing and taught me a whole lot about the back end of running a business. We were looking at individual stylist sales and creating commission reports and looking at expenses and how much does it cost when the shampoo person does two pumps versus one pump, when they're doing a shampoo, like all of those sorts of things. I'm learning about risk and I'm learning about fraud and I'm learning about all of these big business, very corporate accounting ideas on the side.What would you tell your younger self if you had the chance?Entrepreneurs want to say yes to everything, right? Like every opportunity that looks kind of shiny, they want to say yes to. And so I would be on board. I'd be like, Yeah, yeah, let's do it, let's do it. Sounds great, whatever. And then it would completely take us off course of the vision that we had or it would just kind of we were all over the place for a little while. Again, this was years ago, so it took us both a while to be able to figure out what was something that we should say yes to versus what was something that we should thank you, but no thank you.Find out more about Kristen on her website.Running a business doesn’t have to run your life.Without a business partner who holds you accountable, it’s easy to be so busy ‘doing’ business that you don’t have the right strategy to grow your business.Stop letting your business run you. At Harper & Co CPA Plus, we know that you want to be empowered to build the lifestyle you envision. In order to do that you need a clear path to follow for successOur clients enjoy a proactive partnership with us. Schedule a consultation with us today.Download our free guide - Entrepreneurial Success Formula: How to Avoid Managing Your Business From Your Bank Account.https://empoweringtheentrepreneur.com/ Copyright 2025 Glenn Harper 61nK7C5qeyrGwR8edubz

Our guest is Kyle Morris, a serial entrepreneur, and owner of The Golf Room and The Golf Room Everywhere. He played professional golf for what would have been about 8 to 9 years and then played 40 weeks a year and 20 countries, traveling with his kids and wife. But things had to change.We were traveling the first six months of my first born Adler's life. He was sleeping in hotel rooms. He was born on June 9th. We left on June 23rd, and he didn't sleep in his own bed until the middle of November. And then that next year she goes, "That's not happening anymore." So then we moved home back to Ohio from Scottsdale, where I'm originally from, still playing, and then started teaching and kind of felt God moving me into a different direction.How did The Golf Room come about?One of my good buddies had, like, a man cave in his basement. So I said, Hey, I need to build a man cave like you. He says, Hey, I've got this little place like this little room that you could practice out of. I started hitting balls and he says if you want, we should get people in here. You could teach some lessons on the side. We could also get people to rent this bay hit balls and practice. And then it continued to grow into more ideas.As Glenn puts it...When you see an entrepreneur and, you know, they get the bug and obviously the commitment to be an athlete of playing golf and what it takes the mental grind to do that probably gave you, I guess, the confidence in your own abilities to go out and be an entrepreneur because you're like, Well, I'm not going to fail at this. I'm going to just do something different. I'm going to nail it.And Kyle continues on with his perspective of his entrepreneur journey...I think that the world, which is why the entrepreneurs are listening to this podcast, why they are entrepreneurs, is there are people who talk about doing things and then there are people who actually do things. The world is filled with people who talk, but very few people actually do.When did you realize you have to convert this to building a business. When did that lightbulb go off for you? When did you realize that?So there gets to a point where you just go, okay, I've got to do more. That's why I keep doing these expansions and buying businesses because I have to as an entrepreneur, which I think most of us all are, I have to see what the ceiling is. And if I don't see what the ceiling is, I don't even know if I can live with myself. So it's like I'd rather fail and see what the ceiling is than not try and just be like I could very well just chill out and say, hey, like life is good.And Kyle's thoughts on how entrepreneurs and professional athletes are very similar.I think that all great entrepreneurs and all great athletes are circled and encompassed with a body of basically a halo of optimism. If Tom Brady is down by three points, right, and he's got 15 seconds left, everybody in the stadium knows that Tom's winning. He knows it too. And if he doesn't, fans look at each other and think that's weird. There's always something that the entrepreneur can hold on to and say, hey, like, it'll be fine.How important is delegating?I think that's a really hard thing for like entrepreneurs to wrap their brain around saying, hey, like, I know if I did this, maybe I could do it better, but like my hours are actually better spent doing something else, and then let them do this. They'll get it to 80% to completion. I'll put the all tie the bow on it, you know, cross the t's, dot the I's, alter something, and then away we go. And how about the work-life balance as an entrepreneur?I think that's the hardest part of an entrepreneur, is just trying to make sure that when you're there, you're there and you're being very mindful and present. I think that's probably something that I'm always working on in my character to just say, hey, like I'm with my kids, be with your kids. And like when you're with your wife, like be with your wife. And then when it's time to work, work, right?Owner, Director of Instruction, Golf Digest Best Young Instructors in America, and also ranked as the #1 instructor in the State of Ohio. Kyle does media for The Golf Channel, Trackman, and Golf Digest and has an extensive online community at TheGolfRoomEverywhere.com. Kyle owns and operates The Golf Room in Dublin Ohio and also a founding member at GolfSuites @the_golf_room on Instagram Running a business doesn’t have to run your life.Without a business partner who holds you accountable, it’s easy to be so busy ‘doing’ business that you don’t have the right strategy to grow your business.Stop letting your business run you. At Harper & Co CPA Plus, we know that you want to be empowered to build the lifestyle you envision. In order to do that you need a clear path to follow for successOur clients enjoy a proactive partnership with us. Schedule a consultation with us today.Download our free guide - Entrepreneurial Success Formula: How to Avoid Managing Your Business From Your Bank Account.https://empoweringtheentrepreneur.com/ Copyright 2025 Glenn Harper

Adam Tarnow is our guest. He is the founder of Adam Tarnow & Company, a leadership development firm located in Dallas, TX. They develop customized training to equip professionals with the soft skills they need to become excellent leaders.What does Adam do for his clients?Curation is a word that I'm starting to really grow comfortable with. When I first thought about what I wanted to do as a consulting firm focused on leadership development, I was thinking that I would develop my own custom content or come up with my own custom content, and I do that. But then I realized there's really nothing new under the sun, right? A lot of what I do is I'm standing on the shoulders of other great authors or thinkers and the ideas that they've shared with the world. And I'm just kind of organizing all of that. So I really do think curation is a very accurate way to describe what I do. And when I present this content to my clients, the only customized piece that I get to add to it or where I get to put my fingerprint on it, is really deciding how to organize the content.So Adam went to school, became a CPA, then you got out of that and you became a minister. How did you fall into leadership development?The only metaphor I can find out there that seems to really describe it well, is it my career has turned into a Seinfeld episode, where you just had all of these plot lines that seem to make no sense. And then at the very end, it's like, oh, that, okay, now that all make sense how that came together.So being a CPA has taught me is how to think. It taught me about corporate America, it taught me about large organizations, certainly taught me how to be organized and thoughtful. What ministry taught me was people just we're all the same. We all have the same issues. We have the same thoughts, feelings, emotions. It taught me how people think and react. It taught me a lot.When you are growing as fast as Adam's business is, there's time to say yes to all opportunities, but then there's the time when you have to make the hard choices to say no.In 2021, the training started to pick back up and I was able to now start to say no to some of those other things that I said yes to. But I was so grateful for the learnings that happened in there. I mean, obviously, as an entrepreneur, I need to know how to market. So I was really grateful that I said yes to some of that. Podcasting is a big part of my business model as well as for my own personal brand. So I was grateful to say yes to those things because I learned a ton as I went through that. So so yeah, I mean, saying yes is very, very helpful oftentimes. But then there comes a time where you do have to focus.Do you think when you go into these companies and you provide the training, though, is there some sense of team in that regard?I do feel like I'm a part of their team now and they do view me as that trusted advisor. There is a high because when they do well, I feel like, okay, I got to contribute to that and that was a lot of fun.What does Adam consider his superpower to be?I think I just I'm a teacher. I mean, I think that really is it. I just love to teach. I love to learn. I love to systematize that information and I love to share it with others. I can remember all the way back to eighth grade in my math class and the teacher letting me get up there and teach that exercise and that lesson, like going over it with the class. And I loved it.What advice would you give to people that have that "skill of leadership," but haven't been able to capitalize on it or have the awareness of that skill?My teacher side of me is going to have a bias towards just go study it. And so that to me is always such a great way to do it. This is really no excuse to not be a continuous learner anymore. I mean, between master classes and YouTube and LinkedIn classes and training that your company provides and books that are out there, as well as audiobooks and podcasts. I think for some, it just starts with curiosity and just wanting to learn and finding some voices that really do that you really do resonate with.And what is his endgame?My owner's intent is very focused right now on what I would say is building a platform. And for the first time in my life, I think I understand why I want to build a platform.Adam is referencing:No BS Small Business Book by Casey GrahamOn a mission to curate the most helpful leadership content my clients have ever encountered. Adam's Website Running a business doesn’t have to run your life.Without a business partner who holds you accountable, it’s easy to be so busy ‘doing’ business that you don’t have the right strategy to grow your business.Stop letting your business run you. At Harper & Co CPA Plus, we know that you want to be empowered to build the lifestyle you envision. In order to do that you need a clear path to follow for successOur clients enjoy a proactive partnership with us. Schedule a consultation with us today.Download our free guide - Entrepreneurial Success Formula: How to Avoid Managing Your Business From Your Bank Account.Copyright 2025 Glenn Harper

We welcome Glenn Dunlap, who is the Co-Founder & CEO of Peerview Data, a SaaS firm that specializes in benchmarking and comparative analytics solutions for CPA firms.And like most entrepreneurs, Glenn runs several companies.Prior to launching Peerview Data, Dunlap was a Co-Founder and Managing Director of Milestone Advisors, an accounting and advisory firm, where he provided business strategy, corporate finance, and part-time CFO services to emerging market companies. In 2006, Dunlap also launched Big League Tours, a tour operations business that provides unique, high-end tours to all of the Major League Baseball stadiums. In 2016, the company became an Official Partner of Major League Baseball and now hosts 40+ baseball tours annually. Dunlap started the business out of a passion for the sport, the enjoyment of traveling to baseball venues, and the desire to see all 30 stadiums with his dad & son (which he has completed!).So what is Glenn's Peerview Data philosophy when he sees something else has to work better, we have to do a better job?"This may not work, but..." So I went to some of my former clients and said, you know, hey, this may not work, but...and they went, "Yeah, let's do it."Everybody wants to know how they're doing versus their competition. That's what Peerview Data provides. Data can help an entrepreneur to take a moment and reflect. Benchmarks aren't the "end all be all." But what can you learn from them, and what data, to compare and learn.How did he choose the entrepreneur path at Ball State University?We're out on the loading dock one day and this guy says, "What are you what are you studying?" And I go, "I don't know. I haven't declared yet." And he goes, "You need to be an entrepreneurship major." Like, I don't even know how to spell it! "What are you talking about?" And he said, "Yeah, my wife's involved in this thing. Go over there right now and declare that as your major." So I went over there and looked at it and I was like, "Well, this sounds kind of interesting". And then I signed up for the class. I bought the book, I read it cover to cover the first night. I'd never done that with a school textbook ever, and was I like, "Wow, this is it. This was what I wanted to do."Working for the big CPA firms, how and why did you decide to strike out on your own?What was going through my mind was, if I can sell it for you knuckleheads, I'm going to go sell it for myself. So I literally kind of walked out of that room a little bit bigger and went back to my office and I started calling clients and said, "Hey, if I leave here, would you follow me?" And they followed me.But he didn't do this alone. Throughout the process, as he went through, his mid-thirties, he had multiple mentors to guide him, to give him confidence.Most entrepreneurs have some kind of superpower that basically sets them apart from their competition. What does Glenn consider his to be?It's a willingness to ask that stupid question. It served me well when I was working with clients in a consultative situation. Look, maybe I don't understand this. Help me understand this. And I don't know your business as well as you, but can you tell me this or can that that I'm having trouble lining that up. Help me make sense of that.So what is Glenn's endgame?I love what I do. You know, I'd be happy doing this the rest of my life. So it's kind of one of those things when you get asked the question about the endgame, it's kind of like, does it have to have the end? I don't want to stop.Glenn has spent his entire professional career working in and with entrepreneurial, high-growth companies. As a seasoned business advisor and small business executive, Glenn has consulted daily with entrepreneurs on strategic and business planning, building financial projections, determining the appropriate capital structure and raising capital. Glenn 's Website Running a business doesn’t have to run your life.Without a business partner who holds you accountable, it’s easy to be so busy ‘doing’ business that you don’t have the right strategy to grow your business.Stop letting your business run you. At Harper & Co CPA Plus, we know that you want to be empowered to build the lifestyle you envision. In order to do that you need a clear path to follow for successOur clients enjoy a proactive partnership with us. Schedule a consultation with us today.Download our free guide - Entrepreneurial Success Formula: How to Avoid Managing Your Business From Your Bank Account.Copyright 2025 Glenn Harper

Bill is one of those guys you can say is on top of his game. Entrepreneurs seek him out to be behind the scenes to solve problems, act as a sounding board, mediate disputes, and address issues in front of the c-suite. He utilizes his strong marketing background, to facilitate growth, sales, and marketing strategy and incorporate measures to ensure revenue generation, cost reduction, and risk mitigation for his clients. As he states...I help business owners, successful business owners, scale their business, bring in the right players, mostly around marketing a lot of businesses that are trying to scale. They have a hard time finding the right marketing partners to help that without hiring full-time staff. And that's not always the best solution.How were you able to cultivate all your key relationships over your career? How did you figure out the key to that success?A lot of it starts with people like Glenn and networking with Glenn. Networking with other people in our group, mastermind groups being open, being at conferences, just being open to have these conversations with people and learn and not shut down. You really open up your experiences when you talk to people in other industries.What was that "a-ha moment" you had to become an entrepreneur?I hired a supplier once and we worked very closely together to build a loyalty program for Gap, Banana Republic and Old Navy. And I liked his life. I liked what I saw. He was out signing deals. He was traveling all around. He was doing some entertaining. He was capturing business and enjoying that life. And I thought I'm never going to have that in the corporate world.And what's great about being an entrepreneur is that you can do it your own way!Everything I do in life, I run more in a corporate manner. But I like the freedom of the entrepreneur, so I'm kind of a hybrid.When you come from the corporate world and transition into an entrepreneur, it's natural to keep that life in the rearview mirror, for a time. But as Bill says, that crutch goes away.I think the corporate background probably is a hindrance because it's a crutch. I always think, Oh, I can always go back. I don't anymore. I've been out so long. But for the first seven, eight, nine years I kept thinking, "Man, it'd be nice to have a paycheck every week. Man, it'd be nice just to talk to people at the water cooler and not work as hard as I'm out here working." I'm probably not employable because I would drive people insane with "Let's get something done now."How important is self-awareness of who you are and what you are doing?You have to have a continual analysis of yourself and where you're going. Because once someone goes on the entrepreneurial journey, they don't really know where they're going to end up. But if you're too focused on where you're going to end up, it could end badly. And some of my business does not end up where I wanted them to go. But because I had a bigger awareness of myself, I knew where I wanted to take myself. So where I'm at today is perfect.What would you advise fellow entrepreneurs that are struggling, perhaps or trying to get to the next level?Rely on your network and ask a lot of questions. When I look back, there were quite a few times I'd ask and listen to the answers that they give you. Be around people that have already been in your shoes that can give you that advice.I'm a trusted advisor and servant leader that works behind the scenes to focus the entrepreneur's time, energy and productivity to the 20% effort that gets 80% of the identified company goals. After 15+ years of experience in Fortune 500 companies, 12 of which were in executive marketing roles, I struck out buying businesses and executing rebranding, turnaround, and growth strategies. During my corporate career, I was a key influencer in revenue growth at retail and financial services companies, including GE Money, Victoria’s Secret, Old Navy, Pep Boys, Gap, Banana Republic, Alliance Data Systems, Wachovia Bank (Well’s Fargo) and Kohl’s. I progressed from Market Analyst to Marketing Director and VP of Client Strategy and Marketing. My personal business ventures have ranged from retail and food services to construction, real estate, and marketing services. Bill's Website Running a business doesn’t have to run your life.Without a business partner who holds you accountable, it’s easy to be so busy ‘doing’ business that you don’t have the right strategy to grow your business.Stop letting your business run you. At Harper & Co CPA Plus, we know that you want to be empowered to build the lifestyle you envision. In order to do that you need a clear path to follow for successOur clients enjoy a proactive partnership with us. Schedule a consultation with us today.Download our free guide - Entrepreneurial Success Formula: How to Avoid Managing Your Business From Your Bank Account.Copyright 2025 Glenn Harper