Don't Be A Sheep: How to Take Risks and Reach Your Goals

Path to Progress with Paul Heintzman and John Ackerman

John Shumate, CEO of Venture First (and the most interesting person we've ever met), teaches us how to take risks and reach our goals.

Some questions answered in this episode:

• Did you see yourself as an entrepreneur growing up?
• How did you make the leap to become an entrepreneur?
• How did you get and keep your first clients?
• What was your day to day like starting out and what where the first few years like running Venture First?
• What is the best marketing tool you have ever used?
• How did you expand Venture First's services from business valuation to outside CFO Services and bookkeeping?
• What does it mean to be a CFO for a company?
• How do you grow your services when you aren't an expert in that service line?
• How do you differentiate yourself in an industry that has a "stodgy" reputation and make finance sexy?
• What separates people who take risks from those who do not?
• How can great things happen from really bad situations?
• What does your day to day look like now that Venture First is more established?
• What are the highs and lows of being an entrepreneur?
• Why does being an entrepreneur suck?
• What are the benefits of being an employee vs. being an entrepreneur?
• Do you think the entrepreneur spirit is genetic or is it something you learn?
• What does Venture First look like today?
• When did you take on investors and how has it changed the company?
• How will you know when you've made it?
• What is the best decision you've made running Venture First?
• What is the future of Venture First?
• Why should people take risks?

Last call:

• What advice would your 60 year old self give you today?
  • Break More Rules, Have More Fun, Work Harder
• What advice would you give to an entrepreneur just starting out?
  • Find a really good mentor
  • Be ready to spend more time and capital than you expect
• What's the best thing you've spent money on in the last six months?
  • Satellite phone (overall best purchase)
  • Nice bottles of bourbon -
• What book/documentary would you recommend?
  • Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It...and Why the Rest Don't by Verne Harnish
  • Fight Club (movie or book)
  • The Hard Thing About Hard Things
  • The Advantage
• What's your favorite thing to drink?
  • 1968 Old Fitzgerald
  • Old Fashioned
  • Basil Hayden

Shoutouts:

• Woodford Reserve
• Please & Thank You

Enjoyed this episode? Feel free to contact John at [email protected] and connect with him on Linkedin.

Have any topics you want to be covered or amazing people you’d like us to interview? Let us know! You can email us at [email protected]. You can also find us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Linkedin. Please be sure to subscribe to our weekly mailing list at drunkenmoney.com/subscribe.