274 Elliot Kallen - AUDIO
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Corey Kupfer: Elliot Kallen is the founder and president of Prosperity Financial Group, an industry authority in finance and a renowned contrarian investor. Elliot is a number one bestselling author in the business section with his most recent book, Driven, how to elevate your success as an entrepreneur, which provides valuable insights, lessons, and strategies on the path to successful leadership and entrepreneurship.
Elliot, welcome to the podcast.
Elliot Kallen: Great to be here, Corey. Thanks for having me.
Corey Kupfer: Absolutely. So listen, I, I want to get into the book. I want to get into all that you do working , with the folks that you do. I want to hear some stories about, , your own deal experience, which I know you have.
But before we get into all that, I want to take you back to when you were a little kid growing up, maybe a 10, 12 years old. What did you What did you want to be? Because my guess is a, an investor and an author and a and a coaching consultant and everything else you've done probably wasn't it at that age, but you tell me.
Elliot Kallen: When I was young, it's a great question, Corey. When I was a young kid, my dad was a [00:01:00] small business entrepreneur. I didn't understand that I had to work with him on weekends. I work with a little bow tie. I was introduced to me as his little sales manager. His territory was New Jersey to Boston. And we do meetings in Boston.
We get up at four in the morning, go to Boston. It was a great life, but I figured what I really want to do is I want to become a CFO and then a CEO and a company down the street from us, so to speak. Was it, it was a conglomerate. They were by everybody out. They own continental baking aerospace, the telephone systems around the world outside the U.
S. That's what I thought I'd be the CEO of. So even as a little kid, I wanted to be the CEO of a major organization.
Corey Kupfer: I love that. I love that big vision. One of the question, looking back, what was your first deal of any type? It could have been something small when you were younger or early in your career or anything else comes to mind.
That was a deal that you remember.
Elliot Kallen: My dad was trying to teach good another good question. My dad was trying to teach me sales So he was in the ink and pen business He [00:02:00] created some amazing inks and some inventions that put my brother's sister through law school But he had a bunch of rejects.
He had these green pens. He made kind of like, sharpies today green markers And he said i'm going to give you these green markers This was in third or fourth grade and I want you to sell them at school for a nickel apiece To all your friends, and I did, I gave me, he gave me 100 of my soul to basically every kid in the school came back with money, got beaten up a little bit for some money, but he said, if you could do this and sell this, which is a nickel, imagine what you could do to something really big.
So that means you have the gift of gab and that was he was really proud of the fact. That there was a gift of gab and the ability to talk and negotiate and in a way, he created a little bit of fearless spirit in me, even though he didn't know it.
Corey Kupfer: I love that. I love that. It's so great. And, it's amazing because, you hear many stories where it goes the opposite way, right?
Where parents are very, want people to follow a certain path and that risk taking and entrepreneurial spirit is actually [00:03:00] discouraged. So I always love when I hear when it's encouraged.
Elliot Kallen: I still think they would have rather have been a heart surgeon.
Corey Kupfer: Absolutely. Love it. Tell people a little bit more about what you're doing now. And then I want to go back and talk about some of the deals you've done in the past, but give people a little better idea of what you do and who you serve.
Elliot Kallen: Great. I have three entities here, so I've started companies three, four, and five here.
First, first one is Prosperity Financial Group. It's a California based registered investment advisory or a fiduciary investment firm. We have about a 1000 clients between myself and 5 other advisors manage upwards of 400Million dollars, growing a double digits of net assets every single year for the last number of years, especially in this year, the few years that we've had that been pretty horrible at cobit.
We've had some amazing double digit growth. And I'm surrounded by an amazing team that does that prosperity wealth management as a national company. It's based here in the same office. It's [00:04:00] got 55 advisors around the country again, growing quickly. And those are all independent or fiercely independent, smaller advisors, same amount of assets, about four and a quarter million, 425 million.
And that's growing. And again, we, where we do the back office for advisors and they can just go out and do their own thing and stop bothering me and leave me alone and go ahead and have fun and try to remember what being an entrepreneur was instead of having employees on labor laws and lawyers on staff and all the things that I have to have, which you hate as a business owner, they don't have to worry about that.
And the 3rd, 1 is a charity that I started 8 years ago called a brighter day than it's at a brighter day dot info a brighter data info. And we started that following the death of my son in 2015 and it unites. Resources on stress and oppression for teens and their families with the goal of stopping teen suicide and 7 to 8 years later, we are now touching thousands of families a month with our resources in different ways.
So [00:05:00] 3 entities that we've grown all 3 of different end games, and it's pretty exciting what we're doing. There's no such thing as a 40 hour work week for me, Corey. And as you know, you're talking to a lot of business owners, a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of high energy type a people like myself, that just all we know is go, go, go.
You know, we might drop down a heart attack one day, but we're going to keep going as long as we can and trying to stay in good health doing it. But that's who I am. And my wife said to me. The other day, she said, listen, in five years, if you sell your company, are we going to retire? And I said, yeah, we'll retire, but I'm going to start another company.
That's what I'll do. And she said, what's it going to be? I said, travel leisure. We're going to go all over the world and write podcasts and podcasts and write reports to travel for free to all five star hotels everywhere.
Corey Kupfer: I love it. I love it. That's a business. A lot of, a lot of folks love to have, and I'm sure you could create it if you wanted to.
That's awesome. So, our audience knows that we have a lot of clients in the RIA space in the wealth [00:06:00] management space and, that kind of organic growth that you talked about in terms of your company is really phenomenal because the studies have shown that a lot of firms, if you look at just purely organic growth, so that not deal driven growth and not market appreciation, which of course, for 10 plus years, a lot of people were all benefiting from the average advisors is growing at only a 3 or 4 percent organic rate, so having that organic growth is phenomenal.
And it certainly even helps with the deal driven growth and valuations later on. So that's that's pretty impressive.
Elliot Kallen: Thank you. I did. It's funny. I just met with a we call these mega firms. So you've got a lot of venture capital money that's gone in. You've probably touched that, you know, in your world.
And so I'm what's called a mid tier player. It's pretty funny because you put my 2 companies together. We're just shy of a billion dollars and I'm a mid tier player, not even a large player. Which is pretty funny because I remember when a hundred million dollars was a large
Corey Kupfer: This was big. Absolutely.
Yeah I saw I was in this industry back then as well. Absolutely.
Elliot Kallen: The goalposts keep moving on me here. So it's not really fair [00:07:00] but we did this and so I went on the target list for so many companies that And they're the brand names that you I don't need to drop their names. You know, they're out there already Everybody knows they're out there I'm out there looking for people that want to merge in and have fierce independence like me and not want to have the controls that a lot of big companies want Because the bigger you are, the more controls you have to have, because the more things can go wrong.
You just got more moving parts. So we look for the people that are more like me. They look at me in a mirror. Not that, I don't want anybody to look like me. God forbid they look like me for their own life. But there are people that like independence that thrive on creativity. They're saying, just get out of my way and let me do my thing.
That's what I, and those are the people that we look for. As we're growing every day.
Corey Kupfer: Love it. Love it. So I want to thank you back because I know you have experience in the past with raising capital, with doing M& A, buying and selling companies. Talk to us a little bit about that past experience in your life.
Elliot Kallen: Yeah. So I've done this now, like I said, two [00:08:00] times beforehand. And actually there's even a third one in there. I just don't really think of it as by itself. When I went after leaving the accounting world, the world of accounting, after I graduated from Rutgers in New Jersey, In 1980, so everybody can get my age down.
I didn't like counting. It wasn't a good foot. It wasn't a good fit. My dad was right. I shouldn't have gone into it. And we started a packaging company almost from scratch. And we went into business and we took over some of the clients from magic marker, their industrial clients, they had just filed bankruptcy.
Their industrial division had no value. We just kind of took it. They were happy to make us a deal. And we suddenly had a little client base and we grew that into a packaging company. And so this was my first experience taking something from nothing and growing it. And we went to 35 employees and 5 million in revenue in just a few years.
And here I am in my 20s. I really didn't know a lot of what I was doing. I was learning by the seat of my pants. I wish I had a mentor that I wish I hired a CFO. These are things you wish you could do over again. Okay. [00:09:00] And not instead, I brought in salespeople, but didn't, but I handled the money.
And that wasn't a good idea because I was too young to understand that. But what was happening there, Corey, that so many business owners go through is I was outgrowing my ability to generate cash, free cash. And so I had a 50, 000 line of credit. I thought that was huge. Then it went to a hundred. By the time 1986 rolled around, I had a 500, 000 line of credit and bankers were throwing money at me.
Corey Kupfer: Yeah,
Elliot Kallen: and it was just wild what I was doing. And of course, October 1987 rolled around and the market tanked by almost 50 percent at the end of the Reagan era, and banks just started to call their lines of credit back very quickly, thinking we've got something long term. And, 90 days later, the world had changed already back to what it was, but there's an immediate panic that set in at that time.
And I realized that, this is going to be a, this is a painful experience. It's time for me to sell the business. And the way I learned that Corey is I knew I needed more capital, [00:10:00] but I was already 500, 000 on the line of credit. And I seasoned tickets for the New York jets. I'm sorry. I'm a lifelong jet fan.
We bleed green. I get it. If you're listening to this and you want to send me poor pity cards, I'm all up into it. So I, my wife and I went to this, went to a game and we're sitting in the stands. And I realized that it was the beginning of the fourth quarter. I mean, we had been arguing over the business.
For the entire game at that point. And I just said, I've got to sell the business or I've got to , refinance it because I'm going to six and a half days a week and I need to get money. And my first thought was, let me refinance it. Now you have all this central capital money, Sand Hill road in Palo Alto and New York and Chicago.
There's a lot of free money that used to not be available. But in those days, what you did is you advertised yourself in the New York times, the back of the business section. For money wanted or venture money wanted. That's how you got money. And I put an ad in there, give or take two inches [00:11:00] high looking for capital.
And I started to get phone calls from Arab sheiks and Middle East princes and New York and Manhattan and Florida people who were retired that have money, they want to throw you. And I finally said, I was talking to a Saudi Arabian prince at one point. And he said, look, I'll give you a million dollars.
But I want to warn you because you seem like an honest guy, which I am impeccably honest, not perfect, but honest. And I, he said, if this goes awry, if this doesn't work, cause I think you've got some really good ideas on how to become a magnet in the packaging business. You are going to walk away without your house and probably just your car and the clothes you're wearing because we're going to go after all that.
And we're not going to go after the mean way. We're not going to try to destroy you. We're just going to put a lien on everything you have to try to get our money back. Yeah. And you have to decide if that downside outweighs the [00:12:00] potential upside. And he was being brutally honest, but he was accurate because it didn't at the end of the day.
I met with my attorneys, I met with my new CPA firm, and we all decided the cost of growth Was greater than the value of return. So I sold the assets. I stripped away the liabilities. I kept the liabilities. I sold away the assets. That was my first deal. I raised capital by selling away the assets, including the receivables, but I kept the payables and then began to pay them off in a smart way.
And we did. It took me a little while to pay off the payables, but I had all this money coming in on note that was guaranteed by people's homes. And that was my first deal.
Corey Kupfer: Wow. So I want to I want to do a little bit on the buy side of the sell side of that. So you talked about starting this, talking about buying and talking about magic marker.
Like how did that all come about? Like you're 20 something.
Elliot Kallen: I was working for a big eight accounting firm at the time. And [00:13:00] my father had retired from the ink and solvent business.
Corey Kupfer: Okay.
Elliot Kallen: And he was fortunate enough to create one of the colors of ink for a Bic pen, if you remember Bic. Sure. And he put my brother's sister through law school with that little invention.
But he was dumb. He was old. He was sick. I didn't understand it. He had multiple heart attacks. And he turned to me and he said, you hate what you do. He said, magic marker. I used to work with magic marker. I've got an idea about you and I do this together. I didn't know he would, be gone within 90 days, but He said, you would love this and you've got a personality that's not an account.
You hate what you do, which is true. You can't wake up during the day and hate what you can't wake up and hate what I do every day. You can't hate your boss. You can't hate your spouse. You can't hate your kids. You can't, you cannot go through life hating your life. It's a terrible formula for success.
It just doesn't work. Including marriage. You can't hate your spouse and say, but we're going to have a [00:14:00] happy marriage. It doesn't work. And so it was with his help. He said, let me make a phone call. Let's go down and talk to them. And that's how we got started doing that. And I didn't want to be in what he did because he knew inks.
And I, that wasn't me. It was a shrinking business and it's basically a dead business because all the inks today are really been replaced with laser and so forth. That's glad that didn't happen. The packaging business was my little brainchild, because I had already made contacts with Dow and DuPont and plastic companies and some of these major companies like American Cyanamide, which became Monsanto, had become my clients right off the bat and they were making them.
At that point, packaging products and material products that were all poisonous for us in the environment, but I thought there'd be a niche for it. And I took to it and industrial tapes. And I just loved it and created a brand and trademarked it called pro tape and trademarked [00:15:00] the company creative design and just started to do some really creative things with it and grow very quickly.
And then on the sell side. You went through this idea, maybe you're going to, it's more capital. You decided not to do that. You decided to sell it. Did you hire a banker or a broker? Did you, how'd you find your buyer?
The buyers became
the employees of the company.
Corey Kupfer: Ah,
Elliot Kallen: I had contacted a business broker.
I had told my sales manager that I'm going to be doing this. And I want you, I'm going to give you some extra money so you stay here because I want you to know I'm going to do everything in my power for have them to buy the entire company and the team and try to keep your team together. Yeah, and he had said that he contacted his.
Brother in law who was an oil he was in the oil futures business. And if you remember oil in the eighties was booming, late eighties was booming and early eighties, it's terrible. In the late eighties, they couldn't do a, it was a more blockable. They were just right printing money. And the guy in his firm put up a small [00:16:00] futurist business and they put up the capital to buy me out.
And it was something down and over the next 5 years, I got money and that was enough to keep everybody going. And then he took over and I literally set him up with all my leads. And then he moved. He moved all the people down closer. We, where he lived and I kept the rental space that I had in an office commercial park.
We did it renegotiated out. Some leased it out at 3 trucks. I sold those away 3 international 22 footers. I sold those. And started to look for something new to do. So I'll tell you a funny story, Corey, about how you never know what's really going on. After I had sold my business, cleaned up the warehouses, made it look good, wanted to walk away with my head held high, even though inside of me, I felt at that moment, a little bit like a failure because I didn't, I knew I didn't recognize free cashflow and how that operated.
Corey Kupfer: Yeah.
Elliot Kallen: Just didn't recognize that.
Corey Kupfer: Yeah.
Elliot Kallen: Only knew that I was growing at 25 percent a year. [00:17:00] That happened at the concept of how do you grow 25 percent a year and run out of money? How does that happen?
Corey Kupfer: But, I mean, over time, you realize that's kind of classic, like you are far from the only one that happens to, right?
Elliot Kallen: Happens every day. But I didn't understand, again, too young to understand it and too inexperienced. To understand that, but I wanted to do something right. And my family had said to me, Elliot, maybe because of your experience as CEO, you should think about going to work for somebody who's a VP of sales.
Or something like that. And then maybe you'd get back into the CEO world, take a step or two backwards, VP of marketing, VP of sales. And so I went to work with this company in Philadelphia that did all these testing and interviewed you. And they found out what you were really good at. All right. And I learned a few things about myself and it's funny.
I, and I hope everybody goes to companies like this. I learned I could never buy a McDonald's franchise cause I could make a better burger. So don't buy a formula. Don't get into the formulaic business. [00:18:00] You're not going to be the kind of guy that wants to make every widget look exactly the same. That's not you.
Don't buy Taco Bell. Now today, do I wish I had a dozen McDonald's? But that's what I learned about myself. So that's a good thing to learn about yourself. The second thing I learned about myself is I'm not the most employable guy because I still think like an entrepreneur. And so one company, two companies said to me, one was in the industrial automotive business.
Wisconsin and the other one was based out of Pennsylvania and they were in the malls and they did pictures of kids and, a kiosk mall around the United States. They both said the same thing to me and said, Elliot, you are so qualified to do what we want you to do because you're young, you don't have children yet.
You've got energy that's boundless. And that makes a difference as an entrepreneur, you got to have the energy. You at some point, we either take our clients and do your own thing, or you'll leave us to start something [00:19:00] totally different with a brainchild of yours. And that's what I knew I needed to get back in my own business, and that's a great learning lesson for an entrepreneur because family wants you to be happy and successful, but not necessarily on your terms, their terms.
Corey Kupfer: Yeah, and you're right. And it's not because of anything negative. It's just that they're worried about you. They can only see. Listen I've told the story several times about. One, my, my parents on one hand, and also all kinds of other folks, my parents, of course, what, listen, I'm a lawyer, right?
This is, it's 1991, , I'm about to get a raise to make six figures which is I was at 90 something, I was going to make 105 or whatever it was, which, in 1991 was, but today it's good money for some, for a lot of people, 1991, that was really, really good money, right?
And , I call my parents one day and I tell them I'm leaving. I'm stopping my alarm from no, I don't have any clients. No, because I worked at a firm that has big clients, long term clients, not leaving anywhere. Yeah, I'm starting from scratch. No, I'm going to figure it out. And, [00:20:00] let's just say they were very worried and not happy.
And then and then most of the people I talked to, friends, people I knew, whatever, they were all like, why are you doing it? And it was, if you remember, 91 was a recession. As well. They were like, what do you create? Like, all kinds of lawyers were getting laid off, from jobs. So I get I'm voluntarily leaving.
So all these people tell me it's crazy. Now, the interesting part is. In 1995, so I started the firm really in 92 left 92. In 1995, we took our first real office space. We had been like a shared office. And it was down at 40 Wall Street, and we had this nice office space, 3, 500 square feet, had a corner office, view of the Statue of Liberty, it was really, we had a big party.
All these people came. And the same people who three, three years ago, tell me I was crazy. What I was, what was I doing? Why was I leaving my job? How was this going to be successful? Told me that they all knew I was going to be successful. Okay, and like, when they were standing in that space, they, oh, we always knew you'd be successful.
They didn't remember what they said 3 years ago. The big difference was 3 years before that, they couldn't [00:21:00] possibly see doing that themselves, right? They couldn't conceive of leaving a six figure job to start something with no clients. But when they're standing in that office with the view of the Statue of Liberty and the nice build out, And, the glass front conference room, whatever, now they could see it.
So now, of course, they always knew that I was going to be successful, right? And that's how people always see you through their own filters. And it's not because they're bad people. In fact, most of the time they care about you, but it's just because that's how they see things, right?
Elliot Kallen: Well, there's an old Jewish joke about that.
And somebody else can say, because I'm Jewish, it's clean here. But, the first Jewish person is elected president. And the family's there for the inauguration, and here the mother, who's close to 80, is sitting in the front row, and, and the press comes up to her and says, we really want to know how you feel about, your son, who's about to become president, and he's the first Jewish president, are you really proud of him?
And she goes, eh, kind of. Not as proud as I am of his brother to what do you mean? How could you not be proud of these? The first Jewish president said his brother's a doctor.
Corey Kupfer: Right,
Elliot Kallen: you know what? People have their own ideas of [00:22:00] what's right for you.
Corey Kupfer: Well, that's right.
Elliot Kallen: You should marry.
This is the job you should have. This is the job you should, the car you should drive. Everybody has your best interest at heart from their perspective.
Corey Kupfer: That's
right.
That's absolutely right. I love that. All right. So now we're at the point where you realize, nope, you got to be doing your own thing.
Did you jump into financial services, the wealth management at that point, or was it something in between?
Elliot Kallen: No, I got it. I got somehow hooked up with a friend of mine from Columbus, Ohio, who was in the environmental cleanup business, air and water remediation. Okay, I thought that's a great business to get in.
So the super fun site had just been discovered up in Niagara Falls. If you remember that and the cold love canal. Yeah, well, this is an interesting program and there was a major soils discovery in New Jersey, along the Pacific River of agent sanamide. That was in 55 gallons drums buried along the river.
That was decaying. And thankfully, I had contacts and so forth and that's I [00:23:00] got. Some of that soil moved to the state. It was Washington state where a lot of deadly soil goes in our country to the eastern side, the high desert side of Washington state. And I was able to put my fingertips in that toes in that water, and I got into the environment, clean up business.
And I stayed in there for 5 years. And I did a little bit of work with the FBI along the way with some consulting work doing some math for them. If you've ever seen the numbers, the show numbers doing math for the FBI to work on pyramid schemes, discover making a pyramid schemes. And so I knew by the time 1992 came around that the environmental cleanup business was evaporating.
Corey Kupfer: Yeah,
Elliot Kallen: sorry for the pun on that, but it was disappearing at the end of the George Bush senior administration was going away. All the big money had been made unless you were going to do government clean up of government sites, and I wasn't going to do that. And so I knew I wanted to get back. And do something and I investigated the financial services business and [00:24:00] I thought I would take what I learned from the big 80 county firms with partners in a set of areas, go into different financial services and insurance businesses, combine the two and do something like that.
And I met with Shearson in Florida, who was a family friend. I met with Meryl in Jersey and Lincoln in Jersey and somebody in Philadelphia, and I didn't hear anything I liked and my wife got pregnant with twins. After three miscarriages and she's the California girl and we decided to come to California.
She came out here, brought me back to San Francisco Chronicle and there was a little ad from Lincoln. Oh, no bigger than this said, come in here. And I met with them when I came out here and started the business division with Lincoln. They were wonderful people. And that's how I started my career. And we stayed there until 99 when I took the entire division and we left and started Prosperity Financial Group.
Corey Kupfer: In 99. So that was yeah, that was real, that was pretty early in the and what's now called the independent advisor movement, but,
Elliot Kallen: Very early. It didn't even have a title yet. Nobody called it that independent advisor. Just you were independent, right? You were an [00:25:00] independent channel.
Corey Kupfer: So talk to me about that, because obviously now, listen, as you know, and we, we've done hundreds, literally hundreds of transitions of advisor teams out of warehouses and. Banks and insurance companies and IBDs they go independent. But now, now that, and I've been doing it for a lot of years.
Now there's such a infrastructure and the custodian, the cus what the custodians offer, what, tech vendors and consultants and, there's a whole ecosystem that supports moving their independence. But in, in 1999, there was pretty much none of that.
So talk about that. That transition, you didn't have a lot of people to help you figure out how to do it on your
own, right?
Elliot Kallen: No, we had a good company. Raymond James creative independent division, financial services. I'm not even sure if they're still around anymore. Cause I've kind of gone to a different model on.
They are trying to recruit the big, the teams from the brokerage houses, like Merrill Lynch and all that's profitable for them. But 2000 is when we really got heavily into it. And it was a tough time because of the dot com bust happened. So the market tanked, we were trying to work with our clients, they were getting [00:26:00] frustrated because some of their portfolios dropped in half overnight and then I was in the middle of a divorce.
So 2000, what I say at that time was really rough year for me and we lived on credit cards a lot. But you know something, I had a lawyer that said to me in my divorce, he said, listen, Elliot, let me ask you a question. If you walk away with nothing more than your business and your ability to because you can't lose your business, but your ability to be a father, a good father, because I know that's important to you.
Corey Kupfer: Yes.
Elliot Kallen: Ability to be a business owner. Would that be enough?
Corey Kupfer: Yes.
Elliot Kallen: And I said, yeah. He said, well, let's see if we can get your house too. And I bought my ex wife out of the house. So I walked away with my company. I had to write her some pretty big checks and ongoing money for, for a significant amount of time.
But I walked away with my head held high and I made a decision. I'd be a great dad. So the five out of seven days I had my kids, no daycare, I picked them up at three o'clock and we went and played dad, I play [00:27:00] sports. And you know how it is in those days with sports. There are same, how it is today. You're busy seven days a week with sports.
We were like that. It was a great life. A boy, you're running around like a chicken with your head off and you're starting a business from scratch and you're talking to people and they're saying, no. So what do you do? How do you get that done? You don't work enough hours. And I said I opened up the office at 6.
Every day and they're like why do you get there so early to do stock trading? I said no i'm not a stock jockey and I can't be a stock jockey at 6 30 in the morning That's there's no money in that but I want to be the first one in there So I accomplished more by 10 in the morning than most people did by 3 in the afternoon And thankfully my dad knock on wood gave me this incredible work ethic it's probably a double edged sword because Hard work is a double edged sword.
But he had this phrase that nothing you do can make up for hard work. And then my mother had this program that talking about other year, this is called my schizophrenic issues with my mother in one ear, my dad in the other ear. And and [00:28:00] my mother said, you can do better tomorrow than you did today. So every day when I came to work and I do this today, I always feel like I could do better than I did yesterday.
Corey Kupfer: Yeah. I love that. Love that. Let's talk about the book. We mentioned in the bio number one, Amazon bestseller. Tell us about the
book.
Elliot Kallen: It's called driven. It's over my left shoulder. Thank you for bringing that up. It's written with a friend of mine Adam Torres. Who runs a web development company and he calls himself an accidental entrepreneur, but I wanted to write a book for years.
This is a full book for years about entrepreneurship, not about why you need to buy a stock or a bond or a mutual fund or, finance. But I wanted to write about entrepreneurship and leadership because I think they're tied together. Yeah. Some people think that the two best entrepreneurs in America are coming out of Facebook and coming out of Amazon, those two companies.
So because you have two people that are in a multi billion dollar business for [00:29:00] Meta and Facebook, not Facebook, and Amazon, those two people, I don't need to mention their names, everybody knows their names, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg. And here they are, Mark Zuckerberg, College. He's in the cafeteria eating one day, the next day he's a billionaire.
And you think, so entrepreneur has got this impression from late night TV and channel seven and five, that all you got to do is come up with a neat idea. I've got a couple of people, Sand Hill road and Palo Alto to fund you. And the next thing, you're a billionaire. Then you're on the New York stock exchange.
You're going to retire to 45, with 10, 000, pieces of Bitcoin. It's easy. I don't know why everybody doesn't do this. And I know that for me, as I've already told you, my track in life is amazingly like that, up, down, sideways, backwards, even I'm amazed, Cory, on how unstraight my own personal line of life is.
I laugh at that, but it's true. And so I wanted to write a book to give permission for entrepreneurs [00:30:00] to have that same course, to understand that perseverance is a strength. Fortitude is a strength. Charity and legacy are characteristics you don't want to lose. And honesty is rare, but so important, but not perfection because that doesn't exist.
That's what I wanted to write about. And I talk about charity and I talk about how my dad had no money and my parents were in the middle of a depression and somehow they managed to give 10%, they tied 10 percent every week to charity that was pennies. That was like 25 cents went to charity. We're talking about small dollars, sleeping on the floor with coats.
And so forth, but they always gave, or we had to give back to cousins who needed help on weekends. We'd go work their small store cause they could afford somebody. So you're now the bicycle fixer in a small bike shop and you're the lawnmower engine guy for your cousin and need the lawnmowers fixed.
And you'll learn this stuff. And those are great lessons to learn as a kid. [00:31:00] And that's what I, that's what the book's about. Learning life lessons. And the biggest lesson is entrepreneurs never fail. But boy, do we have some expensive learning lessons.
Corey Kupfer: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. It's interesting.
The especially for folks, younger folks and folks just even though they haven't been through newer entrepreneurs, let's put it that way. Cause there are. Plenty of corporate refugees who become entrepreneurs and even at a later age. And in fact, it's a it's somewhat of a myth.
Of this, everybody's a 22 year old founder. Like, the average age is much higher than people think of newly founded companies. So whatever stage you're at though, but , it is very different. Right. And boy, am I with you on the perseverance? I, we had this entrepreneurs organization, which I've been a member of since the start of 2008.
At this event one time, they call it the night of the living dead. And It was every, it was entrepreneurs telling their worst of the worst of what happened to 'em. And just sharing it. And the difference about it was, 'cause there's many, many entrepreneurs who talk about their tough times, but it's very [00:32:00] often just a prelude to the hero's journey.
Right. To the comeback story. This was just, no, this was none of the comeback story. None of the hero's journey. This was just. The worst of the worst in your life, whatever. And the reason for it was not for the best people, but it was really for everybody, for the 50 or so entrepreneurs were in that room to understand that everybody has been through something right.
And the ones who are still in that room, because there's still entrepreneurs, they're the ones that. Persevered, through that adversity, whether it was personal divorce, whether it was bankruptcy, whether it was, other business challenges, whether it was, partners stealing money from that.
I mean, you name it. Every story in the book was there. And and it was still going.
Elliot Kallen: It's, in the movie, Rocky not to quote, some literary movie here, but there's a phrase where Rocky Balboa says, I believe it says it to his son. Maybe he says to another boxer. It's not how many times you get knocked down.
It's how many times you get back up. And I made my kids constantly report that to me. When you get knocked down, what do you do? You get back up? Dad. I got it.
Corey Kupfer: [00:33:00] I love that. I love that. So in terms of what you do with clients, and I know, you got the business where, you know, but in terms of your own.
Let me ask you this way. Are you dealing directly with clients in terms of the planning, and wealth management side of things and your businesses at all?
Elliot Kallen: I have 120
of my own clients.
Corey Kupfer: I thought that was the case. So it, in terms of the, in terms of providing that wealth management and other, financial planning and other advice that you give these folks, how has your experience as an entrepreneur and as a dealmaker, impacted?
That ability to work with people and the advice you give them because I'm sure some of them are entrepreneurs and growing businesses. So, how does that experience influence your
advice?
Elliot Kallen: Life has a way. Great question. Life has a way of not just making you humble, but bringing humility to you.
Humility and empathy are two incredible traits, not humbleness. But humility and I'm sure you have the word. I just said, uh,
Corey Kupfer: empathy.
Elliot Kallen: Empathy They're great at giving you the ability to talk to people and listen [00:34:00] from their point of view. I think that's the best thing I do. I think what I've got going for me that they're very, there's a plethora of competent financial advisory firms in the country.
I'm not that unique on that. What makes me unique to me and to a lot of people in their own way is I'm exceptionally approachable. I care and I think. I'm doing research all the time. I want to succeed for you. I want you to succeed. Your money is my money. You're my brother. You're my father. You're my son.
I wouldn't treat you any differently than in my own family. That's what makes me unique, I believe. And the people who know me feel like that's who I want to work with. He knows, he not only knows me. He cares as if it's me. He talks to me about my kids. He talks to me about my marriage. He understands where I'm coming from.
I'm bitter, I'm divorced. He's talking to me about that. How to get over the bitterness. If there's a death in the family, we talk about the [00:35:00] death in the family. I can empathize. I've had my own share of tragedy there. That's what makes you wonderful, is empathy. I wish my children had the same level of empathy and the next generation was as empathetic.
As the greatest generation of World War Two that had no other option but to be empathetic at that time as they went to war. And today, we're a little cocky. I don't need to care about you. I care about me. I drive a bigger car than you because I want to, I drive a nicer car, nicer house, prettier spouse, better looking shirt, custom, all these things that we compared with each other that are the exact opposite of someone who's empathetic about the person is the world we live in, the material world.
Empathy, you can't measure in a nice shirt. You can't do that, but I can measure in how I care for you. And if you have something going on in your life, I can pick up the phone or I could stop by your house and said, Hey, can I help you? Yeah, anything I can do. That's a
good that's empathetic.
Corey Kupfer: Love that. [00:36:00] Love that.
Anything else before I ask you my final 2 questions, anything else that comes to mind, whether it's, related to your past deal experiences, things you're seeing in your space now currently in terms of wealth management financial services around deals or anything else that comes to mind that we haven't covered before I ask you list?
Elliot Kallen: So when, so far what I've learned about the deals, 'cause I get hit with what feels like a deal a week. It's probably not, but it feels like it's sometimes
Is that most people are wanna buy me out with my own money. Here I spent, a bunch of years building a brand up, Prosperity Financial Group.
Sometimes I feel like we're the Band Aid brand, but it has no value. Like just drop them, we don't care. They're not listening to me at all. They said, Oh, you've done a great job building up your business. So we just want to throw it away and get your clients. So they want my assets. They don't really care about me.
And if I die tomorrow, they give them out to other people at the firm. Yeah. And so there's not really that you're my, you're part of my family. We want you in our family, Elliot. And I think if somebody came to me and said, I want you in my family, because I care about [00:37:00] you. And I want you to walk away from this whole deal one day, feeling like you have succeeded rather than walked away and left something on the table.
I'd be interested in that, but I almost never hear that. I do hear that a little bit sometimes, a little bit here and there, but for the most part, it's about, we want your assets. And frankly, if you died, I hope you don't, but if you did die, we'll make sure your wife gets the money. Sorry about that.
Corey Kupfer: Got it.
So, what can people find out more about your various businesses? What websites or anywhere else you
want to direct them?
Elliot Kallen: Absolutely. For prosperity financial group, it's www. prosperityfinancialgroup. com. My email is Elliot E L L I O T at prosperityfinancialgroup. com. My cell is 510 206 1103, and I put out my cell because I live on my cell, like everybody else.
And for the charity, if somebody's so inclined and they want to get in a world of stopping teen suicide and helping teens, and this is important to them, I know today happens to be Giving [00:38:00] Tuesday. I know you're not, nobody's listening to this on Giving Tuesday. But unfortunately, fundraising is the mother's milk of charity, and it's just how it is.
And that's abrighterday. info, and we'd love for you to check out our resources. Everything we do is free.
Corey Kupfer: Love it. Love it. And the book, I assume they can get on Amazon and everywhere else?
Elliot Kallen: Amazon. com. Driven by Elliot Cantlin. Two L's and one T, Elliot Cantlin. Adam Torres is in there too. But if you put Elliot Cantlin, it pops up.
I don't know how many copies we sold, but because all the profit from there goes to the charity, not to me personally. I'll never take a penny from the charity.
Corey Kupfer: Right.
Love that. Love that. ELliot my final question of the podcast is always about my highest value in life, which is freedom. And for me, that means freedom from around the world for all people from oppression to why I'm, I've been an entrepreneur and haven't had a boss in decades.
What does freedom mean to you and how does it impact your life and business?
Elliot Kallen: It's a great question. You're going to get different answers from different people. We live in a volatile political world, so freedom can be very political in there. Yeah, [00:39:00] but I won't do the esoteric, global, thing, but for me personally, about 10 years ago, I sat down with my wife and this is wife number two.
Hopefully it's not on route to wife number three. And I'm hoping I'm not the guy between one and three either. I have a great marriage and I have a wonderful wife and I'm very fortunate and blessed with all that stuff. But I said, you know, Tammy, I advise people in retirement every day of the week.
And it's not just financial advice. We talk about what are you going to do? Because the average senior watches TV four hours a day. That's not a good financial plan. And so we talk about that, whether it's golf or travel or dinner or wine or grandchild what's your plan? So I said to her what's our plan in retirement.
And I'll give you a little bit of a winded answer to a short question, if that's okay with you. That's great. and we both said, we took out a piece of paper, literally, I said, what do we like to do above all else? And when I was younger, I lived in Europe. I lived in Geneva for a short period of time.
[00:40:00] So for me, traveling, particularly Euro travel is a really big thing. I love to travel. My wife loves to travel. She gives me the permission to do all the effort, put it all, just do it all. And she said, I'll never complain about what you do. I'll be a great sport because I don't say do this or do that. Just run it by me.
And I do it all. We have a great time. I mess up something on every trip, but they're great trips. So travel's number one. We love great food. We love to cook great food. I've become a bit of an amateur chef and she's my number one critic, but she loves the cooking too. We have a thousand bottle wine tasting room A lot big caps mostly big caps and some sins All from california and we collect it.
We buy it. We drink it. We party with it We do that. Those are the big things food wine and travel or are big things That's why I wouldn't mind starting a leisure business in retirement And I said we talked about this and I said how about golf because we belong to a country club here in california And we both agreed we [00:41:00] like golf.
We don't love golf if for some reason physically we couldn't golf We survive we go to the gym Four or five days a week and I go at 4 45 in the morning if that didn't happen We'd walk every day. If that didn't happen, we'd do something different. We're passionate about being in shape, even though I always feel like I'm out of shape, but whatever.
So we do that. And I said why are we going to wait to retirement to do that? Let's do it now. And that's what we started to do. So for me, the freedom is the ability to say like I'm doing this summer. Okay, five days of Munich, 12 days in, or 10 days in Austria and four days in Crete. That's our summer.
And I got a daughter Dallas. We're going to go see with a grandchild on the way. And 1, it was there now. I got a son in DC. We're going to go there whenever we want and we'll go to Hawaii in December. That's a lot of being on a plane. That's a lot of eating out. That's a lot of great entertaining.
And we love [00:42:00] to have people over for dinner. Corey, come over and eat and share our great wine with us because we're not saving it for a rainy day. We're saving it for you and people like you. We want to have great products and great wine and great friends. And that's what freedom means.
Corey Kupfer: Love that answer.
And I know we had in our pre call, we shared our common love of travel. Great food, wine and great company. So I'm on board for all of that.
Elliot Kallen: The doors open and you let me know where you're in Chicago, right?
Corey Kupfer: No,, I'm in California most of the time. I'm in Marina del
Rey.
Elliot Kallen: Oh, you're in Southern California. Let's figure it out and we'll we'll have to do some exchange of food and wine somewhere.
Corey Kupfer: Love
that. Love that. Elliot Kallen, thanks for being such a great guest on the DealQuest podcast. Thanks for having me, Cory.
