Joe Dunaway 0:02

Welcome to the VICI Code, where we unlock real stories of small business owners who've battled chaos, crushed doubt, and conquered their challenges. Faith, family, and finances. No fluff, just raw, honest conversations that decode the path to victory. One story at a time. What is up? Thank you for joining us today as we explore our another latest purpose-driven journey, The Architect of Value, where we learn about building an enterprise that outlasts you, how high-level service providers can shift from operating a job to building an asset, the power of alternative risk management, and why the fiduciary mindset is the bedrock of long-term sustainable growth. Every business owner reaches a plateau where the systems that got them to a million are the exact same things preventing them from reaching 10 million. Today's guests have spent over two decades as the architect for elite professional practices, helping them move from day-to-day survival to sustainable enterprise value. Steven Belosi, a C-suite consultant, accredited investment fiduciary, and former standout college athlete who pioneered proprietary insurance products and captive medical liability companies. Steven and I connected through Dan Martell's elite mastermind. He brings a fiduciary first mindset to the VICI code. With his background in complex financial structures like captive insurance and his experience navigating the elite professional service space, Steven is the ultimate architect of enterprise value. He doesn't just look at a PL, he looks at the structural integrity of a leader's entire life. We are exploring enterprise grade leadership. How do you apply a fiduciary standard to your business operations to ensure you're building an asset, not just a career? And as always, we'll filter Steven's journey through the VICI pillars faith, family, fitness, and finances. Steven, so good to connect with you again, man. Welcome to the VICI Code.

Stephen Bellosi 2:12

Great to connect again. Uh, I've been looking forward to continuing our dialogue.

Joe Dunaway 2:17

Yeah, well, we we got a lot to dive into. We want to jump right into the early stages, the breakthrough. You started by educating medical and dental residents, an audience that is notoriously difficult to capture, and transitioned into high-level C-suite consulting. What was the specific breakthrough moment where you realized that professional practice owners were fundamentally misunderstanding the enterprise value of their own businesses?

Stephen Bellosi 2:43

That is that is the question, Joe. And I don't know if it was just really um one moment. I think it's it's a collection of moments. And um, I do recall, my gosh, it's it seems like so long ago, where I remember sitting across the table, you know, from physicians and practice owners and finally having this epiphany that I knew more than they did, right? And it was the kind of that light bulb moment. I want to say it was probably about eight, nine years into my career. And some people would say, My gosh, Steve, it took you so long to kind of get to that point. But what dawned on me was, you know, in the uh in the curriculum, whether we're talking about physicians or dentists, right? These other uh professional service providers, there is no financial education, Joe. And it dawned on me that not only was there no financial education, that there was a lack of incentive to have any financial education, right? Because when you think about it, the institutions that are educating the physicians or the dentists, what are they? I mean, they're hospitals, right? That they don't want to uh train entrepreneurs, right? They're training world-class clinicians. So this has been um this has been the issue, you know, in that in that field, and it persists today. So that that hasn't changed. I don't see it changing, but uh the turning point for me, uh having so many conversations with providers that aspire to you know start a practice and um and then when you start to think about all the things that you need to do to actually execute on that, I mean the the list is a mile long, right? So, you know, another kind of turning point moment for me was again, I had the good fortune of working with uh so many um talented, um very bright uh physicians and dentists. One of my kind of bigger, more established clients um came to me with an opportunity and said, look, you know, I want to build, I want to build something. And you know, obviously I was intrigued, but this is when I first started to learn about um consolidating practices, about the term enterprise value and really the whole um sort of pathway to get from single provider or single specialty provider to really to a multi-specialty medical organization that consists of you know different service lines and um not just practices, but outpatient surgical facilities. So I had the you know the good fortune of being in the right place at the right time, kind of uh stepping into that in my gosh, it's so long ago at this point, but it was my my early 30s, and I spent the better part of a decade living that uh in that world where we were either consolidating practices, buying them, merging them, and you know, getting to this point where it became very attractive uh for an exit. So, not just one thing, but really the accumulation of many things over you know many years that kind of got me to that point where it was okay, how do we go from you know point A to point B and really maximize that enterprise value? And really, what does it really take to get into a position where you can transact?

Joe Dunaway 6:04

And a lot of those conversations took place during your fiduciary side of an AIF. You hold the AIF designation, which centers on fiduciary responsibility. Most business owners operate their internal business without that mindset. How does applying a fiduciary standard to your own leadership partnerships and financial structure change the long-term viability of a private practice or firm?

Stephen Bellosi 6:29

Yeah, I mean, it's another great question. I mean, when you think about where practice starts, Joe, it's it's um usually it's one or two providers, right? And it's front desk, and everybody's wearing a lot of hats, including the owner operator, right? As the business grows, it's a function of taking off those hats, giving those hats to people that are trained to do certain things. And the business really, it really goes from that mom and pop to you know a real, a real business, right? And so there's so many pieces that kind of come come into play there. But to your point, I mean, to me, and my entry point into the business was that financial advisory, you know, fiduciary lens. And most oftentimes it was getting into the practice and figuring out, okay, um, where are the big spends, right? And it was always the same thing, Joe, it's rent, payroll, insurance, right? Those are your top three for the most part. And then, you know, kind of everybody else kind of uh, you know, it could be anything else once you get once you get past that point. Um, so the you know, looking through that financial lens was very helpful to say, hey, is there any financial waste anywhere? Is there anything we can do more efficiently anywhere? And then when you start to look at um, you know, a multi-location practice, or when you start to consolidate them, you can achieve these economies of scale by putting together all of the things like the 401k and the health benefits and things like that, because those are the big, you know, those are really the big spends. We talked um, or you mentioned the you know, the captive insurance world, which again, that's a very um it's a very narrow field that it only fits the right kind of the right kind of practice or the right size. But done properly, I mean it creates uh tremendous uh leverage and expense management for you know for a large medical practice. And you know, we don't want to make this all about medical malpractice, but when you look at most practices, especially northeast part of the country and and others, I mean it's a top two, top three expense, right, right behind right behind uh medical insurance. So if you can, if you can find ways, and this is what I learned, Joe, if we can reduce overhead, right, while finding uh efficiencies, whether by coming together or you know, improving the commercial payer contracts, there's a really great value proposition um, you know, to be had for you know bringing these groups together. But it all really started looking through that fiduciary lens, right? How are we doing things the right way? And you mentioned a word that I know we hear a lot, you know, through our coaching community, which is standards, right? And what I found working with some of these practices is that there's very little or almost no standards when it comes to the financial pieces, right? How clean are the books and records? How how well thought out is the employee benefit plan? What how is recruiting being done? How is retention being done? So all of those things really uh lent themselves very well to kind of making a leap into getting into the really getting into the practice and and being more of a C-suite consultant, being more of a growth consultant, having lived through the get from point A, you know, the mom and pop, one or two, you know, one or two employees to a real medical organization that has uh real systems, real processes, and real enterprise value.

Joe Dunaway 9:57

So, you know, we talked about some of the the PL costs. Let's circle back. I do want to circle back on, you know, risk management. Is there one risk one risk management blind spot that most owners don't see until it's already costing them millions in enterprise value?

Stephen Bellosi 10:17

If I had to narrow it down to one, it's probably the the delay in bringing in um real administrative talent. And this is something I talk about a lot. And again, it's it's really part of the reason why you know my career path has kind of turned more to the consulting than just the the financial advisory piece of it. Um and I always say this, I say it a lot. Um a practice, right, that wants to grow, they may not be at a point where they can afford $250,000, $300,000 CFO, COO. And if that if that's not the case today, they can rent it. Right. So if you can't afford it, you rent it because you may not be able to afford it today, but you can't afford not to have that level of thinking in your organization if you want to grow. Right. So it's the it's the classic if you if you do what you've always done, you're gonna get what you've always got, right? And if you're just trying to figure it out and wing it, it's just gonna take much longer. Right. So it's it's very much the reason you know why we're in a coaching community, right? We want to accelerate our growth path, right? So I think that that's probably the number one that sticks out to me is provider will be doing very, very well. And again, these are very, very intelligent people, right? Very ambitious, very entrepreneurial, but the delay in raising their hand and saying, hey, I could really use some help, that piece, and it's so difficult to quantify, Joe. It really is, but that's probably number one that sticks out is that that key hire.

Joe Dunaway 11:55

I can I can speak from uh from experience with some of the clients that I've helped. Some some of my clients have high hired the right billing encoders, uh, and it's led to uh a massive influx of of faster cash into the business to help them run and expand. Um, and give back to their team. Some of these some of these hires are like huge for them. Where how did you how are you operating without it? So I I can even speak from experience that that's a that's a great bit of advice, uh Steven. Now let's let's zoom out, right? Let's zoom out from the day to day and let's get more into that consulting piece. In the finance pillar, you've dealt with everything from captive insurance to derivatives. For the owner of a professional service firm who feels trapped by busy work, what is the sequence of moves required to stop being the bottleneck of their own company?

Stephen Bellosi 12:49

Yeah, there's a phrase that comes to mind that you're I'm sure you're familiar with this one, you know, from Dan's group, but the sequencing equals success, right? And um yeah, when we're talking about any any business, when I think about all the businesses I've worked with, you know, the owner-founder is almost always the bottleneck. And what it's about, Joe, is control, right? And having the trust in others to relinquish some of that control and empower others to make make those decisions. So um, you know, that's kind of where the the transformation happens, in in my opinion, is kind of getting, you know, getting that key person in the door and getting out of the way, right? Because it's it's almost always the uh the owner-founder. Because again, a lot of times, let's just be real about it. It's their money, it's their idea, it's their vision, it's their brand, it's them, right? And the whole process of really growing something of enterprise value is actually making it not about that owner-founder, right? It's actually making the the whole thing about reducing the key person risk. And it really boils down to that basically the higher the enterprise value, the lower the key person risk. So imagine telling uh uh you know a practice owner this, and I've had to do this, where it's hey, this whole thing revolves around you, and um the mission is for you not to be the superstar anymore. Right. That we want we want the uh you know the spotlight to be equally on everybody else. And the more that we can do that, the higher the value of the practice is. And you should see some of the looks that you know that uh I get from time to time.

Joe Dunaway 14:42

And you know, they go through, I don't, I don't want to say this in a negative light, but it's true. You know, a lot of these uh physicians, they they develop this, they call it the God complex, where they just they they are important, they're they're saving lives. How can you not develop this complex of ultra importance? Um, so it's it's definitely gotta be difficult for them to pull themselves out. You know, how do you prepare a company for an exit that is, you know, let's say five years away when the owner is currently doing all the sales work today?

Stephen Bellosi 15:14

Yeah. It's um it's a multi-year strategy, like you said. It could take three years, it could take five years, but there has to be a willingness, Joe. And that that's the that's probably the most challenging uh piece of the work, which is getting that owner operate, that owner operator to adapt a different mentality. It's it's really a paradigm shift, it's a mindset shift of the hero, you know, superstar mentality to the you know, CEO, mentor, you know, if if again, uh you're gonna know where this comes from too, but um, it's the if you can teach the other physicians or dentists or whatever it is in the practice to be 80% of what you are, it's 100% freaking awesome, right? And that's the thing because they wanna be just sort of by by default, right? They want to be the star of the show, they want to be the most important. And it's really it's it's kind of goes against our psychology, right? We built this thing, you know, we've been the center of you know, of that business, you know, getting getting off the ground and thriving. Why is it not about us anymore? Right. And it in reality, again, if we're really, if our if our mentality is, hey, how do we grow enterprise value? It's exactly that. It goes against the like where the brain wants to go. And so that's that's the trick is really getting them to take those hats off and really uh buying into replicating themselves, right? That's the most that's probably the most challenging thing about it.

Joe Dunaway 16:50

The conversation I have with some of my clients that are in that same chapter of their their business cycle is you know, got it. You're concerned that you're you may not be concerned that like other people can do the work, but you may be concerned that your clients may think that like you're you know bowing out or that they're not getting, you know. But I I tell my clients that are in that in that position that you need to go from world-class technician to world-class trainer of other technicians, right? There will be that that period of like, oh no, Joe's no longer doing my taxes or or my consulting package. Now I have you know Christina doing it. But Christina is great, and Joe's training another five Christinas to train, you know what I mean? Like, that's usually the mindset shift that works for us when we're talking to clients is you know, you want to go from a world-class technician to a world-class trainer of technicians, and now you have a farm of um all these other technicians that can do sometimes, they can do more than 80%, sometimes they can do 110% better than you. You just haven't found them yet, right?

Stephen Bellosi 18:07

Right, right. And and part of that reason, again, this is from this is from last week's uh call. It's because the the practice or the business doesn't have the space for that because the you know, the owner operator is preventing that from happening, right? They're not attracting that type of person. So, you know, coaching the owner operator that you know, we want to attract the top-tier talent that can one day actually, you know, kind of uh surpass you in terms of their skills and training and everything else, that's a tough thing to swallow because in them in their mind, it's like, well, wait a minute, nobody can do it better than I can. But in reality, that's exactly what you want, right? And then you want to be able to have this organization where you bring talent in, and that talent helps grow the other talent, right? Where the business itself, not only can it maintain, right? And and this this is talked about on our coaching calls all the time. Hey, can you can you take a vacation and the thing not fall apart? Not only that, but we take it one step further where can you step out of the business completely? And not only does it maintain, but does it grow? Right. And so if you can, to your point, if you can become this world-class trainer, impart all your wisdom onto you know the rest of the team where they're then doing the same thing and the same thing and the same thing, that's that's the ultimate destination where you have this company that grows. And yeah, it's it still has all of your fingerprints all over it, but you're not in it. You're not you're not in the weeds every day. And that is so hard to do, what we just described there. That is that's the ultimate destination, is to get to that point where the thing can really thrive, not just sustain. Yeah, so getting the owner operator there, Joe, that's the that's the mission.

Joe Dunaway 19:55

Yeah, that's our job, right?

Stephen Bellosi 19:57

Yeah, that's our that's our that's what we signed up for.

Joe Dunaway 20:00

Speaking of team, coach, you know, growth, let's get into some other fun stuff. Fitness and the athlete mindset. You played college football at the College of New Jersey. How much of the team first culture and physical discipline from your athletic days still informs the way you advise C-suite executives today?

Stephen Bellosi 20:24

Yeah, so uh being an athlete, Joe, I think it maps it maps so well to the business world specifically. And um I I again right place, right time. I've had the good fortune of having some really great coaches, right? Um high school and college and alike. Um it all mass. So when you talk about things like you know, the time management, the discipline, and just that, you know, the habits that you form, um it all mass. And to me, I've I've always been the type of person where the busier I am, um, the more the like just the better everything goes, right? Because I'm forced, and we talk about forcing functions on these calls all the time. My forcing function is my calendar, right? And so if I live by my calendar, everything else, you know, everything that needs to happen happens. If I don't, then that's when the problems occur. So um I would say, you know, I attribute almost all of my success professionally back to my um, you know, my athletic uh background and experience. And um I could talk about it for hours, but to me, it's it, there's so many of those lessons that map directly over to business. And I always say if you want to, if you want to learn about somebody, play sports with them. Because you can tell how do people deal with adversity, how do they deal with how do they deal with winning. How do they deal with anything? Right? You can oh you can see all aspects of that person's personality when you're playing sports. And so you map you map it forward to today, you know, can't can't play tackle football anymore at uh at my advanced age, but play around to golf with somebody, Joe, you learn a lot about them.

Joe Dunaway 22:20

I agree. Um, it's a big part of why it's it's stressful time management-wise, but I I still coach little league, right? Like I've I have four kids. We're going on five this summer. I don't I don't think I told you that yet, but we got a fifth one on the way uh at the end of August. And so like I've coached, I've coached the two older kids through several years of little league, and we're coaching the younger ones. And and all the kids I coach, most of them won't even play beyond little league, let alone play at a higher level beyond that. But what we teach there is resiliency, teamwork, how to win, how to lose, how to be uh responsible uh to your team, show up, um, you know, cheer everybody on and just be a part of the team. And, you know, so much is learned in the trenches of sports. I I would be doing my family, my kids a disservice by not, you know, letting them experience the the ups and downs um and the growth of sports. So I'm right there with you. I played college sports too, and um it's not even that level, but just all all sports at all the levels that you know I you and I played at, they've played a part of you know the DNA of who we are and how we show up for our clients, our family, our community. So um I couldn't agree more.

Stephen Bellosi 23:43

Yeah, and I think it really, especially as we get older, those habits that we formed in terms of getting into the gym, they pay dividends later on. Um, because it's just it's part of, you know, it's part of who we are. Yeah. But you know, I see you get in in for uh CrossFed regularly, like all those movements. I did those for years, right? All the the cleans and and uh deadlifts and all that stuff. Um it's it's almost like it's it's in your DNA, you know, once you've done it for so long. And when you think about missing a day or two at the gym, it's like, no, we gotta get, we gotta get in there, right? It's just part of it's it becomes part of who you are.

Joe Dunaway 24:23

Yeah, it's your it's your operating system, it's your it's your roadmap to success. You can't, yeah. I've I've lived a life of you know, stepping away from the gym for an extended period of time. And I can tell you right now, I'm not saying that was the underlying issue, but I think it was um it it said a lot about where I was in life and and where I wasn't in a great space. And that was just one of many reasons, many many things compounding a problem that was already existing. So I I couldn't, it's not a it's it's a non-negotiable, right? You know, it's just a non-negotiable at this point. Um, uh, you know, making sure that I'm prioritizing my fitness. Even even my wife won't even get in the way. Not that she, not that it's like, you know, I have to posture that way, but like even if it like, you know, is a a cram to for me to go run out to CrossFit or or go out for a run, you know, she wants me to do that because she knows I'm a better person for it. And although it presents some obstacles once in a while, we both know like it's for the better. It's it's a sacrifice that that yields um you know results for for all of us.

Stephen Bellosi 25:32

So yeah, no, and it's I think um it's a privilege. And we'll just talk about this for a minute because uh it's not something that I've uh I've really shared really with anybody except for very close people to me. But uh this was now it's a couple years ago at this point, but I managed to injure myself in the gym pretty uh seriously. I had a multi multi-disc uh injury in my cervical spine. So when you talk about being out of the gym involuntarily for a period of time, um I remember all I could think about, not all I could think about, but one of the top, you know, most frequent thoughts in my brain was I cannot wait to get back into the gym. I cannot wait to be able to, you know, exercise again and not be in pain. And um you really don't appreciate your good health and physical fitness and everything until it's taken away. So during that period of time, it was, you know, I I did not want to be photographed, I was certainly not on social media, I was not able, physically able to show up, you know, for clients for my family. And it was probably one of the most difficult things, you know, mental, not only physically, um, and if anybody out there has had a disc injury, they can relate. It it's absolutely debilitating. So imagine not being able to sit, stand, sleep without being in some form of pain, right? And so you know, fast forward that every day that I'm in the gym, you know, at least at some point in time, there's there's a you know, this many thoughts of gratitude that I can do that, and that you know, I made pretty much you know a full recovery from that, and then I can get back in the gym and do everything that I did previously. So again, it's um you know, take take nothing for granted. And you know, again, the thought, you know, the thought or the frame that we put that in is I get to go to the gym, right? I get to show up for my clients the way that I want to, and my family, and my friends, and do all the things because in a moment's notice, it could be it could change.

Joe Dunaway 27:45

Yeah, that's a great perspective, Steve. Yeah. And I and I know your family had to be a big part of your support system while you were going through that. You know, you enjoy traveling with your wife, Michelle, and your son, Braxton, and the family pillar. How do you manage the demands of a high travel, high consulting lifestyle while ensuring you're act actually present with them?

Stephen Bellosi 28:06

Yeah, I think it just goes back to the time management. And I think it's really about um, you know, good communication, setting uh the expectation, right? And being on the same page that if, you know, again, if you want to get to where you want to go, you want to achieve all these goals, that it's not easy, and you have to be willing to do things that others just simply won't do, right? Um and there's nothing wrong with the mentality of, hey, I want to go, you know, I want to have a nine to five, and I want to, you know, um, you know, just just kind of check the box on that versus I want to put in extra effort so it does, and again, so it can free up time, whether it's down the road or whatever that looks like, to be able to go to the soccer game and to be able to do do all the things. It just looks way different when you have to travel a lot or uh be available after hours and and do certain things. So I think it's really um again, just setting the setting the expectation, managing the expectation, and arranging your schedule in a way that for the most part, it could be invisible to everybody else. But you're, you know, whether you're getting up extra early or you know, after after bedtime, you're catching up on some work, that's kind of what it looks like, Joe. And that's that's the stuff that nobody really ever sees. But it's kind of what it's kind of what it takes. It's very, um, I would say, you know, especially working with a lot of you know physicians or dentists, they're not talking during clinic hours. They're doing what? They're seeing patients. Right. So so it's kind of it can be, you know, a little bit um all over the place in terms of what the schedule looks like, but that's what it takes.

Joe Dunaway 29:53

Yeah, it's a it's it's an art. It's almost magic to make that invisible uh succeed um and be present with your family. Now you are involved with things even beyond work and family. You're involved in organizations like Miami Man Legacy Club and the Humane Society. In terms of faith and your personal values, how does doing the right thing, even when no one is looking, serve as a competitive advantage in a world that often prioritizes the quick flip over long-term sustainability?

Stephen Bellosi 30:26

Yeah, that's a fantastic question. And what I think it comes back to, Joe, is you know, having the right framework with which to make decisions, right? So if we're talking about faith, right, we know we like to think that we know what the difference between good, good and bad is, right? Between right and wrong. So if we can if we can lean into that and not get caught up in kind of the day-to-day or the quick win or the cutting the corner, and some of that comes back to also the uh like the gym analogy, right? You can't you can't just get into shape by showing up at the gym every so often, right? And you you can't have um you know good decision-making criteria if you're not spending time on your faith and again, showing up for your family and and those things. So I think it's just it's those uh those frameworks uh that are so helpful when you know you're making hard decisions. And we get them a lot, right? Especially dealing with clients, where it's like, hey, can we just can we just cut a corner, right? Can we just what's the fastest way, you know, to get something done? And it's it's a conversation I have more often than not is okay, there's the fast way, right? And then there's the right way. And those two things are not always the same, right? So it's really coming back to the right way, and I think that that's with everything. So we're talking about setting a good example for our children, right? And our family. And you know, getting um, you know, when you think about when you study your faith, right? What's the what's the right way to do it? Is it the fast way? Is it the easy way? And oftentimes, and it's the same thing with business, oftentimes it's not. You know, the fast way is actually the wrong way. And it's those that cut corners that end up uh, you know, kind of paying the price down the road, right? And I say that that I've seen it happen a lot where it's if we pay less now and we cut a corner, and I'm just thinking specifically on the business side, and then we get down the road and we're into a due diligence exercise, right, to fix something later. Like I said, you pay now or you pay later, and when you pay later, you pay double.

Joe Dunaway 32:45

Yeah.

Stephen Bellosi 32:46

And I think that that's that that really I think it it's it's a great metaphor for life, right? So if you do the work now, right, you're not gonna have to pay double later, right? You go to the gym consistently, you're not gonna have to, you know, go on this mission to drop a bunch of weight or you know, whatever that that situation looks like. I think it all maps, Joe. I think it it's all you know, having that, having that consistency and then having these good frameworks on all fronts, and then also having a great community like the one that we're in, right? And something I'll say about that real quick is you know, Dan's community has also opened up doors for other communities that are local. I know we talked about that before. Um and so that that kind of um, you know, that thought process starts to really open up other positive doors, right? Whereas I think it's the same could be true the other way, right? If you're not in good communities and you're not hanging around the right people, right? You can kind of you can kind of go the other direction really, really fast. So I think all those things map when we talk about what's the you know, what's kind of the path to making good decisions and success, it's it's all of those things. And it's having the right frameworks and it's having the right, you know, community and and peer groups to rely on.

Joe Dunaway 34:06

Yeah, absolutely. So we got the fun rapid fire section here, Steve. Before we wrap things up, I want to hit you with a couple quick ones. What's the most common myth about growth you have to debunk with new clients?

Stephen Bellosi 34:22

Um that it's uh quick or easy. It's not, it's definitely not. Yeah, there's no there's no quick fix and it's not it's not a straight path. It's a very windy road.

Joe Dunaway 34:35

Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. Do that and you'll win. That's it.

Stephen Bellosi 34:39

Sometimes you gotta go slow to go fast. 100%.

Joe Dunaway 34:42

What's one structural move a business owner can make this year to immediately increase their exit valuation?

Stephen Bellosi 34:49

Um, quick one is is get your books and records in order.

Joe Dunaway 34:54

That's good advice. That's great advice.

Stephen Bellosi 34:58

I know, I know somebody named Joe who can help with that.

Joe Dunaway 35:01

There you go. I'm preaching the same thing, brother. What does uh victory look like for you and your family in 2026?

Stephen Bellosi 35:10

Um time freedom, right? We were talking about that kind of uh off camera. So uh having more freedom of time, you know, getting more control of uh of the calendar. That's what it looks like in 26.

Joe Dunaway 35:24

I love that answer. I feel the same way. All right, quick recap. True value is built through structure, discipline, risk management, and the courage to think like an enterprise owner rather than a technician. If you're a professional owner, firm owner, looking to build or scale an asset, connect with Steven on Instagram. He's Steven underscore Apex underscore consulting, and he can help you explore his consulting practice. Uh Steve, anything you want to leave our listeners are uh with today?

Stephen Bellosi 35:57

Uh there's there's so much, Joe, but I think I mean to me, um, you know, I hope we brought some value to you know to those that uh that we serve, you know, business owners of of different types or aspiring business owners. Um to me it's uh you know, it's it's just it's so rewarding. And it's it's great to obviously connect with like-minded people like you. And I would encourage every anybody that's you know that that's listening, uh, that's you know, if anything resonated or if if I can be of of of help, I'm glad to connect um with anybody, especially on Instagram. That's that's where um you can find me kind of the you know the most. But um just as a parting message, and I know you know where this comes from too, uh think bigger because there's a lot that's possible. And I know we see this in our coaching community. There's a lot of people doing a lot of cool things. And a lot of it is just mindset and pushing yourself to do more. So whatever your business is doing today, add a zero to it.

Joe Dunaway 37:02

I love it. I love it. Uh, to our listeners, uh, you can find a link to Steve's uh Instagram account uh in the show notes. Uh and for now, build smart, lead with integrity, and always keep your eyes on the long-term value. We'll see you on the next episode of the VICI Code. Thanks for tuning in to the VICI Code, where the underdogs rise and the numbers finally make sense. If today's story hit home, share it. And remember, faith fuels a fight, and your comeback is already in progress.