The Balanced Business Dad
The Balanced Business Dad is a conversation that focuses on balancing the important six pillars of life for the business and entrepreneur dad. Join hosts Dustin Hoog and R.J. Campbell as they talk about the challenge of balancing work and life with the pillars which are: Faith, Health, Marriage, Fatherhood, Brotherhood and Business. Whether you are a solopreneur, dadpreneur or owner of multiple businesses, you will learn from success stories, wins and challenges from these Christian business owners as well as hearing about using the Dad Up Framework to handle challenges.
The Balanced Business Dad
Redefining Success: Kalan Hubbard on Entrepreneurship, Family, and the DADUP Framework
Think you've mastered the high-wire act of balancing business with family? Kalan Hubbard joins me to challenge that notion and offer fresh strategies for success. As entrepreneurial dads, we're in the trenches, where the battle for time and attention between boardroom triumphs and bedtime stories is real. Kalan, a dynamo in the real estate world, shares his insights on thriving in the entrepreneur marriage, keeping the sparks flying with our spouses while we fuel our business dreams. Our conversation is a treasure trove of pivotal discussions that promise to strengthen your home life as much as they do your bottom line.
Ever considered shaking up the corporate ladder by ditching the CEO role? That's precisely what some of our ventures have done, and the results are nothing short of transformative. Our chat takes you behind the scenes of this unorthodox approach, revealing how clear role definition and enhanced communication can lead to a well-oiled business machine. Discover what happened when we let actions and expertise, rather than titles, drive our operations. It's a candid look at the professional harmony we've achieved, where business decisions stay at the office, and personal bonds remain unscathed.
Rounding up our robust discussion, we introduce you to the DADUP framework, the beating heart of the Balanced Business Dad community. It's not just about gaining insights but also about applying them to forge a life that's rich in accomplishment and affection. As we wrap up, I extend an invitation to join our vibrant collective of fathers who are just as passionate about their family roles as they are about their business pursuits. Tune in and let's navigate this exhilarating journey together, where being a supportive spouse and an attentive parent is the true mark of success.
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Dads, do you want a thriving business that doesn't control you, a passionate marriage and kids that adore you? Do you want to grow deeper in your faith, be healthier both physically and mentally, build more meaningful relationships with your friends? Welcome to the Balanced Business Dad Podcast, where, in each episode, we dive into balancing and optimizing the six pillars of life Faith, health, marriage, fatherhood, brotherhood and business. And here are your hosts, pioneers of the Balanced Business Dad movement Dustin Hogue and RJ Campbell.
Coach Dustin:What's up, guys? Welcome to another episode of the Balanced Business Dad. I'm your host, coach Dustin, and of course we're going to have a special treat for you today. But real quick, I know how you guys plan things and you plan weeks ahead and then things are just thrown in a wrench when you're a business dad. So if you see my background, it's a little bit different today because I am here actually recording this from home, not our normal studio. My son has been fighting pink eye since Thursday. This is now Monday and he finally gets to go back to school tomorrow and I think I'm actually catching it too. So now I've started on the eyes drops. So it is, you just got to love those wrenches as a business dad. But, guys, welcome. Of course my goal is to always make sure that you're getting value from this episode, and I know you will from today's episode. We have a special guest from Missouri, so that always brings me happy right down the road in the state from me. But, mr Kalen Hubbard, how are you, sir?
Kalan Hubbard:Doing well, doing well, happy to be here and yeah, it's great to find another Missourian here in the virtual world.
Coach Dustin:Yeah, so the cool part is Kalen and I have only talked one other time, but it was either he put out a post or I put out a post and like four people tagged us in it that him and I should be speaking, which I thought, well, hey, that that is God, in my opinion, telling us something, so maybe we should actually talk. So I wanted to get him on the show for a while, but I'm going to let him take it away right now and kind of say you know, what are you doing today, and why did all these people think we should talk? That our lives are intertwined, so take it away.
Kalan Hubbard:Yeah, that was a very interesting post and outside of those tags, I got a couple of texts as well of like, hey, do you know, dustin in St Louis? I'm like I find me this Dustin in St Louis. I guess we need to, yeah. So, yeah, I mean, our worlds definitely intermingle on a couple of different fronts. We're both in the real estate space. My wife has been in real estate. She got into real estate in 2011 and I got in in 2015,. When she hired me to come over from teaching, she was already in real estate and started our team and then hired me to come in and work with the team.
Kalan Hubbard:And then also just talking through this crazy world of being in business, managing this business, being in this entrepreneurial space, and how do we be good fathers, be good husbands, be good partners and spouses to our people? So, starting a couple of years ago, we started another portion of our business where we teach and coach and speak on what we've trademarked as the entrepreneur marriage. So the entrepreneur marriage, and so whether that's you work with your spouse, whether maybe you're a W-2 and your spouse is the entrepreneur, maybe you guys are both entrepreneurs but you work in different businesses, which is where my wife and I are now. I'm doing the teaching and speaking thing, and she's building her own company as well. So all kinds of different combinations, but they all bring their unique challenges and aspects to a marriage. So that's what we do we help people navigate those tough conversations and get on the same page with a lot of things.
Coach Dustin:Yeah, I love that and that hit home so well because I became self-employed in December of 2014. I was employed in December of 2014. I left my very secure job to go into real estate as full time, and I always tell the story. It was nine months before we were going to get married, so I went to my fiance at the time hey, that's very secure, very amazingly good, high paying job with the most amazing benefits that we've ever heard of. I'm going to go ahead and leave that. You know that'll be fun. Um, I was blessed that. Her uh was blessed by her parents. They were entrepreneurs, so she saw that in life. Um, that you know they ran a business but, uh, she really didn't ever want to become an entrepreneur up until probably the last three years Now before that did you have?
Kalan Hubbard:does your family have a background in entrepreneurship?
Coach Dustin:Mine does not at all, so far less of entrepreneurship. It's not even funny. I think my dad still I've been self-employed for 10 years and I think he's still afraid of me being self-employed actually.
Kalan Hubbard:So I come from the teaching room. My mom and dad are both retired teachers. My sister's a teacher. She married a teacher. Other family members are teachers and I mean, as a country, we're short on male teachers, we're short on math teachers, we're short on middle school teacher. Middle school teachers and I was a male math middle school teacher yeah, all the security you could want in a job, you know, and just hey, you know, like I said, the benefits, the insurance, the time off in the summers, let's just throw that away and jump into this crazy world. But yeah, her family was the same way. Her family was full of entrepreneurs. She, she was like, yeah, it'll be fine, let's go. She had to talk me into it.
Coach Dustin:Nice. So yeah, I was going to say you mentioned in your story there that she hired you. So tell us that story, because it was kind of the other way around. I was self-employed, my wife worked for a big hospital chain, but from home, so she'd kind of work on my business a little bit but then was focusing on her job until finally she came over full time. But it seems like the roles were reversed there and she hired you. So tell us how that journey went.
Kalan Hubbard:Yeah, so I was teaching and she worked for an agent at a local brokerage and she came to that agent and at that time it was the agent, her and another admin and she was running. She had provided a ton of leverage for that agent. He was pretty much just going on appointments and she was running the show. Outside of that, I mean it was a good setup. She grew, helped grow his business to where she hired out the transaction coordinator portion of it as well. And she came to him and said here's the plan for our team growth. Here's the next four or five hires, here's where we're going to upscale this, here's where we're going to move this. Here's the order of the next 16, 18 know months. Here's how we're gonna grow and it's gonna be great. And he said, oh my gosh, this is, this is great, this is amazing, it's going to work. I don't want anything to do with it, but you have to go do this. And she's like what you know. And he, he had other businesses, he had other goals, he had other things that he wanted to get into, but he just said you have to do this, you, you have to go go do this. So she said okay. And, um, she's like, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna build this team. I need a, I need a listing agent, I need, I need a main agent to start with. I need a main agent to start with.
Kalan Hubbard:And so she pulled me from. She convinced me to quit teaching and to put our family in this a hundred percent commission, a hundred percent just world of you know profits instead of you know regular paychecks. And in the meantime she, she kept working for him. She took on another agent, did that agent's transactions for a while. So she was running the original team. She helped run part of another team and started our team and got me I mean cause we didn't have any deals, you know, to start with. So she, she made it work with working with these other teams until we got up and going and she locked me in a room at that brokerage and said here's all the expired listings for the last three years that we have phone numbers for. I'll see you at lunch, get on the phone and that's what I did.
Kalan Hubbard:First two months is just crank through and just call, call, call, call. And then we started growing our team and next thing, you know, we have a few agents with us and we've leveraged out more and more of our admin side, and so she was our CEO and then eventually we started our own small boutique brokerage and so she was the broker and the CEO of that and I was the lead listing agent and did some recruiting and some ownership stuff there. But from day one, make no mistake, I worked for my wife Every Friday, every week. I'm reporting numbers, I'm reporting activities, which led to some very interesting conversations, very interesting conversations, interesting conversations, very interesting conversations, and it some of the, a lot of that stuff's helped us put together the programs that we have for people, because it helped us structure conversations.
Kalan Hubbard:You know, we had to find a way that I could come to her as the broker, as the CEO of our team, and talk to her as the CEO, not as my wife, and I needed to be able to come with it because you know, if I, if I missed numbers, I didn't want to come to her as her husband letting her down. That really messed with me on the inside and and we had some really tough conversations and she did you know. So we found ways to structure those conversations of hey, I'm coming to you as the lead, the, you know the listing agent, I need to tell the CEO where we are, here's where. And it put us in the. It helped us put those hats on. It helped us get in those business conversations to where later we could talk as partners, we could talk as husband and wife, we could talk, as you know, each other's person outside of the business, which took us a while to figure out and was always a work in progress.
Coach Dustin:So I I'm loving this and I say we got to jump right in because I feel this way with my wife a lot. And we, you know I again, it's always we're progressing to get better every day lot. And we, you know, again it's always we're progressing to get better every day in it. And you know we use level 10 meetings to talk about business thing. But we are in every one of our businesses well, except for one, we are partners in it. Where it's not one of us is really in charge, I would say we are in it completely together as partners.
Coach Dustin:So I would love to hear the tools and strategies for all the business dads out there, but including myself, because I'm taking notes of how do you do that? Because there are certain parts of our businesses that I would say I have 51% say in, certain parts, she has 51% say in, but how do we get through those? You mentioned conversations a lot, so I'm assuming it's going to be around conversations to make sure we are on the same page. Would love it, love to hear from you.
Kalan Hubbard:Yeah, one of the best things we did was you're probably familiar with an organizational organization chart. So you've got BOD board of directors reports to the CEO and most businesses large board of directors reports to the CEO In most businesses, large businesses BOD reports to the CEO and then you've got a bunch of managers that all report to the CEO. So we took CEO out for the most part Now. Now with the real estate business, we left her in at CEO. With some of our other businesses, we took CEO out, but she was the CEO of our business. She had the last say. And so we had all these other jobs profitability, recruitment, listings, buyers, hr, accounting and all these jobs even had sub jobs under and we went through, put together a huge list of all the things that we were in charge of and then we mapped out okay, who's in charge of this, who's in charge of that? And we put you know each other's, we put initials into who it was and it helped us do a couple of things. Number one it helped us frame conversations when I could come to her and say, hey, as the accounting manager, I need to talk to the CEO, and now I'm telling her okay, here's where we're at with costs we need to cut back on here. Or she would come to me and say, hey, I need to talk to the accountant. Or she would come to me and say, hey, I need to count a talk to the accountant. The accountant Do we have the funds for me to go buy X to go? We want to spend on ads here, or we need, you know, another computer, whatever. So now she's coming to me in an area that I'm supposed to be in charge of and asking for my expertise within this area. She's not coming to me as another co-owner, and now we're going to figure this out between the two of us. No, she's like no, you're the accountant. Do we have it or do we not? I can say, okay, yeah, we can do that, but I'm going to have to take it from this other thing. Can you go without that for two months? Whatever that is.
Kalan Hubbard:And it helped us have good conversations, putting each other's opinions, you know, in the right lanes and you know. And then we had, as our team grew, we had other people in the, in our brokerage and in our team that took on some of those that you know. We had a director of operations that wasn't either one of us, you know. So she had several things that she was in charge of and and Jessica would come and ask her the same way. She would come and ask me and I would ask her and I could ask you know her. Her name was Tally. I could ask Tally things. Not, I'm not coming to you.
Kalan Hubbard:As you know, as half of the board of directors at the top this is the accounting asking the operations manager what do you need next quarter? I need to know what you need next quarter, or stuff like that. So mapping it all out and us having input into how that looks really helped our conversations not really bleed over into the husband wife conversations and things especially, especially when it came to accountability, when she came to me and said hey, I'm not talking to you as your wife right now. As the CEO, I need to talk to you about where we're at on listings. We're. We're not hitting our goals. Let's. We need to talk to you about where we're at on listings. We're not hitting our goals. We need to have a conversation about your activities, calls, whatever's going on in the agent room, because I was also kind of in charge of for a time in charge of the agent room and then we found that to be problematic because of balancing the husband part.
Kalan Hubbard:So we took, put a different agent in charge of the agent room and they were accountable to jessica and I. I still had these other things, but it helped not having so much that came between her and I. It just became problematic to the point where, like, we can either keep fighting this or here's a solution and that person, honestly she was a former um, she was a former school principal Like she had the better skillset to manage that section and we're like you know what? This, this, this is dumb. She has the skillset, she's very capable, she's very smart. Let's let her, let's have her have the agent room. Kaylin, you're in charge of this, you're in charge of this, tal, you're in charge of this. Let's go and and that was our, our way to kind of help with a lot of those conversations.
Coach Dustin:I love that you mentioned a couple of times. You know you would go to her as and say is it what you truly saying? Hey, I'm the accountant right now. This is my question, so you really called it out. I love that.
Kalan Hubbard:And that was big because it helped us just totally change mind frames. I need to talk to you as the accountant and and I'll I'll share with you an image we have in the class I teach. We have a breakdown of how that conversation goes. Somebody states who they're talking to, who they are, so I need to talk to the CEO as the accountant. Here's the problem, and there's just a structure of here's the problem. Here's the problem and it kind of there's just a structure of here's the problem, here's the impact of this, here are the changes that I'm, that I'm foreseeing happening.
Kalan Hubbard:Let's talk about a and then you discuss a plan and then you end with as partners. At the end you come back to if it's a husband and wife, if it's two partners, if that's a really tough conversation. I always recommend wrapping that up Once you've got all the business done, have a quick conversation and connect as partners At the very end. As your husband, I'm excited we were able to get through all that and have a good conversation. Thank you for having that conversation in those. I appreciate it. I know we're going to be fun. No, we're going to work through this. Love you. High five, pat on the like, whatever that is, love it.
Coach Dustin:Love it. So I mean, you know it's, it's interesting, it's one of those things that it's. It's. It's simple, it's not easy, right? Because I wrote down one of the things that I've always heard. It called the sticky note exercise, which is in the sticky note exercises you're writing everything down, every responsibility down on a sticky note. So accounting, boom, that's a sticky note. Payroll, that's a sticky note, whatever. And then you have a wall full of sticky notes and then you start taking which one of those sticky notes and applying them. Who goes where right or where they fall under. So that's what I heard there when you were talking about that. You mapped it all out, everything in your business, what needs to happen, and now who's in charge of it. Love that. And then that framework is the word I'm going to use on how to have those conversations. I'm coming to the CEO as the accountant. That's, it's genius, right? Because it does change. I mean it really is, because it just changes that it's so incredible, it really is.
Kalan Hubbard:And I stumbled upon that and I think actually Jessica said it to me one time and I was like whoa, anytime that you come to me with this type of thing, that's what I need need like say that thing again. You know it's like yeah, from now on, that's how we have to start these.
Kalan Hubbard:And she was like, why, like what, what do you mean? And we kind of talked through it and then we were both like, absolutely we, we gotta have that for for. So that whole map it out thing in in our class I'll have participants especially if their partners are there in class, I'll have them without the other person, seeing one person fill the whole thing out, the other person fill the whole thing out, and then they compare, like what do you think you are in charge of what? Do you you know what? But? And then we see what's different and then we also have them go through and they'll okay, which of these is a huge pain point for you? Which of these do you think take a guess at? What is a pain point for your partner?
Kalan Hubbard:Now we can have conversations of okay, do we need to switch these roles? Do we need leverage? Do we need to hire this out? Who's the accountant? Can we afford to hire this out? Is it worth? Like, here's a huge stress. What if we just hired half of that out, whatever it is? We just hired half of that out, you know, whatever it is, um, and we just. Again, a lot of what we do is just expose different things that need to have a conversation around that, that the conversation needs to be had.
Coach Dustin:Expose what conversations need to have.
Kalan Hubbard:Yeah, that's the one of the last. The last questions I ask in my class is what's the conversation we're not having that we know we need to have and why are we scared to have it Like? Most of the time, if there's a riff, if there's any type of friction, there's probably a conversation that's not being had, that needs to be had, and finding it I love that question needs to be had.
Coach Dustin:And finding it, I love that question. That's actually kind of a version of we're having our Balanced Business Dad retreat this coming week, so by the time this is aired, we've already had it. But one of actually a fellow both of us know him Coach Matt Lachenko put that question in our worksheet, which is what is the one thing you don't want someone to ask you right now? Oh right, so I love that, and that's kind of how this is. What is the conversation we need to be having that we don't want to have?
Kalan Hubbard:So and then, yeah, and that fault. That question is why, like, why are you so scared of it? Why, yeah, yeah, oh, that's a good one. Well done, coach Matt. Yeah, yeah, oh, that's a good one. Well done, coach Matt.
Coach Dustin:Absolutely, absolutely. So this is awesome. So what I guess, to kind of wrap this up in a bow, the business dad out there who is probably putting way too much on themselves, right, probably, and they're not leaning on their spouse.
Kalan Hubbard:I always think they should, because I think their spouse is smarter than them and they can help them tremendously. How do we start with maybe not even necessarily bringing the spouse in the business, but at least leaning on our spouses and start having these conversations? That would really help us move forward in our business, but also in our marriage, and if those things are right, everything else seems to be elevated as well. So where would you start? If you could sum that up they just can't help themselves and they just start pouring back into you. And we talk about seeing the marriage as a nest and your job is. The goal is for 90% of your intentions, energies and activities is to go into building the other side of the nest for your spouse, whatever that needs, whether it be security, confidence, value, whatever that is. And then the other 10% is understanding what you need on your side of the nest and being able to communicate that to your spouse. When you are like that, when you approach it that way, that other person more times than not they just want to pour back into your side of the nest. So when you have two people spending 90% of their time building the other up and building and supporting and growing the other person. It's massive person, it's massive and that other person. So in this situation to go back to your question of how does a dad, a business dad, lean on their spouse is, I think part of that starts with understanding that you can pour into somebody and pour into a massive way and just build them up and over time, if they're not already, they're going to be building you up. And then the other part of that is understanding what you need and that's a huge proponent.
Kalan Hubbard:I I'll be honest, when we started this, I didn't know what I needed. I didn't know what I needed on my side of the nest. It took me years and that's a constant evolution. I'm't know what I needed on my side of the nest. It took me years and that's a constant evolution. I'm still trying to figure that out. What do I need on my side of the nest For me?
Kalan Hubbard:I'm a very I've always been just a pretty how do I say? On the outside I seem like one of the most confident people you'll meet. Just not a lot bothered me. You couldn't embarrass me. I'm just a confident person, except when it came to my wife's opinion of me. I was always second guessing. I like that was the. If my wife didn't believe me, it would just be crushing.
Kalan Hubbard:I don't care what everybody else says, I don't care how they, how they see me. That much Like I am who I am to them, I don't care what everybody else says, I don't care how they see me, that much I am who I am to them, I don't care. But, jessica, the confidence that she gives me is one of the biggest gifts she's ever given me in our marriage and in our business and me as a professional Just her having confidence in me that I can go do great things. Um, um, let's go like whatever it is you want to. Oh, kalen, I think you would could sell tires for a living. If Jessica says she's confident in it, I'm, I'm there, whatever you know. Um, I don't know if I answered your question, yeah you did.
Coach Dustin:There was a couple of things. Hey, it's building the other person up, right? I mean that's, that's almost the. I always get confused either Zig or Jim Rohn, zig Ziglar or Jim Rohn get somebody else what they need and they're going to help you get what you need. But I mean that's, that's that. But the one under that is understanding what you need. I mean that that doesn't go for your spouse, that goes for anybody you're going to work with. If I, if you don't understand what you need, how is anyone else going to help you, right? So I love that understanding what you need. And then I'm also going to say you're I'm going to assume you're not unusual there, because I believe wars are won because wives have confidence in their men. I really, truly believe that. I truly, truly believe that. And if both sides have that confidence, look out. So I love this. This was great stuff. So what do you have going on now and how can people find you?
Kalan Hubbard:You can find me on all the different socials at Kaelan Speaks, that's K-A-L-A-N. Spe speaks. So Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, all those things. We've got online classes that we're rolling out. We're starting to work on some. I actually just had a quick intro call with someone before this where we're starting some one-on-one coaching so excited about that and that's going to be a pretty unique situation. We're starting some one-on-one coaching so excited about that and that's going to be a pretty unique situation. Roll people through a program to help expose some of those conversations, dig into the whys behind some issues, things like that. And, yeah, help people have those conversations, Love it those conversations. I'm a firm believer of the success of your blank is directly related to the amount of tough conversations you're willing to have. It's one of my favorite quotes and you can put anything in that blank. Success of your marriage, success of relationship with your kids, success of your fitness just depends on how many tough conversations you're willing to have.
Coach Dustin:I love that man. This is good stuff. Thank you so much. Guys, Make sure you go back and listen to this and write this down. I mean, I have a page of notes here and we've only talked for 27 minutes, so you know that's good, but it's stuff like this that we constantly want to bring to you, so we really appreciate it. Guys, join this conversation that we have on our free Facebook group at the Balanced Business Dad or you can even go to dadalphagroupcom. There'll be a free training of me explaining the DADUP framework, and then there's a link right in there where you can jump in the Facebook group. Besides that, guys, remember to DADUP. People in your life who love you deserve it the most. We'll see you next week. Thank you, guys so much. Thank you, family.
