He Turned a Broken Business Model Into Millions
Living Your Legacy
Dave Barrett, a self-made insurance executive and serial entrepreneur, shares his journey of transforming a failing business model into a mu
Key takeaways
- Traditional incentive structures in the insurance industry were holding employees back and stifling innovation.
- Giving employees a direct stake in their own success led to exponential business growth and long-term sustainability.
Main topics
- Reimagining employee incentives in business
- Building scalable and recurring revenue models
Notable quotes
"I turned my resignation in and three days later the CEO came to me offering me seven million dollars. Seven million? Seven million and I said no."
"The success of the business was all on the back of everybody having success."
Conclusion
Dave Barrett's story illustrates how rethinking traditional business models—especially around
Transcript preview
Speaker 2 (0:00) I turned my resignation in and three days later the CEO came to me offering me seven million dollars. Seven million? Seven million and I said no. Oh. Because I promised the guy that I was starting the business with and I regretted that from 2013 to about 2017. Whoa that's Speaker 3 (0:13) a Speaker 2 (0:13) long regret. Yeah yeah. But as that kind of took hold the business grew by giving people the opportunity for themselves to grow. Through that process we started having success but the success of the business was all on the back of everybody having success. Speaker 1 (0:25) Dave Barrett is a driven, self-made insurance executive and entrepreneur, serving as president of Team RTP at CRC Specialty. He began his career in 2008 at SW Risk, rising from an entry-level role to becoming a top producer through his strong work ethic. Speaker 2 (0:40) I realized I built something pretty cool. I was really valuable. There you go. What made it so valuable was the growth of the business from people from outside the industry. Other people had it replicated. And the reason I replicated because my business was failing without doing it, right? Because nobody would come work for me. Speaker 1 (0:55) So Speaker 2 (0:55) the initial big failure led to figuring out a system that led to the final massive success. Like Speaker 4 (1:06) a super high school internet Elvis is going to reinvent the farm. It's not over until I win. The Speaker 1 (1:17) Living Your Legacy podcast for those who live to leave a legacy. Speaker 4 (1:30) Chicago! You can live your dream! Speaker 3 (1:38) Hey, welcome back, everyone, to another episode of Living Your Legacy podcast. I'm your host again, Jay Slangen, and we're down here at the sunny Miami beach, the new studios. And yeah, we have the privilege to have a conversation with some of the best entrepreneurs, the disruptors, experts in so many different fields here. Yeah, I kind of love my job when I get to do these things. And we got a special guest here from Texas. And yeah, introduce yourself. What's Speaker 2 (2:03) your Speaker 3 (2:03) name? And what's Speaker 2 (2:04) your Speaker 3 (2:04) business? Dave? Nice Speaker 2 (2:06) to meet you, bud. Good Speaker 3 (2:06) to have you on the show, Speaker 2 (2:07) man. several businesses my first main business that had success was an insurance business wholesale specialty insurance i was called risk transfer partners okay Speaker 3 (2:15) um Speaker 2 (2:16) and then uh since then i had a you know exit i sold that business nice um it was a good day good day good day i still actually worked there i'm the president of the dallas operations of the company that bought me he's called crc group okay um and then on the side kinda i've started uh several other businesses underneath the scaled up ventures platform. That's the parent company that I fold all my businesses under. All right. And right now we have the ones we have operational under that platform right now. One's called Heat Wave Luxury Light Therapy. It's a retail red light sauna studio. Gotcha. And we're developing a proprietary red light. booth for that so it's kind of they're getting some name brand locally there in frisco texas nice and then once i get that booth done it should be a scalable business we have a business called i have this called create our arvana creative group Speaker 3 (3:04) it's Speaker 2 (3:05) kind of a marketing company to tie a lot of the entities together um give them a social press social media presence all right and then i also have arvada wellness leasing which leases um high-dollar aesthetic equipment to the med spa industry. Yeah, yeah. It's booming. It's booming. Yeah, well, yeah, and that's the thing. It's a fragmented industry, right? Not a lot of centralized capital. I mean, and it's a very large industry. That's a $1.6 trillion industry worldwide. No doubt Speaker 3 (3:32) on that, man. Speaker 2 (3:33) Tell me this. Tell me, do you, tell me a wellness brand. Speaker 3 (3:37) Tell me, tell you a wellness brand? Like what kind of wellness you talking about? So Speaker 2 (3:42) wellness told me, told me an aesthetic brand, a laser Speaker 3 (3:46) away. My wife is, she's always going to laser away. Right. Yeah. And shout out yesterday. We had the, the perfect. Oh, is it the perfect dose? Right. It's another. Right. But I'm sitting here, you know, my wife's kind of into that stuff. I also get to interview a few people that have it. Right. But if it was just me, like I'd be like, yeah, Speaker 1 (4:08) exactly. Speaker 2 (4:09) That business, that industry, I think there's a lot of opportunity in it. Right. Yeah. selling beauty. Everybody wants that. No Speaker 3 (4:16) one's taken that Starbucks kind of name brand role to it. Yeah. That's a heavy lift. Speaker 2 (4:21) It's all, it is. It is. And Speaker 3 (4:23) it's just a lot of, you know, independent people that were nurse practitioners and then kind of moved into the whole aesthetics industry. Right. And so you got, I guess, two kind of directions they go with it. Well, one is kind of like injectable specialists. Right. And then another is kind of like. lasers and I don't know, like all kinds of different machines that they'll have. And Speaker 2 (4:46) that's the thing is so on the lasers, the machine, the aesthetic side, Speaker 3 (4:50) you Speaker 2 (4:50) know, as you said, a nurse practitioner that wants to start her own business, those machines could cost you two, $300,000. Some of the best. And a lot of the traditional lending won't come through and, you know, Chase or Bank of America is going to look at, well, how long have you been in business? They were not going to give you a loan. Well, I look at that as that equipment. Well, it's also Speaker 3 (5:08) not $200,000, $300,000. You know, like Chase, you're getting at max with good credit score, they'll give you like $60,000. Yeah. Speaker 2 (5:17) So what I do is I buy that equipment and I lease it to those startups or even several years in. Perfect. Because the other part of it is even established med spas. that equipment changes out you know new jet new generators come out every you know three four five years yeah right so you don't want to be locked into an asset you can lease it yeah yeah yeah that's the i mean i'm just getting that going just putting my uh First equipment out into the market there in Q3 of this year. Excited about it, though. I think it's a good concept that should help some businesses grow. I Speaker 3 (5:47) can't believe those machines are like $200,000, $300,000. Yeah. Which one's he talking about? Speaker 2 (5:51) Well, I'd say one that's really good is the Luminous Stella 22. That's their new. You can get those. What Speaker 3 (5:58) is that? Like the red light therapy? I guess there's like... uh i mean there's all kinds of stuff i can Speaker 2