D.G. Elmore Intro

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today on the servant leadership podcast DG Elmore shares what servant leadership looks like as an entrepreneur DG is the

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chairman of Elmore companies a diverse portfolio of businesses across various Industries as a seasoned entrepreneur

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and leader DG has successfully guided numerous companies and sports teams to growth and success demonstrating a

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steadfast commitment to Servant leadership in addition to his business ventures DG's leadership style focuses

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on empowering ing his team fostering a culture of trust and prioritizing the well-being and development of his

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employees Beyond his business ventures DG is passionate about mentoring and supporting the next generation of leader

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today DG will help us understand how servant leadership has helped him build strong teams lead with core values and

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Achieve success across many Industries well thanks DG for joining today yeah great to be Be With You Chris yeah glad

Welcome D.G. Elmore

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you're here um for those that don't know who you are share share a little bit

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about who you are and what you do well thanks Chris I have a lot of different companies uh our umbrella

D.G. Elmore’s Background

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companies Elm more companies and we uh acquire small companies from

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Founders uh that are ready to exit and have some transition and we hopefully

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build those companies up and we keep those companies for the long run uh we

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we see it as generational Investments uh because that's just what we believe in

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is building up businesses over uh many many years and and holding on to them

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and continuing that that Legacy and we've done that for 40 plus years now

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and in addition to that I'm on a number of different Boards of directors nonprofits in particular uh focused on

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um in most cases advancing the Gospel of Jesus and his kingdom um so uh The

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Navigators salt exchange baseball Chapel uh pulse uh number of different

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organizations like that so both for-profit world and nonprofit world love it on the on the for-profit side

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what what verticals do you end up getting into with those founder businesses we're so we're in mining

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logging drone technology corporate travel management

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Staffing expert Witnesses uh let's see what else um

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professional development lishing um software uh for the travel

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industry uh yeah there's there's some others it's very broad yeah so so I'm

How D.G. Began Buying Companies

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sure you were naturally an expert at all of those before you got into them how how does one even get into this industry

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like how did you get into this how did it start well it started as I had one

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company that uh I started running after graduate school so I went to law school and NBA school and then afterwards my

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dad had a one of his companies was some people had committed a bunch of Fraud and it was a mess and he had to fire

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everybody and so he asked me to start running that company and so it was uh it

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was not a simple thing to do but we got it turned around and as it was turning

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around he gave me an opportunity to buy it so I bought that company and then from there we took as that company

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eventually got profitable we took the profits from that to start another company and then the profits of those

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companies to buy another company and profits of those companies buy another company and we kept taking the money we

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were uh creating from those businesses and reinvesting it and buying other companies and so that's what we now my

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kids are doing that and that's what we've continued to do and so we don't focus on one particular vertical we're

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very uh agnostic in terms of an industry there's some Industries we don't like

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but we're we love looking into all sorts of Industries yeah what what was it like

Working With His Dad

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working with your dad oh it was the best yeah it was great I know there are all sorts of stories of um families that you

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know it's all sorts of turmoil but uh it was he just passed away in June and when

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I think back of how awesome it was for us us to have those times of working

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together and dealing with problems and dealing with fun adventures and it was

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it was terrific we had a great time together he we always had this concept of I had my sandbox and he had his

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sandbox and I would go into his sandbox and help him make his castles and he would come into my sandbox and help me

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make my castles but I didn't tell him how his castles should look and he

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didn't tell me how my castle should look we just had our own sandboxes and he knew where mine was and I knew where his

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was so it worked out great and and you said your your kids have gotten involved in the business at some level what's

Involving Children In The Company

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that been like oh it's awesome they are so talented and so watching them do what

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they've done in terms of finding companies to buy bringing other partners along uh buying companies that they're

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running it's been it's been amazing yeah it's just yeah I my object Ive has

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always been to be the biggest fan of my kids and if I can be on the sidelines

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watching them cheering them on that's that's a huge highlight for me wow so so

Turning Points In D.G.s Career

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when it's all getting started you're jumping into a company that has some major fraud issues and I'm sure there's

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a big Turning Point at some level that you're coming in and trying to figure out what's going on uh what are a couple

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other big turning points um throughout your career that you've been like wow these were pivotal moments moments that

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kind of led to where you are well one of the most pivotal moments was I was

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getting ready to finish graduate school and there was a um uh a Ministry going

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on that my wife and I were involved with in Bloomington Indiana uh called The Navigators and we were just helping

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people get to know who Jesus was and the Navigator said hey would you stay in Bloomington for a couple more years and

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I had no intention of staying in Bloomington Indiana you know I thought this is a college town I'm done here I'm

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moving to Chicago being my dad's office and you know we were going to conquer the world and after a few months of

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really wrestling with what to do I made the conscious

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decision uh that my wife and I would stay in Bloomington and we're still

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there to this day but when I look at at the different people that are my business partners and the companies that

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we have if I'm not in Bloomington those things don't happen and it's just the

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you know that cascading effect of that one decision has had huge impact on my

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life family's life the businesses and everything that that we have it's been it's been really amazing I'd say that

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was one of the biggest ones um I'd say uh also what there was a point

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where I had two three companies at the time and one of

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them I was spending almost all my time on and

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I came to the realization

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that I needed to have someone else step in and be running that company and the

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the mental that I had gone through in my mind was you know if I had to pay

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someone this is like you know 1990 or something if I had to pay someone

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$100,000 to run a company that I was running it's like I can just run the

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company I'll do it better than them and I'll keep the $100,000 and I ended up eventually

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coming to the realization and this proved to be true that if I hire someone

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pay them the $100,000 that that frees me up to go do

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other things that is going to produce way more than $100,000 and the good news is is the person that I selected was

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every bit as good as me we didn't lose a single bit and that was another big

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lesson because I learned that the way to multiply myself was actually to to find

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really good people to do what I was doing or do better or different than me

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and then I can move move on to do other things and that allowed me to multiply myself out there so um that was that was

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a huge lesson also you know as you go into all these different companies work with Founders a lot of them haven't

Conversations With Company Founders

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replaced themselves I'm sure right um that's probably a hard conversation to have with people how do you help

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somebody even start that process of replacing themsel uh a lot of leaders who will be listening to this probably

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might be in that exact boat where they know they need to replace themsel and don't even know where to start don't know what to do yeah that's well you

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know what we do is is we look to help them understand look you can have a

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liquidity event and we will bring in Talent uh to help in this transition and

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so I think for a lot of Founders they don't have a succession

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plan uh you know maybe they have children that aren't interested in their

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business um maybe uh you know it's just whatever something happens that they

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don't have a succession plan they don't understand that they could actually hire someone to do the work and even if they

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do that at some point they probably want some liquidity event and so what we do is we help them figure out okay here's

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how you can have a liquidity event and we're we are trusted people that are going to take care of this child that

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you have birthed and you have raised and is now a mature uh being you know and

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that's when when you have a Founder that's built up their business that's how they feel about it they feel as

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though it's like one of their family and we want to help them understand that

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we're the type of people that are going to take really good care of their business and uh as a matter of fact when we when we meet with people that are

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interested in selling their company to us we actually give them a list of here's here are the past 15 companies we

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bought and you can call all these owners that we bought from and get a reference

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check you know so it's not so much of a um a uh a reference check on the typical

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sorts of things but this is to ask how were they as buyers what were they like to work with and so it's really

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interesting um that you know we really focus on people feeling like oh they

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took good care of the company that I birthed and created and built up

Servant Leadership Style

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with with all these people that you're interacting with you probably see tons of different leadership styles

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um one of the things that we talk a lot about is servant leadership is that a word that even

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comes up when you're talking about people or with people or what do you see be successful leadership strategies or

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styles that people have well servant leadership is a very successful style

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okay um I I wouldn't say that I I see it a lot

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um certainly in some cases but in in many cases um we we don't we don't see

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that but I in my mind the best way to lead is to be part of an

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organization to be serving the people that are there in the organization it's

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this internal and external right it's both the people that are the

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employees uh and serving them to help them really Excel uh and then it's also

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serving customers uh and making sure they're getting exactly what they're what they're looking

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for so what what have you seen from a leadership style standpoint um be some

Operating Partner Qualities

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of the things that you're looking out for when you're looking for people to partner with what are the what are the qualities that you're looking

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for well when we when we look at a finding a

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partner because we we tend to when we go into acquire companies we know and we've identified a

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operating partner that we want to be be with us and so when we're looking for an

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operating partner we're not looking for someone who um you know we sent out uh

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solicitation for resumés and interviewed for a couple of hours and then we say oh we'd like you to go run this company

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um we're looking for people that we know what they're all about what their

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heart is like how they evaluate things how they act um around people how they

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care for um the people around them and so we're looking for a special type of

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person uh that has a uh a character

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quality of um caring loving kindness Focus

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um intellect uh ability to to lead in a way

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of having a vision for what needs to be accomplished and how to how to get there

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and so these are qualities that we're looking for in those in those people we partner with are those things that just

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come natural to people are they things that people have to grow in from what you've seen oh I I think it's I think

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it's really a combination of both I mean it's certainly something I've grown in all these areas um you know and there's

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areas where I'm not I'm not very good and so I'm always trying to learn from

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my business partners or uh you know other people that I know and just try to

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improve from the from the nonprofit side of things when when we because we have

Nonprofit Leadership Challenges

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both the nonprofit side and the for-profit side when when we're looking at nonprofit leaders and all the different things that they face they're

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facing tons of different worldwide challenges right all kinds of causes there's tons of of issues going on

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around the world we see them in the news every day um how how do you think people should be

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navigating stuff like that and how do they grow in their ability to navigate stuff like that oh my goodness

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um yeah there are so many issues that are bombarding um

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nonprofits these days um I think I think professional velopment is

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something that everybody needs to be take their own personal responsibility for I think sometimes in large

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organizations you know huge multinational corporations there's in many cases a plan for professional

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development uh but in most small nonprofits even large nonprofits for

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that matter uh people need to take responsibility for their own professional development so I think

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that's something that uh leaders of all all sorts for-profit

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nonprofit need to take responsibility for um and you know I think one of the

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things that's interesting as I think about nonprofits these days is that there are because there are so many

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issues out there that in many cases someone's trying to tackle that there are continually opportunities for them

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to find people that are interested in their particular situation um and if

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they can identify or those people can identify them they have an opportunity to do additional fundraising that's

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going to help them in accomplishing their mission when when you first were getting

Development Of D.G. Children

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your kids involved in the business you're you're probably looking at them excited that they're going to get involved um I take it they probably

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wanted to be involved um what were some of the things that you were hoping that

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that they would pick up along the way that they would be learning along the way

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so I I think part of this isn't so much just when they're in business uh when

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we're in business together but you know what I was hoping they'd pick up along the way uh even when they were young was

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this idea of grit and hard work and

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focus and and um they have they I have

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six kids so um it's pretty amazing that all of them are super

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focused uh and super hardworking and um have uh incredible

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amounts of um grit and what they can put up with and deal with and uh power

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through it's really it's quite quite impressive um and you want get me

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started too much more because I could talk forever about how awesome my kids are they're amazing but it is um they

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have they have uh I think also since I've seen them in in business work

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through issues you know it's that ability to just keep on going to get

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face difficult situations and continue to keep pushing

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through uh and as they've done that then they have continued to see uh success

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that you know maybe looked almost impossible at the time and they've

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really been able to uh to achieve some some great success when when you think

Facing Difficult Business Challenges

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through those difficult situations or difficult um difficult periods or

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seasons of business in life what are a couple challenges that you face that

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you'd feel comfortable sharing and uh and how you seen seen Success Through

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the other side yeah so I think you know one of the most

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recent challenges uh was um you know 2020 and

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um the whole covid situation and just trying to get through

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to the other side um and been very

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fortunate to to make it through me most of our businesses uh went to practically no

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revenue and we have a bunch of businesses that are in the travel

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industry and moving people and different situations so it was a we also have um

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our family has a number of minor league baseball teams also and so there's no baseball being played um so there were a

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number of challenges that we we faced at that time and you know I were a couple

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of lessons that that came out of that some of which i' had already learned before in other situations but one is is

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that we had to do make decisions that

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will allow us time to get to the other side to what I we didn't know when it was going to end but we had to make hard

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decisions uh that gave us some chance of surviving whenever it did end and it

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came around which uh most cases was almost a year later

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and so one is is that you've got to make the hard choices uh and you know which is

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you know cutting people cutting salaries cutting um work hours all these things

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that are no one likes to do but you have to do the other thing that I thought I I

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learned um uh specifically during covid was the

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idea that um we have to plan for the difficult

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situations not for the positive and Recovery situations so for example in

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the baseball world uh there we didn't know if we would

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start sometime in the summer of 2020 and what I was trying to get the guys that run those clubs for me to

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understand is is we need to be prepared for not playing at all because if we

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play we already know how to do that that's that's the easy part we like we

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do that all the time so in all cases I think what I one of the big takeaways

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was it's we know what we need to do what we can do what we have to do is prepare

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for the really hard stuff and if we're prepared for the hard stuff and that comes we're in great shape if

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the hard stuff we don't need to activate those hard things well we already know

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what to do when it goes well and according to plan so we just we just go ahead and do that so I'd say those are a

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couple of things that that I learned during that time other times it has been

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uh that just having this positive attitude uh we will get to the other

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side um you know I think of the uh what um in the book good to Great is coin

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this idea of the Stockdale Paradox um this idea that we don't know when it's going to

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get better we just have faith that it will get better and we don't want to be overly optimistic like oh it's going to

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end now or it's going to end now no what we need to know is it will get better but we can't say when and I think that's

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an important mindset to have we'll get through this but it may be a

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long time with with some of the obviously

Most Exciting Results

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hard stuff you've been through there's been a lot of highlights that you've been through what are some of the most exciting things that you've been able to

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do you know we have one of the most exciting things is besides seeing my

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kids succeed in business that's I love that but um we have one company

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that uh in the the education space so we we serve uh Educators uh School teachers

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and administrators and we bought that company when it was doing maybe a couple

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million dollars in revenue and you know we've seen it Go almost a h hundredfold over the past um uh 25 years and that's

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wonderful from a business standpoint but even more significantly is that we

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have millions of teachers who have impacted tens of millions of students

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because of the type of professional development that we provide uh in terms

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of um face- tace uh professional development events

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driven professional development books um online tools all these things that have

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allowed teach teachers to impact students and impact families and that's

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one of the most exciting things um you know when you think about the ability that we have to provide good business to

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make an impact in people's lives you know I love that and that gets to be one of the most exciting things and you know

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in the baseball business I tell people there's nothing better than going to a baseball game and calling it work that's

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the best to be able to say you know I'm sitting there I'm eating a hot dog uh or

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whatever it is and because we run all our own concessions so I eat a lot of the I need a lot of food to try it all

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out and to be sitting there watching baseball and enjoying our concession

Involvement With Baseball Teams

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food that it just doesn't get any better than that that's awesome baseball seems like a tough industry to break into

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because there's only a certain number amount of teams how'd you even get into the baseball world because you're pretty

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pretty involved yeah I I am uh it started my dad in

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1982 uh he had a lot of business in Hawaii uh in the travel industry and the

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Hawaiian Islanders which was Triple A baseball team uh came up for sale and so

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he decided that he wanted to to to buy the team and so he was able to to to buy

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it and then the next year he bought another team and two years later he bought another team and then the family

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started buying teams and I started buying teams and so it's something that we've been we've been doing for for a

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long time yeah do they ever play each other uh we actually my dad and I had um

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there was a team in the Pioneer League back and I think it was in 2017 that um he had a team in Idaho

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Falls Idaho I had a team in Hell on to Montana and they played in the championship against each other and so

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we had this uh is the best out of three uh series and it went down to the third

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game and his team in IID know Falls beat my team and Helena by one run in the uh

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in the third uh third game of the championship series yeah it it was

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really fun we were both at the game together and and he it was all he always

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loved winning championships I do too but for him it was something really super special and so I didn't mind losing to

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my dad I was happy for him yeah yeah it's fun to be there together oh yeah it was it was outstanding with with so much

Evaluating Philanthropic Alternatives

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business involvement so so many different verticals um it's hard enough

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to figure out what you get involved in from a business standpoint obviously there's like profitability metrics and things like that when you think about

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nonprofit involvement you named multiple nonprofits that you're involved in um how do you look at nonprofit involvement

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and philanthropic involvement how do you look at what do you get into and what interests you yeah thanks um

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it's for for a long

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time uh it was sort of a smattering of all sorts of different nonprofits and

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then as a family we had to start narrowing down what we're going to be involved in and um I was on the board

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directors for uh many years of The Navigators and then chairman of the board for for 12 years and so that from

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a personal standpoint that was my uh real focus and since I um uh left the

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Navigator board and my time was up as as uh chairman because we had bylaws

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written around how long we could be um chairman um I started other nonprofits I

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was open to being on their board and um really it's it gets to be from a board

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standpoint I look at what what's their what are they

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trying to accomplish what's their mission what are they going after and is that something that one I'm passionate

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about and then the other is is there a role for

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me within that board you know what if they're looking for someone to fill the

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a board position how do I how do I fit and why am I the

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person to um to take that role and so uh

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it's been a combination of what do they do and how do I fit within that um from

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a standpoint of um being financially involved it's a matter of is this

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something that I'm passionate about and is something that our family is focused

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on and that's just taken time to evolve and get an understanding of okay what

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are we really about what do we want to see accomplished in the world and so how are we going to invest financially and

Finding Nonprofit Board Members

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become a philanthropist basically getting involved on on the board side of

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things what have you seen nonprofits do well or what advice would you give to nonprofits trying to build out a solid

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board yeah that's a great question the I would

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say it is finding the

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right people that are going to give you a variety of opinions but

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are all in on the mission of the

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organization um so to bring in people that are not

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connected with in a heart and mind way with the

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nonprofit I think just because they give you some quality that you think you need

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I would um I would hesitate to do that I think you need to make sure you've got

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people that are passionate about what the organization is all about what the mission is what the strategy is um and

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then you can from there you go out from there to the next level is okay what do they bring

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from either a um professional standpoint or a diversity standpoint or an

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experience standpoint I think that's where you go to that next level but you got to focus on that they care deeply

Advice For Obtaining Donors

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about what the organization does yeah and thinking through now on the

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financial side I'm I'm guessing a lot of non profit leaders reach out to you and say hey we have we do the best nonprofit

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work there is we're we're the greatest nonprofit and this is why you should support us um and what they do is

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probably awesome and you probably look at it and and you also agree hey they do great work but uh there's a lot of stuff

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you get involved in there's a lot of stuff you don't get involved in what advice do you have for people who are trying to connect with um with new

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donors with on the giving side you know it's interesting because I think the

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there is something that's been happening over the past I don't know maybe 10 years I

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think really is there's this movement towards what's the ROI on my investment

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in your nonprofit how are you showing me a return on you say you're G to transform this many lives or you're

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going to do this kind of work and what's

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the return on that and I think data and statistics is

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all helpful but for me I need my heart

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engaged so I think you have to bring both good data with good stories U

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because some people are going to be totally data driven they're like yeah don't tell me the stories just give me

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the numbers and I tend to be a little more on the other side of hey I want

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stories that get my heart raced in and my mind racing um because yeah I look at

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data all the time in business and I that's I don't run my business from my

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heart I run it from my mind but my philanthropic uh philanthropic actions

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and work I I want my heart engaged so in my mind what a nonprofit leader needs to

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be able to do is is really it's not either or it's both come with stories

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come with data and then see as you're meeting with prospective donors see

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where do they gravitate towards what do they really want but be be prepared with

Ten Rapid-Fire Questions

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both that's that's really good good information uh really good thoughts um

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one of the things that I love to do to kind of wrap up a lot of podcasts is ask everyone we interview the same 10

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questions in the rapid fire questions Okay so so I'm going to ask you 10 questions and it's just first thing that

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comes to mind okay um there's no right or wrong answer and and we'll kind of see where this goes okay so when when I

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say servant leadership who's the first person that you think of H that'd be Jesus um he says that for

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the son of man did not come to be served but to serve and give his life a ransom

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for many so that's who did that's good five words that most describe your

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yourself uh focused

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um she asked my wife she would say humble um and

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uh good listener a

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um caring and um

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able to connect the dots so Insight of connecting things

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together favorite author or book

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uh well besides the Bible um we I've read a lot of um biographies and

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autobiographies um with my kids um and then we would talk about them because you learn a lot in that so this is not

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rapid fire good the um I would say one of our

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favorite books uh is called shoe dog by Phil Knight Love great book and it's not

35:41
really about Nike it's but it is outstanding book yeah I would encourage

35:49
everybody to read that book love that book yeah that's yeah that might be my favorite book as well yeah um favorite

35:56
movie uh the sting which uh yeah with Robert

36:04
Redford and Paul Newman Love The Sting yeah favorite food

36:10
pizza favorite thing to do in your free time ski really yeah where uh in Beaver

36:16
Creek Colorado love it uh surprising fact about

36:26
you what I was 21 I jumped off a 20 foot cliff on

36:35
skis and you're still here I'm still here were you okay yeah wow that's I

36:42
would not do that uh favorite place you've

36:48
been I've been a lot of places I um I'm a huge fan of Paris no say Paris

36:59
where do you want to visit that you have not

37:06
been um probably Antarctica love that last question best

Closing

37:12
advice you've ever

37:22
gotten yeah hire that person to replace yourself and go do it again yeah

37:28
again and again and again yeah yeah love it well thank you so much for joining excited for people to hear more about

37:34
your story and uh and to learn a lot from you thanks Chris it was great being with you thank you for listening to this

37:39
episode of the servant leadership podcast if you enjoyed what you heard please give it a thumbs up and leave a

37:46
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37:52
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