Today on the servant leadership podcast DG Elmore shares what servant leadership looks like as an entrepreneur DG is the chairman of Elmore companies a diverse portfolio of businesses across various Industries as a seasoned entrepreneur and leader DG has successfully guided numerous companies and sports teams to growth and success demonstrating a steadfast commitment to Servant leadership in addition to his business ventures DG's leadership style focuses on empowering ing his team fostering a culture of trust and prioritizing the well-being and development of his employees Beyond his business ventures DG is passionate about mentoring and supporting the next generation of leader today DG will help us understand how servant leadership has helped him build strong teams lead with core values and Achieve success across many Industries well thanks DG for joining today yeah great to be Be With You Chris yeah glad you're here um for those that don't know who you are share share a little bit about who you are and what you do well thanks Chris I have a lot of different companies uh our umbrella companies Elm more companies and we uh acquire small companies from Founders uh that are ready to exit and have some transition and we hopefully build those companies up and we keep those companies for the long run uh we we see it as generational Investments uh because that's just what we believe in is building up businesses over uh many many years and and holding on to them and continuing that that Legacy and we've done that for 40 plus years now and in addition to that I'm on a number of different Boards of directors nonprofits in particular uh focused on um in most cases advancing the Gospel of Jesus and his kingdom um so uh The Navigators salt exchange baseball Chapel uh pulse uh number of different organizations like that so both for-profit world and nonprofit world love it on the on the for-profit side what what verticals do you end up getting into with those founder businesses we're so we're in mining logging drone technology corporate travel management Staffing expert Witnesses uh let's see what else um professional development lishing um software uh for the travel industry uh yeah there's there's some others it's very broad yeah so so I'm sure you were naturally an expert at all of those before you got into them how how does one even get into this industry like how did you get into this how did it start well it started as I had one company that uh I started running after graduate school so I went to law school and NBA school and then afterwards my 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 everybody and so he asked me to start running that company and so it was uh it was not a simple thing to do but we got it turned around and as it was turning around he gave me an opportunity to buy it so I bought that company and then from there we took as that company eventually got profitable we took the profits from that to start another company and then the profits of those companies to buy another company and profits of those companies buy another company and we kept taking the money we were uh creating from those businesses and reinvesting it and buying other companies and so that's what we now my 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 very uh agnostic in terms of an industry there's some Industries we don't like but we're we love looking into all sorts of Industries yeah what what was it like 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 know it's all sorts of turmoil but uh it was he just passed away in June and when I think back of how awesome it was for us us to have those times of working together and dealing with problems and dealing with fun adventures and it was it was terrific we had a great time together he we always had this concept of I had my sandbox and he had his sandbox and I would go into his sandbox and help him make his castles and he would come into my sandbox and help me make my castles but I didn't tell him how his castles should look and he 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 was so it worked out great and and you said your your kids have gotten involved in the business at some level what's that been like oh it's awesome they are so talented and so watching them do what they've done in terms of finding companies to buy bringing other partners along uh buying companies that they're running it's been it's been amazing yeah it's just yeah I my object Ive has always been to be the biggest fan of my kids and if I can be on the sidelines watching them cheering them on that's that's a huge highlight for me wow so so when it's all getting started you're jumping into a company that has some major fraud issues and I'm sure there's 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 other big turning points um throughout your career that you've been like wow these were pivotal moments moments that kind of led to where you are well one of the most pivotal moments was I was getting ready to finish graduate school and there was a um uh a Ministry going on that my wife and I were involved with in Bloomington Indiana uh called The Navigators and we were just helping people get to know who Jesus was and the Navigator said hey would you stay in Bloomington for a couple more years and I had no intention of staying in Bloomington Indiana you know I thought this is a college town I'm done here I'm moving to Chicago being my dad's office and you know we were going to conquer the world and after a few months of really wrestling with what to do I made the conscious decision uh that my wife and I would stay in Bloomington and we're still there to this day but when I look at at the different people that are my business partners and the companies that we have if I'm not in Bloomington those things don't happen and it's just the you know that cascading effect of that one decision has had huge impact on my life family's life the businesses and everything that that we have it's been it's been really amazing I'd say that was one of the biggest ones um I'd say uh also what there was a point where I had two three companies at the time and one of them I was spending almost all my time on and I came to the realization that I needed to have someone else step in and be running that company and the the mental that I had gone through in my mind was you know if I had to pay someone this is like you know 1990 or something if I had to pay someone $100,000 to run a company that I was running it's like I can just run the company I'll do it better than them and I'll keep the $100,000 and I ended up eventually coming to the realization and this proved to be true that if I hire someone pay them the $100,000 that that frees me up to go do other things that is going to produce way more than $100,000 and the good news is is the person that I selected was every bit as good as me we didn't lose a single bit and that was another big lesson because I learned that the way to multiply myself was actually to to find really good people to do what I was doing or do better or different than me 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 a huge lesson also you know as you go into all these different companies work with Founders a lot of them haven't replaced themselves I'm sure right um that's probably a hard conversation to have with people how do you help somebody even start that process of replacing themsel uh a lot of leaders who will be listening to this probably 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 know what we do is is we look to help them understand look you can have a liquidity event and we will bring in Talent uh to help in this transition and so I think for a lot of Founders they don't have a succession plan uh you know maybe they have children that aren't interested in their business um maybe uh you know it's just whatever something happens that they don't have a succession plan they don't understand that they could actually hire someone to do the work and even if they 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 how you can have a liquidity event and we're we are trusted people that are going to take care of this child that you have birthed and you have raised and is now a mature uh being you know and that's when when you have a Founder that's built up their business that's how they feel about it they feel as though it's like one of their family and we want to help them understand that 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 interested in selling their company to us we actually give them a list of here's here are the past 15 companies we bought and you can call all these owners that we bought from and get a reference check you know so it's not so much of a um a uh a reference check on the typical 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 interesting um that you know we really focus on people feeling like oh they took good care of the company that I birthed and created and built up with with all these people that you're interacting with you probably see tons of different leadership styles um one of the things that we talk a lot about is servant leadership is that a word that even comes up when you're talking about people or with people or what do you see be successful leadership strategies or styles that people have well servant leadership is a very successful style okay um I I wouldn't say that I I see it a lot um certainly in some cases but in in many cases um we we don't we don't see that but I in my mind the best way to lead is to be part of an organization to be serving the people that are there in the organization it's this internal and external right it's both the people that are the employees uh and serving them to help them really Excel uh and then it's also serving customers uh and making sure they're getting exactly what they're what they're looking for so what what have you seen from a leadership style standpoint um be some 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 for well when we when we look at a finding a partner because we we tend to when we go into acquire companies we know and we've identified a operating partner that we want to be be with us and so when we're looking for an operating partner we're not looking for someone who um you know we sent out uh solicitation for resumés and interviewed for a couple of hours and then we say oh we'd like you to go run this company um we're looking for people that we know what they're all about what their heart is like how they evaluate things how they act um around people how they care for um the people around them and so we're looking for a special type of person uh that has a uh a character quality of um caring loving kindness Focus um intellect uh ability to to lead in a way of having a vision for what needs to be accomplished and how to how to get there and so these are qualities that we're looking for in those in those people we partner with are those things that just 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 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 areas where I'm not I'm not very good and so I'm always trying to learn from my business partners or uh you know other people that I know and just try to improve from the from the nonprofit side of things when when we because we have 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 facing tons of different worldwide challenges right all kinds of causes there's tons of of issues going on around the world we see them in the news every day um how how do you think people should be navigating stuff like that and how do they grow in their ability to navigate stuff like that oh my goodness um yeah there are so many issues that are bombarding um nonprofits these days um I think I think professional velopment is something that everybody needs to be take their own personal responsibility for I think sometimes in large organizations you know huge multinational corporations there's in many cases a plan for professional development uh but in most small nonprofits even large nonprofits for that matter uh people need to take responsibility for their own professional development so I think that's something that uh leaders of all all sorts for-profit nonprofit need to take responsibility for um and you know I think one of the things that's interesting as I think about nonprofits these days is that there are because there are so many issues out there that in many cases someone's trying to tackle that there are continually opportunities for them to find people that are interested in their particular situation um and if they can identify or those people can identify them they have an opportunity to do additional fundraising that's going to help them in accomplishing their mission when when you first were getting 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 wanted to be involved um what were some of the things that you were hoping that that they would pick up along the way that they would be learning along the way so I I think part of this isn't so much just when they're in business uh when 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 this idea of grit and hard work and focus and and um they have they I have six kids so um it's pretty amazing that all of them are super focused uh and super hardworking and um have uh incredible amounts of um grit and what they can put up with and deal with and uh power through it's really it's quite quite impressive um and you want get me started too much more because I could talk forever about how awesome my kids are they're amazing but it is um they have they have uh I think also since I've seen them in in business work through issues you know it's that ability to just keep on going to get face difficult situations and continue to keep pushing through uh and as they've done that then they have continued to see uh success that you know maybe looked almost impossible at the time and they've really been able to uh to achieve some some great success when when you think through those difficult situations or difficult um difficult periods or seasons of business in life what are a couple challenges that you face that you'd feel comfortable sharing and uh and how you seen seen Success Through the other side yeah so I think you know one of the most recent challenges uh was um you know 2020 and um the whole covid situation and just trying to get through to the other side um and been very fortunate to to make it through me most of our businesses uh went to practically no revenue and we have a bunch of businesses that are in the travel industry and moving people and different situations so it was a we also have um our family has a number of minor league baseball teams also and so there's no baseball being played um so there were a number of challenges that we we faced at that time and you know I were a couple of lessons that that came out of that some of which i' had already learned before in other situations but one is is that we had to do make decisions that 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 decisions uh that gave us some chance of surviving whenever it did end and it came around which uh most cases was almost a year later and so one is is that you've got to make the hard choices uh and you know which is you know cutting people cutting salaries cutting um work hours all these things that are no one likes to do but you have to do the other thing that I thought I I learned um uh specifically during covid was the idea that um we have to plan for the difficult situations not for the positive and Recovery situations so for example in the baseball world uh there we didn't know if we would start sometime in the summer of 2020 and what I was trying to get the guys that run those clubs for me to understand is is we need to be prepared for not playing at all because if we play we already know how to do that that's that's the easy part we like we do that all the time so in all cases I think what I one of the big takeaways was it's we know what we need to do what we can do what we have to do is prepare for the really hard stuff and if we're prepared for the hard stuff and that comes we're in great shape if the hard stuff we don't need to activate those hard things well we already know 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 couple of things that that I learned during that time other times it has been uh that just having this positive attitude uh we will get to the other side um you know I think of the uh what um in the book good to Great is coin this idea of the Stockdale Paradox um this idea that we don't know when it's going to 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 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 an important mindset to have we'll get through this but it may be a long time with with some of the obviously 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 do you know we have one of the most exciting things is besides seeing my kids succeed in business that's I love that but um we have one company that uh in the the education space so we we serve uh Educators uh School teachers and administrators and we bought that company when it was doing maybe a couple 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 wonderful from a business standpoint but even more significantly is that we have millions of teachers who have impacted tens of millions of students because of the type of professional development that we provide uh in terms of um face- tace uh professional development events driven professional development books um online tools all these things that have allowed teach teachers to impact students and impact families and that's one of the most exciting things um you know when you think about the ability that we have to provide good business to 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 in the baseball business I tell people there's nothing better than going to a baseball game and calling it work that's the best to be able to say you know I'm sitting there I'm eating a hot dog uh or 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 out and to be sitting there watching baseball and enjoying our concession food that it just doesn't get any better than that that's awesome baseball seems like a tough industry to break into because there's only a certain number amount of teams how'd you even get into the baseball world because you're pretty pretty involved yeah I I am uh it started my dad in 1982 uh he had a lot of business in Hawaii uh in the travel industry and the Hawaiian Islanders which was Triple A baseball team uh came up for sale and so he decided that he wanted to to to buy the team and so he was able to to to buy it and then the next year he bought another team and two years later he bought another team and then the family started buying teams and I started buying teams and so it's something that we've been we've been doing for for a long time yeah do they ever play each other uh we actually my dad and I had um there was a team in the Pioneer League back and I think it was in 2017 that um he had a team in Idaho Falls Idaho I had a team in Hell on to Montana and they played in the championship against each other and so we had this uh is the best out of three uh series and it went down to the third game and his team in IID know Falls beat my team and Helena by one run in the uh in the third uh third game of the championship series yeah it it was really fun we were both at the game together and and he it was all he always loved winning championships I do too but for him it was something really super special and so I didn't mind losing to 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 business involvement so so many different verticals um it's hard enough 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 nonprofit involvement you named multiple nonprofits that you're involved in um how do you look at nonprofit involvement and philanthropic involvement how do you look at what do you get into and what interests you yeah thanks um it's for for a long time uh it was sort of a smattering of all sorts of different nonprofits and 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 directors for uh many years of The Navigators and then chairman of the board for for 12 years and so that from a personal standpoint that was my uh real focus and since I um uh left the Navigator board and my time was up as as uh chairman because we had bylaws written around how long we could be um chairman um I started other nonprofits I was open to being on their board and um really it's it gets to be from a board standpoint I look at what what's their what are they trying to accomplish what's their mission what are they going after and is that something that one I'm passionate about and then the other is is there a role for me within that board you know what if they're looking for someone to fill the a board position how do I how do I fit and why am I the person to um to take that role and so uh it's been a combination of what do they do and how do I fit within that um from a standpoint of um being financially involved it's a matter of is this something that I'm passionate about and is something that our family is focused on and that's just taken time to evolve and get an understanding of okay what are we really about what do we want to see accomplished in the world and so how are we going to invest financially and become a philanthropist basically getting involved on on the board side of things what have you seen nonprofits do well or what advice would you give to nonprofits trying to build out a solid board yeah that's a great question the I would say it is finding the right people that are going to give you a variety of opinions but are all in on the mission of the organization um so to bring in people that are not connected with in a heart and mind way with the nonprofit I think just because they give you some quality that you think you need I would um I would hesitate to do that I think you need to make sure you've got people that are passionate about what the organization is all about what the mission is what the strategy is um and then you can from there you go out from there to the next level is okay what do they bring from either a um professional standpoint or a diversity standpoint or an experience standpoint I think that's where you go to that next level but you got to focus on that they care deeply about what the organization does yeah and thinking through now on the 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 work there is we're we're the greatest nonprofit and this is why you should support us um and what they do is 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 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 donors with on the giving side you know it's interesting because I think the there is something that's been happening over the past I don't know maybe 10 years I think really is there's this movement towards what's the ROI on my investment in your nonprofit how are you showing me a return on you say you're G to transform this many lives or you're going to do this kind of work and what's the return on that and I think data and statistics is all helpful but for me I need my heart engaged so I think you have to bring both good data with good stories U because some people are going to be totally data driven they're like yeah don't tell me the stories just give me the numbers and I tend to be a little more on the other side of hey I want stories that get my heart raced in and my mind racing um because yeah I look at data all the time in business and I that's I don't run my business from my heart I run it from my mind but my philanthropic uh philanthropic actions and work I I want my heart engaged so in my mind what a nonprofit leader needs to be able to do is is really it's not either or it's both come with stories come with data and then see as you're meeting with prospective donors see where do they gravitate towards what do they really want but be be prepared with both that's that's really good good information uh really good thoughts um 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 questions in the rapid fire questions Okay so so I'm going to ask you 10 questions and it's just first thing that 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 say servant leadership who's the first person that you think of H that'd be Jesus um he says that for the son of man did not come to be served but to serve and give his life a ransom for many so that's who did that's good five words that most describe your yourself uh focused um she asked my wife she would say humble um and uh good listener a um caring and um able to connect the dots so Insight of connecting things together favorite author or book uh well besides the Bible um we I've read a lot of um biographies and autobiographies um with my kids um and then we would talk about them because you learn a lot in that so this is not rapid fire good the um I would say one of our favorite books uh is called shoe dog by Phil Knight Love great book and it's not really about Nike it's but it is outstanding book yeah I would encourage everybody to read that book love that book yeah that's yeah that might be my favorite book as well yeah um favorite movie uh the sting which uh yeah with Robert Redford and Paul Newman Love The Sting yeah favorite food pizza favorite thing to do in your free time ski really yeah where uh in Beaver Creek Colorado love it uh surprising fact about you what I was 21 I jumped off a 20 foot cliff on skis and you're still here I'm still here were you okay yeah wow that's I would not do that uh favorite place you've been I've been a lot of places I um I'm a huge fan of Paris no say Paris where do you want to visit that you have not been um probably Antarctica love that last question best advice you've ever gotten yeah hire that person to replace yourself and go do it again yeah again and again and again yeah yeah love it well thank you so much for joining excited for people to hear more about 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 episode of the servant leadership podcast if you enjoyed what you heard please give it a thumbs up and leave a comment below don't forget to subscribe and hit the notification Bell to never miss an update be sure to check out the servant leadership podcast. org for more updates and additional bonus content