Stress Is Relative No Matter Where You're At

I asked Dave how it feels growing that fast. Is it overwhelming or does it feel expected?

His answer surprised me. When people ask about the growth at Dope, he looks back on what their vision was when they started. "It wasn't the numbers. It wasn't this many employees or this much revenue. I just saw an opportunity to solve a problem."

As you build a business, it always feels like things should happen faster than they're happening. With Dope, when he looks back, the weeks turn into months and the months turn into years. He still has to pinch himself sometimes for where they're at.

But here's what hit me. "I still have the same feelings at night, during the day when I'm working through things that I had when I was growing and still very involved in Lion's Share Maintenance."

He doesn't experience any less stress now, 15 years in, doing tens of millions in revenue, managing 100 employees, than he did when he was driving around in a van, shoveling gas stations to pay the bills over the winter.

"It's the same feeling."

The Points Where You Have to Level Up

Dave and his wife gave up drinking. It'll be four years coming up this spring. "I think that was a big point for me of just like getting dialed in, being focused."

He's had a lot of opportunities to get around big names, backstage, in mastermind groups. Over the years, he found that a lot of the people he defines as successful are doing a lot of the same things.

They manage their time well. They have a good morning routine. They're focused on wellness, health, recovery.

In running and scaling businesses, it gets so easy to get into the grind and the 10, 12, 14, 16, 18 hour days. When you take a step back and realize what you would tell yourself when you were starting out, when you were 25 years old, you look back at some of the decisions you were making, some of the ways you were balancing your stress, some of the habits that came naturally.

Being reactive. Helicoptering in on the business. Going back to whether they're the worst or the best versions of yourself.

"I think that holding yourself accountable as a manager, as an owner, as an entrepreneur, you get to choose what your hard is."

When Dave made the decision with Dope to really go all in, being a serial entrepreneur, he knew when he started Dope he was putting the horse blinders on. Anything from the partnerships, the affiliates, the potential investments, the opportunities, this one for all the businesses he's owned and been a part of, he really put on himself.

"One of the biggest aha or clarity moments for me as I look back is I just really made a commitment to focus on being the best version of myself so that all the people as we were growing that depended on me, I could share that with and not be as selfish with it as I historically had been in my career."

Why He Put on the Horse Blinders

I asked Dave why he put on those horse blinders, because our nature as entrepreneurs is to want to start as many businesses as possible, take as many opportunities as possible.

In any business, there's always going to be opportunity. We all have the same 1,440 minutes in the day. When Dave started Dope, he knew that through his 10 years as an entrepreneur, he had relationships, partnerships, connections.

The problem he was setting out to solve was bigger than just him. But there were also unconventional ways they approached solving it.

"If you told me five years ago I'd own a print shop, I'd tell you you were nuts. That wasn't the plan. Our whole plan was broker this, work it out."

But what he saw very quickly within three to six months of owning this business was that was a problem they had to be willing to solve themselves.

He'd been in the data business for almost 10 years when he started Dope. He had a lot of partnerships and relationships with people who owned regional and national print shops. But he was asking them to do something that wasn't really common, that wasn't the industry standard.

They break the home service space at Dope down to 75 different verticals. When you hear riches are in the niches, he was taking on a responsibility to simplify or templatize the relativity of how direct mail could work for a lot of different businesses.

Very quickly came the affiliate deals, the rev share deals, the partnerships. "We've been beating away private equity with a stick since we started this thing."

Just really being strategic but very disciplined. Not every opportunity is a good opportunity.

"I'm a visionary to a fault and chasing the squirrels and looking at the different exciting things. One of the reasons that I believe Dope got to where it's at in the amount of time that it did is because of the discipline of having those horse blinders on and not chasing every squirrel and every possibility."

They stayed focused on their value proposition, what they offer, because they truly can at Dope help so many different types of businesses.

From Prison to Home Service Business Owner

Dave's background is not what you'd expect. "I'm an ex knucklehead, man."

He started getting in trouble when he was 14. He went to nine different high schools. Ended up hitting the home run of getting in trouble. "I was in prison from when I was 21 to right before I was 25. Never had a job in my life."

When he was in a halfway house transitioning out of prison, he got a job at a window cleaning company. "I was just like the worst employee in the history of employment. You would never want to hire me as an employee of your business."

Very quickly transitioning out of being in trouble most of his life, he went kind of back to the same shit for about a year. "Sick and tired of being sick and tired. I was just like, I don't want to keep doing this."

He had just met his wife. Very quickly after, she was pregnant with their first child. He was just trying to figure it out.

In the home service space, it's low barrier to entry. You can grind. He didn't really know anything else. So he dove in headfirst. Doing the sales, the customer service, booking jobs, doing the actual work.

"I had never really done labor in my life. I'd never really run a business. I sold drugs my whole life."

The Early Hustle That Built Lion's Share

This was right when Facebook was coming out. Dave saw the opportunity in Facebook and creating content. He went all in while running the business, learning how to run ads and videos.

He got an opportunity to speak at a power washing convention two years into his business. He saw business owners doing a million dollars a year. "I was like, my God, that's success. That's what I need to figure out how to do."

Then Dave shared one of the most creative sales strategies I've ever heard. He would throw on a safety vest and try to go get commercial work at strip malls.

"I would throw on a safety vest, get myself all worked up, find a strip mall. I'd try to find the local small business where there'd be a younger person working."

He'd walk in urgently. "Bob, hold on one sec. Ma'am, I need to immediately find water access to this building. I need the property manager's information immediately."

He'd estimate every service at the strip mall. What it would cost to wash the sidewalks, the awnings, the windows. He'd send property managers unsolicited bids, then follow up.

He'd get etched candy jars with their logo, go into the property management office with it full of candy. "I don't need anything. I'm going to leave this candy jar here. When it's empty, text the number on the jar. I'll come back and fill it up every month for free."

Dave's pro tip: "You can literally get away with anything if you have a safety vest on."

The Journey from SaaS to Data to Dope

Three years into his home service company, Dave created CloseTheJob.com, a glorified PDF merger like DocuSign or PandaDoc. He paid a guy $30,000 at the University of Minnesota to create it.

He started speaking at trade shows and within four months, they signed up 300 people for $90 a month. "I was like, shit dude, this is easier than washing windows all day."

He kept trying to turn the software into a CRM and got into some failures there. He has four violent felonies, so he got into an arrangement with a staffing company in Canada. Found out they were upcharging invoices. Tried to sue them, but the contract said he had to sue them in Canada. "Well, I can't go to Canada because I'm a felon."

They ended up having to settle a $120,000 bill for $40,000. Learned a lot there.

But what he really learned was how to aggregate lists for residential homeowners and businesses. He got into the world of brokering data, just stumbled into it about 11 years ago. Ended up opening an agency to help agencies with audience targeting.

He met Dennis Yu at the Traffic and Conversion Summit in San Diego, got in with Dennis real quick. Dennis has all these huge accounts. Ashy Furniture, Nike, TiVo, UPack. They started doing audience targeting for these Fortune 500 companies.

Then Facebook started taking away all their audience targeting like homeowners, credit score, income, home value. Dave very quickly figured out how to get 90 to 95% match rates uploading audiences into Facebook that Facebook took away.

When he would sell lists, two would be to a small business owner, four would be a telemarketing company, four would be to a direct mail company. No matter who he sold a list to, he would have to do consulting. Show them how to use the data.

He loved small businesses, loved working with them, helping them grow. Telemarketing, he didn't love call centers. The rules were changing. He felt like he wasn't in control.

"Direct mail was run by 70 year old fat guys who suck at golf, whose kids don't want to work for them. There's a lot of innovation in the print space and direct mail. So I saw a lot of opportunity."

He wanted to build software that could do automated direct mail. Instead of sending blasts of 20,000, 50,000, 100,000 pieces spray and praying, he saw a different vision.

"You could get more success sending more mail to less people."

The Power of Intentionality With Your Time

Dave is one of those crazy people. He wakes up at 4:30, 5 o'clock every morning with no alarm. He always has.

"I take a lot of responsibility in getting myself ready for the world and getting the world ready for me every day."

His daughter is about to turn 13 next year. She's experienced every phase from them not being able to afford a $400 van payment to getting their second home in Puerto Rico. His youngest, Kobe, who's two, all he knows is them living in the house they live in now, experiencing the life they have now.

When Dave started Dope, he always knew the work that would have to go into it. He didn't sit down and vision board about hitting Inc 5000. "All that shit is just a byproduct of hard work."

"I just treat my time as my most valuable currency and I'm very, very intentional. It's not even about the discipline, it's the intentionality."

If he doesn't spend some time with himself in the morning, if he doesn't get his workout in, if he doesn't have his check-ins, if he doesn't do his stuff that keeps him on track, he can't operate at the level he needs to.

"I don't have a personal chef where I can hit my walkie talkie at 2 a.m. to get a grilled cheese. But we have people that we take some of the money that we make and we buy our minutes back."

If he wants to go on a run at 1 p.m., he can. If he wants to pick his kids up from school one day when he wasn't planning on it, he can.

With previous businesses, that wasn't the case. He was doing the 10, 12, 14, 16 plus hour days. But you got to paint the room before you hire the painter.

"I am very, very, very intentional about focusing on the things that I am naturally good at or that I get excited about doing. And I try to figure out just simply how to make enough money to pay the people to do all the shit that I don't want to do so I can focus on what I'm good at."

When he is honed in on the things that come to him naturally or that he's excited about, those things happen faster and he can delegate the things that don't come naturally.

"I'm the worst manager ever. I'm not the systems and process person."

In a company with 100 plus employees, he only has three direct reports. That was set up intentionally because as the CEO of a business, "This is my first time running a company this big also."

If he's not taking things off his plate and delegating, they get stuck.

Health Is Wealth, Even When You're Grinding

I asked Dave if the health habits apply to the beginner just getting the company going or is it the nonstop grind at the beginning.

"Everyone's got to start somewhere. If I knew what I knew now about my body, I'm very blessed that I focus."

He got ID'd buying Zyns the other day. His favorite thing in the world to do is smoke cigarettes. "If I could smoke cigarettes all day, every day, 24/7, I would, but I can't. That was not good for my health. I feel worse."

People get caught up in not having enough time. "You know how expensive it is to do some pushups or go on a run?"

If you're not investing in your health, your wellness, your recovery, what are you doing? Grinding, plowing Red Bulls, eating Adderall, smoking cigarettes. Managing the stress, eating like shit during the day because it's quick.

Gary Vee said something about this. Someone asked him about working out and grinding. Gary's response: "When I'm disciplined, when I'm eating good, I'm working out, I feel better. When I'm not doing all those things, I feel worse. I would rather feel better, so I just do it all."

Dave took that to heart. "If I am not staying focused on my working out, my wellness, my recovery, I don't operate at that high of a level and I don't feel as good and I like feeling good so I just do it."

The Real Secret to Dope's Growth

I asked Dave how they've grown so fast. Is there a secret to their success?

He referenced The Go Giver. There's a conversation about coming out with a business. How much can we charge? How big can we get?

If you're going to sell rocks for a dollar, you got to get a stand, find the rocks, sit on the thing. Only so many people want to buy a rock for a dollar. Anyone could do what the pet rock guy did.

But then you go to the best brain surgeon in the world that can charge the most money. That person had to go to school, become the best, figure it out, solve the problems. They only have so many minutes during the day to be doing these things.

"How much you can charge is based on the level of problem you can solve. Are you selling a rock? Are you doing brain surgery? Or somewhere in between? How much you can make depends on how many people you can help."

What Dave saw with Dope was the opportunity to standardize something that a lot of people heard of. "The problem we fight at Dope has been said for 100 years. Direct mail is dead. Great. So were Facebook ads if you approach them the way that you did 10 years ago."

Every parcel in the United States, 180 million parcels, has one thing. A mailbox.

"When I looked at Dope and how direct mail was being done by these guys and girls lighting their cigars with hundred dollar bills since the magazines, publications, junk mail, I just saw it different."

One of the things that helped Dope grow is he wasn't trying to grow it. He had no intention whatsoever. He was never big on business plans. "As an entrepreneur, I was just like, we're going to figure some shit out."

If you asked him five years ago how big Dope was going to be, he couldn't tell you. He just knew there was a big enough problem and he had come up with a solution.

"Success is truly when preparation meets opportunity."

None of their growth was planned. "I'm an entrepreneur, man. I'm a founder. I'm a hustler. I take a problem and I come up with a solution."

Setting Expectations Powers Everything

Dave talked about not obsessing over what could go wrong. He used to sit around and obsess for hours. What could happen? What are they going to say? What am I going to say if they do this?

"Then I realized the more you pour into that level of thinking, more you're giving those outcomes energy."

Don't be so obsessive to the point where you're literally creating an outcome because of the energy you're pouring into it negatively.

What if you just sat around and thought about all the things that went right? If you came up with a plan and communicated what your plans were to people and set your expectations for what you were going to happen?

"If you expect something from someone and they don't do it, you're only going to be disappointed. And if you expect something from someone and they do it, you're not going to think about it that much because you expected it."

What if you look at business and communication and relationships as just putting the work into setting the expectations around what you want to happen? Figure out how the people you're depending on are working with, communicate.

Get your shit together with EOS, read Traction and Rocket Fuel by Gino Wickman. "There are operating systems for business, for relationships, for life, and all of them boil down to one thing. It's setting expectations."

An expectation is simply communicating what you want to happen. Figure out what you want to happen. Lay out your expectations and figure out how to communicate around the metrics.

"I have a good or bad habit of making things sound inherently kind of simple, but how hard do you want things to be?"

Dave's Message: Slow Down

I asked Dave for his message to business owners.

"It's the same. I'll give the same answer that I give when I'm asked, Dave, what would you tell your 18 year old self? Slow down. Just slow down."

We always feel like it should happen faster, but if it did, you wouldn't appreciate it.

When you look at aha moments, inflection moments, pain points, light bulbs, all of it through your career, when it's good, you got to always remind yourself that it could get worse. And when it's the worst, "Anytime it's as bad as it could possibly be, it can only get better."

The real practice, the real muscle that needs to get trained for all of us is just catching yourself when you're at your worst moment. When you're going to go back to that thing that is inherently the most comfortable for you, feel that ginger ale bubbling up and you're going to be reactive.

You know yourself better than anybody. When you understand getting back to behaviors or habits and just catching that ginger ale, slowing down and realizing that you made the decision to start all this.

"Whatever you're doing, whatever you're going through, whatever is on your plate, that thing was empty before you started putting stuff there."

The stress and the hardship and the pain, all of it that comes along, Dave's been doing this a while. When he looks back on any single inflection point, crossroad of his life, slow down a little bit, take it in, feel that emotion.

"You're the one that's in control to any reaction to anything that you put on your plate."

And Dave's final thought that hit me hard: "Everyone says stop and smell the roses, right? How about take a step back more often and just realize the flowers are growing."

My Main Takeaway

This conversation with Dave completely changed how I think about entrepreneurship. The biggest insight is that stress is relative. It doesn't get easier when you grow. You just learn how to manage it better.

The power of putting on horse blinders and saying no to opportunities is underrated. Dave could have chased a million different things with his connections and experience. Instead, he focused on one problem and solved it better than anyone else.

And the health piece cannot be overstated. You are your biggest investment. If you're not investing in your wellness, you're setting yourself up to crash when you finally get the success you've been grinding for.

But the message that will stick with me forever is: slow down. Take a step back and realize the flowers are growing. Success isn't just about the destination. It's about appreciating the journey.

Thanks for reading, and if you found this valuable, make sure to check out the full podcast episode. Dave drops even more wisdom and stories that I couldn't fit into this recap.

You can find Dave everywhere under Dope Marketing or Dave Carroll on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and all social platforms. Head to Dope Marketing to check out how they're revolutionizing direct mail with automated, laser-focused campaigns that integrate with your CRM.