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Dave Lavinsky talks with Jason Barnard about starting at the end.
Start At The End! Dave Lavinsky—serial entrepreneur, bestselling author, distinguished business strategist, and the founder and president of PlanPros.ai—shares the game-changing methodology that’s helped over 1 million entrepreneurs build bigger, faster-growing companies. Drawing from 30+ years of experience launching, scaling, and exiting multiple ventures across diverse industries, Dave reveals his proven “reverse engineering” approach to business planning that transforms wishful thinking into concrete roadmaps for success.
Get ready for a deep dive on:
– The “Start at the End” methodology: How to envision your ultimate business goal and work backwards to create an actionable plan
– Why traditional business planning fails and how reverse engineering your success changes everything
– The exact framework for breaking down 10-year visions into yearly, monthly, and daily actionable steps
– Asset-building strategies that compound over time vs. daily tasks that waste your potential
– The psychology behind goal-setting and why most entrepreneurs lose sight of their end game in the daily fires of business
This episode delivers transformative, battle-tested wisdom for entrepreneurs, founders, and business owners ready to stop drifting and start building systematically toward their ultimate vision.
#StartAtTheEnd #BusinessPlanning #EntrepreneurStrategy #BusinessGrowth #ReverseEngineering #AIBusinessPlanning #FastlaneFounders #DaveLavinsky #BusinessStrategy #EntrepreneurJourney #StartupPlanning #BusinessSuccess #VisionaryPlanning #GrowthStrategy #EntrepreneurTips
What you’ll learn from Dave Lavinsky
This episode was recorded live on video August 26th 2025
Links to pieces of content relevant to this topic:
https://planpros.ai/
https://www.growthink.com/
Dave Lavinsky
Transcript from Dave Lavinsky with Jason Barnard on Fastlane Founders And Legacy. Start at the End
[00:00:00] Dave Lavinsky: So if we have a hundred employees in 10 years, we probably have 90 in nine years. You probably have 80 in eight years, right? Obviously, it’s not linear, but it’s gonna be somewhat of a trajectory going forward. So yes, let’s look at five years, where do we need to be in five years?
And get that down on paper. And then once again, and keep moving backwards to figure out what we need to achieve this year. Because I think a lot of businesses, if we look at this year, even if they’re successful from a profitability perspective, are they building the assets that they need to build to get to where they really want to be?
[00:00:38] Narrator: Fastlane Founders and Legacy with Jason Barnard.
Each week, Jason sits down with successful entrepreneurs, CEOs and executives, and get them to share how they mastered the delicate balance between rapid growth and enduring success in the business world. How can we quickly build a profitable business that stands the test of time and becomes our legacy? A legacy we’re proud of.
Fastlane Founders and Legacy with Jason Barnard.
[00:01:07] Jason Barnard: Hi, everybody and welcome to another Fastlane Founders and Legacy with me, Jason Barnard, and a quick hello and we’re good to go. Welcome to the show, Dave Lavinsky.
[00:01:20] Dave Lavinsky: I like that. Thanks for having me here, Jason.
[00:01:22] Jason Barnard: Yeah, you get the baritone.
[00:01:24] Dave Lavinsky: I’ll take it.
[00:01:26] Jason Barnard: Lovely to meet you. We’re gonna be talking about Start at the End, which is a really cryptic title.
[00:01:32] Dave Lavinsky: Okay.
[00:01:32] Jason Barnard: Can you, in one sentence, tell me what we’re gonna be talking about?
[00:01:37] Dave Lavinsky: When we talk about Start at the End, we talk about envisioning where you want your business to be in X years, which is the end, and how you create a plan, reverse engineer that end vision so that you can achieve that vision over the next X years.
[00:01:56] Jason Barnard: Right, which is why you got tagged as interesting guest by Gab.
[00:02:00] Dave Lavinsky: We’ll take it.
[00:02:01] Jason Barnard: The podcast production manager, we were discussing that just before and now I a hundred percent understand exactly why she made that particular tag.
[00:02:10] Dave Lavinsky: Okay.
[00:02:10] Jason Barnard: Before we get into that, Kalicube® looks after personal brands and corporate brands for entrepreneurs, and you have a lovely Knowledge Panel.
If I search your name on Google, you look great. It lists you as an author, which is unfortunate because you’re actually an entrepreneur, but you look really good. Is your name unique?
[00:02:34] Dave Lavinsky: Mostly. There is a couple. There’s one David Lavinsky, but I’m the only one that goes by Dave. So there is. If you do search on just Lavinsky or David Lavinsky, you’ll find one or two other people. But yes, it is pretty unique. I’m lucky to that extent.
[00:02:52] Jason Barnard: Unlike my new friend, James Brown, who I interviewed earlier on. Then I looked to AI Mode, which is Google’s new AI system to challenge ChatGPT and it, for some reason, kept repeating Growthink. It’s obsessed by Growthink. It even thinks your education is Growthink.
No idea where that comes from, and that’s one of the problems with AI right now. It gets itself into a little hole and it can’t get out. And it keeps repeating things that just don’t make sense. So this is a good example of hallucinations that AI often has because it doesn’t really understand what it’s saying.
[00:03:31] Dave Lavinsky: Mm-hmm.
[00:03:32] Jason Barnard: Whereas the Knowledge Graph and the Knowledge Panel here is fact. So we’ve gone from fact, which is really cool in Google search to, I’m not really sure. I might get my head stuck in a hole and I will repeat something that doesn’t make sense. Despite the fact that it’s obviously not logical. Education – Growthink.
It’s not logical because Growthink is your company.
[00:03:56] Dave Lavinsky: Correct. Correct.
[00:03:59] Jason Barnard: So AI is still not quite there. So Dave having a unique name is a huge advantage. If you are called James Brown, you have a huge problem with the very famous James Brown.
[00:04:12] Dave Lavinsky: Yep.
[00:04:12] Jason Barnard: If you are called Dave Lavinsky, you don’t need Kalicube®.
[00:04:17] Dave Lavinsky: Agreed. Except if everyone starts naming their child, Dave Lavinsky, then we have a problem in our hands. But most likely that’s not gonna happen. So everyone does need Kalicube®.
[00:04:25] Jason Barnard: You’re safe. Brilliant, wonderful. So let’s get on to Start at the End. So you are saying at Kalicube®, I need to imagine where I want to be at the end.
Now the end could be 20 years, it could be 10 years, it could be five years.
[00:04:37] Dave Lavinsky: Correct, correct.
[00:04:38] Jason Barnard: How do I decide?
[00:04:41] Dave Lavinsky: So, for everyone, it’s different. My background is business planning. So a lot of times I say, Hey, you’re starting a company, or you have a company. And you have this company and today is today. And what do I want to do with this company?
What is the end game? I wanna take this company public. I want to grow the company to X million dollars in sales and sell it. But I think personally, maybe, it could be a longer term. But if you’re a company, I think you have an idea in mind that I want to take it to this point. And if you’re a young entrepreneur, you may have a 30, it may be 30 years.
Now if you’re a little old, you may say, Hey, this is my five-year goal, or 10-year goal. But it’s really just think about your company, what you want, what’s the end game for that company. So let’s say that Jason, you and I are starting a company and we’re starting a hair salon.
[00:05:35] Jason Barnard: Thank you.
[00:05:37] Dave Lavinsky: And you and I started a hair salon.
[00:05:39] Jason Barnard: And some have more need than others.
[00:05:41] Dave Lavinsky: Well, we do everything. We don’t just do top of the head, we do beards and everything else, and we’re gonna start a chain of hair salons. We want to grow this business and we want to get to a hundred million dollars in sales. And we don’t know. Let’s say, we wanna get to a hundred million dollars in sales in seven years and we want to sell the company and retire and go off for the sunset.
So that’s our end. That’s the most important thing for, I think, for most entrepreneurs, for all entrepreneurs, is to understand what that end game is. Because if you don’t, it’s Yogi Berra, the baseball player said, if you don’t know where you’re going, you’re not gonna get there.
[00:06:20] Jason Barnard: Right.
[00:06:21] Dave Lavinsky: And so a lot of entrepreneurs, they know at the beginning when they launched their business, a lot of times, they know where they wanna go. But once they start it, they deal with the fires of every day running a business. It’s hard for them to, they lose sight of where they want to go. I’m sorry, did you wanna say something, Jason?
[00:06:36] Jason Barnard: Yeah. Well, there are two things going on there. Number one is most entrepreneurs know where they want to go and then forget because they’re fighting fires.
[00:06:45] Dave Lavinsky: Yes.
[00:06:46] Jason Barnard: I would’ve imagined most entrepreneurs don’t know where they want to go and they just start it because it’s fun. But that’s because that’s what I’ve always done.
[00:06:55] Dave Lavinsky: It’s just start.
[00:06:56] Jason Barnard: Yeah, I start. Because I think, wow. I can solve brand problems in Google and now brand problems in AI.
[00:07:03] Dave Lavinsky: Mm-hmm.
[00:07:03] Jason Barnard: I can disambiguate and make you look like a superstar when you’re not.
[00:07:06] Dave Lavinsky: Mm-hmm.
[00:07:07] Jason Barnard: I can make your personal brand or corporate brand look much, much more important, much, much more authoritative than it truly is by using what you already have.
That’s a fun idea, and I can see that it’s useful, but I’ve got no idea what the end is.
[00:07:22] Dave Lavinsky: I hear you. I think that’s maybe more of a serial entrepreneur type of thing where you keep iterating, keep coming with new ideas. I’m a little jaded by the fact that my expertise for the last 25 plus years is business planning.
So a lot of entrepreneurs come to me because they need a business plan. Why do they need a business plan? Usually they need a business plan to present to an investor. And the investor and lender, as part of the business plan, wants to know that end game. They say, well, how am I gonna get my money back?
So a lot of times the people I work with, when they start the business, they have that end game in mind. You, as more of a serial entrepreneur, you keep coming up with new ideas. A lot of times, yes, you may not have the end game in mind. You just think, Hey, this is cool. Let’s do this. And it’ll achieve whatever.
But you’re not as defined on the end game, which is also fun.
[00:08:13] Jason Barnard: Right. But I had an interesting experience this weekend. I went off to the countryside for a musical weekend jamming with musicians.
[00:08:21] Dave Lavinsky: Perfect.
[00:08:22] Jason Barnard: And strangely, one of the conversations with one of the musicians was exactly this.
[00:08:27] Dave Lavinsky: Okay?
[00:08:28] Jason Barnard: He said to me, what’s your end game with your business?
[00:08:31] Dave Lavinsky: Interesting.
[00:08:32] Jason Barnard: So this is absolutely perfect, and I’ve been thinking the last couple of days, what is my end game?
[00:08:37] Dave Lavinsky: Got it. So, let’s talk. So the end game, let’s get rid of our hair company, but your end game is to get to here. And so really the strategy is, okay, we want to be here, we want to be whatever the number is, a hundred million dollars.
And the first thing I’d like to do is really figure out what that means. So let’s say. We’re trying to get to a hundred million dollars in whatever business it is. Does that mean we have one location, 10 locations? How many employees though do we have? So I like to figure out, well, what assets are required to get to that a hundred million dollars business?
It’s not just gonna be me and you, right? We’re gonna need to have different locations, different people, different systems. So what I like to say is, okay, this is where we wanna be, and this is what it looks like. What do we need to achieve in the next year to get us on track? To getting on the trajectory to getting to where we wanna be in five years or seven years, or the end game, and then I like to work back further.
Well, if that’s where we need to be in a year to get to the end game, where do we need to be at the end of the quarter? Where do we need to be at the end of the month? Where do we need to be at the end of the week? What do I need to do today? So it’s really reverse planning to figure out to get to that end game.
And once again, it goes back to most people don’t know the end game. Most entrepreneurs forget about the end game and so they don’t plan properly.
[00:10:00] Jason Barnard: Yeah, forget about or didn’t know to start with my case being the second one.
[00:10:04] Dave Lavinsky: Right.
[00:10:05] Jason Barnard: But if I say, okay, I’ve got an end game, 10 years time. Kalicube®, we’re making a hundred million dollars a year.
[00:10:10] Dave Lavinsky: Okay.
[00:10:11] Jason Barnard: Is it worth me looking at a five-year plan, or should I just look at the one year?
[00:10:16] Dave Lavinsky: Great question. 10 years. Here’s where I wanna be in 10 years. I’m okay with whatever breakdown you want. You guys want to be nine years, eight years, seven years, six or five. I wanna figure out the trajectory.
So if we have a hundred employees in 10 years, we probably have 90 in nine years. You probably have 80 in eight years, right? Obviously, it’s not linear, but it’s gonna be somewhat of a trajectory going forward. So yes, let’s look at five years. Where do we need to be in five years and get that down on paper.
Then once again, keep moving backwards to figure out what we need to achieve this year. Because I think a lot of businesses, if we look at this year, even if they’re successful from a profitability perspective, are they building the assets that they need to build to get to where they really wanna be?
[00:11:05] Jason Barnard: I have another question and it’s really bothering me.
[00:11:07] Dave Lavinsky: Sure. Bring it out.
[00:11:08] Jason Barnard: You ended up saying, what do I need to do today? My immediate question is, if I want a hundred million dollars in 10 years time, why am I talking to you, Dave?
[00:11:22] Dave Lavinsky: Meaning?
[00:11:22] Jason Barnard: This is what I’m doing today. It’s what I’ve chosen to do today to talk to you and my friend James Brown, which still makes me giggle.
[00:11:29] Dave Lavinsky: Mm-hmm.
[00:11:31] Jason Barnard: Am I doing the right thing?
[00:11:34] Dave Lavinsky: Well, A, I don’t know, because I don’t know what the 10-year plan is, but what you are doing today is you’re building an asset. This podcast, and this video, and this audio is an asset. Most entrepreneurs don’t build assets on a daily basis.
This podcast, maybe no one will ever listen to it, or maybe we’ll have a million people listen to it. And this is something that’s going to really help. For me, going back to start at the end, I wrote a book called Start at the just over a decade ago. And this guy named Rob Dyrdek from the TV show Ridiculousness, read the book.
He has since said it’s the most influential book that he’s ever read.
[00:12:13] Jason Barnard: Wow.
[00:12:13] Dave Lavinsky: And he’s actually used that philosophy to say, this is where I wanna be. And now he’s somewhat close to a billionaire entrepreneur. And so that was an asset that I created many years ago that actually has come to help me and a lot of other entrepreneurs.
But it’s helped me on my trajectory to getting to where I want to go.
[00:12:34] Jason Barnard: Right. Okay. And that’s where the million entrepreneurs, I was curious about that as well. You’ve helped over a million entrepreneurs. That includes people who’ve read your book.
[00:12:43] Dave Lavinsky: Didn’t include those folks.
[00:12:45] Jason Barnard: Oh, wow.
[00:12:47] Dave Lavinsky: So we sell business plan software, business plan guides, and we’ve had over a million people purchase that or download our software and business planning guides.
So we’ve helped. It’s well over a million at this point.
[00:13:01] Jason Barnard: Right. Okay. Super. That was just curiosity.
[00:13:06] Dave Lavinsky: Sure.
[00:13:07] Jason Barnard: It’s really difficult for me to think. What should I do today with that a hundred million dollar, 10-year goal in mind? And that was the question.
I didn’t mean to insult you, but am I doing the right thing? As you said, you don’t know, but I’m creating an asset which is already positive. All the other things I did today, I’m suddenly freaking out that I’m wasting my time.
[00:13:31] Dave Lavinsky: A, there’s a decent chance that there are certain things that you are doing that is wasting your time in terms of getting to your goal.
But you are doing some other things that are good. So once again, we take that 10-year goal, five-year goal, we break it down and what do we need? Where does your business meet at the end of the year, end of the quarter, end of the month? On a daily basis, it’s hard. You gotta say, okay, if I wanna be here at the end of the month, and a lot of times it’s building an asset.
When I say an asset, hiring a new employee, train new employee, creating a new podcast, figuring out, building a new system, et cetera, launching a new ad channel, et cetera. So these things that you say, Hey, at the end of this month I’m more so of planning. What you need to do at the end of the month, a month by month. On a daily basis, it’s harder. But if you say, Hey, this is what I wanna achieve at the end of the month, and maybe your goal at the end of the month is, I wanna have eight new podcasts and I wanna do this. And then, so today, you recorded two podcasts. You won. You won. But what else do you need to do?
So really, it’s thinking about more of a monthly, what do we need to accomplish this month to get us on the year track and the 10-year track. So what do we need to do this week or every day this month to get us to that monthly goal?
[00:14:46] Jason Barnard: Right. That’s kind of huge already. I’ve set myself the goal by the end of the month that I’m going to build the backend of Kalicube®, KaliNexus™ tech stack.
To be able to deal with the Claim, Frame, Prove model that we’re implementing for our clients automatically.
[00:15:03] Dave Lavinsky: Okay.
[00:15:05] Jason Barnard: And every day, I think, which bit should I do now? Then I get distracted by the podcast episode that I need to record because Gab set it up and she’s done a brilliant job and it’s exactly what I need.
Because then I just pitch up and do the interview. Then somebody sends me an email about an event that I’ve gotta do tomorrow and I get distracted all the time. So that kind of end of month goal, it’s quite difficult to hit. And that’s a question of obviously time organization, which is why I’m struggling with the kind of breaking it down day to day.
I think I can get to the end of the month by achieving what I aim, but I’m probably gonna have to work the weekend.
[00:15:43] Dave Lavinsky: Possibly yes. So what I do, I’m a big fan of the time chunking or time blocking on my calendar. So if you say, Hey, Dave, I can only do the podcast during these hours.
And I did, when I scheduled it, I said I can’t do these hours. Certain hours I couldn’t do. This is the only spot that I could do because certain hours are already blocked out for me that these are hours that are going towards tasks that I need to accomplish to hit the monthly goal, to hit the annual goal, to hit the multi-year goal.
I’m a big fan of blocking at those hours and holding them very, very sacred.
[00:16:19] Jason Barnard: Right. Yeah, which I never do. I’m rubbish at that. So first good tip, but that’s actually less to do with the start at the end.
[00:16:29] Dave Lavinsky: Sure.
[00:16:30] Jason Barnard: Now, another question that I have is, you said a hundred million dollars, so I repeat it a hundred million dollars.
[00:16:35] Dave Lavinsky: Okay.
[00:16:36] Jason Barnard: How do I define what my goal is? I’m sitting here now in my company thinking, okay, it’s going well. We’re making money. We’ve got the clients. I’m comfortable. The team’s great. And now I can sit down and define my goal.
[00:16:50] Dave Lavinsky: Okay.
[00:16:51] Jason Barnard: I could say a hundred million dollars. I could say $10 million.
I could say $15 million. I could say $5 million. I’m picking numbers out the air.
[00:17:02] Dave Lavinsky: Okay. So for me, I know what I wanna do after the end of my business. I know my personal ambitions.
[00:17:13] Jason Barnard: Oh, what’s that?
[00:17:14] Dave Lavinsky: I’m a relatively unique case in that. I’m gonna go into politics after.
[00:17:21] Jason Barnard: Oh, cool.
[00:17:22] Dave Lavinsky: After I end my business. And I already started playing with that. And so I have a very defined timeline, but for most people it’s okay. A lot of people, it depends on your age. I wanna start a new business, or I wanna retire. Now, let’s say our goal is to retire and then it just, okay, I wanna travel.
Well, what do I wanna do? I wanna travel and get a sense of how much money I need to achieve that goal. So let’s say, if I need $5 million and that’s what I planned out, to travel and do this, then I need to exit with $5 million in cash at the end. So to me, it’s just like thinking about what you want to do next and that differs for everybody.
And there’s a lot of social entrepreneurs that don’t want any money. The goal is that helping a million entrepreneurs like I’ve done, that could be their end game. And that’s beautiful and that’s wonderful. It doesn’t have to be a casting. It could be, Hey, I wanna help a billion people.
Go for it. I love it.
[00:18:20] Jason Barnard: Right. Yeah. I kind of got the feeling I was getting retirement advice from you there. But in fact, the helping a million people, we give away The Kalicube Process™, which is our methodology for managing brands in Google and AI. We give it away for free because it’s an existential problem.
How AI understands and represents you is something that people are gonna have to get a grip on whether they like it or not.
[00:18:43] Dave Lavinsky: Yes.
[00:18:44] Jason Barnard: Give it away for free and we help people who are time poor, cash rich, who want us to do it for them and do it properly.
[00:18:49] Dave Lavinsky: Mm-hmm. Perfect.
[00:18:51] Jason Barnard: My biggest aim is to help as many people as possible.
[00:18:54] Dave Lavinsky: Okay.
[00:18:55] Jason Barnard: And to be able to retire comfortably and play music. That’s it.
[00:18:59] Dave Lavinsky: Okay. Well, I love that. My family’s very, very musical. I’ve been to five concerts in the last week and a half, I think so. And my kids are both musicians and my wife’s actually a musician as well, so we’re big on music.
So, but those goals are great. Those goals are great. But in terms of the business side, you wanna help a lot of people. And maybe that you write that down, we wanna have a million people download the guide or whatever that number is. Millions just a nice round number. I don’t want to put words in your mouth or give you goals.
[00:19:33] Jason Barnard: No, the thing is Katrina who manages the guide downloads is probably now freaking out as she listens to this.
[00:19:41] Dave Lavinsky: I said 10 million. I said 10 million. Make her freak out a little more.
[00:19:48] Jason Barnard: But I like that approach because when you say to me, I wanna make a hundred million dollars, that doesn’t really resonate in my brain.
[00:19:55] Dave Lavinsky: Yeah, of course.
[00:19:55] Jason Barnard: 10 million or a hundred million doesn’t make any difference to me.
[00:19:58] Dave Lavinsky: Yeah.
[00:19:59] Jason Barnard: Helping a million people by having them download the guide and understand exactly what they can do to control they’re destiny, fixed, extensive problem. How does AI understand and represent me? I can take control.
Wow, brilliant. The million people helped. That’s something I can deal with.
[00:20:14] Dave Lavinsky: Good.
[00:20:14] Jason Barnard: And then build a business whereby I’m comfortable for my retirement. Sorry, go ahead.
[00:20:18] Dave Lavinsky: Perfect. And so, with the downloads of the guide, yes. It’s not linear, but we can say, Hey, we got 300 last month. What do we need to do to get maybe not 400 this month, but we need to get 400 or 500. We need to get this by the end of the year.
Because a lot of times you can’t. I don’t like very short-term thinking. It’s like, yes, if I held a gun to your head and you have to get a hundred more downloads this month, you’ll figure it out. But maybe the following month it’s gonna go down. So like I’m more about how do we build assets? What do we need to do?
Do we need to build a bunch of new organic webpages that support that, that link to the guide.
[00:20:58] Jason Barnard: Yeah.
[00:20:59] Dave Lavinsky: And that’s something that could take several months to do. And that’s fine. And let’s say it takes us four months to create all those supporting pages. I’m fine with that as long as we create 4 of those pages this month and 4 of those pages next month, right? So we keep adding assets that are gonna allow us to achieve that goal. And then, as you said, money-wise, it’s different for everyone. Some people are happy retiring with no money. I’m great with that. It could just be legacy.
I wanna understand where you wanna be so that we can start there and figure out the plan to get you there. Because once again, very few people are doing that and fewer entrepreneurs.
[00:21:34] Jason Barnard: Yeah, that’s a great conclusion. I need to set my goal, work backwards to figure out how to get there, look at what I’m gonna do to get to the next five-year point, then to the next year point, then to the next month point.
Don’t freak out too much about the daily stuff. Read your book because apparently it’s the best book ever.
[00:21:53] Dave Lavinsky: Just the first three chapters and then you could stop.
[00:21:56] Jason Barnard: Oh, brilliant. Okay.
And that’s perfect. So I will do that now. Thank you very much, Dave.
[00:22:03] Dave Lavinsky: You got it.
[00:22:03] Jason Barnard: That was great. Thank you, everyone, for joining us.
You get the outro song. A quick goodbye to end the show. Thank you, Dave.
[00:22:14] Dave Lavinsky: I was not expecting that. Thank you so much. It was a pleasure to be here. I appreciate the singing, appreciate the music, and I just hope that the people, the entrepreneurs listening today got some value out of that and are able to grow the business that they’re here to achieve.
So that’s my goal.
[00:22:33] Jason Barnard: Brilliant. Well, I got a lot out of it.
[00:22:35] Dave Lavinsky: Excellent.
[00:22:35] Jason Barnard: So that’s one person already.
[00:22:36] Dave Lavinsky: Excellent.
We’ll take it. Thank you, Jason.
[00:22:38] Narrator: Your corporate and personal brands are what Google and AI say they are. We can give you back control. Kalicube®.
The event is 100% free:
Organized by Kalicube®.
