Why 2 Employees Beat 6 (The $400K Hiring Math)

[00:00:00]I was over in Dubai. I was speaking at a big Mind Valley event. I was standing talking to this guy, 6'7. I play pro beach volleyball. I said, "If I got six [music] guys from my team and he starts laughing and he goes, "Dude, we'd beat you every single game." I'm like, "Wait, so two guys would beat six?" He goes, "Every game." So I realized that if you have two A players, you pay [music] them 200 grand each. That's two people for 400,000. Or you have six B players, [music] I'm paying six people 100 grand each. the two A's at 400 would destroy the six B's or [music] C's at at 600.

[00:00:34]>> All right, listen guys, this is part two. Everyone was uh excited about Cameron Herald, which I'm a big fan of.

[00:00:41]I work with him on a regular basis. He spoke at my last event. He just knows business and he knows really top down business, but it's really bottom-up business. He is uh wrote a lot of books.

[00:00:52]He's known for growth and scaling. Uh works really well with CEOs and COOs.

[00:00:58]And what I talk about, we'll probably jump into this, is I'm a visionary. Then we've got the integrator. Uh COO Alliance is the number one global peer community for second in command leaders.

[00:01:08]Founded by Cameron in 2016. It provides high level leadership training and support for COS, VPs of operations, GMs, and presidents who run companywide operations. I could talk on and on about Cameron, but uh why don't you just introduce yourself? I'm sure everyone's heard of you, but uh it's always good to get a refresher. Wow. All right.

[00:01:28]Introduce myself. Uh Cameron, entrepreneur, COO. I've built a bunch of companies. I've been paid to speak now in 30 countries. I've been paid to speak on every continent, which is really random. Um built a bunch of different businesses. I had my first real company when I was 20 years old. I had 12 full-time employees. Grew up in a family of entrepreneurs. Um the fourth company that I built was 1800 Got Junk. The first one I was involved with was a group called College Pro Painters, which not a lot of people know of, but was probably the best training ground and where I learned the most about leadership was building College Pro.

[00:02:04]Every year, we had to go out and recruit, hire, and train 800 university students to be franchises.

[00:02:10]>> Yeah.

[00:02:10]>> And then in 6 weeks, they had to go out and recruit, hire, and train 8,000 students to paint houses. So, imagine in six months hiring 9,000 people. And I did that four years in a row. So yeah, that was some of my bio, I guess.

[00:02:26]>> You know, we could dive into a lot of the stuff we left off on, but you know, I want to just start by talking about a vivid vision. And we talk about this all the time. My bracelet says, "Ruthlessly prioritize.

[00:02:37]>> I've got ADHD. Every symptom you could think of. I got ideas coming out of the yin-yang." And uh we're not ready for all my ideas. And Jeff Basos talks about this.

[00:02:46]>> I just did that with my finger just to remind me to say it.

[00:02:49]>> Yeah. So we're not ready. We're trying to build a company that can handle all my ideas. Uh we they all go in the ASA board. I want to be heard. You know, we worked a little bit with Dan Martell.

[00:02:57]Dan Martell loves you, by the way. And uh >> mutual.

[00:03:01]>> He said, uh you know, the worst thing, Tommy, is when you don't feel heard.

[00:03:05]>> He goes, "You'll wake up in the middle of the night, you'll say, "What happened to that idea I had two weeks ago?

[00:03:09]Where's that at? When are we doing it?

[00:03:11]What's the priority level? And your team?" So, he had a meeting with my complete executive team. He said, "This is just who Tommy is." doesn't mean he doesn't he'll take no gracefully, but it needs to be heard. It can't just be shoveled off the board. But let's talk a little bit about let me speak to that.

[00:03:25]Yeah, because that's separate from vivid vision. You said the the Bezos thing and then we hyperl really really quickly. So what Bezos said in a meeting or an interview one time was I have so many ideas that I have the ability to kill my company by pushing too many ideas out onto the floor too quickly and I have to slow myself down.

[00:03:43]>> Right. And I think what Dan is saying and what you're saying I agree more with which is we need to get our ideas heard and then we need someone to capture our ideas and take care of them for us and not necessarily start them all right away. So when I was the COO at 1800 Got Junk, what I would always say to Brian was, I love that idea. Let me ask you a few questions so I can understand it a little bit more and then we can decide when to start it.

[00:04:07]>> Yeah.

[00:04:07]>> So then I would ask him the who, what, when, where, why, and how. I'd ask him a little bit about the ROI he was expecting. what completed look like. We might even go for a walk and talk and grab a coffee so I could understand the idea. And then I would say, "Okay, based on what I now know, let's start it right away." Meaning, which of these 12 other projects might it bump or I love that idea, let's start it maybe next month.

[00:04:31]But I got it. Or now that I understand that idea, we just mutually decided to kill it, >> right? But at least I got the ideas out of your brain which is so full and overflowing and I kept kind of kept track of it because entrepreneurs want to know that we're either going to take care of their idea or that we understand their idea or that we've got it somewhere that we can look at it later.

[00:04:51]>> Right? That's what's important to me. I mean marketing, we'll talk about that later, >> but it's been impossible. It's not a priority yet, but it should be. And there's a lot of politics now within the company because there's, you know, there's a lot to do with fleet and insurance and there's every reason why we shouldn't. That's when I do it.

[00:05:09]>> Let's talk about that for a second. So, every idea has an ROI or should have an ROI calculator attached to it because as an entrepreneur and as a person, we can always say, "Oh, marketing. Parking is parking and marketing at the same time."

[00:05:24]So, it's parking your vehicles in hightra areas. And yes, that should happen. But visav everything else that we're working on or related to all the other ideas that you've got, what's the ROI of that idea versus how much people, how much time, and how much money is it going to cost us to make that idea happen? And then what's it going to generate? Will it generate revenue? Will it generate profit? Will it make our customers happier? Will it make my employers happier? Employees happier.

[00:05:52]And based on that, do I do it or not? Or do I do it later? Because yeah, yes, it should happen. But you got 50 other ideas, too.

[00:05:59]>> No, there's there's several hundred in a sauna and there'll be a thousand by then.

[00:06:03]>> But that's how I prioritize them is based on that ROI and based on the people input, time input, and money input.

[00:06:08]>> Well, yeah. No, that makes sense. But how do you say uh taking in our guys to a baseball game? What's the ROI? You could It's very hard to extract. Yes, they're not going to turn over as quickly. They'll probably stay on board longer. They'll be happier. But there's certain things that are really hard to extract an ROI on. Okay. Yes. So, taking the guys to a baseball game is going to make them happier. I would then look at our employee net promoter score to know where are we today on our happiness for our employees, right? I know what my customer net promoter score is. What's my employee net promoter score? If I'm over positive 80%, I'm going to dial back all the baseball games I'm taking people to because I don't need happier employees. So, years ago, I was coaching a company. They were ranked as the number two company to work for on glass door in the United States. I coached them for four years, coached six of them, and their their employee net promoter score was positive 86%.

[00:07:01]And we were talking about some of the stuff they all the perks they were giving their employees. And I said, "You know what? You're trying to actually grow your gross margin. You're trying to grow your EBID because you're getting ready to sell. Why don't we get rid of some of the perks and let's dial back the employee net promoter score from positive 85 or 86 to positive 75? You'll still be one of the best companies in the world to work for, but you'll be a lot more profitable.

[00:07:23]>> I agree with that wholeheartedly. And I think you talk a lot about the sign of a great company, which you you send out a blind survey and they come back to you is would I stay working here? Would I advise somebody? A net promoter score is would I promote this company to a friend? Yeah.

[00:07:39]>> And you know 80% or better is they are a promoter of the company.

[00:07:44]>> Yeah. and 20% are detractors or sorry then you take you take your nines and tens those are your promoters subtract the ones through six those are your detractors and you end up with a result of somewhere between negative 100% and positive 100%. Our goal as a company is to have our customers at greater than positive 50 which is considered world class. I like positive 80. Our goal with our employees is greater than positive 50 which is considered world class. I like positive 80 right cuz I don't want to be like I want to be best of best.

[00:08:13]>> Yeah. No, I love that. Uh I'll shift back because I go very quickly because I got so many questions. Um >> the vivid vision you know people I think that's one of the most profound just the concept you name the book. Exactly. It's so smart to name the book exactly what it is.

[00:08:30]>> And so talk to me about the principles of a vivid vision.

[00:08:35]>> The idea with a vivid vision, let me explain what it is and then where where I got the idea. The idea of a vivid vision is an entrepreneur clarifying in a four or fivepage written description what their company looks like, acts like, and feels like three years in the future so that everyone around you can see what you can see. It's kind of like getting the internal movie that you can see playing so that everyone else can follow along with you. They can they can create what you can create. So I learned this concept 30 years ago from an Olympic coach. He was working with high performance sports athletes and he said that they used visualization in sport so that they could perform their sport completely on instinct. He said in the business world if you could do the same thing you'd win. So an example of that is a home builder right a contractor. If you you're building a home right now, >> you're building a ginormous, incredible.

[00:09:26]>> It's it's it's beautiful. You showed me some of the the blueprints a month ago.

[00:09:30]>> Now, you know what you're building, but if you went to the contractor and said, "Here's a bunch of money.

[00:09:36]Build me my dream home." It wouldn't look anything like what you wanted, >> right?

[00:09:41]>> Because he can't read your mind. He doesn't know what a dream home means. He even if you gave him a couple of pictures, that wouldn't be enough. So you had to do a lot of work explaining your vision to the contractor so he understands your vision.

[00:09:54]>> The contractor then creates blueprints and elevation drawings and schematics and plans to show you your vision. You sign off on his plan. He signs off on your vision. And then he then takes your vision and the plan and goes hire a bunch of subtrades and people to make your dream come true. Now, what's really cool is you've got hundreds of employees or dozens of employees building your dream home. You've never talked to any of them.

[00:10:20]>> No.

[00:10:21]>> And how can they read your mind? It's because you use the vivid vision concept to get a contractor to create the plans.

[00:10:28]So, in the business world, you craft a four or five page written description of your company. Your leadership team and your COO create the blueprints and the plans to make your visions come true.

[00:10:39]They then hire a bunch of employees to work the plan, right? Plan your work and work your plan and then all of a sudden your company evolves.

[00:10:50]>> Yeah, for sure. In theory. Uh, [laughter] >> you know, exactly.

[00:10:54]>> You know, it's funny. I just did a a live I was walking out of an interview cuz I do a uh secrets of the trades every month.

[00:11:01]>> Uh, not a huge mailing list, but I enjoy doing it. And it's all my words. It's just the writers put it in a better context. And it's so much it's so funny how people are like, "Man, if I just had Tommy's pay structure, if I just knew Tommy's marketing, if I just knew his onboarding process." And I'm like, "That's not the answer." I'm like, I had a guy a guy call me the other day. He's just a million-dollar HVAC guy. And I was like, a million dollars? I'm like, I know single salesman doing 10 million. I think you got a sales and pricing problem. But I said, the most important thing is get your CRM set up that it spits out exact exact exact KPIs. your booking rate, your cancellation rate, your capacity. I'm like, that's the foundation of knowing your numbers. But I don't know. I can't tell you. This is like hundreds of people a week ask me for something. What's the silver bullet?

[00:11:48]What's >> Yeah, what's the silver bullet? What's the magic?

[00:11:51]>> It's a whole bunch of secrets. It's a whole bunch of systems. It's a whole bunch of tools. I said to my son this morning, he's 23, running his own business. I said, "You got to be good to be lucky and lucky to be good." Um, in business, there isn't one secret. There isn't one formula. There isn't one right answer. There's a whole bunch of right answers to a whole bunch of problems.

[00:12:10]But it is similar to building a home.

[00:12:13]This is the best analogy I've ever encountered for how to scale a business.

[00:12:17]When you build a home, you start with a foundation, >> right?

[00:12:20]>> And you can go visit your home being built for months and it's so boring because it's just foundation. It's the foundation. It's like, when are when do I get to put in the Wolf Stove and the the movie theater room and the gun range and the bowling alley, whatever you're building in your cool home, right? Like when do I get to put all this cool stuff in? That comes way later, >> right?

[00:12:36]>> It's foundation, foundation, foundation, foundation. So even those marketing metrics >> are completely irrelevant if you have the wrong people and the wrong vision and the wrong culture. So let me talk to you about the foundational parts of your business.

[00:12:53]The first start is that vivid vision.

[00:12:55]It's what are we building? If you have all the metrics and you're measuring stuff but no vision, it's irrelevant. So you start with a vivid vision and then and then you you go with a kind of corners and those are your core values right of an obsession with core values living core values firing people who don't break the core or who break the core values only hiring people who already live those core values an obsession with core purpose saying no to everything that's a distraction except why we exist why we're showing up in the space that we're in. You could sell windows. you know that uh 30 years ago I met with this guy Philip Orsino he was a founder of a company called Premor and I said you're doing $2 billion a year in revenue not market cap $2 billion a year in sales selling doors why don't you sell windows similar manufacturing similar customer he goes you know what Cameron goes we're selling $7 billion a year right now in doors in seven countries I think we'll expand to 14 countries before I add a product like holy [ __ ] talk about focus So you got vision, you got core values, you got core purpose, then you have your behag and then you got to get all the right people and get rid of the wrong people.

[00:14:08]So So I think the right answers for your company are starting with that stuff.

[00:14:14]And no entrepreneur wants to go there.

[00:14:16]They're like, "Yeah, yeah, I know that, but give me the give me the silver bullet." Yeah, yeah, but if I park my trucks in the right area, right? No, that won't work either.

[00:14:24]>> If you don't have vision, if you don't have core >> vals, correct? I mean, if your truck sucks, it's going to detract people.

[00:14:30]>> But that but your wraps are correct because they're aligned with a vision.

[00:14:34]They're aligned with a brand. They're aligned with core values. They're aligned with a culture.

[00:14:38]>> That's the key. Like if you parked the a crappy old truck that had stenciling on it that said we're the cheapest, >> right?

[00:14:45]>> That would not magnify your brand. Yeah.

[00:14:47]>> It would actually detract.

[00:14:48]>> When I started at 1800 Got Junk as their COO, I went out in the trucks for a half a day. I came back at lunch and I was getting changed into my street clothes.

[00:14:56]And Brian, who was the founder, who had spent 12 years building the company, said, "What are you doing?" Said, "I'm done." He goes, "What? Done what?" He go, I go, "I'm done hauling junk." He goes, "You've only done a half a day." I said, "I get it. That's not what we do.

[00:15:10]>> We pick stuff up. We put it in truck. We get rid of it. I got it. I don't need to do that for 10 weeks to learn that that's part of the business. What we do is we engage with customers. We're about a brand promise. We're about our quality focus areas. We're about our core values. We're about building a cult.

[00:15:25]We're about we got to raise our prices 40% because you're all going bankrupt. I don't need to learn how to haul junk better.

[00:15:31]>> I love that word. Build a cult.

[00:15:33]>> Well, that's culture. That's the derivative of the root.

[00:15:35]>> Yeah. Well, it's something we try to focus on.

[00:15:38]>> You have to build a little more than a business and a little bit less than a religion. You have to get into the zone of a cult.

[00:15:43]>> Yeah.

[00:15:44]>> You guys are doing that here.

[00:15:46]>> You know, we've got 60 students next door, 75 coming in next month. We've got a total of 700 people uh technicians and installers. That means we're hiring more than 10% of the workforce a month.

[00:15:58]There's a lot of things that could go wrong.

[00:15:59]>> Yeah.

[00:16:00]>> And what we do is eight weeks and that eight weeks is kind of a trial that we want to pull people out.

[00:16:06]>> And so when somebody asks you about the secret, it isn't the metrics.

[00:16:10]It's about the people.

[00:16:12]>> It's about the people. And I'll tell you this.

[00:16:14]>> And don't and don't let them distract us from that.

[00:16:17]>> Yeah.

[00:16:17]>> And then it's about the right people.

[00:16:19]>> Well, and we're going to talk about that. But the uh you know what what do you think's more important? This is a really good question. What's more important? The right people with the right system. Because I believe you could take a C player with the right attitude and turn them into an A player.

[00:16:31]>> Before both of those, it's vision, >> right?

[00:16:34]>> Because if I have a really good system going in the wrong direction, we're [ __ ] >> It's no bueno.

[00:16:38]>> If I have the if I have the best employees we could ever get in Scottsdale Phoenix going in the wrong direction, we're [ __ ] >> So vision, that vivid vision is the most singular important piece in a company, right? Because if you get all the right people in your company going the wrong way, what was the point?

[00:16:52]>> Well, here's what I get all the time. I get a lot of questions.

[00:16:55]>> And then yes, I believe it's about systems. People don't fail, systems fail. Michael Gerber from the E-Myth Revisited, right?

[00:17:01]>> That was a critical >> I think I have >> that was a critical lesson for us 30 years ago in starting 1800 Got Junk was understanding that if something goes wrong, it's not a person's fault. I had a mentor who was being groomed as the second in command at Starbucks. And uh Howard Behar called my mentor Greg who was the second command there and he said, "Greg, why is the letter B on the sign at 50th in Wallingford in Seattle not working? Imagine they have 11,535 stores at the time." Greg goes, "I don't care." Howard goes, "What do you mean you don't care? Why is the letter B not on?" He goes, "Howard, that's the wrong question. The question we need to ask is what system was broken or what system was missing or what system can we put in place to ensure that every letter on every sign at all of our locations are always working. That's a question I'll look at.

[00:17:47]>> That's a genius question, >> right? System every it's going back to first principles. So every entrepreneur needs to ask not why did Bob [ __ ] up?

[00:17:56]Wait, why did you hire Bob? How did you train Bob? What system was broken that allowed Bob to make that mistake? Bob didn't make a mistake. Bob wouldn't even be here had it not been for you or us hiring him or training him or onboarding him or coaching him or maybe we gave Bob so many balls that of course he was going to drop some balls. So don't point your finger at a at a person, point your finger at a system. So every day at 1800 Got Junk, we would have a daily huddle and we would finish our sevenminute daily huddle with this one question.

[00:18:26]What missing systems do we see?

[00:18:30]people be like, "Oh, so it was again it was a problem." We would then identify the missing system for that problem.

[00:18:36]>> Hey guys, I just want to let you know that the $250 off Freedom ends tomorrow.

[00:18:39]Tomorrow night it's gone. So the prices go back to full price. That's up to 250 bucks off every tier for America's 250th birthday. If you've been waiting for a sign, this is the sign. October 26th through the 28th at Mandalay Bay. The best operators in business under one roof. Go claim your seat right now at freedomvent.com or call or text us at 602581-7563 and we'll get you in. Do it tonight. I don't want you to miss this. You know what's interesting is every morning I get a text message of every major KPI.

[00:19:12]Booking rate, cancellation rate, conversion rate, average ticket, turnover rate.

[00:19:16]>> Very important KPIs.

[00:19:18][laughter] >> What's that?

[00:19:19]>> I got to stop on that. What kind of Well, you don't drive your car. You have a driver now. When you drove a car, what kind of car did you drive?

[00:19:25]>> I have a TRX.

[00:19:26]>> Okay. And in your TRX, did you have a dashboard on your car?

[00:19:29]>> I did. And what metric did you look at most often on the dashboard?

[00:19:34]>> Um, the speed.

[00:19:35]>> Bingo. And it was really big and right in front of you. Right. Right.

[00:19:38]>> And then in the bottom right hand corner, there was another metric that would light up once in a while. Go, hey buddy, fill me up with gas.

[00:19:43]>> Y.

[00:19:43]>> The other metrics were kind of irrelevant.

[00:19:46]>> Unless you got an old car, then you're looking at the heat.

[00:19:48]>> Correct. There might be a couple others, right? The heat, the battery. Okay. But you don't need to look at every metric every day. Your email that you get every day should only show you the metrics that are outside of the bounds that you've set for them. Why do you need to know every single day that the gas is full?

[00:20:04]>> Well, so if your metric is green, I don't want to see it. You should only be seeing the metrics that are yellow or red on a daily basis.

[00:20:11]>> I mean, I I I could digest this in less than a minute, but here's what I >> But imagine if you could do it in 20 seconds.

[00:20:17]>> Yes. And that's lean the whole deal of lean manufacturing kaizen and trying to get a little bit faster.

[00:20:22]>> Why why do we want our leadership team to keep seeing the metrics that are green every day? I want them to only see the stuff that is is highlighted in or maybe it's super green. Maybe there's too much profit, meaning we should go spend faster, but I don't want to just keep seeing the same metric saying you're good, you're good, you're good.

[00:20:38]>> No, I I I feel like my best analogy is I'm on Mars now. I'm not involved at all in day-to-day. I'm involved heavily in marketing and recruiting, but >> uh you know what it does is it allows me to see what went well. What where's the shiny day? The beautiful what what didn't go well. So I get I give a lot of attabs like dude you're killing it.

[00:20:58]>> Then that makes sense. That's why you want to that's why a leader should know about the good metrics is to praise is to do the ad boys is to say great job >> and then the volcanoes and the tornadoes. I'm like what happened here?

[00:21:10]And sometimes it's a budgeting problem, which our FPNA team is amazing what they do. There's six of them.

[00:21:16]>> But we're crushing budget. And sometimes I love crushing budget and sometimes I'm like, why are we crushing budget? And it's a budgeting exercise. But you know, >> yeah, you're right. There's gold there.

[00:21:27]>> Yeah. Yeah. I will say this. I want you to answer this question.

[00:21:30]>> But you So yes and yes, you should see them and you should know what to do when you're seeing them. A lot of people will just see the good stuff. They won't do anything. At least you're doing the add boys or you're examining why are we doing so well too. I think that makes sense.

[00:21:42]>> I send out 20 messages a day via via video every birthday, every anniversary >> and I'm working on handwritten cards. So I want the wives to see >> video is so good too. They'll because they'll share the video with the wives.

[00:21:56]>> Yeah. No, we and they're sincere videos.

[00:21:58]And then also I'm able to do groups. We built a software. I want to show it to you. But I could literally say Michigan had a record day. Y >> and I could send it to every guy in Michigan with a click of a button.

[00:22:07]>> Awesome. I say you guys are killing it.

[00:22:08]I'm getting wristbands made for >> Howard Behard did that at Starbucks. Eh, >> what's that?

[00:22:12]>> Every single Friday when Howard Behard, they had 11,535 stores. I know this cuz my mentor is being groomed as a CEO there. So Howard every Friday would sit down for two hours with a stack of thank you cards and a spreadsheet. It'd be like store number 176, Frappuccino record. Hey, store number 1706. Congrats on the Frappuccino record in Seattle. Great job, Howard.

[00:22:35]>> Yep.

[00:22:35]>> Kelly, four years. Kelly, thanks for your four years of service. Love you, Howard. Every Friday for two hour. He didn't know who to who to praise. He couldn't interpret all that data and decide. It was a system given to him.

[00:22:46]Yeah.

[00:22:47]>> But when you're the CEO of a company that big and you're spending 5% of your week >> praising and saying thank you, >> every entrepreneur out there is not doing even close to that. You are you're doing more, which is good. That's why you're successful.

[00:23:01]>> I'm just getting started.

[00:23:02]>> But that's why you're successful. not necessarily the the metrics that we measure on the marketing stuff. It's cuz you're you're deeply caring about the right people.

[00:23:11]>> You hire the right people and then you're you're caring about them.

[00:23:13]>> I mean, I talk to these guys. You know, the number one question I get is, "What's next? What do you got for me?

[00:23:19]What do I do with the money? Where do I invest?" They're asking the best questions.

[00:23:22]>> I, by the way, I love that they're asking about investing. I think most companies that do a 401k matching are missing the point.

[00:23:30]>> Just simply matching 401k is stupid.

[00:23:32]Teach your employees how to invest.

[00:23:34]Teach them about dollar cost averaging.

[00:23:36]Teach them about compound growth. Get them excited. That's where we actually should be giving our time because because most kids, most adults, parents never taught them that.

[00:23:47]>> No. And that's why in my dream manager program, we got a full-time dream manager. I'm hiring a second one. Is first of all, we teach >> one of my favorite books of all time.

[00:23:54]Such a good Kelly. Yeah.

[00:23:56]>> And just pay off the highest interest rate first. Uh, here's what you should live off of. Profit first. You've heard of that book by Michael McCull.

[00:24:05]>> So, he wrote a new book and we're the first two pages of it. Cool.

[00:24:09]>> Because I said, I want this for employees. I understand profit first for businesses.

[00:24:12]>> Yeah. They need to understand for their home, their personal cash flow.

[00:24:15]>> Well, literally take your paycheck, take out what you want to save, and then the leftovers should be what you could spend. And the leftovers are what you should donate to the church, too. This whole like 10% off the top tithing before you take care of your kids. For me, I I I I go to church and I'm I grew up Christian, Catholic, but like I feel bad for the kids, the families that are like donating their 10% and they don't have enough to like take care of their kids.

[00:24:40]>> They got spending problems. That's >> this country. You know, here's what I get all the time. I want to be like you, Tommy. And by the way, I take that really to heart, but they go, I want to expand. I want to diversify my product set, which I don't do at all. Uh, and I'm like, "Well, I hope you own a lot of market share. You got to be doing 20, 30 million in your market, and you got to be above 15% to the bottom." And they're like, "No, but like we want to expand quicker." And I'm like, "Do you know? Do you not know how difficult you're going to be? Robin, Peter, you're going to be sending your best guys to this other market. This is you're not ready to expand." I wish I could have talked to my younger self and said, "Don't expand that quickly."

[00:25:18]>> Do you know why you expanded quickly from my perspective? You were devouring learning. You were You were so hungry to learn. You've been you've been devouring books and podcasts and and Is that true?

[00:25:29]>> Yeah.

[00:25:30]>> And I and I think that I think that a lot of these people that want to grow quickly aren't willing to put in the work. Years ago, I had a client of mine.

[00:25:38]I was coaching this guy named Adam Dailyaly. And um Adam was sixth in the US Olympic trials running middle distance. So in 10 his best time at a 10K was 28 minutes and 46 seconds.

[00:25:48]That's ridiculous. I said he was lying and he goes, "No, I was sixth in the US Olympic trials." I'm like, "Hey, I want to run faster. How do I run faster?" He goes, "Run more." I'm like, "No, no. I I want some techniques. Is it mid-foot running? Is it like I'm more cadence? Do I need to go speed work?" He goes, "No, Cameron, run more."

[00:26:04]If somebody really wants to grow a business, grow yourself. Like truly, and I'm not saying like, you know, um, uh, Grant Cardone like go into debt and borrow money. None of that [ __ ] Read a book, listen to podcasts, looking like listen to courses, take courses, get all the free stuff that's online available for free. Stop spending all the time surfing social media and watching all the crap on TV and wasting all the time.

[00:26:28]Grow more. You want to have muscles like Tom, like like you do, go to the gym more. You know, that's a really I I got so many questions, but you say there's three problems with CEOs and the second one was CEOs grow themselves instead of their managers and their leaders. And what I noticed is when I started bringing people to seminars and inviting them on my stages on my team >> and actually I put three books on Luke's desk already this week and I know he doesn't read them all. Luke's my COO.

[00:26:53]>> Quick quick sidebar. Give him the chapter of the book to read because sometimes it was like, "Oh, that one chapter was amazing. We didn't necessarily mean the whole book."

[00:27:00]>> You know what? That's really smart.

[00:27:02]That's really smart because I think it's could be overwhelming. U like [clears throat] the Fifty Shades of Gray, just read those two pages cuz those are >> Yeah, that's and most books should have been like pamphlet. Yeah. Pamphlet. So, but but you know, when I really said come to these things, get my excitement, walk out of because when I'd walk back in at whether I read a book, listen to a podcast, was on a podcast, went to an event, I'd come back and they'd be like, "Oh [ __ ] Tommy just went to another event."

[00:27:28]>> Yeah. But when they're going, >> they bring back that energy and that excitement. And now we huddle. We say what is important that we just learn from.

[00:27:35]>> We did the same at 1800 Got Junk. The best example I've ever seen of it was a former client of mine who had no budget cap on training of his employees. So what he meant by that was he was building about an $80 million business.

[00:27:48]Anytime one of his employees wanted to go to a conference, he said yes, as long as you come back and teach us something you learned. He never tied it to a metric. He never tied it to their role.

[00:27:57]If somebody came in and said, I want to go to Tony Robbins, cool. Go. I'll pay for it. Cover your own hotel. I will pay for you to go. He would pay their flight and their um their fee, their entrance, >> right?

[00:28:09]>> And he never tied it back to anything because he knew that people that were hungry to learn would stay. They would attract other great people who were hungry to learn and they would grow the company.

[00:28:20]>> Smart.

[00:28:21]>> Crazy, right? It was amazing. You know, we're we're getting ready. I I'm sure you've talked to Luke about this, but to invest and this is a little early to bring this up, but your program that gives you maybe the bronze that everybody I think it's six or seven.

[00:28:34]>> Oh, the investing lead in your leaders.

[00:28:36]>> Invest in the leaders and we're having like 40 people. I don't know the number exactly.

[00:28:40]>> Go through it.

[00:28:40]>> And they're all going to go through it.

[00:28:41]We're all going to do it together. We're all going to have and then I think you're going to come at the end and >> maybe a Q&A or something.

[00:28:46]>> Yeah. Let let me explain how the program works. So, it's called Invest in Your Leaders. It's the 12 core management and leadership skills that anyone managing people needs to be good at. It's the stuff that I was trained in at College Pro Painters when we hired those 8,800 people every year. It's the stuff I trained Kimell Musk, Elon's brother in 1993. It's the reason why Zip 2 got funded was those 12 skills. When Kimell and and Elon Musk started Zip 2 before PayPal, all of that money that they raised was based on the 12 skills that I taught in that course. no hyperbole. So the skills are things like situational leadership, interviewing, running effective meetings, managing conflict, delegation, time management, project management, um coaching, running one-on ones. It's kind of the 12 core functioning skills. What you guys are doing is going to pay $350 per person to have them go through that training, lifetime access, and they'll get pretty good at the content, right?

[00:29:44]>> They won't be like PhD teachers of it, but good enough. So, I always say for every skill, whether it's um you know, running, you could be a bronze, silver, or gold at running. Whether it's time management, you could be bronze, silver, gold at time management. You know, Dan Martell wrote the book Buy Back Your Time. He's probably a gold at time management. You don't need to be a gold at everything, but you at least need to know that it exists. And then you need to be pretty good at it, which is bronze, or really, really good at it at silver. When you're at gold, you could teach other people and certify other people in those skills. What I do with invest in your leaders is at least get everybody to bronze or silver, >> right? And it's so important. I I our people are they're begging us for leadership. The problem I have and the reason I appreciate your program is you pick the wrong person for the wrong person. You know, out of every consultant, one out of four I've said maybe would say was good. You know what I mean? You're excellent at what you do.

[00:30:40]Uh, and everybody kind of, you know, a lot of them want their core like whether it's purchasing, they want to know a lot more, >> right? They learn about what they do, right?

[00:30:48]>> But they don't learn necessarily about how to >> they need to know the skills still. That the that's like the the thing we're going to get really good at.

[00:30:54]>> You know what's really Here's what's really scary. Think about you for a second. How many people have you hired in your career?

[00:31:00]>> Thousands? No. No. You personally that you said, "Yes, hire that."

[00:31:04]>> Oh, 100. Yeah, about 100.

[00:31:05]>> Okay. So, you you've interviewed and hired about 100 people. How much training have you had on doing interviews?

[00:31:11]>> Not a lot.

[00:31:12]>> Have you been certified in interviewing?

[00:31:14]>> No.

[00:31:14]>> Have you had personal trainers in the gym?

[00:31:16]>> Yes, I have a personal trainer.

[00:31:18]>> You have one today?

[00:31:19]>> Yeah.

[00:31:19]>> You've never had a trainer on interviewing?

[00:31:21]>> No. Well, I I've gotten coached in the past.

[00:31:25]>> See how you're stumbling through it even like it's crazy. And there's people out there that have had not even as much as you've had, which was kind of limited too, right? I I I've probably had without hyperbole, without exaggerating, about 80 to 90 hours of training on doing interviews, which means role plays, practicing, being filmed, self-critiquing, self-evaluations, filling out forms, reading books, watching videos, watching other people, getting people to critique me to the point that I'm like, I don't want to do any more training on interviewing. I got it. And I'm still not Jeff Smart, who wrote the book, Who? Or Brad Smart, who wrote Top Grading.

[00:32:02]>> Yeah. You know what? I uh I had >> and I've been to seminars as well.

[00:32:06]>> I had you interview somebody on our team. Remember that when we had first started >> was I interviewing somebody hire I forgot the position but I was like why don't you run it by you know who it was? It was Manny in the call center and he's like dude this is his fifth interview. I was like let Cameron just take take a shot at it. And he's been absolutely phenomenal.

[00:32:26]>> And and this is so my point is we don't have to be the best at something but we need to be better at it. So people that come in and complain about employees, well you hired them and most people have never had any training at doing it.

[00:32:37]People complain about meetings all the time, but they've never been trained in how to run highly effective meetings.

[00:32:42]>> I will tell you, I used to try to sell people on the company and talk 80% of the time [clears throat] knowing like this is what we're doing and try to convince them to work for us. They're already there.

[00:32:53]>> And you're also scaring the A players away.

[00:32:55]>> Yeah.

[00:32:55]>> You know, any A player that shows up, the more that you talk, the faster they walk. I I say the 8020. You shouldn't be talking more than 20% of the time now >> because you need to grill them first to know if your time is worth it to spend telling them on why they should be here.

[00:33:09]>> 100%.

[00:33:09]>> And an A player wants to sell you and also is excited to share what they know.

[00:33:17]>> Oh yeah.

[00:33:17]>> So the more the more they talk, the faster they walk.

[00:33:21]>> I um I think >> we do a pretty darn good job. I think I think Sophie is absolutely phenomenal, but I still think we got to do better.

[00:33:29]Like I walk in our training center and I do a 3 and 1 half hour orientation and if a guy's got sunglasses on when the founder comes in, I'm just super annoyed. We're inside, you know what I mean? T-shirts as well.

[00:33:42]>> They're all they're all dress code.

[00:33:43]>> We've gotten too far with with whole like people showing up wearing t-shirts.

[00:33:46]I mean, look, you're not Mark Zuckerberg, so don't wear the t-shirt and the and the Grace White shirt to your job interview. First date dress code. I don't expect you to show up with a shirt and tie, right? That's kind of silly. like IBM banned the tie n or 30 years ago, but at least if you wouldn't wear it on a first date, don't wear it to work. So, first date dress code.

[00:34:04]Um, the second one is is there's got to be that level of like I'm showing up for my first day on the job. So, that means show up a little bit early, show up prepared, show up with questions, show up excited, have read my vivid vision, right? Really know what you're in here for 100%. And the more we brand, the better people that come to us. It's amazing how that works. like A1 is we have other brands under A1 and Sophie's like we just don't get the same people interviewing but we don't get the same candidate level and it's a lot harder when we don't have a strong brand in that market. Well, we also want to push some people away too. Like I actually want some people to read a job post and go there's no way I'd want to work there. That sounds too high stress for me. That sounds like I have to live core values. That sounds like I got to really show up and deliver results. That's too much. Great. Go work for the post office. I only want the true A players coming here. I only want the people that know this is gonna be the hardest thing you've ever done. And you'll be thrilled doing it, but this is gonna be the hardest thing you've ever done.

[00:34:58]>> Yeah.

[00:34:59]>> Well, I've got a guy out of Texas. His name's Cody. And I mean, it is not easy to work for him, but if he loves you, he'll die for you.

[00:35:06]>> Bingo. And that's why you even smiled thinking about Cody.

[00:35:09]>> Yeah.

[00:35:09]>> That's an A player.

[00:35:10]>> Oh, he's >> That guy bleeds core values. If you if you were to rattle off your company's core values, which I already know that you know, most people's core values aren't core values because you don't even know them. But you love Cody so much that you could even explain why he lives on the five core values you've already got.

[00:35:25]>> He is such an amazing guy. But they don't make them like this guy. He works 14our days. His dad owned the company.

[00:35:31]We bought the company. They're investors in the >> They do actually make them just not as many out there. There's lots there's not as many A's, but they are there. So Cody knows other A's because Cody doesn't have friends who are C's.

[00:35:42]>> He's breeding A's. Correct. I mean I just did his guys. his his guy his first month got out of the Navy. He's 26 years old. His first month at $190,000 in garage. That's unheard of.

[00:35:55]>> Uh >> where did Cody grow up? What's >> Houston?

[00:35:58]>> He did in big city.

[00:35:59]>> Yeah.

[00:35:59]>> Okay.

[00:36:00]>> But I'm telling you, his dad started the company in like 1977. And his dad's the hardest worker you'll ever meet. And Cody and his brother Ryan are like just they just like to work.

[00:36:09]>> Yeah.

[00:36:09]>> Cody's got eight kids. His brother has five. And somehow they still >> work 14 hour days. There's a core values god squad for them, right? They're they're church or faith-based families.

[00:36:20]>> 100% faith based.

[00:36:21]>> So there was a do you remember the bombings that happened over in India about 15 years ago that guys went in and like started shooting people up and bombing the Taj and the Burge.

[00:36:30]>> I didn't know that. No.

[00:36:31]>> So it was hor horrific. About 70 or 80 people died. The Taj Hotel Group would be like the the Four Seasons or the Fairmont Hotel Group of India. They interviewed the CEO and they said, "None of your employees left the hotel." while all the shooting was happening and all the bombing was happening, none of your employees left the hotel. He said, "No, we can't leave until our last guest leaves." He said, "It's our it's our obligation and and we have to take care of them." And somebody said, "Where do you find people like that? Where do you find or how do you how do you coach people to live those core values?" He goes, "You can't coach people to live core values. They either live them or they don't. And no one has those core values that we need if they're coming out of Bombay and New Delhi. They only come from the small towns and villages because they haven't been corrupted.

[00:37:14]They haven't they haven't grown up in that big city. They haven't lost touch with you know what really matters like grandma's kind of core values. So he said we hire from the small towns you know and I'll tell you this too is ethnicity matters. You look at some of our A+ players I'll tell you they are whether they came from Iraq they came from India like some of the people they come here and they're like >> wait a minute happy to be here.

[00:37:39]>> They're so happy. And another thing is they walk up to a house, they're like I mean our top guy, one of them like I I did role play with him in front of 85 people and the everyone watching hundreds of people and um I said go ahead and like go over springs with me. And so he did and I go you know that's just that's too much. And he goes why?

[00:38:06]And he just stood there. And the way he looked at me and the way he did it, he goes, "You want it fixed, right?" Why?

[00:38:13]And I just was like, it was like a master class cuz he didn't explain, he didn't stutter, he just made eye contact, one word.

[00:38:19]>> And and and they said, you know, I said, "Well, it's just more than I wanted to spend today."

[00:38:25]>> Why?

[00:38:25]>> Yeah. Yeah. And it was like like I loved it because he's like >> and he'll say something to customers.

[00:38:31]>> Anybody from India, the Middle East, they can sell, man.

[00:38:34]>> Oh. Oh, and he goes, "The whole world is selling."

[00:38:36]>> He'll look at somebody and he'll say, "Do you not like me or do you not like the price?"

[00:38:41]>> That's it.

[00:38:42]>> And it's like he'll narrow it down. And it's it's it's amazing what he does.

[00:38:46]>> So, I've been I've been to 80 countries now. I've traveled. I've been to all seven continents. I love haggling just for sport.

[00:38:53]>> Yeah.

[00:38:53]>> I can't I can't I can't win. They're so good.

[00:38:56]>> Yeah.

[00:38:56]>> They're just so good.

[00:38:57]>> It's It's fun. You know, when I get chased through the mall with the girl putting lotion on >> and they don't take no and it's like, "All right, I'll buy your $20 lotion."

[00:39:05]It's like, I want to hire them for like an event, >> you get upsold into something else, too.

[00:39:08]>> They're very good.

[00:39:10]>> I mean, those are the people I want for events that are like, "Pay them great.

[00:39:13]Pay them." You ever go to an event and you see people just sitting there like, "Yeah, we sell garage doors. Yeah, we do windows." Then you get the people that are like, "So, what do you do? Do you live around here? You know, have you do you know anything about insulation?" and they'll just ask you off-the-wall questions, get to know you, make them like you, and then all of a sudden you're like, "Yeah, come out and do a demo. I like you."

[00:39:32]>> This should terrify you, by the way, if you're if you're watching or listening.

[00:39:36]If you have those kinds of people working for you and you don't have them handcuffed to your company, guys like me come and take them. So, not only do I like notice those people at conferences or events or other companies or in my day-to-day who are amazing, I try to poach them.

[00:39:50]>> Yeah. Not just even for me, but I'll like I've even sent someone to you. I didn't I have an Uber driver that I referred to you and Luke and said, "Hire this guy."

[00:39:58]>> Yeah.

[00:39:59]>> Right. Like when when I have an Uber driver and then I'm reaching out to a friend or a client that I'm coaching saying, "Hire this Uber driver." Your employees are not safe because the best companies will come and take them from you. Full stop.

[00:40:13]>> Yeah. No, this is a fun conversation. I wanted to get I really think you spent a lot of time on stage talking about what would Jack Welch do and it's a results versus values. It was a matrix. Yeah.

[00:40:24]>> Can you kind of walk through that?

[00:40:26]>> Yeah. I was speaking at an event in South Carolina. It was the South Eastern Regional for YPO and there were 13 YPO chapters and I was speaking to them and I was sitting in the green room backstage talking to Jeff Immelt who was the successor to Jack Welch. Jack was the CEO and chairman of General Electric and then Jeff was his successor and I said to Jeff, what's a system that Jack used that you still use in GE today? And he drew a diagram on a piece of paper and the diagram was a fourbox matrix. So on the on the up and down y-axis was results and you grade your people on on how good they are at getting their stuff done. Zero at the bottom and 10 at the top. Okay. So somewhere between zero and 10 on results. And then across the bottom axis was core values or culture fit and you rate them there somewhere on on uh low core values, low culture fit to very high a 10 out of 10. So if someone is a is, you know, below five on results and below five on core values, you fire them, right? You get them out of your company. If somebody is like a positive nine on results and a nine on core values, like a Luke Martin who works with you as your you handcuff them. You make sure that there's no way they would ever quit even if they got offered more money to go somewhere else.

[00:41:35]Right? And this has happened. employees who will get offered more money to go somewhere else and they won't go is because we've got them locked into the company and we know they have our best interest at heart. That's a that's a true A player and that's someone in the top right hand corner. If they're in the bottom right quadrant where they're really really good core values, really amazing people, but they're not getting the results. Often we try to coach them and we try to train them. That's the wrong place to start. What I try to do is put them in the right seat first.

[00:42:04]That's what Jack would do. He would say, "You know what? this is the right person like a Cody, but maybe he shouldn't be in finance, maybe he should be in operations, right? Or maybe he shouldn't be in operations, he should be in PR. If you put the right person in the right seat, you don't need to do any training whatsoever. They excel, right? It's like in in hockey, don't take a goalie and try to make him a defenseman. Put the goalie in goal. Put the defenseman in defense and you win. And then on the top leftand corner with the super high results people, but they're jerks or they're toxic. you got to fire those people, too. So, basically, anybody on the left side, you have to fire.

[00:42:41]>> You know what's interesting is Luke's kind of an anomaly. He could handle more direct reports and he could actually handle more than most anybody I've ever seen. And I think he thinks it comes easy, but it's so hard for other people.

[00:42:54]I think the people he has on his team that do a great job, he tends to add things because he knows they're capable and they just can't handle what he could handle. his workload, he could handle probably three times what most people could handle. And he's very efficient.

[00:43:07]He He text me this morning at 3:45 a.m.

[00:43:10]I mean, he's up and at him. He goes to bed at 7:00. I mean, he's just I walked I got in his car the other day. He's got Alex from Blast. He didn't know he was driving me home, but he's obviously always learning.

[00:43:20]>> And uh >> and his car is probably pristinely clean because there's no clutter.

[00:43:24]>> It's a clean car. I mean, and it's a u it's a [snorts] um what the hell? Elon Musk.

[00:43:31]>> Tesla. Tesla just [laughter] I've never owned a Tesla. He's like, "Dude, it's so easy to drive."

[00:43:36]>> He loves it.

[00:43:38]>> I mean, they they own nice cars and he still drives the fastest car they ever made in 2016, a P90 or a P90D. And I got stopped for speeding here in C in Scottsdale. And the cops said, "Why are you speeding?" I'm like, "I was trying to avoid somebody." He goes, "No one speeds up to try to avoid somebody. They they they hit the brakes." He goes, "Do you like your car?" I'm like, "Yeah." He goes, "Slow down. I'm not going to give going to give you a ticket."

[00:43:58]>> That's a cool car.

[00:43:59]>> He's so fast.

[00:44:00]>> No, those are cool. I'm going to probably get one. I just I just >> Great.

[00:44:04]>> So, let's go through the three problems that CEOs have. You You put them down and I'll go through the first one.

[00:44:12]>> They don't know the core leadership skills people need.

[00:44:16]>> Okay. If you're thinking about your people and you want to grow them, we don't really know what to grow them in, right?

[00:44:23]>> Like, we don't know how to. It's like the first time I went to a gym, I didn't know what I didn't know. I didn't know how to use the machines. I didn't know what weights to use. I didn't know what reps were or sets were. I didn't know. I didn't know. So, most leaders, if you've never built training companies, don't know what to train people in. So, I'll give you the shortcut.

[00:44:39]You need to train people on what's called situational leadership, which is the ability to adapt your leadership style on a project by project basis. You need to coach people on coaching so they know how to coach other people. You need to coach them on training people so they know how to train them on certain skills. You need to coach them on running one-on-one meetings. You need to coach them on running all meetings, whether it's financials, reviews, um, daily huddles, you know, whatever, whatever meetings, meetings with clients. You need to coach them on time management, priority management, um, on interviewing, on communication, on handling conflict. Those would be kind of the executive functioning skills.

[00:45:17]I agree you you know, what are your thoughts on IQ versus EQ? Because I've noticed that a lot of people that are super smart, they don't know how to talk to people and they never will. They they don't know how they make other people feel. They're condescending. And you can have the conversations, but they they don't want to change. I I just had a a speaker present to our co alliance and her content was incredible. I speak quickly. I'm at about 118 words a minute. Clinton and Obama were 96 words a minute. She was like 150. She didn't have the EQ to notice herself and dial it back and then be able to deliver value. Yeah, I think EQ is is really important. You have to you have to you have to be able to observe yourself and you have to be able to blame yourself a little bit too, right? It's so easy to blame somebody but there's three fingers pointing back at you. Yeah.

[00:46:03]>> When you point a finger, I think it's a balance. You can't hire an idiot who who knows they're an idiot. I'm like, [laughter] you know, >> yeah, it's obviously it's hard in certain parts of the company. I mean, uh, you know, the finance department is they they're number ninjas. The the FPNA team, >> they do really well as well, though.

[00:46:24]>> We got a great team. I mean, what I found myself is I could critique every single person on the team, and I could critique myself even more. But the fact is, we've got chemistry. We've made it through a lot together. People always ask, could you rebuild this company? I'm like, the camaraderie is hard to find.

[00:46:39]It's years.

[00:46:40]>> You can't go hire a team in a year. I mean, >> do you know why you get along with people? It's because they all live the same core values that you do.

[00:46:47]>> Yeah.

[00:46:48]>> The what's really weird, and people miss this, is you're not trying to hire people like you. Like my IT team, our IT team at 1800 got junk, nine or 10 of them, they were all Russian. I didn't have a lot in common with them. So, I I didn't really like hang with them, but man, they lived our core values. So, there was a lot of respect between each other.

[00:47:11]So, you're not trying to hire people like you. You're trying to hire people that live your core values, are obsessed with your behag. They're obsessed with your vivid vision. They're obsessed with your core purpose. But you don't want everybody to be similar. You don't want everyone to have the same behavioral traits as you, right? There's not a single salesperson like Cody would never make it through an HR person screening process.

[00:47:30]>> Oh, no. He sucks at that.

[00:47:31]>> Because HR people would hate Cody because Cody doesn't follow rules. He doesn't follow proceed. He wants people to follow procedures, but not him.

[00:47:38]Right. He but but but sales people would never make it through an HR screening process.

[00:47:43]But they can all live the same core values. HR people and sales people can at least all live the same core values.

[00:47:50]>> Um the next one with CEOs grow themselves instead of their managers and leaders. We discussed that but you could talk about that.

[00:47:56]>> It's kind of an obvious. It's like the analogy I use is a duck. If a duck has one really strong wing and one weak wing, it flies in a circle. So what would be the point of just training the quarterback on a football team and not training everybody else? You need to train everybody on the team so that everybody can work together, everyone collaborate, everyone gets stronger, and you can also probably operate your company with less people. If you truly train people, you'll get a lot more results through those people. You could probably get rid of your bottom 20%.

[00:48:25]>> I [snorts] like your uh I want you to be very descriptive here. bring us back to the time and place cuz this is one of probably the deepest lessons you were able to teach me and Luke uh audition by subtraction or audition by subtraction or do not hire is your volleyball lesson.

[00:48:41]>> Oh, the volleyball in LJ >> in Australia.

[00:48:43]>> Yeah, it was uh Dubai. So I was I was over in Dubai. I was speaking at a big Mind Valley event. I just came off a stage of 200 people. Um I did the opening keynote. Steven Bartlett from Dire of a CEO did the closing keynote.

[00:48:55]And I was standing talking to this guy 6'7. I said, 'What do you do for fun?

[00:48:59]He's like, 'I play volleyball.' I'm like, ' Do you still play?' He goes, "Yeah, I play pro beach volleyball." I'm like, "Isn't pro two on two?" And he goes, "Yeah." I said, 'You know, when I was in college, I played some volleyball and I was on my high school team. I said, "If I got six guys from my team," and he starts laughing. I didn't even have a chance to answer to finish the question. He goes, "Dude, we'd beat you every single game." I'm like, "Wait, so two guys would beat six?" He goes, "Every game." So, I realized that if you have two A players, like two people that are really good quality, really good culture, really good skills, they've done it before, you like each other, you can finish each other's sentences, you pay them 200 grand each, that's two people for 400,000.

[00:49:38]Or you have six BC players who they work hard, you got to manage them, you got to align them lots, you got to you're always trying to herd cats, they're okay, you know, they they do their solid 9 to5. I'm paying six people 100 grand each. The two A's at 400 would destroy the six B's or C's at at 600. So A players are free. And the only time you have a real A player is if you absolutely know it. Meaning you were taking notes in the interview. That's an A player. When you're not taking notes, they're not A's, which is okay. A players are raceh horses. B players are workh horses. The C players go to the glue factory. So at A1 Garage, you got 600 employees. There's 1400 now.

[00:50:22]>> 1400 cheapest creepers. Okay. Out of your 1400 employees, my guess is you have 140 true A's, maybe 200.

[00:50:30]And you've probably got a solid thousand B players and you probably have 50 C players. Get rid of the C's. You don't even have to replace them. There's nothing wrong with a thousand solid B players. They grind it out. They do the work. They don't drive anybody crazy.

[00:50:46]They don't piss anybody off. They live the core values. solid.

[00:50:50]>> I get really upset sometimes, me and Luke go back and forth on this because I'm not a quick person to fire, but you know, he this is good tension within the company is uh ultimately I'm responsible for marketing.

[00:51:04]>> Yeah.

[00:51:05]>> Uh we've got a CMO. He's amazing. We got a VP of marketing >> and you know our CFO tends to be like and marketing he's from England marketing Michigan and like I'm like well let's look at operations let's look at cancellation right let's look at capacity planning but most importantly let's look at what the new guys the the the guys 6 months and under are doing and I got them more of the Jack Welch but I'm more of like instead of every year every three months but Luke's like you know these guys need time and I'm Like it's very tough for me. It's very tough. And you know, they're running lower quality leads, but not all leads.

[00:51:42]So, we're getting into lead scoring right now because I want to know for a fact. And I don't think he's right or I'm right. I think it's somewhere in the middle. But I have a low tolerance for people that don't come up on time, dressed right, clean truck, drive safe, those are easy. But operational excellence, like the stuff I'm looking at is their conversion rate, their average ticket, their turnover rate. And I can see potential in a lot of people.

[00:52:02]But then there's just people for 3 months they haven't moved. They haven't made a phone call. They don't show up to practice.

[00:52:05]>> You got to make the cuts.

[00:52:07]>> Like they have to be mandatory practice.

[00:52:09]They don't want to do it. They need to get cut.

[00:52:10]>> Here's some data or some some thoughts around this. Number one is when you have doubt, you have no doubt. So when your gut's saying, "Yeah, it's not going to work out." Make the cut. [snorts] The second part is why are we spending so much time managing, coaching, helping, leading, giving support to our C players? Why are we do it more to A players, right?

[00:52:34]>> A players will double.

[00:52:35]>> Correct.

[00:52:36]>> Before a C player will come up to a B player, >> you know what we do with our A's? We just let them do their job because we're so busy spending time with our C's.

[00:52:43]>> Luke can manage a lot of people, but does he give his grain to his best horses? If Luke is spending time managing his C's, thinking about his C's, worrying about his C's, what if he spent time with the A's >> 100%. What if what if we put like I told you about the invest in your leaders training course 12 months ago.

[00:53:03]>> You know what? Yeah. No, trust me, it's it's on the top of the list. I mean, we're doing it. I I think he's been in contact.

[00:53:08]>> But my my point is if if more companies would spend their time with their A players, it would make it easy.

[00:53:14]>> I spend all the time with the A players by the way. It would make it easier to get rid of your C's. You know, I I once met a billionaire. This is a decade ago.

[00:53:23]And he said, "I never had to fire anybody."

[00:53:25]>> Back when a billion dollars was a real >> It was a real number. And I said, "What do you mean you never fired anybody?"

[00:53:30]>> Wow.

[00:53:30]>> He goes, "Tommy?" He goes, "It's impossible to jump through the hoops >> that I make players jump through." He goes, "They don't even get to come work for >> He goes, they will not jump through." He goes, "They quit." He goes, "Because they got to show up at this time. They got to get this training." uh this guy that my girlfriend introduced me at the time and this dude had three private jets. I don't even his name was Todd something but we met at a Starbucks and he took the time just for a quick minute with me. This is before I had any money or anything.

[00:53:57]>> Cool.

[00:53:58]>> And I was like it was just really interesting that he said I [snorts] never fired anybody >> because they quit.

[00:54:04]>> He goes I run them through like they they are going I I make it very very challenging >> challenging to get in the door and then challenging to stay. challenging to stay because if you're not performing, you're going to run through you're going to do ride alongs, you're going to do this, you're going to do this, you're going to do this, and at certain point you're like, "Dude, this you're going to get you're either going to get better quickly or you're going to leave."

[00:54:21]>> Yep. And and and certain you know when you're walking somewhere and you'll see a bunch of malard ducks, all the malard ducks hang out with other malard ducks.

[00:54:28]All the A players only want to hang out with A players, but not a lot of A players are going to work for a company if they know it's filled with C's.

[00:54:35]>> 100%.

[00:54:36]>> They just don't want to go there. All the top guys fly across the country to go ride with another guy. They're calling each other every day. They're they're looking at the leaderboard going, "Man, I'm I'm number three. I need to be number one." They call me up and they're like, "Dude, what can I do to pick up an extra shift? I got to go."

[00:54:50]I mean, I get text messages 20 a day.

[00:54:53]>> And then I screenshot them and send them out to all the texts.

[00:54:55]>> I used to tell franchises something like that that when you go to a conference with all the franchises from your brand, don't talk to the negative franchises.

[00:55:03]Go talk to the positive ones. Go talk to the happy ones. talk to the top performers. Why would you go hang out with the cultural cancers? And that's where grandma was right that one bad apple spoils the whole bunch. That cultural cancer, even if it's an employee or a branch manager, whatever, destroys everything. I had a CEO I was coaching one time. He owned a chain of 16 dental offices. And he said, "Oh, that's just my receptionist." I said, "Just your receptionist? That's your director of first impressions?

[00:55:30]>> That's the first person that every employee sees every morning. last employee everybody sees on the way out the door. First person every customer sees. Last person like that's one of your most important roles. Director of first impressions, not not just a receptionist.

[00:55:44]>> I love that title. You know, I I I always do this during orientation. I go, "Guys, talk to the optimistic guys finding a way to win that are asking for help." I go, "I had two managers. They talked every day. Super optimistic, beating their scores. They were just coming up with answers, coming up with solutions. My cousin Stephen and another guy out of Dallas.

[00:56:03]>> Mhm.

[00:56:04]>> These guys were the worst guys. They call every day.

[00:56:06]>> Totally.

[00:56:07]>> They call each other and [ __ ] about everything. They tell this company has issues. This is messed up. This is wrong. Cancer. They needed to get out of the company and their family. One of them was family.

[00:56:18]>> It impacted me one time. I I came back from traveling around the world. I was 26 years old. I got a job in sales and I had I'd run my own business for two years prior, college pro. And I decided to do a job in sales. I was really didn't know where where to go and what my direction was going to be and I was keen. I was excited. I was doing software sales in like 1991. It was like tech. It was [ __ ] exciting. And there was this guy in our room. I don't remember what his name was. I can still picture him. And he was just he was a bit of a loser. He he was just negative about everything. He wasn't wasn't hitting his quota. Wasn't doing well with sales. And every day he would just play Tetris and complain. And after about 3 weeks, you know what I started doing? Playing Tetris.

[00:56:56]>> Yeah.

[00:56:58]>> So sad. I got sucked into it. This other woman that worked with us was like super keen as well. And I kept trying to migrate over to spend time with her because she was keen and was selling lots. She got sucked into it as well.

[00:57:09]Over a period of about four or five months, all four of us in the sales team got sucked into this negative vortex.

[00:57:15]Had they gotten rid of that bad apple, the three of us probably would have still excelled.

[00:57:20]>> Are you familiar with Andy Elliott?

[00:57:22]>> No.

[00:57:23]>> Andy Elliott, the guy that's you got to have a six-pack. He's all over the internet. He's out here in Fountain Hills, but he's he's >> a dad bod, but I'm 60 now.

[00:57:30]>> Yeah, [laughter] he's a cool dude, good friend of mine.

[00:57:33]>> Uh, and >> these guys started making a ton of money >> in sales. He had no limit.

[00:57:40]>> And I talked to one of like the top guys under Aliot Group and you know, these guys are making a million dollars. I mean, they're just killing it, right?

[00:57:48]They're selling training, sales training, and they're just smiling and dialing. They're putting out all the social media. I mean, he's very good at what he does. And I mean, he gave out a cell phone number, but eventually became like everyone had a cell phone number you texted on social media, >> and now he's got another number. I mean, every time I talk to him, he's got a new number because eventually bombards.

[00:58:10]>> And he said, you know, we had to do, Tommy, is every morning we had to do 30 minutes of thankfulness of what we've got.

[00:58:19]>> And we had to start changing the culture because everybody's like, oh man, that guy's making 1.8 million. like I don't make enough.

[00:58:26]>> And there was just this attitude of like I'm not making and like wait when we found you you were making 75,000.

[00:58:32]>> Yeah. Yeah.

[00:58:32]>> And then there's just like the comparison and the jealousy >> and so they started to have to do affirmations and >> where your focus goes thankfulness and what I didn't have what I had. And he goes that took six months to really turn it around.

[00:58:45]>> Exactly. And that's that's a CEO who was very observant to what was happening with culture. culture is that it's not the free massages and the free lunches.

[00:58:54]>> Yeah.

[00:58:54]>> Right. You can give free massages and free lunches to people all day long and your culture will get worse if you don't fix the core.

[00:59:00]>> 110%. You know, I think about this all the time that that's my job. It's not Luke's job.

[00:59:05]>> Well, your job is to be the chief energizing officer. Culture is a part of that. It's why I only I believe that a CEO should know have have no more than four or five direct reports because you also have culture, your board of adviserss and legal strategy.

[00:59:19]>> Yeah.

[00:59:20]>> Right. You those are four direct reports right there. But culture, the whole idea of the the employee net promoter score, the feeling, the buzz, the vibration, that's so critically part of the CEO's purview.

[00:59:32]>> I got a lot of work to do. I'm horrible with names and I hate saying that out loud because it doesn't make it any better. I wish I could say I'm best with names, but I'm just not.

[00:59:40]>> My wife is the best with names. It's >> my fiance Bri is just a wizard. She's like, "Oh, like I could just be like, it's almost like I got a mild case of dementia because like I can remember everything. I can remember movies. I can remember quotes. I can remember." But when it comes to names, and it's not because they're not important.

[00:59:56]>> No, >> it's I just got to do like username seven times, say it out loud, associate it with an actor.

[01:00:02]>> I'm so bad with it. I I was at your home for dinner, you and Bri, and your friend >> Aaron. Aaron. I thought it was Allan.

[01:00:08]See? Yeah.

[01:00:08]>> There was only one other person.

[01:00:10]>> I had left that night and I wanted to reconnect with him. I couldn't remember his name. You reconnect me. I still can't like We got to be bad at something.

[01:00:17]>> Yeah. I'll take it.

[01:00:18]>> You know the third one.

[01:00:19]>> I'm worse at it than you are.

[01:00:21]>> Maybe. [laughter] Uh, you know, we'll see. You're g So, small and mediumsiz companies don't have training departments.

[01:00:29]>> Yeah. When you grow a company and you get to a certain size over usually it's over two or 300 people, your HR department starts to build out an internal learning and development department. You have an LMS, you've got training videos, you've got training sheets, you've got role playing. You guys do you have a coaching room.

[01:00:46]>> Yeah.

[01:00:46]>> But when you were less than 200 people, you didn't have that. You had Bob who would train some people on the fly, >> right?

[01:00:51]>> So what happens is when you're in a small to midsize company, you don't have the resources and the expertise to help you scale. So your job is to plug stuff in that will help people scale. This isn't a pitch for my course, but there's lots of courses online. Put your people into them because you're not going to build yours. So stop saying we're going to build something when you're not.

[01:01:11]Don't give a whole book to somebody. Say read chapter six of that book or here's a video. Watch between minute 13 and minute 21 of that video. Right? That's enough to get people started on training. But don't keep saying that you're going to build it internally because you won't. that's going to [ __ ] you.

[01:01:28]>> You know, when it comes to A players, I want to go back for a second. I was thinking, how many owners that decided to start their own company are just not A players. I I did this post and I said, most people shouldn't be business owners. They don't even know like you're going to fail. I mean, the the odds are against you, right? We know that the odds are against you, especially going over a million dollars. The chance of making it take >> Well, here's here's the math that you what you're asking. There's 14 million companies in the United States.

[01:01:56]Of the 14 million, 7 million is average.

[01:01:59]That's the middle. That means there's 7 million entrepreneurs in the United States that are below average.

[01:02:06]There's 7 million that are above average. But being above average kind of sucks. Like imagine if some if your doctor said to you, "Your health is like the average American."

[01:02:14]>> [ __ ] that. I don't want to be the average American. The average American European maybe, >> right? Well, but but like so so I want to be in the I want to benchmark above that. So really what you're saying is to be a really good entrepreneur, you have to be in the top 10%. Okay. So now >> 1.4 million.

[01:02:29]>> That's 1.4 million that are in the top 10%. You're not in the top 10. You're in the top 1%. Probably probably in the top.5 of the 1%. Right? You benchmark against the best of the best. Your health is against the best of the best.

[01:02:43]Your wealth is against the best of the best. Most entrepreneurs are saying they want to be like Tommy are trying to go from zero to great. I think most entrepreneurs try to go from zero to good and then go from good to great and then go from like how the best get better.

[01:02:57]>> Yeah. Well, that that's the thing. I don't think entrepreneurship I I think there's a really there's a fallacy out there because if I'm a technician, you know what I think?

[01:03:07]Yeah. They pay for some overhead. They pay for the CRM. They got some CSRs and dispatchers. But they go, you know, the parts cost a buck. I sell it for 10.

[01:03:14]That's $9. Let's say two of that goes to operations. That makes 70% net. Yeah.

[01:03:19]>> So, I met this entrepreneur, cool dude from Australia, and one day, I mean, he wasn't making a lot of money at the time. He took out 30 pennies. And he had his team, he's like, "How much do you think I make out of every dollar?" And when he took back two, I mean, the company wasn't doing very well, 2%. But they were just shocked. And that's why I have open book management.

[01:03:37]>> So, I learned this. I was 20 years old.

[01:03:39]I was running my house painting business. I had 12 employees. Five of them moved from Ottawa, Canada to Sudbury, which was six hours away to work for me for the summer. And I was about six weeks into my summer. And my friends hated me. And I was telling my dad at dinner, he goes, "Why do they hate you?" He goes, "They think I'm rich." He goes, "You're not making money yet." I said, "I know that, but they don't know that." He goes, "Well, why don't they know that?" I said, "Well, all they see is the revenue for all the jobs." So, we've painted 30 houses, and all they see is how much money I'm getting paid for the houses, but they don't know my all my expenses. He goes, "Show them." I'm like, "How would I do that?" He goes, "Open your accounting, your open book management, and show them your accounting." So, I had my 12 employees over for dinner that night. I ordered pizza and beer, which I couldn't afford cuz I wasn't making money yet.

[01:04:23]And I showed them my accounting. I showed them royalty, paint, soft supplies, gas, workers comp, liability insurance, my accounting, my bookkeeping, my pager bill. I showed them my marketing costs, my flyer drop costs. I showed them my customer service. Show them my They were [ __ ] terrified that we were going bankrupt.

[01:04:41]Yeah. In 30 minutes over the They hadn't even finished the pizza and they went from you're rich and we don't like you to we're going bankrupt. Are we going to have a job next week? Literally changed everything.

[01:04:52]Most people should not be entrepreneurs.

[01:04:56]Entrepreneurship got too trendy with the rise of the Facebook and Instagram starting 2007. Prior to 2007, no one wanted to be an entrepreneur.

[01:05:05]>> Yeah. Social media. Here I am in my jet.

[01:05:07]Here I am on Bora Bora. Here I am with all life, right?

[01:05:11]>> That's gonna go viral like it did with me. Because the fact is the first five years I didn't have any money.

[01:05:17]>> And we won't tell people the truth yet.

[01:05:19]You're not going to tell people in the moment of how hard it is until you've solved the problem because it hurts our business. So entrepreneurs won't say in the crisis of meaning, in the valley of death, when the when our employees stealing, when we had to fire our best friend, when we have no money to pay bills, when our wife is is screaming at us because we haven't paid ourselves for 4 months, when we just hired somebody and we're not sure if we can meet payroll. We don't talk about it in the moment. We'll talk about it two years later when it's solved, but no one really shares that raw truth. So then everybody watching thinks that, oh, being an entrepreneur is incredible. No, it's really freaking hard. It takes a long time to get to the night before you become the overnight success. People look at 1800 God junk and go, "Wow, 900 million. I want to build a company like that." It took Brian 12 years to go from 0 to 2 million. I joined, we got from 2 million to 106 million in 6 years. Then it's taken 19 years to go from 100 million to 900 million. And you think you're going to do it in four years? It took him 30. You know what's interesting about that is Jeff Bezos was talking to Warren Buffett >> and he goes, "Why don't more people follow your strategy?" You know, he goes, "Because it's a get-rich slow scheme."

[01:06:31]>> Right?

[01:06:31]>> He goes, "Nobody wants to get rich slow." And I always tell people, imagine what you could do in 10 years. Why do you always say next year I want to do this? And I'm very patient, but when I get the ball rolling, momentum, it's amazing. I talked to a a large large large large PE company recently and I told him about our company and I go you know it's a lot easier to get to a hund00 million IBA to get to a billion dollar IBIDA. He goes no it's not. He goes you got all the systems. He goes you'll go to a billion dollars of IBA faster than you did get to I mean and really in the last 5 years.

[01:07:00]>> Yeah. It's harder to go from zero to a million than from a million to a billion.

[01:07:03]>> Yeah.

[01:07:04]>> Yeah.

[01:07:05]>> And he goes, "Dude, you got the systems." He goes, "Now it's scalable.

[01:07:08]Now it's attack." And that's where I'm at. And you have the people >> again having all the right systems. It's it's vision, people, and systems.

[01:07:18]>> Well, the systems, I've always said this, the systems dictate the people you're going to get. And the vision dictates the people you're going to get.

[01:07:24]>> Yes.

[01:07:25]>> If they see what you're building, they'll join you.

[01:07:27]>> People, correct?

[01:07:28]>> Uh I want to pivot real quick because people always ask me this. They're like, "What's my next hire? How do I get my integrator?" And I'm like, "Do you have an EA that's good?" I'm like, "Are you still doing minimum wage tasks?" And I don't pay my EA makes uh >> more than >> most employees do >> by far. But I'm probably I would need four EAs. She's just I can pay 450,000 to pay her. So >> I heard this quote I heard this quote years ago from a friend of mine, Jack Dailyaly, who's one of the best in the world at sales. If you've never brought Jack into your company, by the way, to do sales training, you should. He is world.

[01:08:02]>> What's his name? Jack.

[01:08:03]>> Jack Dailyaly. World class. You We got to get him on your podcast, too. World class. Unbelievable. One of the highest rated speakers in history for EEO. Uh anyway, Jack said, "If you don't have an executive assistant, you are one." And that burned into my brain so dearly. Any entrepreneur out there who is working hard and doing work that's minimum wage jobs is really hurting themselves. So to the the example I give is if I was on your board or if I was your private equity firm, if I owned part of your company and I found out we were paying you a hundred grand a year or 200 grand a year or $500,000 a year to be CEO, why are you doing $12 an hour work? Like I would literally I would lose my mind.

[01:08:42]And if you're the entrepreneur, why are you doing minimum wage work? Why are you paying yourself to do minimum wage?

[01:08:47]>> I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why.

[01:08:49]Sometimes it's cuz it's the only area of life they get satisfaction from and it's the only area they get a dopamine rush from is being busy because they don't like their spouse, they don't like their kids, they don't like they have no hobbies. No, I think the real and Dan actually talks about it in um the camcorder method of you know the first time when Ashley started wrong hotel I was on a window seat. I only sit aisles. I'm like it doesn't have a gym. It doesn't have a restaurant. You know why did you respond to that email that way? That's you don't respond that way to that. And so, but literally, I didn't do my job. And it's a big trust.

[01:09:24]>> It's a lot of trust. And you know what?

[01:09:26]You're going to take two steps backwards. There's going to be a lot of training, but then it sets you up for freedom.

[01:09:30]>> Well, this goes back to my course, Invest in Your Leaders. If you don't know how to run classroom training and run coaching sessions and do one-on-one coaching, you can't grow people.

[01:09:39]>> I definitely the camcorder method is part of that.

[01:09:42]>> I'm I'm very good at communicating with her. I know sometimes she comes in and I'm like, "It's been a day." And she's like, "Oo, are you okay?" But she comes in my office now, she's like, "You ready for 35 push-ups?" Like literally, like she knows if I tell her what I want, she does a good job. Even though I'm like she's like, "Come on, I'll do them. I'll do 10 with you and you got to do all of them." She'll count me down and like she's like, "Okay, earlier 30 minutes on the treadmill. It's it's on your calendar."

[01:10:10]>> Really?

[01:10:11]>> Yeah. So like like we got this rhythm down. She knows what's important to me, what my goals are, getting married, she's got all this stuff dialed, and she's like, "This is but that's what the next level is." And I'm not a big believer. I know you are. That's how important it is to have somebody across my office. That's how important for someone to come in. That's how I'm still a paper guy.

[01:10:32]>> Freeze you up to do the stuff that you're supposed to do. I was briefed by your team. This is the second time I've been on your podcast and we're friends.

[01:10:38]I used to coach you guys. They said, "You're going to get there. You'll be sitting down. Everything will be ready and Tommy will run walk right in right at the start. I got here the slate was ready. My name was on it. There was water sitting here. One of your EAS came up and handed me my coffee that I asked to everything was dialed in. Boom. Right at the start. You walk in the door because you've delegated everything except genius. You're you're hiring people to do stuff that they love to do.

[01:11:01]Like a lot of EAs really want to give us a better life, right? They want to take the stuff off of our plate. It feeds them. It fills them. They love doing it.

[01:11:09]and they want to free like the only three things I do now. I coach people, I do speaking events, and I do media interviews.

[01:11:16]>> Yeah. You've done a great job of building a great life of what you enjoy doing. And uh you know, I had Mark Winters, you're familiar with Mark Winters, you know, >> Wickman's part. Yeah. They did Rocket Fuel >> and then he wrote Visionary recently.

[01:11:28]Oh, cool. And um moral of the story is he said, "You know, Tommy, you'd be surprised on an integrator COO, your right hand." Uh he's like, "They don't need to be on stages. They they appreciate the satisfaction, but they live." And you know what's funny is Luke always says, "My job is to make Tommy's dreams come true >> and to make you look good." His job is to shine a spotlight on you and make your vivid vision come true. And then our job as the CEO, your job as CEO is internally to make sure people understand why Luke has to make the tough decisions, why he has to play the heart out sometimes. Yeah. Most the COO of 1800 got junk, Eric Church, has probably been on a stage twice in his 16 years being COO. He doesn't want Now, when I was there, I was a different style COO, >> but Eric doesn't want any of that. He wants to give Bri. So Brian's on Dragon's Den and Shark Tank and, you know, doing the whole the press thing.

[01:12:22]>> And that's where I want to double down.

[01:12:23]I just was shooting commercials earlier and it's look I don't it's not a vanity move it's like the founder story when I founded this company I made sure the job was done right >> and some founders don't do that and they're not good at it Tobias Luke from Shopify is one of them so he is an outward-f facing COO Harley Finkelestein but then you take somebody like a uh Mark Zuckerberg Mark is the only one who talks to the media the only one who talks to the press he's very outward facing CEO no one knew his COO Cheryl Sandberg until about the year she was leaving. She was there 15 years as his second in command. She came in when he was 21 as the adult in the room and was there beside him as his second in command. No one needed to know her name.

[01:13:05]She didn't need anyone to know her name.

[01:13:07]And she had no desire to ever go off and become a CEO either.

[01:13:12]>> Have you ever coached anybody and you've said to them business might not be for you?

[01:13:19]>> Wow. Oh, have I ever co No, but mostly because I only coach companies that have already gotten their company to a proof of concept and now they want to scale.

[01:13:27]So, I've never coached uh that's not true. When I was very young and was at College Pro Painters, I had a couple people that I shut down before they started, >> you know. Would you ever coach somebody still on a truck?

[01:13:38]>> No, cuz they're they're still too early for me. So, I only work with companies that are about five to 50 million in revenue and want to go to 50 to 500 million.

[01:13:47]>> I don't I don't coach that early. It's interesting because a lot of people get stuck at 5 million and this is one of the questions uh >> they're in the death zone.

[01:13:56]>> You know, >> what would you tell somebody if someone listening runs a $5 million company?

[01:14:02]Now, here's the interesting thing that no one >> really good advice. Yeah. Go ahead.

[01:14:05]>> Well, I just want to I want to clarify because I don't like this question because I don't give a [ __ ] if you're doing a hundred million. If you're doing 1%. We don't talk enough about profit.

[01:14:14]>> Correct. Revenue is vanity. Profit is sanity. And I've been spitting that out for the last 10 years.

[01:14:18]>> So when my sister joined what's now called EO, it used to be called YEO, which was the Young Entrepreneurs Organization. She used to call it YBEO, the Young Broke Entrepreneurs Organization. She goes, "Who cares?

[01:14:29]They're all doing 2 million, 5 million in revenue. None of them make any money." She had a safety deposit box at her bank filled with cash. She was making so much money. It was obscene.

[01:14:38]>> Yeah.

[01:14:38]>> Yeah. So, so I the only two organizations I've ever seen that do this properly are Go Bundance and Tiger 21 where to be in that mastermind, you have to put your financial statements down on the table and pass them around.

[01:14:52]You have to put your investment banking statements down.

[01:14:54]>> What is the other one for >> Tiger 21 and Goundance? I went to a Goundance event 10 years ago in Whistler and these hundred CEOs were all passing around documents to I'm like, "What are you guys doing?" They go, "Our financials." I'm like, "You're literally reading financials." Yeah. Yeah. and our investment accounts. There were no posers in the room.

[01:15:14]And we need entrepreneurs to stop talking about these. Oh, I did a million-doll launch. Yeah, but you had 50% in affiliate fees, 15% customer service fees, 5% returns, 4.5% credit card and Stripe fees. You had 10% or 15% was spent on marketing. You took $50,000 off that million-doll launch and you spent six months doing it.

[01:15:36]>> Yeah. Why did Jeff Walker even be allowed to run that whole program of the product launch formula? Because you're doing million-dollar launches and you're still living on on ramen noodles.

[01:15:44]>> Yep. Now, I know Jeff Walker actually Joe Idro me. He's in like Denver, I believe. He was supposed to come on the podcast. I lost track of him.

[01:15:52]>> He was a speaker at RC Alliance and like look, I love the whole product launch formula as long as it also can be done and make money.

[01:15:59]>> You got to be profitable.

[01:16:00]>> Correct. So >> that was And by the way, my criteria with Brian when I came in at 1800 Got Junk was I can't coach you anymore unless we raise our prices 40%. Because you're not making money. The franchises aren't making money. The guys in the call center aren't making money. The guys in the trucks aren't making money.

[01:16:15]If we can't make money with all of us making money, including our franchises, I don't want to help you scale this.

[01:16:20]When I was at College Pro Painters, I was a franchisee. My first summer, I made $11,000. That was 40 years ago.

[01:16:27]That was 1986. I made $23,000 in '87. I made $34,000 in 1986. I made a total of $70,000 profit in the 80s. That was like making a half a million to a million a year today in buying power. Yeah.

[01:16:43]>> I had paid my college tuition was $1,100 a year. So I paid my college tuition in the first summer times four.

[01:16:51]>> Paid I bought a house when I graduated.

[01:16:53]I had no debt when I graduated. Profit was something I learned very early on.

[01:16:58]And the the first thing I tell people is if you're not at 15% or more, >> you need to you need to get smaller.

[01:17:04]>> You need to trim the fat and work on the marketing source that are working. But Ellen Roar, you familiar with Ellen Roar?

[01:17:10]>> Yes.

[01:17:11]>> She's great. She she was my coach in like 2018 financial quick check. She's good at finance. Okay.

[01:17:17]>> And she said, uh, I want you to read my book, Where Did the Money Go?

[01:17:20]>> Because that was me >> doing 17.5 million. At the end of the year, my CPA calls me up and says, you owe 300 grand. I'm like, I don't even have that in my account. Right?

[01:17:27]>> How's that possible?

[01:17:28]>> Right? And >> and it's because most entrepreneurs think it's all about sales and marketing, but they don't understand the basic P&L. Like revenue minus cost of goods sold is your gross margin minus all of your overhead is your net profit.

[01:17:40]Then you also have to pay your taxes.

[01:17:41]But then you have cash flow. Like that money isn't just sitting in your bank because you're buying stuff and investing in the future. If you don't understand the basic P&L and cash flow and budgeting of your business, don't start a business or or learn that or get someone to help you learn that.

[01:17:54]>> They need help with that. And I I tell you that was the missing piece. Once I got the right controller and CFO in place and I actually had the answers and it was the the the key here is it was correct.

[01:18:05]>> It was audited.

[01:18:07]>> It wasn't BS. Yeah.

[01:18:08]>> It wasn't what a simple bookkeeper put together. Most small businesses, medium-sized businesses, home service, home improvement, >> they've got their antu in the books and it's okay. It'll pass a sniff test, but it's not right.

[01:18:20]>> And it'll get you to about a million, but it won't necessarily help you scale.

[01:18:23]And you can go bankrupt with growth, right? Just because you're bigger, the cash needs are a lot more as well, right? You when you're small, if you need money, you just max out a credit card, you borrow money from your dad.

[01:18:34]When you're midsize, you've you've maxed out your credit card, borrow money from where do you go now? The bank. The bank won't necessarily loan to you. So then you get strapped. Then you got to take a hard money loan. Then you get even bigger. Like I have a a friend of mine who just went bankrupt, shut down his business, closed down events, literally burned every single bridge he ever had because he he didn't tell people he was scared and didn't know what he was doing. I don't think he cognizantly tried to screw everybody. I think he just built a business that was too big and he didn't understand cash flow and budgeting and then all of a sudden he'd borrowed too many from too or too much from too many and he was gone.

[01:19:08]>> And we always think we're going to get there. We're going to get there. We got to make it through the storm. Hope isn't a strategy.

[01:19:15]>> You know, the economy is doing pretty darn well. The stock market's up. I'd say buyer sentiment's a little bit down, but here's what's crazy. I had my buddy come into town the other day and he's he works with the wizard of ads, Roy Williams.

[01:19:25]>> Roy Williams. Yeah.

[01:19:26]>> And Austin, Texas.

[01:19:27]>> He goes, "Dude, I set five days records in a row." He goes, "Everybody in Columbus is asking me, "How are you staying busy?" He goes, "Tommy, I need to hire 15 more people >> and everyone says it's a bad economy."

[01:19:38]>> Who is he? I think I just talked to him.

[01:19:39]>> Aaron? Yeah. Aaron Gainor.

[01:19:40]>> Oh my god. I just talked to him. Yeah.

[01:19:41]Crazy.

[01:19:42]>> Yeah. the same guy we were talking about.

[01:19:44]>> Yeah. Yeah. I was like, "You got to work with Roy Williams. That's extraordinary."

[01:19:47]>> He gets to work directly with him.

[01:19:48]>> It's amazing. Yeah. I know. It's Yeah.

[01:19:49]It's amazing.

[01:19:49]>> I like Roy Williams and and you know, I kind of get to see it and and they spend a lot of money on radio a lot. And you you always said TV is a waste of time.

[01:19:59]>> Now TV is the digital yellow pages.

[01:20:01]>> Yeah.

[01:20:02]>> Right. Because the the the people that have money aren't watching TV ads.

[01:20:07]>> They're on they're online. So So that's why I would say move away from television and put your money into digital. put into outdoor, put into radio.

[01:20:15]>> I agree. I want to talk real quick about your sister about a quick story and we we'll start wrapping up with a few more questions, but uh you know, she's obviously an A type person. She'd give everybody a hug and she say, "I'm not leaving here without a written testimonial."

[01:20:28]>> Yeah. I was like, "God, how do you know about my sister?" My sister's running an incredible company. She has about 300,000 people playing co-ed inter mural sports in her leagues.

[01:20:36]>> Wow.

[01:20:37]>> She runs an unbelievable culture business. If you ever interview anybody like over Zoom, you should do an interview.

[01:20:43]>> Where does she live?

[01:20:43]>> Toronto, Canada. She's she is that strong. She's been running her company from for 30 years. Built it from scratch. She's done eight or nine acquisitions now. [gasps] So, when Christy was starting in business, she learned at College Pro Painters as well.

[01:20:55]Um, she was running a franchise for College Pro Painters. She would show up at a job site doing an estimate to try to land the house. And she would say to the customer, "When I leave after we've painted your home and it looks incredible, I'm not leaving until I have three things. I want a check. I want a letter of reference. And I want a hug."

[01:21:14]And [laughter] she would kind of giggle and they would laugh and they go, "What do you mean a hug?" She goes, "I want you to be so happy with your paint job that you're going to give me a check, a letter of reference, and a hug." And they went, "Okay." Of course, she was signing everybody up. She also then had a binder that had a letter of reference and a before and after photo of every single house that she painted. Now, in the first couple of weeks, there weren't that many. After a bunch of weeks, there were a lot. And then she landed everybody she ever talked to. Everybody she was talking to was signing up with her. So, she raised her prices. She kept raising her prices, but her client binder had over a hundred letters of reference and before and after photos.

[01:21:52]She was making more money than God.

[01:21:55]I think it's so powerful and it's one of those things where I'm like, Luke, we got to do this. But those are some of the things that I'll take as a pet project >> and I'm like, I could do this very quickly. You know where you can do pet projects really quickly is with company owned locations and do a test project.

[01:22:10]Now, if you've got a lot of company owned locations, you always have a prototype store. That's where you're allowed to see.

[01:22:16]>> I mean, we're not a franchise. We're >> No, I know. So, that's what I mean. So, but if you're a franchise, you can have a company own locations. If you're all company owned locations like Starbucks or like A1 Garage, you still need a prototype store.

[01:22:26]>> You need to do it in a market.

[01:22:27]>> You need you need Well, you need a store or a market or somewhere where you can test stuff. Maybe it's a couple zip codes in your market where you get to do it's called skunk works. So, you get to go and just like try [ __ ] out and see what >> We always do. Now, we try it. We We try it out. We make sure. We just ended our training program of our traveling trainers.

[01:22:45]>> Yeah.

[01:22:46]>> There was four of them. We gave it a year. We changed it. We tried it. We do it. And that's another thing, Cameron, is most people will die on the sword.

[01:22:57]They literally like if a market's not making it and it's hard. We closed Portland. It was not a big deal. We said, "We're going to give it one last try." Yeah.

[01:23:06]>> And we did.

[01:23:07]>> Steve Jobs cut 80% of his product line when he came back into Apple. 80% of the products he cut.

[01:23:13]>> Most people won't do that. They won't take the pivot. They won't get rid of that line that's not making money. Yeah, I ask people. I went to this company in Chicago, massive company, garage doors, >> and that's by the way that that ties back into the revenue and profit. You've got revenue from selling some stuff, but if there's not enough gross margin in there, all you have is the pain in the ass factor. Sorry. Go ahead.

[01:23:30]>> Well, no, you're you're you're this guy's selling parts, right? So, he's doing distribution, he's doing commercial, he's doing residential, and he's doing new construction.

[01:23:42]>> And I mean, he's doing everything. He's doing storefront. He's doing rolling steel. He's doing docks levelers. And I go, "Man, this is impressive." And he's super proud, but there's [ __ ] everywhere. We got to go to five different buildings. There was nobody in his like I was like I go, "Where's all the profit coming from? What department?"

[01:24:00]>> Right?

[01:24:01]>> He goes, "I don't know."

[01:24:02]>> He goes, >> "All I know is this is how much money we're making." And he goes, "It works."

[01:24:07]And he goes, "Why wouldn't I sell parts for all the parts I go into?" And I go, "Just because you could doesn't mean you should." I didn't say anything to him because I was a guest and I'm not there to criticize, >> but I just every question it just there was no clarity.

[01:24:18]>> You have a better filter than I do. I can't help myself cuz I see it as my money. I I see everybody wasting stuff as my money. I see so often entrepreneurs are like flies banging their head on the window and then they're going to work keep working harder till they get through the window and they all end up dead on the window sill. I just want to go dude there's a door right here.

[01:24:35]>> Yeah. I can't help myself but to sit down with that guy and go, "Look, you've got this one product that you've got eight people and all this effort and all this energy going into it. And by the way, all of your unhappy customers are with that product, too. So, you're wasting money." Like, you could kill that whole thing off and get rid of six people and and life gets so simple.

[01:24:54]Well, that's, you know, as an entrepreneur in me, I had two full-time mechanics, two hoist. I started my own rap shop cuz I was like, we're buying all the trucks, right?

[01:25:02]>> And man, all that stuff. And Luke's been talking a lot about getting back into inventory. I'm like, >> "No."

[01:25:06]>> Do you know where a good example of that is?

[01:25:08]>> What is this?

[01:25:09]>> It's a telephone. It's a cell phone.

[01:25:10]>> It's an iPhone.

[01:25:11]>> iPhone.

[01:25:12]>> Okay. Who makes iPhones?

[01:25:14]>> Someone in China.

[01:25:15]>> Bingo. Not Apple.

[01:25:17]>> Yeah.

[01:25:17]>> Apple Apple designs them. Apple markets them and Apple sells them and they outsourced the stuff that they're not good at and somebody else is world class at. Just because your business is about selling iPhones doesn't mean you have to make them. Just because your business is about selling garage doors and installing doesn't mean you have to warehouse them.

[01:25:36]>> Well, that's the point is just because you're selling a product doesn't mean you have to sell it if it's not profitable.

[01:25:40]>> Well, we don't have van vendor managed inventory in this industry yet. But the point is is like, dude, we spend $70 million a year on parts and doors.

[01:25:48]They're willing to jump over backwards, willing to open open up weekends for us.

[01:25:51]I'm like, why do we put a full-time person in there that they pay and we just reimburse cuz we want to get in and out like capacity. There's other things you will do in house. Like at 1 1800 Got Junk, they hired Roy Williams to run their radio ads.

[01:26:04]But the call center, they run in-house.

[01:26:06]Do you know why they run it in house? We could outsource the call center.

[01:26:09]>> Yeah.

[01:26:09]>> Cuz a call center was our first point of contact with every single customer, and we knew that we had to be best of breed at that.

[01:26:15]>> Do not outsource your call center. I mean, a lot of people are like, "Have you heard about, you know, what they're doing in the Philippines?" I'm like, "Dude, they're like, they speak almost perfect English." And I'm like, dude, I've tried I've tried Mexico. I've tried other places.

[01:26:30]>> That is the dumbest decision to save a dollar, >> but outsource your wraps.

[01:26:35]>> Yes, >> we outsource the raps and the guy does a fantastic job. I mean, there's certain things that you think obviously vertical integration is important eventually.

[01:26:43]>> Can be.

[01:26:43]>> Yeah.

[01:26:44]>> The right move at the right time.

[01:26:45]>> Yeah. Eventually when you've hit a when you've hit a level in your market that you've hit saturation and now you can't buy more, you can't build more, you can't open green field more. Sure. or then vertical integration.

[01:26:55]>> But I'd go buy it. I'd go buy the best in class.

[01:26:58]>> I would too.

[01:26:58]>> I would not go start and then I would redo it and rebuild it or or or you know >> build the symmetry of it. Yeah. And there's [clears throat] a lot of advantages. What didn't we talk about that I should have asked you? What's on your mind lately?

[01:27:10]>> You know what's on my mind and I know it's actually on yours too is stuff about hobbies and life and family. So, I saw an interview around six months ago and it was Tony Robbins being interviewed by Alex Formoszi and Alex put the video up and then killed it and he I think he killed it because Tony kind of out alpha him and it was kind of sad. I thought Tony was a little bit rude and a little bit too much and and he kind of got Alex on the fact Alex had said something to the effect of I've kind of lost my passion and my purpose and I'm not having as much fun running the business anymore. And Tony said well you don't have kids and you don't really have any hobbies. Like >> I was pregnant. they're pregnant >> and now they're pregnant and I think that's going to be a big shift for Alex and Ila now. They were they went to an event of mine 10 years ago. Their COO was one of the first members of the CO alliance. Um I think now that he's going to have a child coming, it's going to be a quantum shift for him and his business will do even better cuz he'll start to develop something else besides just being the best of running a business.

[01:28:04]>> He doesn't have any direct reports. I talked to him the other day. He called me.

[01:28:07]>> No, but he doesn't have a lot of hobbies either.

[01:28:10]You and I have talked about that as like if f work like what do you love to do?

[01:28:14]What did you love to do when you were 12?

[01:28:15]>> So think about Dan Martell for a second.

[01:28:17]We're both friends. I've been friends with Dan for for probably 16 years now.

[01:28:21]I've known Dan since before they had kids for a long long time. We were in a couple masterminds together. We've traveled together. I went heli skiing with him this January. Dan helys skis.

[01:28:30]He does snow biting snow boating or snow biking. He does jet skiing. He does wakeboarding. He goes hiking. He traveled around the world last year with his wife and kids. Um he's into fitness.

[01:28:42]Uh what else is he into? He's into cars.

[01:28:45]He's got he's got a lot of hobbies and he's obsessed about growing his business.

[01:28:49]>> Yeah.

[01:28:50]>> But business is not his hobby. His hobbies are his hobbies. Business might be a passion. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs need to get some balance back in their lives again because at the end of the day, the only metric that I'm completely convinced I know for sure is true is the death rate is still 100%.

[01:29:08]>> Yeah. Well, for >> every other metric is very low.

[01:29:10]>> At least the next 10 years. [laughter] >> Yeah. Truth. Truth.

[01:29:14]>> You know, so Alex called me the other day, this was a couple weeks ago, and he said, "Hey, dude. I just want to apologize." He goes, "I know we're supposed to do a podcast four years ago.

[01:29:23]uh the person that introduced you as a scumbag and I hate him and I associated you with him. Won't go into who it was, >> but uh he's like, "Can you just can we kick it for an hour and just [ __ ] over Zoom?"

[01:29:34]>> He's great.

[01:29:35]>> And uh he's ask He goes, "One third of my people that come in are home service."

[01:29:39]>> He goes, "I just got a lot of questions for you. You could ask me anything." He was very transparent with me. School's killing it. His school thing >> huge. I love school.

[01:29:46]>> And and you know, I was like, >> "Does he own that or own part of it?"

[01:29:50]>> Uh I'm pretty sure he owns it. It's such a good platform.

[01:29:54]>> And he goes he what did he tell me? He goes uh he said something along the lines of uh you know all the things that I do all over social media.

[01:30:06]He goes there's a lot of things that come out of it. He goes I get a lot of clientele and whatnot. But he goes I got access. Everyone takes my phone calls.

[01:30:13]They answer now. He goes but Tommy he goes we're shutting down 20 fraud accounts. So much I got my lawyers all over the place. just a really interesting guy. And look, I give him a lot of credit because he's maintained the same personality as T-shirt.

[01:30:26]>> You know, he's who he is and I like that. And he's he and the other thing, >> but he's but he's on tilt.

[01:30:32]He needs to get some hobbies.

[01:30:34]>> Yeah, 100%.

[01:30:35]>> He needs to have his kids and that'll build a better human and a happier human. Elon is on tilt.

[01:30:41]>> Elon's very strange how much I mean the dude is >> I first met him 27 or 30 37 years ago. I met him in 1997, so whatever that is.

[01:30:50]And then I was or I was a reference for them in '95. Then I formerly met him in 97.

[01:30:54]>> Oh, 20. Yeah. 29.

[01:30:55]>> Yeah. Um, he's on tilt. He's not happy.

[01:31:00]>> So So you don't have to be unhappy to build a successful business. Richard Branson is happy. Dan Martell is happy.

[01:31:06]You've got hobbies and passions.

[01:31:08]>> I'm happy. I mean, I just interviewed the uh the number one guy that teaches a course at uh Yale or Harvard. Harvard on happiness and he said happiness Tommy literally he's like breathing techniques he's like all that stuff we we just I just did a fire round with him on like cold plunge sauna red light and he's like but here's the thing he's like happiness I >> is is a choice y >> and for most people I mean I do believe like that that there's really just chemical imbalances but I'm just like look I love I really do enjoy my life I got a lot going on right now I got a lot of things to be excited for. But I'm like, man, I'm like, man, I am living like I would who would trade their places? I I can't really think of a whole lot of people that wouldn't trade place with me cuz it's not a fake happiness, you know, once you're famous, like really famous. I wouldn't want to be Tom Cruz. Like, I'm peeing at a urinal and a guy wants to get a picture of me. Like, I don't know if I want that.

[01:32:04]>> Yeah. I I'll talk a little bit about happiness. My dad My dad said years ago that um happiness and life is not about getting all the best cards.

[01:32:17]Sometimes it's about playing a poor hand well. And there is an example of a person who grew up on the street who crushed it in life. A person with no arms and no legs who crushed it in life.

[01:32:30]A person with um you know a disease that crushed it in life. People can choose to be unhappy or they can choose to be happy, right? I I have a a friend of mine in Vancouver, Canada, David Ash, who won a massive award for the entrepreneurs organization. He was the social enterprise um winner of the he sold this company for over 100 million 15 or 20 years ago and then bought a bunch of properties in Vancouver and donated them to the city as a place to get single moms and drug addicts off the street so that they could restart their lives. And I said, "Dave, what what was your reason for doing that?" And he goes, "You don't know my backstory." I'm like, "No, I just know you built this huge company and sold it for 100 million in like 98." God, 30 years ago. Crazy.

[01:33:13]That was a lot of money in '98. 100 million. A lot of money. And uh I said, "Well, what's your backstory?" He said, "My mom was a heroin addict and my grandmother was a heroin addict and a prostitute. His mom was a prostitute as well." He said, "I I didn't know my dad.

[01:33:27]I don't even know if my mom knows my dad. Um, and I didn't go to school until grade four because we lived on the street and I want to take people off the street. Now, if somebody like that can can like not going to school till grade four, it's like shut the [ __ ] up, right?

[01:33:42]With all your excuses and why your area is different, your business is different, you're back, happiness is a choice, success is a choice, learning is a choice, most people won't put in the work, the ones who do will be successful.

[01:33:56]>> I love it. You know, real quick, I just want to point something out because I had to do some quick math. I think of life in doubles.

[01:34:03]>> And the rule of seven says at 10% my money will double. That's a pretty safe bet. Yeah. 100 million doubles in 7 years to 200, 14 years to 400. Uh 21 years to 800. 28 years it becomes 1.6 billion >> billion dollars.

[01:34:19]>> And that's just letting that's that's not that's not very aggressive 10%. I mean S&P's >> better than that. If I looked at the buildings that he donated in in in Vancouver to the city and what he's worth. Yeah.

[01:34:30]>> And that's that's like I mean I just talked to a buddy who sold his company three years ago. He goes, "Dude, I I pretty much put all the money into SpaceX." He bought it for $12 a share.

[01:34:40]>> SpaceX.

[01:34:41]>> SpaceX.

[01:34:41]>> It came out at 135165. Yeah.

[01:34:43]>> Now it's over 200.

[01:34:44]>> I have six allocations in SpaceX. My initial allocation was February 2024. I got another one March 2024.

[01:34:51]>> See, that's that's killing it. And those are those are going to be a lot more. I also have two in anthropic and I have two in OpenAI. My anthropic ones are going to be big.

[01:34:58]>> You know what? This this is what I've been talking to my invest investment committees about is like I want to find those. I I want them and I got access through Goldman and and Lynch and some of these other places. So, last thing I want to say that about this happiness uh instructor is uh I talk I I talked to him about Dan Thurman u off balance on purpose and I go everybody wants their balance like they want a balanced life and I go that's [ __ ] You got seasons of life. But I said, he goes, "Tommy, you know, in a perfect world, I wrote down my life of what I wanted it to look like in 3 years."

[01:35:28]>> Mhm.

[01:35:29]>> And he goes, "Tommy, there's 168 hours in a week." He goes, "To live the life that I wanted in 3 years, I would need 300 hours in a week." He goes, "Cuz I got kids. I'm super proud of my kids."

[01:35:39]He goes, "So I built," and this is going to sound really bad, he said, but I said, "I built a life that was good enough."

[01:35:46]>> Mhm.

[01:35:46]>> Because there's so much Yes. I would be praying every day, making sure I'm building a house in heaven. I'd be working out. I'd be a seven body fat doing >> breath. I'd be doing all of it. I'd be going and writing books. And he goes, "But >> he goes, it sounds really bad. It just sounds almost negative that it's a good enough life, but that's what I had to build."

[01:36:04]>> So, here's my analogy. Picture kind of a circle, like a a big huge disc, like something like this table, but a lot bigger, with an elephant standing on it.

[01:36:14]It would be kind of going like this, right? wobbly trying to keep its balance. That's our life. And our life is understanding the key points on the circle and how can we get some of them a little bit better but but going like this. So my key points are things like my fitness, my faith, >> my finances, my friends, my family, right?

[01:36:36]>> Fun >> and then future self. Those are okay. So those so so now think about okay so for your fun where would you rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 for fun? and every month or two give ourel a rating and then pick a couple areas this month to work more on. So right now I'm deep on the finance stuff. I'm really working hard on the business stuff, but in two weeks my wife and I head off to Europe again. We go back into the fun side. We go back into the family side or the right we're doing work on on sexuality like so we're we're doing stuff bucket list stuff. But this this week I'm not doing any bucket list stuff. So I just try to stay cognizant of those six to eight areas of my life. Um, and then always be working on a couple of them and let the other ones slide a little bit, but I'm not going to let my fitness slide for for 8 10 months, right? I course correct.

[01:37:24]>> You know, I got a question. You're a mentor. Yeah.

[01:37:28]>> To your kids to a lot of business owners >> and I have mentors, too.

[01:37:33]>> And you're married.

[01:37:34]>> Yeah.

[01:37:35]>> And you know, the the thing is about women is is they just want to be heard.

[01:37:40]>> Yeah. And you can't give them the answers even though you're like I got the [ __ ] answer. Yeah.

[01:37:44]>> Like this. You cut that [ __ ] off and you tell her no more. You know what I mean? Or they like they'll be telling me a brie. And you know my mom, my aunt, my grandma. It's like and I sit there in the room with women and I'm like >> do we have anything to be happy about?

[01:37:59]And men are more like did you see the hockey game? Let's go play. Like I I know what it's like cuz I was a little boy with a family of women.

[01:38:05]>> So and you're a mentor. You've got advice. You've been through a lot.

[01:38:08]You've got a lot of life experience. So, how do you deal with your wife? She's a bit younger. Mine's 15, almost 16 years younger.

[01:38:14]>> Yeah, mine's 20. Um, I was at an event two weeks ago called Rhythmia. I did a 7-day Iawaska um journey down in Costa Rica working with shaman, 60 people on the property. And on the last night, one of the women was losing it.

[01:38:31]Not even on Iaska, the night after I had a bit of a psychotic meltdown in a good way. We were there to really go deep and she was going and the rest of the people in the room, we were doing a meditation, a breath work session, were kind of freaked out by it. And one of the guys went over, Brad, and sat in front of her and he goes, "Can we go outside? I just want to hear you." And she stopped and kind of went, "Yeah." He goes, "I just want to hear you. Let's go outside." And she goes, "Okay." And he walked outside with her and he goes, "Can I hug you first?" And he hugged her and she just collapsed. And then she talked through everything that she was kind of ranting about in this breath work session. And when she finished talking, she goes, "No one's ever really heard me before." He goes, "I just wanted to hear you." I was like, "Dude, how did you know how to do that?" He said, "I learned it from a marriage coach. I've been trying it with my wife."

[01:39:21]>> Wow.

[01:39:21]>> It's really [ __ ] hard, man.

[01:39:24]>> It is hard.

[01:39:24]>> It's hard. But it's equally hard for them when they ask us a question like, "How was your day?" And we go, "It was good."

[01:39:32]It's hard for them to go, what's he hiding or what's he not saying or what's really there. Not we're just so our job as men is to learn how to speak women and how to learn women. And our job is to remember that they're still trying to learn us, too.

[01:39:45]>> That's pretty profound.

[01:39:46]>> It's true, right? And at the end of the day, we're all just walking each other home. None of this [ __ ] really matters.

[01:39:52]>> Yeah.

[01:39:52]>> It's also the same with some of our employees. They're still understand.

[01:39:55]They're trying to learn how to speak Tommy and Tommy's trying to learn how to speak Luke or Fred or Cody or whatever.

[01:40:02]>> Yeah, we we did a personality test one day and uh Brian Davenport was like the odd man out on this matrix. He was like the only one and he the instructor it was uh the predictive index index. Yeah.

[01:40:16]>> And he goes Tommy he goes you are he over overlapped my personality with his.

[01:40:21]He goes we're identical like identical.

[01:40:24]And he goes, "So I could speak to you about this, right?" He goes, "Brian, >> you work your ass off for a month. You work your ass off." And I mean, you go to war. You're putting in 14our days.

[01:40:34]You walk into Tommy's office, you show him, you want to show him an hour cuz you work so hard at this.

[01:40:40]>> Tommy's got five minutes for you. And he says, "Great job."

[01:40:43]>> Or he says, "Great job. I don't care."

[01:40:45]>> Yeah. And he goes, >> "Now Tommy, you need to give him 15, 20 minutes. Brian, you need to learn >> that you guys are opposites. So Tommy, you got to come here to meet him and you got to come here to understand Tommy.

[01:40:56]>> So So he has to come in and speak faster in an executive summary bullet points and you have to be able to say anything else you want to share.

[01:41:02]>> And by the way, I need to stay off my cell phone and not distracted and actually say this is great. I found myself with in Brian's office this morning.

[01:41:09]>> Do you know what the biggest gift you can give Luke? Because Luke is probably a very high factfinder. He likes to ask a lot of questions to start projects.

[01:41:16]The biggest gift you can give him is to say, "Any other questions on that?"

[01:41:20]>> Yeah. on that great idea that you have that you've been thinking about for a week or a month.

[01:41:24]>> Oh, he knows how to poke holes in things. I think his job is professional.

[01:41:27]Poke holes in things. It should be his >> He's He's You guys have learned how to You've learned that men are from Mars, women are from Venus with each other.

[01:41:33]You've learned how to speak COO and he's learned how to speak CEO. It's a critical skill.

[01:41:37]>> Well, he's been very patient with me.

[01:41:40]He's been giving me a lot of compliments. I mean, we've been in a lot of meetings and I try to make sure to people to understand that how much he's grown.

[01:41:47]>> Yeah.

[01:41:48]>> And he's committed to grow. shining a spotlight on each other.

[01:41:50]>> It's well, look, I'm not doing it for any other reason, but it's the truth.

[01:41:53]>> You know what a good hack is for things like like um predictive index or DISC or Colby or any of the personality profiles? Take yours and just say, "Here's my predictive index profile."

[01:42:03]Write it in. And then take somebody else on your team, say, "Here's their predictive index profile."

[01:42:07]>> Throw it in Claude.

[01:42:08]>> Put it into Claude and say, "Give me a one pager. Put it in grade six English.

[01:42:11]Give me like teach me how to work better together, how to collaborate. We're going to drive each other nuts." Like, "Give me a one pager on how we can help each other." But do it as like a do again. Do it as a one pager in grade six English.

[01:42:22]It's so good.

[01:42:24]>> You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to get Which one do you like the most?

[01:42:28]>> By the way, you can do that with your wife.

[01:42:30]>> Oh god.

[01:42:30]>> Here's Bree's personality profile.

[01:42:33]Here's my personality profile. Teach me how to be a better husband and wife.

[01:42:36]Here's >> So what what what what's the best one out of all of them?

[01:42:40]>> They're different. There's no best. You learn something different from all of them. From Colby, you learn how someone starts or initiates projects. The love languages, you learn how they need to be praised. They're very different.

[01:42:54]You can actually map love languages at work as well.

[01:42:56]>> There's color, >> right? There's color.

[01:42:59]>> There's five languages in the workplace, >> right? Exactly.

[01:43:01]>> You can take that test for free if you buy the book.

[01:43:03]>> Yeah. I've I've done a different person I've probably done about 12 or 13 different personality profiles. And every year I used to get my executive team to do another one. And then we would pay a consultant to come in and do what Claude can now do. Take a look at my profile and their profile and teach me how to work better. Take a look at my profile, their prof. Teach me how to learn how.

[01:43:21]>> It's really really smart. I got a lot of notes. Probably too many notes, but it's I love doing these podcasts because man, we could jam out for five hours. And it's interesting and I respect you a lot. So that makes it much better because I work with you.

[01:43:33]>> Thank you. You know, I get on some people and I'll tell you like I enjoy most of them, but some of the time I'm like, "Dude, what the fuck?" It's like it's like dragging out things and that's like sometimes it's bad advice and I'm like, I don't agree with that. But, you know, this is a podcast you live and learn and not not everything I need to agree with, but man, you what I love that you do is you've got a story for everything and stories are like the basis of human human beings is like I was >> also the basis for gray hair.

[01:44:00]>> Yeah. [laughter] Well, you know where your hair comes from.

[01:44:04]>> You know, it's it's hard because we got two dogs. We got Huckleberry and Finn and and out.

[01:44:07]>> Dude, there's lots of people that travel with their dogs.

[01:44:09]>> No, no. And trust me, it's it's easier to find private now, but you know, we're talking about our honeymoon and it's going to be two weeks. We're talking about this four seasons where you fly to different cities and it's an adventure.

[01:44:18]And all I can think about today, cuz she wants to talk about it tonight, and this just sounds really bad because I don't have any kids yet, but those are my kids. Like, you should see they're almost like, you've met them, but they're almost like humans. There are also people who will come and take care of your dogs for a couple weeks at your home. There's professional >> Oh, I've got great people. I mean, Ashley, that's part of our job description.

[01:44:36]>> Oh, cool.

[01:44:38]>> So, listen, Cam. Um, >> you you you've written a lot of books.

[01:44:41]You want to just run through the books you've written real quick so people know?

[01:44:44]>> Yeah. Double Double Vivid books, Meetings Suck.

[01:44:47]>> Yeah. Double Double Vivid Vision, Meetings Suck, Free PR. I co-authored The Miracle Morning for Entrepreneurs with Hal Lrod. Uh, and then I wrote The Second in Command, which is probably my best book of all time. And then the last one I co-authored with my assistant Meredith Kuba who's been with me for 10 years. We co-authored uh Grandma's Business Secrets. And it's all the grandmother.

[01:45:06]>> Did that come out?

[01:45:07]>> Yeah, it came out in January. It's all the little sayings that grandma said that we know to be true and how do you apply them to business? And I'll give you a couple examples. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Right? If it's not broke, don't fix it. Uh a baker's dozen. Like what's how do you apply a baker? Do you know what a baker's dozen is?

[01:45:25]>> No. So a baker's dozen was back in the 40s,50s,60s you'd go to the baker to buy 12 croissants and you'd come home and you take and you like that's weird.

[01:45:35]There's 13. The baker, the nice baker always put an extra one in to wow the customer. That was a baker's dozen. So how do you wow your customers at A1 garage?

[01:45:45]>> You give them a little extra.

[01:45:47]>> What's the What's the free prize inside?

[01:45:49]What's what's the little >> talks about this?

[01:45:51]>> Correct. So that's give your give them like a buyer guide. give him give him a prize >> something. So So that's a grandmotherism is the free prize inside. So we took 60 sayings that we know to be true and then we wrote a one pager on how do we actually apply that to business.

[01:46:05]>> That's cool.

[01:46:06]>> Yeah.

[01:46:08]>> Business isn't difficult. We make it difficult.

[01:46:10]>> It is the core principles if you just stick to them and just we make it complicated. Like I'll give you an example. I just walked in Luke's office before this meeting and I said look I'm going to go talk to every realtor. I want to take this on personally because I I know all the major realtors. We're just going to do it in Phoenix. Uh the ones that matter that have a huge social media, the designers, I know all the designers. I know all the architects.

[01:46:31]I'm just going to tell them your next 10 doors, we're going to do it cost.

[01:46:34]>> I love this >> at cost. That includes our labor fee.

[01:46:37]>> Love this.

[01:46:38]>> But you're going to we're going to have A1 driving up. I'm going to do an interview with you. And he goes, "Let's do it, dude."

[01:46:43]>> We did that with We did that with all the home makeover shows on television when all when TV was a big thing. We were on all the home makeover shows and we would donate free junk removal as long as they would show our trucks in the in the episodes.

[01:46:56]>> Yeah.

[01:46:56]>> Powerful.

[01:46:58]>> Close us out, brother. I mean, how do people get a hold of you? How do people get in that uh that leadership class?

[01:47:03]>> Yeah. Go check out invest inyouleleers.com. That's where all those skills are. It's only 350 bucks a person. I was telling a CEO one day, he said, "Well, if I invest in my people and they quit Yeah. What happens if they stay?

[01:47:14]>> What happens if you don't invest in them and they stay?" Right? There's there's a cost to that. Go to cameronherald.com.

[01:47:19]It's h e r o l d. It's got links for my course, my books, my speaking podcast.

[01:47:24]It's all there.

[01:47:25]>> Cool. Finally, just close out whatever's on your mind that we didn't talk about.

[01:47:28]>> It's that none of this [ __ ] matters.

[01:47:30]Death rates 100%. Let's enjoy the journey.

[01:47:32]>> Enjoy it.

[01:47:33]>> That's exactly what the happiness guy said. He said just enjoy. You got to enjoy it. Everyone thinks, man, if I got this, if I get this many followers, if I get this, then I'll be happy.

[01:47:42]>> I think as well, let's make sure that we help our people enjoy it, too. Yeah.

[01:47:46]like that dream manager cuz their lives are tough too and if we care about them more than we care about our business goals they'll go through brick walls to build the company.

[01:47:56]>> Very powerful. I appreciate you being in here. [music] >> Thanks man. Appreciate it.

[01:47:59]>> Thank you. Great see you. Thanks.

[01:48:04][music]