S01E04 – Transitioning & Positioning

Transcript

0:00:01.0 S1: Thank you for being a part of this week’s episode on the back porch. You’ll notice that we have the air show going on here in Midland, Texas. And so you hear those sounds soaring above us. It’s P52 Mustangs, it’s Zeros, it’s all sorts of awesome cool things going on. But we’re definitely glad that you’re a part of it. Just know that this is being taped live right here on Chris’s back porch. You’ll hear dogs barking, cars driving by, and today you’re going to get some sound clips from the air show that’s happening on locally. So I hope that you enjoy and gain something out of this. How do you feel about this whole experience? Because it’s new for you and me. We’ve talked about it for quite some time. But yeah man, is it what you expected?

0:01:44.6 S2: Kind of. I think it’s mostly what I expected. It helps that we got the steering wheel. So that does make a big difference. But I think that filming took a little bit to get used to for sure. Just having the cameras around and all the audio equipment and everything that’s involved in improving the production quality and making it something that’s good is really something that you do have to get used to. So that way you can still be natural, have the conversations that we want to have, and not take away from that just because we’re making it available to everybody else.

0:02:18.3 S1: Sure. Yeah, yeah. But having a conversation on camera is weird. That’s definitely been some getting used to. Not knowing when we should look at the cameras, when we should be looking at each other, kind of figuring that out, dialing that in. Yeah man. For real. And then they can’t see it on the camera, but we got these big microphones above us and I’m always afraid that I’m going to do something to mess it up and whatnot. But yeah, I mean that’s, it has been a lot of fun. I think what I’ve enjoyed most is the process.

0:02:54.7 S1: I think so. It’s been a really enjoyable process. It’s been a lot of fun. It’s one of the things that honestly, the first week I was really nervous about it. I can’t honestly say that I was looking forward to it because of how nervous I was. And everybody talks about how anxiety is just stressing too much over the future. We haven’t got there yet. But now that we’ve actually done it, a lot of that stress has really backed off completely to where this is a lot of fun. Yeah, that’s a good point. And I really look forward to it. And the anxiety really has gone at this point. Now it’s like, man, we’re going to have some good drinks. We’re going to eat some good food. We’re going to hang out and have some great conversation with some good company. And man, it’s so much fun. Like I can’t see my life moving forward without doing something like this on a regular basis. Yeah. And I can’t reiterate enough just what you said right there. The fun part about it is the creativity and you miss the process by stressing out about the product. Right. And in my mind, how I kind of overcame that as we’ve been doing this, because we’re halfway done now, right?

0:03:59.0 S1: With the season. With this season as we film this episode. And reminding myself that these guys are the professionals. They have it handled. It’s really just our job to be mindful of where our feet are at. Be present in the moment. Have the conversation. And let these guys worry about what we would be anxious over. What we would stress out about. And that I think to me has been a great mindset shift. Sure. Yeah. Because man, this is so stinking fun. You don’t want to miss. Just brainstorming with these guys and saying, hey, how about if we throw this idea in? What if we go and do that? This is incredible. I can see why people want to be in Hollywood. I can see why they want to create content. This is really fun.

0:04:57.8 S2: It is a whole lot of fun. So I’m going to go ahead and get going on our drinks today. And I think that a great segue into our conversation, which today we’re going to talk about positioning to execute in your business differently using the primary operating principle. And also part of what that transition looks like. So what are you going to hit us with drink wise as we have this conversation?

0:05:21.5 S1: I already know. So I’m going to tee it up and say that’s why I’m wearing the cowboy hat. If you’re wondering, George Straits out here right now because we’re having.

0:05:29.6 S2: We’re having traditional steakhouse old fashions today. There we go. Yee haw. Along with for the meal, we’re going to have some prime New York strip steaks. Which are a steakhouse favorite, of course. And you know how I’m not super huge on the starches. Normally everybody else would be having a loaded baked potato. But we’re going to do zucchini and squash today on the grill. And I think that’s going to be a great compliment. Definitely a healthy alternative. And it’s still a steakhouse feel. And still steakhouse feel. It’s very home, down home kind of natural feeling. So but what I was going to say is leading into that, you brought up kind of what our favorite things are about the podcast. And today we’re going to talk about positioning and transitioning. Why don’t you explain to our audience a little bit while I’m making these cocktails a little bit about how you positioned yourself to even make this podcast a reality. Well let’s hold off on that because I don’t want to take away from the experience of you making this drink.

0:06:25.7 S1: Okay. Because it’s actually fun to watch.

0:06:27.6 S1: Okay. So I call this a traditional steakhouse because all the ingredients are what you would normally find in a traditional steakhouse. Every steakhouse I’ve been to, whether it be Longhorn Steakhouse or Texas Roadhouse or Saltgrass, whatever your favorite steakhouse is, if they’ve got a full bar and they’re serving old fashions, they’re almost always going to have some sort of dark cherry. We’re using Amarena cherries today. They’re going to put full slices of oranges in instead of just the rind that you might see at a classier establishment. And then they’re going to use the orange bitters instead of the aromatic bitters. And then they’re going to give you a shot of club soda right out of the soda fountain that they got behind the bar instead of a water that we’ve used in some of these other ones. So that’s kind of what we got going on today. So I make mine a little bit different though than what you would find at a traditional steakhouse. I slice my oranges into regular circular slices instead of wedges that you might see at a lot of places. And then what I like to actually do is go ahead and stuff them all the way down here in the bottom of the glass.

0:07:30.7 S1: If I push them down, we’re getting some of those juices out so that way we’ve really got that full orange flavor kind of sitting there at the bottom. And then the more you drink it, the more that orange flavor becomes pronounced. Absolutely. You get that fruity citrus thing going on. And then we’re going to go and throw the bitters right on top of that. Nice. Get that going. And then we’re going to go ahead and use simple syrup. I know we’ve been using honey. We’ve used maple syrup. We’re going old school today. We’re going old school and we’re just going to go with the bartender’s friend and throw some simple syrup in there. And then we’re going to touch that up with the club soda. And we’re going to top that up. There we go. Get all those bubbles going. And then because of the way I slice the oranges, this is where I normally stir the drink a little bit, but I’m just going to give it a swirl. Just because you get down in there and the orange is going to kind of help break up the liquid and mix it anyway. Once we’ve got that in there, we’re going to be ready to go ahead and add the ice.

0:08:40.8 S2: Today we’re going to use the cylinder cubes. I’ll see a lot of these at steakhouses and a lot of times also see the square cubes. Sometimes you just got regular ice. And it doesn’t really matter which one you go with as long as keeping it cold. I like these because they keep it cold longer and generally you can use these spheres for a whole second drink. Right? Absolutely. And then we’re using the buffalo chip today. We’re going to swirl that around and let that melt down just a little bit. Take a little bit of room in the glass for these cherries.

0:09:28.0 S1: That’s right. So we queued up the buffalo chip last week.

0:09:32.1 S1: Yes sir. And so buffalo chip is one of the bigger breweries in this breweries distilleries. Sorry, I’m used to drinking beer in a lot of circumstances. Distilleries they actually distill for a lot of other brands as well. So they’ve got a lot of brands that they distill for. So a lot of the bourbons that you’re going to see on the shelf are absolutely coming out of the buffalo chip distillery. You’ll see that little buffalo chip logo on a lot of different bottles with a different logo on the main. Interesting. They do make a good bourbon and so it’s worth taking note and checking out some of their products. Once again we are not sponsored by any of these companies. We enjoy them and want to share them with you. That quite literally is the cherry on top.

0:10:19.3 S1: The cherry on top. And I’ll tell you what, this is a pretty simple drink that you could do with Maker’s Mark or something else. That’s what I normally do. And that’s a really common bourbon and whenever you’re trying to impress somebody or kind of show off a little bit, I found that it’s not the bourbon or the drink or how you make the cocktail. It does it’s some of the smaller details. And you’ll see that a lot in your business. It’s like where can I have the biggest impact with the lowest cost? Well a wooden toothpick costs probably less than a penny. A metal toothpick costs about two or three dollars. And so if you’re looking at that, you’re getting a two thousand percent impact out of a toothpick as far as image goes. And it looks really classy and dresses it up a lot. And it just really makes people like take notice of something extra that you did in your beverage. And it costs you literally next to nothing and they’re totally reusable. That’s one way to look at it. I love it. Look at you making a business application out of a drink.

0:11:14.9 S2: Heck yeah. Well here it is taking it to Texas. Yes sir. Halfway through. Oh wow.

0:11:31.1 S1: Yep, taste the syrup. Absolutely. Pretty good my friend, thank you. Yes sir. Yeah. Alright, so to answer your question, let me first step back a little bit and recap. Sure. Because I think it would definitely be beneficial to lay some context of where we’ve been to where we are now. So we’ve spent like the last three weeks talking about the who, the why, and the where. And the first week we really hammered down on who we are. And I think that’s important for laying a good foundation. Yes sir. I mean where the rubber meets the road is we’re different. We have different experiences, but we’ve definitely come to this conclusion of the primary operating principle being dominant in our lives. It’s how we orient ourselves in our business. Sure. And man I hope that people saw the value in that conversation as far as that podcast. Right. And we added another layer to that. And the extra layer we added was why. Right. And we really fed off of our personal experiences as to why we have embraced this idea of the primary operating principle. And where the rubber meets the road there is quite simply if you’re going to make yourself distinct from your competition, you need to have a greater why to contextualize things in.

0:13:19.1 S1: Sure. And then that really led us to the last foundational conversation, which was the last episode. And that was where does the primary operating principle intersect. And we really took that more from like a demographics conversation, but we didn’t really get into the actual nitty gritty. It was more of an how do you qualify where you fit as far as applying the primary operating principle. And I think where the rubber meets the road there was quite simply it has more to do with mindset than it does with circumstance. Absolutely. And so now that leads us to today’s conversation. And I think today’s conversation, if this season is anything, it’s an ongoing investigation that you and I are having in the vehicle of this conversation. Right. Into this idea of the primary operating principle. We really do want to examine this thing down to its depth. So if we talked about the who, the why, and the where, well, brother, today it’s when. And you teed it up great. And that is positioning and transitioning. And so the question you asked me was when did I ultimately position myself?

0:14:38.3 S2: What did you do for positioning to even make this podcast a reality? And I’m not even talking about all the details, but maybe a broad overview of like, hey, what were the big picture check marks that you hit from where we started talking about this to where we are. And we actually said, okay, we’ve checked all the boxes. We’re actually ready to do this.

0:14:57.8 S1: As far as the podcast or my business?

0:15:00.3 S2: Let’s go with the podcast right now.

0:15:02.9 S1: Yeah. So some big check marks, man. The big check marks really has a lot to do with this fascination with master mining. So the first check box to mark is when I read the book Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. And that goes back 2010, 2011. That was the very first business book I ever read. Okay. No, well, that’s not true. Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Sure. Yeah. Think and Grow Rich was probably the second one. And chapter 13, and I don’t know how I remember this, but chapter 13 of that book is entirely devoted to this concept of master mining. Sure. It’s a strong desire to say, man, there’s got to be other people like me out there that have a desire to want to master mine together. Right. Like who’s my people? Where’s my tribe? Right? Yep. I think our friendship together is a huge check. Obviously this podcast wouldn’t even be possible if it wasn’t for the hundreds, literally hundreds of hours that you and I have spent. Two failed attempts to get a mastermind group off of via ground. And then the realization that why don’t we do a podcast? Because that’s the best vehicle, if I could reuse that word.

0:16:36.8 S1: That’s the best, but there’s a better word for it. I mean, that’s the best outlet, best channel maybe. Platform of influence. Platform of influence. There we go. It’s a contract. And really if there’s an agenda in having this conversation, it is nothing more than just having a mastermind conversation in real time about the most wildly important goal of any business, which is the primary operating principle. And then just to see where it goes from here. Right. And to see where this evolves. Right now it’s two dudes talking on a porch.

0:17:18.1 S2: Who knows what this turns into. And quite frankly, I’m excited not knowing and just being part of the ride. Well, and something I think that’s cool that I just want to highlight that I know about the journey to get here is actually we use the primary operating principle to get to this place. Oh, without a doubt. Yes. Yes. And you’ve had a lot of relationships with marketing companies, film crews, things like that and had all this set up before it was even like a for sure thing. Just position yourself by creating strategic relationships that you also had value to add to those relationships as well. But you strategically found people that had value that you needed moving forward to grow your concept, your ideas, your beliefs. Yeah.

0:18:08.0 S1: Well, I found a media marketing company. These guys over here that are crazy enough to be like, hey, rather than just one idea, I’ve got multiple ideas. Right. And so, yeah, another check box for that one is understanding where all or not even understanding because I don’t fully understand yet. Sure. But I want to conceptualize where all these different conversations, all these different podcasts that I’m doing, where they will intersect. Right. And then, man, honestly, if you have something that you think is cool, you don’t want to be the only one playing in that sandbox. Right. You want to bring people to go ahead and play with you. And so you want to find the best people that can add to this vision. Sure. Yeah, man. That’s awesome. Yeah. So I’m going to turn the table, switch gears here, and direct a question to you if that’s okay.

0:19:18.7 S1: Absolutely. Let me get this grill fired up so that way we can get the squash and stuff on. We’re going to crank this thing up. How long do you honestly need to grill squash? I do mine for, like, I like mine about 45 minutes to an hour on the grill. And I’m going to set-Wow. So it’s about the same as corn? Yeah, about the same as corn.

0:19:38.3 S2: Most of my vegetables are hardier vegetables, and I consider a squash a pretty hardy vegetables. It’s dense. Like if you grab it, it’s hard. Yeah. And so that density to make it soft and delicious, I mean, we’re not boiling it, we’re not steaming it. And so you don’t have all those direct heat attributes. And I’m cooking at like 350 and it’s just convection. So to get that soft, tender, boiled, but the flavor of the grill kind of texture, 45 minutes to an hour is where I like to be.

0:20:05.9 S2: You know, when I first started grilling, I always thought meat would take longer than vegetables. That’s probably a rookie mistake, right? That makes for some dry meat and hard vegetables. But like in my mind, I’m like, it’s meat, it’s muscle. It should be more dense. It should, I mean, vegetables are puny, right? Like, like, like Asian. Man, is it the polar opposite? Like mushrooms are, I mean, but they’re soft and so they don’t take as long to cook. And so it’s really based off the density of the vegetables. Not universal. So softer vegetables and things like that, they take less time. Anything that’s denser and hard just to the touch, then yeah, it takes considerably longer. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Unless you just like crispy vegetables and then you can cook it as long as you feel like.

0:20:50.7 S1: There it is. So question. Answer. Hopefully. Hopefully, let’s see. When so I’m trying to put my I’m, I’m trying to put myself in the mind potentially of someone that would be viewing this podcast. Sure. This is great information. I’ve been working for someone for a long time. I’m looking to get out on my own or I’ve been out on my own for a while, but my attitude, mindset, mentality toward business is way different than what you guys have been talking about in any of those two scenarios. If someone says I really do want to make a shift or I’m considering making a shift toward the primary focus going as deep into relationships as possible, both with my clients slash customers as well as with my team. Yep. Plus all the mating my processes as much as possible. Right. Okay. You haven’t. And in all fairness, we haven’t yet. The last two episodes we’re going to film is when we’re getting into the meat and potatoes of this conversation. So before Chris, I even consider getting into the meat and potatoes of this conversation, what this looks like, how to actually execute on this. When is even an appropriate time for me to start moving my business toward this direction?

0:22:32.1 S1: Does that make sense? I mean, that’s a very long winded question, but. Absolutely.

0:22:35.7 S2: So basically you’re saying you’re struggling or you’re not struggling, but you know that you’re capable of more and you think that this is your path to get there. Or I even buy into this.

0:22:46.8 S1: Sure. This sounds like a much better way to do life and do business than what I was winging it as.

0:22:54.5 S2: Right. I feel that. And I’ve done it both ways. And so I can actually speak to that question very well because I’ve done the wing it style business where you’re fresh and you’re motivated and you’ve got tons of mojo and very little experience.

0:23:09.0 S1: Do I position, then jump? Do I jump, then position? What does this look like? Man, I listen to so many different internet gurus on social media that say one way is right and the other way is right. Where you’re right. That’s pretty much the conversation that I see is that people are either saying, do I just jump and figure it out? Or do I figure it out and then jump? And I think that it’s a combination of the two. I think that if you jump without any planning whatsoever, the likelihood of failure skyrockets because you have not counted the cost. There is a reason that the majority of small businesses fail due to undercapitalization. They did not count the cost before they went out and executed. So there’s several business fundamentals that have to be accounted for before you can take a step. But you are taking steps and figuring out what those are and figuring out where your weak spots are and say, cool, how much money do I need? How many people do I need? What is it that my customers are looking for? How many of their customers are there in my market that want what I’m offering?

0:24:20.5 S1: Do I need to shift what I’m offering to improve the value? Whatever. There’s a ton of questions that need to be answered. I would say that the right answer is you have to have a crystal clear vision of what it is you’re trying to do. Exactly what your company is three months, six months, a year, five years from now. What does that look like? And you need to know exactly what it looks like. Because I’ve done it where it’s like, well, I’ll just mold it and see what it turns into, that kind of concept where you’re doodling. OK. Doodling. That’s an interesting way of putting it. Well, you think about it. It’s like whenever you start a doodle, it’s a line or a scribble or a circle. And you just add to it until it turns into something. At some point halfway through the process, you see what it is, and then you just let it be that. And there’s an element of that. To an extent. But where an artist goes in, they know what they’re going to draw when they sit down and pull out their pen and their paper. And they can draw exactly what it is.

0:25:17.4 S2: And the quality is really good. The detail is really good. The message is clearly conveyed. And I’m going to tell you that Picasso sells his artwork for a lot more than a doodle on a piece of notebook paper. Abstract. Yeah. And so the value is in the vision. And that’s your first step. If you say, what’s step one? Get a vision. Nail that vision to the freaking wall. It needs to be a mural. You should know every detail of it. Yeah.

0:25:47.0 S1: And… Did I tell you on one of these podcasts, maybe the first one, that one of my very first business ventures was an actual art business?

0:25:53.0 S2: Okay. I don’t think I remember that.

0:25:54.8 S1: Yeah. Yeah. I did portraits and murals that were basically I did commissioned jobs. People would commission me to do stuff. Sure. But yeah. I would definitely speak to what you’re saying in the artistic imagery. Because if anyone thinks that they can accomplish something by just putting a pencil on paper and just do it… I mean, Bob Ross, is that the guy that does all the painting? Sure. Yeah. Yeah. That’s not really how that works. We don’t just draw happy trees. There’s a whole planning process of what you want in the foreground, the background. There’s a composition to it. There’s figuring out what your color palette is. So I mean, in vain of that thought process of that imagery that you’re using… Sorry, I still do the jazz fingers. The spirit fingers. The spirit fingers. You freaking made me conscious of it now. Gosh. It’s all right. It’s pure entertainment, man. People would be like, this is Jason’s spirit fingers. The idea in business is you’re not just going to go jump into something without doing some type of due diligence. But okay. Okay. But now you… Let’s expound upon that. Because to what level… If I could say anything about us, dude, we are polar opposites in the fact that you will leap first and ask questions later.

0:27:23.9 S1: Yes. And I can’t hand everything down to the freaking detail to where I don’t actually make a first step. Okay. And there’s a difference.

0:27:33.8 S1: So I don’t think that either way is right once you get to that place because you’re successful in your own right and I’m successful in my own right. And we could not use each other’s styles. But we had to balance each other out. Yeah, yeah, definitely. If you leave me to my extremes, I can become my own worst enemy. And if I leave you to your extreme, then you can become your own worst enemy, right? Kind of that idea. Yeah. Like I’m going to blow the jet up or I’m going to the moon mentality. Yeah. And you’re like, I’m not even starting the ignition until I’ve tested every component on the plane. There we go. We have NASA this thing. Right. Sure.

0:28:06.2 S2: And so if it wasn’t for someone like me to push you and say, dude, just go do it, you’d never get off the ground. And if I didn’t have you to say, hey, bro, like your wing is holding on by duct tape, then I would take off and…

0:28:20.6 S1: Let’s not construct this plane in the air. Let’s build it on the ground first. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:28:25.5 S2: And so we’re kind of different in that regard. Sure. And we compliment each other as far as pushing our boundaries either forward or backwards.

0:28:33.4 S1: Okay. Does someone need to have a established business first and then position themselves toward moving toward being relationship focused?

0:28:44.0 S2: I don’t think so because from what I’ve discovered in everything we’ve talked about and everything we’ve actually gone out into the world and done, people are the only thing holding you back from the next level, period. It doesn’t matter if it’s more clients or more staff or just a bigger network in general, like for just a larger resource to pull from to be able to explore and expand in different directions. Relationships are paramount to success. I mean, I’ve heard that so many times since COVID is your network is your net worth.

0:29:15.8 S2: Your network is your net worth. Sure. Okay. And I am a firm believer that that’s true. I believe that your relationship development should start today. Like you can’t wait.

0:29:24.3 S1: You’re already behind. You didn’t start off this way with your automotive business. No, sir. So was the right way to do it to figure it out? If you could go back, would you change anything? Would you position yourself first and then move toward where you are now? Or would you have gone through everything that you went through, build yourself up to a certain point, then position to make that transition?

0:29:56.8 S1: I would have done it the same way because the results are the same. Actually, I think that I have more advanced results because I jumped in early. I struggled because of that. I learned things I don’t think I would have learned waiting anyway, that I literally had to go through the process because I didn’t know I needed to know those things. And I didn’t have anybody that told me I needed to know them. So by just jumping in and figuring it out at a certain point, now I’ve done quite a bit of due diligence. I knew what my numbers were. I knew what I was looking at. I knew what-Sure. If there’s one thing, you always know your numbers. I know my numbers. And so that gives me a lot of confidence to execute because I know what’s in my bank. I know what I can live with and what I can live without. I know where I can trim when I need to. I can transition and shift my business 10% on any given day on financials because I know where all my levers and switches are. And that gives me a lot of confidence to move forward because I know all of that and I know how robust my business is as far as just overall strength.

0:31:00.1 S2: I can mess with it pretty good and I’d have to really be negligent to screw it up. So that gives me confidence to go and try things and move things around and do things differently because I’ve got a really stout foundation. I bought a really robust business that had room for error that allowed me to go and operate knowing I was going to screw some things up.

0:31:23.6 S2: What if the person listening to us doesn’t have room for error? Then go and build room for error and then go and execute. That’s what I would say is your real threshold for risk is how much margin of error do I have? If you’re at 1% then you do not have room to wiggle. You need to grow that margin of error and say I have more profit. I’ve got more customers. I’ve got whatever it is. Wherever your margin of error is lacking, if you screw it up here it will ruin you. You need to give your entire business enough cushion that you can fall back some because you made a mistake and be able to at least go back to where you were, reset a baseline and start over again and do something different so you don’t have to go to what true zero is.

0:32:16.1 S1: I don’t know if I necessarily disagree with you. Maybe I just would articulate it in a different way. All I have is my experience to pull from it. When I positioned myself toward being a holistic comprehensive financial planner, which is how… I’m not technically a financial planner. I don’t have a CFP, but I’m a financial advisor that does financial planning. That’s how I would articulate my brand. The firm I was with told me you can’t do that. You’re not established in the business. You need your assets under management to be to a certain level. You need to be so many years in the actual business. The only thing you should be doing is selling and brokering. I said not only am I not going to do any more brokering, selling at all, I’m going to give away all of the products for free and I’m going to go through a detailed relationship process. Sure. I’m not even going to be compensated until the back end of this process. We’re going to build the entire relationship first and then we’re going to use that as a foundation to actually launch from. Every person at that time, I was in my second year of business, told me, you are going to fail.

0:33:48.1 S1: You will not be here 18 months from now. That’s not totally different in my business. Our transaction cycles-I didn’t have wiggle room. By everyone’s perspective, I didn’t have wiggle room. I said, you know what? Screw you. I’m going to do it anyway. My only thought process was, in my mind, this is what’s right. This is what I’m going to do. You know what? I’m probably bullheaded stubbornness, but I’m not sorry for it. That bullheaded stubbornness was like, dude, I went three months without any compensation whatsoever. My firm cut off my salary as soon as I went below their performance expectations, which was entirely built off revenue. I basically told them, I’m not going to produce any revenue whatsoever for a certain time period and then it’s going to skyrocket. They’re like, you know what? If you want to do that, it’s on you. We’re not going to pay you. I straight up, dude, went without being paid at all. Was I right?

0:35:02.6 S2: Well, that was-How did you make it? If you went forth and-Sheer cussedness determination. No debt in savings. Just what I want to say on that is one, there was some physical and some emotional upfront evaluation that happened there. Is A, you positioned yourself financially. Yes.

0:35:25.9 S1: You had savings.

0:35:26.6 S2: Oh, that’s huge. You have to position yourself financially. You had savings and you also had very low operating overhead for your lifestyle.

0:35:33.3 S1: Yeah. Yes. Our lifestyle was cut to just the bare necessities for at least 90 days.

0:35:41.5 S2: What were those necessities? Just to say, this is literally the only money that came out of my bank account during this period. Yeah.

0:35:46.7 S2: Okay. Good question. The way I would envision it is think about you’re constructing four walls around your house. Those four walls are, first one, food. Yep. And not going out to eat. That’s like the whole Dave Ramsey mantra. The only reason you should be in a restaurant is because you’re working there. So just, I mean, we’re talking about staples that we’re eating off beans and rice. My wife’s Mexican, so it was bean burritos in quesadillas, right? Hell yeah. And so food, lights, water, utilities, house payment, gas in my car to get to work. That’s it. And insurance? Yeah, I’d count that in. I would lump that into the house payment. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because I mean, I got a FHA loan, dude. Okay. So you’re financially prepared, but what you really alluded to me there is that was a piece of it, but that wasn’t even the big factor to you. You and your entire, not just you, but your entire household was emotionally prepared for this venture.

0:37:02.7 S1: Yeah. I mean, I had kids that were too young to know any different and I had a wife that was 100% supportive. Absolutely.

0:37:09.8 S2: And so without that positioning of getting everybody prepared and say, hey, we’re going to go 90 days, maybe even four months with absolutely no income because we want more out of life than what we’ve got right now. And we’re going to make this sacrifice and it’s going to be okay.

0:37:27.6 S1: See, what I love about what you’re highlighting right now is that as business owners, as entrepreneurs, we tend to forget that when you’re positioning yourself to make probably the most astronomical shift, it’s really not the business or the financials. It’s really the home and the emotional part of it. It’s your personal finances. It’s your home health. You didn’t even ask me about what my daily routine was to get through this, but that was a component of it as well.

0:38:02.4 S2: So I would say that mindset positioning is probably the most critical part about moving forward.

0:38:08.1 S1: I’d say so. It’s more important than what you’re even doing for your business. For sure.

0:38:12.9 S2: I think so because if you’re not mentally prepared for the things that are going to come, even if you don’t know what’s coming, it’s not any different than like I’m going to build an armor for myself and my psyche and my emotions and my household that’s so dense that I can go out and slay dragons and I’m cool with it. And I don’t know how big the dragon’s going to be, but I’m prepared for it. And guess what? When I’ve got my sword and I’ve got my armor, then I can walk out of my house and I’m going to go out for all of the world. I don’t care. It’s mine. It’s coming.

0:38:46.6 S1: So here’s where the potential pushback is. And after we’re done this point, I’ll see if I can get you to make another one of these for me. That was really good. And that second one, we’re really going to get the orange in there. For sure. So this is where I might push back on. I think the right time to position for the transition is when you have this epiphany that I’m not operating according to the primary operating principle. And then you do it. I don’t think there’s a time that you wait for.

0:39:23.4 S1: No, it’s something that you do right away. I know for me it was. But in your due diligence, the positioning is the preparation to make the plunge. As far as when am I ready for my business? Well, you owe it to yourself, your teammates, and your client slash customer base immediately. Why would you be doing anything else? But then it’s the preparation to get you to that point. Honestly, and this is where I’m at. Feel free to push back on me. You don’t need to leave the employer until you get out of debt.

0:40:04.1 S2: Oh, I’m a firm believer, or at least it’s well managed and you literally have so much cash on hand, it doesn’t matter.

0:40:09.9 S1: And you better have a buttload of cash on hand. Buttload of cash.

0:40:14.1 S1: I cannot stress how much money it takes to do a business. It’s unbelievable. Because I know whenever I first got into entrepreneurship, and I’m not even going to call them businesses, let’s call them side hustles because that’s what they were. And there is a distinct difference. And while I’m talking about this, I’m going to go ahead and get these veggies prepared and go ahead and whip us up another cocktail. So my side hustles, all I looked at was how much does the equipment cost? How much can I charge for my service or whatever? And then we build these unrealistic projections. And that’s like every young entrepreneur does this, they say, man, I can make a dollar off of every baseball card and I can buy these baseball cards for 50 cents from China. And if I sold two million of them on eBay, then I’d be a millionaire. And then you buy a million of them and you sell 20. Like whatever the case may be. And it doesn’t really matter. That’s not the point I’m trying to make is that it’s not realistic because a lot of it is realistic. But that’s how we look at it.

0:41:22.0 S2: We oversimplify the complexity of what a business is and the relationship dynamics and what it takes to go and sell a million baseball cards.

0:41:33.3 S1: And your side hustle is getting kicked in the teeth so you can learn reality. Exactly.

0:41:40.3 S1: And so there’s a lot of that kind of stuff going on. And so whenever you’re looking at these things, you need to take it out of the simple and put it into terms of what it really is that may I be looking at tax liability and employees and cost analysis and all these other things. And you know what? Whenever I got into business, I didn’t know all of that, but I found out quickly that I needed to and I went and sought out help. And I think that I could have actually started better if I sought out help before I jumped into it. Okay. Interesting. And had help people actually just help me plan that. And it’s just nuances. I could have still took on the plunge at the same time. I could have just been better informed because I went and bought the information from somebody that had it. Yeah. Whether that’s your attorney or your CPA or a business coach or whatever that is, whatever your week on and you don’t know. And if you’re talking to somebody that does own a business and they’re talking about things, you don’t know what they’re talking about.

0:42:34.3 S2: That’s your cue to get that information from them or go find out where they got it from and pay that person to give it to you. Even if it costs $10,000 before you start your business, a lot of your big multi-hundred million dollar coaching companies talk about that because they get asked that question. Hey, if I’ve got $10,000 and I want to start a business, what should I do? And all those guys will tell you the same thing that I would agree with and tell you, take that money and invest it in yourself.

0:43:04.1 S1: Yeah. That’s leading me. There’s so many different directions that I want to go with that. So the first part is definitely getting your own financial house in order. And you know what, before we transition to that second one, which is you need to invest in yourself and that’s a part of positioning before you’re fully prepared to take the plunge. Yes. There we go. I’m keeping it all with P’s. There’s my sermon background, right? There’s my homiletics background. Well, I can tell you-You alliterate everything. I can tell you what the seven P’s are and then maybe-Okay, there it is. There’s some people that are going to push back and say, well, you know what? Why should I pay my vehicles off? Why should I pay my credit cards off?

0:43:51.0 S2: Freedom is power. I did it with debt, with very little cash. I know that you did. And I got lucky and I actually had to refinance my vehicles. I had to cash out every liquid asset that I had and get credit cards to make it through my first big dip because I was not prepared. And if I didn’t at least have over $20,000 of equity in my truck, most people don’t have $20,000 of equity in their vehicle they can cash out on. Yeah. And so that’s why you said that you got lucky.

0:44:21.5 S2: I got lucky. I had accidentally prepared myself to the bare minimum unintentionally and I had to go and figure out where I had money laying around in my life that I could liquidate and pump back into my business to make it through this hurdle. And looking back now, it wasn’t a big hurdle. I’ve had way bigger hurdles, but it woke me up so much. I was much more prepared for the next one. And now I can get hit by some really big waves and I don’t care.

0:44:50.8 S1: And that’s the freedom that you’re talking about. Debt really does restrict your freedom. And when we say freedom, what we’re talking about, I think, is a sense of mobility and resilience. You lose resilience and you lose mobility when life inevitably throws you curve balls. And you can’t be focusing on business the way that you should be focusing on business when you’re getting all these curve balls thrown in your home life. Another dynamic that I would throw on that too is your wife has no clue most of the time. And if you’re definitely a lady entrepreneur listening to this and your husband’s working a nine to five, he doesn’t have a clue either. The spouse does not have a clue what your business is. They don’t know. No, they don’t know what your struggles are and all these things. My wife now knows because in the last 90 days she’s come to work for me. Right. And boy, the conversations we’re having, like, wow, this is what you do, right? So all the spouse understands is the car is about to get repossessed. And why can’t you fix that?

0:46:07.5 S2: Because if I fix that, then I create this whole other issue that is going to have longer lasting consequences than sucking it up for a month or two and taking the hit.

0:46:19.4 S2: And then. But if you’re positioned properly, there’s no hit to take. Exactly. And I think the best and what that comes out to is, well, are you saying you care about your business more than you care about this family? OK. Now, right. Right. OK. And I’m going to say yes to that. And here’s why. You have to have. I wouldn’t want to put myself in that conversation.

0:46:38.5 S1: I will do it.

0:46:39.3 S2: And here’s why is because you have to have a maximum amount of respect for the thing that supports you and your family.

0:46:47.9 S1: No, I’m just. Yes, no, I totally understand that. What I’m saying is I wouldn’t want to put myself in a position where I’m in debt and I have to make a decision on what I’m going to do with my business or if the vehicle is going to be. No, I agree.

0:47:03.6 S1: Nobody wants to be in that position. But if I was in that position because I’ve been in that position where I’m going to pick this bill or that bill, I’m going to take care of the business that takes care of me. That’s going to be my priority. But I also have coached other businesses that are so far gone that there is no coming back. And those guys have to say, man, you need to draw back, get everything you can out of this thing and do something different because you’ve already sunk the ship. It just hadn’t gone under. And that’s another good point. When you’re not positioned well in your personal finances, you have to understand debt is an accelerant. Right. So if you have a bad idea, it’s a really bad idea. Right. Really fast. And the danger is, as an entrepreneur, normally your first five ideas are bad ideas. You don’t want to finance and leverage your bad ideas. No. You want to leverage your good ideas. I agree.

0:48:00.5 S2: So I’ve done it both ways. I’ve got a company that we did 100% cash. We did $10,000 investment and did half a million in revenue first year. Heck yeah. And so I’ve done it that way. In that business, what we ended up doing is I actually liquidated zero assets out of it. We reinvested everything. I think I was getting maybe $200 or $300 every couple of weeks out of the business just to something because you need some kind of reward for your efforts. Oh, okay. Yeah, sure, sure.

0:48:32.1 S1: Pocket money.

0:48:33.0 S2: But everything that we made, we pumped back in. I mean, we turned $10,000 worth of assets into $200K worth of assets in a year. Just grinding and reinvesting as much as we could. And anyway, that business burned down in January, so it is whatever it is. But I’ve done it debt free. And then I’ve also done it on the other side where I leveraged it. And yeah, there’s a huge amount of stress that goes with that leverage because with the debt free company, man, if I had a bad month, it literally just cost me whatever it cost me. If I was out $500, I was out $500. It was really small numbers. I might put a couple grand in in a month. But whenever you’re generating big money, it’s not a huge deal. It sounds like a lot, but a couple grand when you’re dealing with hundreds of thousands of millions isn’t a big deal. It’s negligible. Sure. Where with my other business, I mean, we’re running $100,000 in overhead monthly. And man, that’s a huge demand. That’s a tall order. And especially whenever you’ve got things like COVID that happened and economic downturns and market crashes and all kinds of other things that you have zero control over, that your finger in the pie matters not to those events.

0:49:48.5 S1: You have to be ready in business when you take the plunge. You have to be positioned to the point where your cash flow can go to zero and you can still survive.

0:50:00.4 S2: Yep. And I actually plan that way. My savings in my business is for months at zero. And I will tell you, I’ve never been to zero and I won’t ever go to zero. If you got a business that’s making money, you’d have to screw up really, really bad to go to zero. Yeah, but when you’re first starting off and you’re transitioning to this primary operating principle, it may not even be in reality, but conceptually you are betting the farm.

0:50:28.5 S2: Oh yeah, for sure. So going back to my firm, I had zero proof this was actually going to produce money. Right. I was betting the farm. I knew that this was going to work. And not only was this going to work, it was going to work exceptionally well. Sure. But at that moment I had to be positioned. I’m hoping that I’m right that this is going to work really, really well.

0:50:60.0 S1: It’s like I’m going to battle. When you go to battle, you want to look like a Spartan. Yep. Right? You want to look like Thor with that fat pod. Right? Right. You want to look like Leonidas. Right. And that’s because, man, honestly, you may-Those are great examples because those are exactly what we’re talking about in positioning that you don’t have a body like that by sitting on the couch waiting for something to happen.

0:51:34.0 S2: Yeah, that’s not what this is.

0:51:35.1 S2: You have a body like that because you’ve been preparing for this opportunity for as long as you can remember.

0:51:41.6 S1: So you need a financial body. And then on top of that, now this is a great segue to you need to invest in yourself. You need a body of knowledge that is lean. Because you’re going to-And flexible. Yeah, and flexible. Because you’re going to war and those two things are important. I’ve seen that rigidness is one of the most difficult mindset obstacles to overcome that’s the most damaging to a business is because-How so? You’re not allowing yourself the flexibility to move and shift and adjust. And so if something’s not working, it will continue to not work. And you get that festered splinter syndrome where something that wasn’t a big deal simply because it wasn’t removed turned into a massive infection in your business. Interesting. Okay. And that’s what I think-Can you give some specific examples? Offhand? Okay. I know I’m putting you on the spot.

0:52:35.2 S1: Sure. So one great example of that is a lot of people in my industry say, cool, I’m busy. I’m two weeks booked out on work. I’ve got more than I can handle. Why would I do marketing? Okay. And so they refuse to do marketing. Well, what happens is those guys that refuse to do marketing while they were doing well, when the market turns or something happens and that work that was plentiful gets trimmed down to competitive, you’re not competitive because your awareness in the marketplace was only to the borders that you had already previously established where someone else was out there-Oh, we’re here in one of those planes.

0:53:15.1 S2: Oh yeah, we are.

0:53:18.0 S1: Definitely out there flying around. Oh, what are you catching, Luke? I have no idea. Plane’s flying. Yeah. It’s a bird. It’s a plane. Let me know when they get to those B-17 bombers.

0:53:30.2 S2: Hell yeah, man. Let’s get Superman on video. So anyway, that’s kind of my thoughts on that as far as that goes.

0:53:40.2 S1: Okay. That’s perfect, man. I mean, this has been, I didn’t know how this conversation would go and so far I’m delightfully surprised. This is real world stuff. A lot of people have dreams of being entrepreneurs. They get punched in the face one time and then they give up on it for the rest of their lives.

0:53:59.8 S2: I tell people, because I’ve got a lot of my young guys that work for me and want to be entrepreneurs and I have every intention of helping them every way I can to elevate to that point through working with me and my companies. I’m all about it. But one of the things that I talked to them about when it comes to that is I said, you were born ready for this, you just need to accept that. And they’re like, what do you mean? I was like, you were born with no teeth.

0:54:29.1 S1: Oh, your teeth have already been kicked in. And then it took me a second. Yeah. And they’re confused. They’re like, man, you’re going to pick those things up off the ground all day, every day. That is your new job. And you can get them kicked in once and guess what? A new set grows back. Yep. Get them kicked in the second time. Well, you know. I get kicked in the face every day almost. But it’s a great analogy because it’s okay to get hit the first time and it’s okay to get hit over and over again when you’re starting off.

0:54:59.0 S2: I think it’s okay. You don’t want to get hit over and over again with the same entry level mistakes. With the same mistakes. I agree. As you grow, your problems need to grow with you. If you’re still struggling with minor startup level issues three years down the road, then you fundamentally screwed up somewhere in the process.

0:55:18.2 S1: So let’s focus on the body of knowledge aspect of it because we can drill down on this a little deeper. So before someone positions over, you had made the statement that most business gurus will tell you, and I actually agree with this too, you invest in yourself first. Yes.

0:55:34.7 S1: Why? Okay. I’m going to put the cart before the horse on this one and start with extent. Okay. The extent is personal. It has a lot to do with your motivation, your capacity for pain and your ability to execute on multiple systems at a single time. Okay. Those are all factors. As far as that goes, you’ve got to make that decision for yourself and say, I can do this. As soon as you can say, I can do this and you believe it and you go out and you’re going to do it because there’s no option not to in your own mind, then you’re ready. So then if I’m hearing you correct to the extent of how much knowledge you need before you make a plunge, it’s just enough knowledge for you to say that you’re ready.

0:56:22.9 S2: Yep. That’s it. Barely enough. Barely enough. Barely enough. If you are over prepared, then you’ve delayed your success by exponential time. Are we talking about just opportunity cost? Opportunity cost, growth cost, all of the above. If you started a year ago, how much closer are you than starting today?

0:56:47.5 S1: In my experience, because I fall in this category, my mistake is to wait too long. Right.

0:56:54.2 S2: And I rush in and I’ve had this conversation last night. We had screwed up and crashed and burned several times, but I’m okay with that. Like I’m built for that. I’m one of those guys that bounces and grows all his teeth back and all of those things. And so emotionally, I would say that I am stronger than most people that I know in general, because I will take a hit all day, every day, and I’m ready for more.

0:57:17.4 S1: Well that’s what I wanted to add to the conversation. So I’m like, sure, but even me, right? So I’m, I’m more risk adverse. So what I have learned is that you don’t truly understand anything. You don’t truly learn until you execute. Right. So there is something to be said to someone that has more of my dispensation to acquire just enough knowledge for you to get comfortable to take the first step and to understand what the second and third steps going to be. Most people that are bent towards yours barely understand the first step and then they just plunge. And so you don’t even know what the second or third step is, right? So of course you’re going to fall on your face. All I’m saying is there’s something to be said of your body of knowledge is just what is the first step and how can I execute well on the first step? What are the second and third steps I need to be thinking about that I can research while I’m doing the first step? And I actually remember and it adds confidence. The reason why people like me don’t make the first step is we’re lacking confidence.

0:58:29.8 S1: Paradoxically, the only way you gain confidence is by taking a plunge, by taking a step.

0:58:37.4 S2: I think that the disconnect for young entrepreneurs, let’s go back to that guy that you’re talking about, our girl that gets punched in the face and goes home one time, first time. Let’s talk about that person because that’s a lot of people out there. And there’s a lot of people that are going home on punch two or three, a lot.

0:58:57.7 S1: And they’re not even big punches in retrospect, they’re just jabs. They’re just jabs. But to them, they feel like they’re knockouts. Here’s the issue with that is the people that become entrepreneurs thrive on success. They’ve been winners their whole life. That’s why they even feel like they’re capable of branching out on their own. They are afraid of failure. Interesting. And the fact that they failed for the first time maybe ever, or they failed for the first time in a bit, whatever the case is, that that failure point is huge to them, even though in the grand scheme, it’s super tiny because they’re not accustomed to it. They’re not used to it. That’s not the life I’m used to living. That’s not why I want to do this. This is super uncomfortable. I don’t like losing. I’ve got every trophy for every game I’ve ever played. I’ve never went home without one. What do I do? They go home. Interesting. And where I’m on the other end of that, where we’ve talked about this in some of our past episodes where I’m going to use this word because I can’t think of a better one. I’ve been a loser my whole life.

1:00:06.9 S2: I’ve lost consistently. I’ve lost tons of games. I’ve lost tons of relationships. I’ve lost tons of people that I’ve loved. I’ve lost businesses. I’ve lost everything to zero more than once. I have a threshold for it that says I don’t care. It’s coming at me anyway whether I ask for it or not. Let’s embrace it and grow from it and overcome it. I have people that say how are you so good at what you do? And I said because I screwed up a whole lot. If you look at anybody that’s great at anything, they have a much more massive failure list than anybody else that’s not competing with them.

1:00:47.2 S1: I hear you branching off to a third topic. Let’s put a pause on that for a second. The first one is personal finances. The second one would be a body of knowledge, for lack of better words. A third one would be what I hear you going into and that is psychological toughness. But before we do that, let’s focus on that second one just a little bit more.

1:01:12.6 S2: So going into that, the body of knowledge, what do you need to know before you go? Just enough to take the first step. The only thing I would add to it. What I tell all my guys, this is my addition to it and I think this is the most important thing for anybody to be super honest with themselves about. What do I not know?

1:01:30.4 S2: That’s exactly where I was going to go. I don’t care what you know. I hire people on my team all the time. When I interview people, I don’t ask them what they know. I want to know what they don’t know. And I don’t even care what they don’t know. I just want to know that they know what it is. I want to know that they realize what their limitations are and that way we can come up with a plan to surpass those. And so whenever I’m going into a new venture, I want to know what I don’t know so I can accommodate that. So I can compensate for it. Sometimes I compensate for it by going and taking a course or reading a book. Sometimes I compensate for it by bringing in one of my relationships in my network that’s an expert in this field that I don’t know about. Exactly. And use them as an asset. Or I go out because I don’t have somebody in my network and I pay someone to be part of my network to fulfill that gap because I know I don’t know.

1:02:21.2 S1: Perfect. Do you know what I hear you saying? I hear you saying, and this is the absolute truth of the whole affair. When you’re an entrepreneur and you’re starting off, all you have is a vision and you have to have a vision. You have to have a clear vision. It needs to be crystal clear. And what we’re just imploring you in this conversation is to have it be conducive to the primary operating principle of relationship focused and automating. You have a desire to automate all of your processes. Your vision should embody those two things and then you should know next what you don’t know to achieve that vision. Oh, there’s a step before that. So the first is the vision of what that is. The second thing is all your activity is focused around a hustle that is producing a profit because without that, you don’t have cash flow and without a cash flow, you don’t have business. Right. So that’s that knowing just enough to take the first step, but understanding what the second step and the third step need to be. And then the third thing is knowing what you don’t know. So you can seek out that information.

1:03:30.2 S1: As a student of your industry, being humble enough to where you can experience dynamic growth. Because your job as the entrepreneur is just to bring the vision. It’s not to be an expert on everything else. There’s experts out there that you can tap into.

1:03:44.4 S2: Yep. That was my greatest weakness is I went into this because I’m a smart guy and I can read something and remember everything that I read.

1:03:51.6 S2: You know what you and I just did right here? We just mastermind starting or transitioning or positioning into a business. Anyone can follow the formula that we just laid out and be successful. Absolutely. Now let’s take it home. Well before we take it home, you uncovered a third branch of this that I really want to dig into. Which is threshold for pain. The psychological preparedness. Before we do, is there anything we need to tend to the grill or are we still good? I’m going to go ahead and throw the veggies on the top rack and crank this bad boy up to 425 and then we’ll get ready. I’m going to go ahead and probably dry season these steaks so they can get a little bit of flavor soaking in. Perfect. Let’s do it. That way we can throw it on and then we’ll drive this thing home.

1:04:36.6 S1: Yeah. Man, you can’t overstate psychological preparedness. I mean, you can’t have just psychological preparedness, but you can’t succeed without psychological preparedness. You have got to have a tremendous threshold for pain. For someone who thinks that they’re just going to go out there and they’re going to win right off the bat, you are fooling yourself.

1:05:05.1 S2: Oh yeah, for sure.

1:05:06.4 S2: Winning takes time. You need to be patient. If you are, all that means is that you haven’t set your aim high enough. I’ve taught you that because you’ve always been like, oh well, I want to set goals I can achieve. I’m like, I want to set goals that I want to achieve in 10 years. We both are pretty happy somewhere in the middle of that. Possibly. Possibly.

1:05:30.1 S2: What are we rubbing? All right. Once again, it’s just a regular day. We’re doing some Weber Smoky Mesquite seasoning and some McCormick Montreal steak. Nothing fancy today. This is all old school. This is traditional steakhouse. This is my dad’s steaks. For real. This is something that my dad would make for us. And tell you, it’s the greatest thing ever. It’s a secret recipe. All he did was mix two grocery store brand seasonings on there and create his own blend. And it’s his custom blend. You know what dads are. They’ve got to have that.

1:06:02.3 S1: Yeah, man. That’s how I am.

1:06:03.9 S2: Heck yeah, man. We tell our kids, oh yeah, I made that from scratch and we grew the herbs in the garden when I was a kid. And of course my grandma actually did grow the herbs in the garden when I was a kid. Our parents were more of a reality. So yeah, just kind of saucing those on there. And these are just prime one New York strips. I mean they got some pretty good marbling. They’re not the same as the Wagyu. They do have a pretty good fat cap on them, which is really what adds a lot to their tenderness in a New York strip and then having that good marbling just kind of helps the meat separate as it cooks is that that breaks down.

1:06:44.2 S1: Oh, you’re putting them both on. Oh yeah, dude. So you’re not going to crust the edges like you do with the Wagyu. I’m not going to crust the edges on these. Like I said, this is how everybody you see cooks their steaks. We’re literally just going to flip it and flop it, mix this stuff in on both ends. I thought crusting the edges was a Chris Taylor thing. It is a Chris Taylor thing, but I don’t do it on rib eyes or New York strips because the fat cap will actually wash it off. And so I don’t generally do that. And I want to focus on the main flat sides on these where with the tenderloin, you don’t have any excess fat. And so I add the full encrustment all the way around. So that way we get that maximum flavor profile that even if I did this on this, it’s literally just a waste of time and seasonings because that flavor profile is literally going to wash up and burn up in your grill. Interesting. Solid point. And I just press that right in there. Those look good. And then we’ll cover those back up.

1:07:44.7 S2: Are we going to do a medium today or are we going to do a more on the rare side?

1:07:49.5 S2: I like a solid medium personally. I do like a solid medium. Y’all are good with solid mediums, right?

1:07:54.3 S2: All right. Awesome. Heck yeah. Luke was saying that man, since we’re going traditional here, it should be more on the rare side. Cut those horns off, wipe its butt and put it on the plate. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Drag it across the grill. Yeah, cut its horns off, wipe its ass, drag it across the grill and throw it on my plate.

1:08:16.5 S2: We’re going to go in that way. If we’re going to do that, we might as well go liver king and eat its testicles too.

1:08:26.4 S1: Rocky Mountain Whip Team. Man psychological toughness. I think eating testicles takes psychological toughness. Yeah, for me it does for sure. Well they’re not on the menu today.

1:08:45.9 S1: They’re not on the menu today. No sir. Good news, you don’t have to eat testicles to have a great business. Good job. Yeah. Thank God. But you do need to have psychological toughness. You do need psychological toughness. Mine was forged in being told no a thousand times before. And I know they say you got to be used to being told no a hundred times before you say yes. Mine was like a thousand times before I heard a yes. Sure and uh. Mine was growing up with a stuttering problem. Right. And AEDHD and teachers not knowing what to do with you.

1:09:20.8 S2: I think that that’s a cultural issue but that’s not worth going down the day. But yeah, no, no, no, but that’s toughness.

1:09:25.8 S1: It is. Um, if I look back on these things it’s definitely not like a. And then you know what? Um, mine was my side hustles failing. Yeah. But not giving up and trying something new. Mine was knocking on two thousand doors trying to sell mutual funds and stocks. Right. Um, oh what’s yours? Man it’s just um grinding it out. I mean working jobs that I was underpaid and overworked and still just driving through that like I think I said that I don’t know if I even expect explain expanded upon this. When I was working at Midas and Albuquerque, um, that was my first job out of the Navy. I wasn’t making great money. But I showed up six days a week and ground grounded out man. I grew as much as I could. And it’s crazy cause it was a, I didn’t really much care for much of anything about that job. It was literally just a means to an end. I needed it to support buy food and groceries and gas. Like I mean like that was it. Like that’s all it was there for. That’s all it meant to me. But every day I would wake up and say, man, there’s really good odds that today somebody’s going to walk through that door and see something in me and it’s going to change my life forever.

1:10:47.0 S1: Interesting. Now on the other side of that, I worked there for over a year and that day never came. Yeah. Um, but where that mental toughness saying that to myself every day. The reason why you felt that was because of your success with AT&T. Well just I’d always been someone that always leveled up quick. Yeah. And I was like, I know that I’m a rock star. I know what I’m capable of and I just need someone else to see that. And as soon as they do, then they’ll know who I am and what I’m capable of and what an asset I’ll be to whatever it is they’re doing. And so it was just a huge amount of confidence in my own ability, even though I wasn’t even executing on that ability at that time. Not at all. I just showed up every day and showed out the best I could hoping that one day would come that someone would take notice and do something with it. The day never come. So what happened? I showed up one day and I took notice and I did something about it. And so even just telling myself that every day made me become the guy that changed my life.

1:11:48.4 S2: Interesting. Because I was waiting for somebody else to come and do it and they never showed up.

1:11:53.4 S2: Interesting. Your experiences in the Navy probably built up to? Absolutely. I can imagine it wasn’t all a bed of roses. Oh no. Navy was a mess for a million reasons. I enjoyed a lot of things about it. I advanced quickly. I performed my job well. I consistently was a top performer and whatever it is I did and I’ve been that way in everything I’ve ever done. So when I got into the automotive industry I was like I’m going to be that guy here too. Even though I’m brand new I’m going to do things that nobody else has ever done here. And I’m out there in my business now and I’m doing things that people have never done here. And it’s ten years later. So patience I think is a factor in mental dexterity as well.

1:12:41.0 S2: Psychological toughness. Positioning yourself before you execute on the pot. With the presupposition that when you do transition you want to be successful and this is the thing that you commit your life to moving forward. Sure. Should people put themselves in positions where they fail first before they execute on the pot? No. Just accept it as it comes. I don’t believe in positioning myself for failure ever. That’s not what I’ve ever done.

1:13:14.0 S1: But your failure is what positioned you towards success and mine. So what if someone’s never experienced it?

1:13:19.5 S2: I’m willing to accept failure but I never set myself up for it.

1:13:22.9 S1: Okay. Intentionally. But how about throwing yourself out there and with some other side hustles before you actually devote yourself to a serious business. Is there any validity in that type of a proposition? I did that. My concept. I’m glad you brought that up. I actually wanted to talk about that today. So I got my business. I was doing great. It was maintaining. It paid my bills. I was making. I was profitable. I wasn’t wildly profitable but I was profitable and accepted that and it was better than what I was used to from a financial perspective. So I thought it was good. But I also failed to look at it in scale of like okay cool I’m making a few thousand dollars a month but how much am I spending to make a few thousand dollars a month? A hundred thousand dollars? That’s not a very good scale. That’s not a good ROI. No.

1:14:16.6 S2: And so I didn’t look at it that way though. I just said cool well I’m used to making four and now I’m making five thousand dollars a month and I said cool this is good and I didn’t know how to scale my company because I didn’t believe that I could do all the things that I’m doing now for a million reasons and so I decided hey well I’m gonna go do some other things and I want to make more money. And so I’ll just go start this business and that business. My concept was that I would build an empire through these different facets of different businesses that all kind of supported each other and at the end of the day all it did was water me down because I had to become an expert in new things that I wasn’t an expert in. It was a huge time drag. There was a huge gap. There was massive investment that didn’t return at the rate that it needed to return. I ended up with a whole bunch of mediocre junk. And once I shifted and said man this is the road I’m on and I’m staying inside the lines and I’m going as fast and as hard as I can and I’m gonna either crash or land on the moon is kind of my approach to it really.

1:15:21.9 S2: Yeah and what I like and what I’m hearing from that man the most is if someone’s like well the point is and this is what my I don’t know if you notice I’m just throwing out a whole lot of stuff hoping some stuff will stick right. Sure. But what I’m hoping that is ultimately ascertained from this conversation is that the idea of being relationship focused is a noble pursuit. Sure. And if you fail at it doesn’t mean you should give it up. No. Just try at it again. Get better at it.

1:15:53.6 S1: And then do it again and they get better at it. Yeah absolutely. And if someone’s like well you if you do this right you’re gonna do something different than what everyone else is doing. You’re doing something different than what everyone else is doing. I’m doing something different.

1:16:09.0 S2: Yeah what I’m doing right now in my industry is painting me hot pink in a sea of black.

1:16:16.3 S1: I love that expression. For sure.

1:16:18.8 S2: Like people come in and it’s so different they don’t even believe it’s actually happening. Okay so tell people. That it’s actually real.

1:16:26.4 S1: Tell people what you’re doing.

1:16:28.6 S1: Man I mean literally I just do huge value feed up front. We’ve addressed this in previous episodes where man like I just want to help them solve their problem. Yeah like there’s a business transaction somewhere in the mix but that’s not even my priority. That’s not my existence. That’s not my normal. Machine gun just for the sake of time because I can imagine you’re about to throw those things away. Cool man.

1:16:48.9 S2: I give. Machine gun. Relationship focus. As deep in relationship as possible. As deep as possible. Just give me three things. Cool man. I want to understand what their problem is right now. I want to fix that problem for them right now. What their immediate issue is. And then I want to figure out what their secondary problem is and work on addressing that and explain what that process looks like to them. And then I want to deliver on that expectation that I created.

1:17:12.4 S1: So what are some things, two or three things that you’re doing that’s different from your competition to achieve that?

1:17:17.5 S2: I will absolutely get people to where they need to be. I want your car here and I want you at work or home or wherever you’re supposed to be. So I’ll go send a guy out down the road to go get them to wherever they’re late for because their car’s broke down. Well I’ve got a tow truck going to bring it in and all of this cost them nothing. I haven’t even agreed to do business with them yet. And you’ll give away the tow truck service for free.

1:17:37.3 S2: No matter what. What else? And then whenever they come in we check. The metal does work man. Yeah we check their car out for free. We look at it for free. I want to know exactly what’s wrong with your car and at least what road we need to go down to solve this problem in the most efficient and cost effective way possible and then walk you through that process. I’ll take you out into the shop and show you exactly what we’re looking at with the car and educate you on exactly what’s going on so that way you have a complete understanding of what we’re up against.

1:18:06.8 S1: And no one else does this?

1:18:08.1 S2: Nope. Pieces, types and shadows but not with that transparency.

1:18:13.7 S1: Give me one more. What’s something else that someone that you do that no one else will do as far as driving the relationship as deep as you can in serving your primary function of basically getting people functioning as fast as possible? What’s one other thing you do in that relationship process?

1:18:35.8 S2: I mean in that relationship process I tie it all the way back into my employees and my staff and I freaking take such good care of them that they understand that their job now is to actually just take that good of care of the customer that I’m going to treat them in a way that I want them to treat others and I create that entire culture in my business where relationship is key and number one and everybody knows it. It’s more important than the dollar, it’s more important than the job, it’s more important than whatever than going home on time. It’s more important than absolutely anything else is to form this relationship with such a profound distinctness that nobody could replicate it. People starting off in the automotive business, can they do what you’ve done right now?

1:19:24.6 S1: And let’s say they’re financially, personally ready for it. Let’s say they have a body of knowledge that’s positioned them and they’re ready for it. And let’s say that they have a psychological toughness to them. Can they do what you’re doing right now and succeed first year of business? Absolutely. Sure, no questions asked. I doubled my business in three weeks. Three weeks of doing this and I went all in. I did it all. I literally doubled my business. Whoa, stop. That’s one hell of a claim, bro. You doubled your business in three weeks operating on the primary operating principle.

1:19:59.1 S2: Yeah. 100% across the board. No bullshit. No bullshit. Straight double. I went from 100% to 200% in three weeks. And all I did was lay it out and say, this is what we’re doing. This is what you guys get out of the deal. And this is what the customers get out of the deal. And this is my expectation. This is my standard. If you’re in, you’re in. If you’re out, with you’re out. Cross the line today.

1:20:25.0 S1: Next question. If someone can succeed at positioning themselves toward executing on this principle in the automotive industry, by your estimation, can they do it in whatever industry that they’re in?

1:20:38.8 S1: I can absolutely do it in any industry. The thing that’s allowed me to do it with the speed that I’ve done it is, A, I was financially capable. So I was able to throw some money down on the line and make a bet on this. And it was substantial. The other thing that I was capable of doing is not being scared to do it all at once. To just say, you know what? Throw that garbage in the trash. I don’t care for it anymore. This is what I care about now. And I’ve even taken my guys, which are primarily focused in any type of service business, is production. And I even took the time to say, you know what? For the next month, I don’t care about production. I care about the way that you are producing. And I said, I’m going to throw the numbers out the window just to get you guys to be able to execute this in such a way that meets my satisfaction, which is far above what the client’s demand for satisfaction. And blow everybody out of the water. And I knew that the revenue would come if we could actually do that.

1:21:44.9 S1: That I said, slow down. Do this the way I want you to do it. Take the care. Take the time. And the money will follow. And it has 100%. So are we at the point where we need to put the stakes on? Yeah, we can throw the stakes on. I think we’re up there. Well, before you do, let me wrap that up. Sure. Because I didn’t give the whole story. I can definitely concur with you that it’s transferable across principles or across industries. That this principle is transferable across industries. Because of the financial services industry, it is definitely transferable. And the other side of that is, I told you where I was in my second year of business. I didn’t tell you where I was in my third year of business. My third year of business, by focusing on relationships above all else, did I have a rough second year? You better believe I did. But by my third year, no one else in my region had acquired a deeply served, like we track metrics across the board, right? Deeply served is a very important metric. That is like how many of your households do you actually have relationships with that you’re serving clients across goals.

1:23:06.5 S1: You haven’t just gotten money and invested it in an IRA, which believe it or not, it’s easy to do. You just wait for 401k rollovers. You wait for people to switch jobs and that’s an opportunity for a 401k rollover. I mean that if you’re servicing them across goals, you’re deeply serving that individual household. Right. Okay. So what do you think that my number was? I have no idea. The median in our firm was somewhere between 60% and 70%. It would constantly fluctuate. Mine was in the high 80s. Okay. Before I left, and you’re going to think I’m bullshitting you, before I left, it was 100%. That’s fantastic, man. Not only is it fantastic, the firm views it as impossible. Right. But the firm doesn’t operate on the primary operating principle. No, they operate off numbers. So to say I had one now, my CEI scores, that’s when they call-Oh man, that smells so good. When they call clients and do surveys, well that would tell you right now, right off the bat, if that was just a fabricated metric or not, right? Because you could reinforce that. There’s a system of accountability. Well, you’re going to call clients and you’re going to fulfill a survey.

1:24:34.2 S1: Deeply serve, perfect is 500. I’m in the top 3%. I’m at a 470. About 3% of 10,000 financial advisors. I am triple the national average for every metric that anybody measures shops on.

1:24:53.4 S1: This works. Yeah. Literally, if you put me up to the national average of shops, their charts are here and mine start way up here. I don’t care what metric you’re using. I don’t care if we’re looking at average repair order. I don’t care if we’re looking at car count. You look at absolutely everything, we’re dominating the entire market and I’m capturing market share at rapid rate at the lowest expense because I’m providing so much value that people can’t say no. We talk about sales. When I talk to people about sales that are just getting into it, I said, man, if you want to get good at sales, learn how to give something away for free because it’s harder than you think. Then once you move into the next level, it’s like, cool, how can I give away so much value that they can’t say no to what I actually offered them on the backside? It’s like, dude, I’m so deep into your trenches that I don’t even want to leave. Where do I sign? Yeah. People didn’t realize that second year wasn’t that I was failing. That second year was me giving away all of the value at the front end.

1:26:02.2 S1: The third and fourth year was reaping all of the benefits of it. What came with deeply served in CEI was 100% consolidation. I was one of the only financial advisors in my region that all of their clients consolidated all of their assets with me. That’s every financial advisor’s dream.

1:26:25.7 S2: But they don’t know how to get there.

1:26:28.8 S1: It behooves you to position yourself well. What we got from this conversation today is that if you position yourself well, I think it is safe to say there’s an element of personal finance to it. There is definitely an element of a body of personal knowledge and understanding you are not going to be the master of everything in your business. You are going to need to know what you don’t know and bring people that specialize in those areas into your business. Then there’s going to be an element of personal toughness and perseverance. To get to this, why? Because you’re going to give all of your value, you’re going to position yourself to give yourself all of your, you’re going to position yourself to give away all of the value at the front end to build the relationship. There’s not going to be any relational cost to your customer or client. You’re going to bear the burden of that responsibility.

1:27:23.0 S2: Sure. Absolutely. Pay it up front. Pay it up front. You’re going to be paying for those tow charges. I don’t even know if me and that customer are going to be able to do business together, but I’m willing to invest to find out.

1:27:36.0 S1: Exactly. I don’t know if this is a relationship that’s going to work out with a prospective client or not, but I’m willing to invest the time and the excellence to build out a comprehensive financial plan before we ever do business to find out.

1:27:54.1 S1: Even inside my team, when we first started operating this way, I actually got some kickback. I think this, I know we’ve only got a little bit of time left, but I think let’s focus a little bit on the transition and instead of so much what the transition looks like, because that’s going to be different for everybody, I’m going to focus on some of the things that I’ve noticed that were serious issues during the transition that I’ve had to overcome. Okay. Does that sound fair? Yeah, man. Okay. The first thing that I think that it ended up with is the business owner we talked about at the beginning of this conversation that is wherever they’re at. It doesn’t matter where they’re at, but they see the value in what the primary operating principle is. They want to make the transition. Let’s say they’ve even positioned themselves with a lot of the subjects and topics that we’ve talked about today and they’re making a plunge. How do I actually go out there and do this and what do I expect? I think that the expectation is twofold. Is A, your relationship with your clients and two, B, the relationship with your staff.

1:28:58.9 S2: We’re going to flip those stakes so that way we don’t transition them into charcoal. Mid-thought interruption. I’ll tell you what, I’ve been grilling a long time. You can hear the difference in how they sizzle. I don’t care what anybody says.

1:29:14.3 S2: It’s making you a grill master right now, man. I can tell the difference by the sound. Yeah. It reminds me of that Clint Eastwood. Those are ready to flip.

1:29:28.8 S1: It reminds me of that Clint Eastwood movie. It was actually a really good movie. Trouble with the Curve. He was talking and he was a baseball recruiter and he could tell the difference on what was a good recruit to the MLB and what wasn’t based on how he heard their wrist pop when they were swinging the bat on a curve ball. Anyway, go ahead. You were saying you cut yourself mid-thought so you may actually have to re-tee up that thought. Let’s re-tee that up.

1:30:02.2 S2: You’ve got two positions to look at this at. What’s your client response? B, what’s your staff response? Because they’re different and they’re intentionally different. What I have found is that when you start operating off of this, your client response is going to be of disbelief. They have literally never experienced anything in your industry that you are offering them today by focusing on this relationship and automation. That’s brand new to them. It’s foreign. Without a doubt. It seems crazy. It seems wild, but they’re excited about it. They’re as excited about it as you are. And so huge rewards there from your clients where you’re just like, yes, this is where I’m supposed to be. I knew this would work. But then you get to your staff and they’re like, you’re changing everything and I don’t understand and I don’t see the point. We’ve done it this way forever. And you get all that kickback from people that are close to you. And this is, man, like, I don’t want to go down this rabbit trail too far, but like I’ve noticed even becoming an entrepreneur.

1:31:03.5 S2: That’s a great conversation about transitioning. The people that are closest to you are typically your biggest haters. They say, are you sure? And it’s not that they don’t believe in you. It’s that they don’t understand what you’re doing and they’ve never seen anybody else do it. And so it’s brand new. And so like my mom would be like, man, that’s, that’s a lot of debt or that’s a lot of money or that’s a, that seems excessive.

1:31:27.6 S1: And it’s catching the flame on those stakes. Yeah. Grab that flame. Dude, no, this is such a great conversation.

1:31:35.0 S2: Go ahead. And so we, we go down all those things and we struggle with that. And so it’s not even, and it goes back to like your, your preparation, your, uh, your positioning beforehand is how strong are we? You’re going to find out you’re not as strong as you thought you were, but you need to be okay with that too, that your greatest criticism is going to come from in-house without a doubt, a hundred percent of time, the outside world.

1:31:57.4 S2: They’re impressed. They’re intrigued. They are your reward. They’re the, they’re the cherry on the, on the cake, but, um, your family and your friends are going to be people are like, dude, you’re, you’re screwing up, bro. Like you’re, uh, I don’t know if that’s going to work, but whatever it’s your thing. And you hear all those things that can be so discouraging, but what you need to understand in those situations is your vision is not their vision. Um, Steve Harvey, those things on fire.

1:32:27.1 S2: We’re going to give them like about another 30 seconds on fire. Okay, cool.

1:32:31.2 S1: Man, it’s going to have that nice charred taste. Heck yeah. And so Steve Harvey, that’s the black comedian.

1:32:38.3 S2: Heck yeah, man. And I love his stuff. Like he’s a really smart and intelligent and wise man.

1:32:44.6 S1: Yeah. And he does a game show, right? Yeah.

1:32:47.7 S2: He does lots of different things. Yeah. Yeah. But he says, if you want to kill a big dream, tell it to a small minded person.

1:32:55.1 S1: There you go.

1:32:55.9 S2: Boom. And that’s one of those things where you just need to recognize that like they don’t have your vision and that’s okay. It’s not their vision. It’s your vision. And so you need to be able to learn how to put that wall up and say, you know what? No haters beyond this point. I heard you and I love you and you’re my brother, my cousin or my mom or my dad, but I’m going to listen to you out of respect, but I’m going to operate out of my own intention. Well it feeds perfect into that psychological toughness. Yes. See that is the element of it. It’s right on time. So it’s just licking up the fat that’s pouring out. That’s exactly what it’s doing. We don’t get that out of the filets because they just don’t have that extra fat. So that’s what we actually want out of there is we want to actually bleed some of that fat out. It actually creates that separateness in the actual tissues there and allows it to become tender.

1:33:50.6 S1: Sounds good.

1:33:51.8 S2: So we’re going to do that and we’re going to go ahead and throw our meter in here. Maybe I know this is like a plain operation when we were kids. You got it almost man. I was stupid and left this thing in here before we started the grill. So it’s hot now. So if I grab it, it’s not going to end well. It’ll burn your hand.

1:34:21.3 S1: Looks like you got it.

1:34:22.8 S1: I’m going to get it. Whatever. You know what? We’re just going to go by feel today. Screw the temp selector. It’s what I did, but that’s because I got a charcoal grill. Right. It’ll be all right. Do you have it? You want to use those? Oh yeah.

1:34:36.3 S2: That’ll get me there.

1:34:37.3 S1: Boom. Grab it. Stick it. Good to go. Done. Yeah. So I mean really one of the things that you just need to be prepared for is kickback and it’s going to come from places you don’t expect it. I know whenever I’m making transitions in business, I always thought like, hey, I’ll get customer kickback or that learning curve that’s involved in my new process. And believe it or not, a well thought, well executed process that’s founded in the primary operating principles is going to get massive customer acceptance really quickly. It gets massive staff resistance really, really quickly because what it does is it pushes them out of their norm. They’re used to coming in and doing this job, accomplishing this task. Well, I’ve shifted away from I don’t care about the task. I care about the impact of the task and it screws people up. That’s not what they’re used to. That’s not any job they’ve ever had. That’s not in the industry they’ve ever worked in. And when you come in and say, I care more about the impact you have on my clients than I do about what you’re actually getting done. Now those things have to meet because you still actually have to do something to accommodate the client.

1:35:48.9 S1: But getting that mindset shift to go from production mindset to service mindset is drastic and it’s really hard because so many people are really good at production and really not good at service because they’re not practiced in it. They don’t have that experience to where that makes sense totally. A lot of the people that I employ, they come in and they don’t even know what good service looks like. They’ve never experienced it for themselves. They’ve never gone any place that just was like, wow, that was awesome. That’s not a normal thing when you conduct business in our culture right now. There’s places that offer that, but it’s rare. And people are moving that way, but they’re still just, I feel so many companies that are giving the image of what the pop is, it’s facade. It’s like-Without a doubt. It’s a marketing ploy. We want to look like we’re actually delivering, but we don’t actually want to put the effort into deliver where for me, it’s all about the effort to deliver and then figuring out how to deliver on the backside. And that’s been the biggest obstacles, getting everybody else to see that vision and move and migrate towards executing on that vision.

1:37:07.6 S2: And then beef up production with that mindset at the forefront of it, where it becomes the lead engine and production becomes the caboose of the train. So we’ve actually switched spots where it used to be when I first got into business, where you would lead the forefront with production and hope to get some service on the backside. Exactly. Where, oh, where I’m going to give you a mint with your ticket at the dinner table at a restaurant that’s service on the backside, where I want a restaurant where I walk in, they give me an appetizer and a cocktail upfront on the house because I had to wait.

1:37:42.0 S1: Yeah. I’ve never been to a restaurant that does that. But if you have a restaurant that does that, I’ll come to you. Promise. Experience. Absolutely. Because that’s the truth. And I don’t care about the mint at the end. I cared about having a fried, just one fried ravioli. There’s four of us. Bring me four of them and a freaking half a glass of wine. I’m stoked. You’ve done something nobody else has done for me upfront. And so let’s do the service upfront. Let’s develop that relationship upfront. I’m going to give it all away. I don’t even care because I know the revenue will come. I will give away the products for free. For free. I will incorporate the service and charge you for the experience. Sure. That’s exactly where we’re going. So the way I would phrase that in my industry, but before I do, sorry to cut you off. Was there anything else that you wanted to add? That pretty much summed me up. Yeah. Right at the right spot. So my industry looked at this. They prioritized revenue first, asset second, relationships third. Not to say they didn’t want you to have a business of relationships.

1:38:49.0 S1: They just were like, when you’re starting off, it’s revenue first, asset second, relationship third. Then they switched. And my firm was like, okay, well, you know what? We need to focus on assets first. Revenue will follow, right, and then relationship. And what made me so controversial and how I translated the pop into my industry, exactly how you phrased it, exactly how you phrased it, but how that translated to my industry was relationship is first. Assets are second. Revenue is third. Yep. And that’s at the end of every one of my processes in my business. Absolutely. It’ll come. Not only will it come, there will be more of it. Oh yeah. Because you delayed gratification on the front end. And if there’s anything I can add to that psychological toughness, it’s if you’re going to do this, you have to have a mindset that is geared toward delaying gratification. You have to believe in it so much that it’s worth waiting for. Exactly. And you have to understand that a bigger ROI is going to follow. Absolutely. I think that’s a great way to end it, man. I think so. So let’s see. So next conversation is actually going to be the big conversation.

1:40:17.9 S1: We’re going to get into the what. I think we’ve laid enough foundation. Let’s just get to it. In our investigation, we will give a technical breakdown as to what the primary operating principle is from beginning to end. Sure. Chris, tell us what type of bourbon we’re going to be working with next week. Next week, I’ve got a Willett bourbon. I think it’s the coolest bottle ever. To be honest, I don’t know anything about it, but the presentation alone intrigued me. I had to buy it. It just got right off the shelf. I did. I was like, this one stands out in a crowd. It just looks different. This is the hot pink and the sea of black for this week. And it’s just cool. It was $55 for the bottle, so the price was attractive as well. Nothing too crazy. I’m excited to try it next week. I don’t know exactly what kind of old fashioned we’re going to make with it, but I’m excited for it either way. It’s going to be super cool to pop the top on this one. Amazing. So if they get that bottle for next week’s, they’ll make the old fashioned with us.

1:41:23.2 S1: Absolutely. Some kind of old fashioned. Grab whatever you like. Who knows? Maybe we’ll throw some wild in next week. Like maple syrup and cinnamon sticks? Better than that. We’ve got to level this thing up, bro. We’ve only got two episodes left of the season. We can do two crazy old fashions before this wraps up. Bring us the two crazy ones. We’ll do something crazy. Awesome. Thank you guys for being a part of this week’s conversation. Look forward to seeing you next week. Remember, what we’re doing here is all about bourbon, barbecue and business. We’re masterminding together. We thank you guys so much for being a part of this conversation with us. Take care and God bless. Yep. I want to thank you for watching our episode today. I hope that you have a different insight into how you can be growing and transitioning and positioning yourself for your business. Man, please engage with us. Let us know if you’ve got any questions or anything that maybe we didn’t explain well that you’d like us to expand upon in future episodes. Y’all stay savvy and safe. Till next time.