Latest / Revenue Problem Solvers / 21 Years to $10M: What a Founder Stops Doing When the Growth Finally Kicks In | Ben Buckley

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21 Years to $10M: What a Founder Stops Doing When the Growth Finally Kicks In | Ben Buckley · Revenue Problem Solvers

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Around 2016 or 2017 you could only see 100 calls in your
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iPhone in one day. After the 100 calls it would
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start to erase the earliest 1. And so I think by like 11:00 AM
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one day, I have already gone through the 100 calls and I
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couldn't scroll back to see called me at like 8:00 AM
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because I was trying to find someone who called me.
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I didn't save a number. I thought I'd just scroll back
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and find it and then I knew I was in trouble.
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Welcome back everybody to the Revenue Problem Solvers Podcast,
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where we look to crack the code on growing your business by
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tackling the challenge to keep the revenue leaders up at night.
0:31
I'm Carl Ortmans and on today's episode we're going to dive into
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a topic that's regularly talked about but not commonly like
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really dug into. And it's the topic of scaling.
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Now, today's podcast is sponsored by the fantastic team
0:45
of at Virtual Causeway. Imagine your sales team spending
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know your name before that first call.
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Well, that's exactly what Virtual Causeway does.
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They help B2B companies get found earlier in the buying
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process by the right people through the right channels that
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actually influence decisions today.
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What's the result? Well, it's fewer cold calls,
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better conversations, and pipeline that moves faster.
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You can visit virtualcauseway.com and don't
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forget to mention the show for a special rate.
1:15
My guest today is Ben Buckley, founder and CEO of Digital
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Dreams, which is a commercial AV integration company that he's
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been building for 21 years now. Ben started his career at Dish
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Network where he became a field service engineer or sorry, a
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field service manager. He had a stable job, he was on
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the right track. And then he got fired, not for
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poor performance, but for a DUI. That forced hand created a side
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hustle and that side hustle became a company.
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And the company now, 21 years later, is an 8 figure AV
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integration business that has installed LED walls and
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enterprise security systems for companies like Apple, Samsung,
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Salesforce and even Madison Square Garden.
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The first revenue problem Ben ever solved was buying formula
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and diapers. Now his team clears over
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$3,000,000 a month. And what I find compelling about
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Ben isn't The Client List, it's how long the road was and how
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honest he is about why in 2019 he set a goal to hit $10 million
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in revenue. Well, last year he finally hit
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it. And the reason it took so long
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comes down to something most founders won't say out loud.
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He was the one holding the company back.
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Letting go specifically of the things he was bad at is what
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finally broke the ceiling. Ben, welcome to the podcast and
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thank you for joining us. Dude, thanks Carl.
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That's crazy intro appreciate it.
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My pleasure and hopefully all of it was accurate and my research
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is correct. No, Yeah, you're good.
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Awesome. So to kick us off, can you share
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a little about, give us context, a little bit about your world,
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what industries, what verticals do you work with, What are the
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selling motions? Yeah.
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So in my AV world, even though a lot of people don't think they
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need AV or have AV, some probably has some form factor of
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AV in their world. And we we install all types of
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verticals. We install mainly mid market and
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enterprise, small to like medium sized businesses all through
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California, Texas, Oregon, Washington and Nevada.
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Our core is in like San Francisco, even though we're in
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Sacramento, I would say like 80% of our work is in San Francisco.
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And we're we're inside a lot of the new tech startups, probably
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a bunch of new AI companies you guys haven't even heard of that
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are just popping up. They're just popping up like
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crazy. And we're out there just
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knocking out, you know, access control cameras for them.
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Like every, every one of these new startups needs to secure
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their building with like the cameras, access control, the
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data cabling, just to run the employees that are running the
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robots, the AI bots, you know, they all have to have Internet.
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So those are the world's we're in right now.
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A ton of ton of AI startups out there and a ton of small
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businesses to medium businesses in the area.
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It's cool and Ben and I had a really good chat and it was fun
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to to do the to do the prep call because.
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I had a little. Bit of my time in in the
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consumer electronics world with LG and I got to learn a lot
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about panels. But what Ben's doing is on a
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different level. And by the way, if you ever can,
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if you ever worried or concerned or questions, check out his you,
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you have to check out his YouTube.
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I'll post that later. But his YouTube channel, you
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start to see the things you're like, man, that's awesome.
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So I did show my son who's a gamer and now he wants a a wall
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in the house because. He thinks he could help.
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Him with his gaming. I told him good luck.
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So how we got to the topic today is I asked Ben what was a
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successful revenue initiative you've LED or an existing
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challenge you're solving and we had a really great conversation
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but it became really clear that it was really around founder LED
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scaling. And so to start us off here, you
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went from getting fired to building a side hustle to
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running a real company. So at what point did you
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actually start thinking of yourself as a founder and not
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just somebody who needed to make rent?
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So I tell everybody all the time I'm like a super late bloomer
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and I and it's and multiple times I realized, whoa, this is
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bigger than I thought. Whoa, this is bigger than I
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thought. And it keeps going down the
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road, you know, And so I say one of the first early on times I
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noticed that there's going to be more than just a side hustle is
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when like 3 or 4 technicians that were working for me that
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which were 1099 at the time, were counting on me to get paid
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from the customer to make sure that they can pay their rent.
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And I was like, whoa, wait a minute, I'm responsible for
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that. I got to get this.
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They're not doing side hustles on their own, you know, and that
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these guys are like full time for me.
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And that was like a early on, like early on the first time I
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noticed something like that, you know what I mean?
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Like, well, this is like a sign of like I, I'm more responsible
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than just myself and the kids, you know what I mean?
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That was like first couple years of doing like some, some
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residential products we were doing for Circuit City at the
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time. I think I was doing about that.
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We were just doing stuff for Fire Dog.
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I was to do like installs for Circuit City back then and then
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went to Sears and stuff. And then that was one point.
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I hit that at one point and then I think around 20/17/2018 I had
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to start buying vans and get the guys out of their own cars and
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then I they all became real full time employees and that's when
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it really kicked in. Like, OK, you're now a legit
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business with W2 employees, nobody's contractors anymore.
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Everybody reports to you and you have to have all these rules,
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take their taxes out, figure out how to take their taxes out, pay
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the taxes, get a real payroll system, you know, and around
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those sometimes. And that does change your mind
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of how you think and how you are like responsible for not just
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yourself, but everybody else and taxes and stuff like that.
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So, you know, it's, it's scary and it's fun, you know, I, I
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never let it like I never let anything like that like worry me
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too much, but it is like a, a step back type of moment, you
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know what I mean? Yeah, it's, it's interesting
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because I, I really like how you, you talked about, you know,
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the, the journey and all of a sudden people are responsible
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for you and looking at you like, OK, how do I figure this out?
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Early on? You try to do everything and
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from as many founders as I've talked to is like, they're like,
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look, I'm just going to hold, I'm going to try to fly the
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airplane and build it all the same time.
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It's all happening. It's all on me.
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When you were in that journey, what was your sequence of hires?
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Who did you hire first so that you can actually start that
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scaling motion even before you knew you were ready?
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So it was, it was a bunch of hires and a bunch of fires,
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right? That was like finding someone to
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help me. So I would say the first key
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move was getting good technicians that could do the
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jobs as good as I could and trust them.
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So that way I didn't have to go into the field every day and I
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could stay back and do payroll and then try to do more sales
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and do stuff like that. So I first had to duplicate
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myself physically in the field. So I had to get a technician in
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the field or multiple technicians to do the jobs as
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good as I do and trust them. So that take take years of
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training and finding somebody. Then once I was in the office,
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which I was still I'm still in and out the office.
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But then once I was in the office, I needed help.
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I couldn't do as much payroll, right, or I could not as much
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payroll. I couldn't do like I would still
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have to route all the jobs, do the payroll, do the emails of
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the customers, call all the customers in between.
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Hey, this guy's going to be there 10 minutes late.
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OK, I'll and then so they still call you, you know, all these
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things around the corner, you know, and eventually I had so
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many people calling me that I just, I think it's changed now,
8:40
but on the iPhone around 2016 or 2017, you can only see 100 calls
8:47
in your iPhone in one day. After the 100 calls, it would
8:50
start to erase the earliest 1. And so I think by like 11:00 AM
8:56
one day, I have already gone through the 100 calls and I
8:59
couldn't scroll back to see who called me at like 8:00 AM
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because I was trying to find someone who called me.
9:03
I didn't save a number. I thought I'd just scroll back
9:05
and find it. And then I knew I was in trouble
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because I was like, I can't take these calls.
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I can't take this many calls in a day by myself, you know what I
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mean? So then I was really starting to
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find somebody in the office, which I went through a couple of
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people in the office before I got to full time employees.
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And I would have to get creative with how I paid them.
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I would pay them a percentage per job that was already given a
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percentage to someone else, which wasn't sustainable.
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But you know, in the beginning, like maybe you find someone who,
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or I found a couple of people that were like, Hey, I stay at
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home with the kids and I just, I could dispatch all day.
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You know, I don't, I don't need much.
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And they're just helping me out, you know.
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And so I went through a couple of people like that.
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And then I started going through temp agencies to like find
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someone. And I had some, some good ones,
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some some bad ones there along the way.
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And I could never find that key person until I found Kirsten who
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literally changed everything for me.
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And the day she started, I trusted her so much from this
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interview I had with her. I literally said, here's the
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keys to the office. Here's the, here's the log into
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the computer and I'm going into Washington.
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I have to go do this job. And I just left her there.
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Didn't even know. I only knew her for like 2 days.
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Dropped everything off with her. I was like, here, just run this,
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call me if you need me. And within like, I don't know, a
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couple hours, someone, one of my biggest customers called me and
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said, where have you been? And hiding, cursing this whole
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time? You need her.
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It's like, yeah, I know. Yeah.
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And so it takes a while to find someone that that you can
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understand, that understands your business and, and, and
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understands like how you work and all that stuff to help
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better you, you know. And so I went through a lot of
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multiple people and, and we're still going through employees,
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you know, and people change, times change and stuff like that
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too. So hopefully that answers like
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your question. But yeah, it was a couple
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warning signs. It's like, hey, I need to figure
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something else out and how you going to stop paying yourself
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for giving yourself some money to give to someone else the
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scale because you know, when you don't have enough like cash
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coming in, maybe in the beginning you don't know what
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you can or can't pay someone you can't like as you get to like a
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certain level, you're like, yeah, I could fill a position
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for 8089 thousand for the year or something, you know, But when
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you're back there and you're just like scrounging for
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whatever, you're just like, I'm going to pay you what I can give
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you and hopefully someone believes in your vision to come
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along with you. I really like you said that
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because there's a analogy that I've I've used is I can scale a
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recipe. I can't scale a chef.
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And so if you think about it that way, right, there's one
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Gordon Ramsay in the world. There's not a second one.
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However, you can take Gordon Ramsay, have him write a
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cookbook or a or a, you know, yeah, a cookbook and give it to
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a bunch of chefs and say, here's the steps in the process to do
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it. Go do that.
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So I, I like that. Like kind of like tie that
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analogy to what you're doing is like, I need to find more of me
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and how do I scale me? And that's a problem early on as
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a founder. Right.
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Totally. How did so with Chris?
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With Kirsten? Sorry, what did you hire Kirsten
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for initially and how come she had so much trust rated to gate
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from you? From you.
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She was a friend of a friend who worked at a temp agency and or
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who was that guy, not a temp, but she was like the salesperson
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at the temp agency finding positions for people.
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And so I trusted her because she was her neighbor.
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And so that like in right there helped me like get some trust,
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plus some of the questions she answered me.
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One, one key question that she answered for me, I knew she was
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the right person. And the position I hired her for
12:39
was project coordinator. And I just needed her to like
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route the guys and we route the guys get guys and take, take
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half my calls and forward my calls to her.
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But when I, she's working at a cell tower construction company
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and, and I was asking her, I asked her a question like as I,
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as I try to find contractors, right?
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If, if I, if I was to ask you like, hey, if you're going to
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hang one of these walls, you know, what type of mount would
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you use? What drill would you use?
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I'd ask you all these questions and then I would see if you can
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answer them correctly. Or I could see if you're lying
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to me. Because I know by the way you
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pause or by the way you react or that you might say something
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that's not the lingo that I'm looking for, that I know he's a
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liar. Like I, I can't hire that guy.
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He doesn't know what he's talking about or he's just going
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to tell me. Yeah, because, because he wants
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the job, right. And so I, I kind of prepped her
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with a question like that and she said 01 time, she's like, I
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had this guy and it was an electrician.
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I asked him to do something and she's like, I knew he couldn't
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do it because the way he paused and, and she had the same thing.
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She's like, but I, I need to get the job done.
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She hired him through the company and then the guy messed
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up the job. And she's like from there.
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I know every time I hear that pause from someone or I could
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hear, she could hear the tone because he got her in trouble
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and couldn't do what she wanted to do.
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And she knew like, what to look for.
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So ever since that day, she could smell the BS, You know
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what I mean? And I need someone that could
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smell the BS from people. I need someone to smell the BS
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from like whatever it is, whether it's a technician
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saying, oh, I can't, oh, I can't get this job done for this
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reason. Oh, why?
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Tell me why. Tell me why, You know, like,
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whatever, to pull it out of him, to make him do the job.
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Sometimes text if something's hard to do, they might be like,
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oh, it's getting late. I'm just going to blow this job
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off. And you got to be able to smell
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that. Cut them back into doing the job
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and man up and get it done. And you know you'll feel better
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about yourself, right? And I need someone to back me up
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like that. Yeah, Yeah.
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Nice. When so you found you said the
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warning signs and I think if I don't ask you a little bit about
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this, I'll be a miss. What were the warning signs for
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you that you said, OK, this is now something where I really
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need to start to hire and I need to start to add more people or I
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need to scale. Like what did that look like for
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you? Yeah.
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So, you know, it's hard trying to find technicians.
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So there's for one, one of the problems I had to solve was,
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hey, Ben, here's all this work. I'm like, yeah, sure, give it to
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me. And that like now I had to
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solve. How am I going to actually
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physically get it done, right? And not just in my area, but in
15:08
like maybe five other states, 31 states that we are going into,
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right. And so, you know, to find the
15:14
amount of people first searching for them, you know, finding
15:17
them, vetting them and flying out to meet them.
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So my first scaling, I was flying around to every state.
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I'd call a bunch of technicians. I get, I get leads of other
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guys. Oh, I know this guy.
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I know this guy. I would call them, I'd sort them
15:32
through, I'd vet them. And then the ones I believed
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over the phone, I would fly and go meet and I would do the jobs
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with them for like a week, right?
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And then they met me in person and then I showed them exactly
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how I wanted to do it. Then I could see if they were
15:45
really the guy or not. And I did that for a couple
15:48
years and that's how I built up a lot of the technicians that I
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trusted in the other states. But obviously I couldn't go to
15:55
every job and meet every technician in every state with
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the timelines, right? And I think a lot of that did
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hurt me in the beginning with the scaling because I wasn't
16:04
able to do that and I was getting burnt out traveling too
16:07
many places. And then I'm, I still need to do
16:08
my own stuff too, even though I have people helping me in the
16:11
office. I, I'm still responsible for a
16:13
bunch of stuff too, but I can't get done when I'm traveling too
16:16
much. I'm in the field, right?
16:17
So my first scaling I went into 31 States and and me.
16:22
Trying to get 31. Yeah, I went into 31 States and
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I was trying to get as many jobs as I could done.
16:31
And then at then at one point I decided that that wasn't the
16:37
route, that wasn't the way we wanted to scale anymore.
16:40
I don't want to keep finding guys to, to do jobs in other
16:45
states that I didn't have the biggest stake in where the way I
16:49
was doing it was someone sold the job and then just need me to
16:51
go get it done. And they need me to, to be a
16:53
workforce management like platform, which I was doing and
16:56
I was good at, but I, I didn't have control of the jobs, the
17:01
sales or the end customer to move dates.
17:04
Because of that, I was like stuck in this friction point of
17:06
like just hit this, just hit this, just hit this date and I
17:09
couldn't move anything, right. And, and, and trying to manage
17:12
that many technicians with the amount of people I had in the
17:15
office didn't work. And I didn't want to have that
17:18
many office people to manage that many people.
17:20
So originally it was my dream that I scaled it back.
17:23
And we, we started scaling a different way.
17:24
We started going a different route with our own sales, our
17:27
own customers. That that's a pattern I've heard
17:30
a a few times actually. And Mark Roberts has been on the
17:33
podcast. He was the first he he he wrote
17:36
a couple of books. The science of scaling is his
17:38
latest book. His first one was a sales
17:40
acceleration formula, but he was the first CRO and he built the
17:43
in, in my opinion, the greatest demand, demand Gen. funnel and
17:47
engine at, in SAS history at at HubSpot.
17:51
But then I've also had Jay Bear on recently and we're, we've
17:54
talked a lot about scaling and at times the, one of the
17:57
patterns I've heard is that, well, I see some, I see some
18:01
growth. I'm just going to go really fast
18:03
really soon. And then all of a sudden it's
18:05
like, OK, this is too much. I went too broad.
18:08
Now I got to scale it back and become, as the, the comment is
18:12
the riches are in the niches. And so where is the best part
18:15
for you to, to focus on? Because I can only imagine you
18:18
travelling 31 states, working with probably hundreds of
18:22
technicians to do these installs.
18:24
And you're now trying to both manage a business, do all the
18:27
installs, do the HR, do all these things like that's a lot
18:31
of cognitive load for you as well as just physical load of
18:34
being in the field all the time. Right, yeah, I had the crazy
18:38
amount like I never thought I'd have like have like one 1.3
18:42
million flyer miles on like Southwest and always like crazy
18:45
miles on like all these different carriers just going
18:48
out to the time management manage it.
18:50
But yeah, you're right. Like it's, I went out there
18:52
really quick and I was like, you know what?
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That's not, that's not for me. I, I, I want to, I want to scale
18:55
differently. I want to focus on my my culture
18:59
here with the technicians, focus on the culture of the guys that
19:02
do take pride in their work that I do want to continue to work
19:05
with that own other companies, you know that were our
19:07
subcontractors that we still use it as of today.
19:10
And then I wanted to start finding another way to generate
19:14
reoccurring revenue which which we focus a lot on and now we
19:17
have that in the company too. When you started to scale back
19:21
from that broadness, was that also the time where you shifted
19:25
from residential to commercial? Nope.
19:27
So I switched from residential to commercial before that.
19:32
I switched from residential out of residential around 2012.
19:36
It was like slowly trickling out until like maybe 1314.
19:42
And we were still doing like, I still had a couple customers
19:45
that like owned a business and a home.
19:48
And so we'd be like, OK, I'm going to do your business and I
19:49
guess I'll do your home because I do your business and they
19:51
don't want to find someone else. There's like a select people
19:55
that we did that, you know, we had around 10,000 residential
19:58
customers by the time I gave it all away.
20:01
Wow. Wow.
20:03
And so where did where did you give it away to?
20:05
Did you sell that part of the business off or did you just I
20:07
didn't just. Yeah, I did sell it.
20:10
I gave it to a technician that has been with me, one of my
20:13
first buddies and technicians named B and we gave him all of
20:18
that. So he still runs that to this
20:19
day. I didn't, I didn't take any
20:21
money, no profit, no nothing from it.
20:22
I said I don't want to talk to any of these customers ever
20:24
again. In a nice way.
20:25
I was like, you can talk to every one of them.
20:28
I don't want to end. So I literally just gave it to
20:29
him all for free and he just, he still continues to run that
20:31
today. And is that still part of your
20:34
portfolio or is that a separate business of B now?
20:36
Runs all. Yeah.
20:37
B runs the whole thing by himself, yeah.
20:40
Wow, that's awesome. When you started to go back into
20:42
some of these things, like what were the biggest challenges as
20:45
you start to scale? So you you told me you got
20:47
Kirsten, now you're scaling back from 31 states to I can't, I
20:51
think you said five, I think is what you said.
20:53
Yeah. So now you have that focus,
20:56
where does the next challenges come?
20:58
Is it hiring? Is it process?
21:00
Is it playbooks? Is it something else?
21:03
Like what was it for you to help you move into that scaling mode?
21:06
So when we scaled back and I started, that was around the end
21:12
of 2018 to 2019. And by then I had put all my
21:16
eggs into one basket. So let's say I was doing work
21:18
for multiple customers. But by 2018, I cut everybody off
21:22
and I went into one customer. And then I was like, man, I'm
21:24
like 85% into one company. And so by the end of that year,
21:28
I said, I'm going to diversify and get into back to where I was
21:32
and have my hands in multiple pots while we're selling our own
21:35
stuff and we're having our own customers, our own sales, our
21:39
own things to value adds to add to customers, you know.
21:42
And so, so then I started spending almost all my time
21:46
finding new customers to do work for.
21:50
And then one of the key things I think was getting to full time
21:57
sales employees too, because I'm doing sales, managing, trying to
22:02
run the company and stuff like that.
22:03
So the next two key employees to that came later was that was
22:09
getting in my own way. All right, so the answer of
22:11
scaling back and then the next problems was first I had to have
22:14
a path. The path was let me find other
22:16
companies to do work for. So I don't have all my eggs in
22:18
one basket. So I figured that out.
22:20
I'm getting a bunch of customers, getting a bunch of
22:21
customers. Pandemic hits slows down a
22:24
little bit. I'm having a ton of fun through
22:25
the pandemic. Like I said, we can we can talk
22:27
about that another time. I had that fever detecting
22:31
website, right? And so I was selling cameras and
22:33
stuff. So, so we had a little slow down
22:35
with the pandemic, you know, but I'm, I'm still able to, to pay
22:38
from my employees, keep them all on board and not lose anybody.
22:42
I paid everybody even when I wasn't making any money,
22:44
everybody got paid like a regular 40 hour week during the
22:48
whole pandemic. So I was able to, I was able to
22:51
have enough saved up to do that. And I got some of these other
22:53
little business write off things that PPP loans and stuff that I
22:57
got to write off and pay for the technicians to keep him on.
23:01
So I didn't lose anybody during the pandemic.
23:03
We were just having fun selling those fever detected cameras.
23:06
And once we slowly started getting out the pandemic, bigger
23:08
jobs, bigger jobs are coming back in the economy started
23:11
coming back in and I and I got my first full time sales
23:15
employee. It was helping me sell the, we
23:19
sell Vercata, which is like a enterprise access control camera
23:23
manufacturer and he was able to help me sell that and scale
23:27
that. So now we have a recurring
23:28
revenue with that brand that we sell.
23:32
So we sell a ton of that ricotta.
23:34
And so every, I don't know if you're familiar with that, but
23:36
every surveillance camera and access control door that a
23:39
customer buys, they have a license.
23:40
They have to pay to use the device and give them a 10 year
23:43
warranty and then they, they have to renew it every year.
23:46
So, so let's say they have 10 cameras and it's 200 bucks per
23:49
camera per year. Every year they have to renew
23:51
that with me and then we make a percentage of the license per
23:54
year. So we.
23:55
I think I saw that you installed vercata at vercata if I'm not
23:59
mistaken. Yes, we did.
24:01
Yeah, we did. We installed Vercata at Vercata.
24:05
Yeah. But they're expanding so quick.
24:07
They had this little, they had a little small building that they
24:11
took over just for a little bit while they're renovating a
24:13
bigger building. And they needed to keep putting
24:14
their employees in places somewhere helping them build
24:17
that out for them early on. Yeah, that's cool.
24:20
And so that really helped Get Me Out my way of being able to have
24:23
someone else sell when I can't be on every Zoom call trying to
24:27
sell for everybody. Yeah.
24:29
And so this, the selling part is one that I've I've seen and I've
24:33
heard from other founders is like, I'm so close to, I know
24:37
exactly how to say it. I know the thing and I know the
24:39
process and I can connect. I do all this bringing somebody
24:43
else to, to take that sales aspect on.
24:45
How hard was it for you to be like, OK, you got this.
24:48
Now I'm going to go look over here because you've got this
24:51
part of the the Lego kit, so to speak.
24:54
Right. And then I still have that
24:56
feeling that you're talking about.
24:58
It's great that you brought that up because I, I still feel like
25:01
you said that wrong. You should don't say it this way
25:03
because I don't want you to be like a car salesman.
25:05
I want you to say exactly how, even if you think we're going to
25:08
lose the deal, I just, I want you to say exactly how that
25:10
thing works. I don't want you to say it's
25:12
going to see someone from 200 feet away because it's not, you
25:15
know, or like, you know, So I, I like to make sure that people
25:19
sell the way I sell and the way I sell, sell someone Sally sells
25:25
by the C chart right there. The way I sell is even if a
25:30
product says XYZ, if I install it and I know it might fall a
25:34
little bit short of that, I will, I will make sure it's sold
25:37
properly. So the expectation is seen the,
25:41
you know, I manage the expectations.
25:42
I want to manage expectations and make sure it's sold
25:44
correctly. And so to answer that question,
25:47
I was on a ton of calls, you know, in the beginning of all
25:51
the zooms and stuff until job started closing on their own or
25:54
I couldn't make one. You know, I'm just like you, You
25:56
just got to get on it. We've already done a bunch of
25:58
them and they would just get on and do it by themselves and the
26:00
jobs would start to close. And if it comes like super
26:03
technical and, and the sales team doesn't know it, then I get
26:07
on now. So that's how that's how I get
26:09
at it now. So if they're like, I got it,
26:11
I'm going to schmooze the guy over.
26:13
It's easier. We're going to win.
26:13
But then they're like, dude, he has all these crazy install
26:16
questions and I can't figure it out.
26:17
You got to be on with me, then I'll hop on, answer all the
26:21
questions, you know, and that that's where we're at now.
26:23
That's how we're at. But yeah, it took a while to get
26:25
there and make sure everybody knows how to sell it correctly
26:28
and that's how to pitch it and do the demo and all that other
26:32
stuff. And but yeah, even that I know
26:34
even that I still want to be on almost all the calls just
26:37
because I want to be part of it. People getting yourself, you
26:41
know, So you got to keep doing. And it's that control, right?
26:44
Like hearing from others is. It's that control.
26:46
Like I want to control all that I want to control.
26:48
But I know in my heart of hearts, in order for me to grow,
26:52
I need to let go. And I I've heard from other
26:55
founders and other leaders like it's the most challenging part
26:59
to say, look, I'm really, really good at this part, but I know
27:04
I'm needed in other places. And I trust is going to you.
27:08
But like you said, is like bringing in the CEO or the
27:10
founder of the company who has all this deep technical
27:14
knowledge, It's a different conversation.
27:16
So kudos to you to tell the sales team you can take it this
27:20
far once they get to this level. I call it the third why, right?
27:24
The first, the sales team, I think should be able to answer
27:26
the first two why's. Well, why do you do this now?
27:28
Why'd you do it like that Now? Why specifically that third, why
27:31
now you're going into a technical rabbit hole and you
27:34
need somebody who can talk that talk in depth that come in and
27:38
which is where you step in, which is a great, which is a
27:41
great Ying and Yang, so to speak.
27:43
Yeah, totally. Which is still fun.
27:45
I still liked it being part of that.
27:46
And they're learning and they're they're able to knock out more
27:48
questions without me now. So every time I get on that,
27:50
they learn that if that question comes up again, they know how to
27:53
answer it. Yeah, awesome.
27:55
So then the sequence of operations for you or kind of
27:57
the hiring process because you had the technicians, now you've
28:00
got the now you got the trucks, now you got a salesperson.
28:03
What's the next hire that you go?
28:05
I I'm either not good at this thing or you know what, this is
28:09
adding too much cognitive load for me and I got to hand it off.
28:11
What was that next one? OK, so, so first of all, hiring
28:17
is the my worst freaking power. Hiring to someone and doing
28:23
interviews is my worst and firing I'm even worse at right.
28:26
And so I needed help so bad and I joined this group called EO,
28:31
an entrepreneurial organization in Sacramento.
28:33
And, and during that process, I met a bunch of people so that I
28:35
met this guy Craig. And Craig used to be the CEO of
28:38
Kellogg's, right? And he he's, he has his own
28:43
business in town where he coaches, he coaches CE OS and
28:48
stuff and how to be better, right?
28:49
And so I would go see him and he would unlock so many things.
28:53
And I, when I met Craig, he's like, what, what do you need
28:57
help with? Well, first he would be like,
29:00
OK, he would be like, what do you need help with?
29:02
I'd be like hiring, right? He's like, I will come to your
29:04
shop with you. You set up three interviews.
29:07
I will sit through the entire interview process.
29:09
And if you start to like freeze up, I'm going to take over, take
29:12
control of the interview. I'm going to ask all the
29:14
questions. And then he gave me this
29:15
pattern. He would come to my shop, he
29:17
would do interviews with me just to help me build that interview
29:20
muscle. And so if I didn't have that,
29:22
I'd still, I still wouldn't be able to be at the level I'm at
29:26
now. Even though I'm not the best at
29:27
interviewing now, but I'm way more comfortable now.
29:30
It's him coming through and sitting down interviewing with
29:31
me. And then one of the biggest
29:33
things he taught me was he's like, when you're sitting down
29:36
and you're in this interview and he's the guy at the other end is
29:39
telling you everything. He's like, this is, this is the
29:41
date one night. He's like, it's that, you know,
29:44
you're about to get into bed with this guy.
29:45
You're about to bring him in, you're about to hire him.
29:47
And he's like, this is like the best.
29:49
He's telling you everything you want to hear.
29:51
He's like, now go follow up and call all of his references.
29:55
He's like, you got to do the homework.
29:57
If you don't do the homework and call the references, you're
29:59
going to get stuck with, you know, something that you might
30:03
not have wanted. And so this guy, me and him both
30:05
thought it was a great interview.
30:06
He's like, you should hire that guy.
30:08
I'm like, yeah, I think I should hire this guy, you know, And
30:10
he's like, before you get into bed with the this guy and bring
30:13
him into the company, you know, he's like, you have to call us
30:16
references. And I called his references and
30:18
all three said I would never rehire this guy.
30:20
He's an alcoholic and I would never rehire.
30:22
And I was like, oh, man. And if I, I wasn't going to call
30:26
him, I was just like, no, he told me everything I wanted to
30:28
hear, you know? And so they're still got to do
30:29
your homework. And that's what a lot of things
30:31
I would do is I'd spend all this time, I'd get someone, I'd train
30:33
them and they don't last like a month.
30:35
And I, I just wasted all that time and effort, you know, So
30:37
now we're very clear of what we want in the beginning.
30:41
That's awesome and it takes time to get there.
30:43
The hiring process is really hard and even every role you
30:46
need a similar process, but you're asking different things
30:49
and how do you check for it and how do you test?
30:51
And what are those aspects, right?
30:53
Because earlier on I've got to think when you were flying
30:56
around and you're doing the job with the person you knew, are
30:59
they punctual? Are they knowledgeable?
31:01
Can they do the work? Are they hardworking?
31:02
Are they going to make sure? Do they own up to like, hey, you
31:05
know what, I made a mistake. I should have done this.
31:06
That's my fault. I, I'm sorry that you were able
31:09
to see all of that in person. And now when you step out of it
31:12
and you're trying to rent, you're trying to manage all of
31:14
these things. And now again, the, the playbook
31:16
and the process change because this is the scaling moment where
31:19
you go, OK, I can't ask all of this.
31:22
I can't see it in person, but I've got to ask these questions
31:24
and follow a similar process. So the, the playbooks is really
31:28
a scaling aspect that a lot of these founders and and leaders
31:32
that I talked to, they're so big on, especially as you start to
31:36
make that transition. Yeah, and we have other tactics
31:40
we use for technicians, like if I'm going to hire an actual
31:42
employee out of my office, we'll go through a phone interview.
31:46
Then if I'd like him to come into a in person interview.
31:50
Then after that, before we hire him, we pay him to go on the job
31:54
and work with me or one of my technicians to see if he can
31:56
actually do what he says he can do.
31:58
Then we hire him. So yes, there's three parts not
32:00
to the technician. So, so that part we have a real
32:04
good vetting part. So then we're like, hey, no,
32:07
you, you're not at the level you said you were.
32:09
You just are just just work out and I still pay him for the day.
32:11
So I still pay him for the day. No matter what he's going to get
32:13
paid for the day for this like paid try out and sometimes it
32:17
sometimes it might be two days just to like if a job cancels or
32:20
something. I mean, but at least we could
32:22
vet him out really good that way.
32:23
So, but the hiring technicians is a lot easier for me.
32:26
Hiring someone in the office or sales and stuff is still hard
32:29
for us to vet. And we're very upfront now we're
32:32
like this is it. This is our company.
32:33
This is what we do. Come to the shop, come see us.
32:35
This is what we're looking for. If we bring you on, we want to
32:38
make sure you want to be here for a long time.
32:40
We don't hire anybody for temporary.
32:41
We don't hire anybody for us because we have one big project
32:44
that I need to get done. I want to bring you on just so
32:46
you know. So if you're planning on like
32:48
leaving California to go to Texas, if you're planning on
32:50
doing anything, let me know now because I don't want to bring
32:52
you on because it's going to hurt us as a smaller business.
32:55
And so those expectations help weed out a lot of people, too.
32:58
Yeah, there's lots of hiring mistakes that I've, I've been,
33:02
I've personally been part of. And like you said, you, you go
33:05
through like, oh, this person's going to be great.
33:08
They tell you all the right things that you go through the
33:10
background checks, everything. But then it doesn't work out.
33:13
And sometimes it's because the company hits a different scale
33:18
or different stage that they're not comfortable with.
33:20
And it's like, you know what? I only liked it when it was me
33:23
and Ben and we're doing jobs together and now we're in this,
33:27
this part where there's processes and I'll like, look, I
33:30
don't want to do that. I'm just a I'm out.
33:32
And then you get other people that are like, show me what the
33:35
playbook is. Because if you don't have that,
33:38
like I'm not the figure it out person, I'm the scaling person.
33:41
And so there are challenges and trying to vet that isn't easy.
33:45
Yeah, exactly. I know.
33:49
How do you solve that? Yeah.
33:50
Yeah, how do this the solving is the other thing.
33:53
Now the other thing you talked about is the scaling.
33:54
Sorry I cut you off. Sorry.
33:56
Yeah. Oh, no, no, go ahead.
33:58
The other thing you talked like as the scaling happens, you're
34:01
now getting new customers and you've moved into from
34:04
residential to commercial. Now you're kind of going all in
34:06
there. Did you always do the marketing?
34:10
Did you have to hire somebody to do marketing?
34:12
Like how did you connect the sales in the marketing aspect
34:15
for that demand generation or that business development
34:18
aspect? So this is a this is a funny one
34:22
because we I do absolutely zero marketing besides my YouTube and
34:26
TikTok and that only started during the pandemic.
34:29
Other than that, I run absolutely no ads.
34:32
Never, I never run anything. I have 0 paid marketing,
34:36
absolutely not. And, and I've tried it before
34:39
here and there and I just at the times I did try it, I didn't
34:43
have like ACRM or an enterprise, any type of software to take the
34:48
leads that didn't come in. And I never have to me, I, I'm
34:52
not a gambler. And so I feel like throwing
34:55
money at Facebook ads to me was just like pulling the slot
34:58
machine and it, and it hurts me to my core to do it.
35:01
And I can't spend money on that. I don't know why.
35:05
So I spent absolutely nothing on marketing.
35:07
So my marketing is me and, and my sales team going to going to
35:16
customers, finding customers, me going to trade shows and meeting
35:19
people at trade shows. That's one of my biggest
35:21
marketing things is me meeting people at trade shows.
35:25
But I, and, but now the YouTube and and TikTok channel do help.
35:30
And I think I went to been able to scale without or be relevant
35:33
without having it. But I, I, I don't do any, any
35:38
marketing. And another thing is that's
35:41
different with me is I have 0 KPI.
35:44
These are the KPI. This how I know if my company's
35:46
doing good. I don't look at a single number
35:50
in in our NetSuite or anything. If my inbox is getting slammed
35:54
with with emails, we're making money.
35:56
And if my dumpster outside is overflowing with e-waste and
36:01
trash, that's how I know we're making money.
36:03
Those are the only two metrics that I use in my brain to
36:06
measure if we're making money at all.
36:10
That is 2. I got to tell you, Ben, those
36:13
are two KPIs that I've never heard people paying attention
36:17
to. Only two, those are the only two
36:20
I care about and everything else I don't care.
36:22
I don't want to see it. I don't look at the numbers.
36:24
There's I don't, I don't measure anything like that.
36:26
I know which is, which is crazy. And there's like there's some
36:29
guys that are just number guys that I've met.
36:31
I've met some other guys that are like, oh, this week we're
36:33
down 2.5% on this one. So I'm going to tweak this.
36:35
I don't care. I don't watch it like that.
36:37
I just want to make sure all the, our culture is good.
36:40
Our customers are taken care of. We're we're finding new
36:43
customers. Everybody's everybody's happy
36:46
and responding to people. And I watch, I watch how people
36:49
are treating other people. I look for like the red flags of
36:53
like indicators of the customers upset and I jump in if I see it
36:56
in the e-mail or something or hear someone bring something to
36:58
me, I try to put that fire out. That's how I spend all my time.
37:01
But I don't measure any other sales that way.
37:05
I don't, I don't measure anything.
37:06
I can't, my brain doesn't work like that.
37:07
I, I can't even lie to you and say I can't.
37:10
I can't. I can't wash it like that.
37:12
It just doesn't work like that for me.
37:14
Wow. So Evan, what if I can ask this
37:18
and if you tell me, Carl, I'm not answering that like move on.
37:20
But you're totally cool. What do your weekly like?
37:23
Do you have a weekly team meeting?
37:24
Do you talk about, hey, here's the here's the pipeline here,
37:27
the jobs that are coming up? Like, do you, do you even talk
37:29
about that stuff? Nope, I don't.
37:32
Wow. I don't, I know I should.
37:35
So I, I, I will talk to my sales teams when I want and I'll talk
37:38
to Kirsten when I want. And then we will have our
37:40
technicians like every 3rd Sunday or 1/3 Thursday of the
37:45
month, we'll all come in and meet.
37:46
We'll talk about the jobs, we'll talk about what's going on in
37:49
the field and what, what works coming up and what to do, what
37:51
not to do. Here's the new parts we got,
37:52
here's the new tools we got, here's the new product that's
37:54
out. So we do have meetings like
37:56
that, but then that I don't, I don't even have sales goals for
38:05
my exact sales team. And so they know as a as a
38:10
whole, the goal that we were wanting to get to, which was the
38:13
10 million. So everybody knew we had this
38:15
one large goal. And then they set their own
38:17
goals of how much they'd have to sell for us to hit that number,
38:20
right. But I don't, I don't, I don't
38:22
monitor them and I don't hold them to the fire.
38:24
If they don't hit it, they don't make their, they don't make the
38:26
Commission anyways, right? You know what I mean?
38:27
And so my whole, you know, maybe it's too laid back or maybe I
38:31
should be measuring it another way, but my brain doesn't let me
38:33
and I just can't run my company that way and I can't force or
38:36
fake it to be the any other way. Right, and you're staying true
38:41
to your values, like and true to your core.
38:43
So good. Kudos to you.
38:45
I can already anticipate a sales leader who's in a high growth
38:49
listening to this being like, are you kidding me?
38:51
Like almost freaking out, being like, are you serious?
38:54
How are you doing that? You know, and I say it with I
38:57
say it with jest because it it is something where I I've just
39:01
not heard somebody say like, here are my 2.
39:03
Here are my 2 areas of success. The dumpster is full for e-waste
39:08
and my inbox is flooded. Everything else works itself
39:11
out. Yep, that's it.
39:13
Amazing exactly how I work it. Yeah.
39:17
So then how, how did the the evolution to getting new
39:20
customers happen? Because you said you're not
39:22
doing marketing, you're not doing this, You've got a couple
39:24
of salespeople and you don't do ads.
39:26
Is it all cold calling by your team?
39:28
Is it relationship selling? Is it you finish your job and
39:31
you say, hey Ben, I got anybody else you know that would be
39:35
would be a great fit that you can introduce me to like how did
39:38
you start to create that scale of that those the sales process?
39:42
Yeah, it's it's relationship selling and a lot of employees
39:48
move around pretty quickly in the tech world and stuff.
39:51
And so let's say someone was at some tech AI company and they're
39:55
there and you know how fast they grow and how fast they go out or
39:58
people move on. And so, you know, you have to
40:00
treat the people that you're working with very well, even if
40:03
the person that I'm dealing with isn't the one who's the.
40:07
One who writes the check, there's still like the decision
40:09
maker below the CEO. Sometimes they will move on to
40:12
another company. And you know, I always let them
40:15
know like, hey, if you ever go anywhere, just let me know if
40:17
you ever need anything, You know, I could be a good
40:18
reference for you. You know, like whatever it is at
40:21
whatever type of relationship we have with them.
40:22
Sometimes they move on and then they call us back and they're
40:25
like, hey, I was at this other spot.
40:26
Ben never let us down. This thing came down and all the
40:29
stuff went down and this job came out perfectly.
40:31
And then they'll bring us back on because they want to look
40:33
good again. And they use us to look good and
40:36
say, look at you need the same system here.
40:38
I've already implemented it and I've already done it with Ben.
40:40
You're going to have no problems.
40:42
And so then that, so that type of relationship helps us to the
40:44
move to another spot. They'll call us, you know, we
40:48
call it planting seeds and cutting trees, right?
40:50
You know, it's not my saying, but someone else said it.
40:52
But we like to use that saying, you know, so you're just
40:54
planting seeds and maybe someone calls you 2 years later, maybe
40:57
someone calls you three years later.
40:59
Someone, someone called me the other day.
41:01
Someone called me last week and I did work for them in like
41:06
2015, sixteen or something. I went to a new place.
41:10
He saw one of my videos as I came over here, I got this giant
41:13
LED walk and he helped me fix it.
41:15
He just saw one of my videos that kept me out of his mind.
41:18
And we just fixed it in Texas the other day, you know, and so
41:21
you have to continue that's, you know, just continue to be, you
41:25
know, make sure your name is still good and continue to do
41:27
what you say you're going to do in the industry and people will
41:30
call you back in. So, so now I have such a run
41:33
rate of 21 years of us proving, you know, even if we mess up,
41:36
it's not like we're always perfect, but if we mess up, I
41:39
will, I will go in the hole an obscene amount of money to make
41:42
it right for that end user. No matter what.
41:45
We sell something wrong and have to spend 5 grand because I sold
41:49
the wrong parts. I go buy it.
41:50
I don't say nothing to them. I just go buy it, fix it, put it
41:53
in and make it right, you know. And so you know, and sometimes I
41:57
let them know like, hey, I designed it wrong, whatever, I'm
41:59
not going to charge you. I bought this part just so they
42:00
know and I just buy it. And sometimes I won't even tell
42:03
them that I'm going to go in the hole because I'm going to feel
42:06
guilty that I'm like, oh, I'm going to lose 5 grand.
42:09
So just so you know, you know, I don't say nothing.
42:11
I just go put it in and, and get it done.
42:13
And so our run, that run rate helps because we've been doing
42:15
it for so long. And then relationships you have
42:18
calling back other customers, finding new customers and, and
42:23
our, and our name in the industry really helps.
42:26
And, and I know that it can't stay that way.
42:29
And I know I need to get into marketing.
42:31
And every year I have this, my buddy Ria is in Canada who owns
42:35
like a, a company. We, we revisited every year.
42:38
Like you're ready to start running ads, You're ready to
42:39
start getting this landing page, you're ready to start doing
42:41
this. And every year I look at it and
42:42
then I'm like, I got to spend that much and I could just blow
42:46
it. And I I still struggle with
42:48
that, but I I do know I need to get to running our own ads at
42:51
some point to see if that helps. There's growth levers everywhere
42:55
and if that's an opportunity for you, awesome.
42:57
It sounds like you've got a really great opportunity.
43:00
Any of your customer satisfaction, I'll say your CSAT
43:04
metric sounds like it's incredibly high.
43:06
And if you're, if you're getting those referrals, it's the best
43:08
one because it's, I live the experience, which experience is
43:12
a thing that maybe I just looked at the time, Ben, and I told you
43:15
I could shout in here within an hour and I'm getting dangerous
43:17
and close. So I apologize for that.
43:20
If you were to think that if you were to start the business over
43:22
again and you've learned all the things you've learned now,
43:25
because experience is one of the greatest teachers of life.
43:30
If you started over again, are there things that you would have
43:33
done you would do differently now to try to prepare you for a
43:36
scaling position earlier, or would you take it?
43:39
Would you take any different path in the one you've already
43:41
taken? Well, if I if I started over, I
43:46
definitely would skip residential and go straight to
43:48
commercials if I did start over. But you know what?
43:52
I had to take those little baby steps.
43:53
I had to crawl before I ran to even understand if I was good
43:56
enough to do certain things right.
43:58
And so I think that the biggest lessons would be I, I was too
44:04
much of a late bloomer. I didn't, I didn't maybe believe
44:07
in myself enough or didn't look broad enough at everything that
44:11
I was doing and to pay attention into the market in the industry
44:14
that I was in and spend more time on it.
44:17
And going deeper into the segment of like, what's the best
44:21
cable that everybody uses or what's this?
44:23
And you'll find yourself down all these different paths.
44:25
And I think I should have been looking into the industry as a
44:29
whole more to find what we really liked and wanted to spend
44:32
it instead of like trying to do every single thing that's in the
44:36
low voltage world. And so be like, I could do
44:39
speakers, I could do this, I could do that, I could do
44:41
anything because it's low voltage and I have the license
44:43
for it. You know, I need to get down to
44:46
the in and out menu and not the cheesecake menu.
44:49
I know I say that all the time, but like, you know, the
44:51
cheesecake menus get so many items.
44:53
You know, I would cut it down and and be better at like, you
44:56
know, a couple of things then try to do everything.
44:58
I should have focused more on the things we like the most.
45:03
I, I, I use the term a lot, focus and frequency.
45:06
How frequently can you be focused at doing the thing that
45:09
you're the best at? And if you can do that, often
45:11
there's typically success follows.
45:15
Is there, is there something that you're now looking at like
45:18
what is the next path for you? Like is there, are you starting
45:21
to think about what is the next hire?
45:22
What is the next opportunity for you?
45:25
What's that next evolution of scale for you that you're
45:28
thinking about? Yeah.
45:30
Then the first hire that we're currently looking for right now
45:33
is in like an executive assistant just to monitor my
45:36
emails and handle all the and all of my stuff.
45:39
I've had a couple here and there over the years.
45:41
I need to get that just to get a couple more nuance things off my
45:46
plate so I could focus on what's what I do best and what I do
45:50
best is like business development and like the sales
45:52
are bringing in like a big client and bring them over to
45:55
our world and thus being able to do work for them.
45:57
And so I'm trying to focus on that, focus on my time and what
46:04
I do the best at and and then finish a couple of potholes that
46:08
are in the company too. So Carson's overwhelmed, so she
46:11
needs someone to help her with payroll and a couple things once
46:15
I saw for that she can fit do a couple more things that she's
46:18
best at. So there's there's two key hires
46:20
right now. One get stuff off Kirsten's
46:22
plate and one the next one get stuff off my plate and then we
46:26
can continue to to grow it. That's awesome.
46:29
I, if we, if we keep talking, Ben, I, I'll keep you here for
46:33
far too long because I've really enjoyed this.
46:35
I, I like to ask everybody towards the end, like everybody
46:37
likes new and nobody likes different.
46:38
And when you're doing both at the same time, it can either
46:41
cause friction or uncertainty. So for somebody as a founder
46:44
that's thinking about how can they make the shift from founder
46:47
LED sales to scaling, What are two or three actionable things
46:51
that you would say, Hey, do these things Monday morning so
46:54
that you can get ahead and not make the mistakes that I made?
46:59
So the most actual things to do on your and as as you're scaling
47:05
is, you know, I think finding finding that one key salesperson
47:10
that can do the sales that you can trust to shadows you for a
47:15
while enough and and mirrors you enough to where you can, you
47:19
know, give the reins up. You know, getting one one other
47:21
guy just to close a bunch of calls for you as one, you know,
47:24
and finding that person. How do you find that person?
47:26
How you trust that person? You know, maybe you start off
47:29
and they're just paid Commission and and they're just hunting
47:32
what they eat. You know what I mean?
47:33
Just until you can get them on full time.
47:36
So, you know, you could start off that way.
47:38
You don't have to have like I got to get a full time sales
47:40
guy. I got to pay them hourly, plus
47:42
Commission and and monitors. KP is, you know, you could, you
47:45
could start off with someone on the side just helping you close
47:48
deals. A lot of people do it that way,
47:49
you know, so I'd, I'd find like a 1099 sales guy to help you
47:53
that you trust that deal your work.
47:56
So it's a fine line doesn't steal your your IP of what
48:00
you're going after for. So I would work on that.
48:03
What was the other part of the question it?
48:06
Was just like a couple of actionable things.
48:08
Of like a couple, yeah, yeah. So I would definitely, you know,
48:10
start off with an outside sales guys, if you can, that would
48:13
that would be one, right? And then really focusing on what
48:17
you do best and then where do you want to go?
48:19
So if you don't have your Northstar of of where you want
48:22
to be and where you want this company to be and you don't know
48:24
what type of company you are, you have to solve for that.
48:26
So if you don't have that, you're already running lost.
48:29
So get your Northstar, get your sales guys to help you.
48:33
And you know, I, as far as, as a, as a routine, you know,
48:38
everybody's like work life balance and I, I don't know if I
48:41
follow that or follow that all the time or if it's even a real
48:44
thing to do, but definitely have some time for you to focus the
48:48
mark. So my routine is that if I get
48:50
up and go to the gym from 5:00 AM to 6:00 AM, I leave my do not
48:54
disturb on and hopefully nobody calls me in between then.
48:56
And sometimes people do, but at least give yourself an hour
48:59
alone time to figure out what you're going to do for today.
49:01
That's my routine. Find what you, what that looks
49:03
like for you. You know what I mean?
49:05
And so I get that I figure out how my day's going to go and
49:08
then figure out, you know, what I'm going to do throughout the
49:10
day. So I think your, your daily
49:12
routine is if you're OCD like me or you have to follow the same
49:15
exact thing. I would literally eat the same
49:16
thing. I will wear the same exact
49:18
clothes every day just to, just to make the mind numbing thing
49:20
of what pair of pants and shirt to wear.
49:22
If you open up my closets, white T-shirt, white T-shirt, white
49:24
T-shirt, white T-shirt, white T-shirt or T-shirt, blue pants,
49:27
blue, I will grab the same thing just to make it easier for me.
49:31
And all those little decisions help you, you know.
49:33
So I would definitely get you, get you if you, if you're behind
49:36
on sales and you can't do all the sales yourself, maybe find a
49:38
1099 sales guy, you know, work on what's best for you and find
49:42
what that is. And then I would figure out what
49:44
your North star is. I want you to figure out that
49:46
North star of your company. It you'll you'll be able to find
49:48
the path. It's awesome.
49:50
Yeah. There's a few things you said,
49:51
you know your your time. Dan Martel, he is an
49:55
entrepreneur coach and he owns a bunch of businesses, but he
49:58
bought, he wrote a book called Buy Back Your Time, Get Unstuck,
50:01
Reclaim Your Freedom, Build Your Empire.
50:03
Like that's his. This is book.
50:04
So there's that. And then the second thing you
50:05
said is like creating time for yourself.
50:08
The CEO of Vidyard, who I got to work with, he had he had a part
50:11
where he called it the CTFO moment.
50:14
Chill the F out and just give yourself some time.
50:17
Dan is a big part of that too, because he says, you know,
50:20
exhaust your mind and so you can, you know, exhaust your body
50:24
so you can prepare your mind. And then the other thing you
50:27
said too, that I really like, and I heard it recently is about
50:29
your cognitive load. And you think of your cognitive
50:32
load of your bathtub and the number of decisions that you
50:34
don't have to make and the day of the day.
50:36
And like you said, for your clothes, Hey, I don't even have
50:38
to think about it. I know I'm wearing a white shirt
50:40
and a blue pants. Say I'm out gone.
50:41
Like that's not something you have to think about to give
50:43
yourself some more mental space. So these are some really great
50:46
actionable things and thank you for for sharing.
50:48
So I, I told you it's going to be shorter, but here we are.
50:53
Ben, it's been a lot of fun and I think I could talk to you for
50:56
hours. If somebody wanted to learn a
50:58
little bit more, say, hey, you know, I want to talk to Ben or I
51:01
kind of want to look into their stuff.
51:02
Where would you suggest people to go and look or to to learn
51:05
more about you? Yeah, if you want to see the
51:08
type of jobs we do, because it's hard to explain maybe and didn't
51:10
get it like good visual from the way I was like verbally vomiting
51:13
too much on this. You can check out our YouTube
51:16
channel, which is digital dreams installs.
51:18
They're they're same for our TikTok and that that'll show you
51:20
where the type of work we do and the type of customers we have
51:23
and stuff like that. You know, and, and, and, and how
51:27
one more, one more nugget of why I started the channel was the
51:30
reason why I started the channel wasn't to have customers like in
51:34
my videos going. And then tell us how good
51:36
digital dreams was. Ben Buckley was so good.
51:38
Yeah, it's none of those. It's just me and my buddies
51:41
goofing around, doing some doing some of these jobs.
51:43
And if a customer doesn't know who you are in the industry,
51:45
this is a good way for them to see you and how who you really
51:48
are. And they'll be like, oh, maybe I
51:49
have a have you ever done a building this Big Ben?
51:51
Have you ever done a wall 20 foot long and like, yeah, here's
51:54
100 foot wall. You send them the video and
51:56
they're like, oh, and it cuts that in half, right.
51:58
So that's how I use the videos for my sales is showing them the
52:02
type of work we do and if they didn't know me they didn't think
52:04
I could do a job, the scale of the project they have and I show
52:08
them something that's larger then it, it helps build that
52:11
trust and that's what I use that Channel for.
52:13
Nice. Awesome Ben, your story is 1
52:17
where I have learned a lot about and I really enjoy and I I would
52:21
happily have you back to do another one of these like you
52:24
you. Said.
52:25
It's, it's been a lot of fun and you know this stuff, if you're,
52:28
if you're into AV, check it out. It's super cool and you'll
52:33
probably have a great experience working with Ben because my
52:36
experience with him so far, we've, we've not met in person.
52:38
We've just had a couple of chats.
52:40
I I can say I I find him to be very genuine and curious and
52:45
only wants the best for his customers so thank you for doing
52:47
this. Right now.
52:48
Thanks, Carl. Awesome, that's going to wrap up
52:51
another episode of the Revenue Problem Solvers.
52:52
Obviously, I want to thank Ben for sharing incredibly
52:54
invaluable insights. And there's some strategy you
52:56
can put into action. Remember, success leaves clues
52:59
in every revenue problem has a solution.
53:01
Sometimes you just need the right conversation to find it.
53:04
Until next time, it's Carl with the Revenue Problem Solvers help
53:07
you turn your obstacles into opportunities.
53:10
Thank you for investing your time with us today.
53:11
We'll see you in the next episode.