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Eggs 462: Decision-Making Strategies for Entrepreneurs with Chris Boucousis · EGGS! The Podcast

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first month. And now back to the show.
1:32
Hey everybody, welcome back to Eggs the podcast.
1:33
Today's special guest is Chris Bukosis, podcast guest and high
1:37
performance expert, former Australian fighter pilot and CEO
1:40
of Afterburner. Welcome to the show, Chris.
1:43
How are you? Hey, Ron, I'm good man.
1:45
Thanks for having me. I'm very grateful for the
1:47
opportunity. How you guys doing?
1:48
Doing pretty good to have you man.
1:51
I, I gotta just acknowledge this.
1:53
We've had some technical issues and the fact that your phone
1:55
started ringing right in the middle of the intro again, just
1:58
as we're going to roll with it and it's it's great.
2:00
We're never. Going to meet this 10 times.
2:04
Yeah, well. And it's hilarious too because
2:06
it was my son and he's literally 8 feet above my head right now
2:09
just laying in bed and calling me instead of coming down South.
2:12
Anyway, Chris, welcome to the show.
2:14
We're very professional around here.
2:15
Do not be cool. And yeah, so thanks for making
2:19
time. Appreciate you.
2:21
It's a pleasure. Professional doesn't mean the
2:23
absence of mistakes. It's just the ability to keep
2:25
going and still making an impact.
2:27
That's what we're gonna do here right now.
2:28
Yeah. Well, let's talk a little bit
2:32
about you for a second. You're a fighter pilot from
2:34
Australia and you've segued into business.
2:37
You want to tell us a little more about the breakdown on that
2:40
regard? Yeah, I mean, I just, you know,
2:43
like every fighter pilot, we just love it when someone asks
2:45
us to talk about ourselves. So thanks for that, man.
2:48
Yeah. Look, I'm, you know, I've, I've
2:52
tried to live a full life. And I think that kind of started
2:55
with me from the age of five, I went to an air show and don't
2:58
know whether you've ever been on air show, but there's something
3:00
about the noise and the smell of jet fuel that can really
3:04
motivate a young man. And I don't know, I just
3:08
connected with that visceral experience of watching these
3:13
airplanes for a day. And I just kind of decided
3:15
that's what I was going to be. There was no doubt about it in
3:18
my mind. I just spent the next 17 years
3:22
working my butt off. I'm, I'm so blessed that I had
3:26
this kind of connection with a, with a life purpose, because
3:31
everything about me as a human being is the opposite of a
3:33
fighter pilot. I, I have chronic ADHD.
3:37
I was short, short sighted when I, when I went through the
3:40
recruitment process, but managed to get a little bit teary and
3:43
convince the eye doctor to mark me up and as, as having perfect
3:47
vision. So really it's a, it's a great
3:50
story for if you're really motivated and you just want
3:53
something you can bend people to your will.
3:55
And I, you know, I, I joined straight from school.
3:59
I did 12th grade twice because I really struggled academically,
4:03
still do. And the second time I went
4:07
through there in Australia, you can basically ask for a release
4:11
of all your records. So I, when I was in my 40s, I
4:14
asked for all of my military records and I, they have
4:17
everything from the first time you went into the local
4:20
recruitment building all the way up to the day you left.
4:22
It was just hundreds of thousands of pages of documents.
4:26
So it's kind of curious as to what they saw in me when I was
4:29
accepted and it was just this one liner really in big red pen.
4:33
It was pens in those days. Everything was done manually and
4:37
it just said this kid wants it more than anyone else.
4:41
So anyway, I managed to join up, struggled my way through pilot's
4:44
course, struggled my way through becoming a fighter pilot.
4:47
I became a fighter pilot. I did that for 11 years.
4:51
It's an amazing career, a lot of fun, a lot of challenges as
4:54
well. And unfortunately, when I was
4:57
30, I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease and that
5:00
meant I was kicked out. So, you know, went through that
5:04
whole life experience of having a dream pulled away from you and
5:07
all the soul searching that comes with that.
5:09
But it turns out it was a pretty good thing to have happened
5:13
retrospectively because it pushed me into business.
5:15
And, and when I, you know, there was this thing called
5:19
entrepreneurialism, which I hadn't really paid any attention
5:22
to, but when I was looking at what am I going to do next, I
5:25
was just trying to figure it out.
5:27
And I thought, oh, that entrepreneurialism stuff sounds
5:29
interesting. And, you know, like all people
5:32
with ADHD, yet you don't really like people telling you what to
5:35
do. And so I thought, yeah, I'll
5:37
start my own business. And, and that's what I did.
5:39
And I moved to Kabul in, in, in Afghanistan back in 2005.
5:45
And my best friend and I started a, a company called CTG Global
5:49
Christian Thomas Group. Big aspirations.
5:52
There was only two of us at the time, but it didn't, you know,
5:55
it only took us four years and we grew to about 6000 people and
5:57
nearly 1/4 of a billion in revenue.
6:00
And at no point did we actually know what we were doing, which
6:04
which is, you know, a great story for any entrepreneur.
6:07
Like that's the reality. You know, if you're doing
6:09
something new, the fact is you don't know what you're doing.
6:11
And that's cool. But what I feel really grateful
6:14
for, and I've been able to apply this the 20 years since then, is
6:19
the fighter pilot is trained to think a certain way very
6:23
differently to everyone else. Like to be a fighter pilot, you
6:26
can't be just the average person off the street.
6:29
You can't go, oh, we need fighter pilots.
6:31
Let's recruit 20 fighter pilots off the street.
6:34
We're all just young men and women with a dream of flying
6:37
airplanes and, and the system turns you into a, you know,
6:40
pretty good at getting stuff done.
6:43
The, the, the world of the fighter pilots very fast.
6:46
It's, it's massively overwhelming.
6:48
There's so much data. You're, you're flying around in
6:51
three dimensions, you're pulling 9 G.
6:54
Like there's a lot of stuff that is beyond the realms of a of the
6:58
average human. And what they effectively do is
7:01
they kind of, they train the human out of you because humans
7:04
are equipped to survive. And that's not the skill set you
7:07
want for a fighter pilot. You, you basically want a
7:09
killer, right? You want you want someone that's
7:11
really good at getting stuff done and can take $100 million
7:16
machine out and bring the $100 million machine back.
7:19
And so, so to be that person, you have to think differently.
7:26
You have to have a like a different mindset.
7:28
And the Air Force doesn't leave that to chance.
7:31
And this is the same in the United States and in Britain.
7:33
Every fighter pilot is the same, trained the same way.
7:38
And this, this way of thinking and, and existing as a fighter
7:41
pilot was invented by the United States Air Force 60 years ago.
7:45
And, and what it is, is, is this thing called iteration.
7:49
And this is really powerful for entrepreneurs and founders.
7:51
And, and I founded for businesses with this, it's
7:55
understanding that you've got to be super focused about where
7:59
you're going and then you've got to be really honest with how
8:02
you're going, like where you are.
8:04
And you've got to always try something new.
8:07
And I love this idea of you, you, you know, you're not a
8:10
billionaire, right? Well, you're not a billionaire
8:12
yet. You can be, but it requires this
8:16
ability to iterate, to take something and make it a little
8:19
bit better tomorrow and then to take that thing and make it a
8:21
little bit better tomorrow. And I think entrepreneur, not
8:25
entrepreneurs on Instagram that take photos of themselves, you
8:28
know, near jet on the ground, but the real ones that actually
8:32
build multi $1,000,000 or billion dollar businesses, they
8:35
do this anyway like it. They've kind of got the skills
8:38
naturally. They they're always curious,
8:40
they're very driven, very focused.
8:42
But for most of us, we're not. So what I do now with this
8:46
company after banner is I help people that maybe aren't
8:49
naturally iterative that that don't think this way and I help
8:54
them think this way. So, you know, good people can
8:57
start to get the big dreams done and do some some great things in
9:00
the world. So, yeah, I've, I've, I've owned
9:03
a publishing business, I've owned a hotel development
9:07
business, built high rise hotel in Australia.
9:10
And Afterburner basically brings the world of the fighter pilot
9:14
to the business world. And I bought this company 3
9:17
years ago and I came out of retirement, forgot how hard it
9:20
was to be ACEO. And so now I'm working for a
9:24
living again, trying to kind of bring the story of my life.
9:27
And this, this is our 30th anniversary to Afterburner this
9:29
year. And, and just just help that
9:33
help that thing click for people where it's like, I just feel
9:36
like my goals are always out of reach and just click it so they
9:39
actually get there. Yeah, Yeah.
9:42
So there's a lot to unpack there.
9:45
We had a a nice long intro there.
9:49
The question I have is coming from fighter pilot to your first
9:52
business in four years, that kind of revenue, what did you
9:57
what A, what was the business and B like how, how did that
10:01
just kind of evolve so quickly? Yeah.
10:05
Well, first of all, you know, back in 2005, that's when the
10:09
book starting your First Business for Dummies came out.
10:13
You know, all those Dummies books had a, you know, Code for
10:15
Dummies. So I, I remember going to a
10:18
bookstore and I thought, oh, well, I'm a dummy, so this is a
10:21
great book for me. And you know, not being
10:26
particularly book smart or academic, I've kind of only read
10:29
about the 1st 10 pages, but, but something in the 1st 10 pages
10:32
kind of stood out to me. And it was if you're going to
10:35
start a business and you don't know what you're doing, make
10:37
sure you create a business where supply will will never meet
10:41
demand. So here I here I am 10 years
10:44
into business, sorry, 10 years in the Air Force.
10:49
And you know, we just spent the last five years kind of blowing
10:53
stuff up in Afghanistan and Iraq.
10:55
So, yeah, I thought, well, if it's all been blown up, it needs
10:58
to be rebuilt. And so my my business partner
11:01
Tom and my best mate, we said, why don't we just go there and
11:05
see and just see what they need. And so we did.
11:10
And we had these dreams and aspirations of becoming this
11:14
kind of big private security company like Blackwater and all
11:17
these companies that were making ridiculous money at the time.
11:20
But we soon realized that we were just little minnows in
11:23
that, in that market. So we, we said, well, what if
11:26
we, instead of trying to be the big dog, why don't we just kind
11:30
of help them out? And we, we re engineered the
11:32
business plan and we started asking them what are all the
11:34
problems they're experiencing? And the big challenge at that
11:37
time was the cost of Labor. Like a, you take a former Navy
11:41
SEAL Ranger of which we had on our team, you know, you're
11:45
paying these guys 1000 to $1500 a day, but you could take a
11:50
Nepalese Gurkha that was trained in the British Army and pay them
11:54
$5000 a month and, and almost get the same quality, like the
11:58
value proposition was compelling.
12:00
So we want a big contract. Our first contract was $6
12:03
million in, in 2005 money and we brought in 40 Nepalese Gurkhas
12:10
to subcontract to a big security firm in in Afghanistan.
12:14
We did a good job. We grew more security companies
12:17
wanted us. But then we also started to talk
12:18
to the United Nations and the humanitarian businesses because
12:23
at the time in Afghanistan, you know, every bar, every pub had
12:29
these kind of 20 foot walls. And on the on the other side of
12:33
the 20 foot wall was like a festival.
12:35
It was crazy. They said that at the time in
12:38
Afghanistan, you had murderers, misfits and missionaries.
12:43
So, so it was a little bit, you know, you seen the Star Wars
12:45
movie, you know, when they go into the Star Wars bar, it's,
12:48
it's like that. Like there's bounty owners.
12:50
It's just all these crazy people.
12:52
But the thing about being a fighter pilot is, is you always
12:56
say, I've got to go and achieve the mission.
12:59
I've got to get really curious about how to get there.
13:01
So the mission for us was, you know, at the time, we just
13:03
wanted to be very wealthy, right?
13:06
So, so we just kept asking questions of people.
13:09
And then we met lots of other people in the bars.
13:11
And because we didn't drink, because we weren't complete
13:14
lunatics, we started to just start conversations that we then
13:18
took offline and started to develop.
13:21
And as a fighter pilot, you, you're trained in this technique
13:23
called debriefing. And a debrief is, is asking and
13:27
answering 4 questions. What are you trying to achieve?
13:30
What's actually happening? Why is there a gap between the
13:33
two? And what can I do?
13:35
What can I do right now to, to close the gap?
13:38
So, so you would, you would basically talk to people in the
13:41
bar. Hey, what do you do here?
13:42
We build schools and clinics. How's it going?
13:45
Well, we've got massive issues with corruption.
13:47
People are taking the money, the villages, and they're
13:50
disappearing with it. Why is that happening?
13:52
Well, because we don't have a trusted source to go out and
13:55
check what's going on. And we go, Hey, what if, what if
13:58
we did that for you? What, what if we had this system
14:01
where we could stop corruption? We could remotely check that
14:05
these buildings were being built.
14:07
Would that be useful? They go, yeah, that'd be great.
14:09
So then we administered 1/2 a billion dollar project for the
14:15
International Organization of Migration, which is basically
14:18
these these humanitarian organizations.
14:20
I'll tell you right now, I mean, the way that they waste money is
14:22
mind blowing. And we, you know, we invented
14:26
this system. So back back then, you didn't
14:29
have Starlink or any of this, you know, remote broadband.
14:32
So we built the first remote broadband quality system.
14:37
So we would go out, you could take photos, you could upload it
14:39
to a satellite, it would capture the photos.
14:42
We would rotate teams. There was always two people
14:44
doing the assessment. So they couldn't be corrupt.
14:46
They couldn't be, you know, bent to the people's wills.
14:50
And that's when the company really boomed when we were
14:52
basically the only non corrupt implementation body.
14:56
Everyone wanted us to, to do the projects.
14:59
So we did that along the way. We grew so fast that the whole
15:03
company just went out of control.
15:04
I mean, we, we had so many people and it's not like you
15:07
can, people don't even have bank accounts in Afghanistan.
15:09
You're sending them like $50 on the phone, you know, all this
15:13
random stuff. And it unfortunately for us, it
15:17
just got out of control. Like like out payroll and
15:20
financial management. We didn't have a financial
15:21
controller. You know, we're just doing it
15:23
ourselves and we brought in an investor and unfortunately, that
15:26
investor turned out to be not such a great person and kind of
15:29
gradually pushed us out of the business because they had a lot
15:31
more resources than we did. But it was a great adventure.
15:34
And then, you know, and it gave me faith that, you know, as long
15:39
as long as you start a business that helps people, you're
15:42
probably going to be OK. It was a, it was a good lesson
15:46
and and a good listening business as well, because there
15:49
was no, there was no rules, there was no law.
15:53
You would literally get a, a, a, a, a Hilux truck would come and
15:59
just take bags of money off the back.
16:01
These trucks had like millions and millions of dollars.
16:03
That's how you got paid in cash. And then you'd have to figure
16:06
out how to get that out to the people without being robbed by
16:09
bandits. So it was, it was, it was like a
16:12
bull's own adventure. Like it was, it was insane.
16:15
It was, it was one of the best times of my life doing good
16:18
things, but also in a place where it was just, it was all
16:21
based on trust, you know, it was, it was raw business.
16:25
Yeah, Yeah. I think, I mean, there's
16:27
obviously a lot to impact there too.
16:29
But one of the things that I've sort of noticed about your story
16:31
from the beginning and even in as you're telling this story are
16:34
a couple things. First of all, high performers,
16:37
you know, and I'm characterizing you this way.
16:38
I mean, it makes sense, even though you say you were maybe
16:41
strong academically and things like that.
16:42
I mean, just to have the sheer willpower to push your way
16:46
through to fire to fighter pilot tells me you're a higher
16:48
performer. And I've actually, I used to
16:50
work with a guy like this older gentleman, this guy named Don
16:53
Aslett, and he was that way too, where he wasn't the strongest
16:55
academic in the world, but by God, he built a multi gazillion
16:58
dollar business just by sheer force of will, right, Just
17:02
pushed his way through. And to end what you're
17:03
describing here, this kind of, you know, flying by the seat of
17:06
your pants, disorganized kind of thing that you guys threw
17:09
together. Yet here you were able to
17:10
generate this giant business. I think it's actually a nice
17:13
little note for a lot of young entrepreneurs and people like
17:16
that are kind of maybe waiting to get started because they're
17:19
looking for a perfect solution. You know, there's the the old
17:22
saying, you know, don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
17:24
And I think there's so many people who don't actually get
17:26
started on their business because they're afraid of things
17:29
not being perfect rather than maybe embracing chaos a little
17:32
bit, right. And and following more of this
17:34
iterative mindset. So I think it goes back to what
17:36
you were saying earlier about not everybody thinks the way
17:38
that you do. So the other thing that I, I
17:41
thought was there is just, I guess this being able to sort of
17:46
pull this business out of chaos, but then sort of walk away from
17:51
it without, you know, feeling too upset about it and then
17:54
moving on to the next thing. And I think that's one of the
17:56
things that keeps, keeps people out of business too, is that
17:58
they're, they're afraid to fail. And if this fails, I mean, it
18:02
sounds to me anyway from your story that, you know, when
18:04
things went sideways and this guy pushed you out, like you
18:07
guys were just on to the next thing.
18:08
Like you weren't sitting around losing any sleep about it, you
18:10
know, maybe a couple rough days or whatever.
18:12
But I mean, like, you know, but ultimately you guys just felt,
18:15
you know, failed forward or you're on to the next thing.
18:17
And I think that that's a really good thing for for young
18:19
entrepreneurs especially, but, you know, just to understand
18:22
that it's OK if everything isn't perfect.
18:24
And when things go sideways, that's OK too.
18:28
Yeah. And I think subconsciously
18:30
there's a bit of the fighter pilot that shapes that mindset
18:34
because when you're in a, in a fighter jet, you know, you're
18:37
flying between 600 and 1200 mph. Like you can't stop you, you
18:42
just have to keep going. But you have to keep going with
18:45
intention and rigor. And I think, you know, business
18:48
is very much like that. It's you can't just stop on
18:52
Tuesday because you're tired. You can't stop on Wednesday
18:54
because you lost a deal. Like business just keeps going.
18:58
I think what happens though is fear starts to become a player,
19:01
like the fear of failure. And particularly, you know, I
19:04
think a lot of people look at like a Unicorn startup and think
19:08
that that's because of the person.
19:10
I mean, a lot of billion dollar startups are just right place
19:14
right time. I mean, you know, Sam Altman
19:17
wasn't born when he was born and just happened to start the first
19:20
non for profit AI company. He wouldn't be a billionaire,
19:25
right? If Simon Sinek wasn't one of the
19:27
first Ted talkers, he wouldn't have been a big name in the
19:31
personal development space. If Gary Vee just didn't happen
19:34
to start when Instagram was new, he wouldn't be Gary Vee.
19:37
So you've also got to understand that like for 99% of
19:42
entrepreneurs, it's freaking hard and it's slow, much slower
19:47
than you think. And that resilience to find joy
19:53
in the small gains and the consistency to keep growing a
19:57
small game rather than roll the dice.
20:00
And something I personally think the whole social media space
20:04
around business ownership and hustle, like I watch it and it's
20:08
just like, does anyone actually build a business this way?
20:11
I mean, if someone's hustling me, I don't want to buy from
20:15
them to starters. And even for me when I because
20:18
the first business was like a big contract business, right?
20:21
Like it was. You know, you're doing 5 to $25
20:23
million deals, like there's no hustle in that world.
20:27
But then when I owned AI, owned a magazine and it was all
20:30
selling $99 subscriptions and, and for me, I'm like, I'm
20:34
clearly it's, I'm not hustling enough.
20:35
It's all about this hustle thing I keep hearing about.
20:38
And every time I hustle, it went bad.
20:39
And every time I just stuck to the basics, it went well.
20:42
So, so for me, you know, being successful as a business founder
20:47
or entrepreneur is it's just nailing the basics.
20:53
Your your funnel should be boring.
20:56
You shouldn't have to be thinking every day, Oh, how do I
20:59
do some really cool marketing today?
21:01
Like and people look at Nike and they look at Apple and they look
21:05
at Google and they look at Adidas and they're like, they're
21:09
just massively consistent. Like like just do it.
21:12
I mean, how long has just do it been around, right?
21:14
Like it's just Air Jordan, just consistency around the brand
21:17
consistency around the IT. They change the fringes and Nike
21:21
is one of one of my clients, but every time they depart like they
21:26
just a couple of months ago, I don't know if you guys know,
21:30
they tried to change their tagline from just do it to why
21:32
do it? That that doesn't wasn't the the
21:39
fake Coke that was like the epitome of like don't do this
21:43
like they they they or was it Pepsi or some?
21:46
New Coke. New Coke in like in the 90s like
21:50
that's the like it's working. Why break it?
21:52
You know, and that that kind of and.
21:53
That to me that that is somebody that thinks they're an
21:56
entrepreneur and thinks that we always need to change things to
22:00
mix it up. And humans don't actually, they
22:03
just want consistency. They just want to know that if,
22:07
if I buy this, it's, it's what you say it is.
22:10
And I trust you that if it's not, you're going to do
22:12
something about it. You know, and, and we're
22:15
creating, I mean, we just buy so much crap.
22:19
We don't need any more. It's probably not true, but you
22:22
know, at the end of the day, when times are tough, people
22:25
will always buy stuff that they need.
22:26
They always need to wipe their bum.
22:28
They always need to brush their teeth, you know, and I think if
22:32
you just always really drill in on what people need rather than
22:36
what you think they want, because the, the, the blind spot
22:40
for an entrepreneur is you see an idea and you see an
22:43
opportunity, but that's only for people like you.
22:46
Like, that's not for everyone. And if you, if you have a great
22:48
idea and you think it's a great idea, it's not unless the people
22:52
around you and you you canvas widely that everyone thinks it's
22:56
a good idea. Yeah, well, in the Nike 1 is
22:59
such a hilarious example. I mean, because why do it is
23:02
actually almost totally, you know, counterintuitive.
23:05
It's the opposite of just do it. It's like, well, why do it?
23:09
Well, why? Why would I?
23:10
I mean, I could sit here and watch TV today, you know?
23:12
I could sit and flip. My hands.
23:13
That's a good question. That's a yeah.
23:15
It actually talk yeah, it talks me out of buying shoes, right?
23:18
Cuz what do I need those shoes for?
23:19
I'm not going anywhere, you know, so it's a it's such a
23:21
funny thing, but we were talking about this the other day and
23:24
it's a far less sexy example than the Nike.
23:27
But this company, there's a a company called Safelite.
23:29
And Safelite does just like windshield repairs.
23:31
Yeah. And you know, they've had this
23:33
brand for a million years and it's not one you'd see in a
23:36
brand book or anything, but it's consistent.
23:37
And and their product is always pretty good.
23:39
I've always had a good experience with this brand.
23:41
Well, they just rolled out this new ultra sterile, you know,
23:45
brand campaign and logo and all this stuff where they just,
23:47
they, they stripped away all character.
23:50
And I was talking with some other designer friends that I
23:52
know. And basically our discussion was
23:54
exactly what you were just saying was this screams of new
23:56
leadership or some new creative director or some new somebody
24:00
has walked in and decided they're going to make their mark
24:02
on Safelite. And instead they stripped away
24:04
all the culture and the life and everything out of it.
24:07
And now it could, it may as well just be, you know, VC backed,
24:09
you know, or like a, you know, some sort of fun that owns them
24:13
now. And maybe maybe that is what it
24:15
is, But I mean, they, they look like just generic VC backed
24:17
company now. They don't they've kind of
24:19
stripped away everything thing that was safe flight.
24:22
So, so it's kind of interesting how people will just sacrifice
24:25
that for, you know, because it feels good or because it looks
24:28
different or whatever, you know, and kind of even spit in the
24:31
face of things that work, like just do it.
24:33
But that's deeply human. That's that's the kind of the
24:37
challenge with. So the difference with iteration
24:39
is take something good and make it better.
24:42
But we think as human beings, if I just do something different,
24:45
I'm going to solve today's problem.
24:47
And that's, you know, that's kind of how Nike and these guys
24:50
make money, right? They're like every, you know,
24:53
the average athlete or human right thinks about running a
24:57
marathon every 5-4 or five years.
24:59
And then they go buy all the kit and they run for two months and
25:01
they forget about it. And then four or five years
25:03
later, they go buy it all again. Like we just feel that new
25:08
replaces old, like new fixes old that it's, but it's not, that's
25:13
not how successful people work. If you look at the Warren
25:16
Buffett's, the Ray Dalio's, the Roger Federer's, the Serena
25:18
Williams, they just do the basics consistently well.
25:24
And then there's this other idea of, of people and entrepreneurs
25:28
that think if I have structure, it's going to limit me.
25:32
If, if I, if I start to do everything, step one, Step 2,
25:34
step three, I'm going to lose. I'm not going to be creative.
25:38
And I think you guys are in that industry, right?
25:40
So you know it, right? Creative can sometimes be
25:44
misinterpreted for chaos. Like they both start with C,
25:48
they both feel like work, but the results are what you have to
25:52
measure creativity by. And I think, and again, you
25:57
learn this as a fighter, part of it's like when you start a
25:59
fighter jet, every person that flew the aircraft.
26:02
I flew the F18 Hornet from Spain to Finland to the United States
26:06
Navy. We every pilot starts it exactly
26:09
the same way we turn it off exactly the same way.
26:12
We fly exactly the same way. And the reason we do that is
26:15
because when you're actually in combat, it's so chaotic and you
26:20
need to be so creative that if you're wondering, oh, what does
26:22
this button do, then it's you're dead.
26:25
You don't, you don't come home and you see this all the time in
26:28
my, in my life of dealing with marketing in 21 years, I've
26:33
probably really only found two marketing creatives that are
26:37
actually decent that actually can derive results.
26:43
And whenever I've worked with an outsource marketing company,
26:47
when they start the conversation, well, hey, it's
26:50
just marketing. We just have to test and adjust
26:51
and you know, can't guarantee anything.
26:53
It's like, well, I'm not going to work.
26:55
I'm not going to work with you then because why would I hire
26:57
someone that before we even start says it might not work.
27:00
I'd rather work with someone that has a really clear idea of
27:02
what works and then we fix it because it's probably not going
27:05
to work when we start, but we want to get there at the end.
27:08
And I think I personally think that marketing creates too many
27:12
excuses for itself because there's too much bad marketing
27:15
that doesn't deliver results. So I'm really like, I'm anally
27:20
retentive when it comes to working with marketing people
27:23
and that everything that every conversation is anchored by this
27:28
is the result we're going to have in the next month, two
27:30
months, three months. And I'll tell them in the brief,
27:33
I'm OK if we don't hit it. I'm OK because it's who knows
27:37
what's going to happen. But don't start with an excuse
27:39
before we even get out the gate. Yeah, that reminds me of some
27:44
conversations we'd have with SEO experts.
27:49
They they, they just, it always seems like we can, they never
27:55
have a clear. Yeah, exactly what are some some
28:01
markers that you would use as a reference for returns on your
28:07
marketing expenditures? Lots of people like, like you
28:11
said, it's hard to kind of like if they come out saying, Hey,
28:15
it's not going to work. Are you just looking at units
28:18
sold? Are you looking at impressions?
28:20
The, the vanity metrics were huge for a long time.
28:23
And that's not, there's never real results with vanity metrics
28:26
as we know. But what?
28:28
What are your indicators that that tell you you have a good?
28:32
It's a good question, Mike and I, I keep this really simple for
28:36
my entire life, right? I use the same philosophy for
28:39
absolutely everything, whether it's marketing, whether it's
28:41
operations, logistics, whether it's the, the, the wonderful
28:45
woman that I chose as my wife. It's, it's when I was younger, I
28:51
was, I felt like you had to kind of be everything to everyone and
28:55
you, you had to adapt and compromise and accept.
28:58
And then what I realized was, and that's sort of thought and I
29:04
guess this came about subconsciously.
29:06
It's like as a fighter pilot, I always had a target like I, I
29:09
always started with the end and then worked backwards.
29:12
And then in subconsciously in business, I had the end set.
29:15
Me and Tom had the end set for our, for our business.
29:18
But in life I didn't do that. And what I've learned was if you
29:23
approach everything with a destination.
29:27
So for, for a marketing, I'm not a marketing expert, but I know
29:30
how to have a conversation with someone when they're talking to
29:33
me. And it's not about arriving at
29:35
something. It's not about it.
29:36
It's not about delivery. So, so when they talk about
29:39
everything and humanity tends towards doing things, not
29:42
achieving things. If, if every human was oriented
29:45
towards what they achieved, they'd be a lot happier.
29:49
But we tend to wake up in the morning and whatever's in front
29:53
of us, that's what we do. Whatever distraction I get
29:56
during the day, that's what I do.
29:57
I because we're engineered to feel good when we're busy, even
30:01
though it doesn't actually achieve much.
30:03
So you know, and when it comes to marketing, you're looking for
30:06
different things, right? Like of course, you want
30:09
awareness. So for me, I don't mind vanity
30:12
metrics as a measure of awareness because if you build a
30:16
good system and you have a great CRM, we use a lot of AI
30:19
analytics. Now you start to see whether
30:22
you're the people who buy you are aware of you.
30:25
So if I sell a leadership development course, but I've got
30:28
a bunch of what we call spotters, people that love
30:31
fighter jets, well, I'm getting a lot of vanity metrics, but
30:34
they don't mean anything. They're the wrong awareness for
30:36
the wrong people. And then, yeah, you want to
30:39
dial, you want to dial down onto your return on ad spend.
30:42
You want to, you want to compare all of your lead magnets and
30:48
find out which of those are the most, because eventually
30:51
someone's got to buy something. So you can have all the
30:53
marketing in the world, but if they actually drink the can of
30:56
Coke and it tastes terrible, you, you just, your marketing
31:00
budget is going to be wasted, right?
31:01
And that's the other, that's the other problem you have,
31:04
particularly with Commission based marketing is, oh, we can't
31:07
do that because we, you know, your sales team might be shit
31:10
and sales is like, oh, we can't sell because marketing keeps
31:13
bringing the wrong people in the door.
31:14
I'm like, OK, sit down together and work it out.
31:17
Like I'm not going to have this. I'm not, I'm not going to have
31:20
sales over here marketing here. And then you guys throwing mud
31:23
at each other all day. You, you get confident in each
31:26
other and don't make that excuse ever again.
31:29
And without so we work with a lot of company we work with like
31:33
the likes of publicist, right? And we we work with massive
31:38
organizations that do this sort of work at scale.
31:42
And you know, it's, it's the same as the the adversarial kind
31:48
of mentality between the client and the marketing agency.
31:52
And it's like, I'm going to give you a brief and then you come
31:54
back to me and I'm like, you don't do it that way.
31:58
Sit down together and Co create. Like, like if you're worried
32:03
about what you're going to give them, then you haven't I
32:05
listened properly or B spent the time to Co create and we don't
32:09
do enough of that either. Yeah, like I have the vendors we
32:12
use. Even with this philosophy, it's
32:15
like I'm not going to meet with you once a month.
32:17
I'm going to meet with you every week and I'm not going to I'm
32:20
not meeting you every week because I want to look at the
32:22
metrics. I want to meet with you every
32:23
week because I want to know that you're actually doing stuff
32:26
that's going to deliver that. I don't want to get to the end
32:28
of the month and not hit the target, which is what's going to
32:30
happen. And that's the first time we
32:31
talk about it. And I think that again, like as
32:35
a fighter pilot, because we're trained and conditioned to think
32:39
in seconds and minutes, you value seconds and minutes.
32:43
You don't look at the world as if it's quarters, months and
32:46
days. Because if you look at what do I
32:48
want to achieve today, you're going to make about, I mean, you
32:52
make 220 decisions around what you're going to eat per day,
32:55
right? This is how wasted our decision
32:57
making is. But if you start to think, what
32:59
do I want to achieve this hour, what am I going to deliver this
33:03
hour, this hour, this 30 minutes, you'd be quite
33:06
surprised at how much you can actually get done that delivers
33:10
something rather than just be busy.
33:12
Yeah, I wanted to go back to, you mentioned this idea of sort
33:17
of just as a fighter pilot, you guys start flying, you're going
33:19
612 hundred miles an hour and you can't stop.
33:22
And it's funny cuz I'm just sitting here noodling on it
33:25
while you were talking just now and I'm going, well, that's kind
33:29
of a parallel with life, right? Life is just going.
33:32
It doesn't stop, can't stop. But I think a lot of us measure
33:35
our success kind of what you were just describing and sort of
33:37
starts and stops. And I don't think that everybody
33:40
has sort of this iterated, you know, always working our way
33:44
upstream kind of approach to things.
33:46
So I wonder if you talk a little bit about how you start coaching
33:48
leadership into that mindset if they don't already have it.
33:51
And I have to imagine, you know, as you work with a lot of
33:53
entrepreneurs and things like that, you probably do come
33:55
across a lot of people who do kind of have that type of
33:58
mindset. You know, we talked at the very
33:59
beginning about failing forward and stuff like that.
34:01
You know, I mean, like you probably talk with guys who are,
34:04
you know, good at iterating or, or moving off of one thing on to
34:07
the next thing, etcetera. But how do you teach that into
34:10
somebody who doesn't already have it?
34:11
You know, if somebody's kind of approaching things from a
34:13
different perspective, how would you talk them into this sort of,
34:17
you know, the river's always flowing kind of approach where,
34:21
you know, you can't stop. It's just keep moving, keep
34:23
moving, keep moving. Yeah, it's a good question.
34:26
First of all, you know, I just don't ever talk anyone into
34:31
anything. Like it's not for me to talk
34:32
people into stuff. They, they have a need and I'll
34:35
fill it. So you've got to start with the
34:36
right entrepreneur. So if you've got an entrepreneur
34:39
that knows everything and thinks they're the dog's bollocks, you
34:43
know, I can't convince you of anything.
34:46
Like just just keep going. But you know, the entrepreneur
34:49
that's cashed in their home, they're struggling on a second
34:53
mortgage, they're all in seven days a week and they just can't
34:58
like find the, the hook that just brings it all together.
35:02
I just get them to define by Friday, like what?
35:06
What is one thing you can not do, one thing you can achieve by
35:10
Friday? And the thing about
35:12
entrepreneurs is you're at the highest risk of busy work
35:15
because if you're a true entrepreneur and it's A and it's
35:19
your, your own business, nothing exists.
35:22
Websites don't exist, products don't exist, skews don't exist.
35:26
So it's always about what do you start with?
35:28
And the number one thing you need to live is oxygen.
35:31
And oxygen is marketing. So what do you need to achieve
35:37
to get more oxygen by Friday? And everything to do with oxygen
35:42
sucks. Like marketing.
35:45
Marketing is hard because you're talking about ones and twos of
35:50
percents, right? You guys know it in terms of
35:53
stuff, the amount of work you're going to put out, you're going
35:56
to get this tiny little bit of, of engagement.
35:58
I mean, if you, when I started business, you know, 20 years
36:01
ago, you needed to have four conversations to build trust.
36:05
Today, it's in the 20s. You need to have a 20 touch
36:08
points before someone actually begins to trust you, which means
36:11
that it's you're going to go to the bar 20 times looking for,
36:15
you know, a wife and you're going to get knocked back 19.
36:19
So you've got to have that kind of successful act of philosophy,
36:23
which is auditioning for 200 movies and then you finally get
36:26
1. So that sucks.
36:29
So, so expectation management's important.
36:32
So when I say, what do you want to achieve by Friday, It's what,
36:35
what can you realistically achieve by Friday?
36:39
And that might be sit in a room, lock the door, shoot 20 reels on
36:43
Instagram. And that might be terrible, but
36:45
it doesn't matter because at least you've achieved it.
36:47
And then you can iterate on that because, you know, I hate social
36:51
media, but I've got to do it. And I know that the more I do
36:54
it, the better I get at it because I'm trying.
36:56
It's like a trained muscle. It's, it's the brain.
36:59
Have you have you defined the customer journey?
37:02
Do that by Friday, next Friday, customer journey.
37:05
What all the way from buying up to why would they want it and
37:09
define that. And with AI today, you didn't
37:12
even just ask it. Just say, this is my product,
37:15
build my customer journey for me and then connect it to Chrome
37:19
and build my CRM, build my ads campaign, build, build, build.
37:24
I love it, ma'am, I'm I'm so all in on AI.
37:27
It's like as a business, I never knew that.
37:31
Yeah. So, so I think that's the key
37:32
here. It's stop getting lost in the
37:36
doing and start to get into the achieving.
37:39
And when you start to live a life that's achievement driven,
37:43
you get good at two things. One is achieving, but the second
37:48
is also starting to be a little bit better with your expectation
37:51
management. You start to realize how hard
37:53
things are. And the problem with hard things
37:57
is it's easy to have 20 hard things that never get done as
38:01
opposed to one hard thing that gets done every week.
38:04
And I have this philosophy, if you have something you want to
38:07
achieve in 1/4, you can normally get it done in a month.
38:10
If you want to do something in a month, you can normally get it
38:12
done in a week. And if you want something in a
38:14
week, you can normally get it done in a day.
38:16
But you've got to be focused on it all day to get there.
38:20
So it's, yeah, I think. And I feel so blessed to have
38:25
learned this idea of missionization and the mission
38:28
bubble as a fighter pilot, which is like, you've got 2 missions
38:30
today. Every mission requires you to
38:33
think, communicate, execute and debrief.
38:35
You've got to do those four things.
38:37
And when you start to think that way, which is what, what two
38:40
things do I need to achieve today to deliver by Friday?
38:44
And turn your phone off, get slack, dis disconnected from
38:49
your computer and just freaking dial it in for an hour and 90
38:53
minutes. You would be amazed at how much
38:56
you can create in 90 minutes. And if you're, if you're into
38:58
the neuroscience on this deep flow stuff, in 90 minutes of
39:02
focused work, you can achieve around 8 to 12 hours of
39:05
distracted work. Yeah, it flow state to me is
39:09
incredible, like turning on the classical music and just getting
39:13
into it and next thing you know 4 hours is done and you don't
39:16
even it feels like 30 minutes when that happens.
39:20
Plasma balls. Do you know those big glass
39:22
balls that have the electricity? Yeah, yeah, they have them at
39:25
museums and stuff. Just that's how the human brain
39:28
works. So if you if you put 10 fingers
39:31
on a plasma ball, the electricity goes everywhere.
39:34
You put one finger on a plasma ball, you get this really strong
39:38
electric current into your finger.
39:39
That's deep flow. All the neural energy of the
39:42
brain, all the electricity focused into the one task,
39:47
brings the 11,000,000 processors per second targeted down into
39:51
exactly what it is you want to achieve.
39:53
But that does take about 20 to 30 minutes for you to get into
39:56
that state. Yeah, when when it happens, it
39:59
doesn't I, I'm not as I don't, I don't when, when I naturally get
40:08
into flow state and I didn't force it.
40:09
It's crazy. You just sit back and think how
40:11
much I got done. And when I try to get into flow
40:14
state, sometimes I have a really hard time doing it because I
40:17
it's like squirrel, you know, like everyone has that and the.
40:22
I think. I have a philosophy around that,
40:24
Mike. There's a reason that happens
40:27
and the reason is that you're focused on the wrong work and
40:29
your subconscious is telling it when you're, when you're focused
40:32
on the right work flows easy. So when you're doing something
40:35
that you don't want to do because you can't see what it's
40:37
going to achieve, it's really hard to, to get into a flow
40:40
state. So, so when the squirrel comes,
40:44
my advice to people is to sit back and ask yourself, what does
40:48
this work achieve? And that has to achieve
40:50
something that you want, has to achieve more revenue, has to
40:53
achieve more time, has to buy the new motorbike that you want.
40:57
So, and that's where there's this little Gray area between
41:00
the grind, like you've got to grind to make the flour to bake
41:04
the bread. You don't just want to grind to
41:05
make flour like so, so trust your subconscious, like the
41:09
subconscious is way more powerful than what you're
41:11
thinking about. And when the subconscious and
41:14
the conscious are lined up, because the subconscious is
41:18
subconscious anchors to the belief, consciousness anchors to
41:21
the work, when those two are aligned, then you you'd be,
41:25
that's, that's what to me, not human performance, but human
41:30
potential. That's when you achieve full
41:31
human potential. Love it.
41:34
So one of the things I wanted to get into a little bit with you
41:36
is like, I guess deciding what to do, right.
41:38
So like if we're using the metaphors that we've been
41:40
talking about through throughout, you know, the the
41:42
fighter pilot mission, we're driving straight, you know, you
41:45
got the end in mind. Whatever.
41:46
I think people really get caught up in like this thrashing thing,
41:50
especially solopreneurs, people who are working on their own and
41:52
maybe don't have like a team to bounce ideas off of, that sort
41:55
of thing. There's a myriad things to do.
41:58
Like the example you just used about, you know, you don't want
42:00
to stop at making the flour, you actually want to make the bread,
42:02
right? But for a lot of people who are
42:04
just starting a business, maybe they've got to make the flour
42:06
before they can sell the bread. And so I wonder if you help or
42:10
if you have any ideas around sort of making decisions around
42:12
what to do. And I think it's sort of
42:14
twofold. One part is that I think a lot
42:16
of people will just thrash around in this decision zone
42:19
because they feel busy and it doesn't, it feels like they're
42:21
getting stuff done even if they aren't really.
42:24
And then I think the other half of this is, you know, doing
42:26
things in the right order or making sure that we're actually
42:28
doing things that are moving the needle and understanding, you
42:31
know, how to choose those things, I guess in sequence or,
42:34
or to identify the, the path, so to speak.
42:38
So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that, like as
42:40
you're working with entrepreneurs who are sort of
42:41
stuck in the mud and a lot of it's around decision making,
42:44
things like that, how you would start to guide somebody or help
42:47
them move forward? Yeah, So you think of it like
42:50
this. If you need to make flour to
42:53
make bread, you've you've got to know exactly what loaf you're
42:56
going to start with. Like there's a gazillion breads,
42:58
right. So I want to make a salad dough
42:59
with sesame seeds on top. Awesome.
43:02
Because what that's the, that's the difference between
43:05
destination thinking. What we do as humans is we say,
43:09
here's where I am, let's go. And that's the recipe for a
43:15
thrashing, because that's the default human condition.
43:18
Wake up, be busy. Like it's so we think in terms
43:22
of A to B, but we don't really that's you've heard that before.
43:25
I would just, you know, this is get from A to B.
43:28
The problem is no one defines BB is just an idea.
43:31
It's an intention and an intention doesn't you don't
43:34
arrive at intentions, you arrive at destinations.
43:37
So to go back to what and I said earlier, it's like as a fighter
43:39
pilot, you always start with the target.
43:41
As an airline pilot, you know, if you guys get on an airline
43:43
all right, what's your favorite holiday destination, right?
43:46
Where do you like to go? Barcelona.
43:48
Cool. So when you get on an airplane
43:50
to Barcelona, the captain doesn't say welcome aboard,
43:52
ladies and gentlemen. Our goal is to get to Barcelona
43:54
today, right? No, I hope not.
43:58
Yeah, but humans, we live in this world of goals and everyone
44:03
knows as a human being, a goal is something nice to achieve.
44:06
It's not essential, the captain says.
44:09
Our destination is Barcelona. That immediately instills
44:13
confidence in people because you know you've got a competent
44:16
group of individuals up the front that's going to get you
44:18
there. So that mindset shift as well,
44:21
like by Friday I'm going to arrive at a destination, not a
44:24
goal because a goal. We've got kids that play sport,
44:28
they go out, they kick a goal, they throw a goal, but they
44:31
still lose the game. So deep down in our subconscious
44:35
narrative, we tell ourselves that just trying for a goal is
44:40
as good as achieving it. It's this really weird bit of
44:44
human autopilot that we have. So the person, everything you do
44:49
in a business is grind. Like I know I'll give you a case
44:53
for you guys right now. Like we're completely rebuilding
44:57
our by Friday, it'll be finished.
44:59
So we're fully automating our entire funnel, right from copy
45:02
to pictures to CRM to lead scoring, you name it.
45:05
And it's a big database. It's 78,000 people, but what we
45:09
discover as we do this is there is so much minutia, so much tiny
45:13
detail, and if any one of them is wrong, it throws the whole
45:17
game out right. So we, my team and I, every
45:21
single morning, we start off with, here's all the gaps that
45:25
we found yesterday because we're all working on different things.
45:28
So we bring ourselves together and we say right of all these
45:31
different things. This is what we're going to do
45:33
between now and lunchtime. And then we're going to and
45:35
we're going to do this because this is what we need to achieve
45:37
by lunchtime. You can apply the same mindset
45:41
to and I've been an entrepreneur, right?
45:42
So every business I've started, there was just me.
45:45
Nothing existed except for one and two, 2 after banner in the,
45:49
in the publishing business. So for me, it's like if I'm
45:54
doing work that's not generating revenue right now, it's not
45:58
important. Even I can use a spreadsheet as
46:00
a CRM. The reality is right now I'm not
46:03
doing anything to market. I'm not getting any oxygen.
46:07
So, so you've got to be doing and I think entrepreneurs,
46:13
particularly product Orient oriented entrepreneurs, they
46:16
just fiddle with the product all day.
46:18
They just just needs more features.
46:20
It just needs to be this. It just needs to be that and and
46:23
and you're effectively writing a best seller without ever putting
46:25
it on the shelves. So you've got to get out of
46:28
this. I've got this great idea.
46:30
I've got this great product. If the product was just a little
46:32
bit better, everyone would buy it and understand that best
46:36
known is better than best and to be focused on becoming known for
46:42
something and then iterate the product based on what real
46:45
people using it site, not what you think.
46:48
It's 95% of our decisions are based on perception and and
46:54
perception is everything behind the eyeballs.
46:56
It's all you. The 5% is where the magic is
46:59
because that's reality. So you as a, as an entrepreneur,
47:03
you've got to keep engaging people and getting their
47:06
opinions. So you get out of your own head.
47:09
Another saying we have is fighter pilots.
47:11
It's, it's not the missile you see that shoots you down.
47:13
It's what you don't see. And the same with as a human,
47:16
it's your blind spots and what you don't see about yourself.
47:19
That's the thing that's creating the argument with your wife or
47:21
your husband. That's the thing that's stopping
47:23
you from being successful. So you've got to have people
47:26
around you that call you out on it and challenge you
47:29
continually. So as an entrepreneur, a couple
47:31
of things. One, set a destination year,
47:35
quarter, month, Week 2. Don't be by yourself because
47:42
you're just you join an entrepreneur community, make
47:46
sure you get a business coach. Find someone that isn't going to
47:49
say that's a good idea because that's all your family's going
47:51
to say. That's all your friends are
47:52
going to say. Be in a highly challenging
47:55
environment. And two, if you feel like the
47:58
work isn't going somewhere, then it probably isn't like it's,
48:02
it's, it's easier to do hard work when you get the reward at
48:06
the end of it. And you see, you know, you see a
48:08
few extra likes, you see a few extra DMS like that's, that
48:11
keeps you going through the hard stuff.
48:14
Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense.
48:16
I wonder just as a caveat to that or like as a little
48:18
addition, how do you go about choosing the destination?
48:22
And what I mean is, I think, you know, you alluded to this
48:25
earlier talking about social media and sort of the posers
48:27
that are out there. I think a lot of people go into
48:29
business and they're not even really sure why they're doing
48:33
it. Maybe they built a job
48:34
themselves, you know, for themselves because let's say
48:36
they were welder and now they're a freelance welder and they
48:39
started their welding company or whatever.
48:40
You know, like, I mean, people, people start businesses a lot of
48:43
times to just chase down their skill.
48:45
You know, I'm guilty of this. I was a graphic designer.
48:48
I got laid off. I started a graphic design
48:49
company, you know, like that kind of thing.
48:51
And so so but what I did was create a job.
48:53
I didn't really create a company and there was no end in mind
48:56
because it was just I needed work, right?
48:57
And so there wasn't like a destination as part of that
49:00
decision making process. Well there there was.
49:02
The destination was you need to pay your mortgage, you need
49:05
work, you need to make money. That's the yeah.
49:06
So I guess at that point, you know, I mean, yeah, OK.
49:08
You know, there's a, you know, whatever it was, you know, $5000
49:11
at the end of the month is, is the destination, I suppose.
49:14
But but I wonder, I mean, it seems like what you're talking
49:17
about anyway are much further down the road kinds of
49:19
destinations, which are, you know, what's the the outcome of
49:22
this company going to be one day.
49:23
So like, I mean, in the case of fighter pilot, right, you have
49:26
your mission and that's the goal for the day or that's well, not
49:29
to use gold. That's the destination for today
49:31
is we're gonna go blow up this thing and then we're gonna
49:32
return for small businesses or, or people who are getting into
49:37
business or maybe even, you know, well established business
49:40
leaders who are trying to figure out what's next.
49:42
How far down the road does this destination need to be?
49:45
I mean, you know, using the life metaphor again, obviously that
49:47
we have lots of destinations. I've been to Barcelona a bunch
49:50
of times, you know, and then we come back and then we go again.
49:52
And, you know, so, I mean, so there's, I guess some, I, I
49:57
guess I'm trying to understand the pressure of the destination.
49:59
Like how serious should it be? Does it need to be the be all
50:02
end all fork in the ground? Or is it the we'll, you know,
50:06
we'll, we'll know it when we get there and then we'll, we'll have
50:08
another destination once we get there?
50:11
Well, I'll get you to help me on this one.
50:12
The way you did it is the way that it should be done.
50:15
How much pressure did you feel to have the destination of 5000
50:18
by the end of the month? Well, a lot, but I will say what
50:22
one thing that was interesting about me was that, I mean, yes,
50:26
I had these little micro destinations, but then as I got
50:29
on in my career, so, you know, like we just we just
50:31
transitioned to a new company at the beginning of the year.
50:34
But for the last 20 years we've been doing the same thing.
50:37
But we never really grew. We never really got that big.
50:40
I mean, it was enough to sustain me and my family and that kind
50:43
of thing, but we never grew past that Mark.
50:45
You know, there's kind of a barrier that we hit or sort of
50:47
a, you know, ceiling where it was like, well, we can make
50:50
about this much per year. We never really advanced past
50:52
that. And I think, or at least the way
50:54
that I've talk to myself about this is that the destination
50:57
wasn't ever more concrete. It wasn't we're going to be a
51:00
multibillion dollar mega corporation, you know, none of
51:02
that stuff. Instead it was just like, I need
51:04
$5000, I need $5000, I need $5000.
51:07
You know what I mean? Most small bit, 90% plus.
51:10
I used to know the statistic, my brain's forgotten it.
51:12
But most small businesses tap out 2 to 3,000,000.
51:16
And the reason they tap out at 2 to 3,000,000 is that's a nice
51:19
lifestyle for the owner, right? To get beyond 3,000,000, the
51:23
owner has to make a sacrifice. You have to stop taking money
51:26
out of the business. You have to take a pay cut
51:28
because you need to, you need a whole bunch of resources to make
51:31
the jump. So most people can personally
51:34
manage A2 to $3,000,000 business without having to spend.
51:38
And you can sustain that pretty easily with your existing
51:40
relationships. Little bit of new logo work.
51:42
It's OK. So the you know, I call it the
51:45
self limiting belief. Every, every the plateau of
51:50
growth is that is a self limiting belief is establishing
51:54
it. It's not the world.
51:56
If if you wanted to be $100 million company, then let's take
52:00
about 5 years. Give yourself five who who
52:02
knows? I mean the only distant.
52:04
The the closer you are to today, the easier it is to define the
52:09
destination. The further out it gets, you
52:11
start to morph into storytelling.
52:14
Storytelling is, is what keeps people, you know, think of the
52:17
Lord of the Rings, right? It's, it's the story that keeps
52:20
people doing crazy stuff chapter by chapter, page by page.
52:25
But, but when? So when you're an entrepreneur,
52:28
the first destination should be I've got to pay myself, like
52:32
I've got to earn money on myself.
52:33
That's a great destination. The second one is once I've
52:36
earned enough of myself and an entrepreneur should be able to
52:39
do 4 to 5 people's jobs. You should, you should be one of
52:42
those focused people that can get 8 hours of work done in an
52:44
hour. And then you get to the point
52:46
where you're like, right, I need to put money in the bank instead
52:50
of taking it out and give myself a whole nother year.
52:54
And then I've got to go into the thing which most entrepreneurs
52:57
don't like. I've got to start hiring people
53:00
and people who I hire aren't going to care as much as me.
53:03
They're not going to work as hard as me and they're going to
53:05
make a whole bunch of mistakes. That's so that's painful, but
53:09
it's also, it's like painful. It shouldn't be a surprise.
53:13
That's just what's going to happen.
53:15
And I think what happens is people try and push through 2 to
53:18
3,000,000, they hire a bunch of people to help, they don't
53:21
deliver. And you guys, screw that.
53:23
I'm just going to go back to Toothbury and do it myself
53:25
because that's just, that's just easier.
53:28
So, you know, I personally think the big vision is good in terms
53:34
of storytelling, but it's not, it's not a destination, it's an
53:38
intention. You know, it's, it's what it's
53:41
to get the people who are just getting paid by the hour to do
53:45
the extra hours because they're like, man, I want to be on this
53:47
journey. I want to be able to tell people
53:49
at a BBQ that I work for Ryan and Mike like that.
53:53
That's to me the story. So destination thinking is daily
53:57
that that is a really good habit to get into solve, set the
54:01
destination to solve the immediate problem.
54:03
Like look at me, I've got this great vacuum.
54:06
I'm going to be like Dyson. OK, well, Dyson made 600 vacuum
54:10
variants before he sold his first vacuum.
54:14
So just understand that, you know, you've got to do the small
54:17
things to for the big things to happen.
54:19
So, so yeah, like I said, I think if you're if you're
54:21
thinking the story should be 5 years, like I want to, I want to
54:25
sell this to 2 million people. I want to sell it to 2 million
54:28
people because I want to make 2 million people's lives better.
54:32
And then in the end of the year you can make a bit more
54:35
granular, like this year it needs to be 5 million, next year
54:37
it needs to be 15. It's all guessing.
54:40
I mean, who knows? I mean, you know, the company I
54:44
mean now should be doubling its revenue.
54:46
But then the Iran war started, so no one wants fire pilots
54:49
hanging around your business, so.
54:53
Well, I, and I guess that's kind of what I'm getting at right, or
54:55
trying to understand is like, OK, so the path being to, you
54:58
know, the destination being Barcelona, you know, if it's a
55:01
direct flight, that's pretty easy flight.
55:03
You just hop on the plane and boom, you're in Barcelona.
55:05
But if I have 3 layovers and I have to stop in Minneapolis and
55:09
then again in Atlanta, and then again in in Paris and then move
55:12
down to Barcelona like now, my life is infinitely more
55:15
complicated. Right.
55:16
Well, make. Decisions all along the way.
55:18
So I guess that's kind of what I'm trying to understand is
55:19
like, should we be, you know, to back to the iterative idea, you
55:23
know, is each layover just another iteration in the Grand
55:26
Master plan of getting to Barcelona?
55:28
Or is it better to just? Say, hey, I want to get to
55:29
Barcelona. It's a good, it's a good analogy
55:31
because what the reason you're going to have all those legs is
55:34
because you made a value decision, which was I'm going to
55:36
the, I want to spend the minimum amount possible.
55:39
So typically speaking, you want to spend the minimum amount
55:42
possible. You're going to get the flight
55:43
with the long layovers in the multiple legs, right?
55:46
Which is often what an entrepreneur has to do because I
55:48
can't afford, I can't afford to go straight to the to the big
55:51
goal of marketing here. But what you don't want to do is
55:56
to do that for the next 10 years of your life.
55:59
You want to accept that right now, the destination of
56:01
Barcelona is exciting. And I just, I've only got so
56:04
much money. So I'm going to have to endure a
56:07
bit of personal pain. But my destination is to be able
56:11
to do this in one leg in a couple of years.
56:13
And that's, that's what's going to keep me focused on my hard
56:16
work is I want to, by the way, believe me, I know when you get
56:20
to the point in life where you fly everywhere up the front and
56:23
you get anyway it's it sucks just as much as the multi leg
56:26
flights after a while, yeah, it's like you're careful what
56:29
you wish. For travel in general.
56:32
Yeah, but it's, you know what? It's this kind of thing, right?
56:34
And I think Will, you know, when Will Smith had that massive
56:37
breakdown and slapped Chris Rock, you know, and I remember
56:41
watching the YouTube and he said he spent his whole life climbing
56:45
the Cliff. And then when he got to the top,
56:47
he looked down and it was an abyss.
56:49
It's, you never arrive. You never arrive, you know, and
56:55
that's the key with destinations.
56:57
It's, it's understanding. Like I, I was retired three
57:00
years ago and it's, it's not that great.
57:03
And I, and I got back into being a CEO and I, I liked the free
57:09
time I had when I was retired. And I don't like a lot of the
57:13
stuff I have to do as ACEO. But at the end of the day, I
57:16
choose this discomfort over the discomfort of doing nothing.
57:20
Like either way, there's discomfort.
57:22
Yeah. Yeah.
57:24
Well, it's been a great conversation.
57:27
We are kind of to that point. Do you want to tell people where
57:30
they can reach out, get in touch with you?
57:34
Any website links you want to share?
57:36
Yeah, So if you just type boussis BOUCOUSIS, I'm like the
57:42
only one that does this on Earth, and the only other person
57:45
you'll find is my dad. So it's kind of easy on on
57:50
Friday, I just launched a new online, a new online training
57:53
program called Flawless Leadership.
57:55
So if you just type Flawless leadership, you'll find that
57:58
there's a new book coming out as well.
58:00
And afterburner.com or call me boo.com is where you'll find my
58:04
company or find me so, but just type acoustis, you'll find
58:07
something. I love it.
58:08
You'll find it hopefully in a few months.
58:12
Well, they'll find it sooner than that.
58:13
We'll be out on Thursday, so it's coming right out.
58:15
So but anyway, thank you so much Christian.
58:17
This has been awesome. Obviously, I mean, there's, I
58:19
don't know, 900 other things we could talk about.
58:21
So we may have to do this again when the book drops.
58:24
But in the meantime, thank you again so, so much for doing this
58:27
for us. Thanks guys.
58:28
I appreciate it. Very grateful for the
58:29
opportunity. Absolutely.
58:31
And thanks so much to everybody who tunes into the show this
58:33
week and every week. And we'll see you guys next
58:35
time.