Latest / Founder Talk with Alex Sheridan / Why Slowing Down Is the Secret to Growth With Brian Smith

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Why Slowing Down Is the Secret to Growth With Brian Smith · Founder Talk with Alex Sheridan

0:00
Do you think you can scale or grow to seven figures as a
0:03
founder without W2 employees? Oh, that's yes.
0:07
You guys recently made the 2025 Inc 5000 list fastest growing
0:12
company. What are you guys doing that
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other companies or founders are not doing that allowed you to
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make that list? We don't sit back and get
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comfortable where we're at a. Lot of founders say do never
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charge by. The they do, and I don't know,
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I'll tell you, I've built a 30 year consultancy and we charge
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by the hour. We use all of that data to help
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build our learning models, our consulting models.
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We also feed that data into our AI to help our AI learn from
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what our teams are doing because we record in our time.
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They do a narrative of what they've done like a doctor does.
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You don't think companies are going to go?
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We don't need a consultant, we'll just use AI.
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Oh yeah, they will. Yeah, yeah, they do it to us
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now. And how does that work?
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They come back. Exactly, yes.
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What would you say to a founder that's maybe 354045 years old
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sitting across from you and you're able to kind of give them
1:00
one piece of advice as they move forward, not really knowing
1:03
anything about them, but you know that they're a founder,
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they're a business owner and they want to grow their
1:07
business. Have a great.
1:08
Life. My answer is always the same.
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Slow down. Slow down and listen to the
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environment you're in. When you look back at the last
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30 years, was it all worth it? Ryan Smith with IA Business
1:24
Advisors, Correct? That's right.
1:27
Yeah, I saw you did a post on LinkedIn that caught my
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attention as I was doing some research on you and it said that
1:33
you guys recently made the 2025 Inc 5000 list fastest growing
1:39
companies. That's right.
1:40
Is that right? Yes.
1:41
OK. He looked at me like, wait, no,
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no, that's right. My research was off.
1:44
No, my first question is just what are you guys doing that
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other companies or founders are not doing that allowed you to
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make that list 'cause I in my mind that's pretty impressive.
1:54
I think the number one thing is, is we don't sit back and get
1:59
comfortable where we're at, which is very easy to do.
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When you start a company and get to your first plateau, it gets
2:06
so comfortable. When you start making, you've,
2:08
you've come over the top, you've started making money, you found
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this balance and then you just sit back and you just let it go.
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And for us, because we work with founders and we think about our
2:19
influence more intentionally than most people do, we're
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always looking for ways to improve what we do and increase
2:29
the number of people that we have influence with.
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So that includes not only as our clients, but also the people
2:34
that join us and who we help reach their goals from a career
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perspective. Right.
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Was this the first time that you guys made a list?
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It is nice. Congrats man.
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That's awesome. That's a really good
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accomplishment. What what would you say to other
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founders listening? What are some maybe some
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tactical things that you guys, if you had to sit down with
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another founder over coffee and say, hey, if you want to get to
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the Inc 5000 fastest growing companies, this is some things.
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These are some things that you might want to do.
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Yeah. The first thing is, Are you
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ready? There's so much noise out there
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today about you got to scale, you got to scale, you got to
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scale. And I have a lot of appreciation
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for people who peddle that that mindset.
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But scaling comes after growth. And people confuse growth and
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scaling and what they don't and they don't really understand
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what scaling means except this exponential, you know, hockey
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stick growth model. But what they really need to
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understand is get your house in order.
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You know, first make the determination that you want the
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responsibility of growth because the responsibility is amazingly
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rewarding, but it's also such a responsibility.
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It could be amazingly difficult. Can.
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You explain the difference between growth and scaling I.
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Can so when you are growing, you are adding revenue, but you're
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also adding the resources and the foundation to it, which
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means you're still spending money as a percentage of that
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revenue growth. When you're scaling your revenue
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growth outpaces that increase in expenditures.
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So for example, if you are selling products and you need
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five people to sell that product or selling a certain number of
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products, soon you're going to get to a point where those that
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foundation, let's say it's 10 people.
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Let's say the five people, you were selling 100 products.
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But now with 10 people because of technology, business
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efficiencies, business processes, you can sell 10,000
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products. That's when you've hit scaling
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mode. You stopped adding similar
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percentage of cost expenses to your growth revenue increases
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and scaling comes, you know, 2X3X4X.
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We've heard it 10X, which is ridiculous.
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It's a great thing to think about and it sounds good as a
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sound bite. But 10X growth, if you add that
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to most people's businesses, they'll go bankrupt.
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They'll go bankrupt emotionally, they'll go bankrupt financially.
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It is a very tall order for most people to get to.
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Well, I've never heard anyone breakdown the difference between
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growing and scaling in a business.
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I think that was really good. I always thought just like kind
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of they go hand in hand. It's like you're growing, you're
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scaling is kind of like synonyms, you know, But they're
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not. Really.
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No, not at all. How would you go bankrupt from
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scaling your business or growing 10X?
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Oh, that's, you know, that's a great question because we see it
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unfortunately too much. We actually had a client who
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leaned into a 10X mindset and went bankrupt.
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So what happens is they start growing so fast without having
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their, their business foundation in order that they can't keep up
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with the cost of, of that growth or actually they can't keep up
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with the cost of scaling. They didn't understand they had
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to grow first. So what happens is they run out
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of money. You know, they get, this was a
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construction company and they went from 0 to $4 million, which
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in constructions isn't hard. You can get one project and it
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could be a $4 million project. This company went from 4 million
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to 50 million, which is 10X, but they ran out of money funding
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the projects and they started having to take from future
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disbursements of projects to fund their what was really
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growth and pay for the additional people needed to do
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the $50 million in projects. And they ran out of money and
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they ended up going out of business.
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And that happens a lot. You can apply that to a plumber.
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Let's say you know a plumber wants to grow too fast, so he
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goes out and he buys 3 trucks and then he has to buy 3 people
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and he's trying to service his market with these new people.
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Let's say he loses one. Well, the market demand is still
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there because he grew into it when he had three trucks.
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Now he only has two people with three trucks.
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And now the chinks start to happen because he didn't prepare
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for that growth first. And there's a point where you
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get to your break even points, you understand what your cost
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models are, and then you can manage growth in an amazingly
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effective way. Do you think that's more you're
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more susceptible to having these type of issues if you have a
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business where you have invoices that go out in 3060 ninety net
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90 things like that because you're getting the business, but
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you're not getting paid till later.
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So think about coaching, consulting sometimes in a lot of
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cases you're getting paid upfront.
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And that's why at first I was like, how do you go?
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How do you grow? How do you scale 10X and then go
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bankrupt because you're getting the money in?
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Doesn't that money be able to, you know, fund the?
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Business not always money though, right?
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Like sometimes it's the people, right?
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You know, you build up so much business and then you lose one
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or two people because because your culture is being damaged by
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the growth. You're that's a great point.
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And then what happens is, is you degrade your ability to service
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the market. So you don't go maybe
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financially bankrupt, but you go service quality bankrupt.
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You go your ability to react to your clients and provide the
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service that you've promised. Yeah.
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And then you start to damage your reputation and you go
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bankrupt in a different way. Yeah, because then you maybe you
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stop winning business because your brand takes a dip.
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And then the people that you had there, now you don't have enough
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work to fulfill those orders with them.
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So you got to layoff people and pretty soon you're in a
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situation where your business is in the trash.
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Exactly. So it's not always about money
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per SE. It can be about a lot of
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different factors and it's why the growth phase is so
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important. And you for us, our clients, we
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take them through a growth scaling phases.
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We call it smart velocity, and it is a way for us to measure
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through growth into scaling. But you know, all scaling at
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some point reverts to growth again because you hit these
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plateaus where you need more foundation to keep stepping up.
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So we're constantly pivoting between growth and scaling for
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our clients. OK, so back to the original
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question, I love that we went down, we're going to go down
9:01
some rabbit holes and this is good, this is good.
9:03
This is what the viewers want, by the way, to depth.
9:06
You said that one of the things I asked was how do you become a
9:08
a type of company that can become on the inked 5000 fastest
9:12
growing companies. You said the first thing was
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make sure you're ready, right. We talked a little bit about
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that growing versus scaling. What is maybe another thing or
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two that would get you to that point?
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Yeah, hire, hire better people around you to do the things that
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you're not good at. For example, those things that
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support your foundation, HR, accounting, marketing.
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We don't have a sales team yet. We grew 228% last year.
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We've never had a sales team 2. 128% but we as a as a mature
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business too, it's not like you guys are in year two or three,
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yeah, like that's. 28 years old when we started that wow growth
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curve. Something must, something big
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must have happened. It did.
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We changed our mindset. Yeah, yeah.
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We changed our mindset to where we wanted to be.
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We branded our methodologies, we've always had a methodology,
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but we never really pushed it as a brand.
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I know exactly what you mean. Own the drive the own the
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language. Drive the language.
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Yes, what they say. Yeah.
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So we've really leaned into who we are.
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Some of it is our publishing work.
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We've written books that have gotten us a lot more exposure,
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right. I get to speak and get, now I
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get paid to speak, which adds revenue to that number.
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It's, it's not a huge part of our business.
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It's less than 10%, but it does add to our consulting business.
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Right, 'cause you win clients from the speaking engagement.
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Exactly. So.
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And it what it does for us is it lowers our cost of sales because
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we're getting our our opportunities from not having to
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pay sales. That's right, yes.
10:48
So build that. Build that foundation around you
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as a founder. You can't do it all.
10:53
Read the E myth. If you could read a book that
10:57
would help you the most as a founder, read the E myth.
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It really puts into perspective what you need to prepare
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yourself from a foundational founder's viewpoint to take you
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to the next level, even take you to a next level of growth
11:15
opportunity. You mentioned when I was on your
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podcast, you mentioned the E myth and how important it was.
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It's it's a huge part of I, I was fortunate to have a mentor
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refer it to me and recommend it to me when I was young.
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And my wife and I read it before I started the company.
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And we've made it part of the fabric of how we teach as
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advisors and consultants. Can I go back to the branded
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part, you said you you had a lot of systems and proprietary type
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things that you guys did, but it wasn't necessarily branded,
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correct. How did the branding of those
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things, which I think is important and we started doing
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that recently too. How is that shifted into revenue
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for the business? Well, for one, we license some
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of our work now. So we have over 200 independent
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contractors globally that work with us really.
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And those contractors lean into us for a lot of our policies, a
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lot of our procedures, a lot of our processes and we're
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expanding that at a very rapid pace that that's for us.
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Our scaling plan is using contractors and and using
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technology to support contractors in business instead
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of humans. So that's the number one.
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Contractors instead of humans. Well, no contractors.
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Instead of W2. Employees instead of W.
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Two employees. I got you.
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That's what I thought you. I just wanted to do.
12:40
You never know what AI now you know it could go a totally
12:42
different route. Yeah, and and we're not looking
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for AI to replace humans. Yes.
12:46
We're you looking to AI to supplement the human process?
12:50
Right. I think that's kind of the
12:51
blueprint to grow in the consulting coaching business,
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isn't it? I think so 10. 99 you know, is
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that what McKenzie, Do you know anything about them?
12:58
Is that what they did? Except, like, they're a huge
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consulting company. Yeah, they're using a lot of
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contractors, but so is Deloitte. All the big guys are using a lot
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of contractors now, which benefits us, but we don't play
13:08
in that market. So we do not compete with them,
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right. But we do feed off of their
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culture and their culture is a churn and burn culture for their
13:17
consultants. And it's because they're so busy
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and they are powerful and they're actually really good at
13:23
what they do For us, we get to pick up some of the people who
13:28
can't keep the pace and our pace is more intentional and a lot
13:32
slower. And our tools allow for that to
13:36
happen. And the client size, I mean our,
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our average client is five employees to 250 employees.
13:44
You know, and and revenue can swing based on business, but
13:47
basically a million to, you know, 50 million.
13:50
So what's the working relationship like between your
13:53
business and the consultant? So if they're AW2 consultant
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it's pretty traditional. But with the contractors, yeah,
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it is very similar to W2, except a lot of them are independent
14:07
C-Suite consultants, you know, fractional CFO, fractional COO,
14:12
who have gone out to hang their shingle but found that it's
14:15
feast or famine. You get a project, the project's
14:18
over, and what they find themselves chasing is the next
14:21
long term gig. What we provide for them is an
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opportunity to have maybe multiple 456 different gigs, and
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what they get from that is security that if we lose one of
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those, we'll fill it with another one.
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And you pay them based on the engagements that they do.
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We pay them by the hour. Yeah, we pay them by the hour
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and we pay them a high percentage of what we collect.
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So we like it that way. We provide two things to them.
14:53
We provide the foundational support.
14:55
So if they're on a project and they need to lean into, let's
14:58
say, an HR problem or an operations problem, if they were
15:01
ACFO, they know they can pivot back to our team and pull
15:04
somebody off the bench and help them through that problem.
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We win by the extra revenue generated.
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They win because they look like they're operating as a team, not
15:14
just as sole practitioner. Two, we give them tools that
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they can use. We give them the tools of our
15:20
library of 3 to 4000 policy and procedure documents, supporting
15:25
documents that have been tested over the last 30 years.
15:29
They also get over line protection like their liability
15:34
insurance because the contracts are in our name.
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We carry all of the insurances that they might need and they
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don't have to go and buy all of that also.
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And then finally we win because they often times just bring the
15:45
gig to us. So we'll hold the paper on the
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gig. It's still their client and
15:50
they're free to leave. And often times they leave and
15:53
take the client, but just as often they don't take the client
15:58
and we replace them with a different contractor or AW2
16:01
employee. A lot of these these companies
16:04
mature and they move from having a fractional C-Suite person to a
16:08
permanent C-Suite person. We often times get to be
16:12
involved in choosing that permanent 1.
16:15
So we use partners for that, which means that our
16:17
relationship with our recruiting partners, our CPA firms, our law
16:21
firms, all of our partnerships around the world are
16:25
strengthened every time a fractional contractor joins us
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and allows us to be part of their delivery.
16:32
Do you think you can scale or grow to seven figures as a
16:35
founder without W2 employees? Oh, that's yes, I do.
16:40
Yeah, I very much so. What makes you say that?
16:42
Yeah. Well, because there's so many
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individual people right now that I think of Fiverr and some of
16:50
the services that are out there to go and get fractional people.
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And you, if you're, you have a good onboarding process and you
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give yourself the opportunity to slow down when you bring on new
17:02
talent contractors to support you.
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And you actually don't just grab the first person that's there.
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You can surround yourself with people that are like minded.
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And by like minded, I mean buy into whatever culture you're
17:16
trying to build, have similar mission for their success and
17:20
provide the technical skills needed for you to deliver
17:23
whatever it is you're doing. And I think we're a perfect
17:27
example. We have grown in 30 years using
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contractors. We started with contractors.
17:35
How many W2 employees do you guys have?
17:37
48 that's a lot, but we have 200 contractors. 42 W 2 employees
17:42
yes and if you're not an entrepreneur, you might be like
17:44
that's not a huge company, but go start your own business and
17:47
then you realize how much 42 employees W2 are wow that's
17:52
incredible and then you have how many contractors?
17:54
Over 200. Over 200.
17:56
Yeah, that's right. Yeah.
17:56
Wow, wow. It's a good sized business.
17:58
What would you say to someone that's like they're doing
18:01
coaching, consulting work and they're struggling because if
18:04
they bring someone new on, they don't know what they know,
18:07
right. And sure, and they you build
18:09
Sops and processes and systems, but then you're on a call with a
18:11
client and this contractor now who maybe has some experience in
18:14
the area, which is why you brought them on, but they're not
18:17
you. And they can't walk through and
18:19
solve a problem quite the same way you would.
18:21
Or maybe the client bought into the program because they thought
18:23
they were getting you as the coach, as the consultant.
18:27
That's a really difficult transition point for the
18:30
founder, first of all, because having trust in new people when
18:34
you've been the focal point of a relationship is amazingly
18:38
difficult. And I've learned that lesson
18:41
over and over and over and over again.
18:44
And funny enough, I was having this conversation on my way here
18:46
today with a team member talking about dealing with individual
18:51
failure. And individual failure is what
18:53
you're talking about. That contractor coming into an
18:55
environment and stepping on his toes, saying the wrong thing,
19:01
giving them the confidence to say, I don't know.
19:04
Also preparing your client for that type of interaction and
19:07
saying, look, we're growing. I've added this new person.
19:11
This new person is on AX whatever time frame you've
19:15
chosen learning curve, Please be patient with them.
19:19
Always know that I am behind them supporting them and
19:22
whatever happens, we will do it the right way.
19:27
And if they misspeak, please lean into that as part of the
19:30
learning process. And our clients are partners
19:32
with us. That's really good.
19:33
We on board them that way. We we sell our services that
19:38
way. We aren't just a consultant.
19:40
We're actually part of their foundation going forward and we
19:44
have clients who we like to say take us off the shelf and put us
19:47
back on the shelf all the time. We have clients that disappear
19:50
for a year and all of a sudden they'll show up one day, pull us
19:54
off the shelf, use us, and then put us back on the shelf.
19:57
It's because of that transparency.
19:59
It's because of that partnership that we have these types of
20:01
relationships and that's how you build your team around you is be
20:05
transparent about what you're doing with your clients.
20:08
That way there's no surprises. That's so good, Brian.
20:12
I'll be transparent and say right now I have a new person.
20:14
Well, not new. She's been with us a year and
20:16
I'm trying to instill my experience and wisdom and
20:19
knowledge into her. And she's doing a really good
20:21
job on calls. But there's an experience gap
20:23
still, right? And we're trying to kind of
20:24
close as much as we can, be patient with her as she grows.
20:28
I never once thought to tell the client, hey, lean into this.
20:32
If she does misspeak or something doesn't go the right
20:34
way in a meeting, I want you to lean in.
20:36
I want you to ask questions. I'm going to be involved in
20:38
everything. I'm backing her 100%.
20:40
I'm there for most of the calls, to be honest, there for the
20:43
strategy for what we do with them.
20:45
But but making sure that you tell the client that and have
20:48
them say, OK, cool. Well, she says something kind of
20:50
weird or it takes it down a direction that we didn't want to
20:53
go. I'm going to call it out and
20:55
just say it so she can grow. And then we can also get the
20:57
best service possible too. Yeah.
20:59
Wow, that's really good. So with all these W2 employees
21:02
and you've got you know, 200 plus contractors, it seems to me
21:05
like you would have to have some type of client acquisition
21:09
machine for the business. What is the client acquisition
21:12
machine for you guys? Yeah.
21:14
So it's, it's a multi point client acquisition machine.
21:17
One of the things that we require and have through every
21:22
firm that we've ever owned or been involved in is that we have
21:26
community involvement. So what that means is is that
21:29
our practice leads or myself join Chambers of Commerce, you
21:34
know, BN is, you know, different community organizations, you
21:39
know, Rotary, it doesn't matter. You can choose one to many
21:42
depending on what your area of influence is in our
21:44
organization. And we use those engagements as
21:50
client generators. It doesn't always happen
21:53
overnight. And if you're going to join, you
21:56
have to be involved. You can't just join and then
21:58
hopefully it'll just be something so many business
22:01
owners join. These community based business
22:04
organizations, lead organization, but they don't
22:06
engage. You know, they show up
22:08
sometimes, but they sit there. Just wanting business, right?
22:11
Come to me, baby, come to me. Yeah, like they're a magnet.
22:14
The other one is, is so we look for you know what B and I calls
22:19
power partners. We look for partners who will
22:23
give synergistic relationships that have parity.
22:27
And what I mean by parity is there is as much give as there
22:30
is take. And we as we just talked about
22:34
earlier, we make that very transparent.
22:37
If we're going to have a partnership, it's going to have
22:39
to be a two way St. And if at any point it ever
22:42
stops being a two way, two way St. if we take advantage of you,
22:47
not intentionally, but it just happens sometimes or vice versa,
22:51
that partnership could be at risk.
22:53
And thankfully we lose very few of our of our partners.
23:01
Our basket of partnerships has grown fairly steadily for almost
23:07
30 years. Wow, this is an episode I'm
23:10
going to go back and listen to again after this because I feel
23:13
like you're just dropping so much knowledge and wisdom from
23:16
being a business for 30 years and growing your company to what
23:18
it is today. There's only so much you can
23:21
absorb when you're the host trying to ask questions and keep
23:23
it going. You know, I want to go back and
23:25
I encourage you guys to go back and listen to these episodes,
23:27
take notes if you're if you're listening right now.
23:29
So you've been in business for 30 years or almost 30 years at
23:33
least, right? You mentioned in a LinkedIn post
23:36
that you were visiting a client, I think it was in New York, that
23:39
had been with you guys for 10 years.
23:41
That's right. What is the key to client
23:42
retention? Well, the first is transparency.
23:46
Always about everything that has to do with that client.
23:49
It doesn't matter what it is. I can tell you guys live that
23:52
that's like a core value for your company if I had to guess.
23:54
It is, yeah. You can get in so much trouble
23:58
if you try to fix problems, you know, under the sheets, under
24:03
the rug, and it doesn't quite work out.
24:06
And then you have to go and tell them later what you were doing.
24:11
What I have always found is that clients are more upset that you
24:15
tried to fix it without their knowledge than had you just told
24:18
them what the problem was originally and that you were
24:20
going to fix it. So it's like that, I think, in
24:24
life as humans. But it's a great business
24:26
lesson. But the other one is, is we
24:28
listen to our clients. We never sell them anything.
24:32
We actually listen to what their goals are.
24:34
We listen to what their objectives are.
24:37
We lean into that. That particular client started
24:40
as a succession client, which means the father was
24:44
transitioning ownership to the son.
24:47
We got that done. We had a competitor at the time
24:51
they were an EOS company. So they they subscribe to EOS,
24:55
which is a great business operating tool.
25:02
I feel like our operating tools are better actually.
25:05
They don't replace EOS, they just fill in the gaps.
25:09
So we did the transition the, the son hated EOS.
25:12
He just didn't like it because he doesn't like structure.
25:15
As soon as we got the transition done, he fired us.
25:18
So this was in 2018 when he fired us.
25:21
We had laid out what the the six month to 60 month trajectory was
25:28
going to look like for him. And we thought this will never
25:30
happen when he fired us because he was very erratic and it
25:35
wasn't erratic because he's an erratic person.
25:37
He just had a lot of goals and he's just one of those people
25:40
who was like a bull in a China shop.
25:43
Well, he was successful, but he was successful in a way that it
25:47
became just more erratic. And a year later he called me
25:51
and said I need you to come back.
25:53
And he does not prescribe to all of the organization that we
25:56
would like our clients to to follow, but he does what works
26:03
holistically and organically for his organization.
26:07
And they are a perfect example of when you lean into what the
26:09
client wants and what the client's talents are and what
26:12
the client's capabilities are and you allow them to mold what
26:18
you're bringing them into their area of influence that they'll
26:21
succeed. And when they feel that trust,
26:23
they just keep you around. And so they bring us off the
26:26
shelf about every three months on high level issues.
26:31
And then we manage their marketing relationship with one
26:35
of our marketing partners every day.
26:37
So we're involved with them all the time.
26:41
And yeah, that's a fairly typical succession client for
26:47
us, yeah. What's the typical engagement
26:49
just if you were to start with the client today, is it 12
26:52
months, six months? 24 mile foot is a typical
26:54
engagement. I mean for us it's almost
26:58
perpetual, OK, most of our charge monthly.
27:01
Retainer. We don't.
27:02
We always charge by the hour, which I have debates with my
27:06
peers. A lot of people, a lot of
27:07
founders say, do never charge by the.
27:09
Hour they do and I don't know, I'll tell you I've built a 30
27:14
year consultancy and we charge by the hour.
27:17
Now we do have flat rate things. For example, our biz vision
27:20
process is a flat rate, OK. But everything that happens
27:24
after the biz vision process is by the hour.
27:27
Now that doesn't mean that we don't give budget dollars as we
27:31
do. We're very transparent.
27:33
We call them not greater than contracts.
27:35
Every piece of work we do comes with a not greater than clause.
27:39
So for example, you call them retainers, we call them not
27:42
greater than clauses. If we do monthly accounting for
27:46
a company, we'll say we will do all of your fractional C-Suite
27:51
and your monthly bookkeeping for a fee, not to exceed 8000 a
27:55
month. Got it.
27:56
OK. Or not to exceed 3000 a month.
27:59
Isn't that a lot of hours to track?
28:00
Sure it is, but the amount of information we get about
28:04
ourselves from our time tracking tools is more valuable than the
28:09
effort to put into it. I know as a founder and as
28:14
somebody who's seen our organization grow from, you
28:17
know, hundreds of hours of week of consulting to thousands of
28:21
hours a week of consulting, there was no way as a founder I
28:24
could keep track of that and it would drive a lot of people
28:27
insane. We have time tracking tools
28:29
where I get summaries from my team about what our teams are
28:33
doing, how efficient they are, what our utilization numbers
28:36
are, how much clients are spending, how much it takes to
28:39
solve problems, how much it takes each person to solve
28:42
different problems. So for example, we might have a
28:45
seasoned person who tackles, let's say, a bank wreck for a
28:49
client and it takes them an hour.
28:51
A new person might take two hours.
28:53
Well, how do you factor the learning curve into your fee
28:56
structure to get them from 2:00 to 1:00?
28:58
Because there is a learning curve that gets them the
29:01
experience they need and face the challenges that come from
29:05
that. We use all of that data to help
29:08
build our learning models, our consulting models.
29:11
We also feed that data into our AI to help our AI learn from
29:15
what our teams are doing. Because we're record in our
29:18
time. They do a narrative of what
29:20
they've done like a doctor does. When you go to a doctor, he's
29:24
he's transcribing what he's doing for you.
29:26
We do the same thing and we upload that into our AI models.
29:30
What do you say to the business owner or founder that says
29:35
retainers? Monthly retainers are the way to
29:36
go? Charging by the hour is
29:38
ridiculous. That's for them so.
29:41
That's an argument to be made for the monthly retainers.
29:43
Sure what? Do you think's wrong with that
29:44
model? I mean, obviously you mentioned
29:46
the tracking and things like. That I think that's the, I think
29:48
that's, I think they're missing the data that's really important
29:52
to understanding what your people are doing and how your
29:55
people are impacting and influencing themselves and the
29:58
client. And I think not having that data
30:01
long term is a detriment to your future.
30:06
Now I don't know what that means because each business is
30:10
different. Will they overcome that?
30:12
Sure. Will they be profitable still?
30:14
Sure. We have lots of partners and
30:17
lots of clients in professional services who flat fee they're
30:22
amazingly successful. But the founders can't tell me
30:26
what their teams do and they can't tell me the disparity in
30:29
learning or the disparity in in increase in onboarding different
30:35
types of clients or engagements. They they can barely tell me
30:39
what their utilization numbers are.
30:41
And that's an interesting perspective.
30:43
If I was sitting here with the Brian of 30 years ago, just
30:47
starting the business, new to entrepreneurship, what would
30:50
that Brian look like? Yeah, So unfortunately, I wasn't
30:53
new to entrepreneurship, which actually was a detriment because
30:57
getting too much knowledge, and I'm under the table doing quotes
31:02
because the knowledge you get isn't always the right
31:05
knowledge. When you're younger, your
31:07
perceptions are different, your arrogance is different, your ego
31:11
is different. And so the difference is, is
31:14
that I've learned that ego's important when you understand it
31:20
and you can appreciate what it's there for, but it doesn't guide
31:24
you and drive you. It supports you and gives you
31:28
the confidence that you need to get through difficult
31:30
situations. Explain that a little bit more.
31:33
Well, ego is solely human, you know.
31:36
There's no other mammal on earth that has an ego.
31:39
And it can be dangerous. When we think we're too good, we
31:44
don't listen as much. We go faster, we don't, We're
31:48
less intentional, and we are also less intentional for others
31:52
and more intentional for self, which is very dangerous,
31:55
especially in the consulting world, but in any world it's
31:59
dangerous. So those got in the way early
32:03
on. I write about this in our first
32:05
book about my journey from being this immature, experienced but
32:12
very immature business person to this learning curve I had to go
32:17
through as a human and as a professional.
32:20
That really started in the mid 90s when I started the company
32:25
and has never stopped now. But I really realized it the
32:30
latter part of the 90s, early part of the 2000's.
32:35
The other thing is, is going fast isn't good.
32:40
You know, you don't need to go fast to be efficient.
32:44
You don't need to go fast to be successful.
32:46
You need to be intentional. And if intentional means you're
32:49
ultra slow, there's a reason for it.
32:51
Let yourself learn at a pace that supports less mistakes.
32:58
Now, that doesn't mean you're going to make, I didn't say
33:00
mistake, no mistakes, but less mistakes so that when you make
33:03
those mistakes, you can actually look at them more intentionally
33:06
instead of justifying them, ignoring them because they they
33:12
stop becoming mistakes when you do them over and over again.
33:15
And they just turn into stupidity, quite frankly.
33:17
Yeah, making the same mistake over and over.
33:19
Again. And you do insanity and when
33:21
you. But you do that, yeah, When you
33:23
go too fast, yes. And you smooth them over and you
33:26
justify them. Yeah.
33:27
And you get lost in the justification.
33:29
What drives justification, I believe, is your ego.
33:33
Yeah, that's so true. 2004 was a crossroads year for you.
33:37
What happened? It was huge.
33:39
So I was travelling a lot. So IA while consulting, I'm
33:43
sorry, doing consulting yes and I had taken on a Denver is our
33:49
base or was our base, I should say.
33:51
And I don't know why this is the case, but we always seem to add
33:56
clients outside of where we're at.
33:59
It it a lot easier if they're just locally.
34:01
You know, it would be easier and you know, historically it's been
34:05
even today it's this way. We had twice as three times as
34:08
many clients out of Illinois than we do here.
34:10
And our and our biggest team is here.
34:13
However, I was travelling a lot. I had three children at the
34:18
time. My youngest was 4.
34:21
And, you know, my son, who is my youngest was asking, you know,
34:29
the carpet cleaner literally to play with him because his dad
34:33
wasn't around. And my wife told me that story.
34:37
And it, you know, it really hit me why it didn't hit me with my
34:43
daughters. I don't know.
34:44
My daughters would say, you know, maybe well, you know,
34:47
Henry's your son, so he's more important.
34:48
But that wasn't it. I think it was the accumulation
34:51
of so much travel and so much disconnection.
34:55
On top of that. We were in ego phase.
34:57
We had built this big home on a golf course.
34:59
We had the cars we were leaning into.
35:02
We were making a lot of money and we were spending it like we
35:05
were making a lot of money. And the pressure was phenomenal
35:10
to bring that money in for our organization.
35:13
Anyhow, we had an opportunity to disconnect, if you will, from
35:20
that pace, not disconnect from the company, but from the pace
35:24
and we moved our family to Oregon.
35:28
And it is my first lesson in intentionality and really being
35:32
intentional about certain things, one family and to our
35:36
company. Where was our company going to
35:38
go when I took myself out of our headquarters, moved my family to
35:42
Oregon, but left the entire organization back in Denver?
35:46
Did you feel like you had to move to get away from it?
35:48
I did, I, I not to get away from it, I had to move to get
35:52
intentional with my family and I took on a long term contract
35:56
that I knew was going to take up 70% of my time with a client
36:01
that we had a family client that owned.
36:04
It's a billion dollar family who owned hundreds of companies and
36:09
they owned these companies in Southern Oregon and they made us
36:13
an offer we couldn't refuse, which included a guaranteed 3
36:15
year contract in equity. So we moved to Southern Oregon.
36:21
I moved offices literally into the second floor of a bowling
36:25
alley and started running IA remotely from there.
36:32
And you know what we like to say is the rest is history because
36:37
that was the pivot point not only for us as a family, but
36:40
also for IA. It's when IA actually got it's
36:43
it's traction. Interesting.
36:45
Yeah, when you actually more more intentional about the time
36:49
you spent with your family, yes, you got the business grew even
36:53
more. Yeah, I got out of people's way.
36:54
So at the time we owned also an MSP and.
37:00
Managed service provider for those that don't, yeah.
37:03
And I sold that company to our employees and I just walked away
37:06
from it. I just, they took 15 years to
37:09
pay us, but I just walked away. I had nothing to do with it,
37:13
which that company had been in our family really since 92.
37:19
So for me to walk away from that was a big deal.
37:23
But I just turned it off completely.
37:25
I turned it over to people who had been with us since the early
37:28
90s and they bought it from us and they ran it and they made it
37:32
amazingly successful. And I leaned into our
37:35
consulting. I leaned into our investment in
37:39
Southern Oregon, but I also also leaned into what we were doing
37:42
externally with our teams and really started to focus on
37:45
developing our tool set, our our biz vision process, how we were
37:51
going to approach clients. And I got very intentional about
37:55
who we were as a consulting organization.
37:58
And when I did that, I started to shed feeling like I had to be
38:02
involved in everything. And I started becoming, I still
38:06
did tactical work because I enjoy it, but I was also able to
38:09
slow down and let it grow at its own pace.
38:12
And it took four years of that before we had a good foundation.
38:17
And how did the relationship with your kids and life change
38:20
from all this? Yeah, it was amazing.
38:22
I mean, I saw them every day instead of, you know, every two
38:28
weeks. Is that hard at first though
38:30
making the adjustment? It was, yeah.
38:32
And I still had to travel. I still, we joke, Renee and I,
38:39
I've been with my wife now 35 years, and we joke that we've
38:43
been together 35 years because I travel so much.
38:46
And, you know, that's funny, but it's somewhat true.
38:51
Our relationship is renewed every time I travel and she
38:54
travels with me now because we're empty nesters.
38:57
But it really, it really did change the way that we thought
39:03
about our time together. There was resentment on both
39:07
sides, I think when I traveled all the time when we lived in
39:10
Colorado, you know, But it became our life became more
39:16
intentional, not just our personal life, but our business
39:18
life. She got involved in our business
39:21
more. The kids got involved in our
39:24
business more. We tried to spend where we lived
39:27
in Southern Oregon. You had to drive everywhere,
39:30
hundreds of miles. So I bought a Suburban and we
39:32
spent a lot of time in the car together, you know, things like
39:35
that. And we were forced to be this
39:39
family in the time that we were together.
39:42
And it's paid dividends. I mean, my kids were just here
39:47
over the weekend because they went to a festival together and
39:49
they're all grown adults and live all over the country.
39:52
But they came here first, came together and then went.
39:55
So we are we are more of a family than we ever would have
39:59
been had we just stayed on the trajectory we were post or pre
40:05
move to Oregon. It's such an important story
40:08
because I think a lot of founders, all of us at some
40:11
point in time, especially like maybe early on, but I know some
40:14
people in their 50s, sixties that are still that way where
40:16
it's just grow the business, grow the business, grow the
40:18
business. And we we sort of lose sight of
40:21
what are we even doing it for? Why, you know, is it to support
40:24
a lifestyle and is it to support our family and the things that
40:27
we want to do in our life? Or is it just growing to to get
40:30
to the next milestone? Because those the next milestone
40:33
just gets pushed out to the next one and the next one and the
40:36
next one. And then pretty soon you look
40:37
back and you go, damn, I missed out on this and this and the
40:39
kids and the one right. I mean, it's just a kind of a,
40:44
it's an easy trap to fall into, I feel like.
40:46
It is. Especially when you're very
40:49
motivated and you're driven, you're an entrepreneur type that
40:51
you know, you're just go. Yeah.
40:53
I think being transparent about that is what's most important, I
40:56
think. What happens is your family
40:59
starts to think that the business is more important
41:03
because they don't understand what drives that entrepreneur.
41:06
They're not transparent with the family about what actually makes
41:10
them happy as an individual. And each of us is different.
41:13
And I think the more you can share with those that are close
41:17
to you about what drives you, there might have to be
41:20
sacrifices, there might not. You might find out they have the
41:23
same drive and they just want to be more involved.
41:25
I know families who we've supported through succession,
41:29
who you know, the wife and the kids are just as driven about
41:33
the business as the entrepreneurs.
41:35
And they find once they they open that transparency and have
41:40
that clarity with each other, they start moving forward again.
41:44
But what they find was they were battling each other and they
41:47
didn't even realize they were battling over the same
41:50
objectives. So transparency solves a lot of
41:53
things that bring so much clarity.
41:56
And you can apply that anywhere. So it's not that it's bad to
41:59
have these tendencies and, and these urges and, and these
42:03
goals. What's bad is, is when you don't
42:05
really define it clearly in your area of influence, whatever that
42:09
is, that includes your wife, your kids, even your teams.
42:13
If your teams don't know where you're going, everything you do
42:17
is chaos, and that's dangerous. Yeah.
42:21
You mentioned 2008 being a tough time in the business and then
42:24
COVID. Which one was tougher and what
42:27
was the lowest point in the business and how did you get out
42:29
of it? Wow.
42:32
So I think the lowest part of our business wasn't really 2000
42:37
and 2008 was tough. 2008 was tough for a different reason.
42:42
We actually took a huge hit in utilization in 2008 when the
42:47
when the economic crash happened and we had to find a way to
42:50
bring utilization numbers up. What do you mean by that?
42:52
So as I talked about, we have a lot of contractors.
42:57
So for us, utilization for 70%, utilization for a consultant is
43:04
an important number at 70%, we are running, you know, 5 by 5.
43:09
I mean we are just clicking and 70% is 70% of full time.
43:15
So if you can think of a person who works 1000 hours, if we can
43:19
get 700 hours billable out of them, then we're doing really
43:23
good. Well, those numbers dip below 50
43:27
because as the financial impact of the 2008 crashes hit small
43:31
business, they immediately started to retract their spend.
43:36
They were transitioning a lot of what they needed done to
43:41
themselves because we have a small business base.
43:44
I mean, we don't have layers and layers in the companies that we
43:48
advise. So we had to come up with a way
43:50
to increase utilization and do it in a way that touched all of
43:55
our consultants. So we addressed that, but it was
44:00
a learning curve for us. We had some big losses and I had
44:07
to also deal with what that was doing to our local business.
44:10
We had just built a hotel in Southern Oregon.
44:13
Worst time to buy a hotel or build a hotel?
44:16
We build it from scratch. Oh my goodness.
44:18
We had an entertainment center that we had equity in, which is
44:21
bowling and and arcades and you know, people didn't have
44:25
discretionary in terms of spend. So that just kind of layered it
44:28
for us. Now, in those moments, what's
44:32
your mindset? Are you doubting things?
44:34
Are you that you know kind of going back to the foundation or
44:37
you just saying I've been here before done this will weather it
44:41
or fine. Yes.
44:42
So I don't really doubt much. Was that the case early on or is
44:48
that something you learned? No, that's something I learned,
44:50
yeah. And, and going through the
44:51
experiences, you kind of, you know, you have the scars.
44:54
Yes, every failure to me now isn't really.
44:58
I don't really like that word. You know, every issue that we
45:02
face is just a learning opportunity.
45:04
Yeah, that's right. And I actually counsel A-Team
45:06
member at least once a week, sometimes multiple times,
45:10
multiple team members when they beat themselves up over this.
45:14
Don't doubt yourself. Learn, learn from whatever it is
45:17
that's that's initiating the doubt and use that as a way to
45:21
to improve. Period.
45:22
We don't like the word change. We, we replace that with
45:26
improve. If, if you're changing to
45:28
change, you're doing it the wrong way.
45:29
If you're, if you're changing to improve, you're on the right
45:32
mindset. So for me, it was I was fearful
45:40
for what was going to happen to the people that I was
45:43
responsible for, which not only included our IA team, but also
45:48
included in this small community where we lived, the 80 people
45:53
that worked for us between a hotel and an entertainment
45:56
center. And then roughly 100 to 120
46:02
contractors and employees at IA and watching them suffer because
46:07
we couldn't keep the pace. Our clients just didn't have the
46:10
work for us. And coming up with solutions was
46:13
very stressful. But we were always, at this
46:17
point, we were very transparent with everybody about what we
46:22
were going to be doing. Everybody always knew the hotel.
46:25
I don't care if you are one of the room cleaners in our hotel,
46:30
if you were the snack bar worker at the entertainment center or
46:35
if you were a consultant, you knew what we were doing to
46:38
overcome the challenges we had from a business perspective.
46:42
And we were shoulder to shoulder with you.
46:44
For example, I plowed. I bought a plow and put it on
46:48
the front of our vehicle that we picked up people from the
46:53
airport for our hotel. And we saved, you know, $2000 a
46:57
month plowing our three acres of parking lot at our entertainment
47:01
center, our hotel, by putting a plow on the front of our pickup
47:05
truck. And I did it, you know, and
47:08
that's. Where you have to push the ego
47:10
aside your point earlier and be humble and say this is what's
47:12
required to get us out of this. Yes, you know, I worked behind
47:16
the bar on Tuesday nights to save a shift and give people
47:20
some time off, and it was the slowest night, so I wasn't
47:23
taking a lot away from our team and their ability to collect
47:27
tips and build those tip relationships you need in those
47:30
environments. So it was little things like
47:32
that that add up and Renee and I stopped taking that.
47:38
I would be paid the same hourly rate.
47:42
So everybody in our company is paid hourly.
47:44
It's a very unique model that we have.
47:48
I determined that I would be paid the same rate as the lowest
47:50
paid employee in the company during that time.
47:54
So the lowest paid person at an entertainment center is about,
47:57
you know, $0.10 over minimum wage.
48:00
That's what I got paid. And I, I kept it that way
48:03
actually up until about two years ago when we brought on our
48:08
first partner. But I've always had that mindset
48:12
that compensation for me as a business owner comes in profit,
48:18
not in a salary. That's right when you look back.
48:22
At the last 30 years, was it all worth it?
48:25
Yes, I wouldn't. Change anything.
48:28
If I changed, you know, I did this Ted talk and I talked about
48:33
the the butterfly effect. If I changed anything in the
48:37
past, everything we might not even be sitting here.
48:41
Probably wouldn't be. Yeah, so.
48:44
I look. If I look back at the past, it's
48:46
for one reason. Can I, can I learn something
48:49
from it? Or can I look at it and think,
48:53
wow, that was just amazing. Those are both positive
48:56
statements. Even the negatives.
48:59
If I look at something that was negative in my past, I'm not
49:01
looking at it to beat myself up. I'm looking at it and either I
49:04
overcame it, which is a positive, or is there anything
49:08
else I can learn from that experience?
49:09
Today, it's the only two two. Reasons why I look.
49:14
At past negative issues, AI is like the big talking.
49:18
Point right now, obviously. Everyone's talking about it,
49:20
it's got all the hype and the buzz.
49:22
How do you think AI impacts service based businesses like
49:25
consulting firms and coaching companies over the next five
49:29
years? Well, I think it will.
49:32
Influence a lot of us in a bad way I think a lot of people are
49:36
leaning into it to do their jobs and I think that's dangerous Me
49:39
too the reason is a crutch in a lot of ways where it's like I.
49:43
Just see people going right to AI the first thing without
49:45
thinking, without putting their insights.
49:48
And I think it's it's not a good crutch if you're using it that
49:50
way. And I think it takes away from
49:51
your own intellectual thought process, your creativity.
49:55
But certainly it could be used as an assistant, as a creative
49:57
assistant is what I like to say. Yes, yeah.
50:00
And and we would agree, 100. Percent.
50:02
In fact, we have policies on AI usage in our organization that
50:09
tie directly to what you just said.
50:11
You cannot use it to do your work.
50:14
You can use it to review your work.
50:17
You can use it to edit your English, but you can't use it to
50:22
answer the question. Interesting.
50:24
I love that so and. In our work, that's really.
50:27
Important for one is that if you allow AI to.
50:32
Answer a client. 'S problem and AI answers it
50:35
wrong we've now inherited A liability from something that we
50:38
have very little control over so we posed it that way to our team
50:43
first and like you know do you want to be the person who tells
50:47
your client that you didn't do the work AI did the work and
50:50
you're sorry it's wrong do you actually want to have that
50:54
because. I'm not having that.
50:55
Conversation. I don't.
50:56
I don't. That's a tough conversation,
50:58
honestly, and I don't. Have those conversations for.
51:01
Our team, if our team makes a mistake, it's our team's
51:04
responsibility to be accountable to the client.
51:07
That's right, period. And that's how we teach
51:09
accountability also because it you're going to make mistakes,
51:13
so you might as well learn how to do it early.
51:16
So on the good side is it is a great tool for checking
51:25
yourself, your English, you know, adding context or asking
51:31
if you have enough context or don't have enough context.
51:36
Are there any differing opinions that you can do research on?
51:39
Provide me the research and the reference material that goes
51:42
with the research. One of the things I think people
51:45
don't do is they trust AI, whereas if you ask AI, it'll
51:49
actually give you the data that it used to give you an answer,
51:53
and you can actually look at that yourself.
51:55
And I think humans get lazy with AI, totally.
51:59
And I think that's the biggest danger.
52:01
I agree we'll get intellectually lazy.
52:03
We take the path of least resistance in those.
52:05
Cases and AI gives us that path and it's an easy out and
52:08
sometimes we don't want the path.
52:10
We want the path that is the best path for us to take to get
52:12
to where we want to go. Often times that's a little bit
52:15
more of a challenging path, right.
52:17
So you don't think AI is going to, you don't think companies
52:20
are going to go? We don't need a consultant,
52:21
we'll just use AI. Yeah, they will.
52:23
Yeah, yeah, they do it to us now.
52:25
And how does that work? They come back exactly?
52:27
Yes, and it will happen. Change in five to. 10 years when
52:30
it's a. Lot better.
52:32
I think it's going to change contextually.
52:35
What I mean by this is, is I think what we will see is a lot
52:38
of initial AI responses. So here's my problem.
52:42
Let's say I have, I have a turnover problem at, at my
52:47
office. And the turnover problem is
52:51
probably something to do with the lack of understanding of
52:54
what the position is. So people come into the
52:56
organization, they either don't understand the position they
52:59
were hired for or they didn't understand the culture they were
53:02
being hired into. So AI will tell them that, you
53:05
know, hey, you have, you know, you have a communication
53:08
problem. You're not setting your, your,
53:10
your candidates up for success. AI can't be the human that
53:16
teaches the, that does the onboarding of a human and
53:19
transitions them from a new person in an organization to an
53:23
integrated person in an organization.
53:26
So what's going to happen is, is people will start to self
53:29
identify some of the issues they're having through AI, but
53:33
AI will not be able to do the work that's needed to fix the
53:39
issue because these are plumbing companies and construction
53:42
companies and and they're small, OK, most businesses are small to
53:48
do that work, to develop a position guide, to teach it to
53:53
onboard it to, to do everything that's involved in that requires
53:57
a human and it requires a human that isn't in construction.
54:00
Well, they're in the construction business.
54:02
And every time that they try to stop doing construction to do
54:06
onboarding or accounting or anything else, they're taking
54:08
away from their core value. So what's going to happen is, is
54:11
you have people that lean into AI for problem identification.
54:18
But I believe that consultants will then transition more into
54:22
actually the the task based on, you know, remediation work that
54:29
needs to be done. And we'll be supported by that
54:31
also. Yeah, yeah.
54:34
Last question for you. What?
54:35
Would you say to a founder that's.
54:36
Maybe 354045 years old sitting across from you and you're able
54:40
to kind of give them one piece of advice as they move forward,
54:43
not really knowing anything about them, but you know that
54:45
they're a founder, they're a business owner, and they want to
54:48
grow their business, have a great life.
54:49
Yeah, that's a great question. And my answer is always.
54:52
The same Slow down. Slow down and listen to the
54:56
environment you're in and make sure that you understand what
55:01
you're doing, why you're doing it, who you're doing it for, and
55:05
you understand the people who are supporting you.
55:07
But you have to slow down and listen.
55:09
And if you do that, the issues will.
55:14
Come to the top faster. The solutions to those issues
55:17
will also come to the top faster, and you will also
55:22
respect the people that are around you more because you're
55:25
starting to listen to them. And not everything they say has
55:29
the value you need. But everything they say is still
55:32
important because it pertains to somebody in your area of
55:35
influence. So if they're wrong, you have an
55:37
opportunity to help them be better.
55:40
If they're right, you have an opportunity to improve yourself.
55:43
Either way, you're going to improve your overall area of
55:47
influence in your environment. Like the more I learn about
55:50
business. The more I realize I don't.
55:52
Know about business, you know, it's like one of those things
55:55
where the more you learn about it, the more you realize you
55:57
don't know. But man, this has been a great
55:59
conversation. Brian, I really appreciate you
56:01
doing this. I this is going to be this is
56:04
one of the top episodes for me. I'm going to go back and listen
56:06
to this again. Thank you.
56:07
I really appreciate everything that you shared a lot of wisdom.
56:09
Appreciate that. Thank you.
56:10
Where can. People find you, connect with
56:12
you. Learn more about what.
56:12
You guys do? Yeah.
56:13
So our website is. IA Business advisors.com so you
56:19
can go there, learn all about who we are, where we've come
56:22
from our our team. Also the I am team series, which
56:27
is a website that's all about our culture and behavioral
56:32
development work that we do within organizations and
56:34
individually for through leaders.
56:36
And then I'm on LinkedIn. Yeah, so connect with me on
56:40
LinkedIn. We share a lot.
56:43
Everything we talked about today we share through our social.
56:47
So I almost forgot rapid. We'll do this rapid.
56:50
Fire, since we don't have a lot of time, I got 3 questions from
56:53
the Founder Talk Club, which is our community around the podcast
56:56
where people can ask questions for upcoming guests.
56:58
So we'll kind of rapid fire these as much as we can.
57:00
The first one is what's the biggest mindset shift small
57:02
business owners need to make in order to go from survival mode
57:05
to scaling mode? Yeah, well, you know to.
57:08
Risk of being a broken record. Slow down and listen to your
57:11
market and understand where you're at and get yourself
57:15
through growth to scaling. Love it.
57:17
What advice? I feel like we did answer some
57:19
of these. In the show.
57:20
So what advice do you have for founders who feel stuck between
57:22
wanting to grow their business and also being burnt out?
57:25
That's a great 1 so. Understand why you're burnt out.
57:29
So which takes the slow down moment?
57:32
Can you improve that objectively?
57:35
It's a deep thought process and if you can't start looking at
57:39
succession. The last one was are there?
57:42
Risk of scaling your business too fast?
57:44
But we covered that and absolutely there are.
57:46
Yes, my takeaways were slow down, listen, be intentional and
57:53
be transparent with your team, with your clients, with your
57:55
family. So, Brian, thank you again for
57:57
being on the Founder Talk podcast.
57:59
And maybe at some point we could do around too.
58:01
Yeah. Thank you, Al, Appreciate you.
58:02
Yeah, thank you. Oh.
58:04
Man, that was what do you think, man?
58:05
That was fun. God, that was.
58:10
I love doing podcast. Alex, you're really.
58:12
Good in this setting too cuz seeing you from a.
58:14
Host is one thing, but from a guest it's a totally different
58:17
cuz now you really get to open up and we get to hear from you
58:20
versus when you're a host it's more about the guest, right?
58:23
Wow, yeah, I really enjoy. Turn these off real.
58:26
Quick.