Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Natalie Dawson - Co-Founder of Cardone Ventures | How She Went From $0 - $84 Million in 2 Years

Transcript

Natalie Dawson - Co-Founder of Cardone Ventures | How She Went From $0 - $84 Million in 2 Years · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  97% of businesses fail because they aren't focused on the right things.
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  Instead of focusing on the things that they like to do, they have to start focusing on
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  the things that have to be done in order to skill their business.
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  Playing a game with finding great people is a business owner.
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  If you're playing this game of people, you're really thinking about,
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  I need to create a brand as a place where people come to find success.
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  When you think you've gotten good at something, you might not be so good at that thing.
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  I do find that a lot of business owners really struggle with that level of seriousness
• 0:30
  and that level of commitment because they create a business around a lifestyle.
• 0:34
  If you don't have people around you telling you what's next or helping you prepare for what
• 0:39
  that experience is like, you feel like your purpose is gone.
• 0:42
  Bigger things in life, it's making sure that the perfection that you want
• 0:46
  isn't the thing that actually stops you from continuing to move forward.
• 0:51
  Welcome to Success Story. I'm your host, Scott Clary.
• 0:54
  The Success Story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network.
• 0:58
  Now, HubSpot is the resource that you need to tap into if you are an entrepreneur.
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  Natalie, I'm very excited to sit down.
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  We're going to have a lot of fun.
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  I want to start off with this.
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  So your thesis is that 97% of businesses fail
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  because they don't start the work.
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  Now, I wanted to start the work because most entrepreneurs would think,
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  I've started my business.
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  I've started the work.
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  This is not the work you're talking about.
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  Why do 97% of businesses fail?
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  97% of businesses fail because they aren't focused on the right things.
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  I believe that if you see a business in the ECOM space,
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  you see a business in the HVAC base space.
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  You see a business in the Chiropractic space.
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  Whatever business it is that we're talking about,
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  there is another business in that same industry that is winning,
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  that is succeeding, that has figured out how to adapt to whatever the market conditions are.
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  Even if you are a printer and we know that there is less printing demand today than there
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  was 20 years ago, there are still examples of somebody being successful in that space.
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  And so the question has to become, what did that business owner and that team of people
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  spend their time on that is different from where you are spending your time?
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  They figured out something different.
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  They figured out a better product market fit.
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  They figured out how to message their product and service better.
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  They figured out what they needed to tweak and they really learned
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  through the process of growing and scaling their business.
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  Now, once you have achieved product market fit,
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  my perception and working with the business owners that I work with is that,
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  instead of focusing on the things that they like to do,
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  they have to start focusing on the things that have to be done in order to skill their business,
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  like creating systems and processes and truly putting the foundation in place.
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  But until they get product market fit, until they're able to figure out who they're selling to,
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  how they're talking to that person, all the things that you know so much about,
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  they don't need to focus on starting the work, which is the book title that I'm coming out with,
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  and how I'm really framing that because the work that they have started is good work.
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  It's important work, but they do reach what we call a break point.
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  This break point happens around the $3 million in revenue mark for the majority of businesses.
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  And when that mark happens, when they figure the way to message their product and service
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  to their clients, and they have continued to consistently shown that they can do that,
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  the work is an entirely different set of challenges, and it is an entirely different way of thinking
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  that they need to start prioritizing. And what I find is the majority of business owners just
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  don't start prioritizing those things. They continue to focus on if they like the sales aspect.
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  They're going to continue to stay close to the customer and figure out how to be a better salesperson.
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  At a $3 million business, you do not need to continue to focus on being a better salesperson.
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  It is an entirely different set of things that you have to start doing and force you and your team
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  to put in place in order to truly scale that business.
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  So I have an interesting story. So I will not name the name of the business, but I know a business
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  founder, it was a 10-year-old business, and the company was doing about $10 million in revenue.
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  And the founder was responsible because he held all the main accounts since day one,
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  because he was door knocking to close business when he first started, and he was probably responsible
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  for about $4 million or that $10 million in revenue, which is absolutely wild.
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  So think about problems with exiting, scaling, all of it, right? So that breakpoint at $3 million,
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  you mentioned a couple things that I want to unpack so it's clear. So you mentioned product market fit,
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  you mentioned breakpoint at $3 million, you mentioned focus of things, focusing on things
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  that are fun to do but not necessarily scaling. So let's unpack maybe some of those concepts first
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  just to provide some context and framework. So product market fit, how do you define product market fit
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  for a business? Once a business has determined what their product is and that they are able to sell
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  that product consistently through a single channel, through whatever their acquisition channel is,
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  and I don't have a metric that I use that I'm like, you are the, and you understand the marketing
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  and the sales, the CAC, the LTV ratio to CAC, what we're looking for is in a standard businesses,
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  HVAC, chiropractic, marketing agencies, at $3 million in revenue, if you are not the person
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  continuing to sell that product in your business, you have figured out how to have a product
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  or a service, whatever it is that you're selling, that you're able to grow if you were to add
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  an additional channel outside of that first channel. That's what we're looking for in the businesses
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  that were defining as product market fit for the SMB space. Okay, cool. So they have one revenue
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  stream and they have one channel that trying to figure out how to diversify but they do have
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  paying customers, everything's working, they're hitting a $3 million dollar and I actually think
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  this is actually interesting because I thought a break point in the business was, I thought it was
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  10 million and about 50 employees. So when it starts to get complicated and that's when
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  you have to hire, you know, talk about COO with EOS, it's called an integrator, there's
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  all these different versions, right? So what happens at $3 million? Because $3 million,
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  I'm assuming, because a solo printer could scale to $1 million, I'm assuming, in most cases,
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  $3 million, what's happening in most businesses in SMB space? Processes break.
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  The business owner. At $3 million? Well, they can't continue to be the person that's leading
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  their business. They have to have other people. Some sort of leadership team and does not
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  see suite. It's probably not even a VP suite. They're bringing in directors. Think of a state or
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  sales team. You have a salesperson. That's how you start your business. Most business owners
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  might even be the salesperson. In order to duplicate themselves in the sales function so that they
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  can actually focus on operations, some HR things, maybe some marketing pieces, they have to
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  hire a second salesperson. That is responsible for sales. Then, when that salesperson is continuing
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  to do what they need to do in order to sell inside the business with only one salesperson, they can
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  only figure out how to... I feel like I just lost my whole train of thought. Well, no, they have
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  one salesperson and they need to replicate that. But obviously... Have to then hire more people.
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  Of course, yeah, but it's difficult, because if the first salesperson is the founder and they
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  pass it over to one salesperson, performance is going to drop immediately because they're not as
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  invested in the business as the founder was. They're already like, okay, so now I'm investing in this
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  person, even though they're getting 20 leads a week, they're not converting at 30% or converting
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  at 10%. Then all this starts to break down. The machine doesn't scale because that one person
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  they hired. More often than not, they'll be benchmarking against their own performance as a founder
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  and it's scary to continue to grow, so then they default back to doing the stuff themselves,
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  which is not good, and they don't want to lose the relationship with these high value accounts and
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  whatnot. And then they're back inside the function. Exactly. It has the salesperson. Okay, so that
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  particular break point, what is best practice? Because you work with, and I want to learn more about
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  where you came from, how you built this month, because now you have over a billion undermanagement,
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  which is absolutely phenomenal. So now you can test stuff at scale, which is always fun.
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  But this $3 million break point, people are selling, founders are selling to hire one salesperson.
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  It's not working. Very common problem and SMB, small business. What do you do with that?
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  When they know that it's not working, when they know when it's not working, when the people
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  is at the process is what is it that takes it to like over that $3 million? They have to duplicate
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  themselves because they are still the ones that are in these functions because they've hired the
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  person. They've hired the salesperson. They've hired the head of marketing. They have some form
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  of a leadership team in place, but they are not actually the ones that know how to do what is
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  needed to get done inside these businesses. And so what we're looking at at the $3 million mark
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  is how does the founder take the skill set that they have and truly duplicate through looking at
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  measurements? Every single day, what are the metrics inside that business to let that founder know?
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  Is this working or is this not working? When they have the measurements in place and they see
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  what's not working, ideally, you're not just looking at what's broken and you're trying to fix
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  as if you're a firefighter every single day. What's broken? You're looking at what has worked as a
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  business owner. What worked for you? When you were in the sales process, what was the documentation
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  and all of the recorded sales calls for you in that function? Same with your marketing. If you're not
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  looking at your leads every single day and it's shocking when you work with business owners who are
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  in smaller industries and who are more fragmented, they don't have access to things like CRMs or they
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  don't think that they do. They don't perceive that that's a problem. They might not even be looking
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  at their financials on more than a quarterly basis. And so you're really putting this structure
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  into place inside the business to let the founder know or the entrepreneur know what's broken
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  today, assembling a team to help solve that problem is their next set of challenges because they now
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  see what's broken, but then they're playing firefighter by them being the ones that's fixing it.
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  So we find that you have to put this foundation in place. What are the financial review
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  processes looking like? Are they even looking at their financials on a consistent basis and
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  expecting from their outsourced bookkeeper because they probably can't afford to hire someone
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  in house to see when it's happening to look at the correct numbers to be able to then formulate a
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  plan if I'm off on my EBITDA, if I'm off on my revenue, then what do I actually have to do in order
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  to fix that? But I don't even know if I have to fix that if I'm not looking at it. And so that first
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  breakpoint really is those foundational elements through your financial review, your metrics,
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  and the training and duplication of the owner into additional team members to allow that
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  business to start to go into what would be the next breakpoint, which would be from $3 million
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  to $8 million in revenue, which then you're looking at hiring an additional leadership
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  player to actually put those correct systems and processes in place because they're focused on
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  the measurements that they've been tracking. So you know that example that I mentioned,
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  I think that example was only allowed to exist because the founder was so fanatical about
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  closing deals. So he actually grew the business larger than probably he should have before
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  implementing all of these different SOPs and systems and processes and standard operating procedures.
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  Because he couldn't bring somebody in that could do 4 million in revenue? No, he couldn't.
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  Absolutely not. No sales rep could ever do it. If I remember, each sales rep was doing just under
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  a million and he was himself closing 4 million and obviously massive imbalance as to who he could hire.
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  But I also think an interesting thing in the space that you deal with, which I think is more of
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  an issue with entrepreneurship in general. We look at all these VC backed, angel backed, silicon
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  valley tech startups and they build they build their businesses not profitably and they're burning
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  cash raising next rounds, raising next rounds. And these are like the entrepreneurial influence
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  that a lot of us succumb to. You just mentioned HVAC, you mentioned service-based, medical,
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  dentist, agency. So I think the issue really is that you have somebody who built a great HVAC
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  company and they're like, damn I'm doing a million dollars, million five. And like I can't hire
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  a three person inside sales rep and account it and then another two account executives with a million
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  bucks. And that's what screen people over because they're learning from the wrong, they're learning
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  from the wrong people. There's no, I don't know a single HVAC entrepreneur thought leader on social,
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  but I know Jason Calicanas. I know I know all the guys from Y Combinator. I know all those people
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  that are super loud on Twitter and create podcasts and then you fall like the people like Adam
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  Newman, who wild story, right. Those are the people that you look to and you're like, okay,
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  how do I learn how to build a business like this? But first, I don't even believe that many people
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  should build a business based on venture money. I believe building profitable businesses
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  from the get go is like a superpower because it sets you have to be successful entrepreneur.
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  So what's the playbook for somebody who is in a service based or even not service based?
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  Who should they be looking to? Who should they emulate? Who's done this like very, very well
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  repeatedly? Who's like a better entrepreneurial, no influence than all the stuff we see on social
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  and YouTube and podcasts and all that stuff? Because we service all of these different industries
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  were industry agnostic. We do have a couple of investments in health care. We have investments in
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  HVAC. We have investments in roofing and dental. We find that in every one of those industries,
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  there are micro influencers who have gone from being the dentist, having their hands and
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  somebody's mouth and actually scaling to 15, 25, 45 dental locations. And they are creating
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  content, but they are not creating content where they are getting millions of views and have
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  all of these subscribers to their YouTube videos. It's such a niche audience that they are really
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  talking to. And so for every one of these verticals, we do find that there are influencers,
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  but they are not at the level. And they are so specific to, you know, I think of like Tommy Mello
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  in the garage door space. It's not so, so neat. garage doors. Yeah. Yeah. He sold his business
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  for half a billion dollars in the garage door space. Yeah. So there you have somebody who is now
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  probably going to create a larger influence because he has done something that's so spectacular,
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  but it started as just a guy figuring out how to sell garage doors. And so as people become more
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  successful through the markets that I'm sorry, the industries that are hot right now and getting
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  huge valuations, somebody like Ken Goodrich in the HVAC space selling ghetto over, he sold it now
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  three times for over $250 million. They will start to come out and have more social presence,
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  and they will be creating individual industry specific playbooks on how to do this, whether you
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  are a chiropractor or a dentist or whatever the vertical that you are in. But the principles
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  remain the same, which is why I feel very confident in writing a book like start the work or writing
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  a book like teamwork where at the end of the day, if you're a business owner, taking VC money is
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  a little bit different. And we don't we're not pro VC money for the majority of businesses,
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  because you really shouldn't be accessing that capital unless you already know the basics of what
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  it takes to run a business. And the majority of business owners are not trying to raise VC capital,
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  but they think they think that oh, maybe that's interesting or exciting. They should really like get
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  their teeth knocked in first by creating a marketing agency or hiring their first team or figuring out
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  some of these standard foundational skill sets. How do you review financial set of documents
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  in a business? Do you have that core competency before you go ask somebody for money, much less
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  your friends and your family for money? Like you should have these very foundational business skills
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  in place, where you've demonstrated that you were the right person for somebody to place money
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  with you and not on like a hope and a dream, but on a real live example of this is me demonstrating
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  that I actually know what I'm talking about, that I'm able to market, that I'm able to solve a
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  real problem and you don't get that through not having some sort of experience. So the X factor
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  and I agree completely. I mean, I think too many people raise money. I think that so yeah,
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  if you don't know how to read a PNL or even create one, like that's a big issue. So
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  the caveat that the takeaway is don't raise money for most businesses, build it profitably from
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  the get go, but the X factor like you can build SOPs. People will understand the concept of building
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  systems and processes around what they know. Even if they're not doing it, they can do it tomorrow.
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  The X factor is people. The X factor is always people and I've heard this time and time again,
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  especially post COVID and even I don't know what the rest of the US is like with the rest of the
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  world, but I have friends that run businesses and I have not had to hire people in the US since
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  COVID ended. So I've been able to hire all over the world. Pre COVID was a different story. We had
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  people in Canada and the US, but post COVID, it's all been, it's all been all over, but I've
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  friends who have tried to hire and they say that the talent landscape post COVID is very difficult.
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  It's very difficult to get great people and these people are not bad business leaders, but it's like
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  the wildest stories. Like somebody will be hired, W2 employee, and then negotiate a salary,
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  and then the first week they'll say I want more money. Like things that didn't happen
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  in my life at least. So the X factor is always people. The first person like that founder,
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  lead business, they're making money themselves, the higher sales rep, maybe they're not closing
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  as much as the founder does. So those first few hire are super important. How do you navigate
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  the talent climate? How do you find the right person? What is your framework? Because now you
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  have thousands of employees. So you figured it out. What is that strategy?
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  I am a big believer that business is one through creating a people game and you have to think about
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  yourself as a founder, as an entrepreneur, playing a game with finding great people. It's not just,
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  oh, I'm going to find one person and they're going to solve this problem and I'm playing this game
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  of checkers where it's just one piece at a time, oh, I need a marketing person.
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  Oh, I need a sales person. Okay, now I'm going to go out and recruit. It is a game that you have to
• 19:48
  play for a long period of time to help the market understand why you are the founder or the
• 19:55
  entrepreneur or the business that great people want to work with. And so first it starts with
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  how are you promoting that you are a great place to work at? Are you talking about?
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  In our business, Cardin Ventures, are you talking about the fact that people are winning
• 20:08
  inside your company? Not just your clients, but your team members. We have team members who
• 20:12
  came to work with us who were making $60,000 a year and are now making $400,000 a year. We've
• 20:18
  only been in business for five years. We promote those stories, but we're thinking about that when
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  we make that initial hire of somebody who is saying, I'm making $60,000 a year. I'm applying for
• 20:29
  a job here at this conversation, but I have radical goals. So how do you find people who have
• 20:36
  radical goals, but are at a starting point where the business can afford to hire that person?
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  Most businesses cannot afford to hire somebody at $400,000. They can't afford to hire somebody
• 20:44
  who is hungry that's making $60,000 who has the vision for their life of wanting to make $400,000,
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  but has actually no idea how to get there because if they knew how to get there, they would
• 20:54
  already be making $400,000. We live in a free market economy. If somebody could go down the street
• 20:58
  and make that amount of money, they would go and make that amount of money. And so as a business
• 21:02
  owner, if you're playing this game of people, you're really thinking about, I need to create a
• 21:08
  brand for our organization where great talent thinks of us as a place where people come to
• 21:14
  find success and to have their success be easier with me than they would be able to find success
• 21:19
  with somebody down the street. So how are you promoting that? How are you constantly recruiting for
• 21:24
  people and posting jobs, even if you're not hiring for those roles to tell the market that you
• 21:29
  are recruiting and you're constantly looking for great talent? And then once they come in the door,
• 21:34
  how are you exemplifying that you are actually interested in their success? I think what's made us
• 21:40
  successful in this hiring market over the last five years, pre-COVID, post-COVID, is you're getting
• 21:46
  an opportunity to work alongside real leaders in a non-virtual work environment. We have an office
• 21:52
  here. We have an office in Scottsdale. They're seeing how I work every single day. They're seeing how
• 21:57
  Brandon works every single day. They are like rubbing shoulders with us constantly to solve the
• 22:03
  the largest problems inside our organization. And if you take that and you apply it to a small
• 22:07
  business, we had the exact same principles five years ago as we do today. We create this environment
• 22:14
  that allows people who have this dream, have this hope for their lives because we're marketing to
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  them as a candidate journey, not just a customer journey, as a candidate journey because we're playing
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  this people game. And this candidate journey is telling them you can achieve your personal professional
• 22:28
  financial goals through working here alongside us. We've achieved our personal professional financial
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  goals up to a point. So there is some success that you can follow, but we have radical goals for
• 22:37
  this organization and we are committed to growth. So once they're in the environment in order to
• 22:42
  keep them, they have to actually see that we're really doing the actions that demonstrate that
• 22:46
  we're committed to those things. So if they saw us on vacation all the time, or if they saw us not
• 22:52
  really being interested in their success, if they saw us just like half-assing the work that we do
• 22:56
  with our clients, it would be a different story. But instead what they see is a team of people and
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  leaders back then when we had zero employees all the way up to today when we have hundreds of
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  employees working on the weekends and being here before people and being here after people leave.
• 23:12
  And they really are understanding what it takes to be successful. So it's the entire package of
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  we sold the dream. We're marketing two candidates that this dream is possible here because we have
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  this target of where this business is going in the future and we're really clear about that target.
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  And then once they come in, they are testing and watching and seeing how serious we are. And so
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  we have to be serious every day. And I do find that a lot of business owners really struggle with
• 23:36
  that level of seriousness and that level of commitment because they create a business around
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  a lifestyle. And if you want a lifestyle business, that's totally fine if that's your
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  prerogative. But you are going to lose a people game if somebody else is not actually
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  fulfilling their side of the public. They're not being role models for that. Yeah.
• 23:54
  You're going to lose that person and somebody else is going to find the better talent because
• 23:58
  they actually want to be around people who are able to make their success easy.
• 24:01
  Hey guys, Scott here. I just wanted to take a quick moment to say a heartfelt thanks to every single
• 24:07
  one of you. Six years of this show and it's really all because of you. Your listens, your support,
• 24:12
  your shares, it will keep this thing going. When I started, I had no idea how big this would get,
• 24:17
  how many lives we touch, the stories we share, the lessons that we learned together, it's truly
• 24:23
  humbling. And I believe that we're building something really special here. A community where no one
• 24:27
  has to reinvent the wheel. We're all in this together, learning and growing. And here's my ask,
• 24:33
  if you love this show, if it's made a difference for you, please share it with somebody who needs it.
• 24:38
  Hella friend, host on social, whatever works, it's the best way to keep this thing going strong,
• 24:43
  bring on even better guests and share more life, changing wisdom. And you can find us on all the
• 24:49
  spots. So you can go to successstorypodcast.com if you like listening to podcasts. If you like video,
• 24:54
  you can go to YouTube. It's youtube.com slash C slash Scott Declary or the newsletter newsletter.
• 25:01
  . Scott Declary.com just spread the word. I'm eternally grateful for each and every one of you.
• 25:08
  Let's keep learning, let's keep growing and let's keep making this world a little bit better
• 25:13
  together. All right, let's get back to the show. When you're trying to find that high performer,
• 25:18
  because you're talking about all super high performers, I mean, somebody's making 400 grand,
• 25:23
  obviously highly ambitious person. So how do you manage getting them to commit to your
• 25:31
  business? Well, not also getting them to commit to any other side hustle, any other thing
• 25:36
  they're trying to take on because now everybody is trying to be their own influencer. And I mean,
• 25:41
  I have my own thoughts about I do believe that if you hire people like I'm super happy if they
• 25:45
  build their personal brand, start something on the side, I think it helps them upscale. This is my
• 25:49
  personal opinion. There's a lot that goes into that. But for yourself, I'm curious, you know,
• 25:55
  when you hire somebody like this, there's a very high likelihood that they are either looking for
• 25:59
  the next thing, how to make more money. When you start making 400K, you're like comfortably
• 26:04
  poor at that point. So now you realize that then life is good, but I'm also in Miami. So how do I
• 26:09
  make a million dollars a year? And maybe it's not within organization or maybe it is, but the person
• 26:14
  who makes that kind of money, I believe is inherently very entrepreneurial. I think they are
• 26:21
  somewhat entrepreneurial because they're really striving. And if they put that much energy into
• 26:26
  their own business, there's a chance that they could actually succeed as well. So how do you
• 26:30
  manage that personality type? Because everybody wants that person, but then at the same time, maybe it's
• 26:36
  easier. Somebody is okay. Again, nothing wrong with how much money you make, you make 60K,
• 26:40
  make 400K, make a million, make 10, it doesn't matter. But if somebody's okay making 60K and they're
• 26:45
  not looking for the next thing and they're happy with that, then maybe it's less of a liability to
• 26:50
  the company. We start the conversation with our team members around their personal, professional
• 26:55
  and financial goals. That is a process in our business. They are sitting down with their leader
• 27:00
  and saying, this is what I want to achieve. So if that person is saying, I want to be making
• 27:05
  $400,000 a year over the next three years working here. I want to then understand what is five years
• 27:12
  for now. Look like because what I know about being a business owner is it sucks most of the time.
• 27:17
  And you could actually live a fantastic life working for somebody else, making more money than you
• 27:23
  would make by yourself. The stats with business do not lie. The majority of businesses do not make a
• 27:28
  lot of money. And even if you took a high performer inside a business, it does not mean that they are
• 27:33
  going to be a high performance business owner and come with all of those challenges and all of
• 27:37
  that risk. And so when we're having these PPF conversations with the team member,
• 27:41
  if they're telling me that they want to own a business one day, I really have to get down to
• 27:46
  like, why do you want to own a business? Is it because you have to be the guy? There's that
• 27:51
  quality where some people are just like, I want to be the guy. I want to be the person. I'm like,
• 27:56
  okay, that's cool. Part of that is a little bit of ego because they have no freaking clue what
• 28:00
  they're talking about. They're making $60,000 a year. They've never started a business before.
• 28:04
  They don't understand what those components are going to look like. And if they do think that they
• 28:10
  want to be the guy, we're probably not going to retain that person. To be honest with you in five
• 28:14
  years, that hasn't happened for us. Our high performers have not left us, especially the ones that
• 28:19
  started early on. The ones that are making, we have people making 400, 500, 600, the highest paid
• 28:24
  person probably makes $1.2 million a year in a starting salary. That's a lot of money, isn't it?
• 28:29
  It's good money. Going out and starting your business, there's a lot of risk for you,
• 28:32
  aren't going to be able to replace that income and all of the things that go into entrepreneurship.
• 28:38
  And so for that person, we're asking that they go all in on their goals by being really focused
• 28:46
  on the set of problems that we have. If we have a set of problems for somebody who is a high
• 28:51
  performer making $400,000 a year, that is not a nine to five job. And we don't expect that they
• 28:56
  are going to be able to solve those problems at that compensation level in a nine to five environment
• 29:01
  because there's just more complexity than you clocking in and clocking out. That's not the mindset.
• 29:07
  So when we have that person though that doesn't see themselves being an employee forever,
• 29:12
  how do we create the opportunity as Cardone Ventures as any small business to show them how they
• 29:18
  could be a future partner and build inside of what we want to create, which is a billion dollar
• 29:23
  organization. They could be the president of one of our verticals. They could be a president
• 29:28
  of our health vertical or our HVAC vertical or our roofing vertical or a dental vertical
• 29:33
  and see themselves growing inside our business because we don't want to lose those people.
• 29:38
  And then they would still get the flexibility, the autonomy that they're looking for.
• 29:42
  While still getting to do it with really cool people, the hardest part of starting a business
• 29:46
  is actually having to do it by yourself. And it sucks and it's painful and most people don't
• 29:51
  make it through that. So why wouldn't you want to continue to work alongside people who are
• 29:56
  always going to be pushing you and expecting more of you once you get to that level and partnering
• 30:01
  with you because there's more of a cushion there than you just going out and starting your own
• 30:05
  business. And this has been successful for us because it's an easy story to tell people.
• 30:10
  And it's also getting them focused on what the problems are today instead of I'm solving these
• 30:14
  problems in my day job, but now I'm also solving these side problems and now my focus is split
• 30:19
  in two different areas. That person is going to be less good at both of those things than the
• 30:24
  person who just does go all in and focuses on the one thing in their career. Yes, they're choosing
• 30:29
  to take a gamble on the organization, but if we continue to demonstrate that we're here,
• 30:34
  that we're pushing, that we're growing, then that confidence and that trust continues to build.
• 30:38
  So the concept of giving ownership to somebody, not just in their job, but like true ownership
• 30:44
  over a vertical or equity, I think that's such an underutilized tool, but it's underutilized
• 30:50
  for a reason is because founders and entrepreneurs are very scared about giving up a piece of what
• 30:57
  they've built. And they don't want to do it incorrectly. They don't want to give ownership to the
• 31:02
  wrong person. And I don't know if, for example, if somebody in Cardone Ventures, if they took
• 31:07
  over as president of an HVAC division, if they would be able to buy in and have equity in that,
• 31:12
  I'm assuming yes at some level, if they've shown that they can exceed and grow it and build it.
• 31:19
  So I think that, okay, so we talked about building SOPs, finding the right people, but then
• 31:27
  scaling out the management team, scaling out the people that are entrepreneurial, but within
• 31:32
  your own organization, maybe ownership is a key piece of that. So how do you take it from,
• 31:37
  let's tie this back into the book and the framework and the three million to the eight million
• 31:42
  breakpoint. Eight million dollar breakpoint, you have to start bringing in another level of
• 31:46
  management. That could be people that are super entrepreneurial, but they're taking a risk on your
• 31:50
  business, they're committing their time to your business. What is the playbook for finding the
• 31:55
  right person that you can give ownership to, that you can trust with that level of management
• 32:00
  and level of responsibility to get over that eight million dollar breakpoint?
• 32:06
  You're really marketing to this person through every touchpoint that your brand creates online,
• 32:13
  and my job in our organization is to be talking to that person, which is different than talking to
• 32:18
  our clients, because I recognize that we are not going to win this organization game if we cannot
• 32:24
  figure out how to find great people. So I'm marketing to the type of person that wants to leave a
• 32:29
  job. We just hired our CFO slash COO who left KKR. He was the head of treasury in order to
• 32:36
  inside our business, and he's totally badass. He literally moved from New York to join this like
• 32:41
  small little 125 million dollar company to be a part of what we're building, but that same thing
• 32:50
  that we are doing today to attract talent from KKR is how we started the business five years ago.
• 32:57
  It's talking about the fact that we are going someplace and having a big vision, and to me this is
• 33:01
  where most business owners just fail. They do not actually have clarity on what their 10-year
• 33:06
  vision is. You and I were talking about your 10-year targets and your 10-year goals and
• 33:09
  committing to something for 10 years. If you really had that mindset with your business,
• 33:14
  you should be sharing with every single person that you come in contact with what that big vision
• 33:19
  is. And if you don't have that big vision and you're not talking about those things, of course,
• 33:22
  you're going to get disengaged people. People who are not interested in even having a conversation
• 33:27
  about equity because they just looked at your position as a job. And your mindset because you're
• 33:32
  not playing a people game is I'm just filling holes inside this organization instead of really
• 33:37
  strategically looking at this is how do I find people who want to come on board to have a piece
• 33:42
  of this business to help grow this business. So every single thing that you do when it comes to
• 33:48
  how you show up with your team every single day, how you interview the candidate, what you're asking
• 33:52
  them to demonstrate to you in the interview process. Are you asking them what their goals are?
• 33:57
  That to me is the lowest hanging fruit for a business owner. If you are not asking somebody what
• 34:01
  their goals are prior to them joining you, it's akin to somebody getting married, falling in love,
• 34:07
  deciding to get married in a very short notice. And then once you're on your honeymoon,
• 34:12
  you're having this conversation. You guys are blissfully in love, but you're having this conversation
• 34:15
  about the significant others saying, oh, I can't wait for us to move into the country and for us to
• 34:20
  be able to have farmland and get out of the city. I hate the city and we can have all of these kids.
• 34:26
  And you're like, wait a second, I love the city. I always want to be in the city. I didn't think
• 34:30
  we were going to have kids together. I thought it was just going to be you and me till the end and
• 34:33
  we were going to build this empire. There was no coordination on the goals for those groups of people.
• 34:38
  We do this to our team members all the time. We're secretly as business owners wanting to create
• 34:43
  these large organizations. We have these dreams. We don't communicate them. We post a position
• 34:48
  assuming that we're going to get the best talent, the most engaged talent somebody who's finally
• 34:52
  going to help me in my business. All of a sudden they come on board. We didn't ask them what
• 34:56
  their goals were. They're expecting to clock in and clock out or they have other priorities
• 35:02
  that we didn't even ask them about ahead of time. And yet we're expecting them to help take our
• 35:06
  business from $3 million to $8 million. We didn't we didn't even contextually put that person into the
• 35:11
  role of what does it take to go for $3 million to $8 million. Do you know what it's like to work
• 35:16
  at $8 million our business when you joined your last company that I'm so impressed with as an
• 35:20
  entrepreneur that was doing $50 million in revenue. Were were you there only when they were doing
• 35:25
  $50 million or were you there when they actually grew from $25 to $50 so that you have context to be
• 35:29
  able to help us not just go to $8 million but actually hit a $50 million target. And so in this
• 35:35
  conversation with the candidate you have to be framing what the goal is for the organization.
• 35:41
  And then once they're on board with you you're crystal clear on what the expectation is. Are they
• 35:47
  hitting metrics? Are they clear on what their job description is? Do they know what success looks
• 35:51
  like in the first 30, 60, 90 days? And at that point for us at least that's when we start issuing
• 35:57
  equity because I'm not going to give equity to somebody on a hope and a dream and a promise
• 36:01
  but a lot of higher level executives are wanting that promise when they start an organization. And
• 36:07
  because we've tried doing that a handful of times I'm at the place today where I will not do that
• 36:11
  because they come in with these big degrees or they come in with this this 14 years at Ernst
• 36:17
  Young and they are about to be a partner and then they come in and they expect that our environment
• 36:22
  is a cushy one. And so it really depends on what the business owner is trying to create but if you
• 36:27
  are really serious about your goals and you are really clear on where you're trying to go you have
• 36:32
  to be communicating that with the person the entire time you almost have to promote that more
• 36:37
  than your promoting your client journey more than your promoting you bringing on new business
• 36:44
  because at some point that is not the thing that's going to stop you from growing your business.
• 36:48
  It's going to be this people piece and if you're not focused on this people piece when you start
• 36:53
  you're just playing this whack-a-mole game and filling positions and filling roles and you have
• 36:58
  this duct tape together team once you've got all of these clients that are inside your business
• 37:05
  and the business isn't set up to actually scale. I'm super curious because
• 37:11
  so your husband brand in and yourself you had 151 million dollar eggs which is phenomenal right
• 37:18
  so obviously like first of all you just said you brought some KKR which is like well I think
• 37:22
  that at this point the second or third largest private up firm in the world still phenomenal you're
• 37:26
  still doing it but when you when you started working with Grant I want to unpack even your
• 37:32
  experience because what he built out and how he partnered with both of you so branded in yourself
• 37:39
  to build a card on ventures this is kind of it's an example of exactly what you're telling
• 37:46
  businesses to do so I mean not a lot of businesses can attract somebody who had 151 million dollars
• 37:52
  exit to come and partner up with them so you know obviously I think it's good just to get a
• 37:59
  little bit of your backstory and where you came from but then tee it up with how did this partnership
• 38:04
  happen because this is what as a business owner if I can attract somebody who had that level of
• 38:10
  exit nine figure exit like that's phenomenal like I can only dream like right that's what I mean
• 38:16
  I'm trying to attract people from from fang from Facebook from Apple let alone like an exited
• 38:21
  entrepreneur it was a very serendipitous event in our lives and I honestly think that this is
• 38:28
  the greatest gift of my life up until this point which was I watched my now husband build this
• 38:34
  business as an entrepreneur he founded it in 2004 I worked in the business the last handful of
• 38:40
  years while he was going through the road show and the exit of this organization so the wire
• 38:46
  hits the bank account we were in Spain and within moments of that wire hitting I just watched the
• 38:54
  anxiety flood through him because you have this thing that happens that you've always dreamed of
• 39:01
  but if you don't have people around you telling you what's next or helping you prepare for what
• 39:07
  that experience is like you feel like your purpose is gone and this is exactly what happened
• 39:13
  his purpose was gone and for two years we went around hanging out with everybody who has had done
• 39:19
  a similar thing they had exits what do people do when they sell their business they start investing
• 39:24
  in golf memberships they start traveling more they buy homes they might buy some stupid stuff
• 39:30
  what has been happened to have a car a car a little addiction there for a while think about like
• 39:35
  six cars in a matter of two months it was ridiculous it was a lot of cars he likes cars he still
• 39:41
  likes cars but there was no influence around us saying this is what's next and so at the time I
• 39:47
  was 23 years old he was 48 years old we have a little bit of an age difference and I was like this
• 39:53
  is not what I signed up for I signed up for us to build a business I signed up for us to have a
• 39:57
  purpose and a mission and I'm not cool with us talking to your golf buddies every single day about
• 40:02
  the one shot that we missed every day it was like the same conversation the one shot is with
• 40:07
  golfers the one shot that like took the whole game out like I can't do this and so I started
• 40:11
  looking at all these social media influencers because my husband is brilliant and he's engaging
• 40:16
  in dynamic and funny and he's sharp I was like if these guys can do it you can freaking do it you've
• 40:21
  done more from a competency standpoint than most of them have and have this incredible story
• 40:25
  so I started looking all these social media people and I showed Grant to him and the first time
• 40:30
  he saw Grant he was like this has to be a joke like my husband was a very like traditional business
• 40:35
  person he was thinking that our next iteration was going to be going through private equity
• 40:39
  and I was like what if we went this social media route so I found this list showed him Grant he
• 40:43
  was not interested I instantly was like this is the guy I just could tell through the content
• 40:50
  but more importantly his relationship with his wife and his relationship with his kids not only
• 40:54
  was he creating this financial success and have this big mission to help all eight billion people
• 40:59
  on the planet with financial literacy like the mission's insane Grant like when he talks about 10x
• 41:04
  that push that he has is very real because he has this big mission but it's not just about
• 41:10
  the cars and the planes and the watches and all the success which is what I was seeing so much of
• 41:16
  it the golf course it was for him more about how do I create this life and this legacy for other people
• 41:22
  and also have an incredible relationship with my wife and also be a phenomenal dad
• 41:27
  and so I was very interested and attracted to this life this 10x thing that they were promoting online
• 41:33
  and so I read every single book I practically watched every single YouTube video and put this
• 41:37
  in front of Brandon when we were going on a four hour car ride I put the 10x rule on after I
• 41:42
  had read it like two times at that point and at first he's like no no no we're not listening to
• 41:46
  this luckily he has no idea how to work Bluetooth the age difference helps me with this so I forced
• 41:52
  him to he couldn't he couldn't turn it off we were in the car for four hours and it clicked for him
• 41:57
  so when we met Grant and Elena it was really us validating are they who they say they are and
• 42:02
  is their audience somebody that we know that we could help they at the time had a Cardinal Capital
• 42:07
  which is an investment firm for multifamily real estate and they had Cardinal University which
• 42:12
  is sales training but what we know how to do is leadership development and hiring and operations
• 42:18
  and how to look at financials and all these other components of growing and scaling a business
• 42:24
  so we met this audience at GrowthCon in 2019 this big event 35,000 people in it we met this
• 42:30
  audience we're like yeah we know we can help these people because they're only getting serviced
• 42:34
  through these two channels that Grant currently is offering and we watched Grant and Elena like
• 42:40
  weird little stalkers like we just like watched every little move and when we finally got the
• 42:45
  opportunity to meet them we said what would it take for us to have a conversation around being
• 42:50
  partners and creating a billion dollar organization together servicing business owners and Grant
• 42:55
  kind of blew us off a little bit at first but you know we know how to follow up and we continue to
• 42:59
  follow up and when that conversation became real it was so obvious that this is a need in their
• 43:06
  organization and this is what we are good at doing and we had been able to create this track record
• 43:12
  and so for the last five years that's what we've been busy building but for me maybe you and I
• 43:18
  might have a little bit of a different philosophy on this actually and I would love to like debate
• 43:22
  this potentially like I think it's really hard when you're like picking and choosing pieces of
• 43:28
  mentors because I don't want to be watching somebody who has all this business success
• 43:34
  and is telling me what it takes to do to be great in business but is a shitty dad like I don't want
• 43:39
  to be listening to that person and I have a hard time bifurcating that it's one person because to
• 43:45
  me they're they are one person and I want to learn from people who really do have it all if
• 43:50
  there is somebody who has exactly what I'm looking for I want to listen to that person and I used
• 43:55
  to listen to all of these different podcasts and YouTube like I'm a student of this this content
• 44:00
  and I used to listen to couples who did business separately and then all of a sudden I was like
• 44:04
  picking fights with Brandon or having issues in our business because I was listening to content
• 44:08
  that even though maybe I was listening to them about marriage content it infiltrated the fact that
• 44:12
  they weren't working together and that wasn't my path my path was working alongside my husband
• 44:18
  in a business and having to figure out this this way forward while also being a business owner a
• 44:24
  wife being supportive in all of these roles and it was confusing to me when I was trying to just like
• 44:30
  study one part of somebody and so for us granted Elena really were that like family,
• 44:37
  husband, wife, kids, ridiculously successful from a financial standpoint and impact driven and
• 44:44
  what I found them to me I'm like I'm going all in and five years later I am more putting them on
• 44:51
  a pedestal today than I was back then and that is so rare in today's world where you put somebody
• 44:59
  on a pedestal because you think that they're this great person from everything you've watched on
• 45:02
  social media YouTube Instagram all the fun stuff you're like oh they're this person but then
• 45:07
  you meet them oftentimes and you have a lot of experience with this you meet them and
• 45:10
  and don't meet your heroes right they're not yeah you like that's it real advice don't meet your
• 45:14
  heroes yeah to me I respect them more after spending thousands of hours with them then today then
• 45:21
  I did back then because they actually are who they say that they are and to me they're better like
• 45:25
  I wish somebody I wish they were better promoters of who they are because I think so much gets missed
• 45:30
  with the two of them and so that's why we decided to literally go all in we move from Washington
• 45:35
  move between here and Scottsdale to build this business over five years because we found people
• 45:40
  that had the life that we wanted who were willing to mentor us and we also brought a significant
• 45:44
  amount of credibility and influence and hard work and strategy to the table to make this partnership
• 45:50
  makes sense I just want to take a second and think the HubSpot podcast network for supporting
• 45:56
  success story the HubSpot podcast network has incredible podcasts like the product boss hosted by
• 46:01
  Jacqueline Snyder and Mina Kuhnlo Sithep if you want to take your physical product sales and strategy
• 46:08
  to the next level to create your dream life you need to listen to the product boss they sit down
• 46:14
  for an hour they do a workshop style podcast they're gonna talk about everything that you need to
• 46:20
  know to up level yourself social media marketing if you're a consumer package goods if you have
• 46:26
  any sort of physical widget you need to tune into the product boss wherever you get your podcasts
• 46:32
  so it's interesting that you that you you say that you found this one person that sort of encapsulates
• 46:38
  everything it's very hard to compartmentalize one particular aspect of somebody's life and
• 46:44
  then ignore the rest and I think that's actually very wise I think that the reason I have the view
• 46:49
  that I have is because it's very rare to find somebody that encapsulates everything that you
• 46:56
  would look for in a person and I think it's because people are so easily influenced by social media
• 47:02
  I think it's dangerous I think it's less risky to look at a few different people than to go all
• 47:10
  in on one person because if I say go all in on one person there's a there's a high probability
• 47:17
  that person is not who they say they are that's the concern and I think that we talk about access
• 47:24
  all the time and I'm gonna give you an impossible question to answer because you asked me some
• 47:29
  impossible questions as well but when you look at the exit and the access that you had
• 47:40
  someone will be like okay so I didn't have a hundred and fifty one million dollar exit
• 47:44
  how can I have a sit-down conversation with all the people that I look up to to make sure that
• 47:49
  they are who they say they are because I do want to go all in on one person that's a very difficult
• 47:53
  thing to replicate so what would be the advice for somebody who's looking for mentor advice
• 48:00
  all the people online if you can't meet them in person and spend one on one time with them how can
• 48:06
  you study every other aspect around them so with Grant and Elena before we sat down and met with
• 48:14
  them I watched every single thing that their kids were putting out I watched all of the behind the
• 48:19
  scenes of their team's content because do they have great people around them that are vouching
• 48:25
  for them if they don't have great people around them but they're they're promoting that they know
• 48:30
  how to do all of this stuff and that they are these great people great people have other great people
• 48:35
  around them that is a fact and so do they have a big enough business or group of leaders around
• 48:40
  them that do vouch for them that do show up and promote them and believe in them and still say the
• 48:47
  things I mean to me like I am their greatest billboard but it's because I mean it and it's to my
• 48:53
  core that I believe that those two individuals are just the greatest people that I've ever met
• 48:58
  but do they have a lot of successful people around them and what do their lives look like are the
• 49:03
  people around them winning and achieving things and succeeding or the people around them actually
• 49:08
  doing worse or do they not promote the people around them at all so I would really be looking at
• 49:13
  not just the one person you're not just looking at Kylie Jenner or you're not just looking at
• 49:18
  you know whoever your influencer of choices what is the group around them like and are they winning
• 49:23
  or are they losing and are they when they get in proximity to these people are they doing worse
• 49:28
  off than they were beforehand and that to me is such an easy tell if the person
• 49:32
  truly is influential and actually able to create an environment where the people around them
• 49:37
  become more successful my definition of leadership is making other people success easy so if you
• 49:43
  really are a leader how can you demonstrate that you have made the people around you their success
• 49:49
  easy through the environment that they are in now because of you through the example that you
• 49:54
  are creating inside their presence like you do rub off on people grant did rub off on people
• 49:59
  Elena did rub off on people are those people doing better and to the extent that they are that's
• 50:03
  what those are the people you should be going all in on if they aren't then I would second guess
• 50:08
  are they really the right person to be listening to because the people who are close to them know like
• 50:13
  where the bodies are buried if the bodies aren't buried and there aren't any bodies hope like
• 50:18
  praying that they aren't actually any buried bodies or any dead bodies yes figuratively
• 50:22
  um then you know I watched so many social media people and people that we've partnered with
• 50:28
  and I wish that I would have taken my advice earlier on when it comes to investing in businesses
• 50:32
  because what I see a lot of people who are in this game that we're in which is investing in
• 50:37
  businesses they don't they don't really critically look at their partners when you look at a
• 50:41
  business deal that you're about to do what is the family and the friend and the co-worker situation
• 50:48
  I get that you're looking at the founder or the entrepreneur but it's hard to tell just through
• 50:53
  financials and through somebody doing an interview if they're the real deal if I can get access to
• 50:58
  having dinner with the founder and the spouse I'm interested like what what's the dynamic between
• 51:03
  the two of them can I actually meet with the team and understand how that founder shows up with
• 51:08
  their team members because they're going to show me one thing but they're going to be an
• 51:12
  entirely different person and the people around them are going to demonstrate a totally different
• 51:15
  side of them and if I can get access to that when I get access to that we do better deals when
• 51:19
  I haven't done that those nine times out of 10 are the deals that have failed for us it's because
• 51:24
  we just thought this one person was great but we didn't have the rest of the picture and they didn't
• 51:28
  have the same core values that we have they didn't demonstrate these things that are really important
• 51:33
  to us not just inside work and not just being a high performer when they show up but the rest of
• 51:38
  their lives and you know when somebody is a fraud and the rest of their lives when other people
• 51:42
  in their lives aren't gouging for them and when you agree when you I love that process I mean
• 51:50
  I've been part of a lot of investment conversations and I think that a lot of the focus is on
• 51:56
  like the P&L and that's that's really where it ends and then you have a founder interview and
• 52:01
  you figure out the founder is good but sitting down with somebody's spouse meeting their friends
• 52:07
  I don't know you just hired somebody from KKR do they do that I don't I don't know if they do
• 52:12
  they do that level of do they know when they buy a business I don't think so no I just don't
• 52:16
  want to do business if we are smaller than KKR because we're not willing to put up with the
• 52:21
  bullshit that they're willing to put up with I'm okay with that we have done enough bad deals
• 52:26
  for me to know that I only want to do deals with people that I trust that believe in me that are
• 52:31
  rooting for this organization that are ethical that actually are what they say that they are
• 52:37
  and when you come into an environment that is all of those things the people are where they say
• 52:42
  they are they're authentic they're genuine they're high performing ideally that repels
• 52:46
  that the bad ones but sometimes people just get so money hungry or they think that you're
• 52:52
  going to give up sooner than you really are they have a short-term time horizon and you have a
• 52:56
  long-term time horizon like my life is too short to have to deal with those people there are
• 53:00
  enough great business owners out there that are the type of people that I want to spend time with
• 53:04
  that if we have a billion dollar fund instead of a hundred billion dollar fund like I'm good
• 53:10
  because I don't want to have to deal with the headaches and the the sheer torment to be honest
• 53:15
  and I know you have experienced like this the torment of founders who are just complete assholes
• 53:22
  there you couldn't you could pay me enough but it's so much more than what they're actually
• 53:27
  able to bring to the table that it's I'm not going to do that and I do think that there's
• 53:32
  an alternative route early stage founder is listening to this thinking okay I'm not I'm not a bad
• 53:38
  person I'm an ethical person I I check all those boxes but you mentioned something that's very
• 53:44
  interesting you want your definition of leadership was making success easy for other people
• 53:52
  amazing love that definition founders like shit I'm just trying to build a business
• 53:57
  I don't know how to make success easy for other people I'm just hiring people and I have SOPs
• 54:01
  and I hopefully find some talent and it's like it's it's so much that what you know I'm trying
• 54:09
  to figure out how do I create success for other people maybe I kind of know where their career
• 54:14
  aspirations and goals are but it's a startup everyone's struggling everyone's stressed out
• 54:19
  everything's on fire every single day and I'm doing my best and I'm working from six in the
• 54:23
  morning till 11 at night how am I really supposed to invest more into my people what is like a very
• 54:29
  easy way to invest into my people so that their success is easier because of me because I don't
• 54:33
  even feel as a business owner my own success is easy and I think that's a reality for a lot of people
• 54:38
  especially in the in the SMB space in the people you serve sub 10 million dollars nothing feels easy
• 54:43
  your own success is not just pretty doesn't feel easy so how am I going to give my energy and my
• 54:48
  time to all the people that work for me so that Natalie comes in she wants to buy my business
• 54:53
  they don't say that yeah it's not a bad guy but I mean I haven't upskilled I haven't learned
• 55:00
  anything new I kind of just do my job sometimes like we get stressed out and things aren't working
• 55:06
  which is I think is pretty like this is like a standard definition of almost any business so
• 55:11
  what's the what's the strategy to make people's success easier when you're already stressed yourself
• 55:16
  it's a great question that one's like the deep one for me I would say that if you're starting the
• 55:21
  conversation with their goals somebody is coming to you making $60,000 I'll give you a real example
• 55:27
  someone's coming to you making $60,000 a year they want to make $400,000 a year you want to drive
• 55:33
  that person to the things that would allow them to make $400,000 a year we had a team member come
• 55:39
  to us that was making $60,000 a year and her goals when we sat down and talked to her having this
• 55:45
  PPF conversation was in the next 18 months you wanted to make $250,000 like in the role that you're
• 55:52
  in right now it was an operations function there is no possibility of you making $250,000 a year
• 55:59
  this is not real in the next 18 months this is the business owner this is me being a coach in
• 56:04
  the situation because you're telling me you want to do something and if I believe you that you
• 56:07
  want to do this something I have to tell you when that doesn't make sense here but ideally you're
• 56:14
  able to create a different path to keep this really engaged person somebody who wants to be able
• 56:20
  to create something great and share with them what success could look like so this person had never
• 56:26
  sold anything she actually was working on her doctor of chiropractic so she had just finished
• 56:30
  chiropractic school and when she said found and told me this I said the only way that I see you
• 56:35
  joining this organization she was our 12th employee and being able to make $250,000 a year is
• 56:41
  through becoming a salesperson and if you become a salesperson and you learn the most valuable
• 56:46
  lesson that a business like ours is struggling with which is how to get customers in and convert
• 56:51
  them into our products and services you would be paid that and then some so she thought about it for
• 56:57
  a week and half and she's like sure I'll become a salesperson and so we transitioned her over two
• 57:02
  months because she's still fulfilling that operations function so business owners like they're still
• 57:06
  in the function that they're originally in but she pivoted over to sales she cried every single day
• 57:13
  for the first 90 days like it was like a patch up job every single day being told no 250 times
• 57:20
  most of the time people not even answering the phone call fast forward one year later she had made
• 57:26
  $250,000 think she made like 280 then she made 350 then she made 400,000 but ultimately she never
• 57:33
  wanted to be a salesperson she wanted to make $250,000 a year to then be able to service people
• 57:38
  in healthcare space so as an organization we bought this little company called Streamline Medical
• 57:43
  rebranded it to 10x health bolted on another company in order to grow its revenue and we needed a
• 57:50
  director of sales this team member is now the director of sales at 10x health leading a 50 person
• 57:58
  team all because when she was 24 years old she was very honest by saying I'm making $60,000 a year
• 58:05
  my value and contribution today is $50,000 or $60,000 a year but I have these goals and we shoved her
• 58:13
  to where the business needed help right then and there and it eventually ended up leading her
• 58:19
  back to what her goals were originally which was to be part of a health and wellness company
• 58:23
  that was tied to ice you into chiropractic school to begin with and so when you really take it as
• 58:28
  like it's not this overwhelming concept of tying your team members to the goals of the business
• 58:33
  this is a hand-to-hand combat one-to-one conversation you hire somebody they tell you that they are
• 58:39
  making $80,000 but they only want to make $90,000 is that person really going to be the person that
• 58:43
  helps you create this next level of growth in your business probably not early on you only want to
• 58:48
  be hiring very growth-oriented team members because you need them to want to grow and then when
• 58:54
  you're talking to them and they tell you that they have these large growth goals how do you
• 58:59
  craft this doesn't take hours it probably takes 30 minutes with each individual person you
• 59:04
  have 12 team members okay if Bob wants to go from 80,000 to 120,000 what would he actually have to
• 59:11
  do in our product team in order to drive $400,000 of additional revenue for him to be able to make
• 59:18
  this additional 30 or $40,000 a year and if the gap between what they want to make and where
• 59:25
  they're making is so large but they think that they can do it why not have them proposed to you
• 59:30
  what value they could add what skill set they could bring to the table what they would need
• 59:34
  investment in for them to go learn to invest in education and courses and content to actually
• 59:40
  get those skills that you're specifically looking for from that person and so the less you think
• 59:45
  of it as like a general how do I as a business owner overcome this and you think about it individually
• 59:50
  and you're crafting these plans for your team members the more success you're going to have with
• 59:55
  actually creating the success because you need those team members to uplevel their skills to grow
• 1:00:00
  you're just helping them make their success easy by saying great this is the marketing course
• 1:00:04
  this is the funnels course this is the sales content and training and plan this is what
• 1:00:09
  this is going to have to look like and you're demonstrating that success as a business owner because
• 1:00:13
  if you're doing eight million dollars a year and you're trying to get to 50 you're listening to a
• 1:00:16
  podcast like this you're up leveling your skills you're sharing this stuff with your team you're
• 1:00:21
  sending that example of what it takes you have a goal you get really technical about what skills
• 1:00:26
  you need to learn right now in order to get to the next step and then you're duplicating that
• 1:00:30
  across the other team members who are looking at you as the person who's the example for the success
• 1:00:36
  inside the organization i think you're doing it very well and i think that people may not
• 1:00:41
  understand how impactful and useful that strategy that you just gave is because
• 1:00:45
  i've seen the other side of it i've seen the market where people are planning on jumping between
• 1:00:51
  competitors because it's easier to advance your career by going from company one to company two
• 1:00:57
  because nobody invests in them and i think the bigger company some do it okay i think a lot of
• 1:01:02
  the miss the mark on that i'll even tell you a wild story early on in my career i was trying to
• 1:01:08
  move from a small market to mid market sales and there was a base and a compensation package and
• 1:01:16
  my director at the time he was arguing for a higher compensation they were offering
• 1:01:21
  candidates were coming from outside the organization as opposed to what they could offer people
• 1:01:24
  that were internally promoted and for some reason it was like a ten thousand dollar difference so
• 1:01:28
  if you're internally promoted you get say like 65 if you came from the outside you can make 75
• 1:01:32
  and he's like this is the dumbest thing i've ever so what we actually ended up doing is i ended up
• 1:01:37
  resigning and then applying and then he brought me in as an external candidate like how stupid
• 1:01:41
  how stupid is it for a business to do that like that that's absolutely ridiculous so this is
• 1:01:47
  obviously the complete 180 of that type of mindset um i know i just think it's amazing i think it's
• 1:01:54
  i think it's a very smart way to foster talent from within yeah just one more thought on what
• 1:01:59
  you just mentioned because i love this um i think sales is such an important strategy obviously
• 1:02:05
  cardone is a very sales heavy organization is how it all started out um do you believe that and i
• 1:02:12
  believe that at least entrepreneurs should be sales people like that's one of the most important
• 1:02:16
  skills to a point like you mentioned but do you believe that anybody can become a salesperson
• 1:02:22
  absolutely every single person in your organization unless you have some licensure issue like in a
• 1:02:28
  legal business or in a handful of medical businesses you can't have your front office person
• 1:02:33
  selling certain procedures or certain services but outside of some license issue every single
• 1:02:39
  person in an organization should be training every day on the products and services and how to
• 1:02:45
  overcome objections for that business because that is your expansion especially if you are a small
• 1:02:50
  business if you're a small business you have five people to help you hit your growth goals
• 1:02:56
  if you do not equip those five people to help you whose job is it to hit your growth goals
• 1:03:02
  it's yours you are entirely like holding all of this responsibility yourself instead of saying
• 1:03:08
  hey wait there's five people all of us are joined together through this mission all of us are tied
• 1:03:14
  financially to the success of this organization so i'm going to equip you guys with the right skills
• 1:03:19
  so that when you're having a conversation with somebody in an elevator when you're having a
• 1:03:23
  conversation with somebody some business owner that would be the perfect fit for our organization
• 1:03:27
  at a coffee shop or a smoothie shop or at a restaurant or at a networking event you can
• 1:03:33
  confidently talk about what your products are and move them through a close and if you're not
• 1:03:39
  training your people on how to do that you're just accepting the fact that it is your responsibility
• 1:03:44
  but then you're also wondering why everybody in your organization is disengaged well of course
• 1:03:49
  they're disengaged because they don't know how to make any more money you've hired them you've
• 1:03:52
  set a salary for them you don't have incentive compensation created you don't have a commission
• 1:03:57
  structure in place you're not training them on how they can make more money so why would they
• 1:04:01
  stay engaged the only reason that somebody is listening to a podcast like this is because they
• 1:04:05
  are interested in growing some skill set if you're a value prop in your podcast was success stories
• 1:04:12
  how to be the same in one year from now as you are today no one would be listening today
• 1:04:18
  is a terrible tagline but that's what we do to team members that's what corporate America does
• 1:04:22
  to team members they say come in we're going to set a base for you we're not going to be smart
• 1:04:27
  enough to figure out what incentive metrics are we're not going to have a conversation about
• 1:04:30
  what your goals are because heaven forbid you tell us something that is important to you and then
• 1:04:35
  you sue us because you said something like we've just created all of these weird structures and
• 1:04:40
  all these weird weird rules were business owners actually are creating a game where people
• 1:04:46
  only can be disengaged that's their only default is to be disengaged because why else would I
• 1:04:51
  be engaged they don't think of this people strategy as a game where they're playing something and
• 1:04:56
  every single day they get to figure out this different way to engage great people to get the
• 1:05:00
  best talent to them themselves be people and an organization worthy of having the best people
• 1:05:07
  and so it said they just bitched their significant other all might long about how terrible
• 1:05:11
  Sally is or Bob is or Susan is and nobody wants to help them in their business well if you allowed
• 1:05:15
  people to sell in your business you'd at least be giving them a game to figure out how they can
• 1:05:18
  make more money which is actually the contract that you guys have even if you're in a family
• 1:05:24
  business the contract between team members if you are working inside an organization and you
• 1:05:30
  have employed somebody the contract is a financial one if you stopped paying them they would not
• 1:05:34
  show up on Monday morning and yet we don't continue to create on the contract we think that
• 1:05:40
  because they're nice or their family member we don't want to upset them that we're not going
• 1:05:44
  to hold them accountable it's ridiculous and then we also bitching complain about why people aren't
• 1:05:47
  helping us grow our businesses we've never created a structure for them to do that that's an
• 1:05:53
  interesting so it's interesting because I've seen the exact opposite where part of the variable
• 1:05:57
  comp is tied to the company's performance yet the person has no direct impact or perceived direct
• 1:06:04
  impact I mean everything impacts but then it just creates this apathetic like well whatever
• 1:06:08
  happens happens and I'm going to show up on clock in and clock out how do you get people on board
• 1:06:14
  with becoming evangelists sales people for the company how do you remove the stigma of sales because
• 1:06:19
  there's there's always a stigma around sales and there's a certain kind of person that likes to do it
• 1:06:23
  and there's a lot of people that don't like to be sales right so how do you get somebody to buy
• 1:06:29
  into this concept because once they once the money comes in it's easy but there's so much
• 1:06:35
  pressure and negativity around the concept of sales that for a lot of people the gap between
• 1:06:42
  the first commission check and where they're at now and a product manager role is too big
• 1:06:48
  for them to understand okay I'm going to start to go down this path and I'm going to start to
• 1:06:51
  be okay with rejection I'm going to start to be okay with putting myself out there and calling
• 1:06:54
  people and emailing people and having conversations and evangelizing the company I'm working for
• 1:06:59
  what's the what's the way to tie it together I have such a hack for this or wild for this
• 1:07:05
  since we started this organization we've had a daily multimedia with every single person in our
• 1:07:10
  company so today at 1145 Eastern and 45 Pacific our entire company will hop on a call and there's
• 1:07:18
  a bunch of things that we do operationally and culturally on the beginning of that call but the
• 1:07:22
  end of that call every single day we pull up what's called the Cardone U wheel and the Cardone
• 1:07:29
  U wheel Cardone U stands for Cardone University has this like wheel of fortune type thing on an
• 1:07:34
  iPad and we spin the wheel and every single person in the company's name is on this wheel and so
• 1:07:39
  it spins and it lands on one person and that one person shares with the whole company whether we
• 1:07:45
  were 12 employees or now 350 employees what they learned the day before from Cardone University and
• 1:07:51
  then they role play in front of everybody that's so stressful for against building into that you
• 1:07:57
  build it into the culture of the company it's so now you don't want to be the you don't want to be the
• 1:08:01
  the outlier right that doesn't know something that can't role play yep so you set the expectation
• 1:08:07
  but they also know what everyone's doing it every single person is doing it whether your product
• 1:08:11
  tech recruiting videography obviously sales are the best at it but sometimes we have people
• 1:08:16
  in finance who just crush it like oh my gosh you should be a salesperson you could make more money
• 1:08:21
  if you were doing this versus doing that but so we normalize this culture of everything that you
• 1:08:26
  want in life is a sale so if you're saying to us you want to make more money this is exactly what
• 1:08:31
  this looks like and we're going to give you the tools to help you get better at this we're not going
• 1:08:35
  to let you fail the purpose the purpose is not to make people look silly but imagine you're showing
• 1:08:39
  up to to your first day of work inside our organization like it is just part of the culture and the
• 1:08:45
  team is supportive in the chat and they're giving pointers and they're sharing what the links are
• 1:08:49
  carnamentures.com forward slash people that's for upcoming essentials workshop and they're just like
• 1:08:54
  figuring out how to help the person who's working through the sales process but you're doing
• 1:09:00
  your team members a disservice if you are not addressing that the number one skill that they
• 1:09:06
  can learn in a business is to sell you are selling yourself you are selling your team you are selling
• 1:09:11
  the product you are selling the opportunity you are constantly selling in any successful role
• 1:09:18
  and so why do we think that we shouldn't allow people to hone that skill set to develop that to
• 1:09:25
  overcome that negative mindset to me it just demonstrates that a company isn't really willing to
• 1:09:29
  have harder conversations about what true value creation looks like in a business true value is
• 1:09:35
  being able to overcome things that you're uncomfortable with if my head of product cannot figure
• 1:09:39
  out how to intelligently speak and talk to the value proposition of our organization to a potential
• 1:09:45
  client they're not the right product officer inside our organization they can go work they can
• 1:09:51
  work for Facebook they can work for some other place they're not the right person for us because
• 1:09:54
  we want people I want that product officer to be able to sell to me why should listen to their
• 1:09:59
  idea if they can't do that with me and they can't do that with a customer they're not the right person
• 1:10:04
  yeah I think that that's an incredible it's an incredible strategy I don't think many companies do
• 1:10:10
  that and most companies fail I'm 97% yeah so because they're not willing to have the conversation
• 1:10:16
  and we become so complacent with like oh I'm just going to let my recruitment people be who they are
• 1:10:20
  well they developers are a certain personality type recruiters certain I mean and then there's
• 1:10:26
  this whole animosity between marketing and sales because marketing is like you know like we
• 1:10:31
  were the intellectual component of the revenue and sales is like oh well no we actually make
• 1:10:35
  the money and then you have all this these compartmentalized siloed business units that don't
• 1:10:42
  play well together I mean go to any company and I mean it's not a hard and fast rule but go have
• 1:10:49
  a conversation between a CRO and a CTO and it's like they're speaking different languages from
• 1:10:55
  different planets and there's no cohesion and I think it actually really inhibits I mean I've been
• 1:11:01
  on I've been on zoom calls where CTO refuse to even turn on a camera or does it like work still
• 1:11:07
  for in the morning so they don't show up for morning meetings like like just completely different
• 1:11:12
  cultures and you end up disrespecting each other and you end up making all of your jobs harder too
• 1:11:18
  it's worked well I'm assuming this it's worked I never heard anybody say this before it's a
• 1:11:23
  great sale to your organization but it's very interesting it's a new concept I've never heard
• 1:11:27
  you have to cut the shit yeah like what is the purpose of a business it is to service customers
• 1:11:32
  in order to service customers you have to get customers you have to sell like sales is a part of
• 1:11:38
  the CTO and the CRO having a conversation we have to remember and realign our teams with why we're
• 1:11:44
  here and if we're here to solve customers problems by selling them on why we are the best let's let's
• 1:11:51
  make that the DNA of the company I don't want to hear the conversation between the CRO and the CTO
• 1:11:56
  having their like fiefdoms and I'm going to be in my side and our team is going to be against you
• 1:12:01
  we are one team we are one team that has one expectation and if you the further you get from
• 1:12:07
  why the business exists which is to sell customers to move the business forward and ideally
• 1:12:12
  offer a great product and service a solution to their problem the further you get from that
• 1:12:16
  you spend time and your executive spend time dealing with this bullshit of different opinions
• 1:12:22
  how we're going to work in certain ways so us in graining this into our culture sure we've had
• 1:12:26
  people that don't want to be a part of it that has not stopped us from growing we will find people
• 1:12:31
  who are interested and are okay with this and it's the way that we want our culture to be created
• 1:12:36
  and so maybe for the business owner or the the listener who's in our organization right now you're
• 1:12:42
  like this could never fly inside our business you have to ask yourself why why would this not work
• 1:12:47
  inside your organization who would you be pissing off and when you think about those individuals
• 1:12:51
  it's likely handful of people it's not a group of people it's a handful of people they all have
• 1:12:55
  egos yeah but then why are we being reasonable to the egos if we know that this is what's beneficial
• 1:13:02
  not just to your CTO your CTO probably knows how to sell because that's how they got the job they
• 1:13:06
  got like selling themselves they have some sort of confidence they have some sort of skill set that
• 1:13:11
  they're able to say this is my resume because I was able to do these great things but what what
• 1:13:16
  are we doing to help that CTO actually develop their team members to have those skills or or
• 1:13:21
  letting the person who sleeps in until four o'clock doesn't show up to team meetings setting the
• 1:13:26
  worst example but they're supposed to be helping the people underneath them get to the next level
• 1:13:30
  of success it's very unlikely that those people are actually going to be able to develop the
• 1:13:34
  right skills because they don't have a leader who's focused on the right things if you're focused
• 1:13:38
  on the right things sales the business growth through sales it doesn't grow through anything else
• 1:13:42
  there's no magical thing that happens that doesn't allow the business to grow through sales
• 1:13:47
  if we're not teaching that to people we're actually doing them into service and not teaching them
• 1:13:50
  what the value is of their role regardless of their in HR counting tech whatever and when you see
• 1:13:56
  this when when you don't solve this problem early on and when you don't create cohesion throughout
• 1:14:01
  all your team members well you see as the company scales is you'll see different departments
• 1:14:08
  actually like fighting each other and this is I mean I've seen this several times where
• 1:14:16
  a company was acquired and then a certain a certain tech piece of the business with building
• 1:14:22
  a competitive product to the company that was just acquired and basically you're cannibalizing
• 1:14:26
  yourself you're competing yourself or you're you have two similar products and tech is pushing one
• 1:14:32
  and then marketing is pushing one and it's just messy it's very messy if everybody feels like
• 1:14:38
  like a fiefdom I love that like everybody is sort of king of their own little part of the business
• 1:14:45
  it creates a ton of mess and it will only get worse and it'll make everything more difficult
• 1:14:52
  to scale as you grow and I think that this is probably why now I'm unpacking why you've been able
• 1:14:57
  to grow so quickly you focus on cohesion you focus on everyone in the brand being an evangelist
• 1:15:03
  you focus on being a people first business but you're doing and you found ways to build process
• 1:15:09
  around it even at a billion dollars assets under management even with hundreds of millions of
• 1:15:14
  dollars in revenue so I think a lot of people start out with the right intentions but I think as
• 1:15:19
  they grow I think they lose sight and then the corporate America example is what happens
• 1:15:25
  not the card on ventures card on capital card on example which is really what you're trying to
• 1:15:31
  preserve so you don't sacrifice that at the for the sake of scale and grow for sure and the small
• 1:15:38
  business owner if I can just urge them to not be reasonable with their first 50 team members
• 1:15:45
  can we not allow the excuses and the personalities to get in the way of what the mission of the
• 1:15:52
  organization is you start to build this strength where you're like wait a second just because Bob
• 1:15:58
  has this great resume and he comes from this pedigree doesn't mean that he gets to run a train
• 1:16:03
  in my business and make all of these decisions in a way that is not in alignment with who I am
• 1:16:08
  if you can do that with your first 50 team members and have your leaders be the type of people
• 1:16:13
  that actually represent your brands and that you like working with and that are an example of
• 1:16:20
  what you want future team members you're 200th team member you're 500 team member to be like if
• 1:16:25
  that's not how you feel about your first 50 team members then keep weeding out the people that
• 1:16:30
  you are being reasonable with so you keep this philosophy of I'm going to be unreasonable because
• 1:16:35
  then when you have those people those first 50 people they will help you scale and grow the
• 1:16:40
  departments the right way but if you start being reasonable with your fifth employee and people
• 1:16:45
  become reasonable for all sorts of reasons because they don't think they can find better people
• 1:16:49
  they think that the problems that Bob has are better than the unknown problems that Joe is going
• 1:16:55
  to bring in the business they don't think that there's enough talent they hear these stories like
• 1:16:59
  what your friends were telling you about somebody in their second week renegotiating their salary
• 1:17:03
  like all of these random things in a business happen but you have to stay true to this is what I'm
• 1:17:09
  trying to build these are the people I want to spend my time around if you do not fit this I am
• 1:17:13
  confident that I will find somebody who will so no thank you thank you but no thank you I'm going
• 1:17:18
  to replace you with somebody who is in alignment with what I want this business to look like and if
• 1:17:22
  you can stick to that early on as a small business owner you'll be able to have the confidence to
• 1:17:28
  reset with a problematic CRO and CTO because it's just the same thing on a larger scale and with more
• 1:17:35
  team members I love this so start the work you can get it anywhere you can get books obviously so
• 1:17:42
  Amazon will put links in the show notes what would be one thing that you wish you put in the book
• 1:17:49
  that you maybe left out oh that's such a good question I'm sure there's a lot but such a good
• 1:17:55
  question you know I teach all of the content that's in the book and so funny enough I just came
• 1:18:02
  off of two days of teaching this specific content and the group of people in the room are business
• 1:18:08
  owners and leaders navigating metrics and quarterly team meetings and they're like in the thick of it
• 1:18:15
  and if I could include anything which I still technically can because the resources can be added
• 1:18:21
  and changed I would just give more tangible examples of what success looks like with metrics
• 1:18:29
  tracking because it's not the same across every single business and so I'm a big visual learner I
• 1:18:35
  think a lot of times business owners get confused because something doesn't instantly apply to their
• 1:18:40
  business and they can't contextualize how it could apply to their business and so they just don't
• 1:18:44
  do the thing like they don't understand what a P&L is and so they kind of always push this thing off
• 1:18:49
  because they don't understand this one word and all of a sudden they're now operating a business
• 1:18:54
  without financials and so as I was teaching this content this weekend we had different groups of
• 1:18:59
  people in the room and I was like man I would love to give the example of a quarterly team meeting
• 1:19:03
  for a business services organization versus an HVAC business because there are nuances and building
• 1:19:10
  out a library of more tangible things that people can really see like aha that's me I'm going to
• 1:19:15
  pick this resource I am a super tactical person the book is super tactical I want to just give all
• 1:19:21
  of the solutions for people to be able to implement and when I look back on it I'm like oh there's
• 1:19:26
  still so many more examples that I can give so I probably am going to actually add more resources
• 1:19:30
  to the book um I think I think that some of these things can be overwhelming for people that are
• 1:19:36
  just operating a business especially one to three million you probably you may or may not know
• 1:19:41
  what KPIs are you may or may not know what a P&L is okay ours are a various you know a version of
• 1:19:50
  KPIs that maybe are a little bit more confusing and complex quarterly meetings I mean you have
• 1:19:57
  meetings but like what's the point of a quarterly meeting what's the point of an annual meeting
• 1:20:00
  if you were going to look at all the different metrics and and and things that people should
• 1:20:07
  look at as a business owner maybe just very briefly because obviously they're going to go to the
• 1:20:12
  book to get a lot more nuance what are the main things that are important what are the things
• 1:20:18
  that maybe can be pushed off even till the eight million dollar break point I would push off
• 1:20:21
  quarterly team meetings to the eight million dollar break points I would absolutely have a daily
• 1:20:25
  metrics tracker inside your business at the start you looking at 15 things that are happening
• 1:20:32
  in your business every single day between your marketing sales cash collected and operational
• 1:20:39
  functions those initiatives you should be looking at the changes daily what's working what's
• 1:20:45
  not working and really understand the pulse of your business you don't have to look at them weekly
• 1:20:51
  if you're looking at them daily and when you're looking at them daily I wrap this into a daily
• 1:20:57
  multimedia because from my standpoint if you're a 15 team HVAC business and you're doing a million
• 1:21:04
  or a million half dollars in revenue you're going to know what's working so fast if you're looking at
• 1:21:10
  the daily change it's not it doesn't take a rocket science figure out oh we got all of these leads
• 1:21:14
  yesterday what do we do right yesterday oh we didn't get very many leads yesterday what happened
• 1:21:19
  was something broken was something not connected you're so much more in tune with looking at
• 1:21:24
  and understanding what's happening in your business when you're actually doing this daily and it's
• 1:21:28
  a practice that if you wait until your financials come back to you a month later you're not actually
• 1:21:33
  able to impact revenue you're not able to make a change and I strongly encourage business owners
• 1:21:40
  to schedule their day around what's happening inside the business how am I looking at these daily
• 1:21:45
  metrics how do I have time for myself and the key people that I'm dependent upon to make a change
• 1:21:52
  that day based off of what's not working any longer if something didn't work yesterday how am I
• 1:21:58
  making time for my day today to fix or to look at what's not working any longer because how many days
• 1:22:06
  am I going to go how many weeks how many months am I going to go before I realize that the
• 1:22:11
  leads aren't connected or that my salesperson is reading the wrong script and their conversions are
• 1:22:16
  going or are going down the smaller you are the more easy it is to be able to see those things
• 1:22:22
  that are working and are working do less of the things that aren't working do more of the things
• 1:22:26
  that are working and you're going to be able to make time for making those tweaks quickly if
• 1:22:31
  you're looking at those numbers every single day it's not metrics for metrics sake it's metrics
• 1:22:36
  so that I can actually reorganize my day not to fight fires not to deal with the BS that my team
• 1:22:42
  is created on some issue it's to actually fix something that's not working would you say daily
• 1:22:47
  metrics or daily meetings are more important both daily metrics and then and then a daily meeting
• 1:22:53
  that's what it looks like for us even today I have a daily metrics report that gets sent into my
• 1:22:57
  email as soon as the day starts from yesterday that is aligned with our daily all team meeting
• 1:23:02
  and then immediately afterwards there's a leadership meeting for us to block and tackle what happened
• 1:23:06
  why is this thing off how are we doing more of that and then there's obviously time to look into
• 1:23:10
  the future and to say okay how are we strategically planning and how are we fixing things and
• 1:23:14
  what where are we going and how are we aligning the initiatives with that stuff that stuff needs
• 1:23:18
  to happen but most business owners in order to get from one million or three million and actually
• 1:23:23
  hit an 8 million or 10 million or 15 million dollar target they're they have to pay attention to
• 1:23:27
  what's actually happening in their business today not future casting and shiny penning all
• 1:23:34
  the different initiatives that could be happening right now and also like leading indicators as opposed
• 1:23:38
  to lagging indicators for success too I think that we get caught up in vanity metrics and lagging
• 1:23:43
  indicators way too much okay if you are going to anything that we didn't cover we went to a lot
• 1:23:50
  so anything that we didn't cover that you wanted to go into from the book anything you can talk
• 1:23:54
  about stuff you're working on now that's not the book because you have like these we you present all
• 1:23:58
  the time so constant workshops obviously we can talk about just where people can connect with you
• 1:24:04
  as well and get all the social in the handles but anything that we didn't go into you know it's
• 1:24:09
  funny this is the first podcast that I've done in four years where this thing happened and I want to
• 1:24:16
  talk about this on the podcast this thing happened five minutes into the podcast and this thing
• 1:24:22
  that used to plague me and not allow me to publicly speak I was terrified publicly speaking five
• 1:24:27
  years ago six years ago eight years ago I had no confidence because every time I would get into a
• 1:24:32
  room after I had this horrible nightmarish public speaking event this like thing would happen in
• 1:24:39
  my brain where I would hear 15 different voices all at the same time and instead of being able to
• 1:24:44
  communicate what I want to communicate 15 different people were talking to me and like I almost
• 1:24:49
  couldn't hear my own thoughts and so I worked with a speaking coach I when you talk about reps like
• 1:24:56
  I put in reps for every opportunity I could get to make a toast to host a group meeting to record
• 1:25:02
  myself I would do that so I could get over this thing that was happening to me and the craziest
• 1:25:06
  thing happened ten or maybe even five minutes in where that took place and I thought that I was
• 1:25:12
  over that and what I want to share with the audience through this podcast experiences even when
• 1:25:18
  you think you've gotten good at something you might not be so good at that thing and you're never
• 1:25:24
  over those pieces that you're worried about or might have had insecurity about years ago and so
• 1:25:30
  this game of creating a business and being a public speaker and figuring out how to get confidence
• 1:25:34
  and figuring out how to host a podcast or launch a social media platform whatever it is it is a
• 1:25:39
  continuous evolving learning opportunity and when you make mistakes or when you mess something up
• 1:25:45
  it's so easy to just like internalize and I think that this is one of my superpowers even with
• 1:25:50
  the book there are tons of things that after you hit publish you're like I want to fix it and I want
• 1:25:55
  to do more but that's the exact thing that I think plagues people and stops them is they get so caught
• 1:26:00
  up and I want to do more I have to perfect it or they're so hard on themselves that they don't just
• 1:26:04
  keep moving forward and they don't figure out how to overcome from a mindset standpoint those
• 1:26:10
  those moments where they're embarrassed or frustrated or disappointed in themselves and so we didn't
• 1:26:15
  talk too much about mindset things but I know I'm going to rewatch this podcast I'm going to listen
• 1:26:19
  to the podcast and be like me and what happened there and how could I have done that differently
• 1:26:22
  but at the same time five years ago I would have just beaten myself up for this like thing that
• 1:26:27
  I perceive I can't control of course I can control it I know I can but in the moment it feels like
• 1:26:31
  it's uncontrollable and just urging the the person that's listening to this right now that if
• 1:26:36
  you're struggling through something where you're feeling like you have to take two steps back
• 1:26:40
  and you just continue to take two steps two steps back it's okay that that happens to you it's
• 1:26:45
  okay that there are moments where you're not perfect you just have to keep going on with the
• 1:26:49
  thing and you have to just keep remembering that the target is in this case it's a finished
• 1:26:53
  podcast right but in bigger things in life it's making sure that the perfection that you want isn't
• 1:27:00
  the thing that actually stops you from continuing to move forward I would say that also I mean
• 1:27:04
  it's never as bad as you think it is I mean it's really it's never bad as like we are our
• 1:27:11
  perception conflates this issue in our mind and it causes panic and stress and it's never that bad
• 1:27:18
  and it's honestly never even noticeable sometimes it is that bad sometimes it can be pretty
• 1:27:23
  free and bad like have you ever had one of those moments where it's pretty bad something you do
• 1:27:27
  just sounds horrendous or you jack something up listen back to it it's never as bad as I think it
• 1:27:32
  is interesting and I also I also understand now because I've usually it's in some sort of like
• 1:27:40
  performance based like speaking on a podcast or speaking on stage what it actually is it's
• 1:27:46
  it's a protection mechanism and your cortisol increases and you get a small little panic
• 1:27:52
  micro panic attack and then your body just has to like level out and normalize but the thing is
• 1:27:56
  when we get this panic attack if we don't know that it's actually a natural response to being
• 1:28:01
  put on stage or being put on the spot we we think there's something wrong with us and then we'll
• 1:28:05
  be thinking about that thing as opposed to like what we're actually trying to do and it will actually
• 1:28:12
  we will create this this mindset where we keep thinking it's happening to us even though it's not
• 1:28:19
  and we'll keep stumbling and we'll keep and and you can usually for me at least I can tell when
• 1:28:23
  I'm stressed out about something because my mouth gets dry that's like the one sign now by doing
• 1:28:28
  it 500 times or by speaking on stage not 500 times but enough I can perform through it but that's
• 1:28:37
  again just because of doing the reps it's 100% doing the reps by the way we could do a whole mindset
• 1:28:43
  podcast but I want to get the tactics out I love the tactics the tactics are important taxes are very
• 1:28:47
  important um if people want to connect with you where should they go Natalie Dawson I am super
• 1:28:54
  super involved on Instagram I answer all my own DMs I love Instagram it's my platform of choice
• 1:28:59
  so find me there perfect last question if you were going to tell your 20 year old self one thing
• 1:29:04
  what would it be I would tell my 20 year old self to go all in I was so worried about what people
• 1:29:11
  thought of me and got so wrapped up in my own limitations that I just like tried a bunch of things
• 1:29:18
  that I never wanted to commit to something even things that I liked I used to like scrapbooking
• 1:29:23
  scrapbooking was like my thing but I had some friends that made fun of me for scrapbooking and so I
• 1:29:27
  stopped doing the scrapbooking which sounds ridiculous but today you see people who have built a million
• 1:29:33
  dollar or 10 million dollar 100 million dollar scrapbooking business because they were just really
• 1:29:38
  passionate and into that thing and so for so long I really felt like I held myself back especially
• 1:29:43
  at the age of 20 from going all in on the things that interested me because I was fearful and insecure
• 1:29:50
  and really worried about what other people think and today the interest and passions that I have I'm
• 1:29:54
  like I'm crazy and a freak and a fanatic about those things and I slowed my growth by eight to
• 1:30:01
  10 years by not having that mentality a lot sooner