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From Rugby Coach to CEO: Andy Seeley's Entrepreneurial Journey in America · Beyond Fulfillment Podcast

• 0:00
  Imagine arriving in a new country with just a backpack and a few hundred dollars.
• 0:05
  You're fueled by dreams and ambition, yet faced with unexpected challenges and setbacks.
• 0:11
  What would you do if the pursuit of success led you to the brink of financial collapse?
• 0:17
  Well, today we dive deep into the entrepreneurial journey of Andy Seely, the founder and CEO of Creatively Disruptive.
• 0:26
  Andy shares his story, beginning with his arrival in the United States in 1990 with just $500 in a backpack, to the thriving business leader that he is today.
• 0:38
  We explore Andy's experience navigating through financial struggles, starting and selling businesses, and learning valuable lessons along the way.
• 0:47
  Throughout the episode, Andy emphasizes the importance of perseverance, building strong relationships, and maintaining a customer focused approach.
• 0:57
  Join us as we uncover the challenges and triumphs that have shaped Andy's path and gain valuable insights into the world of digital marketing and business growth.
• 1:07
  As always, if you found value from this content, please like and subscribe.
• 1:12
  Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Beyond Fulfillment podcast.
• 1:17
  I'm your host, Dave Goulis, and this week my guest is the founder and CEO of Creatively Disruptive, Andy Seeley.
• 1:26
  Welcome.
• 1:27
  How's it going?
• 1:28
  Thank you.
• 1:28
  Thank you for having me.
• 1:30
  Going great.
• 1:30
  Yeah.
• 1:30
  Appreciate you being here.
• 1:32
  Thank you.
• 1:33
  So, Andy, we were just talking off camera, and you've had quite a long entrepreneurial journey and you actually.
• 1:40
  It actually started when you came to this country with.
• 1:43
  With not very much.
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  Can you just give us your backstory and how you got started in business?
• 1:48
  Pick it off.
• 1:50
  So I.
• 1:51
  I'm a New Zealander.
• 1:52
  This is the funny.
• 1:53
  It's where the funny voice comes from.
• 1:55
  I live in Phoenix, but I've lived all over the country.
• 1:58
  I originally arrived in Chicago in 1999, in August.
• 2:04
  Sorry, in April of 1999 with a backpack and about 500 bucks.
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  And I was supposed to actually go on to England.
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  I was supposed to just be here for six months.
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  26 years later, I'm still here.
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  They didn't.
• 2:17
  We're able to get rid of me.
• 2:19
  Um, and, you know, I came here mainly the.
• 2:24
  The idea was to coach rugby.
• 2:27
  I was a rugby coach at the time, but I kind of had a real drive to make something happen.
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  I didn't really know at that point what it was, what I wanted to do, but I wanted something special and bigger and better than a job.
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  Right.
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  Quickly, I found out that rugby in America is not a big.
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  You know, you're not going to get paid a lot to coach rugby in the United States.
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  It's not a big A big, I guess, career move.
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  And, you know, I, I, I got a job working for CarMax, which is a, an auto superstore, and, you know, on the east coast and the West Coast, I guess, I guess it's all over the place as a
• 3:07
  sales manager and kind of learned a little bit of, kind of how, how the US Works.
• 3:11
  But I really had an itch to do my own thing.
• 3:15
  You know, being in the United States, I really do believe that the US Is a place that you can do anything right?
• 3:24
  You literally, if you, if you stick to it and work and, and work smart, you can really accomplish almost anything.
• 3:32
  It's, it's a, it's a special place.
• 3:35
  And so I always had this itch.
• 3:38
  My wife had an opportunity to buy a gymnastics gym in.
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  It was about 2004, 2005, we bought a gymnastics gym.
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  She was running that.
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  And I started, I got a job as a director of a TV station.
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  We, we did that for a little bit.
• 3:57
  And I got sick of working for someone else because I never was happy working for someone else as a pretty bad employee.
• 4:02
  I always think if you like working and you like being into stuff, but you're a terrible employee, it's probably a bit of a calling that you should maybe try to do something yourself.
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  And after a couple of years at the TV station, I started a business.
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  It was a media business, serving tourists that went pretty well.
• 4:25
  The gym struggled through the financial crisis to the point actually that we kept borrowing money to keep it going.
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  We ended up selling it, but we actually really, financially, personally had a really tough time.
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  And really, really, we, we struggled.
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  The, the business, the media business that I was doing was really struggling along too.
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  It wasn't failing, but it was not taking off during that period, you know, during, you know, that twin 2009 through 2013 kind of period.
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  And we actually ended up having so much debt that we actually had to do a Chapter 13 bankruptcy.
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  And it was a bit of a low point.
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  I was like, you come into the United States thinking that, you know, you're just going to make amazing things happen.
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  And it kind of started like that, and then it like went down.
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  I was like, oh.
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  And I felt quite low, and I was desperately scared of doing something like a bankruptcy or whatever I thought it was, would be a huge failure and everything.
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  And, and what I learned from it, though, was it was probably the lowest point of my 26 years in the, in the US where it was the scariest point and what's going on.
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  But I think what it did Was it actually reorientated my, my brain to realize even though I feared something so much, which was, you know, having tremendous financial difficulty, that my fear was far greater than the reality.
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  Right.
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  So once we hit it, yeah, we went through it, we got it sorted out.
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  It actually turned out to be quite good.
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  Learned how to live without borrowing money for a while which was good.
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  It caused us to have some discipline and we ended up selling the little media company that I built for a decent amount of money around about 2014.
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  And we started Creatively Disruptive 10 years ago at the beginning, ish, about the beginning of 2015 and, and that has just taken off from there.
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  And one of, one of the things, the founding ethos of Creatively Disruptive and I do have a business partner, we both have gone through similar journeys was we didn't, we wanted to build a company that would be able
• 6:47
  to treat its clients like it was part of our family.
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  So we, my idea was that if somebody looks at the ceiling at 3 o'clock in the morning, which all entrepreneurs do, worried about how to make payroll or how to solve this problem, how to do this, how to
• 7:01
  do that, that they could think in their head, you know, I work with Creatively Disruptive, I'm going to call them in the morning and we'll work through how to solve this problem.
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  Because whilst we do a lot of our work is digital marketing and, and business growth and, and you know, getting tools and different things to help businesses grow because we work with 110 different businesses ranging from like they're
• 7:25
  all kind of small businesses, we're not working with major corporations but ranging from brick and mortar, you know, kids activity centers like gymnastics gyms through to, we're working with law firms, working with, we've got some, a couple of
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  kind of interior, interior renovation type companies all the way through to e comm businesses 110.
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  We're having lots of conversations, good and bad best practices, not good practices of how to operate.
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  You know, we, we see you know, some of our clients do loads of mistakes.
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  We're able to take those mistakes and those learnings to other clients that are struggling with things and bring the best practices to the guys that are making mistakes and be able to help them.
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  And I guess the biggest thing that we've, we've kind of come through is you know, the guys that are successful and I'll, I'll put my hand up and say I'm one of them are the guys that don't stop
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  almost every, you know, successful Entrepreneur has had a really tough time, like, a really tough time to the point where they just don't know how they're going to continue.
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  And almost every successful entrepreneur has kind of gone through those tough times.
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  And sometimes they've had two tough times or three tough times or multiple tough times.
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  And those, those failures or difficulties have actually molded them into who they are and this and given them the success that they have.
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  So, you know, what I learned from all of that coming through, all of coming through from, you know, the early beginning of coming to the United States with nothing, basically 500 bucks and, and a ticket to get out
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  of the country, is that if you stick at it and you work smart and you think a lot about things and you strategize, you know, and, and to a degree, work hard and push through difficult periods, if you
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  build good relationships with good people that have skills that you don't have, so you build a team around you that is really, really good, you can overcome almost anything and get to some really good places.
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  And ultimately, you know, I think creatively disruptive is successful mainly because what's really important to us is doing right by people.
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  We, we have an ethos from a management standpoint of doing business with good people and good businesses that do good things.
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  And then we operate in the same way.
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  And it, there's, if I'm honest, it supercharged us to a point that we have us, you know, instead of building a sand castle or a house of cards, we actually have a rock castle that has been able to
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  do well through whatever, through covert to recessions, through whatever.
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  I don't see myself revisiting the times back in the financial, you know, financial collapse that was 2009.
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  So that's a long winded explanation of kind of like my journey from, you know, you know, you know, nothing to something.
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  And my journey is still going.
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  It's exciting.
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  You know, we, we are acquiring businesses.
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  We've recently acquired another agency.
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  We are looking to acquire three businesses right now.
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  There's a lot of business acquisition out there.
• 10:45
  And that's kind of where my journey is headed, is business acquisition.
• 10:53
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• 11:18
  So much to unpack there.
• 11:21
  No, no, it's, it's Great.
• 11:23
  Let me just go back.
• 11:24
  So when you're, you know, before creatively disruptive, when you have the other media company and you have the gym, and like you said, the gym, you're just kind of, you're, you're really going through a tough time just keeping
• 11:37
  it going and you're borrowing a bunch of money.
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  And I'm sure you're thinking, looking at the hole that you're in and like, how am I going to get out of this?
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  And like, how did you know the day to day, right, when you still got to go there and put on a smile for customers and you still got to be strong for your employees and you still have to
• 11:53
  be the leader.
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  Like, how did you get through those?
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  Because it sounds like that was like years of going through those, those challenging times.
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  Probably, if I'm honest, Dave, it was probably four years, four years of struggle.
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  And, you know, there's two parts to it.
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  One is my wife just is, you know, I met her.
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  You know, the reason why I'm still here is that six months into being in the United States, I met this wonderful woman.
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  And you know, 26 years later, we're still together with, with, with a family.
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  So.
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  But my wife, who is a gymnastics professional, and she, she kind of was the, the, the main runner of the gym at the time.
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  She is like a bulldog, right?
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  She, she won't let go of, of things.
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  You go, like, pull her off of stuff.
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  She doesn't give up.
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  She just does what she needs to do.
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  And, and for the, from a gym standpoint, we got through the gym period from pretty much, if I, if I'm honest, her just not just turning up every day, you know, going to the gym, doing the thing, even
• 13:00
  when she wasn't earning any money.
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  And she probably.
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  We didn't earn any money out of that business for probably a year and a half, two years, right?
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  She worked for free for two years basically because she believed in what she was doing and she had a, had a mission that she wanted to accomplish and she would not give up, right?
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  So she, she kept the gym open.
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  Probably by doing that, ie was able to support us through the, the media company that we had, which was basically a publishing firm that we published a magazine that went into hotel rooms for tourists, right?
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  And that was a lot of fun.
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  It made enough money to get us through that period, right.
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  Not enough to pay down the debt.
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  That's why we ultimately paid, you know, four years later, most of that debt was accrued in probably the first year.
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  And then it was battling, you know, collection agencies and everything, which was in itself a whole stress in itself.
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  But at one point, a friend of mine who was a little bit of a.
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  Of a mentor, and that's another thing that I highly recommend anybody to do is find somebody that you can talk to who knows a little bit about stuff, right?
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  Don't just sit there by yourself struggling.
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  Go and find people and talk to them.
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  Don't, don't be so, I guess, you know, prideful that you can't go to somebody that you believe might have some answers that you can talk to, find, seek out a mentor of some sort.
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  So that mentor said, hey, Andy, you got all of these people bothering you.
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  You're walking around with the stress in the world.
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  Maybe it's time to just file a bankruptcy and go and talk to a bankruptcy attorney.
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  And I, I thought bankruptcies were chapter sevens.
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  What, what my bankruptcy attorney said was, no, there's lots of different types of bankruptcies.
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  Why don't we just do a chapter 13 so you can keep hold of your house and you can keep hold of some of your assets and you pay a lot of the money back and it just gets restructured.
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  So that's what we did.
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  And that was that.
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  But what I would say that actually got me through that tough period, was it to just summarize it all up is, was a conversation I had with my dad, who's pretty successfully, you know, manager and business owner in
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  New Zealand.
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  And I went, I.
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  I had a.
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  This one day kind of crisis.
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  Almost like it wasn't a mental breakdown, but it was a bit of a.
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  Like, I'm just stuck.
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  I don't know what to do.
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  So I had a conversation with him and he said, and he said, and this is.
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  I've kind of gone with this always since that day, which it almost, you could almost say that that was kind of like that point where you bounce.
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  And I had that conversation.
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  It kind of just went up from there.
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  And what he said to me is, just do the things that you control.
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  Stop thinking about the things you don't control.
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  Stop thinking about the stuff that you cannot do anything about.
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  You know, you've heard of the thing.
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  Don't worry about things that you can't do anything about.
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  You know, he said, just do action.
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  Just focus on actions that you can control.
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  And give you an example at that point, you know, I started this media company to try to, you know, balance out the books so we could actually feed ourselves and pay, pay the mortgage.
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  And he said, just focus on picking Up a call a phone and calling.
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  Most of the clients that we would.
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  We had back then were or target clients were restaurants.
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  So just call 100 restaurants and see if you can get in to talk to them about them.
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  Advertising in your magazine, you can't control whether they pick up.
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  You can't control whether they agree with you to meet with you.
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  You can't control whether or not they buy from you.
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  The only thing you can control is picking up the phone and calling 100 people.
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  So all I want you to do is focus on that, and if you do that, you're successful.
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  And I was like, okay.
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  And I made a list of 100 targeted customers and I picked it up.
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  I picked up the phone.
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  I only got through to 65 because I actually got a few people pick up the phone and I actually got a.
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  16 people decide that they wanted to talk to me and they wanted me to come in.
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  And I ended up going in to those 16 people and I ended up getting five customers.
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  And that was something that really hit me.
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  I was like, okay, stop worrying about all the things I don't actually control, like, oh, these leads aren't any good, or people aren't answering me, or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, or whatever it is.
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  Just drill it down to the stuff that I literally control myself and just focus on doing the best I can with the things that I control.
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  And that was the game changer for me.
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  Love that.
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  Okay, all right, so.
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  So let's see.
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  So you sell the gym.
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  I know we went off on a tangent, but.
• 17:47
  No, you gave some great perspective there.
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  Okay, so you, you guys sell the gym, right?
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  And then you end up selling your media company.
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  You go through the bankruptcy, you come out on the other side, and after you sell the media company, then what, like what, what made you start creatively disruptive?
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  The media company.
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  The media company that we had, which was basically a publishing company, we had a lot of success.
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  We, we actually did a published.
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  It was actually called getaway.
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  And you can actually go.
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  If you go to YouTube, you can type in Getaway, Getaway, Reno, Tahoe, Getaway, San Diego.
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  That.
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  That is actually that company, right.
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  That we ultimately sold.
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  And what we found with that company was that there was a lot of pushback on publishing and like magazines.
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  No one wanted to spend money to be in a magazine for whatever.
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  For, you know, for many reasons.
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  They were very excited about the video production that we would do on YouTube.
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  So basically the little two minute, three minute stories about things to do in the location that we're we were in, so San Diego or Reno, Tahoe.
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  And what that said to me was, you know, there's a lot of people that want to be out there digitally.
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  Right.
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  And my business partner was going through a change with a business as well.
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  He was looking to get out of a, of a, he was a director, he wasn't an owner of a company.
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  And he, and he wanted to start his own business.
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  And we spoke to each other and we said, look, you know, I want to help more companies.
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  I don't want it to just be tourism based businesses that have kind of very localized.
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  I want to help companies anywhere.
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  And digital marketing is where, where it's at.
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  I mean that's where, where you know, everybody wants to be.
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  So why don't we be in the place that everybody wants to be and we'll just be very good about it, good at it.
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  And on top of that we'll treat people really well and we'll make it more about what they want rather than just ads.
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  So you know, we have a phrase called turning hopes and dreams into data uncertainty.
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  That, that's, that's the, our catchphrase, Creatively Disruptive.
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  And basically what that means is we focus on what you want to accomplish yourself personally.
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  Right?
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  So many customers, they'll come in, they say I want better leads or I want more sales.
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  We did, we drill deeper into that, right.
• 20:14
  To find out what it is that you want as a payoff.
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  So we sold those businesses and we started Creatively Disruptive.
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  One, because we thought that was the future, which it is, which it was 10 years ago.
• 20:27
  And two, we thought we could help more businesses and we felt that there was a need for people to actually have real help with what they wanted to accomplish and to really distill that down.
• 20:40
  And like I said, to be that company that you, if you're staring at the ceiling at 3am in the morning, worried and can't sleep, that you've got a partner that you can reach out to to get some solutions
• 20:52
  or at least work on trying to solve those problems.
• 20:55
  And that was the reason why we started Creatively Disruptive.
• 20:58
  And it was kind of like a nice reset and put to, to start a company that could help anybody with a medium that was, you know, significant, but to do it in a way that was real and more
• 21:13
  in touch with the people behind the business.
• 21:17
  So I mean, that sounds fantastic, right?
• 21:20
  Very admirable and it sounds like something that any, any small business would want.
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  But what, what's the process like of actually like doing that in Terms of, you know, operating the day to day, you know, ensuring that customers are succeeding and that they're paying and, and all the other things that you
• 21:38
  have to work, you know, deal with as a business and you know, as a marketing is a very competitive field.
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  Like so how does, what does the day to.
• 21:47
  In, you know, for that company?
• 21:49
  Right?
• 21:50
  So, so like one of the things that we do is we break everything down into data.
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  So like when you first start with creatively disruptive, which is very different to most agencies that are out there, we will spend most of our time really understanding what you want to accomplish personally.
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  So we'll actually drill down to the point of what schools do you want to send your kid to?
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  Do you want to upgrade your kitchen, do you want a new house, do you want to blah, blah, blah.
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  And we actually come out with a dollar amount of how much you want to earn in 3 years time.
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  Right?
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  So what's your magical life going to look like in 12 quarters three years from today?
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  Right?
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  And we ask people, it's amazing how many times people come in and they're kind of low, they're not as high as we'd like them to be.
• 22:35
  And we ask them to dream hard, but don't, don't, you know, go 20 years ahead, but go three years and think about what you want and then add a little bit to it.
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  So we usually come out with a dollar amount they're looking for.
• 22:47
  So you know, let's say somebody's saying he, hey, currently I'm making $85,000 a year and in three years I'd love to be making 500, $500,000.
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  We break that dollar amount down and we break it all the way down to the point that we know how much the lead cost needs to be.
• 23:04
  Because hey, this is the ad budget and this, you know, and this is all the data that needs to, to happen.
• 23:10
  Then your close rate and the whole nine yards.
• 23:12
  So we know, okay, we do this this quarter and then we layer on top of it the next quarter.
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  We call it the 12 quarter plan.
• 23:19
  As we go through those 12 quarters, this is how the data that we need to hit and the numbers that we need to do to actually get to you to where you want to be.
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  The other part of it is we dig through what you're currently doing.
• 23:31
  We do an audit of everything that you do online from your social media to your websites, your ads, ads, if you run any, to your, you know, to your email marketing, the whole nine yards.
• 23:42
  And we break it down and we look at what's broken, what's working, what's not working, what needs to be fixed to actually get it to, to an alignment to that 12 quarter plan to make sure that those data
• 23:53
  points are being reached.
• 23:54
  And we actually, when we first started we didn't do this but we pretty quickly learned that you know, whilst clients oftentimes want leads and they want sales, often side there's, there's a lot more to it.
• 24:06
  So from a, from a non ecom standpoint we even started doing sales training teaching them actually how to handle leads, how to work through stuff that actually ultimately led to what we've done now which is develop a AI
• 24:22
  kind of follow up system which actually does the follow up system for a lot of our clients, lead generation because we knew that that was a problem.
• 24:31
  We're very good at getting people to reach out to you as a business.
• 24:35
  Oftentimes what the sticking point was was the client being able to, you know, reach out to those leads that came through in an efficient way that actually made them convert.
• 24:45
  So that's kind of, we're constantly looking at what is, what is it that the client wants and how do we hit those numbers.
• 24:54
  So the 12Q plan has become a real significant, I'd say focal point of what we're trying to do because it, whilst customers most of the time and most business owners say they want more customers, it's like how many
• 25:11
  more customers, how much are you charging them?
• 25:13
  You know, how much do you, all the data points that you, you might ask.
• 25:16
  Because just saying more customers is not, is, is not an accurate enough thing.
• 25:21
  You know, why do you want more customers?
• 25:23
  Some, we actually have some clients who say I want less customers, I just want them to pay more.
• 25:28
  Right.
• 25:29
  So going through the process to figure out what they need custom to that business.
• 25:36
  No matter, you know, how big the businesses we have.
• 25:38
  We have a landscaping company which is a pretty small company that we work with at a different level all the way through to, you know, pretty large.
• 25:46
  We actually had a bank, a bank in Louisiana that we worked with for a number of years that ended up doing their own in house stuff.
• 25:53
  And you know, they, everybody kind of has the same kind of process that they need to go through to actually get to where you want to be.
• 26:01
  So yeah, another long winded tangent filled answer.
• 26:06
  All right, and so when you started this company too, because clearly, right, you'd been through challenges, you'd overcome a lot, you kind of were re energized after the sale of the last business, like did this Take off right
• 26:18
  away or did you go through some, like a tough time getting it off the ground?
• 26:24
  I would say it was kind of like a slow.
• 26:27
  There was no, there was no down.
• 26:29
  It's always been on, on the upswing.
• 26:31
  But probably 2015, 2016 was, was kind of like a slow, you know, you know, growth.
• 26:41
  But it was, you know, every month it was a little bit better, a little bit better.
• 26:45
  But it took a while, right?
• 26:47
  My wife had two jobs during that period because, you know, I was earning, I think my partner and I were earning like a thousand bucks a month at the early days.
• 26:57
  And it was, it was slow, right?
• 27:00
  And one of the things that we learned really early on was to build a funnel and to build a presence online.
• 27:08
  Right.
• 27:08
  2015, early 2015, it was still a bit of the wild west, right?
• 27:13
  Facebook, Google, all of those things are very different back then to what they are today.
• 27:19
  And what we learned was building a presence so people know that you exist, that you're not a fly by night organization.
• 27:27
  Because there's so many startup fly by night organizations that are out there to screw people over, even to this day.
• 27:33
  You know, people, you know, many of you have, your listeners probably have experienced that.
• 27:39
  But to build an online presence with a mixture of reviews, with posts with, you know, showing that you exist and that you're, you're part of society and that you're real was really, really important to us.
• 27:52
  And, and that was kind of like building that up, right?
• 27:55
  So you.
• 27:56
  What I would say is if you're starting a business, doesn't matter what it is, there's this, there is a, there is a kind of like a launching pad that you need to go on.
• 28:03
  There's a Runway that you kind of have to get on before you start flying.
• 28:07
  And, and, and there's no overcoming that.
• 28:09
  You can work really hard to try to shorten that Runway.
• 28:12
  But everyone has a Runway.
• 28:14
  And depending on how much, how smart you are, you know, how likely, how you can avoid making bad decisions and how much money that you can invest in it depends on how quickly you can get past that Runway
• 28:28
  part.
• 28:29
  We didn't have a lot of money to invest in it, so it was really just hard work and sweet equity.
• 28:35
  And a bit of advice, good advice from some key players that actually were able to get us going without too much of a drop.
• 28:42
  We didn't actually have any drop.
• 28:43
  It was more of just a slow.
• 28:45
  And then when in 2017, it just started to take off and then, then it was about.
• 28:51
  Then it was different, right?
• 28:53
  It Was like real rapid growth and it was about how to keep the thing together without the bolts shaking and everything falling apart.
• 29:01
  And it became a different thing rather than how do we get this off the ground to how do we keep it together became the, the change.
• 29:10
  And you know, I saw on your, your website too, you've got numerous employees now.
• 29:15
  So you've, you've scaled a bit since it was just you and your partner.
• 29:18
  So how, how is like how have you evolved in terms of like building a team and growing the company to now you have over 100 customers and you're doing much better and you're acquiring other firms.
• 29:30
  Like how, how have you evolved over your, your, your journey with the company to do all that?
• 29:36
  Yeah, I mean a lot of it is, I mean I don't do any of the day to day work.
• 29:40
  Right.
• 29:40
  So I, if you became a customer, you're not.
• 29:44
  You talk, you can talk to me.
• 29:45
  If you ask to talk to me and you'll, and I'll definitely talk to you.
• 29:48
  I'll spend as much time with you as you wanted to.
• 29:50
  But typically you're going to be working with, with our team.
• 29:53
  Even my business partner who's the chief operations officer, he's working on strategies and future stuff and, and, and how to keep all the bolts nice and tight.
• 30:02
  Right.
• 30:04
  You know, one of the things that, I mean, you could take it as a negative or a positive, but I am a bit lazy.
• 30:13
  I would much rather be swimming in the pool with my son.
• 30:15
  Right.
• 30:16
  I've got a seven year old.
• 30:17
  I'd rather be swimming in a pool with him.
• 30:19
  I'd rather be, you know, traveling and going to restaurants and having fun with family.
• 30:23
  I'd rather be doing anything other than working.
• 30:25
  Right.
• 30:26
  Is the reality.
• 30:27
  I love helping small businesses.
• 30:31
  So how do I do that?
• 30:32
  How do I spend time with my family and do all the things that I like but actually really make a difference?
• 30:38
  And what I, what that's forced me to do is actually look for really good people that are better than me at the different things that need to be done in my business and in sequencing the most important ones
• 30:52
  through to where we are today.
• 30:54
  So, you know, one of the things that we learned early on was I'm a decent sales guy, right?
• 31:00
  CEOs most of the time we're decent salespeople.
• 31:02
  We sell our businesses.
• 31:04
  My business partner was a good operations guy.
• 31:06
  He was bad in front of the customers.
• 31:08
  I was always looking for the next deal, the next customer.
• 31:11
  We had a hole with customer service.
• 31:14
  So our first hire was actually a really great customer service focused person and she took over that part of the business.
• 31:20
  She was with us for six years and she was quite instrumental with really starting to build that high level of client services.
• 31:29
  And then we just added to that like what was the next thing that I didn't want to do or my business partner didn't want to do or what needed to be done to actually deliver a really high level
• 31:38
  of service to the clients.
• 31:42
  And we always look for somebody who is way better than what we were.
• 31:47
  It's a boring thing that's probably not earth shattering that everybody hears all the time, but you never want to be the smartest guy in the room of your, you know, in your conference room.
• 31:57
  You want to be the guy going, asking the questions, going okay, well how are we going to do that?
• 32:00
  And then people give you answers, right?
• 32:03
  That's, I don't want to be in my conference room and all my team's quiet waiting for me to tell them what to do.
• 32:09
  Bad situation.
• 32:10
  I'm, I'm looking for people that are going to tell me this is what we should be doing.
• 32:14
  And then I listen to it, think it through, ask questions to figure out what's going on and I try to find those kind of people, right.
• 32:21
  And then we empower them and give them the ability to make decisions.
• 32:25
  So, and we've, we've basically added those, those people to the point now that we actually have two levels.
• 32:30
  We have, you know, people, the have started off with me and my business partner being the management team and we had employees.
• 32:39
  Some of those longer term people are now the middle management that actually run the company.
• 32:43
  We actually have Jessica who is actually running the company day to day.
• 32:48
  Like daytoday.
• 32:48
  She is the boss and makes, that makes the calls and that allows me to focus on the CEO stuff and, and if I'm honest with you, that's where some of the real true growth and strength has come in
• 33:00
  the company.
• 33:01
  I think a lot of CEOs or, or business owners, they never get to that point that they stay in this, in this role of, let's say they, they're, they, they open a bakery and they're making, you know, cakes.
• 33:18
  They stay in the role of making cakes and they never get into.
• 33:22
  And that means the business owner work, which is, can only be done by the business owner or the CEO never really truly gets done, which is what, what, what is the future of the business?
• 33:30
  What are we, where are we going to go?
• 33:31
  I look at it as like the captain of a ship A true captain of a ship back in the day and a.
• 33:39
  Well, back in the day and today doesn't actually get on the tiller, doesn't get, doesn't drive the ship, doesn't do any of the things to make the ship go forward.
• 33:47
  He's usually in the captain's room or the captain's office or where, wherever, charting where to go.
• 33:54
  Hey, this is where we're going to go.
• 33:55
  This is how we're going to get there.
• 33:57
  Right.
• 33:59
  And a lot of business owners forget that.
• 34:01
  That is more important than anything is actually having a clear understanding of where you want to go and how you're going to get there.
• 34:08
  The operations of the company is really, really important.
• 34:10
  But as, as quick as you can to try to start handing that off to people who are better at operating the company, especially if you're an entrepreneur.
• 34:18
  Because a lot of us as entrepreneurs, we're not the greatest operators.
• 34:22
  We're great at starting things up, we're great at getting things going, but we're not good at making, you know, doing the day to day.
• 34:28
  So getting those great day to day people has been really key to us over the last few years.
• 34:34
  To the point that our team's at about 25:30.
• 34:39
  Okay.
• 34:40
  Yeah.
• 34:41
  All right.
• 34:41
  And Andy, if people want to get in touch with you and learn more about Creatively Disruptive and how you can potentially help them, what's the best way that people could reach out to you?
• 34:49
  Yeah, so you can go to creatively disruptive.com if you're an E commerce business.
• 34:55
  We actually have a brand called Ashworth Strategy which you can go to too.
• 35:00
  So it's Ashworth strategy.com is, is our econ part.
• 35:05
  But creatively disruptive.com is the best way to reach out to me.
• 35:08
  If you want to reach out to me, go there and you'll be able to, you know, connect with us.
• 35:14
  You can, you know, find me on Small Business Champion on Instagram if you want to, you want to, you know, follow me or do, you know, jump on there or follow.
• 35:25
  Creatively Disruptive is probably the best way to actually reach me from a business standpoint and you know, go to Creatively Disruptive on Instagram.
• 35:34
  We actually have a YouTube channel too called Creatively Disruptive that you can go on and see a lot of stuff that we put on there.
• 35:39
  So those are probably the best ways to reach out.
• 35:43
  All right, and we'll link all that in the show notes for everyone.
• 35:46
  Awesome.
• 35:47
  All right, well, Andy, thank you so much for taking the time to be here and sharing all this valuable wisdom from.
• 35:52
  From your journey.
• 35:52
  We greatly appreciate it.
• 35:54
  Thanks, Dave.
• 35:54
  It was great chatting with you.
• 35:57
  All right.
• 35:57
  And that's all the time we have for now.
• 35:59
  We will see you next time.