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Ego vs. Reality: Surviving a Business Collapse with RJon Robins · Big Talk About Small Business

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, she was sitting on risers.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm standing on the ground, she's on the risers, and she bends down.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_02: And you have to know Steph is like genuinely one of the nicest human beings on the planet, right?
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_02: She looks me right in the eye and she says, because you don't want it bad enough.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_02: I remember that I said, fuck you, right to her face.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_02: She says I didn't actually say those words out loud.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_03: Welcome everybody.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_03: Back to another episode of that big talk about small business.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_03: And I am here solo again.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, solo in the sense as a host.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_03: Mark Zweig is hanging out in some really nice areas and did not invite me.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_03: And so he left me here to take care of the business while he's out playing and chilling on a beach and hanging out.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_03: But that's okay because I have an awesome guest with us today, and uh who's got a tremendous amount of experience, uh, great personality.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_03: So you're not going to be bored.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_03: You're not going to be bored in this.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_03: And we're going to wrap it back and forth talking about what it means to be a true entrepreneur, not a founder and not a pitch dank, uh, pitch uh pitch deck uh rambler, but somebody that is really legitimately wanting to get into the field of entrepreneurship.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_03: R John has that experience, and you're going to hear a lot about it.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_03: And so I'm going to welcome our guest, R John.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_03: Welcome to the show of Big Talk About Small Business.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_03: I'm really stoked about uh about rapping with you about this stuff.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_02: I really appreciate the invitation.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_03: You got it.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_03: So, R John, let's kick us off.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_03: So, what the story I want to uh I'm going to start out with, let's start with the origin, Bruce.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_03: There's a there's a circumstance back in the day where you're sitting at a kitchen table and things aren't going as flowery and rosy as what somebody might like to put on a on a on a social media post.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_03: What was your scenario?
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_03: What were you faced with, and how and how did you overcome?
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um yeah, it was worse than what you're describing.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_02: Because no, no, really, it was worse because I was a I forgot to ask, am I allowed to curse on your podcast?
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, you can.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I was a big fucking idiot, right?
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_02: Because I had already helped build thousands of successful businesses.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_02: I I started off, I went to law school, I learned everything everyone learns in law school about the business of running a law firm, which is nothing.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_02: I went out, opened my own law firm, fell on my face, discovered that the Florida bar had a whole department that they created way back in 1980 to help lawyers build more successful businesses.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_02: Law firm is a business, right?
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um I fell on my face.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_02: I discovered uh the Florida Bar's Law Office Management Assistance Service.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_02: They helped me transform my struggling law firm into a successful law firm.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_02: Then they recruited me and I went around and helped thousands and thousands and thousands of lawyers build very successful law firms.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_02: And then when I left the Florida bar, I failed to follow my own advice.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't put in the processes, the systems, the procedures.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't, I didn't make it a replicable business that could work without me.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_02: I settled to let it just be a practice, right?
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_02: And so when my wife got sick, she got real sick real fast.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_02: She's all recovered now, but she became real sick real fast with very little warning.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_02: And within 18 months, the whole thing fell apart.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_02: It fell apart so fast because I wasn't there turning the wheel, turning the wheel, turning the wheel, turning the wheel myself.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_02: Lost the house to foreclosure.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um it was bad.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it it on our website, you got my bio, and it was like worse than the bio because if I told everyone, you know, uh, the the gritty details, no one wants to hear the truth.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_02: It was just really bad.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we were struggling to buy groceries.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_02: We couldn't pay, obviously, the mortgage.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_02: We couldn't pay the HOA.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_02: I couldn't get new tires for my car for like a year.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_02: We were broke.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_02: And the reason why this was so bad is because here I am.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_02: I was the guy who had taught and helped thousands of people by this point build successful businesses that ran without them.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_02: And here I was, I didn't follow my own advice.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't follow my own advice about creating a marketing machine.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't follow my advice about putting someone else in place to do sales instead of me.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't put follow my own advice about creating processes and systems and procedures because systems run successful businesses.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_02: I settled to just run it all myself because it was expedient and it was ego, easy, and it gratified my ego.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_02: And I got to show off because I was like, you know, you know, Mr.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_02: Big Shot doing all this stuff myself.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_02: But then when she got sick, it was bad.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_02: And the reason I was saying it was even worse than coming from nothing and building is because when you have something and then you fuck it all up and lose it, it's even worse.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_03: Man, you you're hitting on some, you're striking on some chords that we we talk a lot.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_03: Like this whole, there's like a mystery box in here, like of why do we not do what we know we should do?
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_03: Like when we get in those positions, you know.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, like we know how to based off your you're you're you're teaching other folks, but then you start your own, and then you just you do the opposite of what you know best you should do.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_03: What what what do you think that is?
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_03: Like what do you think feeds that drive?
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_02: So everyone needs a coach, everyone needs an advisor, everyone needs a board, everyone needs someone on the outside calling out the instructions to them that are printed on the outside of the box that they're stuck inside of, right?
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_02: So we're all entrepreneurs, we're all sitting inside of our box, and the instructions to get out of the box are clearly printed.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_02: The problem is they're printed on the outside of the box and we can't see them.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_02: And when you are in the business of helping other people get out of their own box, in my case, I'll just speak for myself.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe others listening to this will resonate.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_02: In my case, my ego required me to be uh the know-it-all, right?
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_02: Because I was the guy who had helped thousands, literally thousands of people reading the instructions to them and guiding them and directing them of how to get out of the box to free themselves from their business.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_02: But I couldn't bring myself to say that I also needed help.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_02: It's like think about a psychologist who doesn't have their own psychologist working on their own mindset.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_02: Think about the uh the the professional athlete who rises to the top of their sport who says, Oh, now I know it all, I don't need coaching anymore.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um you know if you are in the business of guiding, advising, consulting, teaching, being the expert, being the smartest person in the room on a particular topic, you got to look out for your ego because it might tend to prevent you from being able to uh take advice about your own business and bring in people or a person with with with with more objective perspective.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_02: That was that was my problem.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_02: That was my Achilles heel that that brought me down.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and I've seen that happen with thousands of others.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_03: I can uh I can attest personally to the same thing.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_03: It's an i I don't know.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_03: I think it's just an interesting psychological phenomenon, especially in an entrepreneur field, right?
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_03: Like I've built a business, sold it.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_03: These are additional ones, new ones that I've been building.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_03: And for some reason, like I've I can't there, there's patterns or habits that I can't seem to get out of my own way, you know, and things.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_03: But I think that, you know, we I did just recently form a true formal advisory board, which are chock full of really fantastic, awesome folks.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_03: And I think there's a humility stick to it to where you get to a point you're like, I need help.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_03: I want, not actually do I need it, but I actually want to hear objective opinions and perspectives from people that I trust and know that are going to give me the truth.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_03: I think that's important.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_03: When you when you say forming your coaches or your advisory panel, selecting the right ones that you know are gonna give you truth is important.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you know, there okay, so look, it's easy to like make fun of all these stupid entrepreneurs that that that that do this, but you know, but but we're all that way.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_02: Everyone's like that, right?
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_02: You gotta approach it, you gotta approach it with some more sensitivity, right?
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_02: And some humility and and the courage to admit that we all do that to some degree.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_02: Look, it's hard, right?
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_02: You ever hear of a of a psychological thing called the accordion relationship?
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so um sailors, uh traveling salespeople, people who are on the road a lot, away from their family, people who do a lot of military service and they come and go, there's a psychological thing that's like the accordion effect.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_02: And so what happens is um the the the the the the the parent who stays home and holds down the house, stays home and holds down the house, while the other parent goes off and conquers the world for days, weeks, months at a time, and then comes back, right?
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_02: And they have a hard time kind of re-entering the family dynamic, right?
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_02: And and what happens is when we are out conquering the world, when we are out being at the top of our game, when we are out uh being the expert that everyone's turning to for advice, when we are out um even at a board meeting, you know, being the decisive decision maker, right?
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_02: That requires us to have a certain kind of mindset and and and and and to and to live in a certain psychological place in our mind, right?
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_02: We've got to have a certain level of self-assurance, or we can't do what we do.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_02: And it's hard, and it takes practice, and sometimes you got to fall on your face a few times to like have the humility to be able to say, even though I'm the the the the cat's meow over here, I have to willingly and intentionally put myself back into the student role over there.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_02: And you have to like consciously change gears in terms of your mind and in terms of your ego, right?
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_02: So, like here I am, I'm talking to you, and you know, tomorrow I've got, I think, like eight or ten very successful entrepreneurs flying in from around the country to come have uh two shared VIP days with me.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_02: And so what did I go out and do this morning?
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_02: I went out and took a tennis lesson and had someone really school me on tennis, right?
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_02: And that keeps me grounded and it keeps me humble, right?
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_02: Because, you know, after I'm like about to drop dead of a fucking heart attack, because you know, I'm running all over the place and I think I'm doing really great, I talk to the, I talked to my coach afterwards, I'm like, hey, out of on a one to 10, how hard were you playing?
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_02: He's like, about a two.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, okay.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_02: You know, but because we're all we're all beginners at something.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_02: And it's important to go out and put yourself into a place where you get to be the beginner.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't matter if you're the beginner at tennis, or you're the beginner at playing a musical instrument, or you're the beginner at learning a new skill.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_02: You've got to go out of your way to put yourself into a position to be the beginner at something so that when you're the expert, you have more humility, you have more uh sensitivity, and and you're able to take better advice.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's really that's a really uh I like that.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's almost like there's a discipline to that.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_03: And I can kind of relate that in a sense, like I've also personally I practice do something that's that's extremely challenging, that's like that's that is humbling, that kind of knocks you on your face.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_03: Like there's there's a lot of practices that I might take.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_03: Like, number one, I've been for the last two years, every time I take a shower in the morning or any in in the evening or whatever, I turn that puppy on cold because I want to be uncomfortable.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_03: Like I take a I take a normal shower to begin with, but then the last minute and a half crank that over.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_02: I don't do it, but I've done it.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's it's kind of good because it's humbling, right?
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_03: Or I go outside and I try to do something that's you know, I mess with, you know, poison Ivy or something that's threatening, you know, and I I get a little dirty.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_03: But that's kind of one form, but what you're saying, but I like what you're saying because there is a it's it is an interesting thing because you do have to be on your game, you have to make bold decisions, you have to constantly lead.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_03: And then to be led, like it helps you ground back out so you don't get because it's really our ego that starts blindsiding us, right?
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_02: And that's why I intentionally go out and try doing things and hire people to coach me that are just so far above and beyond where I'm at that it forces me back into that humble, curious uh student mode again, right?
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_02: So like I take tennis lessons with people who are like really, really, really good at tennis.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_02: And like it doesn't matter if I make you know 50 times more income than they do.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_02: They're kicking my ass and clearly schooling, right?
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_02: When I go fishing, I bring out like these fishing guides who like like they can tell the fish that's on the hook 200 feet underwater by the way that the little thing wiggles.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, how do you do that?
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_02: And they can tell me, and like that's what it feels like for my clients when I talk to them, because I know what's going on in their business, and they don't know.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_03: That's good.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_03: That's a really good statement, man.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_03: That that kind of just landed the plane in my brain about something new.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_03: You're exactly right.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_03: Because as the entrepreneur and you have a business, you know all these details, you come barging into a client meeting.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_03: I can't tell you the amount of times I've alienated clients, probably, just by kind of vomiting out all the answers to everything under the sun.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_03: Because it's so obvious to us.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_03: It's so obvious.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_02: And and I'm out there with I'm out there fishing the other day, and the guy's like, Oh, that's uh that's an amberjack.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_02: How can you tell it's an amberjack?
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_02: That's 200 feet underwater.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_02: He's like, Well, because of the way that the thing's doing whatever, like, okay, let me sit at your knee and learn something from you, master, because I clearly don't know shit about this.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I bring that humility back to my work with my clients and with my leadership team because it reminds me what it's like to be humble.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_03: Man, that's so good.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_03: Because that guy, that fishing guy, they they have a they have a choice as that expert in that field.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_03: They can either inspire and bring you along into better fishman and better fishing, or they can intimidate and bully you to where you'll never hire them again because you don't want to deal with his ego or her ego up here, right?
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_03: That's very that's a good connecting stuff uh uh point for me, man.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_03: That's really good.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_02: You can do with sports, you can do it with fishing.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I guess fishing is a sport, but like I guess my big point is for your audience, go out of your way to put yourself in positions where you're being taught, trained, coached, advised by someone who's just clearly superior to you to keep exercising that humility muscle.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_03: All right.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_03: So going it was around 2009, I think, that you um that you went through this experience, your wife got ill, your bus, your business crashed.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_03: I want to I want to talk about what happened next, but before I do, we we do talk about what happened next.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_03: I want to I want to kind of unpack a little bit about your own overcoming.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_03: You got humbled, you got put in a position that you didn't think you should be at, right?
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_03: And it's like like like what did you do?
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_03: How did you overcome your emotions in that part?
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I think this is so relevant for entrepreneurs, right?
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_03: Like the humility is real at those times.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_03: What did you what were what are you looking back, what do you remember as like that that trigger point of when you did have a reality of, okay, I'm in this position, I need to get out of it.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_03: What did you do?
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_03: What was your process?
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_03: Dude, did you have any kind of you know, habits that you started forming, or was it pure gut and will, spiritual?
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, what was it that that pushed you through?
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_02: I can tell you the exact moment.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um, there's not many times where you like know the exact moment where something happened, but I know the exact moment this happened.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um it was 20 uh 11.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um we were broke.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_02: We started doing coaching and started doing personal development, meaning becoming custom being being students of coaching and students of personal development.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_02: And I was in uh Las Vegas at a coaching event with a brilliant guy by the name of David Nabel, who was at the time my I was trying to hire him to be my mindset coach.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_02: And I had hired him for a VIP day by putting down a deposit.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_02: And the deal was you can put down a deposit to reserve the date, but if you want to extend it, you have to make another payment towards the full amount, which at the time was$15,000, which at the time was like a lot of money to me, right?
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_02: So I was like on the layaway plan for this$15,000 VIP day.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_02: And David had an amazing uh person working with him by the name of Steph Tuss, who by this point had been listening to my bullshit.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_02: Every time I had to extend the date, I had to give her more money.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_02: So she had to like listen to my bullshit reasons and excuses.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_02: And so I'm at this event in Las Vegas, and I'm I'm telling her, you know, my my latest white on bullshit, my my latest story about why we're broke and what's why it's not my fault and not my responsibility, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_02: And and and she says, and and she says, you know, Dave and I were talking about you two, her, my me and my wife, we were talking about you two before, you know, before we got started, and and and we know why you haven't found the money yet.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, whoa, why?
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_02: Because I mean like I'm fucking desperate at this point, right?
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_02: And and she looks me right in the eye.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, she was sitting on risers, so I'm standing on the ground, she's on the risers, and she bends down.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_02: And you have to know Steph is like genuinely one of the nicest human beings on the planet, right?
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_02: She looks me right in the eye and she says, Because you don't want it bad enough.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_02: I remember that I said, Fuck you, right to her face.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_02: She says, I didn't actually say those words out loud.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_02: And I was so offended and pissed off, and you don't understand, and I had so much, you know, self-righteous bullshit going on.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_02: I would have left the event early had I not been too broke to pay to change the airline ticket.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_02: So I had no choice but to sit there for two days or three days.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_02: It was a three-day workshop.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_02: I had no choice but to sit there for three days stewing in this shit.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_02: And as this workshop is going on, it's slowly unpacking and unpacking and unpacking.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_02: And I realized I don't want it bad enough.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_02: I wanted to be right, I wanted to look good, I wanted the appearances, I wanted other people to think highly.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_02: I wanted all of the appearances of success more than I wanted the reality of success.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_02: I left that workshop, and within six months, we had tripled our business.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_02: Within six months, I started calling people who had previously said no.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_02: I started calling people who had previously, you know, said really not nice things to me, really not nice things about me.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_02: I just swallowed my pride and started doing whatever I had to do to build and build and build and build the business because I I had this moment where I realized I want to be successful more than I want to appear to be successful.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_02: And that changed everything.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_03: That's good.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_03: And in in you know, to kind of Of demissive of this for anybody that's listening, you know, what were the actions like once you had that vision, you know, that perspective, and you and you kind of alluded to them a little bit, but like you said, you'd started making calls, like what actions did we do?
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_02: I'll tell you all the actions, but I'm reluctant.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_02: You know, when I I've shared this story before, and I'm I'm reluctant to share the details because I worry that if I tell you the details, someone's gonna think of this as a prescription.
• 22:31
  unknown: Right?
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_02: These are the things I did because of my unique situation and my unique opportunities and my unique personality and what was going on in the economy at that particular time.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_02: You know, this this is what I did.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know that this is what I would necessarily do if I had to do over again.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_03: But this is what I did.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_03: Or today, right?
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_02: This is what I did.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um I literally went home and be called and began calling everyone who had said no to me.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_02: And I wouldn't let them off the phone until they said yes or hung up or told me affirmatively, don't ever call me again.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_02: I just wouldn't hang up the phone.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um and let me tell you, the first time I got hung up on, you know that song, um Is That All There Is?
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I um is that because if that's all there is, if that's all there is, I'll keep dancing, right?
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_02: The first time I got hung up on was one of the most liberating moments of my life.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_02: Because I was like, is that is that it?
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_02: This is what I've been afraid of all this time.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_02: This is what I've this is what has been stopping me from telling people what I really think.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_02: This is what's been stopping me from asking the the scary question.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_02: This is it.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_02: All they did was hung up the phone and you know, and I went out for dinner.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_02: That's it.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_02: It was I would I would highly recommend to anyone listening to this or watching this, try to stay on the sales call until they buy or hang up on you, just as an exercise, just to just to test the limits of how far it can go, and you will find a new gear that you didn't even know you had before.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_02: And when you do get hung up on, I mean, like losing my house to foreclosure was one of the most liberating experiences of my life.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_02: Like that's all there is to losing your house to foreclosure.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, okay.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_02: You know the house we lost to foreclosure was a$400,000 house.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's like getting pretty close to pocket change nowadays.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_02: My whole life, like, I was afraid, like, oh my god, what's the worst thing that could happen?
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_02: And people always say, I'll lose my house in foreclosure.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_02: No, that it's it's not that big a deal.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_02: And another thing is you find out who your real friends are, which is also very liberating.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_02: So, what did I actually do?
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_02: I what I did was I literally started calling people who had said no to me, and I wouldn't get off the phone until they said yes or hung up.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_02: And surprise, surprise, a lot of people started saying yes.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_02: I started calling people who I had tried to get to do like a joint venture affiliate deal with me who had said no, I started calling them too.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_02: I even started calling people who I knew had said shitty things about me out in the marketplace, and I found ways to make friends with them and win them over.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_03: That's what I actually did.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_03: That's great.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_03: I love that, man.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_03: That's really encouraging.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think I mean even for myself to hear it, right?
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_03: And then, but I'm sure for listeners, there, you know, that's the thing about entrepreneurism.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_03: You do you get you put yourself on an island at some point, and then you live there, you can live there for quite some time.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_03: You know, a little bit of the high uh of a high point of what we're talking about here is you're actually breaking through that island that you create has a lot to do with your own ego, your own expectations, your appearance that you want to have.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_03: And so you start shielding your you start self-protecting unknowingly, subconsciously.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_03: But some of these things you're talking about are like breakthroughs of that shield that you created, because then you're exposed, but then you have you mentioned real friends, real clients, real partners, people that are that you you are building.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that there's I mean, you know, I I can call out some of the entrepreneurs I know that are certainly are probably in their own shield situation now, but to hear this, you know, because we're all we fight that kind of internal monster.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_02: You know, as you as you may have gathered, I'm not everyone's cup of tea, right?
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_02: I think you're great, man.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I'm not everyone's cup of tea.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_02: If I'm yours, that's great.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_02: But I'm not everyone's cup of tea.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_02: And um what would happen, I I now understand this in retrospect.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_02: I wonder if I could have understood, if I had heard this advice on a podcast before I experienced this, I'm not sure I would have understood it.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm not sure if people in your audience are necessarily going to understand this if they haven't been through this before, but certainly there might be people in the audience who have been through this who will feel maybe validated to know you're not the only one, and this is very normal.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um when I was trying to appear to be successful, right?
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_02: I was basically putting out a fake representation of myself.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_02: And the thing is energetically, everyone knows when something feels fake, right?
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_02: And I was hiding my real self as soon as I began to be more focused on actually having success than appearing to be successful, and I was willing to then open up about my failures and my shortcomings and my insecurities and my frustrations and my struggles and all that kind of stuff, right?
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_02: Because I mean, look, my business isn't perfect today.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_02: My life isn't perfect today.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_02: I still have challenges and struggles and problems that we're overcoming.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_02: Everyone is, right?
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_02: But as soon as I start stopped worrying about, as soon as I stopped trying to appear to be successful, I was able to be more authentic about my shortcomings and my failures and my frustrations and my problems.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_02: And that is what gave people the ability to really connect with me, right?
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm not just talking about marketing and clients.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_02: I'm also talking about my employees, right?
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_02: My vendors, because when I could be honest and authentically frustrated or confused or scared or intimidated or, you know, disappointed or whatever feelings I was experiencing, my I was able to have a more real relationship with my vendors who were then able to partner with me.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I was then able to, you know, create a safe place for my employees to share similar feelings so we could get it all out in the open and deal with what was really going on.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_02: But when I was acting like Mr.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_02: Big Shot, who added all together, look at me.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, social media nowadays is really doing some serious damage for people because it's making everyone think that everyone's living the life of Riley and everything's perfect.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_02: And I promise you, no one's life is perfect.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_02: Every human being has something they're struggling with at some place in their life at all times.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_02: And anyone who acts like they aren't is putting on a front.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_03: I agree.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_03: Man, so then then what happened from that step once you started getting the mindset of being successful versus trying to look like it?
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_03: Like what what was your business then?
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_03: What were you doing?
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_03: Give give us a little bit of a timeline there as to how things started building back up and what that looked like.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's basically always been the same business.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_02: This is the thing, this is the thing that's such an interesting like scientific experiment, if you will, because the business model has basically been the same business model when I was making, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars, broke, millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars, same business model.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_02: The difference was my mindset.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, the the business is called how to manage a small law firm.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_02: We serve as the CEO.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_02: We basically function as this C-suite for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of small law firms all over the country, right?
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_02: So mid-sized law firms, firms with 10, 20, 50, 100 million dollars in revenue, they all have a CEO and a COO and a CFO and a CMO.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_02: You know that, right?
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_02: But the small law firm,$10 million,$5 million,$2 million, under$1 million, they don't have access to the same level of C-suite, professional, chief executive officer, operating officer, financial officer services that the mid-size and big law firms have.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_02: And so what we do is we provide a fractional timeshare solution to level the playing field.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_02: So we manage over 500 small businesses that happen to be law firms.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_02: The business model hasn't changed.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_02: I changed.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_02: And when I changed, the business model began working better.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_03: What would you point out as the like, I mean, other than what we've already talked about, was there something else that kind of like based upon your switching mentality and your change?
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_03: Like, was it because you're just obviously more authentic, or is it because you started getting real and fixing maybe some of the terms and conditions or the pricing structure that you had with your clients?
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, there's a million things we've done to make the business work better, for sure.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_02: We introduced new technology, we've introduced new terms and conditions, new policies.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we went from having a 12-month standard contract to an 18-month standard contract.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_02: You know what the difference is between people signing a 12-month contract and an 18-month contract?
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_02: Nothing.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_02: Anyone who's gonna will, anyone who's gonna sign a 12-month contract, guaranteed they're gonna sign an 18-month contract, right?
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_02: Well, the difference is now you have 50% more value in the contract, right?
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_02: That one simple thing that I learned by participating in a coaching mastermind group, I learned it from a guy who had a karate studio.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_02: And he said, Why don't you make this an 18-month contract?
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, Well, because my business is different.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_02: And he like karate chopped my ego and said, no, it's not.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, I went back and tried it, and sure enough, it worked.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um we we've executed three price adjustments in the past 10 years.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_02: We now have how to execute a price adjustment in a membership model almost down to a science.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_02: Like we've learned how to do that.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um we have learned how to do a better job of hiring and onboarding employees to set them up for success.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_02: So now when we hire someone, uh, they go through four rounds of interviews before they get hired.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_02: And then after they get hired, they go through uh eight weeks of training.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_02: So we actually pay them their full base salary plus benefits for eight weeks to set them up for success because what we found is that if they're gonna fail, they're usually gonna fail in that first month or two of training.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_02: And it's much, much, much less expensive for them to fail while they're in training than to fail while they're supporting 30 of our of our valued clients.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_02: So really learning the value of training and the value of onboarding.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, there's there's a million stories and examples like that that I can share.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_03: That's excellent.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_03: So you your uh your business is is membership model based for your clientele.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_03: Do I get that?
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_03: And so they're kind of paying like a membership fee, and they're getting the full C-suite kind of oversight a little bit or fractional oversight for these members.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_02: So if you think of our business like an ice cream cone, the cone itself is what we call our foundation of membership, foundational membership.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_02: Foundational membership comes with a live quarterly meeting, comes with unlimited live workshops, comes with a membership site, archives, libraries, monthly group calls, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_02: And then they can put one scoop on top.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_02: They can put a CEO or a COO or a CFO or a CMO, and then they can put a second scoop and a third scoop and a fourth scoop.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_02: And at some point, they've got so many scoops that we're going to them and saying, look, it's now time for you to hire this position in-house.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_02: You have used us to transition, and now you're ready to hire a full-time chief financial officer instead of us being your fractional chief financial officer.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_02: Or it's time for you to hire a full-time chief operating officer instead of us being your fractional chief operating officer.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_02: So it's an ice cream cone with scoops.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_02: And like if they're between one, between nothing and let's say two or three million dollars in revenue, they'll typically have one COO scoop, if you will.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_02: And then when they reach about two or three million dollars in gross revenue, uh, they'll put a second COO scoop.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_02: And then they get to like five, seven million dollars in revenue, and we're like, hey, you really need to hire someone full-time in-house.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_02: And really, our business model is designed to help them outgrow us.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_03: The and the reality to the entire business model you're doing is specifically in your, you know, your industry that you're serving, the legal industry, people are coming out of law school, they have studied to be lawyers and attorneys, they've studied certain specific disciplines in there, whether it's divorce, civil, whatever it might be.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_03: They need to, they have their entire plates full of practicing law, which is not an easy job.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_03: I've I've known a lot of them.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_03: And so they go out and they create their own law firm, right?
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_03: And they don't know all these scoops and how to run the business.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_03: That's kind of the foundation of your of the purpose of your service and your business.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_03: And so that but when I think about this, this could apply to a lot of different industries, right?
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, there's so many, like architecture and engineering, all these trades that where you study and you graduate and you start practicing your trade, you're you never were taught about business and you need that help.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know, there are other people who fashion themselves as trainers and coaches and consultants to teach you how to be whatever you need to be.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_02: We don't do that.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_02: We just step in and we occupy that role in your org chart for you.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_02: So we're not trying to teach the owner of a law firm how to be a chief financial officer of a law firm.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_02: We just do the job of a chief financial officer for them until they can bring the role in-house full-time.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_02: We're not trying to teach them how to be a chief operating officer or a chief marketing officer or a chief executive officer.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_02: We just do the job for them and teach them how to be an entrepreneur.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_02: So we're really teaching people who went to law school and have no prior experience how in running a business.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_02: We're teaching them how to be an entrepreneur of a business and put in place the C-suite that every successful entrepreneur needs to support their growth.
• 38:45
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• 38:47
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• 38:53
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• 38:56
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• 39:00
  SPEAKER_03: Love it.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_03: That's what your company's doing.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_03: And what's the name of that company?
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_03: How to manage a small law firm.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, that's the name, that's the name of that company that provides those action services.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_03: And you got that going, but you've also been you're an author and you've written a couple of books, correct?
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_03: Tell us about that, uh, about your first one, and then you I think you have one coming out.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_03: Is that correct?
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_03: I've written several books.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um I've I've written several books, most of which are geared for the legal industry specifically.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_02: So Mike McAllowitz, the author of Profit First, uh, we became friends and he asked me to write Profit First for Lawyers.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_02: So I wrote Profit First for Lawyers.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um I wrote uh a really great book.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's a really great book.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_02: Uh my mother thinks it's a really great book.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_02: My wife thinks it's a really great book.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_02: No, it's a really great book.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um called uh called The Automatic Marketing Machine for Lawyers.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um and the book that you're referring to is my first not legal industry specific book.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and that's called Truth, Lies, Mistakes, or Bullshit.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_02: What's driving your business?
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_02: And it's really it's a business parable.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_02: I co-authored it with a great guy named John David Mann.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, John David Mann has co-authored some amazing business parables, and um, we're really proud of the book.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_02: It's fun to read, it's accessible for everyone.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I think everyone can see themselves in parts of this book.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_02: Where uh is that release?
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_02: Is it out?
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_02: It's in pre-release right now.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_02: So you can pre-order it.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, we're we're we're waiting for the publisher to blah, blah, blah, insert a bunch of publisher mumbo jumbo here.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_02: It's in pre- it's in pre-release right now.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_03: It and could any of the listeners uh where can they go to get the pre-release?
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_02: You can go to Barnes and Noble and pre-order it.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, we can give you a link to put in the show notes.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_03: I'd love if you do that, please.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we'll do that.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, for sure.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_03: That's uh, I mean, I'm I'm definitely gonna be in on it.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, are you gonna have an audio version of this as well when it gets published?
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, we just recorded the audio.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_02: So while we were waiting for the publisher to blah, blah, blah, a bunch of publisher mumbo jumbo here, we just went and recorded the audio version too, because we had time to kill, so we did it.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_03: That's I love it, man.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_03: I I'm gonna definitely dig into it because I can tell you I love your story, I love your perspective.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_03: I think it's, you know, I I often say that when when I just talked to a guy yesterday that was wanting to start a business, maybe be an entrepreneur, and the conversation, you know, he's very young, 20 years old, right?
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and I always try to express to folks like entrepreneurship, at least in my experience, has been a very much more of an emotional experience as much as anything on the logic side.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_03: Very much so.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_03: And so what I like about our conversation and and and and your your perspective on things is like the the emotional well-being and the intelligence that you have to have, you know, I think resonates.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_03: And that's what this show is a lot about, too.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_03: It's about charging through that.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_03: How do you overcome yourself?
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_03: How do you learn from yourself, your experiences, and hopefully learn from somebody like yourself, R John, that um so you may not have to go through the emergency emotional turmoil, but maybe to your point, like if you would have listened to this advice back in the day, you haven't gone through that experience to get to that level to where you can actually listen a little bit and and make the change that's necessary.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_03: And so it's kind of an interesting cycle of life.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_02: I think that when the student is ready, the teacher appears.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um, which is another way of saying when the student is ready, they realize the teacher's been there the whole time.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um, because the books that I read, the courses that I took, they were available to me.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_02: I just wasn't ready to take advantage of them.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_03: You know, and to that point, like it's what it's what it what you know, as a student still, right?
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_03: What I'm hearing is is, you know, despite of whatever I personally have been able to achieve in my entrepreneurial career, like there's there's never an end cap to that.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_03: And so that continuous learning is so important.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of time, I mean, you know, one of the things I I've talked about is when I in my first business, I never had any cash.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_03: I never had any money to invest in my business.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_03: I've never been an investor, right, in my entire life.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_03: Sell, build, sell the business.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_03: That is that new entrance of that opportunity, I guess you could say, where I do have a little bit of cash to put in towards a venture that I have has been an interesting ride for me.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_03: It's but it's so different than what I had when you know 10 years ago.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I think that good advice for any first time entrepreneurs.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: Is have no money.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_02: Even if you have money, don't use the money.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_02: Because I've seen so many people avoid doing the difficult things by throwing money at it.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_02: And when you have no money, you have no choice but to pick up the phone and have that uncomfortable conversation.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_02: You have no choice but to figure out how to get it done.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_02: You have no choice but to let go of the unperforming, uh of the underperforming employee.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_02: You have no choice but to, you know, have an uncomfortable conversation with the client who's not paying you.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_02: You have no choice.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_02: But when you've got money, you can postpone.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_02: When you've got money, you can procrastinate.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_02: When you got money, you can put it off.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, like even today, I know that I am allowing my money to prevent me from having some uncomfortable conversations and doing some uncomfortable things because, you know, it's it's what it's just$20,000.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_02: It's no big deal.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_02: I'll get to it next month.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_02: Well, next month it's only$15,000.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, I'll deal with it next month.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_02: Well, now it's down to$10,000.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_02: Now it's down to$5,000, and now it's down to nothing.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_02: But you know what?
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_02: It didn't make a single difference in my life because my income is already way above that.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_02: But I still wasted$20,000, which is stupid.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_02: And when you have no money and you have no financing and you have no credit, and you have then you have no choice but to do what you need to do.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_02: You have no choice but to face reality.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, reality doesn't negotiate.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_02: Reality doesn't want to hear, it's not listening to your stories, it's not listening to your excuses.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_02: Reality is just reality.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_02: And as soon as you start embracing reality, reality will start working for you.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_02: But until you embrace reality, it's gonna keep working against you.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_02: It's like it's like gravity, right?
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_02: If you use gravity to drop a hammer on your foot, it's gonna hurt you.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_02: But that same force of gravity can be used, you know, for for very productive, for very in very productive ways if you know how to harness it.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_02: It's just reality is just waiting for you to embrace it.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_02: And the problem that I find with a lot of first-time entrepreneurs, and it's even worse with second-time entrepreneurs, right?
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_02: So the first-time entrepreneur who's young and scrappy and hungry and broke and desperate, and they and they they embrace reality because they have no other choice, and then they make a bunch of money, and then they go, they start another business, and now they just start throwing money at things instead of going back to being scrappy, right?
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_02: It's like that Rocky movie where he where you know, Eye of the Tiger, he had to go back to the old neighborhood to like get that Eye of the Tiger back.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_02: And so my advice to anyone is start businesses with no money.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_03: Love it, man.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_03: Before we leave, on that point, I'd love to hear what about the the new direction of in the new the new the new trend.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_03: I have no money, I need to go raise money in order to start my business.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_03: This is exactly what I was just talking about.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_02: This is exact we had a a person working for us years ago.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, she started working with us right before we broke the seven-figure barrier.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and then she left when we were at around$10 million.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_02: And she went off to uh go work for Amazon.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um, she eventually came back to work with us a few years later.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_02: We were at that point maybe on$20 million.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_02: And she came back to work with us, and all her friends are like, Oh, did they raise money?
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_02: Did they raise money?
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_02: Did they raise funding?
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_02: Went around, and she's like, What are you talking about?
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_02: They're profitable.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_02: What do you need?
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_02: You don't need to raise money if you're profitable.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that people waste years and years and years chasing the raising of the money, and in the same time and energy and and grit and determination that you need to raise the money, you can actually build a profitable business and they don't need to raise the money, and then you own the whole thing yourself.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_02: That's my advice, you know, for raising money.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_03: Love it.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_03: Love it.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_02: I wouldn't take money unless the person that I was taking money from brought something that I needed in addition to the money.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe they've got expertise, maybe they've got experience, maybe they've got a customer base, maybe they've got access to some intellectual property that I need.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but if you're just bringing money, I don't need it.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_02: Anyone listening to this, you don't need someone else's money.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_02: You can make your own by making sales and and embracing reality.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_03: Love it, man.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_03: It's great advice.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_03: R John, is there anything else you'd like to share with the audience before we jump off?
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I'm sure we could talk on and on and on and on.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe you'll have me back.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_02: But I appreciate this talk, and I really enjoy the talk we had before the show, too.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_02: I wish we had recorded that.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_02: That would be like a great like cutting room floor bonus for people.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_03: A little outtake, man.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_03: R John, it's been awesome.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so if you want to grab one of uh R John's pre-release, it's gonna be on Barnes Noble.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you can look up at if people want to look you up on LinkedIn.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_02: What's driving your business, R John Robbins with one B Robbins, uh, or you can go to how to manage.com and there'll be a link to the book there too.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_03: Fantastic, man.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_03: Well, it's been awesome having you aboard, R John, and I look forward to talking to you again in the near future based upon our initial conversation.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, it's been very helpful for me.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_03: So if nobody else gets anything I did and enjoyed it, man, uh, we're gonna have you back for sure.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_03: It's been fun.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_03: You're gonna love Mark Dwag too.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_03: When he's next time we'll have Mark here, he you're gonna love cutting up with him.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_03: We all we all see the same thing.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_03: It's stuff.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_03: All right.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_03: Well, thank you everybody for listening and tuning in.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_03: This has been another episode of Big Talk About Small Business.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Big Talk About Small Business.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_01: If you have any questions or ideas for upcoming shows, be sure to head over to our website, www.bigtalkaboutsmallbusiness.com, and click on the Ask the Host button for the chance to have your questions answered on the show.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_01: Stay connected with us on LinkedIn at Big Talk About Small Business.
• 50:56
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