Latest / Scrappy but Successful [Consultant's Personalities When No One's Watching] / 7. Why Finance Pros Can't Communicate (And How to Fix It) with John Sanchez

Transcript

7. Why Finance Pros Can't Communicate (And How to Fix It) with John Sanchez · Scrappy but Successful [Consultant's Personalities When No One's Watching]

• 0:03
  [Jack Tompkins] What's going on everybody? Welcome to Scrappy But Successful. It's a show where I sit down with your favorite consultants and we take the comedic route through their early days to find out if they're successful today because they're sophisticated or because they're a little bit scrappy. I'm your host Jack Tompkins, the CEO of Pineapple Consulting Firm. Fun fact of the day, kangaroos can't hop backwards. Not that funny, but at least you learned something already. There you go. Today I'm joined and that is the voice of John Sanchez.
• 0:27
  [John Sanchez] I did not know that.
• 0:32
  [Jack Tompkins] He's, mean, this is a long, we got a founder, we got a consultant. He's a renowned speaker. He's a trainer. He's a communication expert for an industry that communicates mostly via spreadsheets. So John, we know you're successful, but the question we have for you today, do you think you fall more on the sophisticated side of business or more on the scrappy side?
• 0:52
  [John Sanchez] I would say scrappy, sometimes too much.
• 0:55
  [Jack Tompkins] Okay.
• 0:57
  [John Sanchez] And I love it. I actually, as you were kind of going through the intro there, was thinking about advice that I got years and years ago. I had kind of just started speaking at different CPA societies and I had this one set of gigs set up where I was going from like, this is in Ohio, like Cincinnati to Dayton to Columbus all, you know, one day after the next.
• 1:24
  [Jack Tompkins] The beautiful tourist traps. Yes
• 1:26
  [John Sanchez] And I remember I was communicating with a business coach at the time and he goes I admire your scrappiness, but I don't think you have to work so hard And he kind of gave me a little bit of coaching on how I could kind of up level what I was doing but Yeah, I think I've always defaulted to scrappy
• 1:47
  [Jack Tompkins] It's, you know, it's, know the thing has to get done. I'm going to get it done. However it happens, whatever I got to do, it's going to get done, which is the scrappy mentality and the sophisticated side. mean, people do fall on that side. It's great. And they, they built this really nice process and all this stuff, but the scrappy side is where most people start and candidly, I think it's more fun.
• 2:09
  [John Sanchez] What I think mine was born of necessity because I would say even through college, certainly through high school, I was almost always the smallest kid in every class I was in. I ran cross country and swam because they were about the only sports that I thought I wouldn't get killed at. I weighed less than 110 pounds when I graduated high school. so Scrappy was kind of the order of the day when you're doing it.
• 2:21
  [Jack Tompkins] Okay. Wow. It was the only option. All right, so take me back to the beginning. So where'd you grow up and did you have any entrepreneurs in the family?
• 2:46
  [John Sanchez] I don't remember any entrepreneurs in the family. So where I grew up is kind of my dad was in the military. So we moved 12 times by the time I graduated high school.
• 2:57
  [Jack Tompkins] already. I love it.
• 2:59
  [John Sanchez] I say I grew up in South Florida because my dad retired right outside Homestead Air Force Base in South Florida. so from, I guess I was in... guess I was in middle school when he retired and still moved like three or four more times after he retired. Which was the first house that my parents had ever like own. We lived on military housing, you know, the entire time I was growing up. So as far as the closest I remember to entrepreneurial in the family was you ever heard of a roach coach?
• 3:39
  [Jack Tompkins] Yeah
• 3:40
  [John Sanchez] So think those lunch trucks that drive around construction sites and stuff like that.
• 3:45
  [Jack Tompkins] Yes, what has evolved into a food truck today.
• 3:48
  [John Sanchez] Yeah, today they're like super fancy. Back then they were like refrigerated sandwiches and like beanie weenies and stuff like that. It was all like canned packet stuff. My dad used to drive one of those as like an extra job when he was still in the army. That was the closest I knew to anything entrepreneurial.
• 4:04
  [Jack Tompkins] Okay. Hey, earn a couple extra bucks though. Nothing wrong with that. mean, that's pretty good. so I military kid, you're moving schools all the time. We've had a guest on before. There's kind of similar and every new school was like, okay, I gotta not reinvent myself, but I gotta go talk to somebody. I gotta make new friends. gotta do all this stuff. And there's a, there's an entrepreneurial spirit to that. think cause you're like, you don't want to make a fool out of yourself. So you have to go. present and basically market yourself, right? mean, in business terms, as a center, right.
• 4:39
  [John Sanchez] Yeah, yeah. So I learned pretty young. You either have to make friends fast or not have friends. Which for an introvert is kind of tough. But I think I've always I've always figured out I would find those one or two or three people that I got along with really well. I've always been that guy that's had like a small number of friends that were like really, really good friends, not like a gazillion acquaintances.
• 4:44
  [Jack Tompkins] Yeah. Were you going for people that also looked introverted?
• 5:10
  [John Sanchez] more that's that acted introverted. So like, like the wall flowers, I would friends with, a very eclectic group of people. So I can remember a couple of my friends were like in the physics club and the chess club. I had friends that were like a linebacker on the football team, like the ROTC, like the head guy in the ROTC unit in the school. it was kind of whoever I kind of. hit it off with, really.
• 5:40
  [Jack Tompkins] Okay. You're at the center of this like high school drama, essentially of kids versus football players versus nerds versus everybody. everybody's kind of got their separate cliche or clicks rather. You're somehow at the middle of this as an introvert and the new kid in school.
• 5:58
  [John Sanchez] Again, I think it was necessity. So let's take football players, for example. I was in ROTC, which I took ROTC like many people did because they thought it was an easy A, right? Nobody really understood, you know, what do you study in ROTC? It was a lot of different stuff. So we had a lot of athletes in ROTC. And for whatever reason, I don't know if it was coming from, you know, being a military brat, I just kind of took to all of the military. the rules and regulations and just, you know, I kind of took to it. I was good at it. I eventually became the squadron commander. I was like the, you know, the commander of the whole thing. And I think I learned over time that there were a lot of these guys, they didn't really have an aptitude for it. They would show up in their, their uniforms would be kind of messy and their ribbons would be kind of out of place and stuff. And I kind of figured out a way to let them know like, Hey, you take care of me in the hallways. I'll take care of you in here. As an ROTC, there's a systems of merits and demerits. so things that you didn't do well or you did wrong, you would get demerits for, and you could get various punishments for them. So I would just kind of make sure that they had all their stuff squared away. And they would make sure if we were in the hallway, they didn't really have to make a big deal out of it. If they just walked with me in the hallway, people were like, know, Mr. Sanchez, he's buddies with that guy.
• 7:21
  [Jack Tompkins] Okay, you've got an effective bartering system going on. It's one of the typical questions like, you know, I talked with salespeople, it's like, did you did you start any sort of like bartering systems or you selling candy in school, anything like that, but you've got actually a higher level of literally protection in the hallway.
• 7:39
  [John Sanchez] Yeah, didn't. It wasn't as sophisticated as it sounds, though. I don't I didn't really think it through like a strategy. Right. It just seemed like a smart thing to do, like be buddies with the big guy. If buddies, people see you with the big guy, maybe they just kind of leave you alone type of thing.
• 7:55
  [Jack Tompkins] Yeah, I have a friend who still likes to take on that role today. I'm like average item 5'11 and I have a friend who's 6'5 full sleeve tattoo. He's in the military and nobody looks at me funny. He just wants to be the one who stares back at that person and be like, all right, if you talk to kid with glasses, you have to deal with me too.
• 8:18
  [John Sanchez] I worked with a guy. I think it was my second job out of college. So he was a former offensive lineman in college and he was like six three and he had slimmed down to like two sixty two sixty five. And I think I could feel people staring at us when we would like walk to lunch together because it was just like this crazy juxtaposition of size. But mentioned selling candy and.
• 8:34
  [Jack Tompkins] Yeah.
• 8:47
  [John Sanchez] I did sell candy, it wasn't an entrepreneurial venture. was one of those things you do to raise money. I think it was for uniforms for cross country or for our letterman jackets or something like that. So I wasn't making my own money, but I was kind of learning how you generate interest and that kind of thing.
• 8:57
  [Jack Tompkins] Okay. Were you good at sales? Yeah, okay.
• 9:10
  [John Sanchez] No, don't think so. I think I was just funny enough to start a conversation with somebody and then it was like their Krispy Kreme donuts that are like fresh off the truck first thing in the morning, they kind of sell themselves like M &Ms. When you're in high school, you don't really have to push Krispy Kreme donuts and M &Ms.
• 9:29
  [Jack Tompkins] man you gotta wear people steeling them if anything okay did you ever collect anything as a kid
• 9:38
  [John Sanchez] I collected stamps, but it was really because my dad told me that they might be a good investment if you hang on to them for a long time. That is never really that interested in them.
• 9:48
  [Jack Tompkins] That is part two of the question. Did you think that it would make you rich?
• 9:52
  [John Sanchez] No, I thought it was goofy. Yeah, like I kind of trusted my dad that he knew better, but I thought they're just these little sticky pieces of paper. And they cost like nothing. Like how could that possibly be worth anything?
• 10:07
  [Jack Tompkins] I was in a- go ahead.
• 10:09
  [John Sanchez] I still have a bunch of them. They're not worth much.
• 10:13
  [Jack Tompkins] I'm curious, I wonder if we get a value check on them.
• 10:16
  [John Sanchez] I've it a couple times over the years. weren't worth a whole lot.
• 10:19
  [Jack Tompkins] Yeah, it's not worth your time kind of thing. I was in a very similar situation. My dad was a big quarter collector. So getting all 50 states on the quarters kind of thing. And at the time I was like, man, I got 40 out of 50. Like this this collection is worth millions of dollars. And I was like, these are literally, it says it's 25 cents on the coin. this is a dollar.
• 10:40
  [John Sanchez] Yeah, it's not a big play.
• 10:42
  [Jack Tompkins] No, no, was not a long tragedy. ever buy anything off of InfoMarshall?
• 10:44
  [John Sanchez] Mr. yet. The first thing I can remember buying, I spent way too much money on it. was Tony Robbins tapes. original, his original personal power on cassette showing my age here, although my hair always does that for me anyway. But yeah, I remember staying up till the middle of the night watching this giant guy with big teeth talking about all this stuff. And I think, I think it was the first time I got really interested in like psychology and why we do the things that we do.
• 11:23
  [Jack Tompkins] Tony Robbins is like when he was hitting the scene It was like a character out of a book that was just an unrealistic human being somebody some kid dreamt up a seven foot tall dude That was larger than life and had teeth that could walk on its own. People like yeah, let's see what they have to say
• 11:39
  [John Sanchez] And everything he said was kind of contrary. Just a little. You think about psychology, most psychologists, you you see in a movie or something, somebody's going to a therapist and they're going for like years, like once a week or twice a week or whatever for years. And they never seem to like really get anywhere. And then Tony Robbins is like, I can cure fears in a matter of 30 minutes or something like that. You know, and he.
• 11:42
  [Jack Tompkins] Right.
• 12:07
  [John Sanchez] He does these crazy demos where he's got this woman that's like deathly afraid of snakes and he puts this giant boa constrictor on her and he gets her sphere. Cures this kid of stuttering and you know, like five or 10 minutes. I'm like, this is crazy.
• 12:22
  [Jack Tompkins] Yeah, it's viable for virality. Did you do anything with the tapes? Did you learn anything?
• 12:28
  [John Sanchez] I think I learned a lot, I was hesitant to apply it because I was almost, is it gonna sound weird? I was simultaneously afraid that it wouldn't work and I felt like I wasted my money. And then part of me was afraid that it would work and people would think I was weird because this stuff was kinda out there.
• 12:50
  [Jack Tompkins] because you're bringing stakers to school and trying to cure some fears.
• 12:53
  [John Sanchez] Well, years later, ended up, this was probably now six, seven years ago, I ended up doing his coaching program. It was like a hundred hour coaching program.
• 13:03
  [Jack Tompkins] Okay, when did you originally buy the tapes? How old are you?
• 13:06
  [John Sanchez] gosh, I was in high school. forever ago. Yeah,
• 13:11
  [Jack Tompkins] Does that, mean, we'll jump throughout the timeline a little bit here. So obviously you go, we got college, we've got corporate, we got all this stuff training today. Does, the love of training start with Tony Robbins all the way back in high school?
• 13:24
  [John Sanchez] I don't think so. I think, I think I realized, so when I was a financial advisor for a little while and I got recruited into it and the guy recruited me, sold me on the idea that you can make a good living teaching people what you already know about finance. And at that time I had already had like friends who were not in finance coming to me, asking me questions about mutual funds and investments and 401k, you know, the classic. hey, these are my 401k choices. Like how do I pick, you know, that kind of stuff. He's like, you could get a license and get paid for that. And so I started doing the work of an advisor and they started asking me to train people. And I realized, hey, I kind of like training people. So it was, it was more from doing it than, you know, from the Tony Robbins stuff.
• 14:18
  [Jack Tompkins] Gotcha. Okay. I, uh, there was, you know, before like chat, you between everything, there was always a friend or two that had some knowledge of the stock market or even just watch CNBC or something. And then there was like, Hey, I've, I've got 20 bucks. What should I invest in? And there was always that conversation. I've had family members come up to me and say some of the things like, like you're a financial advisor. Not even a little, we do data stuff, but sure. I could run some math for you if that's what you're talking about.
• 14:47
  [John Sanchez] Yeah.
• 14:47
  [Jack Tompkins] Did you parlay that into anything other than training in the future?
• 14:52
  [John Sanchez] No, as a matter of fact, I still remember to this day, before I even got into that, I always had like when I was taking like an econ 101 course in college. And I just got fascinated with the idea of like fundamental analysis. So would literally go to the library back in the day when everything was on paper, and just look up, you know, different stocks and, you know, fundamental analysis and try to apply what I learned in school. to pick stuff, but I never actually bought anything. So this is one of those areas where I think I would have probably been much more entrepreneurial much sooner if I would have had much more of an action bias. I've always been more of an analyst type and have many times gotten stuck in paralysis of analysis.
• 15:24
  [Jack Tompkins] Okay. So, okay, so it wasn't a lack of money. wasn't a lack of courage. It was just the, want to see how this plays out for a little bit and then I'll take my time.
• 15:53
  [John Sanchez] a little bit of a lack of courage. was, I think I was afraid to lose money, even if it was just like a hundred bucks. I mean, I was in college. I was, you I, I alternated between going to school full time and working part time and working full time and college part. I kind of went back and forth because when I graduated high school, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I hadn't applied anywhere. Yeah. I ended up going to community college for a couple of years before I transferred to Florida state. okay. and change my major six times. So that was, I think that really bothered my parents that not only had I not figured it out before I graduated, but I hadn't even figured it out when I was actually in college and taking classes. Like, dude, like pick something.
• 16:24
  [Jack Tompkins] Nice. Right. And did you just go on the dropdown of chooser major and accounting was the first one? You're like, all right, good enough.
• 16:48
  [John Sanchez] No, accounting was the last one. So I started out. I think my first major was computer science. had taken a couple of, I'd taken basic in high school. I taught myself some basic. I had like an, an old, one of the first Atari computers and taught myself a little bit of basic programming. never program anything really useful. I kept track of like football stats, just, it was something to do to apply, you know, what I was learning. Okay. So I did that for a little while and then that turned into some classes. I don't know if you ever, there was a program back then called Job Control Language, which is basically just for mainframes back in the day. And it was like a completely different paradigm of programming. Like I had taken basic and Fortran, I was getting ready to take COBOL, and then this class popped up and it was like a prerequisite. And it seemed like Greek to me. And so in my infinite wisdom, I thought, well, I think I like technical stuff. I think I'm going to be an engineering major.
• 17:49
  [Jack Tompkins] There we go. Logical next.
• 17:51
  [John Sanchez] up. That lasted one semester. When I'm reading through the curriculum and I'm like fluid dynamics and statics and differential equations, like, I don't even understand what the titles of some of these mean.
• 17:54
  [Jack Tompkins] Okay. Yeah, I'm getting lost on page one. We got to switch stuff.
• 18:09
  [John Sanchez] So I switched from that to finance and then I bounced around between finance and econ. I think I might've been a marketing major for one semester. I was a philosophy one for one semester cause I thought it interesting and easy. And then I thought, wait a minute, the idea I had in my head of college from my parents never had anything to do with becoming well-rounded or
• 18:25
  [Jack Tompkins] Yeah.
• 18:38
  [John Sanchez] anything like it was all about get that piece of paper so you can get a good job with a big company, work there for a long time, you get your retirement and that's the formula, right? Right. And so when I started thinking about it like that, I thought, well, what is the type, what is a profession that pays well, that everybody needs, that not only everybody needs, like every business needs, but like everywhere. Right. So if you think of accounting, every business needs accountants, right? Doesn't matter where they are geographically, they make pretty good money. At that time, the demand was really high for him. When I was at FSU, FSU grads had like a 90 something percent placement rate. And even with a B average, I was able to get campus interviews with like the big thing was the big six back then. It just gone from the big eight to the big six. And I thought after taking marketing, finance and accounting classes and management. thought, I think accounting is the hardest one for me. So I think if I can do the hardest one, I should be able to handle any of them. So if I change my mind, I should be okay. I just just ended up sticking with it because I, I didn't really love it. But I thought if I can just suck it up, I can get a really good job making really good money and have stability. That's really kind of the main things I was thinking about.
• 20:05
  [Jack Tompkins] So two parts of this one your collection of majors is basically your collection of friends in high school also this just weird amalgamation of stuff and Then two you pick the hardest one, you know, okay, I kind of figure this out That was you know kind of clearly drilled into from your parents When does that mindset mindset shift? Because that's like it's one of the biggest things is unlearning something that your parents accidentally did to you
• 20:33
  [John Sanchez] okay. So I think it was probably a little less than two years into my first job out of college. I realized I hate this. I hated every accounting class that I ever took in school, but I remember talking to my brother once, my brother's almost five years older than me and he was an accounting major too. So he had already graduated. He'd become a CPA. He was working for Deloitte, making good money and he's And I'm talking to him one day and I'm like, dude, I'm thinking about changing my major. I just hate this stuff. And he goes, hold the phone. First of all, whatever you think of your classes, that's not the real world. Whatever job you get is not going to be anything like the work that you're doing in your college classes. And he agreed with me that he thought accounting was the hardest of the majors in the business school. He's like, if you, if you get your accounting degree and you change your mind, You can always switch to something in finance or marketing or something else, but you can't go the other way just because of the technical nature of accounting. So almost two years in. I was just miserable and I was thinking to myself, it was one night I was so I was studying for the CPA exam, which I never finished. I got past three out of the four parts the first time I ever took it again. know my friends think I'm an idiot, but anyway, so one night it's like eight o'clock at night.
• 21:39
  [Jack Tompkins] Yeah.
• 22:00
  [John Sanchez] and I'm at this client by myself and I'm vouching. I don't know if you've ever been sitting there just like vouching a stack of paperwork, but it was like literally checking, okay, does the signature here match the list of people who are authorized signatories, right? Something like a 12 year old could do. And I'm sitting there thinking, it's like eight o'clock at night on a Friday. Most of my friends are out at happy hour. I hate what I'm doing and when I finish here, I have to go home and study. Yeah. This sucks. Yeah. So I, I just started looking and I ended up getting, I think at the time it was a dream job. Unfortunately, it didn't last long because the company got bought. we got taken over. I'd probably still be there if that wasn't the case. but I ended up looking for another job. I found a job doing and a, which sounded cool.
• 22:32
  [Jack Tompkins] barrel laughs
• 22:58
  [John Sanchez] Had no idea really what the heck it meant. I knew it meant buying companies, but what am I doing at the job? What's the work of doing M &A?
• 23:10
  [Jack Tompkins] What did you end up doing? What was the day today?
• 23:13
  [John Sanchez] a lot of financial modeling and lot of due diligence. was hours and hours and hours in spreadsheets, hours and hours and hours pouring through financial statements.
• 23:27
  [Jack Tompkins] So half kind of fun with the modeling, because there's some enjoyment to that. It probably wears off, but then the due diligence has to be like that vouching and checking signatures again.
• 23:36
  [John Sanchez] Well, that part sucks. The part that was really interesting was filtering companies that we were looking at. So we would say, for example, this is a blockbuster video back in the day, way back in the day when we were the 10-ton gorilla. To give you an idea, we were bigger than our 500 largest competitors combined at that time. Holy crap. We were, mean, and we were doing, we were closing like maybe a deal a week.
• 24:03
  [Jack Tompkins] to acquire a small competitor.
• 24:06
  [John Sanchez] Well, so sometimes it was mom and pop video stores. That was the bulk of it in the beginning. But then Wayne Heisenga, who was the, the, he wasn't really the founder. bought it from another guy in Texas, but he ended up being the CEO kind of long-term and grew the company. And his vision was cradle to grave entertainment. So we got into the music industry, the movie industry, the TV industry. And for each one of those industries that we were looking at, part of my job was to screen which companies we would look at to acquire and then do valuation analysis. So I would literally, back then you'd have to order hard copies. And the first thing I would do is like order the last year of SEC filings. I would buy like every analyst report that existed. And I would just pour through that stuff and start to put together profiles, like industry profiles. And then we'd start to establish the criteria we were looking for. and we'd start to narrow it down to one or two candidates. Then we'd start taking a look at more of the strategic stuff, which is where I sit in meetings with people who knew a heck of a lot more than I did and just kind of listen and learn. That part I thought was really, really fun.
• 25:20
  [Jack Tompkins] Okay, and have you have you cured your analysis paralysis at this point because you're going into that meeting with recommendations or you're saying here are the 10 that fit your criteria.
• 25:28
  [John Sanchez] No, so back then I was a peon, so nobody looking to me for any recommendations. What I didn't realize is at least back then, and this may be different for a different organization at a different time in their growth or whatever, but at that time, the way they were doing deals is two CEOs would get together for dinner and they would talk strategy and they would do like a back of the napkin, like multiple analysis.
• 25:56
  [Jack Tompkins] couple of whiskeys, couple of steaks, figure it
• 25:58
  [John Sanchez] Yeah, you guys did EBITDA X last year. The industry average is four to five times. We'll give you four and a half times EBITDA subject to due diligence. What do you think?
• 26:08
  [Jack Tompkins] Yes, I love it.
• 26:10
  [John Sanchez] And I thought my job was to get all this data and all this information and analyze it and come up with a value we're supposed to pay for this thing. Nothing could be further from the truth.
• 26:22
  [Jack Tompkins] And the guys are just winging it at the end of the-
• 26:24
  [John Sanchez] My job was to basically back into those numbers to justify the number that they came up with. was like it was all CYA.
• 26:33
  [Jack Tompkins] man.
• 26:34
  [John Sanchez] So some of them, though, the smaller deals that we really were doing valuations where we would just look at the numbers and it was like, you're Joe Joe, Joe Schmo on the corner that you have like two video stores, right? There's no real strategic value of buying your store versus the next store. We're doing it just straight off our analysis. So for those little ones, you know, my valuation actually, you know, they would look at it. But the ones that were like really cool. Like when we looked into, um, the funnest trip I ever took was when we were looking at, I don't know if you remember back in the day, an old show called 90210. Sure. Of course. 90210 and a bunch of other stuff back then was owned by a company called spelling entertainment. Aaron spelling was a big producer back then. And it's the first and only time I've ever gotten to fly private. We flew on a private jet to the billionaire owner of this conglomerate that owned all these different entertainment companies. And we were like, they're doing due diligence for like almost a week. And here I'm like 23 years old. And I'm thinking, this is the coolest thing in the world.
• 27:48
  [Jack Tompkins] Yeah, I mean that show was enormous. It's not of my generation. I know about it because my dad still gives that as his zip code as a joke because he doesn't want to give out his actual zip code and every cashier that's around his age gets a nice laugh and says, all right, screw it. I'm going to put it anyways. know you're lying. Did you get to go on set? Did you get to interact with anybody?
• 28:11
  [John Sanchez] No, no, no, we can never deal with any of the talent. It was we were all dealing with the finance guys. I did get to sit at one lunch, though, with Carl Lindner, who back in the day was the billionaire that owned it. He owned he owned that company. He owned Chiquita Brands. I think he owned Circle K food stores. He owned a ton of stuff back in the day. I don't know if he's even still alive. He's probably in his 70s back then.
• 28:17
  [Jack Tompkins] Nerds talk with nerds. Okay. All right. But still you're getting some, that's a pretty high profile meeting that you get a private jet. got some big wigs going on. You got a hit show.
• 28:44
  [John Sanchez] Don't get me wrong. was just sitting there being quiet, but it felt cool.
• 28:50
  [Jack Tompkins] You can tell it however you want now. How long do you survive in corporate?
• 28:59
  [John Sanchez] so let's see. I graduated in 91. My last corporate job. And I had kind of some after that in between was auto nation in 97. So about six years. And then when I was at auto nation, my job was basically a five year strategic plan for one of the divisions. And that entire division got shut down, like 400 and something people got let go like all at the same time. So I'm sitting at home trying to figure out what the heck am I going to do? My phone rings and long story short, had some consulting gig at AutoNation that they thought I was a good fit for and I ended up doing that for six months to a year-ish. That kind of started my, I guess you could say my entrepreneurial endeavors.
• 29:40
  [Jack Tompkins] Okay. Yeah. Okay. So you started as a consultant and you're doing similar work to what you were just doing. Cause it's back at the same company. Is this your own company? Are you just like a guy kind of running an LLC somewhat tenant?
• 29:59
  [John Sanchez] I was yeah, I was just like a 1099 guy
• 30:02
  [Jack Tompkins] Okay, when does the actual company start up?
• 30:06
  [John Sanchez] so let's see, I guess it was about a year afterwards. I partnered up with a guy that I'd worked at at the CPA firm. I worked out before I started working at blockbuster and we just kind of realized through friends. And so, so that, that one gig with auto nation just kind of led from one thing to another. that time, a lot of friends of mine had kind of left public accounting. And they were either like an assistant controller, a controller, a CFO to a smaller company, maybe a manager at a bigger company. And I was just starting to get stuff kind of falling into my lap. And I don't think it was until that started to slow down. And I started to realize, holy crap, like I'm in business for myself. I'm in sales.
• 30:55
  [Jack Tompkins] You're an accidental realization that you're an entrepreneur. Yeah.
• 30:58
  [John Sanchez] Because it literally had all just kind of fallen into my lap and there was one day I remember I was at like a Chamber of Commerce meeting and I was like I have to do a lot more this because I can't just count on this stuff falling into my lap.
• 31:14
  [Jack Tompkins] Yeah. So, all right. So take me into those early days and we won't necessarily call them struggle days, but I'm sure that degree of that. What's, what's like a ramen noodle dinner? What's your version of that around that time?
• 31:26
  [John Sanchez] probably ramen noodles. Yeah, actually ramen noodles. Yeah, I wasn't, I wasn't real. That was before I started watching the food network.
• 31:27
  [Jack Tompkins] Actually, I just actually. did you get to become a fancy chef?
• 31:37
  [John Sanchez] after that? Not a fancy chef, but I cook a lot now. My fiance cooks almost not at all.
• 31:43
  [Jack Tompkins] Okay. Yeah. Okay.
• 31:45
  [John Sanchez] But I enjoy it and it all started because I like good food and I couldn't afford to go out to nice restaurants all the time. So I just was like, what's this Food Network thing?
• 31:55
  [Jack Tompkins] Yeah, this is crappy. like it. I've actually done a similar thing recently where like, hey, I've called this thing with my friends, Jack tries to cook stuff. And it's just, you know, find me a recipe. The list is there. I'm just going to go get the ingredients, throw it together and see how it comes out. And it's that mindset of, I don't want to go out and have a steak dinner or a crazy nice meal every single night and, you know, two drinks and a nice meal and whatever. Bill gets pretty high pretty quickly. So my version is very much the same of like, well, I'm going to make something that's probably 70 % as good, but 30 % of the costs. And I should use the 80 20 rule. You talk about that all the time. That's exactly what is going on.
• 32:35
  [John Sanchez] You know what I found though? You I my personal opinion you can make frickin ramen taste just.
• 32:44
  [Jack Tompkins] Like with a crunchy thing like a cracker or anything
• 32:47
  [John Sanchez] no, but I've put like every kind of meat you can think of in it. I've added all kinds of different, you know, flavorings to it. And amazingly enough, you can get a decent meal. Yeah.
• 33:01
  [Jack Tompkins] If you don't tell people it's ramen, mean there's restaurants that are ramen focused and like that's their whole thing. You can make some pretty classy, pretty sophisticated ramen. In those early days, are you the typical entremere? Like, especially with you cooking and stuff, do you take a while to empty the dishwasher once it's clean and you're saying, that's clean for now, I can get dishes out of there?
• 33:22
  [John Sanchez] yeah, when I had roommates it was like a constant source of annoyance on both sides.
• 33:27
  [Jack Tompkins] Were you the same with laundry?
• 33:30
  [John Sanchez] not too bad with laundry.
• 33:32
  [Jack Tompkins] Okay. That's, that's still my mindset to this day. Like, all right, there are clean clothes in the place. I just need to go to the place, which is not my bedroom that has the clothes.
• 33:42
  [John Sanchez] I'll tell you what I have done in the last year or two that has cut down on that though, is just called through my clothes. And I've realized as you get older, maybe this is just me, maybe there's a touch of OCD in me where I just keep stuff forever. Like I've got, I mean, I had jeans that I wore until I just gained too much weight, you know, and couldn't fit into them anymore. And I realized at some point I'm wearing the same five or six things every week. Like have my favorite like shirts and pants and jackets and you know, whatever. And I just wear the same ones all the time. So why do I have all these clothes? You have less clothes. There's just less laundry. You just go through them and you suck.
• 34:21
  [Jack Tompkins] And then we There you go, okay. I would say that is within the realm of scrappy. Not too scrappy like the business coach said though. I think that is right in the sweet spot.
• 34:34
  [John Sanchez] I think it gets down to when you realize, I can actually save some work.
• 34:39
  [Jack Tompkins] Exactly. It's efficiency. That's all it is.
• 34:43
  [John Sanchez] I'll call it that it sounds better
• 34:44
  [Jack Tompkins] Exactly. All right. So let's jump forward to today a little bit. So you're, you're a podcast host. You give trainings, you talk to the folks who you used to work alongside and you say, Hey, here's how to communicate. I'm dumbing it down, but tell us about today. What do you actually speak on today?
• 35:05
  [John Sanchez] My favorite thing to speak on is exactly the set of skills that I think kind of got me to where I was able to get and keep jobs that I was probably under qualified for because I was a better communicator than most people.
• 35:24
  [Jack Tompkins] Okay. So the introvert with the eclectic group of friends learn how to communicate, had a knack for the kind of math side of it as well. And now that's what you're telling people.
• 35:33
  [John Sanchez] Yeah, I found early on that I didn't realize that the bar is pretty low in accounting and finance to be a good communicator. So to be considered a good communicator in accounting and finance is not like being Tony Robbins. Right. Or like some world-class speaker. And so over the years, what I've started of year and if you look at like stuff that I'm putting out this year, I'm completely revamped my, my course catalog.
• 35:44
  [Jack Tompkins] Bear, yep.
• 36:03
  [John Sanchez] and everything else is based around frameworks. So back thinking, what's up?
• 36:10
  [Jack Tompkins] Easy to think in frameworks.
• 36:11
  [John Sanchez] Yeah. And I realized over the years that we in finance were, we're just mired in frameworks constantly. Right. I mean, think, think about everything you do in a spreadsheet. It's all frameworks, frameworks, frameworks. Math is all frameworks. Language is all frameworks. It's all about a few simple rules of how you structure things to make them easier to either create, manage, communicate. you know, anything along those lines.
• 36:44
  [Jack Tompkins] Okay. How is the training received? Because is it, it obviously, well, that's not the, that's not what I'm going for, but like, it, is it a shocking revelation at how easy it is and how low the bar is to the audience?
• 36:55
  [John Sanchez] Once they learn that there are, there's a small number of very simple things you can do that I don't know if they get you 80 % of the way there with like the 80-20 rule, but they get you a pretty big chunk. If you can cut down on filler words, garb, so like all that kind of stuff, you can cut down on those. If you can improve your, your eye contact, if you can improve your body language, and you're better with word choice, those skills alone can go a really, really long way. And I think once people realize that, they realize it's not complicated. mean, you could layer more stuff on. You could keep adding to it and leveling up. But the core is not really all that complicated.
• 37:46
  [Jack Tompkins] And if we put that into a framework, it's here's the core things, right? Here's five or six things that you can do in your day-to-day life. And it just becomes habit at that point. It becomes a learned behavior. And then if you like it, you can layer on top of that. Right. I'm like, what are some of the word choices? Like give me, give me a bad versus good, or like a, me a more sophisticated word that people could often exchange in.
• 38:09
  [John Sanchez] Well, the first ones that jumped to mind are not really in a finance context. For some reason, my early sales training when I became a financial advisor kick in, probably because I drilled those like over and over and over and over. But for example, there's an old sales trainer named Tom Hopkins, who used to teach what he's called rejection words. And they're words that just put people on the defensive. So sell. People want to own something, but they don't want to buy something. They don't want to be sold. Nobody wants to sign a contract, but they don't have a problem with the paperwork or the agreement. Right? Yeah. Now you have to be very careful with this in accounting and finance, but in sales, they teach people a lot. Don't talk in terms of price, talk in terms of investment. Now, obviously in our world, there's a, there's a lot of terminology we have to be very specific with. So we got, got to be careful with that. Chris Voss, and I think this applies across the board, not just to sales, not just in negotiation. So Chris Voss was an FBI hostage negotiator, he wrote a great negotiation book, and he talks about reframing yes-oriented questions to be no-oriented questions. So for example, I'm calling you about whatever it is, instead of saying is now a good time to talk, or have you got a minute, say is now a bad time to talk. And it all has to do without going down a rabbit hole that he explains really, really well in a bunch of different videos. It all has to do with how our brain is wired for protection. So yes feels vulnerable. No feels like protection.
• 39:54
  [Jack Tompkins] Yeah, that's it absolutely does. It's almost like, I mean, the improv version of this is like a yes and right. It's, something that invites further conversation and the person is still comfortable saying no to something like that. So it's actually, have rejection words to exchange and then you have protection words to enable. that right?
• 40:17
  [John Sanchez] to enable well, I don't know if I'd say enable as much as to to feel protected right some of the other ones that he talks about are So let me think about the ones that are more applicable to accounting and finance because I I started off more like on on the sales track
• 40:23
  [Jack Tompkins] Okay. Widely applicable still.
• 40:42
  [John Sanchez] Yeah, every everything Chris Voss talks about, I think are really, really widely applicable. So, for example, labels, right? You're talking to someone and someone and this is something that I think a lot of people get wrong, especially in accounting and finance. Have you ever been told, leave your emotions at the door like in a work situation? Yeah, it's happened to me a million times, right? Worst advice you could give anybody. It's impossible, right? We're not really capable leaving our emotions at the door. So Voss talks a lot about using what he calls labels to say, for example, let's say you and I having a conversation, you say something and I sense some word or some body language that you're using. You don't like something that I'm saying to immediately put a label on it and call it out kind of diffuses it. And he talks a lot about how people worry that if they bring it up, they're going to plant that negative seed that maybe wasn't there already. And according to him, there's lots of research that shows that it just doesn't work that way. It diffuses it. So you say something that that I perceive as being, you don't like something that I'm saying, literally call it out and say, it seems like this is rubbing you the wrong way. It sounds like it feels like words along those lines where you're not saying it is, you're not pointing the finger. I'm putting it on myself that to me, this is how it seems to me. And I'm putting that label on your emotion, which is really what's at the root of your communication in the first place.
• 42:19
  [Jack Tompkins] Interesting. if you communicate in, if you just address it, right? I mean, this is like, I'm sure plenty of relationships can kind of think back on this too. If there's a conflict or a confrontation or something like that, or something that's going that way, Hey, it seems like this isn't quite landing the way I'm hoping it's landing with you. And then what do you, what do you go from there? Do you say, like, let's talk through this.
• 42:46
  [John Sanchez] Well, first you would just, you'd pick a label. Seems like, looks like, feels like, sounds like one of those. And then wait for their feedback because a lot of times what happens is you could get a correction, right? Like I've had this happen before, more so even in personal life where you say, it seems like you're upset. And the other person might say, I'm not upset. It's just that it sounds like you thought I meant X and I meant Y. So they're clarifying. So great, now I have a clarification. OK, great, now I reword it and I feed it back to them. So it sounds like you're saying not x, but y. And so maybe the best thing now that I'm clear is whatever the course of action is.
• 43:32
  [Jack Tompkins] Okay, let's just, let's take a pause. Let's go on the same page. Okay. Okay. Now, because we're going to run out of time here soon, unfortunately, you and I could talk for hours. know that, but, um, take this into finance, take this into the training and the speaking that you do either give us, you know, maybe some financing examples, like we're kind of continue on and then, um, where are you doing these trainings and like, who's a, who's a good audience for you that needs to learn this stuff?
• 43:35
  [John Sanchez] Mm-hmm. most of the companies that I train are like enterprise level companies. So some of the companies I've trained like Mish, Michelin, Discovery, Discovery Channel, Verizon, Oracle, mostly larger organizations, some associations. so associations are, I would say they're, they're kind of a good source to kind of get your name out there more so than. to deliver a lot of the training through them. It's just that the economics of it just work a little bit different, but I do like working with different associations as well.
• 44:38
  [Jack Tompkins] Okay. And these are all obviously, you and I know AFP, American finance professionals. Are these all accounting finance? And do you have like different, different speeches for those different subsets of broad finance?
• 44:52
  [John Sanchez] not completely different speeches, so I will tweak parts of it to try to tailor them more. Gotcha. So for example, you and I have worked together before on like a data visualization course, right? You might want to, if you were working with like an e-commerce company, you might want to think more about, what are the metrics that are more relevant to them, right? They're probably more concerned with CAC and ROAS and those types of numbers, whereas certain types of businesses, they maybe don't even capture that data very well. And so they're not as focused on it. Right. So the examples is where I would try to tweak things and maybe some of the terminology. Like I was saying, for example, with accounting and finance, we have to be real careful with using euphemisms, right? To say, well, think of it as an investment more than an expense. Well, no, there's in certain contexts, You have to be very specific with the terminology that you use. And so you have to be sensitive to that. If I'm teaching a group, for example, of FPNA folks, they're probably not as concerned with terminology that they might have to be super specific about as if they were in financial reporting, like where they're working on SEC filings all day. As long as we're just talking amongst ourselves, It's okay to use different terminology, but if you're working in financial reporting, you've got to be very, very specific with your terminology.
• 46:26
  [Jack Tompkins] Okay. So you've got this communication layer on top of communication training to make sure that it fits each individual style. Makes perfect sense. Let's hit you with some scrappy versus sophisticated lightning round questions. you travel for work, right? You give speeches all over the, all over the country. TSA pre-check.
• 46:46
  [John Sanchez] No, don't have TSA pre-check. No TSA. No, it's been one of those things on my to-do list forever though.
• 46:52
  [Jack Tompkins] Okay, are you boarding the plane first or last?
• 46:57
  [John Sanchez] I'm typically close to last.
• 47:00
  [Jack Tompkins] Okay, yep, very much same. I don't want to sit there. How do you feel about a preflight cocktail?
• 47:06
  [John Sanchez] It depends on where I'm going and how long the flight is and who I'm with. There's a lot of variables.
• 47:11
  [Jack Tompkins] Okay, all right. So we can analyze that at the airport.
• 47:14
  [John Sanchez] But I'm a little baffled by the fact that some people like, it's like the first thing that they do. I'm like, we're not a club, dude. Like you're traveling for business. The difference jokes.
• 47:21
  [Jack Tompkins] requirement yeah Right. And then how do feel about breakfast at an airport?
• 47:33
  [John Sanchez] Mm, sketchy. Tough. Yeah, I think probably the breakfast would be a go to for me. Probably sounds a little strange. would be like Bojangles or Chick-fil-A.
• 47:44
  [Jack Tompkins] but consistent.
• 47:45
  [John Sanchez] Yeah, it just seems a little safer. Consistence probably better. Not like it's unsafe. It's just it's harder to mess up.
• 47:47
  [Jack Tompkins] Yeah, okay. Right. When you're at a conference, you land, you get all settled in everything. do you cancel all of your preexisting meetings? Are you trying to work that in like taking a call on a bench outside of the room that you're presenting in?
• 48:09
  [John Sanchez] So again, this one depends. I try to take my fiance with me when I can. If it's like a really cool, like a couple years ago, the AFP conference was in San Diego. So I took her to that one. We had a great time in San Diego. It's just a great city. Sometimes the timing doesn't work out in those cases. I'm just trying to get as much work done as I can.
• 48:32
  [Jack Tompkins] Gotcha. Okay.
• 48:33
  [John Sanchez] Unless there's a lot of networking opportunities, in which case then you know want to take advantage of that.
• 48:40
  [Jack Tompkins] Okay. I'm glad you went there. Let me hit you with a few networking questions. Have you ever given out a metal business card? Okay. First thing you do in a room of networking, what's the first thing that you're doing?
• 48:55
  [John Sanchez] I'll tell you the first thing I should do is scan the room and figure out who I should be networking with. What I usually end up doing is I will find someone that looks and I couldn't tell you how I identify this, but someone that looks like we might have some kind of similar interest. And I will typically, this is not a good networking tip. I will typically end up getting into a conversation with that person. and talking to them longer. Remember I mentioned I usually have a small number of friends that I'm like really, really good friends with. Yep. I tend to fall into that behavior in networking, which is not the most productive.
• 49:32
  [Jack Tompkins] This is high school all over again though. You're finding people in high school, they're like, Hey, we have some sort of a connection. You're still doing it. It works. It works for you. It may not be the best tip, but it works.
• 49:41
  [John Sanchez] It can as long as you're not focused on numbers.
• 49:44
  [Jack Tompkins] There you go, quality over quantity, some would argue. Okay, last one, how do you end that conversation? So a conversation has run its course. How do you end that conversation and get out of it move on to either somebody new or go grab some food or whatever?
• 50:00
  [John Sanchez] I have found, especially if it's specifically a networking event, I think most people are perfectly fine if you say something along the lines of, I don't want to monopolize your time. know we're all here to network and I've been talking to you for like 10, 15 minutes now. Great meeting you, but I want to make sure that I respect your time. Kind of frame it more like, not quite like you're doing them a favor, but kind of almost like a respect thing because we're here to network.
• 50:28
  [Jack Tompkins] That's the perfect way we're leaving on the communication point in a networking environment. I'm actually going to use that. I need to use that. I had to use that recently or I should have used that recently. John, thank you very much for coming on. Tell us a little bit. So FP and a group, tell us about the podcast. Tell us about where people can find you. We'll have your social links and everything, but anything you want to promote, tell us the stuff that's going on in your life.
• 50:51
  [John Sanchez] Yeah, so the best way to find me is on LinkedIn. I also have on LinkedIn, aside from just going to my profile, I have an FPNA group on LinkedIn. We're about 34,000-ish strong in that group. There is, of course, the podcast. I have not been as active with the podcast for a while, but that's going to be starting back up here. I've just kind of had some things that have sidetracked me from a time perspective. But it's one of the things that I enjoy the most. I love conversations like you were saying before, we could talk for hours. I love having conversations with people where we have some similar interests and some really different interests. So some of your work overlaps with mine, but there's a lot of stuff that you do that I don't really touch. And I find it interesting hearing about stuff that you're working on, tools that you've been using that you find helpful, all kinds of stuff like that.
• 51:49
  [Jack Tompkins] Yeah, I will say that's one of my favorite things about you. You're always curious, whether it's the next AI tool, just a slightly different perspective. You've always got a curiosity about you. I'm sure that comes through on the podcast. Heck, I've been on a guest on one of the podcasts, but find them on LinkedIn, everybody. It's a big community. John, thank you so much for coming out. You are 100 % scrappy.
• 52:11
  [John Sanchez] It's thanks for having me man. Appreciate it. It's All right
• 52:13
  [Jack Tompkins] Dog student,