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Radical Responsibility: Ignoring Guru Advice to Scale with Jerry Brazie · Big Talk About Small Business

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: I've never missed a day off work sick.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: Now I've been sick.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: I've just never missed a day off at 57 years old.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so the reality is that this mindset that says food is work has never left me.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: Now it wanes, and some days are harder than others, like I said.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: But generally across the board, I'm operating at a higher level than most people simply because if I don't work, then I don't eat.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: And that was implanted into me as an 11-year-old when they gave me a club sandwich all those years ago.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_02: Amen, brother.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it's a good way to kick us off.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_02: It is.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_03: This is another episode.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: Big Yeah, we hate small podcasts.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, we hate podcasts.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: Let's do one.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: How about that?
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_03: Hey, let's do a war.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_03: So, yeah, I mean, I just want to jump right into it.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_03: Um, tell people just a little bit about yourself because they don't know anything about you.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_03: I know you've had multiple businesses, you've got a consulting business as well.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_03: So tell us a little bit about yourself.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, I think the interesting parts, uh, first off, I'll just start by saying, as an entrepreneur, my background, I am who I am despite where I come from and because of where I come from.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I always say that because I'm child number seven of nine.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: My parents had six kids when they were 23 years old.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: My mother brought home the sixth child that she took a bus to go have.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and at home, she had a, so she had the brand new infant and a one, two, three, four, and a five-year-old, six children.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: So she slept every other day for a decade.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: Seven years later, I was born.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't want me to be an only child.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: I have a little brother and a little sister.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: I grew up in abject poverty, stole food to eat as a kid.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: I was born in 1969.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: I got my first job.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: I paid taxes as an 11-year-old.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'm one of the youngest taxpayers in the country ever.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, legit job, wasn't a friend, none of that.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: Local restaurant hired me.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: I left that job at 11 to go work at IHOP because they paid me 25 cents more and would let me work Saturday and Sunday when I was 12 years old.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: So that's my background.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: I was a street kid at 17, lived with hookers and heroin addicts uh in a$25 a week flop house.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: I've been stabbed, shot at, beaten with an inch of my life more times than I can count.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: But I always had a job.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: Started my first company at 28.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: It failed after the first year.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: There's a story there.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: Came back 17 days later and started my second one.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: I did$4 million the first year,$8,$12 million,$14 million the fourth year,$12.50 average ticket price.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I've gone on to do almost half a billion dollars in revenue across a dozen businesses.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: I have failed spectacularly.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: I have lost fortunes and I have made fortunes.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: And you name the business, development, houses, uh, commercial, industrial, transportation, uh, gas stations, car washes, convenience stores, investment firms, woodworking businesses.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: If I thought I could make or lose money, I went into the business.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: I have, I'll just finish with my proudest thing, the best thing in my entire life.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: I have three children, uh, two boys in the military, and a daughter I eat dinner with three, four nights a week, who's the apple of my eye.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I've been married 29 years, the 16th of this month.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_03: That's awesome.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_03: That's a great intro, Jerry.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_03: There yes, man.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_03: I love that story.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_03: That's awesome, man.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_03: And you got a Tennessee behind you.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_03: What does that mean?
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I live in uh I live just south of Nashville, Tennessee.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, uh a little town called Spring Hill that I absolutely adore.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: Are you in the music business at all?
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: No, sir.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_03: Is it isn't that where the Saturn plant was in Spring Hill?
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: Is it the what?
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_03: General Motors Saturn plant, wasn't that?
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: Just south of me.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, down Spring Hill in Columbia.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's exactly right.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_03: I never understood they had like a coming home Saturn deal.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I mean, a Saturn was not that great.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they had a uh there's a Saturn Parkway, uh literally uh, you know, an off a freeway right off of the freeway to get there to this day, the Saturn Parkway.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_03: So, Jerry, one of the things I saw you had in here, it's always a topic that I like to talk about and Eric as well.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_03: Work on your business instead of in your business.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_03: How many times have you heard that bullshit from people?
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_03: And what do you say to them?
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_03: I'm sorry, I lost you.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_03: Just what do I say to what?
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_03: I lost you there.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: Work on your business, not in your business.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, uh, that's funny that you say that because I just had this.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: This is probably the number one conversation that I have with entrepreneurs and even people outside that are looking in.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: The internet is full of people that want to tell you about work on rather than in, because I think it gets clicks because people who are entrepreneurs or who are thinking about it, to them that goes, oh, oh yeah, that makes sense.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I see the guy, you know, he's taking a picture in front of the Lamborghini and he spends four hours a week working, and the rest of the time is in the south of France with some girl in a bikini on a boat.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I want.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: What do I have to do to do that?
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: So the internet is constantly selling you this garbage about work on your business, not in it.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: And then on the other side of it are known names, entrepreneurs who, you know, started from nothing and have now they're worth hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, who have absolutely forgotten what it is to be an entrepreneur.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: Because look, guys, I know hundreds of entrepreneurs.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: I know dozens of millionaire entrepreneurs.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: Most of them started from scratch.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: I have been in this game for 30 years.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know a single entrepreneur, in particular a new one, first four, five, six, seven, eight years that isn't working on the business and inside of the business.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you're not, if you're going to risk your business to somebody that you hired, particularly in its early years, you're hosed because you got animals like me out here just chomping at the bit to steal everything you have.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I promise you, no matter how good the employee is that you find, he or she will not do the job for you, will not look at the world the way that you look at the world.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: So y'all got to ignore that advice about don't work in your business.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: Here's what you do: you work on and in.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: I have a rule.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: I don't clean bathrooms.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: From day one, when I started my first company, I will not clean the bathrooms.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so I always brought somebody in, even when I couldn't afford it, to clean the bathrooms, or I cleaned it myself, because I will never ask somebody in my company to do a job for me that I haven't done.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: I have to do every job.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: Now, that doesn't mean, okay, that's the in the business.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: That doesn't mean I go and do that job every day.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: But if you ask me, I know how to do that job.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so as I scaled, you know, at my largest, I was doing$25 million a year.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: I knew how to pump gas.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: I knew how to sell something at a convenience store.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: I knew how to take inventory.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: I knew how to dispatch.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: I knew how to drive.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: I knew how to back a truck up.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: I knew how to unlock or how to dock a truck.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: You name whatever I knew how to build, I knew, I knew how to take it down, I knew how how to uh run through the regulations, I knew the paperwork, the administration, all of it.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: Now, how much of it did I do?
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: Very little.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: How much of it did I know how to do?
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: A whole lot.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: The computers are a great example.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know the first thing about computers, but I know enough to be dangerous.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: So I hired a computer guy, and then I knew I knew what to ask him, and I knew what to go sit down with him and say, I want this to do that.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how to make that happen.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: I say, I don't know how a television works.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: I understand how a TV works, but I couldn't make a TV work.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: But it's important that I know how it works, not necessarily whether or not I can fix it.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's in and on your business from my perspective.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: And quite frankly, on the ground, I've never seen another operator do it any differently.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_02: Jerry, what do you, you know, you're kind of pulling on a heartstring for me about this on and in people being attracted to that, right?
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_02: You got rookie, not not really entrepreneurs, one entrepreneurs, once they want to be, they're founder, which is another big one of my big things.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_02: I get all wrapped up about.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_02: You can be a founder for$35.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_02: And that doesn't make you an entrepreneur.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_02: I think you're trying with me, but what I mean, do you think that you have to work really hard as an entrepreneur?
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's is hard work, like and and I love asking you because based upon your history, like it's not like you've been chilling and watching things happen and you just landed in fortunes.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, what do you what do you believe about the work ethic of a of an actual entrepreneur?
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_02: What is it what do you have to do?
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: So so I'll I'll answer the question two ways.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: The first way is again, it doesn't sell if you if you are trying to get somebody to buy your course, to, to click on your video, to follow you, it doesn't sell to say that you are gonna have to risk and sacrifice and work harder than anybody around you, harder than anybody that you've probably ever known, and certainly harder than what you think you're capable of to be an entrepreneur.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, guys, I'm sure y'all know how to sell.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: That's not a good selling point trying to get somebody to buy something from you, right?
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: That this is just going to be hell.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: The flip side to, or on top of that, I'm gonna add that I'm an idiot from the streets.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: I dropped out of high school at 15 years old.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: I have zero education.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: I bought a house when I was 20 years old because I read an article.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: Remember, I always had a job, full-time job.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: I read an article that says you need to buy a mortgage or you needed to buy a house.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know what a mortgage was, I didn't know what an interest rate was, and I didn't know what equity was.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: I had no idea what those things were, but I read this article, so off I went.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: So when I was 20 years old, I paid 12.5% interest on a house I bought for$82,000.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: Ten years later, I used that house three separate times over the course of five years to help finance the growth because I was growing so fast in that in my first business that I started.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: The point of the story is as I'm living on the street and I do and I'm crawling my way out, I always went to work.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: I could outwork everybody.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so I may not, I'm not the most educated, nor was I.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: But the thing I have over everybody else is I'll work like nobody, no other human being you ever saw.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: So when I was running and my company's doing$8,$10 million a year, and I got a little thing called cash flow.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of important, look it up.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: I can't figure out how to make money.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm refereeing basketball games at night in order to pay my bills because I got a brand new son, I got a new daughter coming, and the bills at home got to get paid, but I can't figure out how to extract the money.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: All right, well, I'll just work 12 hours a day on this job, and then I'll go work six hours a night on this job, four, five nights a week, nine games on the weekend, Saturday and Sunday, because I got to pay bills.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: I'll sleep for five or six hours, no problem, and away we go.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: And that's how I got ahead.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: There's no education.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: My education was in real time.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: I was getting hit in the face.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: I was standing back up from it, and then I would learn.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it would take me two or three times to learn it, I got to be honest, but I would learn and then off I would go and next level and next level and next level.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: And the reality was it's all from hard work.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: Hard work is a thing that they like to tell you don't do when they're not educated, or excuse me, when they don't have the work ethic, but they just think that they know because I will put an uneducated, common sense, street smart human being up over anybody you put in front of me relative to being an entrepreneur every day and twice on Sunday.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it is seems to be that case, right?
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_02: We get our we get education, inflation.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_02: In our brain, we think we can theorize and we can we're so smart.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_02: We know how to plan.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_02: And I mean, and if you came from a major corporation, you've managed and you've had all this stuff, and you feel like the entrepreneurship is just like I can work on my business.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_02: I can just be a strategic director where for two hours, eight hours a day.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_02: And you know what?
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_02: Here's what's funny.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if y'all have experienced this.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_02: Like, Jerry, it sounds like you've had an exit, you know, before Mark, I know you have.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I really struggle that for for a bit right after that.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I felt like that I could just be an on-the-business type of investor slash yeah, entrepreneur a little bit, but not have to do what I'm saying.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_02: For like 30 days throughout my day, dude.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_02: If that, I got slapped in the face.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_02: I always get learned, I'd always get flirt things, you know.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_02: But I mean, like the intensity of the amount of work.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_02: If you're gonna like if you want to protect that baby and you want to hell that girl, you have to be all way out, dude.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, if I'm awake, I'm working.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, honestly, there is it's just all there is to it.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I I think you're right.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: I did a video the other day.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, I did a video the other day in the car.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: My wife was videotaping me because we had left with my daughter to go eat dinner and the phone call rang.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a problem.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: I live in Tennessee.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: My operating companies that I have are back in Portland, Oregon, and there was a problem back there, and a dispatcher had to run off, right?
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, I haven't dispatched in forever, but there's a problem.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: We're down a couple of people here, and this people are on the road because we were so busy.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, no worries, turn the car around.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: Said, hey, turn the camera on.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: This is the life of an entrepreneur.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: I've been at it for 30 years.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: I've done half a billion dollars.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: I'm turning around because that they need some coverage.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: There was probably a better answer.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: There might have been an easier or there might have been a more complicated answer that took some more time to find the answer.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: I just turn the car around.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: My wife's like, no problem, we'll go later.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe we don't go at all.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: This has been the life forever.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: And people jumped in the comments and were screaming and yelling about you have a job, you're not a business owner, you're out of a job.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: Telling me, you know, a dozen businesses built, bot, sold over the last 30 years that I'm not a business owner, right?
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: It was just funny.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: And all it was was those, to your point, those, those talking points that they have about, you know, your your the the the experts love to say it's a job.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if you have to be there every day, then you've got a job for yourself.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: You haven't created a business.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: Like said nobody ever that's ever done it.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, no kidding.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_03: But if I sell it for$10 million, I I have more than a job.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, you know what I mean?
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, yeah, so this is awesome, uh, Jerry.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_03: So you talk with a lot of small business owners, right?
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_03: I always like to ask people like you that have this wide-ranging experience, and and I share some of the businesses that you've been in, like construction, development, design build, firm, consulting, all that.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_03: Um what do you think are like the top three ways small business owners blow it?
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I yeah, I I think that boy, that's there's there's there's so many specific.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: I think we alluded to it earlier.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: I it again, I always tell stories from my experience, fellas, because you know, that's just the best way is to learn what I haven't done right.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: And and I learned about cash flow when I was I sales are easy.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: I always say sales are easy.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: Selling profitably, that's very difficult, right?
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: If all I could do is sell at cost, I'd have advantages over everybody else, and it'd be way way easier to do.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I learned the hard way.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: I had to take my company from 14 million to 8 million because I uh my first transportation company, because I didn't have the cash flow figured out.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: So cash flow is king.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: And on and just aside from cash flow, revenue is not profit.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that even to this day, sometimes I get caught up on my own supply and start seeing that number at the top and forget to look at that number at the bottom.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: So it's really easy to jump out there and try to grow that top line without realizing that it is doing two things possibly.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's not moving to the bottom line, and whether or not it moves to the bottom line, what's the cash flow?
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: When is that turn from your receivable?
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: So very simple things to a lot of experienced entrepreneurs, but to the young guys or the guys just starting out, or the inexperienced guys, I mean, it's just the first thing I want to know is what's the turn on those receivables?
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: Is that cash, even before we're profitable, is that cash coming in?
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we got to fix that problem.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: So that's probably number one.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: I think number two is again listening to some of the gurus uh about the stuff we've been talking about, uh, and even the people in your own orbit.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: So nobody starting your business, your friends don't have any idea what you're undertaking.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: Your, your, your pastor, your mentors, they can't, if they've never done a business, they cannot help you.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: They don't understand the reality.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: They think, you know, they're like the people in uh sitting on juries and they expect it all to get settled because they watch CSI, right?
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's just not reality.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's not the way that the world works.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and entrepreneurship is not dudes building motorcycles, screaming at each other, throwing wrenches while the camera follows them out the door, right?
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: And they're yelling and screaming, or these restaurant shows where they throw the food on the ground and the chefs yelling at everybody.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's just not reality.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: That's not the, I mean, it's reality television, and I don't even think that's reality, but you know, that's the idea of what of what they think us entrepreneurs are all about.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: And that's just not reality, as I said.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I think the other thing is is just having a good idea on work in that business uh as hard as you can.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: Number three is doubt.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: I've worked with a ton of entrepreneurs, and the thing I tell all of them, and I'm guilty of this also throughout the years, is that no matter what your list of problems you just gave me, then you can point and go, look, Jerry, the guy next door has got the picket fence, he's got the smoke show for a wife, he's driving the escalade, life is really good for him, and the dude to my left is the same thing, only he's got the brunette and everything's great over there.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: Meanwhile, I'm suffering.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I go, no, no, no, no.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: What you don't understand is I just talked to those two.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: They said the same thing to me about you.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: That entrepreneurs, we all think we're the only ones with the issues.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: We're too stupid, right?
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: But we don't want to talk about them because the guys on the left and the right of us are going so good.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: And the reality is everybody has the same problem.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: We're all just doing everything we can to get through it.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: If we would open up about some of that stuff and realize that we're not the only ones with these problems, but we're men mostly and we're ignorant and we just want to fight through it.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: And it all looks better for the guy next to us.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't want to be wrong.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: God forbid I be wrong.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that would be my number three is just they need to get out and talk to more people, have more conversations, in particular with or specifically with people who have done it before, who have gone through what you're trying to go through.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: Because again, your dad can't help you if he's never ran a business.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_01: Because unless you have done it, it's impossible to give advice on that.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I never forget many, many times in the early years, I'd have a$200,000 payroll due on this.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: Probably three times this happened to me,$200,000 payroll due on Monday and no money in the bank on Friday.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: You want to talk about a fast weekend?
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: You want to talk about time going quick, right?
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: Ain't no money in the bank.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: I see that.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_03: That's one of the businesses.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_03: You mentioned motorcycles.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_03: I'm in that business.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so yeah, we're not throwing wrenches, but um, I get it.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_03: It's uh it's a stray for sure.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_03: Um, no, it it it is it is interesting what you said about like the TV shows.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, we can all talk about Sharp Tank and how unrealistic that is.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_03: And and you know, and the home improvement shows with the contractor that as you said, they come in, it's like, how much is this gonna cost?
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_03: They asked their subconscious, the guy's like, 1500 bucks, 1500, I'll give you$500.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, you know.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_03: Like, how does that work?
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: The number of people that I have seen lose money, I mean, uh right up to family members lose money on flip jobs over the last 20 years because it became so prominent on television.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, y'all are, I mean, I flipped a hundred houses.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: I hated every second of every one of them.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_03: I've done it.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: Plain and simple thing.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_03: I'm and it's like people uh like I get asked all the time by people every day, how do you get people to work like you do that are always here, that your schedule is always kept?
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_03: I go, it's real simple.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_03: I don't make everybody low bid everything.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_03: Well, aren't you worried that they're gonna screw you?
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_03: No, I have relationships of trust with people I've had for 17 years or 12 years or 20 years.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_03: That's not the real world where you just beat everybody down on price.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_03: You know, and again, it goes right back to what you're saying about these sort of these unrealistic ideas that people have of what it takes to be in business and what it takes to be successful.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I'm speaking of speaking of other entrepreneurs, that's why I love this show.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_02: That's why I love Jerry, you coming on.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_02: Like, as we are talking about business and the life of an entrepreneur.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, one of the things that hopefully you guys can give me comfort on, Jerry, I'd love to hear your opinion.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_02: Is you talked about you like I experience, I keep kind of repeating a same stupid problem.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_02: Same mistake, same mistake.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_02: I do that too all the time, like on a daily basis.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what am I gonna learn?
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_02: Why can't I do this?
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_02: You know, but I mean, but then there's it doesn't stop you.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't stop it right.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, I don't stop.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_02: I over I just keep pushing.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_02: And then I also recognize a little bit of that fault.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_02: But I mean, do you have that same experience, Jerry?
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, are you kind of repeating the same mistakes?
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think you're I think you're really on to something there.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: Again, uh the both the Mark and Eric, both of you in the context of the the real world versus uh versus what we see on television and this idea, this stylized idea has ruined it for everybody because it's like I as you guys said, I work out.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, fierce.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: I almost died a few years ago.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: I lost a hundred pounds, I've gone through this metamorphosis, and I never miss a workout.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it sucks a lot of times, right?
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to go.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: And you watch these Instagram motivators and it, you know, these guys that are out there talking about I wake up at 4 30 in the morning, and people get the idea that you like getting up early in the morning to go to work or to go work out.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: And look, I mean, I like it, but you know, in context, a lot of times it sucks.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: But that's the difference between me and other people is you have to go.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: I wanna, I wanna.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: I want to live until I die.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: To to to put the odds in my favor as best as I can.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: I need to be carrying as much muscle.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: I need to be, I'm six foot four, I'm 225 pounds, I need to be 215 pounds.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: I need to carry myself as well as I can.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: So when I fall over at 57 years old, I can stand back up.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: So that takes a mindset.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: But this idea that when we get up in the morning, you want to.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: You want to go lift weights.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: I go, I do four miles on the road every day in Tennessee heat.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: Why?
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: Because no one else does.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's hard and I have to do things that are harder than you.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: People go, Jerry, you could do it on the treadmill, it's 100 degrees and 85% humidity.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: Why are you out at four o'clock in the afternoon?
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: And literally, guys, my answer is because no one else does.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: So to answer your question, yeah, I made a mistake yesterday and I made it again today.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: God damn it, why do I keep doing this?
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: And then you just come back.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: And why do you keep doing it, Jerry, if you can't even figure that out?
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: Because you won't?
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: Because no one else does?
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: That's why.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's hard.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: Because I'm an idiot.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, I know it is.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I think that there's like the the perspective of folks that are not entrepreneurs, that are all like aspiring to be.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I get questions all the time.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_02: And I see all this stuff about like the glory of being an entrepreneur and like it's some sort of cool.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, it's the worst job that you can literally ever choose for yourself.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_02: Like, did you put yourself in a more dangerous scenario, work harder than anybody else?
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_02: No one understands you.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_02: You live on an island, the depression's a split second away at any given moment, right?
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_02: Devastation, family problems, like it's all these things.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_02: But to your point, Jerry, like it's not always fun.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, I would say most of the time, like on the way here, I was like, am I there was something that happened in the email, and I'm like, why is it so hard for these people to like why do we generate and create new problems?
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_03: Or why can't people friggin' answer the phone and return calls promptly when I know I've on six boards of companies have to do full-time jobs, two nonprofits, five kids, two ex-wives, and a wife, real estate projects, and I can freaking answer the damn phone quickly.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_03: And here is a lead from April sitting there, and it's August 5th, and somebody hasn't haven't called this person.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_03: What the hell's wrong here?
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_02: It's like it blows your freaking mind.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_02: And the thing is, is like you get off and we do it all over again.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I think it's I think the answer really, what I've what I've kind of discovered is it's it's there's a purpose and a response.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_02: It's actually a an uh a responsibility.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_02: Like I genuinely feel responsible.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_02: You kind of like to your point, you feel some responsibility about getting down at four o'clock because no one else is doing it.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_02: Like that's taking on or turning the car around to go back from the yeah, that's a responsibility.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_02: Like, yeah, hold that high, you know, especially with your back.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what do you how do you feel about that?
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you agree, yeah, and not just turn the car around, but if you go see the video, my wife, my daughter's 27 years old, and my uh and my wife's been with me forever, yeah, no problem.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: They they we we fellas, we've traveled the world.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: They my children read, write, and speak Chinese fluently because I sent them to Chinese immersion school from third three years old until fifth grade.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: They've been to China a dozen times.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: We've been around the world, we've done things a 17-year-old living with hookers, Jerry, couldn't imagine.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: And the reality is that sometimes you got to get up from the meal you just ordered and go home because there's work's got to be done, or I got to go to the office.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: And everybody goes, Yeah, that's true.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: And my kids, I was around 80% of the time, I never missed an event.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: But I I would go to the event, turn around, and leave.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: And if you ask my kids, honestly, they'll say, I don't remember you never not ever being there because it's about quality time, not quantity time.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: These guys think they got to come home.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: The kids go to bed at 8:30, and then you're watching football talking to me about I don't have time to do X, Y, or Z, right?
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: So there's this idea, there's this idea about how the world works for us entrepreneurs from the outside looking in.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: That's just not reality.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: And the point is, I think people do not want to be honest about that's what it takes.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: It can't be, Mark and Eric, that we work harder than everybody else.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: It can't be that.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: It has to be something that brings us all down to a level playing field.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: I want to, you said something purpose.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: When I was 28 years old, my son was born.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and my one minute my wife is pregnant, and the next minute she's not.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: Y'all got kids, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I was running this company for a lady at the time, I was making$55,000 a year, which is more money than I could imagine.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: I could tell you today how I'd live on$10 an hour.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_01: And when my son was born, I couldn't be there anymore.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: I had to go and I had to maraud the countryside.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: I had to, I had epiphany at that point.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: Shut up and listen.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: And then I started my business career because my children were not going, my son was not going to have the life that I had.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: $450 million in revenue across all of these businesses.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_01: Not a single dime, not one dime in all of that revenue did I earn doing something I love.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: Here we go.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: We'll break another stereotype.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: I don't could, I you know what I love doing?
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: Playing pool.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: I love going and playing basketball.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I love to do, right?
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: I want to go travel.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: I that's what I love doing, but what I love doing didn't pay the bills for my kids.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_01: And my children were gonna have a life that that that was unimaginable to me.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: So I work.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_01: You do not want to compete with me because my passion burns like a caveman.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: My children and my wife are in a cave behind a fire, safe, and I go out every morning and go in the tall grass, and maybe something's gonna eat me, and I got to walk in the trees, and maybe something's gonna grab me.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: But the reality is I'm gonna hit a pterodactyl over the head.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to drag it back.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna nurse my wounds while I watch my family eat, and I can't wait to get up the next morning and go do it again.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_01: And here's the trick: if I'm lucky enough to find another group and maybe they get some older dudes that can help me knock a pterodactyl, a bigger pterodactyl, and it's a little bit safer for me, boy, that's even better.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't need that group to go do it on my own because I have a family to feed, and that purpose I have, which is my children, which are my superpower, taking care of them is more passion than you'll ever have for starting your flower shop or whatever the thing is that you want to go do.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: I end every one of my podcasts saying opportunities are everywhere, you got to go get them.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, because we're all down in our heads going, oh, I love doing this and you know, self-help and all the other things.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: Meanwhile, opportunity runs by, runs by.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: And the reality is find something that you can do profitably, take that money so you can sell to somebody else profitably, take that money, then go follow your passion, which is exactly what I did.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_01: So my passion is the success of my children and my wife, which I have done very, very well.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: And every single day I get up, and that is what fuels me.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_01: I could care less how I who wants to own gas stations for Christ's sake, right?
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_01: Who wants to do it in convenience stores and car washes?
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody, except it's a means to an end.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so you do not want to compete with me in that environment because I'm going to crush it because I got mouse defeat.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it's you're sorry, guys.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: I get going.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, man, this is what this is what this show's about.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_03: I I've had I've had an epiphany recently myself.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, you know, I well, uh first off, I came in here today and I told Eric I'm really negative right now.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_03: But I mean, I'm negative based on a lot of things happening out there in the housing market, the economy, the world as a whole.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_03: But it's not gonna stop.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_03: Hell no, bro.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_03: I'm always overcome every time because I don't give up and I am creative and I will outwork other people.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_03: I will keep trying new things and I will outwork them.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_03: But the other thing, the epiphany is in this overcommitment is part of the key to being successful if you're responsible.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_03: Just overcommit, but you're responsible.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_03: That's always been yeah, and then I'll do what I have to do.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_03: I I don't need to be like self-motivated.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I freaking overcommitted, but I'm responsible.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_03: Do I have to force myself to do things?
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_03: No, you just I'm responsible.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_03: I will do what I have to do.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_02: The general taskmasters build that list of the and compounding, compounding, compounding.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know, it's funny, like for some reason I kind of do the same thing.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_02: Like I start multiple businesses, I got all these, but uh the see opportunities rolling by, and I can't help but freaking I know try to go grab that son of a gun.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_02: But then when you start packing up, you have so much stuff to do, like you cannot not work.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's what I'm saying.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, we need to be motivated, yeah.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_03: It's a lawsuit, you just get up and respond to life, okay?
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_03: And if you got enough shit going on and you're responsible, everything turns out okay somehow.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: But see, it's not a it's not a I think that people look at it like it's an onerous thing or it's a heavy weight to carry.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like if they have a nine to five, I ran to work, right?
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_01: I I want to go, I want whatever it was I was doing, it was a means to an end, either feeding me or feeding somebody else.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so I would run to go to work rather than look at work like it was some sort of an impediment stopping me from doing the things that I really wanted to go do.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so you all are the same way.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's that you have to work.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: So we don't have to get past this safe space, self-help, self-love BS that so many people are preaching, right?
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: We don't have any idea what that's about.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_01: We just go out and we do it every single day.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's not onerous.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_01: Turning the car around on the way to dinner was not an onerous thing.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, your poor wife.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: I got a bunch of those comments, right?
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: I've been married 29 years, MFers.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_01: Well, how y'all doing, right?
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_01: How's your lives going?
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_01: I I'll I'll put mine up against anybody.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's the other thing.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_01: Is show me your experience, then we can have a conversation.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_01: But it's never a it's not a negative.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: I don't mind.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes I just don't want to get up, but I just get up.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_01: And then my day goes on, and pretty soon it's 11:30 at night.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, I gotta go to bed, I gotta get up at five in the morning.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_03: This is the problem with the whole work life balance thing.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's like work, work-life balance.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_03: Work is part of life, work is an integral.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_03: We have to work.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_03: You you've said it before.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, and we're never gonna be happy.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, no, Jerry, unlock you.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_03: I'm on wife number three.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_03: I did get a good one the last time around, okay?
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_03: It's extremely it takes some of us a little bit more time.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_01: It takes some work.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_01: No judgment, boys, no judgment, man.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_03: Each one was an improvement, however, yeah, okay.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, the whole the the whole point of that is that um that that you know, yeah, it helps to have somebody who's supportive and all that, but you gotta be self-motivated, you gotta be the one that makes it happen.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_03: You got so my second wife, she had everything, both of them did, but she didn't have to work outside of the home.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_03: We had the 5,900 square foot drywall palace with a pool and a pool house with two having fireplaces in it, not one that wasn't good enough.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_03: Driving the new expedition, escalade, whatever.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, and she was terribly unhappy, all right.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_03: And the reason she was unhappy, and I would try to explain this to her, is you have no purpose.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_03: You're not the only way anybody is gonna be happy is by accomplishing something, yeah, overcoming obstacles, contribution, it it it it's it's essential to the human need, just gratifying yourself.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_03: That's why I say I'm never gonna retire.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_03: So it's like, where are we going out to eat tonight, honey?
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_01: Retire.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_01: Retire, they'll they'll they'll find me.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: I want to die right here behind my desk.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's death.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_01: I want to die on a job site.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm not dying, retiring.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we we I mean, that work life balance thing is such bulky.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think about work life balance, Jerry?
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, work life.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_01: Look, the work life balance.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_01: I love all of this.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's all such BS that again, it's all it just sells clicks.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: It just gets people to follow you, it just gets people to buy your programs.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_01: That's all this garbage is.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: The reality, I'll take my wife, 29 years.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's it's like building the businesses.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's not easy, right?
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, you found a good one, they always like to say.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_01: My wife has the toughest world ever.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_01: She stayed at home, she's never worked, 100%, but she works.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_01: I was, we had a deal.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_01: I got to go to work.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: You don't do all the things that I'm doing and expect me to fix the faucet at home.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_01: It ain't gonna happen.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_01: And there's no money to fix the faucet.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: So you need to figure it out, but I gotta go.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of people would push back against that.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_01: That 29-year relationship, we've been together 33 years, is a lot of work, a lot of turmoil, a lot of fighting, a lot of the things that happen, and slowly you just say, no, we're going to stay together.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna, you know, we have kids, we're gonna work as hard as we can.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_01: And and this idea that all of these things are easy.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_01: When the kids ask me, I have these big car collections, and I'll get asked, you know, Jerry, where'd you get that car?
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_01: What do you do for a living that you have that car?
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, I worked at McDonald's when I was 16 years old, right?
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_01: I did, I had no money and no education, not nothing.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_01: I come from nothing.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I did.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I do, is I came from nothing and I turned it into this.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_01: So I want you to know that I was working at McDonald's at 16 years old to feed myself, not as a summer job, to feed myself.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_01: The point there being that these things are hard, but we just like to look at the fancy cars or the 30-year marriage and go, oh, that's just, you know, I was the rich guy who just got it easy.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's easy to stay married in 30 years when you don't have any issues.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_01: And they don't see the part where I worked eight straight days on a 45-minute nap on the third day.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_01: My biggest competitors went out of business.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_01: I hired 55 people in a month.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_01: I grew my company two and a half million dollars a year in one month when my big competitor went out of business.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I slept 45 minutes on on day three for 45 minutes.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_01: Otherwise, I worked eight straight days.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_01: Got home.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_01: My wife was just telling a story the other day.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_01: She made me ham and gravy and and uh mashed potatoes, and I ate it and then I couldn't go to sleep.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_01: She remembers it like it was yesterday, right?
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_01: This is who I'm married to.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_01: And together, like businesses, when times are hard, you just climb back out of it.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I get why some people don't and some people fail.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: And it happens, and I failed, and you just you just come back.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_01: But this idea that it's just easy and these things just happen uh is just a huge mistake.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_01: And to your point, we need to be challenged.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_01: And my purpose, when I lived for myself, I was not nearly as driven, even though I was crazy competitive.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a very high-level basketball player, all of those things that I did, uh, I it was it was uh I was a shadow of myself relative to when my son was born.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_01: And then that gave me that purpose.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_01: And then once I got that purpose, I was off and running.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_01: I never thought twice, but we think about ourselves too much.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think about me.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: I I my job is to suffer.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_01: These videos are constantly on the internet.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_01: I hate them.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the guy's sitting in front of his car and there's soft music playing.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_01: He's got tears pulling down his eyes.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_01: He's 40 years old and no one loves me, and I'm nothing but a wallet to people.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_01: And then he walks in the door and the kids come running and grab him, and it's the greatest thing ever.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_01: But he's, you know, sitting in the car crying a few minutes ago.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, what men is this?
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_01: That's not what men are.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's not who we are, right?
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_01: We're made to suffer.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_01: We don't know how to be victims, we don't know how to we know how to get beat down, and then we know how to stand back up.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_01: That's what we know how to do.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, guys.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_01: You you all ask all the right questions.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_03: Well, this guy over here, he's always he's like been talking about silverbacks as long as it goes back to 2010.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_02: He's always admired the silverback.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it really it legitimately is all primitive.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_02: It is literally all, and you know what?
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_02: I love nature.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you I st I love looking at nature.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_02: Nature's the best example of what work really is, you know, in my opinion.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, there's always chaos, there's always turmoil, there's always something trying to eat you, something's trying to kill you, something's trying to flood you, something's trying to burn you, something's trying to sink you.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I mean it's everywhere.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_02: Danger, danger, and tension, and only the strong survive.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_02: And then that's what and that's just the casualty of it all.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_02: You know, but then there are sunsets and there's beautiful sunrises, and man, a nice cool creek feels like mighty amazing on a hot ass day.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_02: You know what I'm saying?
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_02: And a fire pulls really good when it's freezing outside.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_02: Like there's that, there's that part that sustains us.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_02: But Jerry, what I love about your story, because nobody could argue with it.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_02: Your background of you, you, and you've said it multiple times, you we were working to eat, and people forget because we're so gosh dang spoiled and comfortable these days, and we got so much content and bullshit influencers and content creators and all this other hooks and everything y'all have to talk about.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_02: We've removed ourselves from the fact that number one, you have to work to eat, like it's a matter, it's not a matter of privilege or opportunity, it is a matter of absolute 100% survival.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_02: So, number one, it starts there.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_02: And like your story really reminds us, and hopefully a listener will go, you know what?
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_02: I'm to your point, I'm I'm a little bitch.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_02: I need to quit wandering about my job.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_02: I need to start working to earn to eat and be a survivalist.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_03: But the problem is, okay, for all of us, especially like I'm older than all you guys.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_03: I'm 68.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_03: I'm a friggin' baby boomer.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_03: If I talk to my students like that or my kids, they're like, oh, you know, boomer.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_02: You know what I mean?
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, because like you, Jerry, I mean, I can't say I had that grew up in poverty, but when I was 18, I was on my own and ate what I killed and supported myself entirely.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_03: And so, you know, I understand exactly what you're talking about.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_03: And and I do think it's a problem today that too many people have too much.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_03: And their expectation, like, you know, one of my my 20-year-old daughter.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I'm not trying to be criminal.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_03: I'm lucky that all my kids are still highly motivated.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_03: But I mean, when you think about it, she's got a new car, she's her rent's paid for, her utilities are paid for, her internet's paid for, her cell phone's paid for, all car maintenance, health insurance, uh, food, and gets a thousand bucks a month on top of day.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, and got to go to France this summer, and is going to um Japan in two weeks to go see her boyfriend.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, think about that compared to the way we lived.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, how does he got?
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, yeah, I'm not doing her any favors, bro.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_03: Truthfully.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_01: You hit it on the head when you said that that that food and work, when I that job I got at 11 years old, uh, at the end of the show, I made$2.35.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_01: My check was$17 in change.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_01: I remember very clearly I took it down to the sentry market and cashed it for dollars.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_01: So I had, yeah, I could whip out them dollars because I had a big stack of ones.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_01: But the best part of that job was that they let me pick off of the menu anything I wanted.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_01: The first food, uh first food I ever ate in a restaurant was at the restaurant that I worked at.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so I picked the club sandwich because, you know, it's four pieces and giant fries in the middle of it to me.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I have, remember, I have six older brothers and sisters that start seven years older than me.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_01: So me eating a meal was always swiped.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's why we were stealing food to eat.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_01: My little brother and I used to steal food as kids because there was older kids in the house that ate all the food.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_01: So, I mean, I sat in the corner, but I'm in a restaurant.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_01: So there's no one coming to get it, but I still sat there.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_01: That that put food and work together for me my whole life.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_01: I've never missed a day off work sick.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_01: Now I've been sick, I've just never missed a day off at 57 years old.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so the reality is that this mindset that says food is work has never left me.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_01: Now it wanes, and some days are harder than others, like I said.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_01: But generally across the board, I'm operating at a higher level than most people simply because if I don't work, then I don't eat.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_01: And that was implanted into me as an 11-year-old when they gave me a club sandwich all those years ago.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I mean, it's it's I don't know, I just find it so fascinating.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_02: And I think it's a major problem, but it's a major problem and thinks me sick.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_02: Mainly when I think about my teams that I'm that are employed with me, you know, or on my team at my companies that are not the owners and entrepreneurs, but they're working for paycheck.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_02: I get absolutely sickened by this.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_02: But as an entrepreneur, about this comfort, complacency, passivity, optimism, make me happy.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you know, like, well, this is unfair.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_02: I need more, more, more, more, more.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_02: It's like a never-ending freaking bucket of a black hole of give, give, give to me.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, give it to me and I will do.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I yeah, yeah, it's it's it's never ending.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_02: It keeps compounding.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_02: And it's not necessarily here's my here's my statement to it in case and listen to this podcast.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_02: But it's not, I don't really blame them individually for it as much as I blame the the culture.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_02: The culture.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_02: Like they have it have to have a responsibility to quit.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_02: Is that called listening to that?
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_02: Now, as the entrepreneur in me, I actually love it.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_02: I love the passivity.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_02: I love the pacifiers that are being thrown out.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_02: I love the the the people that need six weeks to, you know, when a new kid comes into the world and and you know, and by the way, they they're the the dad.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: They didn't have to deliver, but like I worked literally the next day, like all day.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_02: And actually, I was t I'm sure I was doing emails during that some part fell off the day.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_02: But the very next day, like to your point, Jerry, like I gotta go to work.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_02: I gotta go to work the next day and the next day.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_02: I will be there and I will do very specific things, give relief and take care of certain things.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_02: But man, I mean, like I had to I had to go get it.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_03: But here's the thing with all this, I think for most small business owners, they've got to accept.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_03: And this is why there's so many opportunities all around us.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_03: Most people don't do that, most people don't think like that.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_03: So your competition out there, that's another thing, Jerry, that's always gotten me about entrepreneurship, and Eric too.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_03: Although Eric has actually invented stuff, a lot of people think they've got to invent something new to be an entrepreneur.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_03: And in reality, there's all these businesses like the ones you're in, convenience stores and construction, trucking, whatever, where the competition sucks.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_03: You know, and there's just such a great opportunity to just outwork the other guys and just be a little bit better than them, and then you do well.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_03: What do you think of that?
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_01: I think to your points, the you know, this approach to life.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_01: I have this picture that I keep on my phone.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's this little kid in Africa, and he's slumped down in a field, and this guy had taken the picture of him, and he's completely malnutrithed, malnourished.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_01: And in the background are some uh some vultures, and they're waiting for, you know, and he's gonna his ribs are showing, you know, and he's turns out he was 400 yards from an aid station.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_01: The guy that took the picture, it was in Life magazine.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_01: I think he won the prize some prize for it, went and jumped on an airplane.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_01: He was asked what happened to the kid.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_01: That guy ultimately ended up committing suicide because he didn't help the kid.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_01: He didn't know what happened to the kid, but in the background are these vultures waiting to eat the child as it's laying face down in the grass, not able to make it the 400 more yards to the aid station.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_01: This picture's 25, 30 years old.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_01: And people have no perspective on life.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_01: They have this idea that life is supposed to be easy because that's what were fed to us.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_01: I was talking yesterday in the sauna to a couple of young guys.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_01: I started this group.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's a brand new group, the Kronos Forge.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it's a group for men on school, a new community that I'm doing.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm constantly preaching to them that we live in the greatest time to be alive in world history.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_01: And tomorrow will be better to be alive than it was today.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_01: When I was born in 1969, 90% of the world lived in poverty.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_01: The rich people, when I was born, did not or do not, did not have things and couldn't imagine the things that the poor people have today.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_01: You have to have perspective on the world.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_01: You've got to understand that life is supposed to be difficult.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_01: And if life is easy, this is what sets us apart, guys, sets entrepreneurs apart, is that we have no expectation, generally speaking, that life is going to be easy.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_01: We understand that life is hard and that we live in the greatest time to be alive, but at the same time, it can come crashing down and snatch it from you in a heartbeat.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so, in that context, when life is good, we appreciate it, but we don't take it for granted because we know that life is hard.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_01: I always say, live in the uncomfortable.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_01: People don't want to be uncomfortable.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you want to be successful, you want to be an entrepreneur, you want to go out beyond your means, you have to learn to be uncomfortable.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_01: You have to learn in the uncomfortable.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_01: I move every four or five years, and my wife's used to it now because I get uncomfortable.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_01: The walls start to close in on me.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_01: I start to, something's wrong.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_01: She knows my wife now's got it down.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_01: She's like, we're gonna have to move, aren't we?
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, no, we might have six more months.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's okay, right?
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_01: But we just gotta move because I get uncomfortable.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_01: And and and and and or as I get I get content.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_01: And as soon as I get content, I'm it just I can't do it.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's gotta move, it's gotta be new, it's gotta be new neighbors, I gotta go talk to new people, I gotta have new things.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_01: I can't do it.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_01: I gotta keep pushing.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_01: Even when I'm failing, I gotta just get up and I gotta fight through it and I gotta be uncomfortable.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_01: And when things are going great, I don't get too excited about it.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_01: I go find all the things that are wrong and fix them because the things that are going right aren't going to hurt me.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_01: The things that are going wrong are going to hurt me.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_01: But nobody wants to deal with that because we want to, you know, we we want to look at all the good parts and drive the fancy cars.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm really more interested in how do I get more fancy cars, right?
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_01: What can I do to get me more things like that?
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_01: How can I take what I have and get more profitable with it?
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_01: How can my wife and my relationship be better?
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_01: How can I have a better relationship with my children?
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's not the things that are going well, the things that are going wrong.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_01: That's the ones I concentrate on.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_01: People hate doing that.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_01: You're striking a chord with me.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I used to keep like 20 cars at a time, and I move every two years.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_03: So I got you beat there.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_03: As soon as I get that 500k tax-free, we're gone.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_02: Game.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_02: It moves every year, year and a half.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_02: The lot of them kid, you like these double timers.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_02: But I mean, I think here's what I love.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_02: I want to get stuck on that as much as I want to get stuck on this emotional part about it, because there is a wiring here, right?
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_02: Like there is a relentless, continuous effort of pursuit of achievement, accomplishment, contribution, responsibility.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_02: Like like it's always like looking at maybe okay, this is a good way to put it.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_02: If you ever go hiking, or if you're ever on a river boating, like you're bored with exactly where you're at, but you are so intrigued by what's around that corner.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_02: Like you can't wait.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_02: Or maybe you're taking a road trip and you're like you and you have a destination and you get there, it's immediately boring to you.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_02: But you can't wait to get back in the car.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_02: You're still excited about going to the next place.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_02: Like if you went and bounced around Mount Zion Park, Grand Canyon.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_02: But that's so interesting.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_02: Like, that's what I love about this show because you're saying things that I I agree, we're all agreeing, and it and that's something nobody investigates or inquires.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_02: It's what makes, but if I start thinking about other real entrepreneurs, our founders, the true entrepreneurs, we're all kind of cut of that same cloth.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_02: And I think my biggest if I could stand on the stage and with the microphone and express everybody, if you're gonna be an entrepreneur, you better be a little like that.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_02: You cannot be all the things that the books and the teachers are telling you because if you aren't like this, you can invite yourself to a living hell.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_03: The cherries of the world are are really the ones you want to be learning from andolating.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_03: I mean And if you're not like that, then go work for somebody.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_03: Don't try to well, don't try to be somebody you're not.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_03: We were just talking today on the way here.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_03: We we had an interview with my partner and myself at one of my businesses in an interview with a sales, potential sales manager, salesperson.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_03: And anyway, um I said to the guy, you know, it's like I want people who have high expectations for themselves.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_03: I don't want somebody, I want somebody that says, I want to double my income like next year.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_03: I want to be a billionaire, baby.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_03: I'm so tired of the losery mentality and like, well, you know, life sucks.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we're gonna make more than 65,000 a year.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_01: I'll tell you what, I I have some of the my some of the best advice I give for I think for my success, coming from where I come from, is encapsulated in the story.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_01: I'll tell y'all really quick.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_01: When I was 14 years old, my next oldest sister died on the eve of her 21st birthday.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_01: She caught a virus in her heart, and she died literally the eve right after her 21st birthday party.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and she was like my mother.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_01: She was the seven, seven years older than me.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_01: She's the one who had to drag me all over the place and take care of us.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_01: And she died.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_01: That was December 11th, uh 1983.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_01: I turned 14 January 6th.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_01: And in April of that year, I lost all of the now again, I'm big kid, sports, fast, quick, all of that.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I went blind in a matter of six weeks.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_01: I lost all of the vision in my right eye.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's gone.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I lost most of the vision in my left eye.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_01: They were able to save it with some very rudimentary emergency laser surgery, such as it was back in those days.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and so much so that I'm blind in my right eye and I can fix my left eye with a contact, 2250 vision.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and so that's April.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_01: In August of that year, I'm taking money out of the bank, and I know better because I'm a street kid and I've been on the road a long time, you know, full-time job.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I've taken uh uh uh$80 of the$85 that I had in the bank account because you had to leave$5.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if that's still the case today, but you had to leave$5.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_01: I took$80 out and I turn around, four guys are right there, they put a beating on me.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_01: They break two ribs, they'd break my nose, they roll me under, leave me for dead underneath of a bus stop.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_01: August in Portland, Oregon.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_01: I wake up an hour later, I roll out, I got blood down my front, both eyes are black, broken ribs, you know, delirious.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_01: I get on a bus, I get to a transfer point, I tell you, I pass out for a little while, starting to get dark.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_01: I get to another transfer point, get off.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_01: Now I have a mile and a half walk home.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_01: And in Portland, Oregon, to this day, when I go back, I go back one time a month, one week a month.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_01: I will go every other trip or so to this spot.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_01: There's an oversized piece of sidewalk right before you go over the interstate freeway, and it's still there to this day.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_01: There are some duplexes to my right.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_01: As I'm walking home, this true story, guys, on my children's eyes.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_01: I've told this story for years.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_01: Behind me was a female voice back here.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_01: Now remember, I'm delirious.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_01: And the voice says to me, Everything is your fault.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_01: I think that somebody in the in the duplex is yelling out the window, it wouldn't be uncommon, is yelling at me because I look the way that I do, blood down my front, eyes black, but I realize there's no one there.
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_01: And the voice says again, outside a female voice, everything is your fault.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_01: I argue back at this point, and I said, I didn't do anything.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_01: Look at me.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_01: It said, Everything's your fault.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_01: Either you take responsibility for everything that happens in your life, or you're going to end up like everybody else.
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I didn't have a teacher, I didn't have a mentor, I didn't have a pastor, I don't know if it was God, Confucius, Jiminy Cricket.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what it was.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_01: But as I'm sitting here, it changed my life.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't hockey stick.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't all of a sudden go and, you know, I became this great thing.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, no, no.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_01: I had a tough life ahead of me.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_01: But that stuck in me that everything is my fault.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_01: Here's how it manifested itself.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_01: At 19 years old, I got stabbed in a in another robbery with a 10-inch screwdriver.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, that that two guys got me.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_01: I took some money off of them in a pool hall and they got me behind the back of the pool hall.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_01: But but this is how I look at the world.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_01: As I walked out this back alleyway, I know better.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_01: I wasn't paying attention.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_01: And the door behind me took a little bit too long to close.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_01: And there was somebody coming up the stairs at me.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_01: And when the door took too long to close, now again, I went blind to my right eye, but I'm right-handed.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_01: I should have turned to my right, but I didn't.
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_01: I had to turn to my left.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_01: This was 19 years old.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_01: And when I turned to my left, he came up behind me, 10-inch screwdriver that he had filed down.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's kind of what you did on the street in those days, right?
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_01: Because the cops pull you over, it just looks like you have a tool.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_01: And he was going to go put the 10-inch screwdriver into my kidney.
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_01: But I moved to my left to see who why the door didn't close.
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_01: And it stuck in my back and it came out my side and got caught in the muscle.
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_01: So I get out from underneath that and left those guys behind.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_01: Thankfully I was able to do it.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_01: I sat in my 72 Dots and B-210 with uh 550,000 miles and a four-speed transmission hole in the floorboard, smoking.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know, every time I'd let off the clutch, the RPMs would come up and exhaust would pour into the into the car, the windows had to be down.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_01: I sat down in the car.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_01: I realized I had a screwdriver.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_01: I had something in my back.
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know what it was.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_01: Go home.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_01: Took me six hours laying in a bathtub, reaching behind me, slowly taking it out.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_01: I wasn't bleeding profusely.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'd seen murders and I'd seen suicides.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_01: I know, no cops, none of that.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_01: I, you know, I'll take care of it myself.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_01: Put a towel around myself, the only towel I had in this little 600 square foot uh apartment I was in, and duct tape it and went back to work at McAdam Carpet warehouse, pulling carpet out of the racks on Monday morning.
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's that's my mindset.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_01: So those two events in my life, everything is my fault, though.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't woe is me.
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_01: So by the time my son was born at 28, and I had got approach to start this other business, I was in the right frame of mind that everything truly is my fault.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I've had people make lose$100,000,$106,000 mistake one time.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's not their fault.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh what did I do that put them in that position that let them lose that$106,000 on my behalf?
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_01: I have a 100 stories like that.
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_01: And then perspective lends itself.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_01: The biggest mistake I ever made cost me$10 million in six years of my life.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I mean, compared to$100,000, I'll take the$106 over the$10 million mistake I made any day of the week.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_01: So having that perspective, but really understanding that everything is my fault, that takes if men need to hear this in particular in life generally.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_01: I was not going to, as a poor kid on the street, give my agency over to other people.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_01: And when you are blaming everybody else for what's for the ills in your life, particularly when you're a poor kid from the streets growing up in generational institutional poverty, it's really easy to blame everybody else for what's going wrong with you.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so I refuse to do that.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_01: And that lesson at 14 years old, where that voice said to me, Everything is your fault, everything is your responsibility forever.
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_01: If you do anything that crosses me up, it's not your fault, it's my fault because I put myself in a position that let you have that impact on my life.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_01: So if I let you piss me off, then I'm giving up my agency to you.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_01: And if I was to point to a very specific reason why I was able to not only do all the things that I did, but survive a lot of the downside of all of those things, is simply because everything is my fault.
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_01: So you can't hurt my feelings.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_01: You can do whatever you want.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to turn that over to you.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_01: I have a huge ego, not a small one, but I'm also humble, which means that you can't hurt my feelings no matter what it is that you do.
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_01: I tell my managers, uh uh get people to do for you what you want them to do and let them think it's their idea.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_01: They don't, you don't need the power or you don't need the praise.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_01: You don't need the accolades.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_01: Let them have it all.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_01: I know it was your idea.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_01: I know you gave it to them, but the company just continues to do better.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_01: So, in that context, big ego, uh be sure, have some humility, but also have perspective and let everything be your fault no matter what happens to you.
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_01: Beautiful.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_02: It is.
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_02: Jerry, we unfortunately have to end it, but we gotta have you back, man.
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_02: The tune tunes was a combo.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_02: It really is.
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_01: I always say these hours, I know a good I know a good podcast when the hour disappears like that.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_01: It did.
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_03: Man, I yeah, that's Jerry.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_03: Next time we get together, I want to talk to you about the myth of level five leadership.
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, uh, which has uh really been popular for many years.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_03: People act like good degrees, some kind of a Bible.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_03: And and I think it it really misleads a lot of small business owners, you know?
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so anyway, uh, but this is great.
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_03: It's been great having you on the show.
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_03: And we could go on for hours.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_02: Other people reach out to you, man.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, good point.
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_02: How do they connect?
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, really quick.
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I I just started among my other businesses that I have right now, I have a big 38-lot subdivision that I'm just the biggest subdivision in Portland, which just says more about what a piece of garbage Portland is, more than it does about my ability to do a development.
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and then I've got a big transportation company that operates Oregon, Washington, Idaho.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and then I just started a peer-to-peer group.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_01: I joined one when I was 30 years old, and uh, we were together for 25 years.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_01: And then a peer-to-peer group for any entrepreneur is so important.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_01: So I thought, you know what, I'm gonna start my own.
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I just started, I'm just putting together the first cohort, and it is the Kronosgroup.org, K-R-O-N-O-S.org.
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_01: So if you are a seven-figure entrepreneur or above, reach out, let's have a conversation with me and see if this might be a good fit for you.
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_01: It was absolutely critical to my success.
• 1:00:05
  SPEAKER_01: I would not be sitting here today if I didn't belong to a group that served as my board in the way that this my peer-to-peer group did for 20 or 25 years.
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so I just started that new one.
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_01: And then again, I then again I got the Kronos Forge.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_01: You can go again to the Kronosgroup.org uh forward slash forge.
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_01: And that's for men, period, non-entrepreneurs or entrepreneurs, poor, rich, school, the uh just working the nine to five, whatever it is.
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_01: And it's really a community.
• 1:00:34
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just again, we got 22 members.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_01: I just started it.
• 1:00:37
  SPEAKER_01: That if you like what I say, if you like how I sound, if you like my philosophy and my approach to life, if this resonates with you, then that's what this group is about.
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_01: So mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually, if this resonates with you or parts of this resonate, then I'm trying to put a group together where men, we do a call for free every Thursday night.
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_01: You can ask me anything, uh, and we just get together, and it's just a place that men can come and hear that it's okay to listen to that little voice in the back of their head that says, go out and hunt something, knock it over the head and drag it back.
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_01: And you don't have to cry when you're when when when it doesn't happen successfully.
• 1:01:13
  SPEAKER_01: And at the same time, we can be the warriors in the garden.
• 1:01:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I want more men, uh, period.
• 1:01:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I got 50-year-olds and I got 20-year-olds here that it's all right to be a warrior in a garden.
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_01: You can be successful, you don't have to hate women, you can, you can get uh everything out of life that you want to.
• 1:01:30
  SPEAKER_01: I think I'm a good example for that.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_01: So I put that group together for that.
• 1:01:33
  SPEAKER_01: So the Kronosgroup.org is where to go, and you can find all of that.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I appreciate you guys giving me an opportunity to uh to talk about what I do and really put out there where people can find me because uh I'm trying to grow these things.
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_01: These are brand new and they're really uncomfortable for me because they're not, I'm not building something with my hands, right?
• 1:01:53
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not out shaking hands.
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to do these things digitally and in this new world that we have.
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_01: So I live in the uncomfortable doing all of this stuff.
• 1:02:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and and and it's and it's been a great time, a little bit frustrating, but you know, I'm learning lessons.
• 1:02:06
  SPEAKER_03: Good, good, good stuff.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_03: All right, thanks a lot, Jerry.
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_03: Appreciate Jerry and have a great day.
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks, guys.
• 1:02:13
  SPEAKER_03: And until then, until next time, this has been another episode of Big Talk About Small Business.
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you, team.
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks, Jerry.
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_02: See you.
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_02: All right, thanks, guys.
• 1:02:33
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for tuning into this episode of Big Talk About Small Business.
• 1:02:37
  SPEAKER_00: 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.
• 1:02:51
  SPEAKER_00: Stay connected with us on LinkedIn at Big Talk About Small Business.
• 1:02:55
  SPEAKER_00: And be sure to head over to our website to read articles, browse episodes, and ask questions about upcoming shows.