Latest / Founder Talk with Alex Sheridan / How to Build a Profitable Business that Runs Without You with Keith Seebeck

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How to Build a Profitable Business that Runs Without You with Keith Seebeck · Founder Talk with Alex Sheridan

• 0:00
  How would you sum up what you do in a sentence or two?
• 0:02
  I help lower middle market business owners get their lives
• 0:06
  back. And how so?
• 0:07
  Help them create self managing businesses.
• 0:09
  I help them bring up their leadership team gave.
• 0:11
  Me a picture of what it looks like for a business owner that
• 0:13
  is not using some form of EOS. I think it's chaos and they're
• 0:17
  stuck in the world. So Keith Seebeck, yes.
• 0:22
  And then founder of S KG. I pronounce it S kg.
• 0:26
  S kg. S kg.
• 0:27
  That's kind of cooler. I like that.
• 0:29
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 0:30
  So, Keith, just for the audience listening of Founders, how would
• 0:32
  you sum up what you do in a sentence or two?
• 0:37
  I help lower middle market business owners get their lives
• 0:42
  back. And how so?
• 0:45
  Help them create self managing businesses.
• 0:47
  I help them bring up their leadership team.
• 0:52
  So that's not as their, the business isn't as dependent on
• 0:55
  them because that's what I find. You know, often times that you
• 0:57
  talk to business owners and they've owned the business for
• 0:59
  10 years. They got a sales team of 5 or 10
• 1:02
  people. But when you ask them, they're
• 1:03
  like I still responsible for 80% of the sales on there.
• 1:06
  So we'll try to get that balance back for these guys.
• 1:10
  Right. We're definitely going to dive
• 1:11
  into that. And I know the system or the
• 1:14
  road map that you use is not EOS, but it's Pinnacle, correct,
• 1:18
  which is kind of a spin off a different version of EOS.
• 1:21
  I think for those listening right now, some founders might
• 1:23
  use EOS or know what that is, maybe some use Pinnacle.
• 1:26
  But for those that don't know, can you breakdown EOS first and
• 1:29
  then we'll get into some Pinnacle?
• 1:31
  Stuff, sure and I'm probably as good a person to ask because I
• 1:33
  was in the EOS world for almost 7-8 years or so.
• 1:37
  I was in the integrator role. So a lot of people have read
• 1:40
  traction they've they're familiar with the EOS.
• 1:42
  But in the EOS world you have your visionary business owner,
• 1:45
  you have your integrator, which often times your COCOO, your
• 1:48
  president, etcetera. That's the role that I played.
• 1:51
  So basically you know, there's different ways of doing AOS.
• 1:54
  You either self implement the EOS, you hire an implementer to
• 1:57
  work with and I've worked in all those things.
• 1:59
  So if there's an implementer there, what happens is they come
• 2:02
  in every quarter, they kind of help get things going, etcetera.
• 2:05
  But when they're gone, someone has to internally run EOS and
• 2:08
  that's that's what I did right there.
• 2:09
  So I like said, I spent about 7 years doing either self
• 2:12
  implementing as a fractional integrator and then we also
• 2:17
  worked with an implementer right there.
• 2:18
  So I spent a number of years doing that.
• 2:20
  For those that have no clue what EOS is, Entrepreneur,
• 2:24
  Entrepreneur Operating System is what it stands for correct?
• 2:26
  How would you break it down as in terms of what it really is
• 2:29
  and why? Is it helpful for entrepreneurs
• 2:31
  or founders? What's a business operating
• 2:33
  system? And oftentimes people are like,
• 2:34
  is that a software or something? It's not just no software, it's
• 2:38
  just, it's, it's where the systems, the energy, the focus
• 2:41
  goes in your organization to get you where you're going right
• 2:44
  there. So we always say Pinnacle, like
• 2:45
  if you're, if you're not seeing the results you want and
• 2:48
  probably a good time to take a look at your business operating
• 2:50
  system and everybody has one, right.
• 2:52
  You might, you might not use the OS or Pinnacle or something else
• 2:54
  out there, but you have a way of doing business, your systems,
• 2:57
  your processes, how you hold people accountable, etcetera.
• 3:00
  We're just formalizing it within business operating system.
• 3:03
  Can you paint me a picture of what it looks like for a
• 3:05
  business owner that is not using some form of EOS or Pinnacle?
• 3:10
  Like what does their business world and life look like?
• 3:12
  I think it's chaos. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 3:15
  What I typically find is those people, I mean, obviously you're
• 3:19
  going to have people that are just really good, they're sharp,
• 3:21
  they're on top of everybody right there.
• 3:23
  But for the most part, I find most lower middle market
• 3:26
  business owners, it's chaos and they're stuck in the whirlwind
• 3:29
  and the typical they're working in the business, they're not
• 3:32
  working on the business. And you know, I always say like
• 3:35
  everybody has everybody's meeting at the end of the year,
• 3:38
  you know, setting goals for the following, everybody does a
• 3:40
  really good job. We have this meeting, we set all
• 3:42
  our goals for the next year, but two months into the the
• 3:45
  following year, I think they kind of realized like we're not
• 3:48
  gonna hit any of these things right here or a very small
• 3:50
  percentage of them right there. I think that's a common, that's
• 3:53
  what a lot of people are experiencing out there.
• 3:54
  Yeah. Why do you think it is that
• 3:56
  founders can't remove themselves from the business?
• 3:58
  And they're very dependent on them being in there and they
• 4:01
  sort of create themselves as the bottleneck.
• 4:04
  It's a good question, but I think I don't, if you ever read
• 4:07
  the E myth by chance, I think the E myth, the kind of promise
• 4:10
  behind that is that a lot of people who are business owners,
• 4:14
  they came up through the organization so to speak, right.
• 4:16
  And maybe they finally figured, hey, I'm going to do this on my
• 4:19
  own, but they still do all the jobs that they did before.
• 4:22
  And now in addition to doing that, now they got bookkeeping,
• 4:26
  they got accountability, they're hiring, they're firing stuff.
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  I just think they're over overwhelmed and they don't
• 4:31
  realize how important it is to have a solid team around them.
• 4:34
  Or you know, another thing I find is, you know, a lot of
• 4:37
  times these guys have started their businesses, maybe they
• 4:39
  started with their two college roommates, etcetera.
• 4:41
  And they were great getting the business off the ground, maybe
• 4:44
  getting up to a certain point, maybe that $5,000,000 mark.
• 4:47
  But come to the realization that team isn't the same team that's
• 4:51
  going to get you past that $5,000,000 mark up to $50
• 4:53
  million mark. And it's like kind of the same
• 4:55
  thing. There's kind of two key points.
• 4:56
  I think at 5 million you kind of hit that and the same at 50.
• 4:59
  So you kind of kind of need to take a look at your team and
• 5:02
  maybe readjust to make sure you if you if you want to grow past
• 5:05
  that. And why do you think that is
• 5:06
  what what is the team that you know scaling up to maybe a
• 5:09
  couple million or a few million? What do they not have that the
• 5:11
  team you need past that would have?
• 5:13
  Yeah, it's just different skill sets, etcetera.
• 5:16
  And I think that, you know, people, founders and business
• 5:19
  owners, they get tied to their leadership teams and there's a
• 5:22
  loyalty, etcetera. Yeah, exactly.
• 5:25
  Or from day one. But I think if they were really
• 5:27
  honest with themselves, they'd be like, you know what, Bob, Bob
• 5:30
  who's been my CFO or whatever my bookkeeper no longer is, is
• 5:34
  going to help me. I'd be like, I need a CFO now or
• 5:36
  I need a fractional CFO or something like that.
• 5:38
  Or my person in sales, you know, they're kind of an order taker
• 5:42
  over the years. I mean, sales is where you see
• 5:45
  most of it right there. I think, you know, you get
• 5:47
  somebody who's been sitting in a position forever.
• 5:49
  They have pretty good relationships and they kind of
• 5:52
  got the owner by the short ones, almost like if they were to
• 5:54
  leave the business owners like, Oh my God, what would I do?
• 5:57
  But sometimes it's the decision they may never make right there,
• 6:01
  so. Yeah.
• 6:01
  A little bit of fear with letting go of that person or
• 6:04
  parting ways because they know the business so well, they know
• 6:06
  the customer so well. Exactly.
• 6:08
  Easier just to keep them in the role versus making a hard move
• 6:11
  that's exactly that might benefit you long term.
• 6:12
  That's exactly right. Yeah.
• 6:14
  So to go back to that question, why do you think owners and
• 6:16
  founders can't remove themselves from the business?
• 6:20
  Like, what do you think? And you dive in like what is
• 6:22
  going on at the core of that situation?
• 6:24
  Because I do think that's very common from what I hear, too.
• 6:26
  And I struggled about that at a certain point too, even though
• 6:29
  we're a smaller business. Yeah, you just get to a point
• 6:31
  where you're like, I shouldn't be doing all these different
• 6:33
  things. If I am, we're just not going to
• 6:35
  grow. I think it comes down to they're
• 6:38
  afraid to delegate and they're afraid to let go.
• 6:41
  And I think sometimes they just need a little helping hand from
• 6:44
  someone from the outside or like a guy like myself to be like,
• 6:47
  it's OK, things are going to be OK.
• 6:48
  We surround you with the right people.
• 6:50
  You know, let's go through some of the things that you can
• 6:52
  delegate to somebody else where it's not going to have a huge
• 6:54
  impact and start slow. Like start with a couple things,
• 6:57
  right? But you got to start somewhere.
• 7:00
  I think that's the key. You got to start delegating and
• 7:02
  you need the right people around you to do that that you trust
• 7:04
  and you know it's going to get done.
• 7:06
  What is the founder worried about happening if they delegate
• 7:09
  some of the work to employees or team members instead of doing it
• 7:12
  themselves? So I think it's the initial
• 7:14
  handoff because they probably figure by the time I train Sally
• 7:17
  over here to do, you know, to do this, I could do this myself.
• 7:20
  And I think they just kind of get caught in that little cycle
• 7:23
  and they just, they never relinquish control.
• 7:27
  Yes, yeah, You train and coach and develop your team.
• 7:31
  It takes more work on the front end, right?
• 7:33
  It's a lot more time and effort and energy and patience and
• 7:35
  really skills too. Yeah.
• 7:37
  And so short term it kind of sets you back a little bit, but
• 7:41
  long term it catapults you so farther ahead because now that
• 7:44
  team is doing things on their own.
• 7:46
  They're critically thinking, they're executing, they're
• 7:48
  getting results. And you're not the bottleneck as
• 7:50
  the founder anymore. But I think you had on a great
• 7:52
  point, which is a lot of founders and I think we all do
• 7:55
  this. I know I've done this many times
• 7:56
  where I'm like, yeah, I could teach someone how to do this or
• 7:58
  coach them through this. But I can also just do it myself
• 8:01
  in like 5 minutes because I've done it the last six years like
• 8:04
  like clockwork, like in my sleep, you know?
• 8:06
  And so sometimes it's that slowing down to say, yeah, I
• 8:09
  could do this myself, but does that really help the business
• 8:12
  and the team and the long term growth of where we want to go?
• 8:16
  And I think a lot of times the answer is no.
• 8:17
  Yeah, you know, I would agree with that.
• 8:19
  Yeah, I think, I think that's a big one.
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  And I think you kind of hit on, too is just fear of if I give
• 8:27
  this to someone else, what if they don't do a good enough job?
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  If I give this client task that I would normally do to a team
• 8:33
  member now, Yeah, what if they drop the ball and what if they
• 8:36
  fail? Yeah.
• 8:36
  Well, especially if it's your baby, I mean, it's your baby
• 8:38
  that you've built up for 1020 years.
• 8:40
  You probably have most of the really big relationships, et
• 8:42
  cetera, right? Yeah.
• 8:44
  And I often go back to the sales situation and well, I always
• 8:48
  think like that business owner is often time your best
• 8:50
  salesperson, right and be spending a lot of time hitting
• 8:53
  the streets, talking to people, etcetera.
• 8:55
  But what if you set up a a situation where somebody at a
• 8:58
  lower level can maintain the basic things right there or get
• 9:01
  you just put you in front of people only when it's time to
• 9:05
  close deals right there. Yeah, just get that other noise
• 9:08
  out of the way, right? That's right.
• 9:10
  Yeah. What do you say to the business
• 9:11
  owner That is like, I'm worried if I do delegate this, they'll
• 9:15
  chop the ball, they'll make a mistake.
• 9:16
  What if we lose a customer? What do you say to that business
• 9:19
  owner? At first I say, have you ever
• 9:21
  tried it before? Do you trust this person?
• 9:23
  Why don't you trust them? If you don't trust them, maybe
• 9:26
  you don't have the right person in that position right there.
• 9:28
  So maybe maybe that's a bigger issue right there.
• 9:30
  So, but anything just to get them thinking like, do I have
• 9:33
  the right people around me? And again, it kind of goes back
• 9:35
  to what I said, the people that you found the business with,
• 9:39
  they might not be the same team that's going to get to the next
• 9:42
  phase. And if you want to be a
• 9:43
  $5,000,000 company for the rest of your career and you want to
• 9:46
  be involved in everything, that's fine.
• 9:48
  But if you want to grow and if you want things to change, like
• 9:51
  I always say, you know, like who who calls me or when do they
• 9:54
  call me? They call me when the pain of
• 9:56
  the same is greater than the pain of change, right?
• 9:58
  And they don't, they don't want to keep beating their head
• 10:00
  against the wall and doing the same.
• 10:01
  I could do it again, just like last year.
• 10:03
  But I'm going to get the same results.
• 10:05
  And if I'm happy with those results, great.
• 10:06
  But if I asked FIRE to do more than that, it's time to look at
• 10:10
  things. Yeah.
• 10:12
  Yeah, one of the biggest lessons I've learned from building a
• 10:14
  business and a team around it is even if you have the right
• 10:18
  people, you still got to be OK with them failing and dropping
• 10:20
  the ball and missing the mark. And it's like, and if you think
• 10:23
  about how we learned as founders and entrepreneurs, how did we
• 10:26
  learn? We learned by doing in
• 10:28
  repetitions and learning from others, of course.
• 10:30
  But we also learned because we did make mistakes and we did
• 10:33
  drop the ball. And that was like, man, that was
• 10:35
  a painful moment. I'm never going to do that
• 10:36
  again. I'm going to learn.
• 10:37
  I'm going to put a system in place to avoid that.
• 10:39
  And I think like we, for some reason as founders and owners,
• 10:42
  we almost don't let our team have that same, that same
• 10:46
  flexibility to make mistakes and fail.
• 10:48
  Yeah, yeah, I have a saying. I love this.
• 10:51
  It's like one problem, 2 solutions, like I don't, I'm
• 10:55
  ready to delegate to people, but when you come to me, you can't
• 10:58
  just come to me and tell you have a problem.
• 10:59
  If I'm the business, you got to come to me with a couple of
• 11:01
  solutions so that we take. So I know you gave it some
• 11:04
  thought because I'm not going to do your job for you right there.
• 11:07
  And another thing I, I love this article.
• 11:10
  It's I just call it the monkey article.
• 11:11
  It's like a Harvard Business Review article from maybe I
• 11:14
  don't know, 1520 years ago. But the whole premise is
• 11:17
  everybody walks around the organization with all these
• 11:19
  monkeys on their back. And as a business owner, the
• 11:21
  last thing you want to do is have one of your employees walk
• 11:24
  in the door and give their problem to you because now you
• 11:27
  own it. Because by the end of the day,
• 11:29
  you got 15 monkeys on your back right there, and now you're the
• 11:32
  guy solving all the problems, and you gotta deal with that.
• 11:35
  So yeah, highly, if I think like I said, I just call it the
• 11:38
  monkey article from Harvard Business, I would highly
• 11:40
  recommend anybody in a small business read that.
• 11:43
  Yeah, yeah, that's great, man. I love that.
• 11:45
  And if you want your team to be self starters and to get shit
• 11:47
  done, yeah, when they come to you with problems, yes, you have
• 11:51
  to facilitate a solution. Hey, what do you think you
• 11:53
  should do? What exactly you thought this
• 11:54
  through? What made you decide this?
• 11:56
  What routes do you think you could go?
• 11:58
  And what would happen if you went down this versus that?
• 12:01
  And that's how you get people to think critically versus just,
• 12:03
  they just know it's a condition thing now where they just, you
• 12:06
  don't do that. They just come to the owner and
• 12:07
  say, solve this problem. Here's the problem.
• 12:09
  Here's the challenge. Exactly.
• 12:10
  And I think it's a culture thing.
• 12:12
  Like if you can bring that in your culture 100%, then I as an
• 12:16
  employee, no, like, and it only takes one or two times.
• 12:19
  I'm the business owner and employee walks in to me with a
• 12:22
  problem and the culture is, hey, 11 problem 2 solutions.
• 12:25
  It's like, do you have two solutions for me?
• 12:27
  Nope, Welcome back when you do because right, there's nothing
• 12:30
  for us to talk about. And it's it's kind of a culture
• 12:31
  thing. Is that right there?
• 12:32
  That's the best one that happens when you have a new person come
• 12:35
  in. Yeah.
• 12:35
  And the people that are already there are ingraining that in
• 12:38
  their mind. Yep.
• 12:39
  And so you don't even have to have that.
• 12:40
  They're like, I know when I approach somebody, I have to do
• 12:42
  this, this and this. Right?
• 12:43
  Yeah, 100%. It's a culture thing.
• 12:45
  Oh, yeah. Values culture.
• 12:46
  Yeah, I'm a huge believer in in the culture, in the culture
• 12:48
  stuff in that organization. And and at the end of the day,
• 12:51
  like we should really define your culture.
• 12:54
  And like I've been in organizations in the past where,
• 12:56
  you know, the culture, they got all these things on the walls
• 12:59
  and stuff like that. And as employees, we all, it's
• 13:01
  all bullshit. I mean, it's just some
• 13:02
  aspirational things. We don't live that.
• 13:04
  But when you're truly living, I mean, you should truly be able
• 13:07
  to, you should be hiring people based on core value.
• 13:09
  You should be firing them, rewarding them and reviewing
• 13:12
  them based on those right there. And you should be able to stop
• 13:15
  anybody in your organization at any time and say, what are our
• 13:17
  core values, right? I know as a, as a pinnacle
• 13:20
  guide, when I'm meeting with my leadership teams for the first
• 13:22
  time, one of the exercises I do is I, I kind of ask, you know,
• 13:25
  tell you guys have core values, right?
• 13:27
  Oh, yeah. Okay, well, how about this,
• 13:28
  let's all as leaders get out our pens and pencils.
• 13:31
  No one talked to each other. And let's, I want you to write
• 13:34
  down the, the core values of your organization right there.
• 13:37
  And then when they're done, I want to hear them come back.
• 13:39
  They're all different. Half the leaders don't know if
• 13:42
  there's 4 core values. They know two of them.
• 13:44
  You see people grabbing their phones trying to do it, et
• 13:47
  cetera and stuff. So like, it's a big deal and it
• 13:50
  changes organizations. Yeah.
• 13:52
  Outside of that, how would you assess or how do you assess a
• 13:55
  company's culture? Because like it's one of those
• 13:57
  things it's like it's kind of like there's no, it's not, you
• 14:00
  know, it's hard to, it's somewhat hard to like put on
• 14:02
  paper sometimes, but like it's there, yeah.
• 14:04
  So how did, what would be some of the first things you would
• 14:06
  look at, maybe you'd ask the core values question, but what
• 14:09
  might be some other things that you would assess?
• 14:11
  Do they have a good culture or not?
• 14:12
  Or whatever it might be? I would go back to just what I
• 14:15
  said before. I would say like, OK, tell me
• 14:17
  what your core values are. But I do you hire people based
• 14:20
  on core values? When do you have a candidate
• 14:22
  come in? Do you tell them what your core
• 14:23
  values are? And do you say, are you
• 14:25
  comfortable living up to those right there?
• 14:27
  Do you FIRE based on that? Because a lot of people might
• 14:31
  say they are, but will they really fire somebody based on
• 14:33
  that? Do you do reviews based on that?
• 14:35
  And are you going to reward based?
• 14:37
  I mean, that's it in a nutshell. Those 4 criteria will tell me if
• 14:40
  they're truly living their core values.
• 14:43
  Yeah. So you were an EOS guy?
• 14:45
  Yeah, And then you scrapped it for a nickel.
• 14:48
  Yeah. Talk to us about why.
• 14:49
  What made you make that change? So again, as an EOS integrator,
• 14:53
  very different than an implementer, right?
• 14:55
  So I'm inside the organizations and I had every intention of
• 14:58
  being an EOS implementer to be honest with you.
• 15:01
  I went through the process, got vetted out was, was all set to
• 15:05
  do it. And somebody in my network just
• 15:07
  said, hey, you know, before you make the jump, maybe you should
• 15:10
  talk to the guys at Pinnacle. And I, I really had heard of
• 15:14
  them. I didn't know much about them.
• 15:16
  You were going, you're thinking about going out on your own at
• 15:17
  that. Point as an as an US
• 15:19
  implementer, yeah, because what I wanted to do is I love working
• 15:22
  inside organization. I loved working with the OS, et
• 15:24
  cetera, but I wanted to teach us to other organizations.
• 15:27
  I just feel like there's so much value in business operations.
• 15:30
  I just, I wanted to help other business owners right there.
• 15:33
  So anyways, I talked to the founder and owner of Pinnacle.
• 15:37
  You know, I made a couple calls that afternoon.
• 15:38
  I was on the phone with Greg Cleary who owns Pinnacle, et
• 15:41
  cetera. And 5 minutes in I was just like
• 15:43
  this is what I have been looking for my whole.
• 15:46
  Career. But what what made you?
• 15:47
  Did you explore it at all with the OS then like did did you go
• 15:50
  to that rabbit hole? Could you have done the similar
• 15:51
  thing with the E OS? I, I did, I, I was, I fully was
• 15:55
  vetted and had a franchise agreement sitting in front of me
• 15:58
  to join the US and someone. Said, hey, just look at just go
• 16:01
  for you, just. Go talk to this before they do
• 16:02
  it right there, yeah. So what was the big thing that
• 16:04
  made you change? It was the customization and
• 16:07
  I'll I'll tell you in a in a nutshell, and this is what I
• 16:10
  experienced with EOS. Believe me, it's a great
• 16:15
  platform. I mean any business just beyond
• 16:17
  something that's, that's all I can say, whether it's EOS or
• 16:20
  Pinnacle or whatever, you can't really go have.
• 16:22
  A structure is what you're saying, Basically, yeah.
• 16:24
  Have a structure, have a system, don't just wing it out there
• 16:27
  right and and work with somebody.
• 16:29
  I think that's the key because like I said, I, I worked self
• 16:32
  implementing business operating system, I worked with an
• 16:35
  implementer, etcetera. The difference when you have
• 16:38
  someone coming in from the outside holding you accountable
• 16:41
  quarterly, there's nothing compared to it.
• 16:44
  I think self implementing is really, really tough and
• 16:46
  frustrating for most people. I just think have somebody come
• 16:49
  in right there. I'm sorry.
• 16:51
  Well, just why you went to Pinnacle versus?
• 16:54
  Yeah, when I was introduced to some of the tools within
• 16:58
  Pinnacle, I said to myself, I would have killed to have some
• 17:04
  of these tools when I was in my previous life inside
• 17:07
  organizations because there were some things that I just found
• 17:11
  really frustrating and it just never got over the hump on it,
• 17:14
  etcetera. And some of the tools instantly
• 17:17
  solved it. And that's that's why they form
• 17:18
  Pinnacle. They, they were all ex EOS
• 17:20
  people and I think they were just like, how do we make this
• 17:23
  better? And that's what they did.
• 17:26
  What was it like going out on your own?
• 17:28
  Scary. Yeah.
• 17:30
  Yeah. It's really.
• 17:31
  It's really. Scary, especially having a
• 17:32
  career for, you know, a good amount of time and then all of a
• 17:34
  sudden saying, all right, I'm going to kind of exactly.
• 17:36
  And of course you've got, you know, some resources and
• 17:38
  branding behind Pinnacle. Of course it's yeah, there's
• 17:40
  some foundation there, yeah. But it's still you're kind of
• 17:42
  going out. On your own.
• 17:44
  Well, and I knew going into it regardless if I were to go the
• 17:47
  EOS route or the pedicle, right? I mean, I, but you know it, it's
• 17:50
  a license agreement or a franchise you're binding it to.
• 17:52
  But I know that's not like they're passing leads to you
• 17:55
  left, right there. This is a lot of hard work what
• 17:58
  it's going to be right there. So I just knew long term, this
• 18:01
  is what I wanted to do. I've always wanted to be out on
• 18:04
  my own and the timing was just right for it.
• 18:08
  And I, and I want to do this until I retire and I can.
• 18:11
  And I, and more importantly, I just, I love, I love talking to
• 18:15
  business owners and I am fascinated every single one of
• 18:19
  them. They have a unique story and how
• 18:21
  they got there and what they're dealing with, etcetera.
• 18:23
  And I just love helping them. And you know, a lot of times
• 18:26
  I'll meet with business owners who are prospects, etcetera, and
• 18:29
  there's not they're never going to work with me.
• 18:31
  It's pinnacle together. But there's plenty of other
• 18:33
  things I can help them with it. I'm a solution guy.
• 18:35
  So, you know, and talking with someone, they might have 5
• 18:38
  things they're challenged with. So I'm more than happy to bring
• 18:41
  somebody with my centers of influence in and help help
• 18:43
  people, etcetera, not just I love doing that.
• 18:45
  You mentioned retirement. As a business owner, how do you
• 18:48
  think about retirement? Like what does that look like
• 18:50
  for you? I'm interested.
• 18:52
  Well, for starters, I'd say it's I, I want to work for a long
• 18:55
  time. I just because I, I love what
• 18:57
  I'm doing. And I think this is more of a
• 18:59
  lifestyle business where I can kind of, it's not like I'm
• 19:01
  punching a clock 8:00 to 5:00 every day.
• 19:03
  Except we're trying to scale it to $100 million exactly.
• 19:06
  Yeah, I know. But I do plan.
• 19:07
  I, I am working on my exit strategy on how I built this
• 19:11
  into a business that I can sell or pass on to somebody
• 19:13
  eventually. So that that's I want.
• 19:14
  To talk about that later, yeah. But retirement, I mean, I just,
• 19:19
  I want to do this until I'm, I'm no longer valuable to people
• 19:22
  right there. And, and when I lose that
• 19:24
  curiosity and that energy and that passion for it, I mean,
• 19:26
  that's when it's time to stop. But right now I I can't imagine
• 19:29
  that. Do you think you'd ever just
• 19:30
  stop though and not do any business?
• 19:32
  Or would you always do some? Like, I don't think so.
• 19:34
  I don't think so either. I need to do stuff.
• 19:36
  Me too, yeah. The whole like people talking
• 19:38
  about retire, like selling their business or just retiring in
• 19:40
  general from corporate or whatever they do.
• 19:41
  And then I'm going to play golf all day and I'm doing this.
• 19:44
  And for some people that's amazing.
• 19:45
  Yeah. That's your thing.
• 19:46
  Yeah. Do your thing, right?
• 19:48
  Yeah, But for me, I don't know, I just want to feel like I'm
• 19:50
  building something, I'm fulfilled by some level of work
• 19:53
  that I'm doing. But I think when you get to that
• 19:54
  stage of like quote, retirement, yeah, maybe it's a winded down
• 19:58
  version. Maybe it's I've built something
• 20:00
  enough now where I can be very selective with the projects or
• 20:03
  work I do or the clients I take on and having the freedom and
• 20:06
  flexibility there to do something you're truly
• 20:08
  passionate about. Yeah, maybe it's another side
• 20:11
  business or side hustle or something like that.
• 20:13
  Or maybe it's like full time podcasting because you love
• 20:15
  that, right. And you turn that into a mini
• 20:16
  business and that's your thing now.
• 20:18
  So it's like. You know, it's just, I think
• 20:20
  there's a lot of creative ways to kind of, yeah, do it.
• 20:22
  Yeah, I agree. And the beauty of like Pinnacle,
• 20:24
  like why I chose that etcetera. It's like a capacity for me.
• 20:28
  It's like 15 or 20 clients. Yeah, I mean it's not.
• 20:30
  I don't need 200 clients sitting out there.
• 20:32
  So I can manage that in the way we meet with people etcetera.
• 20:37
  I'm busy for little stretches of time, but I have a lot of
• 20:39
  downtime as well to do either other projects I'm working on or
• 20:43
  just relax. Except SO, but that's what I'm
• 20:46
  aiming for. I love it.
• 20:47
  Yeah. So let's help some business
• 20:49
  owners build a more profitable business while getting the chaos
• 20:53
  out of their life, kind of gaining control back in their
• 20:55
  life. I looked at the pinnacle system.
• 20:58
  Yeah. People, purpose, playbooks,
• 21:00
  performance, profit. Correct.
• 21:01
  Is that right? Cool.
• 21:02
  I'd love to maybe dive into this.
• 21:04
  And then maybe we get a little bit tactical, be kind of cool
• 21:06
  too. But, you know, where would you
• 21:08
  start? Does it start with people?
• 21:10
  Does it start with purpose? Is there a start and end?
• 21:12
  Is it, you know, maybe let's dive into this a little bit.
• 21:14
  I'll probably some questions for you, but I'm looking for some
• 21:16
  maybe some tactical stuff that people can listen to and go,
• 21:18
  wow, I'm not doing that. I should do that my business to
• 21:20
  grow my business. Sure, sure.
• 21:22
  So for it always starts with people.
• 21:24
  I mean you may be in the widget business, you may be in the
• 21:27
  financial, I mean you are in the people business.
• 21:29
  So at the end of the day, that's really where we start.
• 21:31
  So I'll kind of go through those what they are right here.
• 21:35
  So people, you know, you get the right people, you put them in
• 21:37
  the right seats and but important that they're following
• 21:40
  your vision as a business owner. Once you do that right, then you
• 21:45
  provide them with a crystal clear strategy.
• 21:47
  Where's the company going? How are we going to get there by
• 21:49
  when are we going to get there, etcetera.
• 21:51
  Then you give them playbooks that are scalable so you can
• 21:53
  start delivering your product consistently out there.
• 21:55
  And then you manage mentor, you motivate, you hold people
• 21:59
  accountable, you help them perform at their highest level
• 22:01
  possible. You can do all those four
• 22:03
  things. The profits are going to take
• 22:04
  care of themselves and you're going to almost have a nest egg
• 22:07
  of sorts. So you can go out and buy those
• 22:08
  eight players that everybody's talks about or you can weather a
• 22:12
  downturn better than your competitors, etcetera.
• 22:14
  You can do that acquisition, etcetera.
• 22:16
  But it's kind of key. You do those four things while
• 22:18
  profits kind of take care of themselves.
• 22:20
  Yeah, yeah. So let's dive into some of
• 22:21
  those. So you mentioned vision, right?
• 22:24
  So most sorts of people and whatnot, making sure the right
• 22:26
  people. But you mentioned vision.
• 22:27
  I think it's a big one. And how do you really create a
• 22:29
  compelling vision for your team as a business owner?
• 22:32
  You know, like, what does that look like?
• 22:33
  You know, cuz I think some people have in their mind, maybe
• 22:35
  I have one in my mind right now, they're like, does my team
• 22:37
  really like, like really, is this what gets them up and gets
• 22:40
  them going? And should it get people up and
• 22:42
  get them going? Yeah, They have their own
• 22:43
  personal motivations, obviously. Yeah, their career, their
• 22:46
  personal life, financial stuff. But yeah.
• 22:48
  What is a good vision in your mind look like?
• 22:50
  Yeah. Well, for starters, it comes
• 22:52
  from the visionary business owner.
• 22:53
  I mean that that's where it has to start.
• 22:55
  Like it's not something you go have HR goal.
• 22:58
  Yeah, it has to come from the business owner.
• 23:03
  And here's why I think it's so important.
• 23:05
  Like, think about this like you're a young engineer, right
• 23:08
  coming out of school and you get an offer from SpaceX where their
• 23:13
  vision is like to build the tools to take us to Mars and
• 23:17
  beyond the solar system, etcetera, versus going to work
• 23:20
  for Boeing where you're just, you know, the culture's kind of,
• 23:24
  we've all been reading things about Boeing.
• 23:25
  I'm like, you look at those two visions sitting right there.
• 23:28
  That's a no brainer for a young kid.
• 23:30
  I mean, depending on what their aspirations are, but I bet most
• 23:33
  young kids would be like, I want to build things to go to Mars
• 23:36
  right there, so. Now, do you think the psychology
• 23:38
  of that, I love what you just said.
• 23:39
  I completely agree. Yeah.
• 23:41
  Do you think the psychology of that is the people that are
• 23:43
  taking those jobs or wanting to work for those companies with
• 23:45
  that vision, that they want to feel fulfilled and they want to
• 23:48
  feel proud to talk about the work that they do?
• 23:51
  Is that really what it's about or is there anything else
• 23:53
  missing there that that maybe motivates them to choose that
• 23:55
  vision over one that's not doesn't really have a strong
• 23:57
  vision? It's hard to say, but I think
• 23:59
  that's a part of it. I guess I think people want to
• 24:01
  break to their friends. They want to tell people like
• 24:03
  why you're going there. Again, I just that SpaceX versus
• 24:06
  boy, I mean, think about the conversations those kids are
• 24:09
  having with their peers. That's what I'm saying versus
• 24:11
  other. I mean, that's.
• 24:12
  Who wouldn't get Mars? And they're like, we're putting
• 24:14
  some plane parts together. Exactly.
• 24:15
  Yeah, I'm putting bolt A on bolt B on a wing over here, so yeah.
• 24:20
  Which by the way, how have our planes not gotten drastically
• 24:23
  better over the last like 60 years?
• 24:25
  I mean, I don't know, it's really kind of the same model,
• 24:28
  right? It's like, I mean, you just, if
• 24:29
  you just took Elon Musk. Yeah.
• 24:31
  And you throw him in the commercial airliner business.
• 24:33
  Yeah. And he's building a company.
• 24:34
  Yeah, I guarantee within 10/15/20 years it's a
• 24:37
  dramatically different place. Yeah, probably doesn't look.
• 24:39
  Faster. It's probably more efficient.
• 24:41
  It's probably ran on electric like it's.
• 24:43
  Probably got one wing, just the whole thing.
• 24:45
  Yeah, I don't. Know I mean wasn't NASA
• 24:47
  basically dead like dead and then Elon came in built SpaceX
• 24:50
  and I revived the whole space program it's like it's.
• 24:53
  Unbelievable. Everybody wants to work there.
• 24:55
  Right. Yeah, yeah, but they got a
• 24:56
  vision. You're.
• 24:57
  Right. Yeah.
• 24:57
  But how does that like that makes sense, right?
• 25:00
  You got some big vision or Apple or something like that or Nike
• 25:03
  or whatever it is. But how does it work for like
• 25:05
  the staffing and recruiting company or the consultant thing
• 25:07
  firm where it's like they're not going to Mars, you know, but
• 25:11
  they're still doing something that's impactful like.
• 25:13
  Yeah, yeah. How do you get that level of?
• 25:16
  I think it's the passion of the business owner.
• 25:17
  I mean, if their vision is, if they're clear about why they're
• 25:20
  in business and what got them there, etc.
• 25:23
  And they're portraying that to people.
• 25:25
  And you know, like if I'm a business owner, right?
• 25:28
  And I'm passionate about my vision for the business, when
• 25:30
  people come in and interview, like I should be telling them
• 25:33
  like, this is our vision. This is this is what we're here
• 25:36
  for. Is this something you're bored
• 25:38
  with? I mean, you got to find people
• 25:40
  that believe in your vision. And once you do, like, again,
• 25:43
  just putting the right people in the right seats, that's only
• 25:45
  part of it. They got to be following your
• 25:46
  vision as a business owner. So they're behind you right
• 25:49
  there. So let's.
• 25:49
  Test this out. I'm going to give you my vision
• 25:51
  for impacts marketing and I want you to grade it and tell me and
• 25:55
  give you some feedback. OK, So and I haven't gone
• 25:58
  through this in a while, so it might be a little rough, but our
• 26:00
  vision is we want to empower. We see a world where 7 to 8
• 26:05
  figure and even solo businesses can.
• 26:08
  They're empowered to do their own content in marketing.
• 26:10
  They're empowered to without. They don't need an agency.
• 26:13
  They don't have to rely on some other third party company.
• 26:16
  They can actually tell their own story.
• 26:19
  They can build their brand. They can communicate their
• 26:21
  message and attract their customers, attract talent, and
• 26:25
  they can do it internally. And we just see a world where
• 26:28
  more companies are able, they're empowered to do it themselves.
• 26:30
  They don't want to feel like they have to, you know, go to
• 26:32
  some other company to do it for them.
• 26:35
  And so it's kind of like not putting out of not putting
• 26:38
  marketing companies out of business, but it's like the
• 26:40
  opposite of a marketing agency, right?
• 26:42
  So when you come to our company, you talk to us, it's not going
• 26:45
  to Mars, but it's there's something there that's unique
• 26:48
  that we're passionate about. Like screw the marketing
• 26:50
  agencies, you don't need them. You know, you can do it
• 26:52
  yourself. We want to empower you to tell
• 26:54
  your story and communicate your message to the world and like
• 26:57
  make the impact, start the podcast, you know, record videos
• 27:00
  from your smartphone. Like that's our whole thing.
• 27:02
  Sounds like a longer version of that, but I could tighten that
• 27:05
  up into a couple sentences maybe.
• 27:06
  But how would you look at that vision?
• 27:08
  So is the vision more about like you're offering people an
• 27:11
  opportunity to take back control over that thing and be take that
• 27:15
  over, right versus working with all these other third parties,
• 27:18
  etcetera. They they can kind of do it on
• 27:19
  their own and self self. Employment, I think from a
• 27:22
  client's client facing standpoint, it's yes, empowering
• 27:25
  them to build a build a brand and create content, tell their
• 27:27
  story, you know, without having to rely on some other company
• 27:30
  that maybe you won't tell it the right way, right.
• 27:32
  So it feels like good to have control of your brand.
• 27:34
  Yeah, yeah. From an employee standpoint,
• 27:36
  it's like, hey, we're disrupting the market.
• 27:38
  You know, it's kind of like liquid death.
• 27:39
  Like we're throwing a wrench into the modern system of like
• 27:42
  marketing agency. Hire one.
• 27:44
  They'll do all your content for you.
• 27:45
  They'll post it. They'll write the copy.
• 27:47
  We're like, no, yeah, you can do this stuff yourself.
• 27:49
  Yeah. So there's a little bit of,
• 27:50
  like, rebellion there. Yeah.
• 27:51
  Yeah. You know, from an internal
• 27:53
  standpoint, you got to be like, that sounds cool.
• 27:54
  I kind of like that you're disrupting the the marketplace.
• 27:56
  So how's that working out for you with your people that work
• 27:59
  for you? I mean, do they believe in it?
• 28:00
  And yeah. Yeah.
• 28:01
  Yeah, and how many? Beside yourself, who else is
• 28:03
  part of of your organization? So internally we've got 1 W 2
• 28:07
  employee. Cal, you know.
• 28:09
  We've got Dee, who's our operations lead.
• 28:10
  She's in the Philippines, OK. We've got Vince, who's kind of
• 28:13
  moving into a more of a editor, I'd say overseas talent
• 28:17
  coordinator, yeah, working with editors, content managers
• 28:19
  overseas. And then we've got a couple
• 28:21
  people on like the podcast team, a couple of editors, more
• 28:23
  contractor type company or type of workers.
• 28:26
  Interesting. Yeah, yeah.
• 28:28
  So to me in my the way I envision is like it looks like
• 28:31
  you kinda because I think it's hard to create things from
• 28:34
  scratch, especially when you're an entrepreneur and you're a
• 28:36
  small business. Like you got so many balls
• 28:38
  flying in there. You can't it's hard to do that.
• 28:40
  But if somebody can help you get the the essence of it on paper
• 28:45
  or do it, then you can build upon it right there.
• 28:47
  And it sounds like that's probably what where you really
• 28:49
  come into play right there, isn't it?
• 28:51
  Yeah, I'm going through it right now myself.
• 28:53
  I mean I've been on my own for a year.
• 28:54
  I mean I'm one man show. I mean, I do everything right
• 28:58
  there. So I get what people go through
• 29:00
  and it's hard and frustrating. And thank God for chat GTP.
• 29:04
  I mean, that's, that's what I'd say right now, yeah.
• 29:06
  I do want to ask you about that. Yeah.
• 29:08
  We'll get to that in a second. Yeah.
• 29:09
  So if we get more about like like playbooks, you know what,
• 29:13
  what is what is the training, coaching, development look like
• 29:16
  and what's missing from most companies right now where their
• 29:19
  team is not being developed the way they should be?
• 29:22
  Well for starters, playbooks are pretty much non existent is what
• 29:25
  I found. You ask people and they'll just
• 29:27
  be like Oh yeah we did something a while ago.
• 29:29
  Well, where are they? They're in a share folder
• 29:31
  somewhere. I don't know when they've been
• 29:33
  updated. So number one, people generally
• 29:35
  don't have them. If they do have them, are they
• 29:37
  being followed? And then the third question you
• 29:40
  ask is how do you know? I mean, it's one thing to ask
• 29:42
  somebody, hey, are you following the playbooks right there?
• 29:44
  Oh, sure. I do it all the time.
• 29:45
  I'm like, well, how do we know? And there are tools out there
• 29:48
  today that are unbelievable. One of them is called Traniel.
• 29:51
  That's one of our partners at Pinnacle whatever.
• 29:53
  I mean, you can put new playbooks in Traniel, you can
• 29:56
  assign people to read them, you know, when they went through
• 29:59
  them, etcetera. But I think the most important
• 30:01
  thing is somebody has to own each playbook, right?
• 30:04
  So like you know, you got playbooks for marketing, sales,
• 30:07
  etcetera. Someone has to own it and
• 30:09
  someone has to review that on a regular basis and stress test
• 30:12
  it. Have one of your people at a new
• 30:15
  person like their start go through this.
• 30:16
  Tell me, are you able to get through from start to finish and
• 30:19
  do this right here? And if not, we modify it.
• 30:21
  So what I recommend for companies is like once a, let's
• 30:25
  say you have, I don't know, 30 playbooks in your organization,
• 30:28
  right. Every quarter, take four or five
• 30:30
  of them and just test them. And, you know, do that every
• 30:33
  year and just update them and put them in a place where
• 30:36
  they're gonna get, they're gonna get used right there.
• 30:38
  Yeah. And it's really interesting.
• 30:39
  One of my clients just just last week and we have a partner
• 30:43
  called Process Optimizer. So they'll come in and help you
• 30:45
  optimize your processes, right? And so we have a tool at
• 30:48
  Pinnacle where you could follow it and self, self do it and
• 30:52
  document all your processes, etcetera.
• 30:54
  And we're not talking about standard operating procedures,
• 30:57
  SOP's that are this thick. I'm talking about what are the
• 30:59
  20 or 30 bullet points that capture 80% of the essence of
• 31:02
  what that role provides right there, right?
• 31:04
  So I always say to my clients, like I have a tool from Pinnacle
• 31:07
  for you. You could do this on your own,
• 31:09
  no problem, right? And now I've been an
• 31:11
  organization, we've been asked to document processes, right?
• 31:14
  And here's what I found. Everybody's top priority, get
• 31:20
  them all documented, etcetera. We're going to do this this
• 31:22
  year, etcetera. And then all of a sudden it's a
• 31:24
  couple months later, two months later, no one's documented
• 31:27
  things. 3-4 months, maybe they're done in a year or nine
• 31:30
  months right there. So one of the reasons why this
• 31:33
  process optimizer is pretty cool is there's a cost to it, right?
• 31:36
  And it's a, it's a little bit of a premium, but they'll come in
• 31:39
  and they'll, they'll send a Six Sigma black belt in.
• 31:41
  They'll spend 2 days with your. Team Engine processes Ninja.
• 31:45
  But they'll spend 2 days with you all day.
• 31:47
  Nine days later, they're all delivered, they're done.
• 31:51
  So it's the I always say to people like you could do this on
• 31:55
  your own, sure, it might take you 3-4, six months, it's
• 31:57
  probably going to take you longer than you think it's going
• 31:59
  to do. But versus this cost to do this
• 32:03
  right here, you know, you knowing it's done in nine days,
• 32:05
  is that worth it to you? And for some companies that's
• 32:07
  like, hell yeah, that's worth it to me for that expense right
• 32:10
  there versus 3 months, six months maybe it's never done
• 32:13
  right there. And now they're documented so.
• 32:15
  Yeah, I think it's one of those things that it's kind of like we
• 32:20
  talked about earlier, we're coaching and developing people.
• 32:22
  Yeah. So you kind of know you should
• 32:23
  have a process and Sops in place, but then it's like, but
• 32:26
  then it takes time to do that, so we don't do it.
• 32:29
  So the process doesn't get better.
• 32:30
  But if we were to stop and just do the system and redo the Sops
• 32:34
  and stuff, it would make our lives a lot easier.
• 32:36
  But it's a longer term solution than just short term.
• 32:39
  Let's just go because we know it.
• 32:41
  Oh yeah. But then someone new comes in.
• 32:42
  They're like, I don't know it. Yeah.
• 32:44
  Well, it's interesting. Like, obviously there's risk at
• 32:46
  the front end because you're not training people, right?
• 32:49
  But there's a ton of risk on the back end.
• 32:51
  You got people that have been with your organizations for
• 32:52
  years, You've never document your processes and they do a
• 32:55
  early retirement and they're out the door.
• 32:58
  You're screwed. I don't know if it's weird or
• 33:00
  not, but I always think about that stuff.
• 33:02
  I always think about like if someone left could, yeah, could
• 33:05
  someone else step in and do the, do we have the right things in
• 33:07
  place? Documentation, SOP's, processes.
• 33:10
  I try to make it as foolproof as possible, one, because, yeah, it
• 33:13
  allows us just to operate more efficiently, more effectively
• 33:15
  and serve customers better. But two, yeah, I do think about
• 33:18
  that because people just leave. They they move on, they do other
• 33:21
  things, they move, they whatever.
• 33:23
  Exactly. So it's like, do you not want to
• 33:24
  be able to have someone else come in and make it pretty
• 33:26
  seamless for them to transition, or do you want it to have it?
• 33:29
  It could be a hot mess if he didn't have any of that stuff.
• 33:31
  I agree. And it's not, you know, the way
• 33:33
  you approach it, it's not like, hey, we're afraid you're gonna
• 33:35
  leave. We want all the stock market, I
• 33:36
  mean. You should be, yeah.
• 33:38
  Once you do that, you should be able that allows you to do some
• 33:41
  other things in the organization.
• 33:42
  We're not so reliant on you right there.
• 33:44
  So I mean, think about, I always think about like the IT guy in
• 33:47
  organizations, like in a lot of small companies, they have one
• 33:50
  IT guy, that guy owns a place. That guy could shut that place
• 33:53
  down with you, get that guy ticked off about you could
• 33:56
  destroy your business overnight with a push of a button.
• 33:58
  I don't want. A server erased?
• 34:00
  God, yeah. So I'm not getting the race.
• 34:01
  Yeah, okay, yeah. You're done.
• 34:03
  Yeah. How do you feel about meetings?
• 34:07
  Yeah, internally, external, like, because I think some
• 34:09
  people have a lot of meetings and maybe there's a lot of
• 34:11
  wasted time there and other companies don't have a lot at
• 34:14
  all. How do you feel about?
• 34:15
  That I think most meetings suck. And I often ask this when I'm,
• 34:19
  when I'm with leadership teams, I, this is how I press press
• 34:22
  with them. So I get a group of seven or
• 34:23
  eight people around and I say, let's picture this scenario.
• 34:27
  You guys have your a weekly leadership team meeting, right?
• 34:30
  Yep, we do. What if I could stand outside
• 34:32
  that meeting the door when you're done right there and I
• 34:35
  could pull each of you as you come out just individually, no
• 34:38
  one else is anything. And I say from a scale of 1 to
• 34:41
  10, zero means that was the biggest waste of time I've spent
• 34:44
  in a long time. Or #10 I'm energized.
• 34:47
  That was the best meeting I ever had.
• 34:49
  What would you rank it? And almost across the board, and
• 34:51
  this is, this is regardless of what operating system we're
• 34:54
  talking about, there are twos and threes and fours.
• 34:56
  They're horrible. And people, they're, I've sat in
• 34:59
  them and I'm just like, this is a waste of time.
• 35:01
  And so why? Are they doing it?
• 35:05
  Though they think it's, they think you're supposed to meet.
• 35:08
  I mean, just yeah, yeah. But that that's one of the first
• 35:11
  things that we change is we, you know, have an agenda, have a
• 35:15
  reason for meeting, make it meaningful, hold people
• 35:18
  accountable, etcetera. You know, like this is what I,
• 35:21
  this is where I see Pinnacle EOS, whatever it is, the magic
• 35:26
  to me happens. It's with, with the leadership
• 35:29
  team and it's in the weekly meeting.
• 35:30
  You can you nail that weekly leadership team meeting, you're
• 35:33
  going to change that business right there.
• 35:35
  And, and here's what's happened when, when I first come in,
• 35:37
  before we put systems in place and really get things down, what
• 35:42
  happens is you got a leadership team sitting around and
• 35:44
  remember, we've all set our goals for the year.
• 35:48
  We got great ID we're going to hit this goal, do this and
• 35:51
  etcetera. And if you're going around the
• 35:53
  room, typically what happens is you got the business owner and
• 35:55
  he'll go around the room and just say, hey, where are you
• 35:58
  with your project? Are they on track or off track,
• 36:00
  etcetera. And what I have found in the
• 36:02
  past is that every project is on track for about 8 weeks into
• 36:07
  1/4. And then about week #8 or 9 also
• 36:10
  I'm like, Oh yeah, that one's kind of off track.
• 36:12
  Oh, and that one is too. And now all of a sudden you had
• 36:14
  fifteen goals you're supposed to get done for the month for the
• 36:16
  quarter and kind of them are never going to be finished right
• 36:20
  there, right. And it's because no one's
• 36:22
  holding each other accountable. And what what happens is the
• 36:25
  business owner, I kind of say is like he's kind of the bad guy.
• 36:29
  You know, we're going around in the room.
• 36:30
  Bob overhears in sales spent three weeks in a row where Bob
• 36:33
  hasn't hit his activity levels to generate sales.
• 36:35
  Right. So here's what happens the gets
• 36:38
  to Bob and he said, OK, Bob, you are you on track or off track?
• 36:41
  I'm off track this week. Everybody's looking at the
• 36:44
  business owner saying what is he or she going to do?
• 36:46
  Are they going to hold Bob accountable and get his ass and
• 36:49
  deer right there? Or are they going to let Bob
• 36:50
  slide for another week? Because if if the owner let's
• 36:53
  Bob slide for another week right there, he just sent a message to
• 36:57
  that whole leadership team that nobody's going to be held
• 36:59
  accountable. And here's what I often find is,
• 37:02
  you know, everybody knows the business owner, they're part of
• 37:04
  a vistage group or they've gone to some seminar or whatever.
• 37:08
  And what happens? They go to their groups, they
• 37:09
  come back, they got all these ideas, etcetera and stuff and
• 37:12
  they want to implement them and people just unleash.
• 37:14
  They're like, you know, if we just wait this out, you know,
• 37:16
  like 3 weeks, after three weeks he's just going to let it go.
• 37:19
  He'll be on to the next thing right there.
• 37:21
  That happens all the time. Yes, yeah.
• 37:23
  So. It's the new.
• 37:24
  It's the new flavor. It's the new flavor of the day.
• 37:26
  Yeah. And just, you know, I just think
• 37:28
  the meetings are super important and to have that agenda and
• 37:31
  what, what my goal always is, is I want to take the bad guy.
• 37:37
  I want to take the business owner out of being the bad guy.
• 37:39
  I want the I want the peers to hold each other account.
• 37:42
  That's what I was gonna get. That's what I was gonna ask you
• 37:44
  next. That's what it is.
• 37:44
  Cuz in my mind when you're running that scenario as the
• 37:46
  business owner and Bob says I missed Mark.
• 37:49
  Yep. Maybe it's I'd ask a question
• 37:51
  how many times in a row you've missed now.
• 37:53
  Yep. And it's 3 weeks.
• 37:54
  Yep. And I kind of pause and look
• 37:56
  around the room. Yep.
• 37:58
  And I'd kind of just wait Yep for someone to say something.
• 38:00
  What's your plan to not miss it next week right yeah, it's I
• 38:04
  love that yeah. Thank you for speaking up yeah
• 38:06
  cuz that's the culture right. Exactly yeah, cuz to your points
• 38:09
  like the leaders gotta lead the way but if everything is always
• 38:11
  like what's the leader gonna do then it's like what's the
• 38:14
  culture? It's gonna all come down to that
• 38:16
  person. But, and that's such a good
• 38:18
  point you make, So what do great meetings look like inside of a
• 38:20
  business? What are some things that like
• 38:22
  someone could go implement next week with their meeting?
• 38:24
  I'll tell you and remember in the beginning of this I said
• 38:26
  there were some tools within Pinnacle that I would have
• 38:28
  killed to have one of them is within this meeting and it's
• 38:31
  it's called, it's a rock sheet. I mean, it's basically.
• 38:34
  Rocks, yeah. So rock, rocks are things, you
• 38:36
  know, what are you going to prioritize for the next 90 days?
• 38:38
  Like they're your little sprints on your way to your goals right
• 38:41
  there. But there is a tool called a
• 38:42
  rock sheet. And what we do is before the
• 38:45
  quarter even starts, everybody goes and develops their rocks,
• 38:48
  right? But the, the leadership team is
• 38:51
  going to kind of sign off on them for everybody else.
• 38:53
  And within that rock is I want to know in one sentence, what,
• 38:56
  what are you going to accomplish this quarter right there #2 how
• 38:59
  do I know it's going to when it's done like describe for me?
• 39:02
  So I don't want to just ask you, he's your rock then Yep, I want
• 39:04
  to know what that what that means right there.
• 39:06
  Then I want to know why is this even a priority this quarter?
• 39:10
  Why couldn't this rock be pushed to the next quarter?
• 39:12
  Why couldn't this be pushed to someone that you, you know,
• 39:15
  works for you down, down, down a lever.
• 39:17
  Except, so remember this is leadership team we're talking.
• 39:19
  About right there. Then I want to know what are
• 39:21
  some milestones? How am I going to know if
• 39:23
  quarters 90 days long at day 30, How am I, what are you going to
• 39:26
  have to have done so that I know we're on track to hit this right
• 39:29
  there. And then finally, the last thing
• 39:31
  is what other resources are going to be necessary?
• 39:34
  So here's a great example. I got a sales guy or leader,
• 39:37
  he's got a huge, massive goal right for the quarter right
• 39:40
  there. But if, if his lead generation
• 39:43
  is dependent on marketing to give qualified leads, him
• 39:46
  marketing better damn well be aware of what his goal is.
• 39:49
  And we better all know because otherwise you got a built in
• 39:51
  excuse right there, right? But what I have found is again,
• 39:55
  everybody's got these rock sheets.
• 39:57
  We make sure why they're even belong in this leadership team
• 40:00
  meeting. And here are the question.
• 40:02
  Here's the difference, right? Instead of asking someone, are
• 40:04
  you on track or off track for the quarter?
• 40:06
  And if you're off track, maybe we, we drop it down to an issue
• 40:09
  list and we talk about here's what we do at Pinnacle every
• 40:12
  single week starting week one of the quarter, you have three
• 40:15
  rocks or whatever the first one is.
• 40:16
  And my question to you is, Alex, what did you do last week and
• 40:20
  last seven days to advance that rock?
• 40:22
  Hopefully you got a good answer. Oh, I did this this nice.
• 40:24
  OK, great. Now we're going to meet next
• 40:27
  Monday as well. Seven days from now.
• 40:28
  What are you going to do between now and then to advance that
• 40:31
  rock? And you give an answer to now
• 40:33
  you're accountable to the rest of your peers for next week
• 40:36
  because you just verbally said what you're going to do right
• 40:38
  there. And then the last question is,
• 40:40
  if you're having problems, how can we help?
• 40:42
  But we are identifying that week one of the quarter.
• 40:45
  We're not waiting 8 weeks into the quarter to find out you're
• 40:48
  having a problem with your rock right there.
• 40:49
  Watch your rocks completion rate go from about 40% up to 80%
• 40:53
  within 90 days. That that to me, that's one of
• 40:56
  the most powerful tools. Again, if I had that tool in my
• 41:00
  past life, game changer. Wow, I appreciate you sharing
• 41:04
  that because I've like people listening now can think about
• 41:06
  how they're running their meetings and maybe if they want
• 41:08
  to work with you a little closer, they can have you come
• 41:09
  in and do some work with them. But yeah, that's powerful stuff,
• 41:12
  man. I feel like a lot of it comes
• 41:13
  down to in business and maybe even in life and relationships,
• 41:17
  clear expectation and responsibilities and follow
• 41:19
  through an accountability. If you just nail that part right
• 41:21
  and it's good, good goals, good rocks, you know, whatever might
• 41:24
  be. And you really follow through
• 41:26
  with people and accountability coaching development as needed.
• 41:29
  Get them to think critically and your accomplishment a lot more
• 41:32
  than most. Yeah, you hold people
• 41:33
  accountable. Yeah, Yeah, what a difference
• 41:36
  makes right? There not easy to do sometimes
• 41:38
  for people. Yeah, but what I like, So what I
• 41:40
  find really interesting that that sheet I'm talking about,
• 41:42
  it's just think about this like instead of me just making up my
• 41:46
  my goal for the quarter, I have to run it through my peers, my
• 41:49
  peers who are we're all holding each other accountable every
• 41:52
  week we meet together. We all know what we're trying to
• 41:55
  do and we all want to help each other.
• 41:56
  It's not it's not about holding you accountable so you can knock
• 41:58
  it out, but I want to help you do that right.
• 42:00
  So yeah, why do? You think it's so hard for
• 42:03
  people to hold other people accountable?
• 42:05
  I, I think it comes down to what we call healthy conflict.
• 42:09
  Like I've said in meetings, but I mean this, this was, you know,
• 42:12
  in the last couple of years, I've said in leadership team
• 42:14
  meetings where I've talked to people prior to the meeting who
• 42:17
  are like, I'm so tired of this or I got this issue right there
• 42:20
  and that meeting starts and that person might as well not even
• 42:23
  exist. They sit in the back, they don't
• 42:25
  say anything right there. So I think it's a, again, it's a
• 42:27
  culture, You need to have a culture of healthy conflict.
• 42:31
  And that doesn't mean you're having fistfights in a
• 42:33
  conference room or whatever, but healthy is the keyword there.
• 42:36
  But questioning people like, right.
• 42:38
  And again, pinnacle, one of the differences we do, you know,
• 42:41
  just like EOS, we would rank every meeting, right?
• 42:43
  You rank it on a scale of 1 to 10, et cetera.
• 42:46
  And it's funny because you people game the system.
• 42:49
  No matter what you set up, people are always getting in the
• 42:51
  system. So people quickly learn in the
• 42:54
  EOS world. Like if you don't score an 8 or
• 42:56
  better, you have to give a reason.
• 42:58
  Like, so you go around the room and it's like, I gave it a six.
• 43:00
  Well, you have to give a reason on why you why this meeting was
• 43:04
  a six. And you got to kind of talk
• 43:05
  about it right there so quickly. If you have an unhealthy team
• 43:09
  environment where no one wants to speak up, guess what?
• 43:11
  Every rating of every meeting is 8.
• 43:13
  It's an 8. Yeah.
• 43:15
  Right, it's good. It's hilarious.
• 43:17
  Yep, it's an 8. No, no problems right there.
• 43:18
  So so I pinnacle, one of the things we do is we not only rate
• 43:21
  the meeting, but we say yes or no.
• 43:24
  Did we have healthy team conflict within this meeting
• 43:27
  today? And if Sally sat in the corner
• 43:29
  and didn't say a word right there, we didn't.
• 43:31
  So what's going on, Tally? Come on, let's let's talk about
• 43:33
  this right there. So.
• 43:34
  Yeah, I think a lot has to do with your humans want to be
• 43:39
  liked. And I think when we hold people
• 43:41
  accountable and we have healthy conflict, even though it is
• 43:44
  healthy, there's still that. Like I'm going to confront Keith
• 43:48
  about something that he didn't do.
• 43:51
  He's going to think I'm an asshole, you know, or he's he's
• 43:53
  going to think differently, Mary.
• 43:54
  He's going to think, why are you calling me out, bro?
• 43:56
  But in reality, I'm doing it because I believe in that
• 43:59
  approach and I want you to do better.
• 44:01
  And I want us as a team to accomplish our goals.
• 44:03
  And we don't get there if we don't do that.
• 44:05
  That's. Exactly right.
• 44:06
  Yeah. And it kind of goes back to what
• 44:07
  I said before. I'm like, if you're perfectly
• 44:09
  content being a $5,000,000 company and you don't want to
• 44:11
  grow, that's fine. But if you want to grow to 1000
• 44:15
  and 50 million, you need to you need to create that environment
• 44:18
  and that team of growth, etcetera.
• 44:19
  And what a difference it is being held accountable by your
• 44:23
  peers than even your business owner right there.
• 44:25
  Because remember when I said like that business owner comes
• 44:27
  off as kind of a bad guy, right? And and now when your peers are
• 44:31
  holding accountable, it's amazing what you get done,
• 44:33
  right? Yeah, How do you do it as a
• 44:35
  might be some solo founders, entrepreneurs listen to this,
• 44:38
  you know, running a solo business, How do you think about
• 44:40
  like rocks and your meetings and that kind of stuff?
• 44:42
  If it's just you, do you still implement some of that stuff and
• 44:45
  hold yourself accountable or how does that?
• 44:47
  Work I do yeah, I have my own like I set my own quarterly
• 44:50
  meetings etcetera. I set my goals for the quarter
• 44:53
  and I hold myself accountable. I mean, some people will have
• 44:55
  like our peer peer groups, you know, I mean, that's the other
• 44:58
  thing to do right there. Yeah.
• 44:59
  Like an accountability buddy could be somebody in a totally
• 45:02
  different, yeah industry or something like that, but just as
• 45:04
  willing to hold you accountable right there.
• 45:06
  You know, I know some people, like I got people who I get an
• 45:09
  e-mail every week, like they're like, hey, these are my goals
• 45:11
  for the really for the year and I'm going to send you an e-mail
• 45:14
  to hold myself accountable. I mean, that's great.
• 45:16
  I don't need them after a couple weeks.
• 45:17
  But if that's what gets you motivated, what what kind of
• 45:21
  whatever it takes, right? Yeah.
• 45:23
  Yeah, I think the ability to have a conversation with
• 45:26
  yourself too, a healthy conversation with yourself, I do
• 45:28
  that all the time. You probably do, too.
• 45:29
  I think a lot of people do is like sometimes I'll just sit and
• 45:32
  think I'm driving in the car, I'm looking in the mirror and
• 45:34
  I'm like, Alex, yeah. What are you really doing right
• 45:37
  now? Like, what are you, you really
• 45:38
  focused on this? Should this be a priority?
• 45:40
  Should this be why are you pushing this off again?
• 45:42
  Where do you need to spend your time right now that would make
• 45:46
  the most sense for the business in your life?
• 45:49
  Yeah, so. It's interesting, I have toyed
• 45:53
  and played around with different ways to manage my day for years
• 45:57
  and I know there's softwares and things like that.
• 45:59
  I've never, every time I go back, I have pencil and paper,
• 46:03
  not pencil, paper, but I have like a Excel spreadsheet that
• 46:06
  I've developed over the years. So like, and every Sunday I
• 46:08
  printed out for the week and I put all my meetings on there.
• 46:12
  I block, I try to block my time out.
• 46:14
  I so I don't miss anything. I try to prioritize things,
• 46:17
  etcetera. And this goes back, this is
• 46:19
  years ago when I was, I was doing some sales consulting for
• 46:22
  somebody and the owner's like, what do you got going on today?
• 46:26
  I'm like, fuck, I got a list of things to speak and he goes,
• 46:28
  give me that list. And he said he goes, first of
• 46:30
  all, he goes prioritize them one to 10 or 20 or whatever.
• 46:33
  And I did that. He goes, give me the list and
• 46:35
  they took the first 3 and he ripped it in half.
• 46:37
  He's like, there you go. There's your priority for you
• 46:39
  first three, forget about all those other ones, right?
• 46:42
  Just get the important stuff done right.
• 46:44
  I don't know if you've ever read the book Eat, Eat that Frog or
• 46:46
  whatever, but I'd highly it's Brian Tracy.
• 46:48
  It's just highly recommended. It's like pick the most
• 46:51
  uncomfortable, most important thing that you have to do today
• 46:55
  and get it done 1st and you'd be amazed at what the rest of your
• 46:58
  day is like. Because if you don't, you never
• 47:00
  do the hard stuff. At the end of the day, it's just
• 47:02
  like, I'll do it tomorrow, right?
• 47:04
  If you do the hard stuff first, the rest of the day is kind of
• 47:06
  easy. Exactly, you know.
• 47:08
  Yeah, it's like a obviously you're working out and stuff
• 47:10
  like that. Like I've always been a morning
• 47:12
  workout person. And my rationalization for that
• 47:15
  is like there is no other time in the day that I control.
• 47:18
  It's the only time. And I might have to get up
• 47:21
  earlier and earlier to accomplish it.
• 47:23
  But that to me is that that's precious.
• 47:25
  You know, no phones are ringing. There's nothing else.
• 47:28
  Just you just got to get her done.
• 47:29
  Eat that frog. You mentioned chat Shapati and
• 47:32
  AI earlier. Yeah.
• 47:33
  How do you see AI disrupting consulting, coaching, mentoring?
• 47:36
  Because you know, what's to stop someone in any industry from
• 47:39
  just being like, you know what? Instead of doing EOS or Pinnacle
• 47:42
  or working with impacts, yeah, I'm just going to chat Shapati
• 47:44
  everything or look everything up and print all these guides and
• 47:47
  frameworks how to run meetings. Yeah.
• 47:49
  How do you see that changing the business over the next 5 to 10
• 47:52
  years? You know, in my world, in the
• 47:54
  pinnacle and the EOS world, I don't see it having much of an
• 47:56
  impact because I've tried to self implement.
• 48:01
  I've seen, is that you being a little biased still being in it?
• 48:03
  Well, I wasn't in it before too. Well, just in consulting and
• 48:06
  coaching though, is that you being like it's not going to
• 48:09
  change this is it? Can't you know or what do you
• 48:11
  think? Or do you think that's your
• 48:12
  honest? Opinion.
• 48:12
  I think it's my honest opinion because I think there's, it's
• 48:16
  because I've seen, I've been in companies, I've watched people
• 48:19
  try to self implement these things on their own.
• 48:22
  And there may be the small percentage where it works, but I
• 48:25
  guarantee it takes a really strong leader to make that
• 48:28
  happen right there. And most people aren't and
• 48:30
  you're on it there. I, I think there's something
• 48:33
  about having that third party come in and hold kind of hold
• 48:36
  people accountable. And I'll give you an example.
• 48:39
  That's by the way, that's our jobs.
• 48:40
  So that's why we don't do marketing for companies.
• 48:42
  We come in and help them build it, the culture, the performance
• 48:45
  around it, how to do it the right way.
• 48:47
  That's hard to do on your own. You you kind of need someone
• 48:49
  there to develop that those habits and stuff.
• 48:51
  It really is, yeah. And I'll actually give you
• 48:53
  another example why This is why I think like regardless of what
• 48:56
  it is to have a guide, having AUS implementer is often times
• 49:00
  these business owners, they're on an island who they have no
• 49:03
  one to talk to. I mean, hopefully they're in a
• 49:05
  vistage peer group or something like that.
• 49:07
  But a lot of them are just, you know, they don't they're afraid
• 49:10
  to talk to their wife because they don't want them to know
• 49:11
  that the business is going in the shitter.
• 49:13
  They don't want to talk to their VPS etcetera, because they want
• 49:16
  them to. They want to be confident,
• 49:18
  etcetera. So so who do they talk to, so to
• 49:20
  speak? And I've seen business owners
• 49:21
  like they need someone else to hold them accountable right
• 49:24
  there. And I've seen leadership teams
• 49:26
  totally change because at at the end of the day, it's the founder
• 49:30
  and they got leadership team and they may say, you know, hey, I
• 49:33
  value your opinion. I'm going to take you into
• 49:34
  account when we make decisions right here.
• 49:36
  But the end of the day, it's their business.
• 49:37
  They're going to make whatever decisions they want right there.
• 49:39
  But there's something about having that third party where
• 49:42
  they're accountable to somebody else.
• 49:44
  And I think it gives the leadership team a little bit of
• 49:47
  it kind of helps bring them together and elevates them
• 49:50
  because they know that that person is accountable to
• 49:53
  somebody else as well. And you're a little bit more
• 49:56
  valuable in the picture right there.
• 49:58
  Yeah. And at the end of the day, you
• 49:59
  know, we all know if you're gonna exit your business
• 50:01
  someday, the value isn't you as the business owner that's
• 50:04
  leaving. The value is the leadership
• 50:06
  team. So that's a just showing just by
• 50:09
  making that investment in someone like myself or a system
• 50:12
  out there, I think that shows a lot to your leadership team that
• 50:15
  this they're serious about this and they're investing in this
• 50:17
  for the long run, right? Yeah, yeah.
• 50:19
  What jobs do you think will be disrupted by AI the most over
• 50:22
  the next 5 to 10 years? Jobs disrupted by a over the
• 50:25
  next 5 to 10. Because and real quick, yeah, I
• 50:28
  think you hit on something really important that I think
• 50:30
  and I've been working with my team on this stuff as a group.
• 50:32
  We've been working on it is if you can coach and lead and
• 50:36
  develop people and create change in organization, that to me
• 50:40
  seems like it'd be tougher for AI to do versus if you create
• 50:44
  templates and this is we edit videos, we write copy.
• 50:48
  We do think that kind of a machine could start doing pretty
• 50:50
  easily and already is in a lot of ways that's the traditional
• 50:53
  marketing agency model. That's why I think ours is
• 50:55
  different and disruptive and probably longer term more
• 50:58
  successful because a lot of these companies have tools now
• 51:00
  at their disposal. So it's about, but how do you
• 51:02
  create a culture around content and people telling, what story
• 51:06
  are you telling and how do you get that out to the public?
• 51:08
  And how do you, if someone didn't create the right piece of
• 51:10
  content, how do you have that conversation with them?
• 51:12
  And but I think those coaching, developing people, leadership, I
• 51:16
  think those are the skills that to really lean on in the future,
• 51:19
  especially with AI coming in here.
• 51:21
  I would think so too. I kind of come from an M and a
• 51:24
  background where we did a lot of, you know, we were research
• 51:27
  like we're looking for, we're looking for businesses that
• 51:29
  private equity could come and buy that research.
• 51:32
  It was super manual. I mean, and I can't tell you the
• 51:36
  hours they spent on that. And I've seen AI come in a
• 51:38
  little bit. They can take something that
• 51:40
  took a team 8 hours and get it down to an hour and that's
• 51:44
  they're gonna get even better at that.
• 51:45
  So I think researchers got people who are doing that and
• 51:49
  all that kind of stuff. That's pretty scary from an AI
• 51:52
  perspective, I think. But you know, I also believe
• 51:55
  that you need to adjust to it and I think if you work
• 51:59
  alongside of a AI, you're in a good spot right there.
• 52:02
  So but but embrace it and figure out how you how to use it.
• 52:06
  That that's all I say. If you don't put your head in
• 52:08
  the sand like an ostrich and pretend that it's not there
• 52:11
  because it's going to eat, it's going to eat, it's going to eat
• 52:13
  you alive. Yes, for sure.
• 52:14
  Yeah, I'm talking to a guy on the show next, actually here in
• 52:18
  like 45 minutes. He does.
• 52:19
  He built autonomous lawn mowers like the big ones.
• 52:23
  And they just go. By themselves.
• 52:24
  And so it's like, I'm excited to talk to him about this stuff
• 52:26
  because it's like, where does that put landscapers and how
• 52:29
  does it change the industry and what jobs are disrupted by that?
• 52:32
  But there, there's no doubt there's humanoid robotics that
• 52:35
  are here. You know, they're in factories,
• 52:36
  they're going to be in homes, they're already folding laundry
• 52:38
  and shit like that. Like it's going to change.
• 52:41
  And so you got to think about certain things.
• 52:42
  To your point, don't put your head in the sand.
• 52:44
  Oh, I'm good. It's not going to change.
• 52:45
  It is going to change. It's not going to eliminate us.
• 52:47
  Maybe, but hopefully not. Yeah.
• 52:50
  It's funny, I went to like I went to a robotic show in really
• 52:54
  downtown Chicago. This was, this was several years
• 52:56
  ago, but I can remember there was this one display or whatever
• 53:00
  where this robot was. There was like all these blocks
• 53:03
  on the floor or whatever, and it's just showing how fast it
• 53:05
  could pick up all these blocks and stack them in this thing.
• 53:08
  I mean, it was like. Lightning. 100 blocks in like 60
• 53:10
  seconds. I mean, it was unbelievable.
• 53:12
  It's just like whoa. Or pickers in when they get that
• 53:15
  picking thing down in the warehouses.
• 53:17
  Oh my God. Exactly, exactly.
• 53:19
  Yeah, I'm sure it's probably not too far away.
• 53:21
  Yeah. You mentioned exiting earlier
• 53:23
  too, yeah. What's the plan if you're a solo
• 53:25
  business owner or maybe do you plan on getting more people on
• 53:27
  the team? What's your kind of path that?
• 53:30
  For myself, yeah, yeah, I just, I would like to find a way to
• 53:33
  have some folks kind of work under me, develop them, et
• 53:36
  cetera. Cool.
• 53:37
  And maybe be more the I'm the visionary, you know, I get the
• 53:42
  story out there and I just generate leads and I have other
• 53:44
  people maybe deliver on the product.
• 53:46
  But you got. To do a lot of content.
• 53:48
  Yeah, I would have to do a lot of.
• 53:50
  Content, or at least in person stuff too, right?
• 53:52
  Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
• 53:53
  Creating the demand for the business and then being able to
• 53:55
  hand it down to people. Would that be 1099 people or W2
• 53:57
  or how do you see that? Well, right, right now I think
• 54:02
  1099 people makes the most sense.
• 54:03
  I mean, just, you know, as soon as you have people do the
• 54:05
  equation, you're serious. There's a lot that goes.
• 54:08
  On with it, but. But I think at the end of the
• 54:11
  day, and you know, this is funny, like when I went out on
• 54:13
  my own, one of the challenges that I found and every, I
• 54:16
  remember talking to my peers, other people, and it's like,
• 54:19
  what do you do for health insurance?
• 54:20
  I have a wife, I have 3 kids. Like I'm going to go off on my
• 54:24
  own. Then all of a sudden I got a
• 54:25
  cold. You know, before I even do
• 54:27
  anything, I got a $2000 nut. I got a cover just for that.
• 54:31
  So I I wish someone would figure out the health insurance for
• 54:35
  entrepreneurs being and I I'm shocked.
• 54:36
  Shame too. I'm shocked that no one has
• 54:38
  figured something out right there.
• 54:40
  Yeah, I just, I'm shocked. There should be a pool where we
• 54:42
  can all get together. That's what I'm thinking there's
• 54:45
  got because it's in numbers. That's what the insurance
• 54:46
  companies want to see. I mean, if we've fooled enough
• 54:48
  people together, I can't believe they can't put something
• 54:50
  together. Why could all the entrepreneurs
• 54:51
  in the United States not act like a big corporation?
• 54:53
  Exactly. Create a big association or I
• 54:56
  don't know where to create a. Systematic healthcare pool for
• 54:59
  us and we can all put in that is a.
• 55:00
  I've never really thought it like that, but yeah, that's such
• 55:02
  a good, good point. Yeah.
• 55:03
  They just, we're kind of starting businesses, employing
• 55:05
  people at times, coming up with new ideas, new products and
• 55:08
  services. And it's like you're in the
• 55:10
  gutter just like you don't even matter.
• 55:12
  Yeah, Yeah. But if you're an employee, it's
• 55:13
  some big company that probably pays 0 on taxes, you get the
• 55:15
  best healthcare. It's it's unbelievable.
• 55:18
  And why is and this another rabbit hole, but why is health
• 55:21
  insurance tied to your job anyways?
• 55:22
  I mean, I don't understand that, but that's all.
• 55:24
  That's all. That's a whole other podcast
• 55:26
  series sitting out there. Because why can't you just group
• 55:29
  it? And maybe by location or some
• 55:31
  other factors. Like anything, just something.
• 55:34
  Different. Yeah.
• 55:34
  That is such a good point, man. So you have three daughters,
• 55:37
  right? Yeah.
• 55:38
  Yeah. What's your advice to them?
• 55:39
  You know, are they in college? Two in two out of college.
• 55:43
  One in college, yeah. Yeah.
• 55:44
  When they ask you for career advice or just business or, you
• 55:47
  know, like maybe life advice in general, Yeah.
• 55:49
  What's kind of some of the things that you tell them?
• 55:52
  You know, for starters, I want them all to be their own person.
• 55:55
  So I just want, I just want them to be happy and do what they do.
• 55:57
  But the thing I stress to them is I just, I want to see grit
• 56:01
  out of them. I just, I want them to embrace
• 56:04
  something and just go, go all in, right.
• 56:09
  Yeah. One of the things that drives me
• 56:10
  like drives me crazy when people I ask you questions that you
• 56:12
  could easily find on your own right there.
• 56:14
  Just just be self-sufficient, be motivated, Go read some books.
• 56:18
  Go read. I always tell my kids, go read 7
• 56:21
  Habits to highly successful people.
• 56:22
  You usually do nothing else as a young kid.
• 56:24
  You read that and embrace that you are so far ahead of most
• 56:27
  other kids out there right there.
• 56:28
  So I don't know I'm I'm a huge reader.
• 56:30
  I don't know if you could tell I've I reference books all the
• 56:32
  time, but I just. That's a good one.
• 56:34
  Read. Yeah, just read.
• 56:35
  Yeah, that's true. You can learn things young
• 56:38
  person or even if you're a little bit older, you always can
• 56:40
  learn things from other people who have done it that you
• 56:42
  haven't done it. And so it's like, why would you?
• 56:44
  You're just getting all their wisdom packaged up in a little,
• 56:46
  you know, whether it's a podcast like this or other YouTube video
• 56:49
  or book or whatever your consumption of choices, just
• 56:51
  learning and growing, right? Yeah.
• 56:54
  And grit's one of those things like how do you how do you
• 56:56
  instill that in your kids? You know it's easy because.
• 56:59
  It's almost like kids are never going to have it.
• 57:00
  Because they probably grew up decent life and they probably
• 57:03
  didn't like struggle super hard, you know.
• 57:05
  And so it's like you want to create this amazing life for
• 57:07
  your kids, but not too comforting to where they don't
• 57:10
  have that grit or you know, because I think that's helpful.
• 57:13
  And so some of that is like kind of letting them go through a
• 57:17
  little bit of a struggle or. Well, that's just, I think on
• 57:19
  their own, right, I think you gotta let them fail.
• 57:21
  That's where that's where we've dropped the ball as parents in
• 57:24
  my generation. I mean, it's just like they
• 57:26
  don't fail. I mean, everybody gets a trophy,
• 57:27
  right? Nobody.
• 57:28
  They don't keep score. I.
• 57:29
  Mean, yeah. The problem is it's not how the
• 57:32
  real world works. You don't get a 13th place
• 57:34
  trophy. Exactly.
• 57:35
  You lose, Yeah. And then it sucks, Yeah.
• 57:37
  And then you got to pick your. Ass and get.
• 57:38
  Better, right? You got to go through your row
• 57:41
  and you go get the 1st place or second or whatever you end up
• 57:44
  in. Yeah.
• 57:45
  And as an entrepreneur, that's there's, there's so much truth
• 57:47
  in that. Exactly.
• 57:48
  Get your. Ass kicked all the time.
• 57:49
  Oh, yeah. And no one goes.
• 57:51
  Hey, Keith, I know you tried hard, but you lost a client.
• 57:53
  We're still gonna give you a check for 10,000.
• 57:55
  Yeah, No, it doesn't. Yeah, it doesn't quite happen.
• 57:57
  Hey, Keith, you lost a damn client.
• 57:58
  Go figure it out, yeah. Exactly.
• 58:00
  You know so. Yeah, it's tough.
• 58:02
  Man, Keith, this has been a really awesome conversation.
• 58:05
  I appreciate you coming in and doing this.
• 58:07
  Where can people find, connect and learn more about what you
• 58:10
  guys do? Yeah, go to mysiteeskagee.com,
• 58:13
  ESKAYGE, e.com. There's a couple of really good
• 58:17
  resources on there. One of them which I would
• 58:19
  encourage any entrepreneur, any business owner out there, we
• 58:22
  have a baseline assessment that we do through Pinnacle and it'll
• 58:25
  tell you where you score kind of in the people, purpose,
• 58:27
  playbooks, profit, performance. It's really good.
• 58:30
  It's a 8 page detailed report tells you some tools that you
• 58:33
  do. And even if you never talk to
• 58:35
  me, you will get value and it'll help you identify things right
• 58:38
  there. So that's it.
• 58:39
  Otherwise you can find me around town.
• 58:41
  I'm in a couple of networking groups and trusted advisor
• 58:44
  council. I can't say enough about that.
• 58:46
  That's been great. And I don't know, I'm just, I'm
• 58:51
  a center of influence and I love meeting people and talking to
• 58:53
  good people and helping them so. Cool.
• 58:55
  We'll link up website, contact information, all that stuff in
• 58:58
  the show notes. So if you're going to get in
• 58:59
  touch with Keith, work with Keith, you know where to find
• 59:02
  it. And then we'll be posting a lot
• 59:03
  of short form clips and content about this conversation.
• 59:06
  And so you'll get tagged and all that too.
• 59:07
  That's fantastic. Appreciate.
• 59:08
  You doing this? Thanks for having me,
• 59:10
  appreciate.