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AI Changed Search. Show Up or Disappear. · Business Roundtable

0:02
Speaker 1: Thank you.
0:16
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the Business Roundtable podcast. I am your host,
0:20
Speaker 2: David Carr, founder of Stewards Your Business Will. We bring
0:23
Speaker 2: to you great leaders, great folks that have amazing experiences
0:27
Speaker 2: and helping businesses grow develop And this episode is no different.
0:32
Speaker 2: But this episode we're not just talking about growth itself,
0:35
Speaker 2: but how do we grow as a leader, how do
0:38
Speaker 2: we grow in developing our messaging. We're talking about visibility,
0:43
Speaker 2: your authority, your leadership, and what does it actually take
0:46
Speaker 2: a founder. So, if you're an existing founder, you're thinking
0:49
Speaker 2: about founding a business, maybe you're in that business, you're
0:52
Speaker 2: trying to have that businer grow, but what is that
0:54
Speaker 2: what do you have to do in today's market? Because
0:57
Speaker 2: what we've seen and I've seen as I've talked to
0:59
Speaker 2: a lot of folks, why I'm actually really grateful to
1:01
Speaker 2: have our guest here is maybe your messaging isn't quite clear,
1:05
Speaker 2: it's not hitting the mark, or your leadership isn't visible,
1:08
Speaker 2: or that founder you maybe have become disconnected from the
1:12
Speaker 2: actual voice of the company. And so today I get
1:16
Speaker 2: to welcome Solomon Timothy. He is the founder of click
1:19
Speaker 2: x and an entrepreneur, a growth strategist, a fellow podcast
1:23
Speaker 2: host and someone who spent over two decades helping companies grow,
1:27
Speaker 2: generate leads, build authority, and actually scalable marketing system. So
1:31
Speaker 2: I want to just say thank you for joining us
1:33
Speaker 2: on the podcast today, Solomon.
1:35
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. David, super excited to be here,
1:37
Speaker 1: just honored our conversations before and this morning as well.
1:40
Speaker 1: This has been amazing just connecting with another entrepreneur just
1:43
Speaker 1: like you who's just as passionate as you know, as
1:47
Speaker 1: anyone that, Yeah, couldn't be more excited for this conversation.
1:51
Speaker 2: Well, I really appreciate when we first started talking, one
1:54
Speaker 2: of the initial conversations we had was about the founders
2:00
Speaker 2: and how they can't outsource that passion. And I thought, okay, yeah,
2:05
Speaker 2: that really stood out to me, and I wanted you
2:07
Speaker 2: to unpack that for our audience because this is something
2:09
Speaker 2: you really work with founders about. It's like, what do
2:11
Speaker 2: you mean when you say can't outsource that passion?
2:16
Speaker 1: Right? So I'll just use Oprah Infree, right, So if
2:19
Speaker 1: Oprah Winfree outsourced her marketing, would Oprah be Oprah? This
2:25
Speaker 1: is the example, right, So I don't think David can
2:28
Speaker 1: do I get a marketing manager and say, well, go
2:31
Speaker 1: ahead and personal brand me. But I'm not going to
2:33
Speaker 1: create any content. I'm not going to put any thought
2:35
Speaker 1: leadership piece. I'm not going to go try to be
2:38
Speaker 1: on podcasts. I won't make any webinars, I won't write
2:40
Speaker 1: on Forbes, I won't write a book. It's the same thing.
2:43
Speaker 1: And no one can ever do what you can for
2:46
Speaker 1: your company. No one's going to be as passionate about
2:49
Speaker 1: you as you are for your own business. Right, so
2:52
Speaker 1: you can ever hire someone to delegate and say, well,
2:56
Speaker 1: go be my brand Richard Branson. Could you outsource Richard Branson,
3:00
Speaker 1: put it in the body of another person, they will
3:02
Speaker 1: now be Richard Branson. That's the thing. Richard Branson has
3:05
Speaker 1: got this this personality that you can't find. And so
3:09
Speaker 1: if Richard Branson wasn't holding that sign the first airplane
3:12
Speaker 1: before he got, you know, into that business, he was
3:14
Speaker 1: walking around saying, hey, I got a plane because I
3:16
Speaker 1: got it. It's one way. He can only fly one way.
3:19
Speaker 1: And he was getting people, one person at a time,
3:23
Speaker 1: selling tickets. Believe it or not, I don't think anybody
3:26
Speaker 1: would want to put themselves through that stress of trying
3:30
Speaker 1: to sell ticket to build out Virgin air Lines like
3:35
Speaker 1: that's yeah, you can't. You can't hire a marketing manager
3:39
Speaker 1: or a sales VP and say yeah, go figure it out.
3:42
Speaker 1: So I feel and this is something we do for
3:44
Speaker 1: every entrepreneur, the work we work with. This wasn't something
3:48
Speaker 1: we did before, but we get every founder on podcasts
3:53
Speaker 1: we say, look, if you're going to work with us,
3:55
Speaker 1: we got to get your thought leadership in check. Just
3:58
Speaker 1: as we're going to be helping you build lead generation, marketing,
4:01
Speaker 1: automation AI stuff, whatever it is we're doing, we need
4:05
Speaker 1: to make sure that you're constantly promoting your business. We
4:08
Speaker 1: need to want it. And if the founder says I'm
4:10
Speaker 1: not going to get on a phone or am I
4:11
Speaker 1: going to do a podcast, I say, you know what,
4:14
Speaker 1: I can do all these things for you. What they're
4:16
Speaker 1: going to do is they're going to go to Perplexity
4:18
Speaker 1: and put in David Carr because I'm going to sign
4:21
Speaker 1: this one hundred thousand dollars product and buy from you.
4:24
Speaker 1: I want to know who this founder is or this
4:26
Speaker 1: company is about. I want to find new information about
4:30
Speaker 1: this company so that they know. You know, I'm gonna
4:33
Speaker 1: trust this company, but the guys out there, he's out
4:36
Speaker 1: there he's sing and podcasting and webinar and or whatever
4:40
Speaker 1: it is. It just brings so much more you know,
4:43
Speaker 1: passionate about why am I working with this company? Yeah?
4:47
Speaker 2: Absolutely, it's Uh, we just did a recent episode with
4:51
Speaker 2: a PR company so much to your point, they're like, hey,
4:55
Speaker 2: we need to be sure where you're We know who
4:58
Speaker 2: you are and who you're trying to talk doing it
5:00
Speaker 2: and get you out there. To your point, if you can't,
5:03
Speaker 2: you can't outsource that. And I think getting and it
5:06
Speaker 2: takes time and effort to get clear on this and
5:09
Speaker 2: what I found working with companies too so much. Your
5:11
Speaker 2: point is if the if the business owner isn't willing
5:15
Speaker 2: to do this, then your employees are not going to
5:17
Speaker 2: know that either. They're not going to clearly communicate that
5:19
Speaker 2: message to the marketplace either.
5:21
Speaker 1: Right. Yeah, so it's the other thing. You should delegate
5:26
Speaker 1: everything else, but not this, Right, So you should delegate.
5:32
Speaker 1: You're running reports every day, looking at the dashboards or
5:35
Speaker 1: running say a roll or whatever it is that you
5:37
Speaker 1: think you have to do, you can delegate that. But
5:40
Speaker 1: you should be creating content. If that is not going
5:43
Speaker 1: on podcasts or something like that, get just getting content
5:46
Speaker 1: out there about your products or solutions and the new
5:49
Speaker 1: invention that your company, the new capability, the new things
5:52
Speaker 1: that you're rolling out and interviewing your customers to make
5:56
Speaker 1: sure that they're having the success. So you're creating now
5:58
Speaker 1: proof that you know what you're doing, and you should
6:01
Speaker 1: be creating a webinar if you're a B to B company,
6:03
Speaker 1: educating the world about what the problems you solve, and
6:06
Speaker 1: you're sharing that passion on other people's platforms like you
6:10
Speaker 1: and I doing it is not so I can go
6:13
Speaker 1: ahead and sell to anyone on this podcast. It's actually
6:16
Speaker 1: the other way around. I want to make sure everybody
6:18
Speaker 1: that's listening is getting so much value out of David's
6:21
Speaker 1: podcast that they're going to continue to listen to David
6:24
Speaker 1: because he's made a commitment to bring in really good people,
6:28
Speaker 1: not because he makes a million dollars with every episode.
6:30
Speaker 1: It's because he's made a commitment that I'm going to
6:33
Speaker 1: go and find really good people and I'm going to
6:36
Speaker 1: bring them to you. So you don't have to go
6:37
Speaker 1: out there and find these people. I'm going to do
6:39
Speaker 1: it for you, right like, So my job is to
6:42
Speaker 1: just come here and make as much value as I
6:45
Speaker 1: possibly can to your audience because they want you. You're
6:51
Speaker 1: the guy that's going to bring another Solomon In, another
6:54
Speaker 1: Gary Be or whoever else that you have lined up.
6:58
Speaker 1: Because that's kind of how we listen into podcasts, right.
7:00
Speaker 1: We listen to podcasts because we know the podcast is
7:03
Speaker 1: going to deliver value. We don't just go and chase
7:06
Speaker 1: guests because that's really not it. But every entrepreneur should
7:11
Speaker 1: be thinking about what am I doing to make my
7:15
Speaker 1: mission bigger? Right, Like it's the it's our job. We
7:18
Speaker 1: have a passion. We're passionate about the problem that we solve, right,
7:22
Speaker 1: and that that impact that you want to create. You
7:26
Speaker 1: have to get out there. You're the Martin Luther King
7:28
Speaker 1: junior with I have a dream.
7:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, so what to that point, Tom and I agree,
7:34
Speaker 2: But there is what happens if leaders. What have you
7:39
Speaker 2: seen when leaders hide behind the brand instead of becoming
7:43
Speaker 2: the voice of that mission. They're like, okay, well let's
7:45
Speaker 2: just go together. What have you seen over your twenty
7:47
Speaker 2: plus years working with companies? Because they some of them
7:50
Speaker 2: may have started that way, but then they kind of,
7:52
Speaker 2: like you said, they kind of maybe hide.
7:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, you get complacent, Yeah, your business is good. I
7:56
Speaker 1: don't need to do it so well. We work with
7:58
Speaker 1: a lot of second generation business owner. So I come
8:01
Speaker 1: from Chicago. Chicago is like notorious for industrial manufacturing companies,
8:06
Speaker 1: and those kinds of brands don't have a voice. There's
8:09
Speaker 1: no ceo getting on video and saying my widget is
8:13
Speaker 1: better than her widget, because they're all stelling commodity at
8:15
Speaker 1: some point. So then then you now sell the business
8:19
Speaker 1: or the kids are taken over. They don't have the
8:22
Speaker 1: same passion. They just have a business handed over to them.
8:25
Speaker 1: To see what I'm saying now, they're like, I don't know.
8:27
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm the owner. I'm the new owner of
8:29
Speaker 1: a fifty million dollar manufacturing company. I just want to
8:32
Speaker 1: make money, right. But then what happens is that they
8:37
Speaker 1: stop innovating or or the competition takes over for whatever reason.
8:42
Speaker 1: It is not because they don't have the capability, is
8:44
Speaker 1: that the mission is not as clear to their employees
8:48
Speaker 1: that are frontline or whatever else to just sort of
8:50
Speaker 1: look at it like it's a cash cop or makes
8:52
Speaker 1: money and it just kind of runs and you know,
8:54
Speaker 1: marketing managers come and go, vps come and go, and
8:57
Speaker 1: it's just sort of like another run of the mill organize,
9:00
Speaker 1: Whereas if you have a leader who's outspoken, very very
9:03
Speaker 1: you know, mission oriented, and say, guys, we're gonna reinvent
9:07
Speaker 1: this industry. We want to be the number one in
9:09
Speaker 1: this space. We want to be the best joint of
9:12
Speaker 1: whatever it is that we sell. We actually are, okay
9:15
Speaker 1: that we're not the biggest, but we're gonna be the best.
9:18
Speaker 1: Maybe the biggest is like an international company or something.
9:22
Speaker 1: It's what We're gonna make sure we know every single
9:25
Speaker 1: client by name. We're gonna make sure our customer service
9:27
Speaker 1: is second to none. We're gonna make sure that our
9:29
Speaker 1: response time is milli seconds. What happens to the people
9:33
Speaker 1: working there, They're gonna get fired up. They're gonna be like, oh,
9:37
Speaker 1: I'm so glad I work here, because everywhere else the
9:41
Speaker 1: employee's morales not greater. They don't want to you know
9:44
Speaker 1: what I mean. They don't want to put in the
9:45
Speaker 1: extra effort. There is no customer success metric that they're chasing.
9:50
Speaker 1: It's just I believe that that comes from the top.
9:53
Speaker 1: You can't never let it come from the bottom. No
9:55
Speaker 1: one's gonna wake up and say, well, I'm gonna make
9:57
Speaker 1: sure that I'm gonna crush it today. It doesn't look
10:00
Speaker 1: like that they're going to only eat the energy of
10:02
Speaker 1: the person that is just it's doing that. And let
10:05
Speaker 1: me tell you, uh, Mark Binnief Salesforce. I've seen him
10:09
Speaker 1: in person a dream Force. He's the same fired up
10:13
Speaker 1: guy that he was since day one. And he has
10:16
Speaker 1: I don't know how many salespeople, but let me tell you,
10:19
Speaker 1: the best salesperson in that company is him. You can't
10:22
Speaker 1: beat him. Right, he's on CNBCS and given a key
10:25
Speaker 1: out there literally the brand that and and I could
10:29
Speaker 1: use elon, but there's a lot of issues with Yeah,
10:33
Speaker 1: who's more passionate about space. It's not the lead engineer.
10:38
Speaker 1: It's this guy who's making up stuff saying I gotta
10:42
Speaker 1: go to you know, Mars and and die there. Well,
10:45
Speaker 1: I guess that's that's like, that's the best example because
10:49
Speaker 1: nobody else is going to have that passion. And by
10:51
Speaker 1: the way, this is not a temporary increase in business.
10:54
Speaker 1: It's not a marketing tactic. It's not like you're going
10:56
Speaker 1: to make more money, which all of it is true.
10:59
Speaker 1: By the way, way, I do when I was talking
11:01
Speaker 1: about getting up you know our customers on podcasts I
11:06
Speaker 1: get a lot of authors and speakers reaching out to
11:08
Speaker 1: us saying, you know, how do we generate more business?
11:11
Speaker 1: And I say, well, how many podcasts do you go on?
11:13
Speaker 1: And I asked these questions. I'm like, you want to
11:15
Speaker 1: promote a book, it's a cost. A book is a cost.
11:18
Speaker 1: It's not a book, it's it's what is it that
11:20
Speaker 1: you believe in? You know, it's all of the things
11:22
Speaker 1: that you learned. You are so passionate about your ten, twenty, thirty,
11:27
Speaker 1: fifty hundred years of experience, whatever it is you put
11:29
Speaker 1: into an eight dollar book not because you'd love it
11:32
Speaker 1: to make eight dollars, it's because you're hoping a million
11:35
Speaker 1: people are going to be impacted by it. Well, I said,
11:38
Speaker 1: if you didn't go out there and promote your book,
11:40
Speaker 1: who's going to do it for you? Right?
11:42
Speaker 2: But right right, just recorded the podcast with a author.
11:46
Speaker 2: He was on just just yesterday we recorded Jack.
11:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, So if if if David Carr didn't go on
11:55
Speaker 1: podcasts to talk about his book, is Solomni going to
11:58
Speaker 1: go and talk about David's book? It's going right, So
12:00
Speaker 1: let's just let's fast forward. Here's the example I was
12:03
Speaker 1: getting at. So I asked this gentleman that we just
12:07
Speaker 1: decided we're going to work together. But I said, go
12:09
Speaker 1: to Perplexity, Chatgibt anywhere, who is solemnon Timothy. All the
12:13
Speaker 1: citations of what Chad Gipt, Perplexity Grock Claude knows about
12:18
Speaker 1: me came from a podcast, So none of it came
12:21
Speaker 1: from my personal website or company website or anything. It
12:24
Speaker 1: came from third party websites that it trusts and it
12:26
Speaker 1: finds useful, resourceful, like Forbes or Inc. Magazine, Fast Company, whatever,
12:31
Speaker 1: or podcast which is considered media. So I said, I
12:35
Speaker 1: didn't tell it in the morning. This is what I
12:37
Speaker 1: want to be. Here's who I am, here's my clients.
12:40
Speaker 1: I can't go train chat, GPT what I wanted to
12:42
Speaker 1: say because I'm here telling them what to say. It
12:45
Speaker 1: can only pick up information from third party sources that trust,
12:49
Speaker 1: and it can cite, well, where is the information about
12:52
Speaker 1: you on the internet for it to answer when somebody
12:55
Speaker 1: else asks me, right where? Exactly exactly. That's exactly why
13:01
Speaker 1: it was.
13:01
Speaker 2: One of my questions to your point is you know
13:04
Speaker 2: how content has changed the way we trust and build
13:08
Speaker 2: our business. And you're what I'm hearing you say is
13:10
Speaker 2: podcast is one of those things. And I feel like,
13:13
Speaker 2: and I love your thoughts on this, Solomon. If a
13:15
Speaker 2: podcast is we're not using AI or anything, it's literally
13:19
Speaker 2: you're getting real Solomon and real David here talking in
13:21
Speaker 2: real time.
13:22
Speaker 1: Mistakes and all, and we might mess up on something,
13:24
Speaker 1: but that's okay.
13:25
Speaker 2: I mean, we're part we're human and I think I think, Salmon,
13:29
Speaker 2: I want you to just comment on this.
13:30
Speaker 1: I think that there's a we're seeing it.
13:32
Speaker 2: I'm undercurrent, but I think it's going to grow as
13:35
Speaker 2: things get quote unquote polished by AI and other things
13:37
Speaker 2: of like. But I want to actually connect with a
13:39
Speaker 2: real person that I can actually feel truly like I
13:44
Speaker 2: love my clients. I want to I want to love them,
13:46
Speaker 2: I want to lift them up, I want to help them.
13:48
Speaker 2: I don't think AI is ever going to do that.
13:50
Speaker 2: It's gonna will know in our money and we'll know
13:53
Speaker 2: it's not totally real. And you're helping your clients and
13:56
Speaker 2: advocating them for them, Solomon, but speak to what you're
13:58
Speaker 2: seeing in the marketplace of like you said, content and
14:02
Speaker 2: reaching people.
14:03
Speaker 1: Absolutely so, our whole marketplace has been shifted thanks to CHADGPT,
14:09
Speaker 1: Open AI and all the things that's happened. Search is
14:12
Speaker 1: no longer a thing that we do in Google. It's
14:15
Speaker 1: something that we do inside AI LLLMS and you name
14:18
Speaker 1: it right. So the buying behavior has changed. Our behavior
14:22
Speaker 1: is now going and finding a business with high number
14:26
Speaker 1: of reviews on CHATGPT. I'm just using that as example.
14:29
Speaker 1: It's got the most user base eight hundred and eighty
14:32
Speaker 1: million or some users at the end of last year.
14:34
Speaker 1: So it's like, there's got a lot of people using
14:36
Speaker 1: this thing. So we're not using Google to do that.
14:40
Speaker 1: So what happens if you don't show up in that
14:43
Speaker 1: brain inside CHATGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Grock, any of them, Well,
14:48
Speaker 1: you don't exist because our decision making has gone from
14:51
Speaker 1: going to Google, clicking on blue links ten of them
14:55
Speaker 1: and making the assessments ourselves in our brains are not
14:58
Speaker 1: the artificial brain, real brain, right, and then assessing, oh,
15:02
Speaker 1: good review, bad review. I'm gonna call Bob and then
15:06
Speaker 1: have them fix my whatever. To go to jadgib to
15:09
Speaker 1: say find me a business and da da da da
15:11
Speaker 1: right and so, and then it gives you three options.
15:14
Speaker 1: They don't give you ten like Google. There's no links.
15:17
Speaker 1: It just says big two and three, and so what
15:20
Speaker 1: do we do. We think that as our assistant did
15:23
Speaker 1: all the work for me, we just call the first one. Now,
15:26
Speaker 1: those ten people that used to be on Google, seven
15:28
Speaker 1: of them are no longer getting any calls because Jagibty
15:32
Speaker 1: only shows you three. If you one more and you
15:35
Speaker 1: said give me more, I'll give you two more. Now
15:36
Speaker 1: you have five, you're still losing five. Other businesses that
15:40
Speaker 1: can do that. So if you're not creating the type
15:43
Speaker 1: of content that AI is reading and then understanding, like
15:47
Speaker 1: YouTube videos and Instagram content and everything else, it is
15:51
Speaker 1: not going to cite you and put you on the top.
15:55
Speaker 1: And that's the real that's the real problem here. So
15:58
Speaker 1: it's not just founder wanting to get the mission out there.
16:01
Speaker 1: We no longer live in a world where just running
16:04
Speaker 1: some ads on Facebook or Google is going to get
16:06
Speaker 1: you in or just showing it inside Google. Because we've
16:09
Speaker 1: been here for thirty years, it is enough, Right, We're
16:12
Speaker 1: going to lose calls because fundamentally the whole thing is shifted.
16:17
Speaker 1: If we're not changing with this big change that I'm
16:21
Speaker 1: seeing in the marketplace, like that's one of the reasons
16:23
Speaker 1: we get our clients on podcasts is because we need
16:27
Speaker 1: to continually push their brand out there for these tools
16:31
Speaker 1: to go and read and understand. So I'll give you
16:34
Speaker 1: a perfect example. I can search for David Carr today
16:37
Speaker 1: and I'm going to get a different answer than two
16:39
Speaker 1: weeks from now because it now reads more information you
16:42
Speaker 1: put out since this search and to the next one,
16:46
Speaker 1: and it's going to try to bring the latest information
16:48
Speaker 1: there is about you. So if you were coded in
16:51
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal, it's going to pick that up and
16:53
Speaker 1: put it on the top of that saying, well, David
16:55
Speaker 1: was coded on Wall Street Journals so and so day.
16:58
Speaker 1: Because it knows it's studied and index and archive whatever
17:01
Speaker 1: you want to call it. It understood it's been trained
17:04
Speaker 1: by that new information about you. Or it'll go do
17:06
Speaker 1: a real time search and find all of that information
17:09
Speaker 1: and give the user a really up to date picture
17:13
Speaker 1: of who David car is. Our customers don't know that,
17:16
Speaker 1: they don't understand that. Most entrepreneurs don't understand that what
17:20
Speaker 1: you did in the past isn't going to get you
17:23
Speaker 1: in the front of CHGPT perplexity. That's that's a natural
17:28
Speaker 1: kind of lead into my next question.
17:30
Speaker 2: Really, well, well, what I found as steward your business
17:32
Speaker 2: is that the businesses usually stall when the founder's clarity
17:38
Speaker 2: starts stops translating through the entire organization. There's not clarity,
17:42
Speaker 2: and so we're not we're not thinking clearly. It's affecting
17:45
Speaker 2: how we develop our people and our teams and our
17:47
Speaker 2: marketing initiatives. And so one of the things again you
17:50
Speaker 2: and I are talked about before we recorded this podcast
17:52
Speaker 2: is how do we look at things differently and not
17:55
Speaker 2: just do the same old There's there's a great book
17:57
Speaker 2: out there, ten X Diseas than two X, and there's
17:59
Speaker 2: a different and the way you think, And we talked
18:01
Speaker 2: about this of this TENX growth versus incremental growth and
18:07
Speaker 2: what have you seen that separates that mindset of like,
18:09
Speaker 2: oh you because you're asking some people to maybe do
18:11
Speaker 2: some revolutionary things they haven't thought about before, they haven't
18:14
Speaker 2: considered like we just do this normal, traditional way, right
18:17
Speaker 2: and obviously you just outline that's not working anymore, But
18:20
Speaker 2: talk about like how do we get there? How do
18:22
Speaker 2: we get from that incremental thinking? What have you seen?
18:26
Speaker 1: Absolutely so, just using the AI search as an example,
18:30
Speaker 1: if you're a founder and you're working really hard for
18:33
Speaker 1: the future, So you show up inside chat GPT, that's
18:36
Speaker 1: a ten X move, that's what I say. Or just
18:39
Speaker 1: doing same, well, the same thing that you're doing right now,
18:41
Speaker 1: kind of waiting for a lead to come in or
18:43
Speaker 1: referral sources or networking. Well, the best chance, the best
18:47
Speaker 1: best bet is you're going to two x because you're
18:50
Speaker 1: going to get some of the same thing that you're
18:53
Speaker 1: being getting and you might grow ten percent or twenty percent.
18:56
Speaker 1: In five years, you're going to be whatever it is.
18:58
Speaker 1: So the NX moves are much more strategic. In other words,
19:03
Speaker 1: you're going to cut out all of these other marketing
19:06
Speaker 1: and you're going to focus on this other thing which
19:09
Speaker 1: has so much potential. Because it's so early, it's kind
19:13
Speaker 1: of like mine bigcoin when it was three thousand dollars.
19:16
Speaker 1: It's so early. Nobody freaking knows that it's going to
19:18
Speaker 1: be one hundred and fifty thousand dollars or whatever it is.
19:20
Speaker 1: One hundred thousand dollars or seventy thousands. Nobody knows. But
19:23
Speaker 1: we know it's not a fad, we know it's not
19:25
Speaker 1: going away. We know that next year it's going to
19:28
Speaker 1: be smarter than it is this year. So do I
19:31
Speaker 1: want to invest my time on a ten x idea
19:34
Speaker 1: or do I just double down on what has worked
19:37
Speaker 1: for the last fifty years or whatever many years. That's
19:41
Speaker 1: that's the mindset. So what we work with founders, we
19:44
Speaker 1: ask these same questions, where do you make the most
19:47
Speaker 1: amount of money? Is that this product or is it
19:50
Speaker 1: that product? And oftentimes the product that they make the
19:53
Speaker 1: most amount of money, they market the least because they
19:57
Speaker 1: put a lot of time and energy into the thing
20:00
Speaker 1: to stay competitive in a commodity like product because everybody
20:05
Speaker 1: else's marketing. So we're like, we got to get in
20:07
Speaker 1: the door for this thing because that's the first thing
20:10
Speaker 1: they want. I said, great, But then there's this other thing.
20:13
Speaker 1: You make like eighty percent margin. I don't know, I'm
20:15
Speaker 1: just making something. Yeah, sure, you makes so much more
20:18
Speaker 1: money doing Let's just use you and say let's say
20:20
Speaker 1: you did speaking engagement and David, you charge one hundred
20:23
Speaker 1: thousand dollars per speaking but you can sell all the
20:26
Speaker 1: books you want. You're making ninety nine cents. You have
20:28
Speaker 1: to sell one hundred thousand books two hundred thousand people,
20:32
Speaker 1: and Amazon takes half of it, and you're left with
20:34
Speaker 1: fifty cents. You're still not making as much as one
20:37
Speaker 1: speaking engagement. So to me, what we would try to
20:40
Speaker 1: figure out is that we should stop wasting your time
20:42
Speaker 1: on all this selling, this other stuff. We should just
20:44
Speaker 1: get you in front of the right people who can
20:47
Speaker 1: hire you to speak for their team and give you
20:49
Speaker 1: what you're worth one hundred grand. To me, that's what
20:53
Speaker 1: it's going to take me to help you tanext your
20:55
Speaker 1: business if you get rid of all these other noise,
20:58
Speaker 1: and then we focus your attention on a few if
21:02
Speaker 1: not one, so you can actually grow. If that makes sense,
21:06
Speaker 1: we could know that makes sense.
21:08
Speaker 2: I mean I think I think sometimes they in my
21:11
Speaker 2: experienced Solomon, they don't how have you helped diagnosis? Because
21:15
Speaker 2: sometimes I think they might think they're actually being more
21:17
Speaker 2: in you said the question. I heard you say where
21:19
Speaker 2: you make the most money. You're breaking this down because
21:22
Speaker 2: I think some of the leaders are under underestimating this
21:26
Speaker 2: strategic position and going through this strategy and slowing down
21:30
Speaker 2: long enough to get ready. And can you talk a
21:34
Speaker 2: little bit about that, just how you work with folks
21:36
Speaker 2: or anybody that it's thinking about. They're going so fast,
21:40
Speaker 2: they're not slowing them down. How can we be more
21:42
Speaker 2: strategic in our positioning.
21:44
Speaker 1: Absolutely well. We talked about strategic coach last time. That's
21:47
Speaker 1: kind of how I learned all of these insights. So
21:52
Speaker 1: what strategic coach teaches you is to think about your thinking.
21:57
Speaker 1: Mm hm, I guess that's the first thing I wanted
21:59
Speaker 1: to just get out there. We got to think about
22:00
Speaker 1: our thinking. So most entrepreneurs are too busy running the business,
22:05
Speaker 1: being the you know whatever, the go to for everything,
22:08
Speaker 1: but we don't try to think about whether or not
22:10
Speaker 1: we're thinking the right way. We're thinking about it the
22:13
Speaker 1: right way, we're thinking about it from a long term
22:15
Speaker 1: perspective versus we're just trying to make it to another year,
22:19
Speaker 1: which is a two x thinking. Ten X thinking is well,
22:24
Speaker 1: I don't want to be done doing this in the
22:26
Speaker 1: next year, or I don't want to do this. I
22:28
Speaker 1: don't want to be done doing this for the next
22:30
Speaker 1: ten years. What's going to take me to be the
22:33
Speaker 1: best version of this kind of business or whatever you're
22:36
Speaker 1: running in the next thirty years. And a lot of times,
22:40
Speaker 1: if you look at like the S and B five
22:42
Speaker 1: hundred and all these big brands, the companies that are
22:45
Speaker 1: not going to be doing great right now are the
22:47
Speaker 1: ones that are not solving for this quarter. They're solving
22:50
Speaker 1: for the next twenty years. So no analyst likes them
22:53
Speaker 1: because they're not moving the needle fast enough. If they're
22:56
Speaker 1: not doing anything well, they're not rolling out AI. Look
22:59
Speaker 1: at Apple, they still have the crappiest intelligence and I'm like,
23:01
Speaker 1: this is not no AI, but they're not. They don't
23:04
Speaker 1: really care right now. They haven't cared for the last
23:06
Speaker 1: two years. But they're the biggest electronics company. We all
23:11
Speaker 1: wear their Apple Watch with half of intelligence and I
23:14
Speaker 1: hate it. I'm like, this thing doesn't work, but I'm
23:17
Speaker 1: still going to use the product because they didn't play
23:20
Speaker 1: a short term game, right, So it's like, we don't
23:23
Speaker 1: have to try to win this quarter or this six months.
23:27
Speaker 1: What if we can become the beast. So what happens
23:29
Speaker 1: is when you start thinking more long term, which is
23:31
Speaker 1: that strategic thing we're talking about, and your decision starts
23:35
Speaker 1: to change. You won't chase every dollar. You start chasing
23:37
Speaker 1: one hundred dollar bills. The one hundred dollars bills becomes
23:39
Speaker 1: one thousand dollars bills or whatever it is. So our
23:42
Speaker 1: decision to work on AI projects was not because we
23:45
Speaker 1: can't make money doing the things that we did before.
23:48
Speaker 1: We wanted to build an entity that cares so much
23:51
Speaker 1: more about being the AI go to because that's where
23:54
Speaker 1: going to be the biggest loss and confusion for entrepreneurs.
23:58
Speaker 1: We wanted to help them show up inside you GPT.
24:01
Speaker 1: We want to help them follow up with their leads
24:03
Speaker 1: on autopilot with no salesperson in the middle. We want
24:07
Speaker 1: to help them get found on podcasts using AI, no pitching,
24:12
Speaker 1: you know, happening. So like, we're building tools like that
24:16
Speaker 1: that we think are a ten X idea because we
24:19
Speaker 1: think the next revolution is autonomous agents doing work and
24:23
Speaker 1: it's not going to be hiring Molly and whoever else
24:26
Speaker 1: Lucy and then put them together in an office and
24:29
Speaker 1: you know, just do stuff. They're going to do it.
24:31
Speaker 1: But they're gonna do prompt engineering. They're not going to
24:33
Speaker 1: do the copy and paste of the world, right, So
24:37
Speaker 1: so yeah, we build these kinds of tools because we're thinking, okay, well,
24:40
Speaker 1: if we think more strategic, this is the direction that
24:43
Speaker 1: we need to move our clients and everybody that we
24:46
Speaker 1: talk about. We don't want to teach them how to
24:48
Speaker 1: use a CRM system because the next generation of workforce
24:52
Speaker 1: isn't going in and finding Bob and updating the record.
24:55
Speaker 1: It's going to download the last call transcript and replace
24:58
Speaker 1: and just it's going to replace all of the fields
25:00
Speaker 1: for you. It's gonna be a different thing. So I'll
25:04
Speaker 1: give you a perfect example. My CRM system is evaluated
25:08
Speaker 1: every day, okay, all the leads that are not being
25:12
Speaker 1: talked to every day, and it goes and finds like
25:15
Speaker 1: ten leads that we haven't talked to, goes and understands
25:19
Speaker 1: all the context information, like all the previous conversation, even
25:23
Speaker 1: how they found us, and sends them an email by itself,
25:30
Speaker 1: very personalized, asking hey, you want to circle back on
25:32
Speaker 1: this conversation. And then and then it skips anybody that
25:36
Speaker 1: has booked a call with me. I mean, this stuff
25:39
Speaker 1: is so interesting, I can't even believe it. And then
25:42
Speaker 1: it sends me an email or to my team that says,
25:45
Speaker 1: these are the people that we followed up with today,
25:47
Speaker 1: and these are the people we skipped. These are the
25:51
Speaker 1: people I had to process from the CRM to get
25:53
Speaker 1: to these few people. It's amazing. I want that for
25:57
Speaker 1: every organization. I don't want it, buddy, do not do that.
26:01
Speaker 1: M H. And I'm just like what more can we do?
26:04
Speaker 1: You know, like what can we figure out next? I
26:08
Speaker 1: loaded up with developers like do this, this, and this
26:11
Speaker 1: because I can't finish it.
26:12
Speaker 2: But I started, Yeah, you're gonna you're getting that help,
26:17
Speaker 2: You're coming to help. I think this is the thing
26:19
Speaker 2: that I find, honestly, with a lot of conversations I have,
26:21
Speaker 2: as Stuart your business, a lot of leaders business owner
26:25
Speaker 2: or the leader just carrying the weight to the growth
26:28
Speaker 2: and they don't and and without the alignment or the
26:30
Speaker 2: structure they need to sustain it. And this comes into
26:33
Speaker 2: people and I think absolutely, you can upscal our workforce,
26:36
Speaker 2: like you're saying, hey, they're not gonna be doing data injury.
26:39
Speaker 2: They can adjust and and I think I'm all for that.
26:42
Speaker 2: And that's something that Stuart your business, We're all about
26:44
Speaker 2: trying to help folks. And and for those of you
26:45
Speaker 2: who are listening, if that helps resonate, reach out to
26:48
Speaker 2: me or you're hearing Solomon talk about Hey, this part
26:51
Speaker 2: of your business and following up with your leads and such,
26:55
Speaker 2: reach out to Solomon. That's all going to be in
26:56
Speaker 2: our show notes. By the way, it's Solomon and I
26:58
Speaker 2: are connected on LinkedIn as well, but I think to
27:01
Speaker 2: your point, it's doing this front end work you're saying,
27:04
Speaker 2: Solomon of you know, I love personally really loves the podcast.
27:08
Speaker 2: Podcast tool came about, like you were saying earlier about
27:10
Speaker 2: like getting this clear as an as an authority building platform,
27:16
Speaker 2: a way of sharing your message with the world and
27:19
Speaker 2: being authentically real, because then we can use like you're saying,
27:23
Speaker 2: the emails nothing because it's pulling from that. But if
27:25
Speaker 2: you're if you don't have that foundation, then it's like
27:29
Speaker 2: like you said, it's it's not going to be authentic.
27:31
Speaker 2: It's not we've got to have it's it's what I
27:34
Speaker 2: hear you say, Salm, it's it's both.
27:36
Speaker 1: It's it's it's.
27:38
Speaker 2: Yes, and it's not only this. And I feel like
27:40
Speaker 2: there's a danger where people only want to go straight
27:42
Speaker 2: to the automation, straight to that, Like you said, the
27:45
Speaker 2: way with the premise of this, so here I think
27:47
Speaker 2: loud and clear i'm hearing you say, is do this
27:50
Speaker 2: strategic work on the front end, think about how you're
27:53
Speaker 2: going to do this, and then start to layer in
27:56
Speaker 2: the automations and the AI, not the other way around.
27:59
Speaker 1: Absolutely, And and I'll also you asked, how do you
28:01
Speaker 1: get to that level. Is that when a client comes
28:04
Speaker 1: and work wants to work with us, we just don't
28:06
Speaker 1: start running Facebook guys. We don't just start saying oh,
28:09
Speaker 1: we got to do this, because that's what a lot
28:10
Speaker 1: of premiitive Yeah, the kind of companies that you might
28:14
Speaker 1: find on the internet. I don't know. Yeah. I would
28:17
Speaker 1: stop and say, well, well, David, why are we doing this?
28:20
Speaker 1: What are we trying to accomplish? Yes, And they're like, oh,
28:22
Speaker 1: I just need leads. I said, well, well how many
28:24
Speaker 1: leads do you need? Wait? Where is these leads going?
28:29
Speaker 1: Who's calling the leads? What are you doing with the
28:31
Speaker 1: leads you made last month? They just said, wait a minute,
28:34
Speaker 1: what are you asking me all these questions? I just
28:36
Speaker 1: need you to work with me, to just give me
28:38
Speaker 1: more leads. I said, that's all I want. I said, well,
28:40
Speaker 1: we're probably not the good fit for you, because you
28:42
Speaker 1: need to go work with somebody who is going to
28:44
Speaker 1: just give you more leads, and then you're going to
28:45
Speaker 1: be the exact same place asking for more leads twelve
28:48
Speaker 1: months from now and twenty four months from now, except
28:51
Speaker 1: you have such a big hole in your funnel you're
28:52
Speaker 1: going to want more leads because you're losing them faster
28:54
Speaker 1: than you're getting them right, And I said, I can
28:57
Speaker 1: I cannot help you, And they said, well, what do
28:59
Speaker 1: you mean. It's because I don't want to get involved
29:02
Speaker 1: with somebody who's not willing to fix the bigger problems
29:05
Speaker 1: in the business. And that's when we get into those
29:07
Speaker 1: strategic questions, like what are we trying to be in
29:09
Speaker 1: three years? What are we trying to be in five years?
29:11
Speaker 1: And if you're in an organization you've ever heard of EOS,
29:13
Speaker 1: EOS has like a three year, a five year, ten year. Well,
29:16
Speaker 1: wouldn't it be nice to know everybody here knows where
29:18
Speaker 1: we're going in ten years? Wouldn't that be nice? Now
29:21
Speaker 1: nobody knows where we're going to be in ten years.
29:24
Speaker 1: We might be in Mars with Elon, but like, but
29:28
Speaker 1: it would be nice to know what we would like
29:29
Speaker 1: to be in ten years. It's the same exact thing, right,
29:33
Speaker 1: So when we start going that level, they don't become
29:36
Speaker 1: so handicapped that leads aren't the problem. They start to
29:40
Speaker 1: see that, well, maybe we should not close these little clients,
29:43
Speaker 1: and maybe we should focus on those bigger clients. Maybe
29:47
Speaker 1: we don't need to just grind it out trying to
29:49
Speaker 1: make another week a month. Maybe we need to be
29:51
Speaker 1: more focused on the kind of clients that we should
29:54
Speaker 1: be bringing on right with those ten x opportunities. So
29:58
Speaker 1: I think it really starts again and from the top
30:00
Speaker 1: having those kinds of conversations. You don't know how many
30:03
Speaker 1: times we get trapped into this we don't got enough leads? Yes, well, okay,
30:09
Speaker 1: maybe it is a fact we don't have enough leads.
30:12
Speaker 1: There's a lot of reasons right now. The market could
30:14
Speaker 1: be a reason, maybe that people are laying up, people off, Like,
30:17
Speaker 1: I don't know why we don't have enough leads, but
30:19
Speaker 1: let me tell you, if you ran a million dollars
30:21
Speaker 1: in Google ads last year, it's going to cost you
30:23
Speaker 1: more because Google ads have become more expensive a year
30:27
Speaker 1: later and their algorithm is not even the same, and
30:31
Speaker 1: so like, there's a lot of reasons why last year
30:34
Speaker 1: to this year our numbers are different. There's a million reasons.
30:37
Speaker 1: Maybe you switch CRM systems and all the tracking is
30:39
Speaker 1: jacked up. I don't know, yep, but we should still
30:42
Speaker 1: stop and say, well, are we even advertising the right service?
30:47
Speaker 1: And are we spending every single dollar as a good
30:51
Speaker 1: steward of our resources or are we just trying to
30:54
Speaker 1: get more leads at any cost because there's a lot
30:57
Speaker 1: of leads that are not qualified. Why waste your time
30:59
Speaker 1: in the first late? Right?
31:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, And to your point, Solomon, I really want to
31:04
Speaker 2: emphasize this as you're listening to folks on the podcast,
31:06
Speaker 2: like Solomon's investing his time, He's coming and bringing value.
31:09
Speaker 2: I'm coming here. We're not asking you to pay anything
31:11
Speaker 2: for this. Otherwise, we love your comments and feedbacks and
31:14
Speaker 2: review We definitely welcome that. But to the point what
31:18
Speaker 2: you're bringing Solomon is you're asking clarifying questions. I do
31:21
Speaker 2: the same thing as doing your business. Why are you
31:24
Speaker 2: doing this? What are you trying to achieve here? Because
31:27
Speaker 2: there's too many people out there, and unfortunately it's amplified
31:30
Speaker 2: by AA in a bad way of I get every
31:33
Speaker 2: day on LinkedIn. Could you use more leads or you
31:37
Speaker 2: know whatever? It this constant barrage and I'm like, you don't.
31:40
Speaker 2: You've not taken any understanding of me and where I'm going.
31:44
Speaker 2: What you do you know what on my planet? Like
31:46
Speaker 2: you said, to your point, do you know my plan
31:47
Speaker 2: in the next year, two years, three years?
31:50
Speaker 1: No, you don't know.
31:52
Speaker 2: You just look at a service that I offer, and
31:55
Speaker 2: you don't you just kind of extrapolate and assume that
31:57
Speaker 2: that's a one size fits all, And I think that
32:00
Speaker 2: it's a real danger for any business owner.
32:02
Speaker 1: Don't assume. You know, you've got to.
32:04
Speaker 2: Listen to the clients and things that are shifting and
32:07
Speaker 2: in the market. Understanding to your point Solomon, and be curious.
32:11
Speaker 2: And that's why I have Solomon on here so that way,
32:13
Speaker 2: you know, here's somebodyho's going to ask you some questions
32:15
Speaker 2: honestly and really help you see is this thrite fit?
32:18
Speaker 2: Is this the right direction? What do we need to
32:20
Speaker 2: start doing? What do we stop doing? What do we
32:22
Speaker 2: need to sustain doing? Tholm and I really appreciate that
32:25
Speaker 2: you bring that, you know, that drive in what you do.
32:31
Speaker 1: It's what entrepreneurs are known for. You know, there's an
32:35
Speaker 1: assessment I recommend everybody take. It's called Kobe Assessment. I'm
32:38
Speaker 1: pretty sure then maybe, but there's one of the things
32:42
Speaker 1: on there is quick start, and quick starts are mostly
32:45
Speaker 1: what entrepreneurs are. We're really good at starting new things.
32:48
Speaker 1: You watch a video, you're like, I got to go
32:49
Speaker 1: buy this. Then you see another thing I gotta go buy.
32:52
Speaker 1: We're really good at starting, we have very little follow through,
32:54
Speaker 1: which is why we you know, you want to team
32:56
Speaker 1: up a visionary with an integrator because visionaries is moving
32:59
Speaker 1: so fast they can't even kick up with themselves. And
33:02
Speaker 1: so same thing happens when it comes to marketing. You're
33:05
Speaker 1: just ready to go and run ads, but we don't
33:07
Speaker 1: know why, and we don't actually know what happened last
33:10
Speaker 1: time or the last week. It's just kind of a problem. Right,
33:13
Speaker 1: So I'm like a quick start nine. My score is eight,
33:17
Speaker 1: but I'm like a ten. I'm like, I'm sure I
33:19
Speaker 1: screwed up a question. I'm really a fast movie. So
33:23
Speaker 1: I know my weakness is not being strategic. It's not,
33:28
Speaker 1: but I forced myself and kind of why you know,
33:30
Speaker 1: I'm in communities, like we just mentioned it, is so
33:33
Speaker 1: that I could be reminded that sometimes I can make
33:35
Speaker 1: a two X decision. Maybe I could just just all
33:38
Speaker 1: settle for a two X deal because because we're like, oh,
33:41
Speaker 1: we need the revenue or whatever else. But oftentimes it's
33:44
Speaker 1: happening at the expense of a ten X opportunity. That's
33:47
Speaker 1: what happens because you only have too much time and
33:49
Speaker 1: energy you can't pursue everything, so when you say yes
33:52
Speaker 1: to one thing, you're saying no to something else. So
33:55
Speaker 1: oftentimes you need partners that are going to stop you
33:58
Speaker 1: and ask you the tough ques questions because you yourself
34:01
Speaker 1: don't know how to ask that question yourself. Yourself will
34:05
Speaker 1: sell yourself on a two x deal when somebody has
34:08
Speaker 1: to be saying, look, David, this is not the best
34:10
Speaker 1: interest for you. Because I can get you in front
34:13
Speaker 1: of two hundred fifty thousand dollars speaking engagement. Why settle
34:16
Speaker 1: for twenty five thousand, right, You're like, oh, really, okay,
34:22
Speaker 1: well then let's let's focus on that. Well, what do
34:24
Speaker 1: I gotta do? Well, you gotta get on tech talk,
34:25
Speaker 1: we gotta do this, we gotta do that. But but
34:28
Speaker 1: the outcome is going to be far greater, right, Like,
34:31
Speaker 1: that's what we want. We want to be the number
34:34
Speaker 1: one podcast, David. We don't want to be number twenty seven, right, Right,
34:37
Speaker 1: there's no point, there's no value in that. We will. Yeah,
34:40
Speaker 1: when you start thinking that way, then every time you
34:44
Speaker 1: have an episode launching, there will be four hundred thousand
34:47
Speaker 1: dollars in sales or whatever it is that is agreeing to.
34:50
Speaker 1: When when you're that number one, But isn't that worth it?
34:53
Speaker 1: That's the question you want to ask yourself. I've never
34:56
Speaker 1: heard an entrepreneur say, yeah, I'm okay being like the
34:59
Speaker 1: last one, where I'm okay being the fiftieth one, because
35:02
Speaker 1: that's not who we are, right, So they're always thinking
35:05
Speaker 1: that they're going to be this best, but the behavior
35:08
Speaker 1: doesn't always match up. Well, I heard a couple of
35:10
Speaker 1: different things I want to pull out there.
35:12
Speaker 2: I know we're getting closer to the end of the
35:13
Speaker 2: podcast here, but you've made some really great points, Solomon.
35:16
Speaker 2: Number one, what I heard you was doing this work
35:19
Speaker 2: of what I call self awareness. So we all have
35:21
Speaker 2: kind of a baseline IQ, but then there's this kind
35:24
Speaker 2: of a you know, this personal IQ of like who
35:28
Speaker 2: you are, and Colby is one of them. I use
35:30
Speaker 2: the five Voices as another tool. We call it a
35:32
Speaker 2: pioneer voice, similar Solomon, But I think all of those,
35:36
Speaker 2: I think taking a lot of them are great because
35:38
Speaker 2: it starts to paint a picture for you about who
35:40
Speaker 2: you are. And that's what you've said, like who am
35:42
Speaker 2: I and knowing and leaning in my strengths beyond my
35:44
Speaker 2: technical skills, and that's.
35:45
Speaker 1: What we do it through your business.
35:47
Speaker 2: Is we really help you lean into that so that
35:49
Speaker 2: when you work with somebody like Solomon, you can come
35:51
Speaker 2: into Solomon and say, I truly am the entrepreneur or
35:53
Speaker 2: I truly am maybe the implementer, and you understand your
35:56
Speaker 2: strengths and where you're going to shine and where you're going.
35:59
Speaker 1: To need help.
36:00
Speaker 2: And the more you can do that, in my experience, Solomon,
36:02
Speaker 2: it's just going to add gas to the fire in
36:04
Speaker 2: a good way, you know, to what that interaction and
36:07
Speaker 2: instead of it's going to be a little slower if
36:08
Speaker 2: you're not you don't have that as clear.
36:10
Speaker 1: And so I want to encourage folks if you haven't
36:12
Speaker 1: done that work.
36:12
Speaker 2: And I'll even put in the show notes the one
36:14
Speaker 2: I have the five voices assessment.
36:16
Speaker 1: You guys think it's absolutely.
36:17
Speaker 2: Free good in that in that journey And the other
36:19
Speaker 2: thing I heard you say, Solomon was putting yourself in
36:22
Speaker 2: rooms and spaces with others that hopefully are further along
36:26
Speaker 2: in the journey that know a little bit more, that
36:28
Speaker 2: are going to ask you some questions that are going
36:30
Speaker 2: to put you in a bit of a crucible to
36:33
Speaker 2: draw some better things out of you. Instead of just
36:36
Speaker 2: if you're the top of the pile, then that's the top.
36:39
Speaker 2: That means you're you're maybe going to that two X thinking.
36:43
Speaker 2: And I think that's part of leadership too, and where
36:45
Speaker 2: you've led company. Solomon is like, can you be humble
36:48
Speaker 2: enough and coachable enough to learn from others and put
36:52
Speaker 2: yourself in a situation. I was just talking to another
36:56
Speaker 2: coach today in Canada, and when we're talking about she
36:58
Speaker 2: was like, I think I should know more of this stuff,
37:01
Speaker 2: but I like have to lower my ego and realize that.
37:04
Speaker 2: And that's I think where you're getting success a'mut of
37:06
Speaker 2: that awareness and being in that room. Talk just briefly
37:09
Speaker 2: about that if you would.
37:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I didn't know about my Kobe score.
37:14
Speaker 1: I didn't know how bad I'm at sales when I
37:18
Speaker 1: had to get sales training help and I'm still getting
37:20
Speaker 1: sales training help. I didn't know. You know, I'm the
37:23
Speaker 1: founder of the company, and my brother would be he's
37:27
Speaker 1: my co founder, and there would be opportunities where we
37:29
Speaker 1: had to keep it up. He's on a sales call
37:31
Speaker 1: and I'm on a sales call. I did the in
37:33
Speaker 1: office sales call when he went out in the field
37:35
Speaker 1: and meant with somebody. So when he comes back and
37:38
Speaker 1: be like, how do your call go, I said, I
37:40
Speaker 1: don't know that. I think it went well. And then
37:43
Speaker 1: they wouldn't buy, and then and then he went and
37:45
Speaker 1: then he sold whatever he was and I just thought
37:47
Speaker 1: that they were a bad fit, they were a bad prospect.
37:50
Speaker 1: Just don't know. Clearly, I was a bad salesperson, That's
37:54
Speaker 1: what it was. It wasn't that we weren't. They came
37:56
Speaker 1: in and they wanted to buy whatever, and I just
37:58
Speaker 1: didn't know how to right. And so it's the same thing.
38:02
Speaker 1: I had to understand that I'm bad at sales. So
38:04
Speaker 1: I went through like five years of sales training. I know,
38:07
Speaker 1: this sounds really terrible. Then I realized that I wasn't
38:12
Speaker 1: asking the right questions, and I didn't have a sales process,
38:15
Speaker 1: and I didn't do any of the things that a
38:17
Speaker 1: good salesperson would do. Maybe I did all the talking
38:21
Speaker 1: and they didn't do any talking. You know, It's like
38:24
Speaker 1: maybe I was a very passionate technology guy. I told
38:28
Speaker 1: them everything they needed to know. And then right away,
38:31
Speaker 1: long story short, I realized that. And then we built
38:34
Speaker 1: a sales process for our company, and I teached and
38:37
Speaker 1: coach that to small organizations that don't have the they
38:41
Speaker 1: didn't know that they needed help, right, So all of
38:43
Speaker 1: that had to happen because, like you said, I had
38:45
Speaker 1: to understand that I'm bad at it, and I didn't know.
38:49
Speaker 1: Like I said, I didn't know how bad I was
38:50
Speaker 1: until I've taken some assessments and I said, you're a
38:53
Speaker 1: terrible salesperson. Same thing with quick start. I didn't know.
38:57
Speaker 1: I mean, I knew that about myself, but I didn't
38:59
Speaker 1: know there was an assessment that's going to tell me
39:02
Speaker 1: that this is the personality I've run with. So if
39:04
Speaker 1: I hired an assistant who's also a quick start, because
39:07
Speaker 1: what we're going to do, we're gonna start a lot
39:09
Speaker 1: of projects. We're never going to finish anything, right, So
39:12
Speaker 1: I make them do a COBE assessment and I make
39:14
Speaker 1: sure they're not a quick start or they're a low
39:16
Speaker 1: quick start, because I need high follow through for these people,
39:19
Speaker 1: if that makes sense. So absolutely, these are the kind
39:22
Speaker 1: of things that you get to do because because you're
39:25
Speaker 1: you're you know, you're you're understanding yourself. The second piece
39:28
Speaker 1: you said is you said, if you're at the top
39:30
Speaker 1: of the pile in the wrong pile. That's what I
39:32
Speaker 1: would say, because you should never be in that pile,
39:34
Speaker 1: because you should always have other people like you said,
39:37
Speaker 1: that are doing or further along than you are, that
39:41
Speaker 1: can mentor you and coach you. And so when I
39:43
Speaker 1: was at a EOS conference in Kansas City two weeks ago,
39:46
Speaker 1: I met a gentleman he's, uh, seventy years old, maybe
39:49
Speaker 1: he's ready to retire. And I said, his name is Pete,
39:54
Speaker 1: and I say, Pete, I need you to be my mentor.
39:57
Speaker 1: I literally and I just spoke to his business partner
39:59
Speaker 1: to I say, hey, we might do some business together,
40:01
Speaker 1: but Pete's going to be my mentor. I don't really
40:04
Speaker 1: work together or not. And I don't I need this
40:06
Speaker 1: guy in my life because he's he knows way more
40:11
Speaker 1: then I I than where I'm at. And so it's
40:15
Speaker 1: it's because you want to be in rooms with people
40:17
Speaker 1: that have gone way further than you or have more
40:21
Speaker 1: experiences in their lives so I can learn from their mistakes.
40:26
Speaker 1: He recommended me like six books to read. I'm I'm
40:29
Speaker 1: still working.
40:29
Speaker 2: On There you Go, There You Go. So so I
40:32
Speaker 2: know we're getting into the podcast. I think you know
40:34
Speaker 2: what I love is how you're showing up Steward and
40:37
Speaker 2: your company how you're taking care of your clients. And
40:42
Speaker 2: we've cared a lot of ground today on the podcast,
40:44
Speaker 2: But what would you say to that business owner, that
40:47
Speaker 2: founder or potentially aspiring founder, what would you say to
40:52
Speaker 2: them at the end of this podcast here today that
40:54
Speaker 2: they could start to apply in their life and you know,
40:58
Speaker 2: move in the right direction, Move in a direction that
41:00
Speaker 2: is actually going to get them in that ten X
41:02
Speaker 2: versus that two X.
41:03
Speaker 1: If you will, absolutely, I think it's first, grab that
41:07
Speaker 1: book and just kind of check it out, probably the
41:09
Speaker 1: first thing to do. It's nothing yet, it's just a
41:12
Speaker 1: way of thinking about it. But I would almost argue
41:15
Speaker 1: that the things that you might be thinking about right now,
41:17
Speaker 1: unless it's about AI or something like that, it might
41:20
Speaker 1: actually not be around too much longer. It's to figure
41:23
Speaker 1: out how can you integrate AI into your business or
41:27
Speaker 1: into what you do for clients, because right now, like
41:30
Speaker 1: I said, what we're dealing with is how do we
41:32
Speaker 1: help organizations fix some of the things that they're not doing.
41:35
Speaker 1: And we're only specifically touching lead generation and customer acquisition
41:39
Speaker 1: for AI. We're not touching their fulfillment. We're not touching
41:42
Speaker 1: anything else because we don't you know, we're not an
41:44
Speaker 1: AI implementation company. But what I want you to understand
41:48
Speaker 1: is that if we as founders aren't listening to what
41:51
Speaker 1: is happening in the marketplace, then we're probably going to
41:54
Speaker 1: be missing out on those TENX opportunities because you have
41:57
Speaker 1: to come up with those ideas right now on what
42:00
Speaker 1: you can be in ten years or five years or
42:02
Speaker 1: two years. Because this is we're still in the early games.
42:06
Speaker 1: We're early, early, early, and I'm fortunate enough. I'm not
42:10
Speaker 1: the smartest guy in the room. I have a bunch
42:12
Speaker 1: of people in this company. They're just eating this stuff
42:15
Speaker 1: up so I can keep throwing ideas at them. And
42:18
Speaker 1: we are no longer coding by hand. We are no
42:21
Speaker 1: longer doing this by hand. We're no longer doing that
42:24
Speaker 1: by hand. So we're getting more done because we're putting
42:28
Speaker 1: the energy and time to learning how to make it
42:32
Speaker 1: do the work. If that makes sense, So think about that.
42:35
Speaker 1: Just freeze up our time, freese up our energy to
42:38
Speaker 1: spend on more higher level work. So I would I
42:42
Speaker 1: would urge every single person. The other thing that would
42:44
Speaker 1: would say is go find a prompt that your customers
42:48
Speaker 1: are searching. So if you already have a business and
42:50
Speaker 1: you're making a million dollars or whatever, what is it
42:52
Speaker 1: that you do? Go put that in in your wife's
42:55
Speaker 1: chat GPT and see who is it's recommending for that thing.
43:00
Speaker 1: Is it recommending your business or is it recommending your competition?
43:03
Speaker 1: If you're not there, well there's your work cut out. First,
43:07
Speaker 1: you got to get better at doing the thing, and
43:09
Speaker 1: you got to get better being found for the thing
43:12
Speaker 1: that you do.
43:13
Speaker 2: Mm yeah, thank you Solomon. I really appreciate this conversation
43:17
Speaker 2: you've shared. It's definitely far beyond marketing. I hear a
43:21
Speaker 2: lot of clears about your leadership, your visibility, or how
43:24
Speaker 2: you to grow intentionally stewarding that influence that you have
43:28
Speaker 2: and building that business that really creates a lasting impact
43:31
Speaker 2: that's going to be around. I just want to say
43:33
Speaker 2: thank you for coming on the podcast and sharing your
43:35
Speaker 2: wisdom and insights with us today.
43:38
Speaker 1: Well, thanks for having me. It's been a great conversation.
43:40
Speaker 2: Absolutely for everyone listening. We're going to make sure you
43:43
Speaker 2: can follow Solomon's websites and podcasts and all that LinkedIn,
43:47
Speaker 2: all that good stuff, so you can definitely connect with
43:49
Speaker 2: them and learn more.
43:51
Speaker 1: Of course, you know if this something marked, you.
43:54
Speaker 2: Know, an idea on the leadership growth, how do you
43:57
Speaker 2: get using these tools getting the thing that healthier culture.
44:01
Speaker 2: I encourage you to reach out to me at Steward
44:03
Speaker 2: your business as well. We can learn more about the conversation.
44:07
Speaker 2: Of course, subscribe to the Business round Table podcast, even
44:10
Speaker 2: come on as as a guest, bring value as Solomon
44:12
Speaker 2: did today. And we really appreciate you guys joining us
44:17
Speaker 2: and hopefully we'll see you again next time. Until then,
44:19
Speaker 2: be well, it's everybody