Latest / Founder Talk with Alex Sheridan / How to use FLOW STATE to be 500% more productive with Rob Krecak

Transcript

How to use FLOW STATE to be 500% more productive with Rob Krecak · Founder Talk with Alex Sheridan

• 0:00
  You've started 10 businesses and then you've sold seven
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  companies. And I was like, what?
• 0:04
  Like, how was that even possibly?
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  My first thought was like, what do you know that most founders
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  don't know? I would say a lot of success in
• 0:12
  entrepreneurship is just. Rob Kretchak, founder of Humans
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  First. It's like, I'm doing a lot of
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  things. I worked all day, but I look
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  back on it and I'm like, did I really move the needle?
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  When you're in flow, you're up to 500% more productive than
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  when you're not in flow. And so that's why I'd like
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  protect this time so critically and just really trying to do my
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  best to get into flow every day. So you've obviously had multiple
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  businesses going at one time. Do you recommend that for most
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  entrepreneurs? It's a really good question,
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  Alex, and probably the most effective thing is to do a good
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  job with your existing clients because if you do a really good
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  job and you amaze them, they will refer people to you and
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  that is going to be your probably your number one source
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  of leads. I really want to make sure that
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  I'm enjoying the journey and enjoying what I'm doing.
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  And if I'm not enjoying that, then I want to do something
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  else. So man, I'm really excited to
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  talk with you today. I was doing like research on
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  your background and stuff and I saw, you know, you've started 10
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  businesses and then you've had seven sales.
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  You've sold seven companies. And I was like, what?
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  Like, how is that even possible? You don't even, I mean, you look
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  like a relatively younger person.
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  So I'm like, what? Like my first thought was like
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  what do you know that most founders don't know having sold
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  7 businesses and started 10? Because that's pretty uncommon.
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  Yeah, I mean, I would say a lot of success in entrepreneurship
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  is just grinding it out and doing the things that other
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  people aren't willing to do, you know, and sometimes that if I
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  can, I curse something. Sometimes that shit sucks.
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  Like that's, you know, but that's that's where you create
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  value is when you do things that other people aren't willing to
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  do. That is why those things are
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  difficult. And that's where you really can,
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  you know, outshine other people. My wife and I have, you know, a
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  list of family values and our number one family value is we do
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  hard stuff. And it's not.
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  So that's not just for the business world for me, that's
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  also in our life. You know, we, we want our son to
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  understand that we want to do difficult things because in the
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  long run those things are usually, you know, very, very
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  successful and also very challenging and rewarding at the
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  same time. Yeah, I heard there's a saying
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  it's like if you do the hard things, life becomes easy.
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  If you do all the easy things only life becomes very hard.
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  And I think it's like that common saying of like pick your
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  hard, choose your hard, you're going to go through challenges
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  and struggle to some capacity. I'd rather do it on a journey
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  that I'm excited about, something that I'm building and
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  I'm passionate about and I'm it's bringing me fulfilment and
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  happiness. Like why would I not want to do
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  that versus struggle and something that I hate?
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  So so yeah, 7, you know, 10 businesses, 7 sold.
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  Think of them listening right now.
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  We have a lot of founders, entrepreneurs listening.
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  I'm like, I'm just curious, maybe first of all, like what
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  kind of businesses were those? And we'll get into some of the
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  details and like how you think about business and that kind of
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  stuff, but a general idea of what types of businesses, you
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  know, have you started and sold. Yeah, so I the first three
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  businesses were Anytime Fitness health clubs.
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  So that's the world's largest 24 hour Coed fitness chain.
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  Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, great franchise.
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  Really, really loved working with them.
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  And I had three different clubs in three different states, one
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  in Arkansas, one in Wisconsin and one in here in Illinois.
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  And then I had 4U brick I fix cell phone repair stores.
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  So those were all in the Milwaukee area and that was also
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  a franchise. And then I had two technology
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  startups and then I have my current consultancy, Humans
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  First, doing fractional integrator work and fractional
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  CFO work. So, you know, a kind of AI kind
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  of joke that I have career ADD, although I do actually truly
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  have ADD and ADHD, like legitimately diagnosed, but, and
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  I always share that with people because I actually think that
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  ADHD, although a lot of people say it's a, you know, it's a
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  detriment, it actually is a something that can really help
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  you if you learn how to mitigate the weaknesses related to that
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  and then amplify the strengths. And so again, I joke that I joke
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  that I have career ADD because I always, you know, get involved
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  with something and then once I feel like I've mastered it, it
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  almost becomes sort of boring. And so I move on to something
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  else. And that's not to mean or say
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  that I didn't like that thing, but I always want a new
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  challenge. And so that's why I have a very,
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  you know, wide variety of interests and my businesses are
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  in a lot of really unrelated things.
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  I mean, fitness and then technology repair are literally
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  about as opposite as they could be, but I really like all those
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  things. And you said, you know, ADHD,
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  what is that? How does that show up for you?
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  Because I feel like I've met a lot of entrepreneurs and being
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  one myself, it's like we all kind of have a little bit of
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  that. Like I need something to keep me
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  going. Like I want to take on something
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  new. I want to grow some, build
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  something. And there's a time to do that.
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  And there's a time to obviously just like, hey, I need to focus
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  right now. Like I can do that next thing
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  tomorrow or the next week or whatever.
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  But how does that kind of show up for your daily life?
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  Yeah. Well, one of the things that I
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  think would be helpful to share with listeners is I didn't get
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  diagnosed till I was 38 and I'm 42 or right now.
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  So, you know, I, you know, went through all my schooling
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  basically and launched and operated almost all of those
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  businesses not having known that I had ADHD.
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  So I actually wish that if I could go back and do it earlier,
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  I wish it would have got diagnosed way sooner because it
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  would have allowed me to, I guess, give myself some grace,
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  right? And know that there's certain
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  things that I do or things that I say or ways that I behave that
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  are unavoidable because of ADHD. And it's not, again, it's not a
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  negative. It actually is a positive.
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  What's an? Example of some of that, like
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  one or two of those. Yeah.
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  So I'll kind of share a quick story.
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  So you know, I was operating my 4 cell phone repair stores
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  remotely while I was living in Denver and I while the stores
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  were in Milwaukee. And so I basically couldn't be
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  at the businesses physically. So I had a completely open
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  schedule. So I and I had read all the
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  books, you know, the productivity books like 4 hour
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  workweek, blah, blah, blah, all these things.
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  And I was like, all right, I am such a productive human being,
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  right? And I thought I was doing all
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  these things that were really valuable, but at the end of the
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  day, if I had to write down a list of the things that I
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  accomplished that were meaningful, it was actually
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  really short. And so I started asking myself,
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  I said, well, what what's going on here?
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  I feel like I'm busy for 8 hours a day and I feel like I'm doing
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  a lot of stuff, but it's actually not that valuable or
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  not moving the needle. And so that, So what I realized
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  is, and, and this again, this happens to a lot of people with
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  ADHD, you can kind of go down these rabbit holes.
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  And sometimes the rabbit holes are like, you know, helpful and
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  interesting, but sometimes they like just piss away a ton of
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  time. And I've found myself doing that
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  so often that I, I realized that I had to take a step back and
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  start to ask myself, like, well, what's going on here?
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  How can I change my habits and my behaviors in order to truly
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  move the needle on what's effective?
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  And so like forced me to completely revamp how I was
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  operating my business and what I was focusing on and how I was
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  doing stuff day-to-day. And so I ended up running
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  hundreds of, we'll call them small experiments on myself in
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  terms of productivity. And, you know, now I've
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  incorporated all of those habits into my day-to-day and I'm way
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  more productive and focusing on the right things.
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  And I also help other companies do that stuff.
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  So I think that's a big one that you hit on, which is that a lot
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  of entrepreneurs are busy, but not necessarily productive.
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  You know, it's like, I'm doing a lot of things.
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  I worked, I worked all day. But I look back on it and I'm
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  like, did I really move the needle?
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  Like, what did I actually do? We're gonna say something.
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  Go ahead. Yeah, well, so I, I always,
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  there's two simple questions that you can ask yourself and it
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  literally could change your entire view on what you're
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  doing. So here's the two questions.
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  And I run through this with entrepreneurs all the time.
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  The first question is, let's pretend this.
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  Then this is more like comes from a hypothetical standpoint,
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  so don't think about it quite literally.
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  But let's just pretend that you only had two hours per week to
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  work on your business. Not 2 hours a day, but two hours
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  in the whole week. OK.
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  And during those two hours, you can only do one activity 1 task.
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  You can't like, break it up and say I'm gonna do a bunch of
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  different things. What one activity would you do
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  during those two hours to produce the most value for your
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  company? So whatever the answer to that
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  question is, I actually don't care.
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  It's the next question that's more helpful.
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  The next question is how many hours per week do you currently
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  spend on that task? And what I, I've surveyed
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  hundreds of entrepreneurs around the world and executives and
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  the, so don't feel bad if the answer for you is 0 or close to
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  0, because the most common answer is between zero and five
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  hours per week. So the average person what what
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  they're really doing is they're going into their job or they're
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  working for their business and they're being reactive.
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  Every day they're reacting, they check their e-mail or they check
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  their Slack, and then they spend all this time triaging those
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  things when in reality, they should be spending the most time
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  maximizing that activity to and as the answer to question #1 And
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  so one of the things that I do is I help companies figure out
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  how they can maximize their time doing that, that activity.
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  And so think about it. If right now, let's say you
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  spend 5 hours on that activity and I can help you get to 20,
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  what does that do to the value of your company that just, we're
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  not talking like a small increase that could literally
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  double, triple the value of your company, especially if you can
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  get everyone at your company to do that.
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  Wow. I know there's people listening
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  and I mean, I even for me and you yourself, right?
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  It's like we think about this stuff all the time.
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  The stuff that we should be doing to grow the business is
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  not always what we spend the most of our time on.
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  I think it's a good exercise to actually be able to like vet
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  that stuff out and get it out there.
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  Right. And so, yeah, wow, man.
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  Like what are some of the, the tactical kind of things that you
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  do? Is it time blocks?
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  Is it, you know, like what are some of the, the things that
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  you're actually doing in the calendar to to change some of
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  these behaviors? Yeah.
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  So I, I, I'm a huge fan of time blocking.
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  I think that that's an absolute necessity.
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  I think that there's a lot of ways to do it.
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  I actually do something somewhat manually.
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  Like I basically and and, and again, like this is through many
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  ways of experimenting on myself. So it doesn't mean that you
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  necessarily have to do it this way.
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  But what I've found works best for me is I'm really the
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  freshest and do my best quality work early in the morning.
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  So basically every day from 8:00 AM to 11:00 AMI have an
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  infinitely, you know it. That time infinitely blocked off
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  my calendar, like forever. Monday through Friday, 8:00 AM
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  to 11:00 AM. And that's my GSD time, which
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  stands for Get Shit Done. So basically I do everything
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  possible to try to not schedule meetings, not do not take phone
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  calls, not make appointments, and just spend the first three
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  hours of the day doing the most important stuff for that day.
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  And for you, what are what is that usually for you?
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  What are those activities? Yeah.
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  So it depends on what I'm doing. If I'm working for a consulting
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  client, it might be doing an analysis for them.
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  If I'm working on a business like let's say it was for, you
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  know, for the cell phone repair stores, it might be, you know,
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  figuring out, maybe analyzing the financials for that business
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  or analyzing some of the reports and figuring out how we could
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  make that business more profitable.
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  Or meeting with a key. Figuring out how I could create
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  a structure for the staff in order to be able to scale the
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  business or something like that. You know, things that are
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  important, but you, if you don't set aside time for, you're not
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  gonna be able to, you know, move the needle on them.
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  Very much it. Almost feels like you could turn
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  5 working days into ten. Well, if you're like, you can
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  manipulate time as an entrepreneur, and I think that's
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  one of the most valuable things we could possibly do.
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  Well, it's it's Oh my God, that's so that's so great that
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  you just said that, Alex, because here's actually the
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  reason that I do this is there's some data behind what you just
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  said. Here's the data.
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  And again, I, I'm a I'm a finance guy.
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  I love data and all the, you know, numbers.
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  So when you get into a deep work state called flow, right, which
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  is what we're eventually trying to get to by being by blocking
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  off this three hours where you have no distractions.
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  These researchers from Harvard did a study and what they found
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  is that when you're in flow, you're up to 500% more
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  productive than when you're not in flow.
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  So what that literally means, and I'm so glad you mentioned
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  that, what that literally means is if you, if you get, if you
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  block off 2 hours per day and you're in flow, you can
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  literally accomplish more in those two hours than an entire
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  day without flow. And so that's why I'd like
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  protect this time so critically and just really trying to do my
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  best to get into flow every day. Does it happen every day?
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  Absolutely not. It doesn't.
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  It doesn't work like that. But even if I can get into flow
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  two or three days a week and crush it for three hours, I
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  literally can get more done in those that time than an entire
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  work week otherwise. Dang, so there's like data
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  behind this? That show I figured there was.
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  That what you said is true. Are there any things that you
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  found helpful to be able to get into flow state?
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  And how do you know if you're in a flow state to begin with?
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  Don't worry, we're gonna get to the business.
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  I've got a lot of good business questions I'm gonna ask you
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  about selling and that kind of stuff.
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  But this is just a good conversation cuz I think this is
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  like instantly valuable for people and applicable to them
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  right away. What is flow state?
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  How do you get into it? Yeah.
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  So flow state. So think about the last time
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  that you were at your at your job or working for your company
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  and you just felt like everything was just going
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  amazingly well, like you were crushing it that day.
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  You know, all, all the your meetings went really well.
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  Everything was just flowing smoothly.
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  It was like running really smoothly like that state of
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  mind. And, and maybe another thing
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  that might accompany that is time just seemed to go by really
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  quickly. Like it seemed like the time
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  just evaporated in a good way, in a good way, not in a bad way.
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  I feel like I'm in flow a lot of the time, but it sounds really
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  nerdy. But like when I'm financial
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  modelling, like, you know, I just put on some good medium
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  techno music, you know, blah, blah, blah.
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  And I'm just like in the Excel, I'm like, Oh my God, this is
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  actually great to me. It's like, it's like building
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  the financial vision for a company.
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  So anyway, the, the reason though that I, this is so
• 14:27
  important is, and again, let's go back to some data when you're
• 14:32
  in flow and you're interrupted, right?
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  And that could be by a phone call, e-mail, whatever, your
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  wife coming in and saying hello. It takes you 26 minutes to get
• 14:42
  back into Flow 26. So basically every single time
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  you get interrupted, it massively cuts down on your
• 14:48
  productivity. And so the whole idea behind
• 14:51
  this time blocking system for me is to block off 3 hours, get
• 14:56
  into Flow, have no distractions, and just get a lot of work done.
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  To directly answer your question, how do you do that?
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  It's really about creating a structure to not have these
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  distractions and give it, but most importantly, giving
• 15:11
  yourself permission to know that you can check.
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  You do. You don't have to check your
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  e-mail or Slack every three hours or during that three hours
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  and everything's going to be OK. Yeah, like you really have to
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  give yourself permission to do that.
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  Yes, zombie apocalypse will not break out if you don't check
• 15:27
  your e-mail. Yes, it's so true.
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  But it's an important thing because we do.
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  The reactive part we said earlier is so key.
• 15:34
  I've got these smartphones which are awesome, but they're also
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  like terrible at the same time because you're just, I find
• 15:39
  myself sometimes just like checking this app, this app,
• 15:41
  e-mail, social media, this, this, I'm like, what am I doing?
• 15:43
  I'm just looking for the next hit, the dopamine hit, you know
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  what I mean? So.
• 15:47
  And yeah, and, and a lot of So what people say to me because
• 15:52
  you, you were laughing earlier, like, well, yeah, your life
• 15:55
  isn't gonna end if you don't check your e-mail for three
• 15:56
  hours. But The thing is a lot of people
• 15:59
  feel like that they totally like they have to be basically a
• 16:02
  chain of their e-mail. And I've actually thought really
• 16:05
  deeply about this and I think here's the reason why they can't
• 16:10
  get away from their e-mail for three hours.
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  Almost every company has not set out written standards of
• 16:16
  communication about how, when and how much they communicate.
• 16:20
  So if that's not set from the ideally from the management or
• 16:24
  leadership of the company, then what happens is everyone is
• 16:28
  forced to guess how and when and how much to communicate.
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  And when you guess there's no clear standards.
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  And so some people might be following some standard and
• 16:37
  other people might be following something different.
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  This all this guessing just creates a ton of stress for
• 16:43
  people and it wastes a massive amount of time and duplicates
• 16:47
  efforts. So by simply having a document
• 16:49
  that's communicated from management that determines how
• 16:53
  and when and how much the company as a whole communicates,
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  it dramatically changes everything about how the company
• 16:59
  operates. Because now instead of you
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  thinking that you have to check your e-mail once every 20
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  minutes, you get to, you know, take two hours and be in flow
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  and you and because your CEO told you that that's OK, it's
• 17:15
  not a big deal. That's such a good point because
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  people, no, it totally does because people just just feel
• 17:20
  obligated to kind of look at something and be like, oh, if
• 17:23
  it's been a couple hours and I haven't responded, they might
• 17:25
  think I'm not working. I'm not saying whatever.
• 17:27
  And it's mostly it's just in our head.
• 17:29
  But if you don't communicate that as the leadership team,
• 17:31
  it's like they just, they're not going to know, right?
• 17:33
  Makes me think about my team. You should probably maybe
• 17:34
  communicate that a little better, but so.
• 17:37
  And, and one thing, by the way, just you, you said this about
• 17:40
  your team. I'm happy to share with you and
• 17:41
  of course share it with all the listeners.
• 17:43
  There's a template that I have that is, you know, basically you
• 17:48
  just use the template. It's, it's very simple, it's 2
• 17:50
  pages, it's not complicated and I'll just give you the template
• 17:52
  and you can adapt it for your team.
• 17:54
  There's instructions on it. Cool.
• 17:56
  But I, I share all these things with people as an open source,
• 17:59
  you know, content essentially 'cause I just, I know that
• 18:02
  they're helpful tools and they're not very complicated and
• 18:05
  they really make a big difference.
• 18:06
  So if I can share the tools with you and your listeners, you
• 18:10
  know, and they can find some value, I'm more than happy to do
• 18:12
  that. You can include a link in the
• 18:14
  show notes or whatever. Yes, we will.
• 18:15
  It's just going to say we'll definitely link it up in the
• 18:17
  show notes for sure, along with website and all the other stuff
• 18:19
  because I think, I think if you're listening now, you
• 18:21
  probably would want to snatch that up.
• 18:23
  I find my I'm kind of like you. I'm a morning person, so for me,
• 18:27
  I get up, you know, I try to get good sleep every night, go to
• 18:29
  bed decently early and then I wake up around 53545.
• 18:32
  Nice early. Yeah.
• 18:33
  And then I kind of like by, you know, 556 o'clock.
• 18:36
  I've been trying now to read a few pages of the book before I
• 18:39
  jump on the digital devices. That's kind of a little helpful.
• 18:42
  So good. But that's a recent thing.
• 18:44
  But then I'll just jump into work and then from six to seven
• 18:47
  house is kind of quiet. No one's really up.
• 18:49
  I'm not really going through emails because I feel like no
• 18:51
  one's really busy anyways. And I just kind of hop in that
• 18:54
  flow state and I'm knock on whether it's sales stuff,
• 18:56
  whether it's working on content, whatever it is, it feels nice.
• 19:00
  It feels really nice. And then there's certain parts
• 19:02
  of the day, like two or three o'clock where if I'm not
• 19:03
  careful, it's like 2 hours go by and I'm like, what did I really
• 19:06
  do? Like beside to respond to a few
• 19:08
  emails and do this and do that and respond to comments or
• 19:10
  whatever. But it's like, is that really
• 19:12
  what I should be spending my time on?
• 19:13
  So yeah, it's interesting, man. Going back to the businesses,
• 19:17
  what are, and you, you could share obviously what you want or
• 19:20
  what you don't want here, but the sales of the company, are we
• 19:23
  talking like bigger, like how much for maybe some of the
• 19:25
  bigger exits? If you're comfortable saying 6
• 19:27
  figure, 7 figure, did you sell any businesses that you wish you
• 19:32
  wouldn't have sold? They're like, what was that
• 19:33
  process like? Yeah.
• 19:36
  So you know exits for the company, I will just say they
• 19:40
  were under 7 figures, but I'll and I'll leave it at that for
• 19:44
  you know each individual company.
• 19:45
  Yes, but but you sold. Seven of them.
• 19:48
  So it's like it adds up, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
• 19:51
  I mean, yeah, you can kind of do the math on some of that.
• 19:54
  But honestly, what's interesting is I-1 time I, I, I calculated.
• 20:03
  Now it's, it wasn't a fair comparison.
• 20:04
  It wasn't a fair comparison, but I calculated for my best
• 20:07
  performing health club. How much time I was spending and
• 20:12
  how how much profit I was making off that club.
• 20:15
  And then I compared that to how much time I was spending and how
• 20:18
  much profit I was making on all four of the cell phone repair
• 20:21
  stores combined. So again, not a fair comparison
• 20:23
  because I was cherry picking my best unit of 1 and comparing it
• 20:28
  to the average of all those. But basically I calculated that
• 20:32
  I was spending 20 times more time to earn the same amount of
• 20:37
  money in the cell phone repair stores as I was.
• 20:39
  And that's why you sold it. Yeah.
• 20:41
  I mean, it makes sense. I mean, yeah.
• 20:44
  And, and like, I still think about that and get sick to my
• 20:46
  stomach a little bit. But you know, it was a good, it
• 20:50
  was a good reminder that a lot of things in business really are
• 20:54
  the 8020 or the 9010 or, you know, 95.5, whatever, however
• 20:58
  you want to word it. But you really have to be asking
• 21:01
  yourself what is the 80%, what 80% of the results come from 20%
• 21:06
  of my effort. And then when you, when you're
• 21:08
  sure that you've identified that, then you double down or
• 21:12
  triple down on that. I really, it was a really hard
• 21:14
  learned lesson for me. It's.
• 21:16
  Funny you said that because I was recently, the last couple
• 21:18
  days had a conversation. We were thinking about going to
• 21:20
  this conference, right? And it's an industry conference
• 21:22
  where our target customers are there.
• 21:24
  So it'd be good for us to be there.
• 21:25
  And I was like wonder if we shouldn't get a booth and like
• 21:27
  go all out and get this stuff. And it's like, you know,
• 21:30
  anywhere from 7 to $12,000 to do that.
• 21:33
  And then you've got other expenses there's and then you
• 21:35
  got several days away from the business, which is like a lot of
• 21:37
  time and resources money. So I was thinking about it and I
• 21:40
  was like, kind of like what you're just talking about making
• 21:42
  the decision of like, is it worth it?
• 21:44
  Where am I spending my time and money and resources?
• 21:46
  And I was like, well, if we put 8 to 10, whatever 1000 into
• 21:49
  LinkedIn ads because I have a good brand there.
• 21:52
  And I spent those two or three days that I would have been at
• 21:54
  the conference just like messaging ideal clients,
• 21:57
  leveraging the brand and the content that we're doing.
• 21:59
  I'd probably book X amount of meetings and the ads from
• 22:02
  spending 10,000 because we spent 16,000 in LinkedIn ads and got
• 22:05
  150 plus worth of revenue. So it's like the ROI there's
• 22:08
  through the roof. If we just spent that money
• 22:10
  there. Is that like, you know what I
• 22:13
  mean? I started planning out.
• 22:14
  I was like, maybe it doesn't make sense to get a booth to
• 22:15
  this conference. Now I do see the other side
• 22:17
  where it's like you're in person, you're building
• 22:19
  relationships. I actually think both is the
• 22:21
  probably the, the answer potentially.
• 22:23
  But I, I, I do start weighing those things out to say, is it
• 22:26
  really worth it? And what else would I could I
• 22:27
  potentially do with this money? And what's the best use of my
• 22:30
  time? I think that's one of the
• 22:31
  biggest struggles. So it's like, where do you spend
• 22:32
  your time as an entrepreneur, as a leader?
• 22:35
  Yeah, it you know. And the, the thing that's
• 22:39
  complicated about entrepreneurship is there's a
• 22:42
  lot of things that you need to do where there's not an
• 22:44
  immediate or measurable ROI, but they're still valuable, right?
• 22:48
  Like, you know, like you said, building relationships, how do
• 22:50
  you quantify, you know, the value of building relationships?
• 22:54
  That is, I think it's possible to do, but that's really
• 22:57
  challenging. And and so it does become hard
• 23:01
  because you also have to weigh these long term, these things
• 23:05
  that build long term value with all the things that you kind of
• 23:08
  need to do immediately, right? Like certain things can't wait
• 23:11
  depending on the nature of your business.
• 23:13
  Some some businesses have more things like that than others.
• 23:17
  Do you look at businesses from like, because I've heard quite a
• 23:21
  bit that there's two types of businesses you're going to
• 23:23
  build. 1 is a lifestyle business where it's like you potentially
• 23:26
  small team, nimble team, you're making good money, 6 figures, 7
• 23:30
  figures, revenue, potentially profits.
• 23:34
  Lifestyle's good, work hours are not crazy, but you're probably
• 23:36
  not going to sell that company for millions of dollars, right?
• 23:38
  And then there's the performance based business, which may be a
• 23:42
  software company or something that has a little more upside.
• 23:44
  Maybe you get some investors and you're going to work grinded out
• 23:47
  until you can eventually sell that business.
• 23:50
  Do you sound like you've been a little bit more on lifestyle or
• 23:52
  maybe a combination of lifestyle and performance?
• 23:55
  I'm curious where you see those two sides of things and if you
• 23:58
  encourage or find one more attractive than the other.
• 24:01
  Yeah, for sure. My, my businesses have been
• 24:03
  lifestyle businesses, but I have, you know, worked with and
• 24:09
  analyzed businesses that are, you know, I don't think we
• 24:12
  talked about, but early in my career, I was a South Side
• 24:15
  equity research analyst and I analyzed publicly owned
• 24:18
  companies, you know, some of them doing 10 billion in
• 24:20
  revenue. So and and those are in the
• 24:23
  medical device and Pharmaceutical industry.
• 24:26
  And so, you know, I've looked at literally, you know, companies
• 24:30
  that are startups all the way to, you know, multi billion
• 24:33
  dollar publicly held companies and everything in between.
• 24:37
  I do think that you things start to become very different, you
• 24:42
  know, and we'll just say a non lifestyle business is somewhere
• 24:47
  probably in the area of like 2 million of EBITDA or very
• 24:50
  roughly, let's say 10 million in revenue, right.
• 24:54
  You know, after you get beyond those points where you have 2
• 24:57
  million or more in EBITDA, then you're, you're really, you know,
• 25:00
  getting on PE private equity radar And there you're going to
• 25:03
  be potentially A takeover target, which is a good thing
• 25:07
  because then multiples, you know, earning, selling multiples
• 25:11
  go up and the value of business is higher etcetera.
• 25:15
  But there's a lot of other different concerns related to
• 25:17
  that. There's scalability, there's,
• 25:20
  you know, can you replace yourself or how much does the
• 25:22
  business run without you? All valid things to think about.
• 25:26
  It just depends on, I guess, what kind of business you want
• 25:29
  and what your end goals are, right?
• 25:30
  Exactly. Some people want to build a
• 25:32
  business and not have to answer to private equity and they want
• 25:36
  to just do the thing that they're doing for the rest of
• 25:38
  their life. And I like more power to you.
• 25:40
  You know, that's, that's great if that's what you want.
• 25:43
  And other people buy something, they build it with a very
• 25:46
  specific idea in mind to sell and they want to get to 2
• 25:48
  million in EBITDA and sell their private equity and then repeat.
• 25:52
  So there's nothing wrong with either approach.
• 25:54
  They're not good or bad or right or wrong.
• 25:56
  It's just what is right for you or what do what is wrong for
• 26:00
  you, I would say. Yeah, I totally agree with that.
• 26:02
  There's, I think there's pros and cons to both and there's
• 26:04
  also different phases and seasons of your life and all
• 26:07
  that good stuff. Do you find yourself now that
• 26:09
  you're wanting to do continue to do lifestyle business?
• 26:11
  Do you have any like are you kind of building your business
• 26:14
  now as lifestyle and make good money, live a good life, have a
• 26:17
  good balance? Yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm
• 26:20
  definitely looking towards something that's more beyond
• 26:24
  lifestyle for my next business and something that I want to try
• 26:27
  to scale to. I don't know, I I, I don't see
• 26:30
  any reason why I shouldn't be able to scale something to the,
• 26:34
  you know, 10s of millions of dollars in revenue easily, you
• 26:37
  know, with a lot of hard work. I shouldn't say easily.
• 26:39
  Yeah, nothing in nothing in entrepreneurship is easy, but.
• 26:42
  Very capable of. Right.
• 26:43
  Yeah, I feel very, exactly, very capable of doing that.
• 26:47
  And is that the current business you're running now or is that a
• 26:50
  future business that you're thinking about or something else
• 26:52
  you're involved? A future business?
• 26:53
  A future business? Yeah, Cool.
• 26:54
  Very cool. Yeah, that would be exciting.
• 26:57
  So you've, you know, been through all these businesses.
• 26:59
  What do you have like a kind of a growth business, growth
• 27:02
  formula or any like, you know, I usually people have like IP
• 27:04
  around that type of stuff. Like I follow this formula or I
• 27:07
  think about growing a business from zero to 6 figures or seven
• 27:10
  figures, whatever it is. You kind of have a process I
• 27:13
  wrote down kind of my, I mean, this isn't like anything complex
• 27:17
  or like revolutionary, but I think about like a business.
• 27:19
  I think you need leads, convert leads to customers, service
• 27:22
  customers, retain customers. Those customers prefer other
• 27:26
  customers, Sure. And maybe we could just break
• 27:28
  down each one of those. But I'm just curious if you had
• 27:29
  anything, the kind of you look someone's like, hey man, I'm
• 27:31
  trying to grow a business like, yeah, what do you, what do you
• 27:33
  kind of think about with them? There's a lot of different ways
• 27:35
  you could go. Yeah, so like my wife laughs
• 27:38
  because I'll, we don't really go to the mall very often, but I'll
• 27:41
  like, go to the mall. Nobody does anymore.
• 27:43
  Yeah, no one goes to the mall but like, but this is, you know,
• 27:46
  here's kind of my thought process.
• 27:47
  So like there's this place selling cupcakes in the mall and
• 27:51
  like my mind immediately goes to how profitable is this business?
• 27:54
  What's the revenue? How scalable is it?
• 27:56
  So I, I started asking the guys questions and like by the end
• 27:59
  of, you know, a few minutes, I basically have like a PNL in my
• 28:02
  mind built for the business about what it's making and how
• 28:06
  much they're doing per location, blah, blah, blah.
• 28:08
  And so that's just how my mind operates.
• 28:11
  Like I can't, it's almost like I can't help it for whatever
• 28:14
  reason. So when I, you're asking like
• 28:18
  how I evaluate a company, I mean, I, I literally at this
• 28:21
  point I've done it for, you know, thousands of times, maybe
• 28:24
  even 10s of thousands. And so I just kind of have this
• 28:28
  a few key things that I look at a couple of them are how much is
• 28:32
  revenue growing or how could I get revenue to grow?
• 28:36
  Another key very key equation is what is customer acquisition
• 28:40
  cost and then what is lifetime value and how quickly do you get
• 28:44
  paid back for each customer or client when you get them?
• 28:47
  And, and then I also look at, you know, what is like return on
• 28:54
  marketing or like marketing dollars spent.
• 28:57
  I also look at what is the gross profit of the business, ideally
• 29:02
  by product or service line or by client.
• 29:07
  If it's a service based company. I, there's so many especially
• 29:11
  professional services companies out there that are doing
• 29:14
  business and 20% of their clients are completely
• 29:17
  unprofitable. Like they're actively losing
• 29:19
  money with 20%. Not, not, not, we're not saying
• 29:23
  like they're breaking even, like actively losing money by having
• 29:25
  this client, you're actually taking money out of your pocket
• 29:28
  and putting it in theirs essentially.
• 29:30
  So I help clients identify those and I'm also a huge fan of EOS
• 29:35
  Traction. I'm not sure if you've heard of
• 29:37
  that system at all, but I used EOS Traction to guide myself on
• 29:41
  a pair of stores to winning a bunch of awards.
• 29:44
  We won top award in the entire franchise for operations and
• 29:49
  then best customer service in the franchise out of 300
• 29:52
  locations as long as a bunch of other awards.
• 29:55
  So I really believe in the EOS Traction system and a lot of the
• 29:59
  things that I do with my clients are related to EOS.
• 30:04
  I'm I'm also AI call myself both a fractional CFO and fractional
• 30:09
  integrator and integrators from EOS.
• 30:11
  Got it. EOS, entrepreneurial operating
• 30:13
  system. Yeah, you bet you got it.
• 30:15
  For someone that will help some people listening that use that
• 30:18
  for sure. But for those that don't or
• 30:20
  haven't really seriously adapted it, what are maybe one or two
• 30:23
  things that you think that like changed your perspective on
• 30:25
  running a business from the EOS model?
• 30:27
  Yeah. So I think the core of the EOS
• 30:29
  system is the L10 or Level 10 meetings.
• 30:32
  And it's basically a framework for how you can use a weekly
• 30:38
  meeting with your staff and have a scorecard related to important
• 30:43
  KPI's that that person has to focus on every week.
• 30:47
  And look, I'm not a, I'm not a meeting guy.
• 30:49
  Like I thought to myself when I implemented this, I was like, Oh
• 30:51
  my God, we're asking our, our Staffs are already super busy
• 30:54
  with the cell phone, a pair of stores.
• 30:55
  It's like a very hard business model to manage.
• 30:59
  I'm asking them that do more shit and have another meeting.
• 31:02
  I'm like, I don't think this is going to be hard to sell.
• 31:05
  And ultimately, once we implemented these L10 meetings
• 31:10
  in this framework, they loved it it because it helped keep them
• 31:15
  accountable, but it also was like a, a good way to get
• 31:18
  feedback and make sure that they were focusing on the right
• 31:21
  stuff. And so we were able to, you
• 31:25
  know, scale the business and really improve operations a lot
• 31:28
  after doing that. It's a, it's a the the it's a
• 31:31
  total game changer having this scorecard plus the L10 level 10
• 31:34
  meeting framework. So you've obviously had multiple
• 31:38
  businesses going at one time. Do you recommend that for most
• 31:41
  entrepreneurs or do you think it's a distraction?
• 31:43
  Do you think it could be a good thing if you can handle it it?
• 31:46
  It's a really good question, Alex.
• 31:47
  And so the most businesses I had operating at once was the four
• 31:51
  cell phone and pairs stores and one health club.
• 31:53
  So 5 at a time. And how many how many people are
• 31:56
  employees are at each location for these types of things?
• 31:58
  Yeah. So like in aggregate for the
• 32:00
  cell phone and pairs stores, I had a rut list called around 20
• 32:04
  people for all four. And then W2 full time employees,
• 32:07
  part time part mix. It was a mix.
• 32:10
  It was a mix. So let's say maybe, I don't
• 32:12
  remember. Just kind of half and half kind
• 32:14
  of more difficult to be honest 'cause then you part time you
• 32:15
  got your own challenges with that too.
• 32:17
  And it's like, yeah, so. It, it is, but it, it, we, we
• 32:20
  did it that way 'cause it worked well with like we had a lot of
• 32:22
  students working and so during the summer when the business got
• 32:25
  busier, they could work more, right.
• 32:27
  So it was just it wasn't a good fit for us and them.
• 32:30
  And then for the gyms, I usually had about 3 employees per
• 32:33
  location, very minimal on purpose, the manager and then
• 32:36
  one or two personal trainers. And sorry, what was your
• 32:40
  original question? Two more than one business at
• 32:42
  one time. Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 32:43
  OK. So I ultimately got away from
• 32:48
  the franchise because I, I did feel like it was more difficult
• 32:53
  to scale than some other business types, right.
• 32:56
  We're like, for instance, if you have a professional services
• 32:59
  business and you want more clients, you just, and it's a,
• 33:02
  you know, let's say it's an accounting company.
• 33:04
  I'm just making this up. You just and, and you know, you
• 33:07
  can service clients with an accounting business virtually.
• 33:10
  So you just acquire more clients online and then, you know,
• 33:14
  service them from wherever you are physically with the, with
• 33:17
  those, with those physical, you know, businesses.
• 33:21
  It's it was harder to scale those 'cause you you got to a
• 33:24
  natural limit of sales in an area and then you just had to
• 33:28
  build a new location or buy a new location.
• 33:30
  Right, going back to the the kind of the five part framework
• 33:33
  I was sharing leads convert leads to customers, service
• 33:35
  customers retain customers, those customers prefer more
• 33:38
  customers on the leads part. What have you found most
• 33:41
  effective with generating leads and maybe for professional
• 33:44
  services? I think most people are going to
• 33:46
  be like B to B not in this probably like owning a gym is
• 33:49
  probably not going to be the listener it could be, but more
• 33:52
  probably professional services. What have you done most
• 33:54
  effective in the last like couple years for just generating
• 33:57
  new leads? Yeah.
• 33:59
  So I think one of the probably the most effective thing is, is
• 34:03
  to do a good job with your existing clients.
• 34:06
  Because if you do a really good job and you amaze them, they
• 34:09
  will refer people to you and that is going to be your
• 34:12
  probably your number one source of leads.
• 34:14
  So ironically, you know, not doing, you know, focusing on
• 34:18
  your existing client base will get you the most new clients.
• 34:23
  Other than that, I, you know, I think that each professional
• 34:26
  services business is different. For instance, some businesses
• 34:29
  might be able to market on a certain platform and they have a
• 34:32
  lot of success, whereas that platform for a different
• 34:34
  professional services company is awful.
• 34:37
  Yeah, it's totally awful. So I, I and, and you're the
• 34:40
  marketing guy. So like you would, you know,
• 34:42
  know better than me. But what I've seen with
• 34:43
  professional services is, you know, you try a bunch of stuff,
• 34:47
  you see what works, you know, you have to try it for a while
• 34:50
  too. You can't just try it for a
• 34:51
  month and then say, OK, it doesn't work, Try it for a bunch
• 34:55
  of months, see what works and what doesn't.
• 34:57
  And then just again and do an analysis, OK, what's my ROI or
• 35:01
  what's my customer acquisition cost by channel?
• 35:04
  And then just go from there. If you know whichever channel
• 35:07
  has the most reasonable customer acquisition cost that's also
• 35:11
  scalable, double down on that one.
• 35:13
  Yeah, for sure. I think professional services,
• 35:15
  LinkedIn obviously massive opportunity, YouTube's even
• 35:19
  good, Tik Tok's even potentially good depending on what you do.
• 35:22
  But I think LinkedIn for professional services, goldmine
• 35:25
  and organic, you've got social selling capabilities.
• 35:27
  You can reach out to people, comment on the stuff, start
• 35:29
  conversations that way very organically.
• 35:32
  And then you've got LinkedIn thought leader ads now, which
• 35:34
  are most people don't know about because.
• 35:35
  I didn't know about that. Yeah.
• 35:36
  What is that? So you can actually run ads.
• 35:38
  You run it through the company, right?
• 35:39
  So you go to your company page, but when you go to run the ad,
• 35:42
  you actually can select employees of the company and you
• 35:45
  can run content that the employees have posted.
• 35:47
  So for you, I'd be a founder or CEO.
• 35:49
  I just go on the company page, select a post that I've posted
• 35:53
  on my account. It runs it as a thought leader
• 35:55
  ad from Alex. But really it's promoted by the
• 35:58
  company. But you almost can't even tell
• 36:00
  it because it's got my profile picture.
• 36:01
  It looks like in the feed. It's coming from me.
• 36:03
  So that's how we've been generating the results on
• 36:05
  LinkedIn because we'll just share.
• 36:06
  It'll be me and a client kind of talking like this in a
• 36:09
  testimonial video, very organic podcast.
• 36:12
  Like it's just like really back and forth and we'll talk about
• 36:14
  the results they got, the transformation they got.
• 36:16
  And then you just start booking meetings because people are
• 36:18
  like, I want that. Very cool.
• 36:20
  Yeah, it's really cool. So definitely look into it.
• 36:22
  And then definitely anyone watching, if you're not doing
• 36:24
  that, if your clients are on LinkedIn and you've already got
• 36:26
  the organic brand, I think it's good to have some level of
• 36:28
  content and a brand organic first, because if they go to
• 36:30
  your page, they see your content, the ads can really do
• 36:35
  wonders. What it also does, it just
• 36:36
  brings more of those ideal customers in your ecosystem.
• 36:39
  So now when you post organically, those people are
• 36:41
  now because of LinkedIn social graph, it'll start to actually
• 36:44
  show more of those people organically and they'll start to
• 36:46
  pop up in your feed. And so it's like you just get a
• 36:48
  lot of byproduct type things that happen other than just like
• 36:51
  they click a link, book a call, it's that, but then it's also
• 36:54
  new connections. There's new likes, there's
• 36:56
  people in your feed now that weren't there before.
• 36:57
  And it's all your target demographic because you've
• 37:00
  programmed the audience to only show content to those people.
• 37:03
  OK. It's really, it's a game
• 37:04
  changer, man. Yeah, it's really cool.
• 37:05
  Wow. So two of the most challenging
• 37:07
  aspects of I think from AB to B standpoint, growing a business,
• 37:12
  whether you're 6-7 figures, even maybe 8 figures.
• 37:15
  One, increasing total headcount, although content and LinkedIn,
• 37:19
  that kind of stuff really helps there.
• 37:20
  But retention is also key as well, right?
• 37:22
  So it's not like increasing total headcount is, yes, winning
• 37:25
  new customers, but also keeping the ones that you have and
• 37:27
  keeping them happy, retaining them.
• 37:29
  And the other, the other one is just removing, and I think about
• 37:32
  our business too, removing yourself from the business like
• 37:35
  the client service side without it becoming a landslide and just
• 37:39
  going to hell. What are your, I want to dive
• 37:41
  into both of these because I feel like they're really
• 37:42
  relevant. And whichever 1 you want to
• 37:45
  tackle first, increasing total headcount or removing yourself
• 37:47
  from the business as the founder, which one do you feel
• 37:50
  more excited to talk about? Yeah, let's talk about the
• 37:53
  second one. Removing yourself as a founder.
• 37:55
  Yeah, I'm, I'm smiling and laughing because I think that
• 37:59
  this is really, really challenging for almost all
• 38:02
  entrepreneurs. And I, and I get why I was there
• 38:05
  myself. But I think most people don't
• 38:09
  remove themselves or or can't remove themselves for a couple
• 38:12
  different reasons. One, they think that they are
• 38:16
  the only one that can do what they do, which, you know,
• 38:19
  occasionally is true. But like 9 times out of 10, if
• 38:22
  you, if you're really good at doing something, you should be
• 38:24
  able to teach someone else how to do that thing, right?
• 38:26
  Or at least and someone else. I didn't come up with this, but
• 38:29
  I love this thought 80% done by someone else is better than 0%
• 38:35
  done by you. And that like that helped me
• 38:38
  think about, Oh my, I was like when I heard that, I was like.
• 38:41
  Oh. That's so true because yeah, you
• 38:44
  can't do everything. You don't have 50 hours in a
• 38:46
  day, right? And so if you're trying to do
• 38:49
  everything, there are certain things that you're not doing,
• 38:51
  you're just not doing because you don't have time.
• 38:53
  You're. Not going to throw the business
• 38:54
  that much either because it's all bottlenecked through you,
• 38:57
  especially in professional services like scaling that
• 38:59
  thing. So if you can just be good with
• 39:01
  someone else doing what you do at 80% of what you do, that's
• 39:04
  still a huge win, at least in my book, right?
• 39:07
  I'm going to stop real quick on there.
• 39:09
  I agree with that. I think the challenge is like,
• 39:11
  so we can do and I'm thinking our business, but even other
• 39:14
  clients that I know and friends that I know, it's like you can
• 39:17
  create the Sops, you can coach, you can teach, you can role
• 39:20
  play, which we do all that stuff, right?
• 39:23
  And they do, I think 80% sounds right.
• 39:25
  Like they're pretty freaking good.
• 39:26
  Like we've got a girl on Kalista who works for us.
• 39:28
  She's one of our content coaches, strategist, she's
• 39:30
  amazing, right? She's really, really good.
• 39:32
  The challenging in those roles, the challenging part is I've
• 39:36
  been doing this for six years and so it's like she can get
• 39:39
  through Sops, coaching frameworks, that kind of stuff
• 39:41
  calls, does a great job on. But then there happens to be
• 39:44
  those scenarios where it's like if you hadn't like understood
• 39:47
  how Linkedin's changed over the last five years, you know what I
• 39:49
  mean, or like you haven't actually done the thing.
• 39:53
  And so it's like almost just it's not her fault.
• 39:54
  It's just an experience gap. It's like she can't go back and
• 39:57
  recall. Yep, two years ago I worked with
• 39:58
  the company exact same thing. Let me show how it plays out.
• 40:00
  Hey, definitely avoid this and definitely go towards here
• 40:02
  because we've I've seen this happen 20,000 times.
• 40:05
  How do you kind of? Aside from this experience,
• 40:08
  right? Like I think that's the main
• 40:09
  thing, like the off the top of your head, being able to solve
• 40:13
  problems like that. Yeah.
• 40:14
  So I, I, I've thought about this a lot, especially as it relates
• 40:17
  to AI and how it's going to change how the future of our
• 40:20
  country works and. Learns.
• 40:22
  I want to talk about that next. Yeah, and, and but here's The
• 40:25
  thing is like, you know, when you do something and you fuck up
• 40:30
  like you, you, you'll, you'll remember that probably forever
• 40:36
  because you directly did it. Whereas, for instance, if Alex,
• 40:40
  if you told me, don't do this thing and I don't make the
• 40:43
  mistake myself. I'm not.
• 40:45
  It's like you telling me or someone else telling me isn't
• 40:48
  gonna resonate in my brain in the same way as me making the
• 40:51
  mistake myself. So to answer your question, I
• 40:54
  don't think that there's a way that you prevent that person
• 40:56
  from making the mistake. They just have to make the
• 40:59
  mistake. Cool.
• 41:00
  And and I think that. That's where I'm at.
• 41:02
  I'm like, she's awesome, but I'm like, I'm just at the point
• 41:04
  where I'm like, the only way I see to take this thing to the
• 41:08
  next level is I got to let her fail a little.
• 41:10
  And she's not going to fail a little, a little bit, right?
• 41:12
  She's not going to like botch the whole client thing.
• 41:13
  Obviously, I wouldn't let her that that happened to her.
• 41:16
  But does she get something wrong that it's like, oh, we could
• 41:18
  have got that? Yeah.
• 41:19
  I think that's part of the growth, right?
• 41:20
  It's like you got to let them fail a little bit.
• 41:22
  A little bit. Yeah, a little bit, right, Yeah.
• 41:24
  And The thing is, if you. Like you keep saying a little
• 41:26
  bit. Yeah.
• 41:27
  Well, well, then what I was going to say is, you know, and,
• 41:29
  and if you know, you've done a great job building your brand
• 41:32
  and your company, right? If and, and with that, a good
• 41:36
  reputation, your clients will tolerate a few mistakes here or
• 41:40
  there because of that goodwill that you've built up with them.
• 41:43
  You know, and so, and, and so my approach has been let the
• 41:47
  employees make the mistakes and then just apologize profusely
• 41:51
  and then go above and beyond to make it right.
• 41:54
  And sometimes that even results in a better scenario.
• 41:57
  Like a quick story, I had someone come into my cell phone
• 42:01
  repair store. We repaired their phone.
• 42:03
  It was, you know, an expensive iPhone.
• 42:05
  We made a mistake, right? Like we, we bricked their phone,
• 42:08
  like we, we completely destroyed it and it didn't work at all.
• 42:12
  And so, you know, that's a horrible situation.
• 42:15
  For a modern human is like you literally just like killed
• 42:17
  somebody in the last. Like, I mean, you know, so mad
• 42:19
  to like this. The scenario is the person came
• 42:22
  in to get their phone that was repaired or they thought it was
• 42:24
  repaired and I, I had to tell them that it wasn't working.
• 42:28
  So I go to the front of the store and I'm like, look, you
• 42:31
  know, I'm so sorry. Here's what happened.
• 42:33
  And I explained to it. I'm like this, our technician
• 42:35
  made this mistake. You know, we shouldn't, this of
• 42:38
  course, should not have been the way that this went.
• 42:41
  And so we offered to, you know, bring their phone to the Apple
• 42:45
  store, get them a new device and put a tempered glass on it for
• 42:49
  free and a new case and a bunch of other things and like deliver
• 42:52
  it hand deliver it to their house and do everything we could
• 42:55
  to make it right. Not only was that customer
• 42:59
  actually and that client really happy with us, but someone else
• 43:02
  in the lobby not related to them or the situation told me they're
• 43:06
  like, you know what, I saw how you handled that situation and
• 43:10
  I'm super impressed by that. I'm actually really, I want to
• 43:14
  do more business with you now because I saw how you handled
• 43:16
  that mistake someone unrelated to the situation.
• 43:20
  And so I do think that there is many opportunities like that
• 43:23
  with, you know, if you just do the right thing and you know,
• 43:26
  make it right for someone and, and ultimately you could end up
• 43:31
  actually in a better spot even after an error or mistake if you
• 43:35
  really go above and beyond to make it right.
• 43:37
  Yeah, it's like a it's a sometimes a little scary for the
• 43:40
  employee. I think about our team kind of
• 43:42
  letting them go, like I'm going to run with this by myself.
• 43:44
  It's like, Are you sure? And it's like, yeah.
• 43:46
  And it's like, look, you may make a little mistake and feel a
• 43:49
  little bit like, that's cool, that's fine.
• 43:51
  Like it's OK, we're going to learn from this right now.
• 43:53
  I don't just give away everything and let them like,
• 43:56
  completely, you know, fall off a Cliff, obviously.
• 43:58
  But I think that's just such an, it's such a hard thing to kind
• 44:02
  of wrestle with because I think there's some owners who are
• 44:04
  like, I want everything to go through me and I, nobody can do
• 44:06
  it like me. I'm not like that at all.
• 44:08
  I really don't, I'm like, I don't want anything to go
• 44:10
  through me. I'm like, I, I, I'm not some
• 44:11
  special bro. Like I just learned some stuff
• 44:13
  and I can teach other people how to do it right.
• 44:15
  And I think that's the mindset. But even with that, it's still
• 44:17
  like I'm more care about, I want our clients to be happy and like
• 44:20
  excited and like, I want them to feel like we're doing a good job
• 44:23
  for them. And so it's like, that's what I
• 44:24
  worry about. But I think the, I think that's
• 44:26
  a good point. It's like you just have to kind
• 44:28
  of be comfortable with a little bit of failure to learn because
• 44:31
  to your point, if you constantly catch everything before it
• 44:33
  happens and they never have to face the client and be like, oh
• 44:36
  shit, I got that wrong. And it's like, that's never
• 44:39
  gonna happen again. You know what I mean?
• 44:40
  If they don't go to that moment, it's almost like it doesn't
• 44:42
  stick as much. It just doesn't.
• 44:44
  My mom would always tell me when I was a young kid, you're gonna
• 44:47
  learn the hard way, 'cause you'd always tell me to do something,
• 44:49
  not to do something. And then I, of course, wouldn't
• 44:52
  listen. And I learned the hard way.
• 44:53
  Yeah, all the time. Yeah, and if you.
• 44:55
  Just gotta learn something's the hard way.
• 44:57
  And I'm sure you would agree in business, Like, I look at my you
• 44:59
  probably the same way I look at the toughest, most challenging
• 45:01
  times in my business. Those are the moments I grew the
• 45:04
  most, yeah, where I knew a challenging time was coming.
• 45:06
  And I was like, I gotta adjust, I gotta evolve, I gotta be
• 45:08
  better here. I gotta do it.
• 45:09
  You know? Those are the times when you
• 45:11
  grow the most 'cause it's like you're just faced with it when
• 45:13
  you're winning, everything is going good.
• 45:14
  It's like cool, like this is great, let's keep going.
• 45:16
  But there's not like a ton of learning lessons in that.
• 45:19
  Totally. OK, so AI want to, I know we're
• 45:22
  going to talk about increasing client total headcount, but I'm
• 45:24
  cool to actually move to to AI if you want to sure.
• 45:28
  What do you think is going on? And you do a lot of consulting,
• 45:30
  right, coaching, consulting, that kind of stuff, professional
• 45:32
  services. How do you see it shaping just
• 45:35
  business in general? Maybe let's start macro and then
• 45:37
  we'll kind of come down what is going to happen over the next
• 45:40
  few years. And then I'm curious, even with
• 45:42
  the professional services, consulting, coaching, that kind
• 45:45
  of stuff. Be curious.
• 45:46
  Yeah, because we're in the age now where it's like, you know,
• 45:51
  last two years it was like, oh, ChatGPT came out, you know, 2
• 45:53
  plus years ago, people started dabbling, getting kind of good
• 45:57
  at it. And then it kind of like started
• 45:58
  showing up in other areas. Now it's like pictures and
• 46:00
  videos and there's, I don't know if you've seen Google VO3, but
• 46:03
  they're like, man, you can I, I even played with it, made a
• 46:06
  video, you put in a script. It's like, so it's like starting
• 46:08
  to go to the next level. And I think the next wave of
• 46:10
  this now, which we're kind of behind the scenes starting to
• 46:13
  work with, is AI agents. Totally.
• 46:15
  They're now just doing full jobs start to finish from from A-Z,
• 46:21
  man, just knocking out a job now.
• 46:22
  It's not going to just like replace all human jobs
• 46:24
  overnight, obviously, but there are some that could very well be
• 46:27
  80% depending on the job, yeah. Yeah.
• 46:31
  So just as a little way of background for you and the
• 46:33
  listeners. So I spent the last six months
• 46:36
  developing an AI agent full time with my a business partner and,
• 46:41
  but we ultimately about a couple weeks ago decided to shut that
• 46:44
  company down because it was really challenging.
• 46:47
  So here's what's happening with AI, which is interesting.
• 46:51
  It's good in general, the capabilities of AI are doubling,
• 46:55
  doubling every four months, which is insane.
• 46:59
  So like Moore's law is for processors is that transistor
• 47:03
  count double S every 18 months. And that's been a, you know, a
• 47:06
  law in computing for a couple decades.
• 47:09
  So what's crazy is AI, even for technology standards, is
• 47:15
  exponentially increasing in capability, like even faster
• 47:19
  than almost any other technology basically in the world that's
• 47:22
  ever that humanity's ever seen. So that's good if you're
• 47:25
  consuming AI, but it's bad if you're trying to develop AI,
• 47:28
  especially on a bootstrap budget.
• 47:30
  Because then if your development cycle is four months and the
• 47:33
  capability is doubling every four months, by the time you've
• 47:35
  developed something, it's already outdated, which is that
• 47:38
  not something that my business partner and I foresaw when we
• 47:41
  went into that business? So what happened?
• 47:43
  You guys developed something that's like obsolete?
• 47:45
  So we, we spent, you know, we'll call it six months developing
• 47:48
  this thing. And then we just ultimately
• 47:50
  decided that, you know, because we were bootstrapping in and
• 47:53
  not, didn't want outside capital or didn't want to raise money,
• 47:56
  that it was, you know, just not, it was not a good game plan in
• 47:59
  terms of how we should approach the problem.
• 48:01
  And so we decided not to continue.
• 48:02
  What was it? What was it?
• 48:03
  What was the function of the AI agent?
• 48:05
  Yeah. So we were developing an AI
• 48:08
  illness advocate is what we called it to help alternative
• 48:11
  medicine companies get more leads from their websites.
• 48:15
  And so the whole idea was that, you know, someone comes to the
• 48:18
  web, like let's say for a ketamine clinic as an example.
• 48:20
  So someone, a user goes to a ketamine clinic website, they
• 48:24
  have a bunch of questions about ketamine therapy, right?
• 48:26
  Like, what is it? How does it last?
• 48:28
  What is it, you know, what is it like?
• 48:30
  And so this AI agent would, you know, service that person and
• 48:33
  answer questions and then, if appropriate, guide them toward
• 48:37
  becoming a patient for that ketamine clinic, as an example.
• 48:41
  And So what went wrong? It just took us a long time to
• 48:47
  get a beta testable version of the product in client's hands.
• 48:52
  And you know, we've learned a lot.
• 48:56
  And I, I'm, I'm really grateful for the opportunity to work with
• 48:58
  my business partner. He's amazing.
• 49:01
  And I really thought it was a good experience.
• 49:03
  And I'm still taking a lot of those things that I learned
• 49:06
  about AI and helping with my fractional CFO and fractional
• 49:09
  integrator clients. But but yeah, I just, you know,
• 49:13
  now I understand why so many AI firms have raised so much money.
• 49:18
  It's, there's a, of course they're, you know, they're
• 49:21
  playing into the hype, but it's also because they just need a
• 49:23
  lot of resources in order to be able to develop something
• 49:26
  quickly. Well, that's interesting, 'cause
• 49:27
  I think people think like, oh, just like Jim's actually asked
• 49:29
  me there a day. He's like, he's like, why
• 49:30
  doesn't the company just like build their own AI agents?
• 49:32
  And I was like, well, like we're like kind of looking into a lot
• 49:34
  of different options right now. And it does, it's not as easy as
• 49:38
  it sounds, right? Just like go build an AI agent.
• 49:40
  I mean, maybe to get like a your foot in the door, but then to
• 49:44
  like to your point, keep up, make it sustainable, make it
• 49:46
  valuable to the marketplace, right?
• 49:48
  Is there a lot more to it than people think?
• 49:50
  Yeah, for sure. I mean, that's what's
• 49:52
  interesting. And again, this is changing so
• 49:54
  quickly. So what we talked about today
• 49:55
  literally could be outdated in a.
• 49:57
  Couple months, right? So or release system like oh,
• 49:59
  that's not even. So, but but the The thing is, I
• 50:03
  think where we're at now with AI agents is.
• 50:06
  So here's my 50,000 foot view of what's happening.
• 50:10
  The tech industry in general always sells the vision and then
• 50:13
  they have a hard time executing right just in general.
• 50:16
  And it this is not a criticism, it's just a, it's an
• 50:19
  observation, let's say. So for instance, let's talk
• 50:23
  like, think about 3DT VS, you know, 5-6.
• 50:25
  Seven years ago, everyone was like, oh.
• 50:27
  The metaverse, too, is the one where it was like, exactly,
• 50:29
  we're all going to be in the metaverse.
• 50:30
  It's like no one's in the metaverse.
• 50:31
  Exactly, exactly. So I mean, just pick your pick
• 50:34
  your major technology from anytime in the last 20 years and
• 50:37
  basically there's tons of hype. And then and then, you know,
• 50:40
  once you get beyond the hype, there's reality sets in.
• 50:43
  And then you have to figure out, OK, well, what is reality?
• 50:46
  And like, where does that, what does that look like?
• 50:48
  Where I think we are today is these, you know, AI companies
• 50:52
  are hyping all these capabilities that agents can do.
• 50:56
  But I've tested out a lot of different use cases like
• 50:59
  marketing use cases, operation use cases, finance use cases.
• 51:03
  And in my opinion, right, they vastly fall short of what the
• 51:08
  marketing will tell you that they do for these companies.
• 51:11
  And again, this what So what I think is happening now is AI is
• 51:16
  good at certain very specific tasks for specific roles or
• 51:21
  specific positions. But eventually what I think is
• 51:24
  AI will get much better at doing much more or many more of the
• 51:28
  tasks for more positions over the coming, let's say three to
• 51:32
  five years. The speed at that happen at
• 51:35
  which that happens is still somewhat undetermined.
• 51:38
  But I, I think that we're at like we'll say task replacement
• 51:42
  today. I think we'll be at like full
• 51:45
  roll replacement depending on different types of roles within
• 51:48
  like the next, you know, let's say two to four years.
• 51:51
  I think so too. I think it's not going to be
• 51:53
  tomorrow. Yeah.
• 51:54
  I think it usually does take a little bit longer than people
• 51:56
  think. You start to see it coming now
• 51:58
  and working on it. And like there's maybe certain
• 52:00
  roles that have sections of it. Maybe there's even certain like
• 52:02
  low level roles where you've kind of replaced it.
• 52:05
  But you see all these posts on LinkedIn where people are like,
• 52:06
  I replaced twenty person team with AI agents.
• 52:09
  Like no, you didn't like, no, you didn't like you did not
• 52:13
  replace 20 humans at this current time and place by
• 52:16
  yourself building out 20 AI agents.
• 52:18
  You didn't have 20 people to be honest, right, right.
• 52:20
  And even if you had 20 people like I just don't see that at
• 52:23
  this point in stage not being a multi billion dollar like tech
• 52:26
  firm or something. Right, exactly.
• 52:28
  I don't think I don't think it that's not 20 legitimate
• 52:31
  employees that you no, there's no way that.
• 52:33
  Replacement you did. Not yeah.
• 52:35
  No, but what I, you know, to answer your, your question about
• 52:38
  like, well, where's this going with professional services
• 52:40
  companies? What I see happening is, and
• 52:44
  again, I think the the rate of replacement will be different
• 52:48
  depending on what type of professional services.
• 52:50
  But I think that, you know, eventually all people who work
• 52:55
  in professional services are going to be managers of all
• 52:57
  these AI agents that are doing a bunch of stuff for them.
• 53:00
  And I think, you know, here's an example.
• 53:04
  Let's let's pretend again, I don't think this is going to
• 53:06
  happen today, but let's pretend I can employ a bunch of AI
• 53:09
  agents and they make, they can do they make the employees 50%
• 53:14
  more productive, right? So as a business owner, I have a
• 53:18
  choice. I can either continue to employ
• 53:22
  all of those employees and have them do 50% more work
• 53:26
  potentially or fire 50% of the employees and then have the
• 53:30
  remaining 50% do all the work that I have now or somewhere in
• 53:34
  the middle, right? So somewhere between firing 50%
• 53:37
  of the people and firing no one, I think the, the most successful
• 53:42
  companies are going to hang on to almost all the, or all the
• 53:46
  employees and you know, have them unlock 50% of their
• 53:51
  productivity and do more work and potentially but do more
• 53:56
  valuable work, right? Like take that extra 50% of
• 53:59
  their time and do the stuff in that answer to the question that
• 54:04
  I asked earlier, what would you do if you had two hours per
• 54:06
  week? Whatever the answer to that
• 54:07
  question is, For instance, if they would do more of that
• 54:10
  activity, I think that those companies are going to be the
• 54:13
  ones that win at the end of the AI arms race.
• 54:17
  I think that those are the ones that are going to have the best
• 54:19
  outcomes, be the most successful, and do the best work
• 54:23
  for their clients. What?
• 54:24
  Do you think about like a business coach?
• 54:25
  Like how does it change? Because I think about like, you
• 54:28
  know, guides, frameworks, building out Sops strategies,
• 54:33
  you have to know how to use the AI really well to do it good.
• 54:37
  But I think like a lot of times you can, you can build out
• 54:40
  things now that you couldn't have done two or three years ago
• 54:41
  for sure. You know, like it's so it's like
• 54:43
  if you've got some like cheap ebook guide that's like not
• 54:46
  super valuable or in depth or has like real store real stuff
• 54:49
  behind it, like a customer is like, I'm not going to give you
• 54:51
  my e-mail name for that. I can just go ChatGPT.
• 54:53
  Well, how do you build out this and this?
• 54:55
  Like, how do you build a strategy for LinkedIn?
• 54:56
  Right. But then there's the nuance of
• 54:57
  like having done it and been in the weeds and their specific
• 55:00
  business and what they should be doing and how they craft a story
• 55:03
  around it and who they hire and develop and how they coach those
• 55:06
  people to do that stuff. That's where I think a lot of
• 55:08
  like the the value is. Yeah, so I I think it goes back
• 55:13
  to what we were talking about earlier, how you know certain
• 55:16
  things you just have to learn yourself or experience yourself
• 55:20
  and you know, even if I can get so so what's interesting about
• 55:24
  AI is it's making high quality information free, right, Which
• 55:29
  is good, which is a good thing, but that doesn't mean so but
• 55:33
  what? But but if I have.
• 55:35
  Let's say kind of already have that though, to be honest, you
• 55:37
  know, with Google, YouTube take like you can actually find most
• 55:41
  things. Sure, I think it feeds it to you
• 55:43
  quicker, but I I, I think I agree with where you're going
• 55:46
  with this. But but well, but here's my
• 55:48
  thought about that. So let's say I have 100
• 55:51
  encyclopedias sitting next to me.
• 55:52
  And like these 100 encyclopedias contain the most valuable
• 55:55
  business information in the world, right?
• 55:57
  Well, what? You know, even if I know that
• 56:01
  it's good information, but there's it, it's still I, I
• 56:05
  still need to know what to do with the information, how to
• 56:08
  execute on it and how to, to put it into work right?
• 56:14
  Like I can't. You could technically tell
• 56:16
  Chacha Petit, give me the execution plan.
• 56:19
  How do I put this in the work? What's day one, day 2, day
• 56:21
  three? What are my KPI's?
• 56:22
  But I agree with where you're going with this, though.
• 56:24
  I know where you're going. Yeah, but you totally agree.
• 56:27
  You can totally do exactly what you just said for sure.
• 56:30
  But that doesn't, you know, tell you, OK?
• 56:32
  Like tomorrow morning when you wake up, after you wake up, what
• 56:36
  should you do? What's the first thing you
• 56:37
  should do? Is it check your e-mail?
• 56:40
  Is it do the first thing on the list?
• 56:41
  Is it something else? You know, you still need to use
• 56:44
  discernment and you still need to have wisdom in terms of what
• 56:49
  you know, what to do, when and which information to use.
• 56:53
  And I I do think that discernment and wisdom just
• 56:56
  simply has to come from experience.
• 56:58
  You have to hold it the hard way.
• 56:59
  Yes, I agree. Yep, I agree.
• 57:02
  And then you talk about coaching, developing people, the
• 57:04
  emotional intelligence of like knowing you have to have a
• 57:07
  conversation with your employee because they've been a little
• 57:10
  bit down in a meeting or two. It's like that's not something
• 57:12
  you're going to print on the SOP exactly like.
• 57:16
  And why I think that that that brings up another point I was
• 57:19
  going to make is I think that in the future, having EQ, having
• 57:23
  emotional intelligence and being able to deal with people will be
• 57:26
  even more important. Because when all the world's
• 57:29
  best information is totally free, having good information
• 57:33
  isn't a competitive advantage anymore.
• 57:35
  But I think dealing with people will and being good at that will
• 57:39
  always be a competitive advantage.
• 57:41
  Totally. And yeah.
• 57:42
  Are there going to be some AIS that deal with people?
• 57:45
  Yeah, absolutely. Like there's, there's already
• 57:47
  tons of people who are using ChatGPT as their therapist or
• 57:50
  whatever. And I don't think that's bad.
• 57:52
  But the point is you're, I, I still don't think there's ever
• 57:55
  going to be a true replacement of a human because even if an AI
• 58:00
  acts like a human like that movie, she or her, her, her
• 58:03
  movie her with Joaquin Phoenix, even if that is possible and I,
• 58:08
  we're basically right there now, I, I think that people are still
• 58:11
  gonna know that that's like in the back of their mind, they
• 58:14
  know that that's a machine. And there's just different
• 58:16
  things associated with talking to a machine like that versus a
• 58:19
  human. Yeah, and you, you want the
• 58:21
  flaws and the mistakes that occasionally come with humans
• 58:24
  and the emotional stuff. And like the.
• 58:26
  Yeah, you did this. You kind of like, you know, you
• 58:28
  do these weird quirky things, but I like it.
• 58:29
  Like that's why I love you. You know what I mean?
• 58:31
  It's like those are things that things that kind of make you
• 58:33
  fall in love with somebody or build a relationship with
• 58:35
  somebody. And it's like nice and
• 58:36
  comforting to know that you're not some perfect algorithm
• 58:39
  that's going to spit you back something, right.
• 58:40
  Yeah, I was going to say something else on yeah, I think,
• 58:44
  you know, our company, we help B2B companies build out their
• 58:47
  own internal content teams and create content, build brand, all
• 58:50
  that stuff. So they don't have to hire a
• 58:51
  marketing agency. They can actually do it
• 58:52
  internally because you have AI, you have you can set up a room
• 58:55
  like this, start a podcast, you have your phone to film videos.
• 58:57
  Like you really can do it in house.
• 58:59
  But it's like, how do you do it? The strategy, all that stuff.
• 59:01
  And I was telling my team I'm like, look, the strategy, the
• 59:04
  frameworks, the workflow, how you do all that stuff, super
• 59:07
  important. But really like our job over the
• 59:09
  next five years, big time is going to be how we hire, coach,
• 59:13
  develop people because you're like, yeah, we're going to hire
• 59:15
  our content team. Cool.
• 59:16
  Do they have the right leadership structure?
• 59:18
  Are you coaching them to develop them into what they their true
• 59:20
  potential? I think to your point, that is
• 59:23
  some of the highest value stuff that you can do.
• 59:25
  And you can do that one to one, you can do that one to many.
• 59:27
  There's a lot of different ways you can do that.
• 59:28
  But knowing how to get the most out of people and like really
• 59:31
  build them up in a positive way. So they're productive, but
• 59:34
  they're also happy, and that's huge.
• 59:37
  Yeah, I mean, I, you know, that's my, the name of my
• 59:39
  company is humans 1st and I exactly.
• 59:42
  I truly believe that, you know, people are the thing that gives
• 59:45
  us the most meaning, joy, purpose and happiness in our
• 59:47
  lives. And if that goes.
• 59:48
  Away. Then we're all screwed anyways,
• 59:49
  yeah. And we just eliminate that.
• 59:51
  Then it's like, I guess we're all just fucking like, AI aliens
• 59:54
  or something, you know, Like, yeah.
• 59:55
  Yeah, it's, and you know, I, I've always looked at my my
• 1:00:00
  employees as the biggest asset to a company.
• 1:00:02
  A lot of people you know, if you talk to a founder, you can
• 1:00:06
  generally. You get a sense for do people
• 1:00:07
  do, do founders or CEOs view their employees as an asset or a
• 1:00:11
  liability? I think if they view employees
• 1:00:13
  as a liability, there's a fun to me like that is a tough place to
• 1:00:18
  be, But I, and, and I took this from Richard Branson.
• 1:00:23
  So I can't say that I came up with it, but it, it, it really
• 1:00:26
  resonated with me. And I, I would say this to
• 1:00:28
  people when I was interviewing them before we even hired them,
• 1:00:31
  I would tell them, look, my business philosophy is very
• 1:00:33
  simple. I truly believe that if I take
• 1:00:35
  care of the employees, the employees take care of the
• 1:00:37
  clients and then the clients take care of the business.
• 1:00:40
  So it's my number one goal to help you be the best version of
• 1:00:44
  the yourself and and put you in a situation and give you the
• 1:00:47
  tools to succeed. And if I can do that, everything
• 1:00:50
  else will fall into place. Yeah, love that.
• 1:00:52
  And, you know, I, I've really lived by that and I feel like
• 1:00:55
  it's been really helpful. And I, you know, still regularly
• 1:00:58
  talk to a lot of my old employees.
• 1:00:59
  In fact, I, I even married one of my old employees and his and
• 1:01:03
  his wife was efficient in their wedding, you know, because I, I
• 1:01:07
  just really resonated with him. And you know, we're, we're still
• 1:01:10
  good friends today. That's cool.
• 1:01:12
  So what's what's life all about for you, for Rob, like you got,
• 1:01:15
  you know, you got a little one at home wife I think right.
• 1:01:17
  And so businesses like what? How do you kind of look at life
• 1:01:20
  to know if you're like, Hey, I'm good, living a good life?
• 1:01:23
  Yeah, it's a really good question, man.
• 1:01:25
  And I, I think about it a lot and I, I try to like, regularly
• 1:01:30
  check in with myself, right? And ask myself, am I happy, You
• 1:01:34
  know, am I doing things that really leverage my strengths?
• 1:01:39
  And, you know, one of the things that I, I, I thought about at
• 1:01:44
  the beginning of 2023, my theme for the year was I want to enjoy
• 1:01:49
  the journey. I want to enjoy the journey,
• 1:01:51
  right? You talked about that earlier.
• 1:01:52
  And, and I, I would literally just, you know, try to every
• 1:01:55
  week, like, say to myself, I want to be here and enjoy the
• 1:01:58
  journey. And and I would regularly still
• 1:02:02
  tell my wife like I'm really grateful to be on this journey
• 1:02:04
  with you. And you know that to me is and
• 1:02:09
  this is like you asked a simple question, but I'm gonna like
• 1:02:12
  take a step. No, it's not a simple answer
• 1:02:13
  though, Yeah. Yeah, I I've thought a lot about
• 1:02:15
  what is the purpose of life, right?
• 1:02:17
  Totally. What is our freaking what are we
• 1:02:19
  doing here on this planet? And I, I, maybe I look at it too
• 1:02:24
  utilitarian like, but honestly, I think humans are just really
• 1:02:27
  smart animals, which is a good thing, right?
• 1:02:30
  But think about an animal, right?
• 1:02:33
  Like a cat. What is a cat's purpose in life?
• 1:02:36
  A cat's purpose in life is just to enjoy where it's at, right?
• 1:02:39
  And just like, really? Survive, really survive, if you
• 1:02:41
  think. Exactly.
• 1:02:42
  Survive and. Reproduce.
• 1:02:44
  Exactly. Exactly that.
• 1:02:45
  On our most basic level, we survive and reproduce, so if
• 1:02:49
  we're here to. Where does that even come from,
• 1:02:51
  though? That's a whole other
• 1:02:51
  conversation. But like, how do they know to do
• 1:02:53
  that? And why does that even matter to
• 1:02:55
  them? You know what I mean?
• 1:02:55
  But yeah. Totally, totally it.
• 1:02:57
  I, I, I totally agree with that, That's for sure.
• 1:02:59
  I, I've come to the same conclusion.
• 1:03:01
  Like on our most basic level, that's what we're here to do is
• 1:03:03
  survive and reproduce. But what that really tells me
• 1:03:06
  then is we're not here for any specific purpose.
• 1:03:11
  Well, that this, that's sort of what I believe.
• 1:03:12
  And so to me, I'm choosing for my purpose to be to enjoy the
• 1:03:17
  journey, right? Like, 'cause if I'm, I'm not
• 1:03:19
  here for a specific purpose other than to enjoy the journey,
• 1:03:22
  what, what am I doing, right? So, so I really wanna make sure
• 1:03:27
  that I'm enjoying the journey and enjoying what I'm doing.
• 1:03:29
  And if I'm not enjoying that, then I wanna do something else.
• 1:03:33
  Well, Dang, I've enjoyed this conversation, man.
• 1:03:35
  This has been amazing. I appreciate you being on where
• 1:03:37
  can people find you, get in touch with you, potentially work
• 1:03:40
  with you? I know we're gonna link up some
• 1:03:41
  of the stuff in the show notes, but.
• 1:03:43
  Yeah, for sure. So you can, if you need to reach
• 1:03:46
  me by e-mail. My e-mail is Rob, ROB at Humans
• 1:03:49
  First dot US and then my website is Humans First dot US as well.
• 1:03:55
  One thing I'd like to offer the listeners for this, for the
• 1:03:59
  podcast is a free complimentary discovery call with me.
• 1:04:03
  It's 45 minutes long. I'm happy to chat with you about
• 1:04:05
  your business. See, you know if it's a good fit
• 1:04:08
  for us to work together in terms of me helping your finances or
• 1:04:12
  operations. Again, I'm again I'm a
• 1:04:14
  fractional CFO and a fractional EOS integrator.
• 1:04:17
  So happy to chat with you about either one of those capacities
• 1:04:21
  and really grateful to be on here with you today.
• 1:04:24
  Alex. I really appreciate the time and
• 1:04:26
  the inside and I really enjoyed the conversation as well.
• 1:04:28
  And seems like we're very aligned on a lot of how we think
• 1:04:31
  about business, which is really cool because you don't always
• 1:04:34
  find a lot of people that are aligned with what you think.
• 1:04:37
  So grateful for the opportunity to chat.
• 1:04:39
  Appreciate being here. Thanks, but.
• 1:04:41
  I'm grateful to be on this journey with you today.
• 1:04:42
  Yes, me too. Me too.
• 1:04:44
  Thank you. Appreciate it.