Latest / Scrappy but Successful [Consultant's Personalities When No One's Watching] / 40. Scrappy Roofer to Executive Coaching with Andy Brown

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40. Scrappy Roofer to Executive Coaching with Andy Brown · Scrappy but Successful [Consultant's Personalities When No One's Watching]

• 0:03
  What's happening everybody? Welcome to Scrappy but Successful, the show where I sit down with
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  your favorite consultants and we find out if they're successful today because they're sophisticated or
• 0:13
  because they're a little bit scrappy. I'm your host, Jack Tompkins, CEO of Pineapple Analyst
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  AI, always helping small businesses become more data-driven. Fun fact of the day, the octopus
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  has three hearts and eight brains. Nature's equivalent of the over-engineered AI startup. But that's
• 0:28
  neither here nor there. Today I'm joined by my friend Andy Brown. He's the founder
• 0:33
  of LULO Coaching. He's a fractal COO, an executive coach, a couple decades of leadership
• 0:38
  experience under his belt. We got big box retail, got multi-site hospitality, senior pastoral ministry,
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  commercial roofing, lumber operations. The guy's done it all. Andy, I'm pumped to have you
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  on, man. We know you're successful, but the question we have for you today, do
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  think you fall more on the sophisticated side, more on the scrappy side?
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  Scrappy for sure. this will offend my home state of Louisiana, but coming out of
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  there you have to be scrappy. So
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  if
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  no, I come from a family great Jack. Thanks for having me on, first of
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  all. Really appreciate
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  course, thanks for coming, man.
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  it. Enjoy talking to you, whether it's on camera or off camera, man. I enjoy
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  you.
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  you
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  definitely scrappy, man. I come from a small town in North Louisiana. You know, we
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  joked the other day. I was telling somebody that for for years we had two
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  places to eat, Chickadilly chicken and dairy made hamburgers. You've never heard of either. they're
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  both out of business now. There's a sonic there. And so I grew up in
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  a town of two thousand people where you had to hustle. You know, there just
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  wasn't a lot of opportunities and the education system wasn't the best. No offense to
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  any of my teachers. You know, I was a bad student. Maybe, maybe it wasn't
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  the education, but
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  Yeah
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  But but no, I came from my dad was a bivocational pastor, built houses. So
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  I grew up doing construction as a kid. you know, grew up on job sites
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  and so we've always had to scrap and claw for everything we've had. So I'm
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  more of a scrappy a scrappy leader.
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  I love it. Tell us, let's just jump right in. So you're doing construction. What
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  age are you starting at construction? this like, is this a family business?
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  Yeah, yeah. I mean, it was all hands on deck. You know, you see little
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  kids that are farmers, you know, that they're five, six years old out milking the
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  goats. Well, I didn't do that. But at seven, you know, seven, eight years old,
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  my earliest memories, I remember being on job sites and carrying lumber and picking up
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  and you know, obviously my job at a young age was to kind of keep
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  the scrap pile burning, especially during the winter months, right? And but I remember being,
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  you know, ten, eleven years old, carrying shingles up the ladder. You know, as an
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  eleven year old kid, a bundle of shingles up the ladder. And, you know, I
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  was a pretty good roofer at by age thirteen. And, you know, we did
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  Ha
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  framing. We did everything. I you know, because I was little, I would have to
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  like get up in the attic and run the, you know, the the insulation, you
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  know, before they did all the blowing, right? You know, and so always got volunteered
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  for all the manual labor in the in the small spaces.
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  Okay, I love it. Is this a family run company? Like who are you working
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  for this time? Okay.
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  Yeah, so my dad, my dad owned the company, and then I had two older
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  brothers. And then you know, once once I was older, my my middle brother, who's
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  still a builder today, my dad has since passed away. He d he passed away
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  in two thousand at the age of fifty one. my brother, my middle brother's still
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  a builder, and but he when he branched off from my dad, he started a
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  roofing company. So I I did roofing with my brother, then he started a framing
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  company, and so we did, you know, stick framing. And did that and then he
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  eventually got back into building from the ground up whole houses, which is what he
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  does in northwest Arkansas now. So did a little bit of of all of it.
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  But it was a family business that my dad and my brother both started their
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  own companies.
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  Okay, we're gonna book in the timeline a little bit. So give me the 15
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  second version of what you do today. And then we're gonna see how the heck
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  you got from 13 year old shingle carrying to executive coaches. So give me the
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  15 seconds of today.
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  Yeah, today I lead a team of of four. there's five of us total, four
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  other people on our team, three other coaches, and then my wife, who's my co-founder
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  and you know, co-owner that does a lot of the back end office stuff. we're
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  a we're a faith-based executive leadership and fractional COO company. we have a lot of
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  services we provide, which we can get into that, but essentially we work with stuck
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  or stretched leaders. stuck meaning that they've been trying the same things. They've hit their
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  ceiling and they just they're out of ideas and they're in the rat race, don't
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  know what to do. Stretched, dude, we're growing so fast, our hair's on fire. We
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  don't have the systems and the people and the leadership development to keep up. And
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  so we kind of specialize in those zero to fifty million dollar stuck or stretch
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  leaders where we can come in and help bring alignment and clarity and and the
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  systems and structure to to be healthy. we're real book on organizational health, but also
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  get ready to scale. in case they want to sell, you know, and so we
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  do a lot with getting them prepped for business valuation and hire multiples. so yeah,
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  I mean in a nutshell that's that's what we do. We work with brand new
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  startups all the way up to, you know, multiple companies right now that are doing
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  forty million a year in revenue and that's kind of our sweet spot.
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  Very nice. Okay. So when you say you feel you've got multiple decades of leadership,
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  this started of you, you're learning on the job at seven, eight, 13 years old.
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  What's your first leadership position? it in the building industry? Okay.
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  No, not at all. I used to get shot with the nail guns from my
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  brothers, man. That's why I left. They would hold the they would hold the button,
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  you know, and shoot and see how fast I could run. And so I was
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  Yeah
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  the I was the youngest. I'll be forty eight in September. And so both my
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  brothers are now, you know, in their fifties and approaching sixty. And so I hated
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  it, dude. I hated the hot, I hated the cold, I hated getting shot with
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  nail guns. And so
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  if
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  my leadership, you know, earliest mi leadership was by accident. I you know, at that
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  time I wasn't a big reader. You can see behind me now. I'm I'm a
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  big reader, or at least I like to pretend I am, but I actually am
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  one of those people who reads a lot. And I remember I was nineteen years
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  old, man, and it was a cold wintery day in Bella Vista, Arkansas. We were
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  building a two-story house, and my job that day was to keep the burn pile
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  up so that when they came off break they could, you know, you know, warm
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  up. And I'm trudging through snow carrying three quarter inch tongue and groove plywood and
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  loading it onto plywood jacks. And I mean, it just sucked. I mean, it it
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  just there was it was hot, it was cold, it was miserable, the splinters. Shoot
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  me with a nail gun. I mean, nothing was fast enough. And I got in
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  a car that day and I told my dad, I said, Look, I said, I
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  love y'all, but I don't I don't want any part of this. I'm not doing
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  this anymore. I'm going to an inside job. And I'll never forget my dad said,
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  I think that's the smartest thing you've ever said to me, son. And and and
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  part of it was we grew up poor. So like I I just didn't want
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  to work that hard and be that broke, just being honest. Like I didn't want
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  Yeah.
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  to do that. And so I went and got a job at Walmart. And it
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  just so happened we lived in Bentonville, Arkansas, and the Walmart was right across from
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  the home office. And so everything there was done with excellence. you had eyeballs on
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  you all the time and you already knew how to work hard. I didn't know
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  the first thing about leadership, but I knew how to work really, really hard. And
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  I think one of my first leadership gifts that God gave me was I've always
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  spotted inefficiencies and they drive me nuts. So I would never come over to Jack
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  and say, Jack, at 19 years old, I wouldn't come over and say, Jack, you
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  need to do this differently. I wouldn't do that. But what I would do is
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  come alongside Jack and start doing what Jack was doing and do it faster and
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  better, not to be arrogant, but because it just drove me nuts. And then Jack
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  would would start asking me questions, hey man, that that makes sense. Why are you
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  doing it? And then I would teach Jack. And that happened at Walmart at 19
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  years old. And and and listen, man, I I had no desire to go into
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  management, but I got promoted. Then I got promoted again. And then six months later,
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  I got promoted again. And then at age 20, to this day, I still don't
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  know anything about cars. If you ask me to change your oil, you're gonna have
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  problems. Okay. That's not me. But at 20 years
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  you
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  old, I got promoted at Walmart. I was the shop manager of the Tire and
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  Loop Express department over 40 year old men that knew what they were doing about
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  cars, but I had the gift of leadership. I had never read a book on
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  leadership, I had not seen great leadership. I really believe that God just had it
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  in store for me. And I had a desire to help people. And so, man,
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  at twenty years old, I'm I'm a a shop manager. My dad ends up dying
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  that year. And I you know, I I just kind of full full disclosure, I
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  went deep into drugs and alcohol in in mourning the loss. I wasn't walking with
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  the Lord right at that time and probably should have got fired from my job,
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  but because I kept doing a great job every day. I got promoted at twenty
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  years old. I became the youngest iron lube express manager in the history of Walmart
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  and I got my first store and I that was my first salaried management job.
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  I moved to a new state to Missouri and took over my own store as
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  a twenty year old. So that was the beginning of my my leadership journey.
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  Okay. So talk about learning on the fly, learning on the job and putting it
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  into practice right away. So did you, did you graduate high school? Okay.
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  I did, by God's grace. I I yeah, I was not again, I was not
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  walking with the Lord. I I only focused on playing basketball. That was my whole
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  my whole deal. I was an alcoholic, so I've been sober now for for several
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  years, but but I was an alcoholic at that time and so I mean oddly
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  enough I graduated with a pretty good GPA because again, I don't think the bar
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  was real high, you know where I'm from, but but yeah, I graduated in high
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  school and And then just went straight into the workforce.
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  So normally I'll ask people, you what was your first job? people say, you know,
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  worked at a restaurant or retail. And you're like, no, was, was leading a Walmart
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  division.
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  Yeah, twenty. It it was funny 'cause when I moved to Missouri, man, they you
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  they gave me the whole spiel. When I I remember the day they brought me
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  in, I was shop manager at Fayetteville, Arkansas at this point. And they brought me
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  in and they said, Hey, we need to talk to you. And I was Yeah,
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  you're I was like, They know do you know what this is about? I said,
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  Yeah, you're probably getting ready to fire me. They go, Fire you? Why would we
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  fire you? I said, Because I mean every day I'm moping around, I don't have
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  a great attitude, my dad died, I'm just kind of messed up and like, No,
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  you've continued to do your job. Everybody here loves you. We actually want to promote
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  you. And I was like, Promote me. Like, yeah, we want you to become a
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  Tyrant Loop Express manager. I was like, all right, great. What's the training program? And
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  because I knew it was six months, and I go, when do I start training?
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  They go, right now. I go, okay. And they go, we need you to relocate
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  in two weeks. I go, do what? And so my training program was like two
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  weeks long. And if I get anybody at Walmart in trouble for this, by the
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  way, they were wonderful people. I was well taken care of. So no, no complaining
• 10:59
  here. But I was told. Your district manager will come visit you once a week
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  up there. Dude, I never saw the guy ever, ever. So it was kinda like
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  parachute in and just sink or swim and man, I just got to work. That
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  is just no different than being on a job site for me. I started cleaning
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  up. I started, you know, making NCAPS displays look better. Our inventory was a mess.
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  So I started looking at stuff that had been stored for for years and I
• 11:22
  started calling other Walmarts or, you know, other other, you know, auto park stores. Hey,
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  I got a bunch of this stuff. I'll sell it to you in bulk. And
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  I just started doing things that normal normal I guess normal managers didn't do. And
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  we were at the bottom of the list for sales revenue. And within six weeks
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  we were number one. And my entire time
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  you
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  I was there, we were never less than number one out of ten stores.
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  Holy crap. How do you get that? All right. I got a bunch of questions
• 11:48
  on this. You don't have a strong financial background. doesn't sound, just, it just, you
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  No.
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  kind of had a knack for it. So you, you just kind of walked in
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  and said, all right, well there's stuff sitting on a shelf that's not being sold.
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  Can we just go sell it? So were you
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  Right.
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  just in a very problem solving mindset? Okay.
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  Correct. Yeah. It's again the inefficiency drove me nuts. If that's sitting
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  Yeah.
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  there for a long time, why? So just to ask myself, do they not want
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  it anymore? Well, no, people are buying it. Well, why are they not buying it
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  here? Well, we probably don't have it displayed right. We're not advertising it right. We're
• 12:18
  not talking about it enough. We're not getting on the intercom and saying, Hey, just
• 12:21
  so you know, guys, we got de icer back here and it's about to snow.
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  Come see us. Like we just started doing things that other people weren't doing that
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  just made sense to me. And If I had a bunch of stuff in the
• 12:31
  storeroom that was getting ready to expire, well, do you want to take a hundred
• 12:35
  percent loss on it or do you want to sell it at fifty percent and
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  get your money back from a vendor down the road and let them take the
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  loss? So I just thought
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  Right.
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  like that and we just started doing stuff. And, you know, and and one thing
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  I've always noticed, Jack, is if you'll go in and just raise the bar with
• 12:52
  cleanliness, cleanliness standards in most industries will make a huge difference to your sales revenue.
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  Think about it. If you go to a restaurant, if the food's great but it's
• 13:01
  dirty, Are you going back? No.
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  Absolutely not.
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  But if you go and it's really, really clean and your food is overcooked a
• 13:07
  little bit, but the server was really nice. Are you going back? Yeah, you're going
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  back. Because
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  100%.
• 13:12
  you think they had a bad day. But if it's filthy in there, you're done.
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  So I've always just tried to rate start with, hey, let's get clean, let's get
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  organized, and then let's just get rid of crap that doesn't need to be around
• 13:23
  here. And that's always led to revenue going. And then now you've got everybody's bought
• 13:27
  in because it's exciting. And when your employees are giving the customer who's paying money
• 13:30
  a better experience, it can be a subpar product. But if they've got a great
• 13:34
  attitude and they're doing it with excellence, they're gonna keep buying from you. And that's
• 13:38
  just how I've
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  Yeah.
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  always grown companies.
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  How did you deal with managing people that were significantly older than you that have
• 13:45
  been in, know, grizzled in the industry, working there for 20 years and you're coming
• 13:49
  in as some, viewed as some hot shot 12 year old, they probably thought, coming
• 13:54
  to run the show. How do you handle that?
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  You work really, really hard. You know, there's no job in the beginning as a
• 14:01
  leader. you know, if the toilets need cleaned, I got them today, you got them
• 14:05
  tomorrow, and yours better look as good as mine. It's just leading by example. I
• 14:09
  think that too many times, even even older leaders, you know, so maybe 45, when
• 14:13
  they step into a new role, they feel like they've got to tiptoe around things.
• 14:17
  I never did that. I got to know people very quickly. Hey, let's spend time
• 14:21
  together. Before I told Jack to do something, I wanna know about Jack. Tell me
• 14:25
  about your family. What do you like about it here? What do you hate about
• 14:29
  it here? Like if you get to know people that you're leading, then show them
• 14:33
  that you're not too good to do some of the things that they do and
• 14:37
  that you're gonna lead by example and that you're not gonna ex you're not gonna
• 14:41
  accept anything but excellence. Most people wanna be led, Jack. That's the point. Like most
• 14:45
  managers realize don't they miss this key point right here. Most people don't want to
• 14:49
  come in and clock in and clock out and just go on about their life.
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  Like they spend more waking hours in our places of business than they do at
• 14:57
  home. They don't want it to suck. But when we don't lead them well, they
• 15:01
  will gladly come in and just get into a dull routine if we let them.
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  But that's not what they want. They want to be challenged. They want to do
• 15:09
  better. They want to make more money. And so I always tried to pair it
• 15:13
  with: hey, I'm right here with you. I want to get to know you. I'm
• 15:17
  going to lead by example. And I'm going to the top, and you're either going
• 15:21
  to come with me or somebody else will take that role. But I want you
• 15:25
  to come with me because I've gotten to know you, Jack. Most people will get
• 15:29
  on board.
• 15:30
  I make sense. Did you learn how to do, anything like, know you said you
• 15:33
  shouldn't be changing oil today, but did you learn how to do any of that
• 15:36
  stuff or is it much more? Okay.
• 15:38
  Yeah. yeah, because we had a system.
• 15:41
  Yeah.
• 15:42
  We had a system in place. Everything Walmart and Waffle House, two great companies I
• 15:45
  work for, were great about systems. Okay. And and so yeah, I mean, like I
• 15:49
  could change your oil at Walmart and things of that nature. But if you ask
• 15:53
  me to go out and listen to a what's wrong with my car and like
• 15:57
  we're in trouble, dude. Like you're full disclosure, sign the nut you know, sign the
• 16:01
  agreement, you're gonna go down the road and your car's gonna blow up. You don't
• 16:05
  want me working on it, but
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  Right.
• 16:07
  No, I mean like I've always been a systems guy. And so if there was
• 16:11
  basic training in place and a way to do things, I just spotted the inefficiencies
• 16:15
  and made sure that everybody was doing at the highest level.
• 16:19
  Okay, take me to today or take me to maybe December, right? So start of
• 16:23
  LULO. You've got a whole bunch of experience at this point. We're jumping through a
• 16:28
  whole lot of the timeline. There's much more leadership experience that we didn't cover, but
• 16:32
  you're jumping in, you're starting a new business. How do you get your first clients?
• 16:37
  How do those come in? And tell me about the ramp up there.
• 16:41
  Yeah, so the timeline of it is I was named COO of a commercial roofing
• 16:45
  company January one of twenty twenty-five. And during that time we had scaled by a
• 16:49
  hundred and ten percent. and so it was really aggressive growth. And unfortunately dipping the
• 16:54
  market, some things outside of my control, myself and multiple others were laid off. And
• 16:58
  so I was laid off June twenty-eighth. First time I've ever been told, you know,
• 17:02
  we don't have a spot for you on the team, and you know. They were
• 17:07
  heartbroken. I was heartbroken. I mean, we really thought we were gonna scale this company
• 17:11
  and and retire together and so no bad blood there by any means, but it
• 17:16
  was a you know, it was a it was a hard moment for us, you
• 17:20
  know. And so that that happened June twenty eighth. And so we made the decision
• 17:24
  in July, July twelfth to to form LULO Coaching, which LULO stands for Love Up
• 17:29
  and Love Out, from the Great Commandment. And so sometimes people ask what the name
• 17:33
  is and is that your dog? Do you got a dog named LULO? Like, no,
• 17:38
  Yeah.
• 17:39
  it That's how I've always taught that, you know, to to people. but we made
• 17:43
  that decision and and roughly I took about seven weeks to just kind of dream
• 17:47
  about what are we gonna do for leaders and business owners. I didn't have somebody
• 17:51
  to call that was like a coaching mentor that I could go to and say,
• 17:55
  Hey, teach me how to do this. I mean, and I had a short window,
• 18:00
  I had a ninety day severance package to get this plane off the ground before,
• 18:04
  you know, before we were gonna have to file bankruptcy is the reality. And Because
• 18:08
  I was making great money as a COO and you know, had to replace that.
• 18:12
  So so I had a little bit of desperation, right? I got a wife and
• 18:16
  three kids and and that was going. but but fortunately, I had experience of God
• 18:21
  providing and and knowing that look, I can only do what I can do and
• 18:25
  that's control how hard I work and and how much effort I put into this.
• 18:29
  But to answer how we got clients, we I've told people this numerous times, and
• 18:33
  I think sometimes they don't believe me, but it's really a three-step process. Number one,
• 18:37
  pray very hard and pray very specific. God, I cannot do this without you. And
• 18:42
  I will do everything I can, but you've got to open the doors. You've got
• 18:46
  to open the doors of relationships. So I've prayed very hard, very, very specifically. Every
• 18:50
  meeting I went to, I prayed, God, please give me a favor with these people.
• 18:54
  If I can help them, open the door. Number two, I worked really, really hard.
• 18:59
  it goes back to being a kid on those job sites. people that sit back
• 19:03
  and wait for things to happen. I mean, good luck. I you know, coach the
• 19:07
  coaching industry,
• 19:08
  Yeah.
• 19:10
  everybody and their grandma is becoming a coach or consultant these days. So there are
• 19:14
  endless opportunities for business owners out there to go to. And so we worked really
• 19:18
  hard. We got in front of people and built relationships and earned trust. And number
• 19:23
  three is I think most maybe not most important, pray is probably most important, but
• 19:27
  number three is you got to deliver results from the moment they talk to you.
• 19:32
  They have got to know this guy knows what he's doing, can help me, and
• 19:36
  then you've got to deliver on what you said you would do. And thankfully we've
• 19:41
  been able to do that. And because of that, we we started actively working with
• 19:45
  clients October one. Okay, so I I get laid off June 28th, July 12th, we
• 19:49
  make the decision to start the company. Everything else, then we start kind of, you
• 19:54
  know, networking and things of that nature. October one, we we we start working with
• 19:58
  clients. And by December, I had to start a wait list. I had 18 clients
• 20:03
  that I was personally working with in in a fractional COO engagement or one-on-one executive
• 20:07
  coaching. And it was just overwhelming, to be honest with you. Just 60 hours a
• 20:12
  week of grueling coaching work, and it was just too much. And that's when we
• 20:16
  made the decision to pivot, hire other coaches, and you know, try to try to
• 20:20
  impact more people because. There's a lot of coaches out there that can help you
• 20:25
  with raising revenue or building structure or all that. and we're probably not unique in
• 20:29
  this that we're faith-based. but we do, I think one of the things that we
• 20:34
  do that maybe some others don't without trying to throw stones is we genuinely care
• 20:38
  about the person. Like if all we do is help you raise your revenue, we
• 20:43
  haven't done anything. But if we can help buy back some freedom in your life,
• 20:47
  so you're a better husband or a better wife, and you've got time to spend
• 20:51
  at your kids' ballgame instead of checking your phone every 10 minutes. Now we're doing
• 20:56
  something. And that's what we're passionate about. And because we've been able to do that
• 21:00
  time and time again, we've just gotten a lot of referrals.
• 21:04
  How do you scale this? Coaching is one of the most difficult things to scale
• 21:08
  and you're tapped at, you're at 18 clients, right? That's too many clients. I'm sure
• 21:12
  you would agree. How the heck do you scale this into kind of drinking your
• 21:17
  own champagne, so to speak, eating your own dog food, whatever your favorite phrase is.
• 21:21
  How do you coach yourself to actually scale this?
• 21:24
  You know, I had to practice what I was preaching. sometimes you have to go
• 21:28
  backwards to go forward, sometimes you gotta slow down to go fast. you know, my
• 21:33
  wife and I have taken a a financial hit to play the long run. when
• 21:38
  I was coaching by myself, I kept a hundred percent of the revenue. Man, life
• 21:43
  was good. We avoided bankruptcy, we put some money in savings, we were by God's
• 21:48
  grace, like everything was great, but I had no time and I couldn't scale it.
• 21:53
  So first thing is I did is I Got my team, I hired great coaches.
• 21:57
  I've got two coaches that each have more experience than I do. I've got Justin
• 22:02
  Arrington out in Arizona. he turns a 49 tomorrow, so happy early birthday to him
• 22:07
  when he sees this. but he has worked, he was the sales director for the
• 22:12
  University of Phoenix. When University of Phoenix Online grew so big, he was the sales
• 22:17
  director for those guys. he's been a fractional the last 14 years before the word
• 22:22
  was ever even used. The guy's been in the fractional space helping business owners and
• 22:27
  across a lot of different industries. So very experienced. So I hired great coaches. Robert,
• 22:31
  Robert Carpenter. the guy's been a number one or number two the last 30 years
• 22:36
  of his life as a CEO or COO. So I've hired great coaches on my
• 22:41
  team and I've gave my clients to them. So we do a revenue share with
• 22:46
  our coaches because I knew I could trust these guys to deliver excellence. Okay. So
• 22:51
  I started giving clients away. Which hurt my personal revenue, but it bought me back
• 22:56
  time so I could work on these other things that we're now doing to scale.
• 23:00
  So a couple things we're doing is I myself am not going to work with
• 23:05
  clients one-on-one except for special projects moving forward. I've got a few clients I still
• 23:10
  work with. in fact it's down to three now that I personally work with. My
• 23:15
  team works with the rest, and we're gonna continue to hire coaches. And the only
• 23:20
  one-on-one work I'll do will be special projects, like leading annual or quarterly planning sessions.
• 23:25
  I love doing that. I'm I'm really great at that. But also these forums that
• 23:30
  we're starting in August. so we're we're kicking off our first two forums. you know,
• 23:34
  think C12, Vistage, EO, all those guys got together and God got involved and had
• 23:39
  a baby. That's that's what we're trying to create. So
• 23:43
  if
• 23:44
  we we really feel like we can create a premium space for business owners and
• 23:48
  nonprofit leaders in that. And so we're working hard on that. So Justin and I
• 23:52
  are gonna co-lead these first two in August, planning to launch two more in October
• 23:56
  and then two more in January. And so that's kind of our focus. But that's
• 24:00
  how we scale. We're gonna do these forums and then keep hiring great coaches out
• 24:05
  there. So if you're out there in a corporate job looking, or if you're a
• 24:09
  great coach that's faith based, that's having trouble getting people in. Call me, let's talk.
• 24:13
  We're gonna be able to get people to feed you in the future. So that's
• 24:17
  how we scale this thing.
• 24:19
  You and I have talked about EOS, Pinnacle, right? Plenty of operating systems out there.
• 24:23
  Some of the stuff that you do, and I assume this will be part of
• 24:28
  the forums too, is actually building the system that enables growth and actually provides structure
• 24:32
  around it. I don't want to ask what are the gaps in EOS or anything
• 24:37
  like that, but what is the difference between an out of the box EOS, for
• 24:41
  example, as sort of like the Kleenex, the name brand, right? Versus something that you're
• 24:46
  putting together for these clients.
• 24:48
  Yeah, so we're you know, I won't use the name 'cause it's not it's not
• 24:51
  what is the word? where you secure the rights to a name. Trademarked. Yeah. Thank
• 24:55
  you. I'm getting older too, so I forget some things occasionally. we're actually
• 24:59
  trademark, yeah, yeah.
• 25:06
  in the process of building an operating system that is sort of gonna be a
• 25:10
  business in a box. and, you know, it's 30 years of of leading different companies,
• 25:15
  different size companies, you know, Walmart, Waffle House, you know, what I learned in the
• 25:19
  ministry, everything. So it's it's all rolled into one. And and look, I'm a big
• 25:24
  fan of EOS. I I think EOS is great, but we've seen some gaps, just
• 25:28
  with working with our clients of, you know, a lot of a lot of operating
• 25:33
  systems will paint a picture of what needs to be there and they give you
• 25:37
  like one or two. pages in a book of this is how to do it,
• 25:42
  but it's a lot of business owners find that it's not enough is what we
• 25:46
  hear. And so through that, we've just created a lot of tools that are gonna
• 25:51
  be part of an overall operating system that's basically when you have a business, it'll
• 25:55
  work with you from startup through scale up. And basically, you know, as a as
• 26:00
  a three person business, you don't need departments, right? But if you had that information
• 26:04
  ready to go when you do scale up, And then you can lean on that
• 26:09
  and trust that it works. And the templates are there and the step-by-step instructions are
• 26:13
  there with AI prompts that you can throw into your own preferred AI and it
• 26:18
  spits out position agreements and process documents and financial reports that you you've never done.
• 26:22
  Because a lot of our ideal clients are this. They were a framer and they
• 26:27
  started framing a house. And then all of a sudden they like, hey, I've got
• 26:31
  two more houses to build. I need to hire three guys. Then all of a
• 26:36
  sudden they grew and they've got eight houses going. And now they got a sales
• 26:41
  leader. and a and a marketing leader and they're like, I never led a company.
• 26:45
  I don't know all this stuff. I don't know about compliance. I don't know the
• 26:50
  right way to fire somebody or onboard somebody that have never been a part of
• 26:54
  corporate America. So we're we're gonna solve that. We're solving it right now for our
• 26:59
  clients. But in 2027, 2028, we want to make sure it's really, really good. We're
• 27:03
  gonna roll out an operating system that we're currently working on and using aspects of
• 27:08
  that with our clients and we we believe it's gonna be really great for for
• 27:12
  people.
• 27:13
  That's awesome. It's a lot of people like just some sort of structure because of
• 27:16
  exactly what you're saying of, I've got, I've got a good idea or I really
• 27:20
  want to do this or whatever it is, but running a business is so much
• 27:24
  more than that. And so being able to have just, I don't like being constrained
• 27:28
  by a system, but I also need the system to support me.
• 27:32
  Yeah.
• 27:32
  And so with through what you and I are talking about, in the previous conversations
• 27:37
  we've had, it's very much a support and a guideline. It's not a rigorous, it's
• 27:42
  not do this, do that. It's support, it's guideline. And especially with the forums too,
• 27:48
  like-minded people, similar situations, a lot of smart people and a pretty powerful.
• 27:53
  Yeah, it is. And and I think there's some of the things that we're gonna
• 27:56
  try to do that are a little bit different than maybe some of the other
• 27:59
  groups out there. And hate sharing this publicly because they'll probably still them. But hey,
• 28:03
  is Ecclesiastes, as Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes, there's nothing new under the sun anyway. So
• 28:06
  we're not afraid of of of competition,
• 28:08
  There you go.
• 28:11
  right? that's part of living in a free market where everybody can compete. But you
• 28:15
  know, one of the things that we're gonna do is we we we lot looked
• 28:20
  at a lot of these other groups and You know, you have this great inspirational
• 28:24
  meeting for a full day or a half a day, and then you got to
• 28:29
  wait another month or you know, before you really have any touch points. And so
• 28:34
  one of the things that we're doing is is A, on the meeting days, it's
• 28:38
  we're holding them at in Atlanta at Buckhead Club. And so people can remote in
• 28:43
  if they need to, but we're really going to encourage, come and be in person,
• 28:48
  right? Come be in person. It's an incredible building, incredible space. chef prepared lunch. And
• 28:52
  so what we're gonna do is we're gonna meet with one group in the morning
• 28:57
  from 8 to 11:30. The meetings are hour three and a half hours long every
• 29:02
  other month. So it's a low time commitment compared to some of the other groups
• 29:06
  out there. but so three and a half hours of high impact. Then we're gonna
• 29:11
  bring in the team from the afternoon that's meeting afternoon, and we're gonna have a
• 29:15
  joint lunch with 29 other business owners. So you're interacting every single time you're in
• 29:20
  person, you're interacting with 29 other business owners, and it's a working lunch. That's prepared
• 29:25
  by a chef. Okay. So that's one thing that's different. Okay. Also, we have a
• 29:29
  platform where every week we're going to do a meeting with all the forum members.
• 29:34
  So again, we want to have six forums in six months. That's 90 business owners.
• 29:39
  It's not mandatory, but if you're struggling to implement something that we've taught you in
• 29:43
  one of those sessions and you're using one of our tools, and let's say you're
• 29:48
  having trouble creating great position agreements. Great. We have a weekly business hour office hours
• 29:53
  where anybody in any forum can come together and we're gonna solve problems together in
• 29:57
  that weekly meeting. Okay, so you're not having to wait two months or a month.
• 30:02
  We'll give you it's no additional charge. We're there, come, we're gonna serve you, okay?
• 30:07
  As are other business owners. Then we're gonna do a once-a-month forum call that's specific
• 30:11
  just to that forum where it's a virtual meeting. So there's a lot of touch
• 30:16
  points that our people are gonna get. So we're really excited about, and that's that's
• 30:20
  just a few of the things. There's others, but there are lots of options with
• 30:25
  groups. A lot of groups are great. We simply are trying to add the most
• 30:30
  value, the biggest bang for your buck. At a reasonable price point with less time
• 30:34
  commitment because we realize busy b owners are busy, leaders are busy. So we've structured
• 30:39
  it in such a way that it's gonna be a high impact. And this is
• 30:44
  the last thing I'll say about that is there's nothing worse, and I went to
• 30:48
  one recently, there's nothing worse than going to a conference or a meetup and you
• 30:53
  get all inspired and motivated, and then a week later there's no traction because there's
• 30:58
  no accountability, there's no follow-up, and there's no continual touch points. We're solving all of
• 31:02
  that with our forums.
• 31:04
  It's so classic. It's, what an inspiring meeting. That speaker was great. I want to
• 31:08
  do this. And then next
• 31:10
  Yeah.
• 31:11
  year you're at the same conference. Be like, huh, I didn't do any of that
• 31:12
  from last year.
• 31:13
  Yeah. Yeah. No, we we literally like, you know, the first thirty minutes of our
• 31:17
  forum meetings is gonna be called check in. And we've created an assessment. Now I'm
• 31:21
  not gonna grade these things on you. It's up to you to be honest and
• 31:26
  and 'cause that's where all growth starts is humility and honesty, right? Vulnerability. But we've
• 31:30
  created what's called the LULO Go gauge. And I have one that's for businesses, I
• 31:35
  have one's for leaders. That was one of the first tools I created. We've had
• 31:39
  incredible Incredible reviews on it. You can go to my LinkedIn page and you can
• 31:43
  take it on there for free. Download it, use it. It's a free resource. But
• 31:48
  it's it's just 10 questions where you grade yourself as a leader. You grade yourself.
• 31:52
  It's not my job to grade you. Okay. I'll give you feedback, but you need
• 31:57
  to grade yourself where you're really at because you know where you're at day in
• 32:01
  and day out. I don't. Okay. So we have one for the leader, we have
• 32:06
  one for the business, but now we've developed these go gauges for your fitness goals.
• 32:10
  What are your fitness goals? I'm not going to tell you what you should do
• 32:14
  to be fit, but I am going to hold you accountable to setting goals that
• 32:19
  you want and then hold you accountable to the commitments you made. Because all of
• 32:23
  us as leaders, especially owners, we need accountability. We're it. There's nobody above us. And
• 32:28
  so if we don't have a group of people around us that care enough about
• 32:32
  us to say, Jack, this ain't a conference where you just get inspired and move
• 32:37
  on. You committed to this last month. How can I help you get better? Because
• 32:41
  I know you have nobody in your building that'll hold you accountable. That's what's different
• 32:45
  about our forums, we're going to hold people accountable in love because we care about
• 32:50
  the success and the results of each leader. But this go gauge is going to
• 32:54
  have things for fitness, faith, or if you're a non-faith person, emotional well-being, right? We
• 32:59
  realize not everybody's a believer. I want to make that clear. We are a faith-based
• 33:03
  business. I don't care if you're an atheist, an agnostic, a Buddhist, a Muslim. I
• 33:08
  won't love you any more or any less based on your beliefs about Jesus Christ.
• 33:12
  Okay, so I want to make that clear. We work with everybody, but I also
• 33:16
  want people to know where we're coming from that this stuff means something to us.
• 33:21
  It's not a it's not a transaction. We genuinely want to see your life transformed,
• 33:25
  and this go gauge is gonna be a part of that. So there's we we
• 33:30
  measure fun, we measure freedom. I don't know a business owner out there who doesn't
• 33:34
  want more freedom. They talk about it, they never measure it. We've found a way
• 33:38
  to measure it and we're going to show progress on the dashboard to where a
• 33:43
  leader can see is this really helping me or not? Because it's the scores that
• 33:47
  they've given themselves and it's our job to deliver the value that helps their. So
• 33:52
  we're we're we're in this together.
• 33:54
  I measure quantifying fun, quantifying freedom as a numbers guy, as a data driven guy.
• 33:57
  I'm all about it, man. I love it.
• 34:00
  Yeah.
• 34:01
  let me hit you with some super quicks. I know we got to get you
• 34:05
  out of here in a few super quick lightning round, scrappy versus sophisticated questions. all
• 34:09
  right. So I'll the start. Do you recommend books or do you recommend podcasts?
• 34:14
  So I'm a books guy, as you can tell behind me. I don't man, listen,
• 34:18
  if you're learning, I I d I'm not complaining. I I I don't care.
• 34:22
  There you go.
• 34:23
  I mean, one of my coaches owned a successful lawn care business, and every day
• 34:27
  he listened to podcasts while mowing lawns and realized that hey, I want to help
• 34:31
  business owners. I don't want to cut grass. He was making money. Now he coaches
• 34:35
  people. so I don't care. As long as you're learning, I don't care, but I'm
• 34:40
  a books guy.
• 34:41
  Okay, how often do you work from your couch?
• 34:44
  Never from my couch, ever.
• 34:47
  Okay.
• 34:48
  I I I'm either in my office where I'm at now or I drive down
• 34:52
  to the buckhead club and and work there if I want to be around people.
• 34:56
  I like getting out. I love going to coffee shops as a pastor in Seattle.
• 35:00
  That's where you did all your work. nobody could afford office space in Seattle. So
• 35:04
  I I I can work anywhere, but yeah, never on my couch, not happening.
• 35:08
  Okay, okay. Get a new client, hire a new coach, launch the forums, a small
• 35:12
  celebration, a big celebration. Is it a nice steak dinner, vacation with the family? What's
• 35:17
  a celebration look like? All of it.
• 35:20
  All the above. Look, if I'm gonna work hard, I'm gonna play hard, man. So,
• 35:24
  like, you know, we're leaving today for Nashville. I get to go work with some
• 35:29
  business owners through was actually invited to speak at another another coach's training, two day
• 35:34
  training. So we're gonna enjoy Nashville on Friday. But yeah, I love a good steak,
• 35:39
  man. I'm a fillet guy. so I love going out and eating a good steak.
• 35:44
  we love to take day trips, many vacations. I love to do it all. Go
• 35:49
  find a good waterfall. you know, we we go to Lifetime Fitness, which is a
• 35:54
  great gym, use the amenities there. So I love to I love to celebrate. I
• 35:59
  think that's important. Leaders that don't celebrate burn out real quick.
• 36:03
  I have been there, done that for sure. The burnout, not the celebrate.
• 36:05
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 36:08
  Andy, thank you so much for coming on, man. 100 % scrappy, we knew that
• 36:11
  coming in. But it's
• 36:13
  Yeah.
• 36:14
  evolved into quite a sophisticated business. I gotta give it to you, man. I'm excited
• 36:17
  for you. It's been really fun to hear about your growth and I'm excited to
• 36:21
  see the next phase, man. What do you want the folks out there to know?
• 36:25
  Anything you wanna promote in the last minute or so here?
• 36:28
  Yeah, I mean, more so than promoting LULO is just grow, man. Pour into yourself,
• 36:32
  invest in yourself as a business owner, as a leader. There's too many people out
• 36:36
  there that feel like I'm a high-paid employee of my own company. I have no
• 36:41
  freedom. I've had clients say, I don't want to finish my drive to work today.
• 36:45
  I had a client through tears. Not recently, by the way. They're better. But you
• 36:49
  know, when we first started working, I had one through tears that. You know, I
• 36:54
  just I want to just shut my doors and never open them again, you know?
• 36:58
  And and man, it's not supposed to feel that way. And so whether it's through
• 37:03
  LULO coaching or another coach out there, invest in yourself. It does not have to
• 37:07
  be that hard. And a lot of times I think people hold back and don't
• 37:11
  want to do it because A, I don't want to spend the money, and B,
• 37:16
  I don't want to have to admit to somebody I need help. Look, everybody has
• 37:20
  coaches. Michael Jordan had coaches, Tiger Woods has coaches. President Trump, whether you like him
• 37:25
  or not, kings, queens, everybody has advisors. It's nothing new. It doesn't show weakness. It
• 37:29
  actually shows strength. And so if we can be of service at LULO Coaching, we
• 37:33
  would love to do that. We're easy to find. Reach out lulocoach.com. info at Lulu
• 37:38
  dot info at lulocoach.com is our email. got a great team of people looking to
• 37:42
  help you. And so we would love that opportunity. The forums, I guess the biggest
• 37:47
  thing I would promote is this is the forums. I don't think there's a better
• 37:51
  value on the market. we didn't touch everything we're doing because I don't want my
• 37:55
  competitors to know everything we're doing. But I d I really believe there's not a
• 38:00
  better value on the market than what we're providing there. And if we can answer
• 38:04
  any questions about that, please reach out. We can tell you about that and other
• 38:09
  services we offer.
• 38:10
  And from what you were telling me, I totally agree. The ROI on those forums
• 38:14
  sounds astronomically high. So, Andy man, thank you so much for coming on. I appreciate
• 38:19
  it. And thanks for listening everybody. Stay data driven.
• 38:22
  Thanks, Jack.