[Allie & You] How to Take Risks and Scale Your Company

It's hard enough building one company, but you know those people that are just serial entrepreneurs and everything they touch turns to gold. Well, maybe not everything, but how do they manage it all? How do they run all these different companies? Well, today on Allie and you'd you're going to find out right here. Welcome to Ali and you'd the business success and lifestyle show. I am Alyson Maslin. My friends call me Ally. And my mission, the reason that I do this work and come to you week after week is because I truly believe you, the business owner, have the power to change the world. So if I can give you the tools, the strategies, the inspiration to help you do that, that is so rewarding for me. So today you're going to get all that and more because our guest is truly an entrepreneur extraordinaire. And he has co founded and or the principal of four current companies that are inc. Magazine's fastest growing companies. Four of them. He's a serial entrepreneur. He's a recovering attorney and accountant. You all know what I'm talking about. Those of you he has founded, scaled or sold almost two dozen different businesses. Wow. With sales ranging from 3 million to 337 million across six continents, he is working now primarily on growing DigitalMarketing.com and NativeCommerce.com Our guest today, Roland Fraser, has funded over 100 private and public offerings, run an international hedge fund. Are you tired yet? And worked with celebrities ranging from William Shatner and Tony Robbins. So I am very excited to welcome and introduce to you Roland Fraser.

Yeah, thank you.

Wow. Yeah, that's. This is so cool. So, like, what do you do? What do you do in your off time?

No, I've made a New Year's resolution to try to be more productive. So that's what I'm working on.

Really? Oh, my God. I know. I'm such a slacker. So. But it's very inspiring and I love, obviously you're going after things that you want and you've taken big leaps, you've taken risks. I'm sure there's been many highs, there's been many lows.

Plenty of both. Yes.

Yeah. So that I want to hear all about that. But I'm wondering, first of all, just, you know, you are this kind of explorer. I believe entrepreneurs are explorers and doers. You run companies, you buy or sell. Do you feel that there in your experience through from yourself and all of the, the entrepreneurs that you've worked with, that there's a theme that runs through, like there's a common theme Almost in their DNA.

Yeah. I think you have to be. You have to be comfortable with risk. You have to. I think you have a. Just a passion for things. I know everybody says that, but it's really true. The people, like, as far as the people I know that are successful, they really. They find opportunities. They're risk takers. They're comfortable with uncertainty. Most people aren't. And that probably more than anything else is, I think the key. You got to be okay with. I don't know what's going to happen.

Yeah. You know, that is. That's such a big thing. And I, you know, I call it being comfortable with the uncomfortable. You've heard that saying before. And I. And I think that's why a lot of people play small.

Yes.

Because of that uncertainty. That they really want to make sure they know what's. That's going to happen. And you really can't do. You have to be willing to like, kind of jump out when there is no net.

Yes, you do. But the worst thing can happen is that you fail. And if you don't define failure as this ego destroying circumstance, then it's okay. It's learning. I like the. It's another way not to do the thing that you were trying to do. I learned lots of ways not to be successful over the years.

Yeah. And also that's where all your magic is too, because you get your biggest lessons then as well. And. And so with all of the things that you've done, you know those moments where you just like, I'm on the right path, like, this just really feels right. What are some times that you've experienced.

That I think you can feel? It's like catch fire. Right. When does something catch fire? So you sent me to watch one of the. One of the people that you interviewed recently, Mike Koenigs.

Right. Yeah.

So I got. My wife and I were in Italy and the volcano in Iceland erupted, covered the sky, shut down all of the flights in Europe. Right. So we were stranded. We were at the airport and saw that that was happening. I was like, okay. So I booked a hotel and we went to the hotel and we're hanging out at the hotel and we kind of done the whole trip. So we were just relaxing. But I was looking for something to do and I hadn't actually. I didn't know Mike Koenigs or anything about any of that, but I did want to try my hand. I'd kind of read about these people doing these launches and I was like, I'm a marketing guy. I'm a business person, I've done a lot of stuff like that. So it's like, I'm going to write a business plan and see what I can do to promote this product that he's got. So he had this product and I wrote my little business plan. It was like an eight page plan and I promoted it. I signed up to be a promoter and I promoted it and I sold. The first day I called his affiliate manager and I was like, I don't know how I'm doing. I mean, it seems like things are good. Can you tell me how much I've sold? And he said, yeah, he said, you're number one. You've sold $550,000 so far today.

Oh my God.

Now, my goal was a good friend of mine lives right down the street from me. His name is Frank Kern. He's also a marketer. And Frank had a record of selling 400,000 during a launch. My goal was to, was to beat Frank's record because I'm a healthy competitor.

Give me something to shoot for. Yeah, I get it.

But I broke it in that day. And then I went on. So that's how I knew it was on fire. So now to me, when something has caught fire, you pour gas on it. You figure out, okay, this is going right, how do I take it to the next level? And so I looked at what I was doing. I was like, okay, I can plus this, I can plus this. What are the other people are doing successful? And I kept adding things to it and making changes that I thought would help. And I ended up putting my personal phone number on the thing. And I talked to, I told my wife, I said, the next six days I'm gonna probably get a ridiculous amount of calls. And I told my friends and I'm very good about not answering the phone, but I said, this is gonna happen. And I talked to, I closed, I think it was, I closed like 120 people on the phone just with phone calls because nobody posts the phone number online. People have questions, they're just stuck sleeping maybe.

And you lose a sale.

And you lose a sale. And I ended up selling right, at a million three hundred thousand of this stuff in six days.

Oh my gosh. And now you're Mike Koenig's best friend.

No, no, no. He sold, I think like $9 million on the launch.

Yeah, yes, I remember that.

But yeah, so just there's several times I have a direct mail business I started 22 years ago now. And I remember when I first started that I sent Out. You send. It's like ads and SEO and everything. You send these things out into the world and you hope that they're going to come back, but you don't know. So you're kind of sitting there going, is it going to work? And I remember I sent out my first direct mail pieces, and my manager came back to me and said, I've got the deposits for today. Do you want to see them? And I said, yeah. And I was expecting, you know, a little thing of checks. He had three duffel bags full of checks from people that had sent back.

Yeah.

Response to it. And I was like, this.

Is this. Is this caught fire? This was a caught fire thing. Yeah.

So just when that happens, it feels really, really good.

Yeah. It's exciting when you get it just right or, you know, you get. Especially with the marketing. Right. It's the right headline, it's the right market. It's just.

Yes.

You know, in the sweet spot.

Yes. Yeah. So it's being in the flow. If you can get in the flow, then it just keeps going. It's pretty amazing.

My dad always said to me, you know, do more of what's working and drop what's not, you know, And I'm like, dad, I want something a little more profound. But it's actually so true. Right.

All of the things that are the most effective sound boring. It's really true. It's like, well, what's the cool ninja hack thing that I can do that I click this button and turn this knob? Yeah. None of that's going to really make that much difference. Most of it's here, you know, and the rest of it is just simple stuff.

I know. Well, gosh. And then. And then there were those that didn't work out so well. So, you know, what were some moments where you were like, wow, this is not working out like I'd hoped, or, oh, my gosh, holy crap, I got to dive in and save this, you know, sinking ship.

There's. There's been a lot. There's one right now. We had a. We had a company and we picked a CEO for it kind of by default. It was somebody that was doing really, really well. And we promoted them a little bit beyond their competence because we really wanted them to succeed, and we kind of wanted to give them credit for being there and all that. And they just didn't have the strong enough financial background. And finances are super, super important, it turns out.

Yeah.

I know. One of your five things is cash flow. And I will. I will attest that that Is, in fact, fairly important. And so expenses just got way out of whack to the extent that the first of the year, we had to make some repositionings of roles and things, and we cut out Almost immediately about $400,000 a month of expenses. That we had made a mistake that I think a lot of entrepreneurs make, which is. Or at least that CEO hadn't, and I hadn't overseen it properly, was that there was scale before growth. Because a lot of people think, well, how do I scale up? But what they really mean is, how do I grow? Well, if you grow but you don't have scale built in, the wheels fall off and customer service falls and product falls. If you scale before you have growth, you run out of money and you get broke. So the balance of those two is so critical. And that was a mistake. And that was something that I and my partners had to kind of step.

In and say, and it happens fast. Like, all of a sudden, you really realize that it's kind of going downhill. And I think that's just such a good point, because when you're at the point of scaling, it really should be able to continue to replicate without your expenses replicating.

Yeah. Or you know, that that's going to happen, and there's a period of time before it's going to turn the corner, and then you have capital to cover Runway. Right. So to me, you give everything. Runway. It's got this long before you're going to run out of money, which means it's got this long to turn a profit, and then that's cool. I like that. You know, I like having that.

That deadline.

If the train's coming, I see the light, you know, But. But you have to. You have to have a plan. You have to have the money to do that. If you don't do that, then you're kind of setting yourself up and your team for failure.

Right. Right. Yeah. I totally get it. And, you know, I think you've got to. We've talked about this a lot, because I coach business owners. You know, when you start a company, it's a whole. You're looking at your business in a very different way. You know, especially in the earlier years of business. Right. Sometimes it's. I want to survive. I just, you know, this is my passion. And then when it's time to. You want to grow and scale, it's a whole different infrastructure. It's a whole different way of looking at your business.

And I think it's a different set of skills, and I think that catches A lot of people. So scaling from say 0 to 5 million, really you're okay if you're a good operator, if you're in the weeds of the company, but when you're going into the 20, 30, 50, 100, you've got to do different things. You're really not focused on the internal workings of the company. You're focused on dealing with shareholders and banks and stakeholders and all other kinds of things, forming relationships outside the company. And it's a different set of skills. So I think you either as an entrepreneur, generally you have one of those two, you don't have them both. Right?

Right.

And you, if you're self aware enough to realize which set you have, then you partner with someone or you retain someone that's got that complementary skill set and things go well.

Get your ego out of the way. Right?

Get your ego out of the way.

Yeah. I don't know. So and so you've gone through, you've gone through lots of ups, you've gone through lots of downs just because you are such a risk take. And how do you, because this is the part that people struggle with the most and I think what holds them back? How do you separate from it emotionally? Or do you, how do you manage.

Separate your emotions from your business? To me, I don't.

Or how do you, what you know, how do you manage personally as things start going down? And what do you think the smartest thing to do would be in those situations?

The very first thing is don't panic. There's very little in life that can happen, especially as you live it and face really challenging things. There's very little in life that can happen that will completely destroy everything. So if you're aware of that to start with and you say step one, don't freak out. And then that gives you the frame of mind to brainstorm what solutions might exist, to consult with other people to see what other options you have. And I think that's, that's really it. It's come up with a plan and then come up with a backup plan and then come up with a backup plan to the backup plan.

Right.

And it'll be fine. There's, there's not much that can happen. Right. I mean, the whole world can fall in. And the worst thing that happens is you file bankruptcy and you start over again. That sounds horrible, scary. But the truth is people, people do it every day.

Right. And that's what, it's helpful to people. Yeah. I mean, it's not like you go in wanting to do that, but you know, it does happen all the time. And that's what I always tell our clients. Think of the worst possible scenario and just go there emotionally and think, what would you do in that situation? You know, and especially if you face things like, you know, serious illness, you know, or other personal tragedies, it helps, you know, not that you want that, but it sure puts things into perspective.

And then I think the key is so. So it's. It's. Don't panic. Have a framework for where this sits in your life and how important it really is. And then think about, how can I reposition? To me, repositioning is everything. And I think the. That it's the best way to recover from almost anything. It's the best way to advance yourself in a career. It's the best way to grow a business. It's the best way anytime anything has stalled, to see how can you take it up to the next level. And so if your business is. If things are on the down, then I'm going to look and say, okay, what are my opportunities? Reposition. What's got momentum that I can attach my business to? Where can I get leverage? And to me, leverage and momentum are.

So give me an example for that. When you say reposition.

Sure.

Just to illustrate that.

So I'll give you an example in the business that I just mentioned, since it happens to be fresh in my mind, not that I'm thinking about it or anything, but that business had a whole lot of people, had a whole content team that were overseas, in the Philippines, creating content for a bunch of different properties that we had. And so we said, okay, I look at an inventory of all the assets that we've got. So which of these assets can turn from cost centers to profit centers? That's the very first thing I do. Then we look at that, and we said, okay, we've got a bunch of people that are producing content, an entire team, and. And we've got capacity. And there's a lot of people out there, when we talk in the world that say, I'm supposed to do content marketing, but I just don't know how. And how do I get that? How do I make that happen? So we said, what if we offer that to customers? And so we decided to take on 100 customers. And this was last month. So last month we signed up $54,000 a month of recurring revenue for customers. We charge $7,000 a month. And then I think this month we'll end up at about $150,000 a month. The team costs $50,000 a month. So we added $100,000 a month of profit to the business, which kind of helps us recover from overspending those other months last year.

I get it. Well, I mean, people need help with implementation, so that's huge. And I think, too, I mean, that's the other thing that I see business owners struggling with. Oh, I don't want to spend this. But if you're spending it to get you here, you know, and that's how we sell that.

So, like, that is okay. It's $7,000 times 12 months. I think that's $84,000 a year. To create a content team is going to cost you about $300,000 a year because you're an editor and content people and people and a tech person. And we do it all for that. And I'm not saying that to try to market the services. I'm saying that to me, anywhere in life that is tough, you reposition yourself on the positive side of, where can I twist this so that it's not going down and that it's going back up? How do I get that corkscrew thing happening?

Right. And just really looking at your company, stepping back and then just making those. Making those changes. So you are. You have a lot going on. Right? I mean, 24 companies. I know you're not working on all of them at the same time, but you're a super busy guy. And I think that entrepreneurs really struggle with focus. We're creative. It's the shiny object. Oh, I want to do that. I love this. How the heck do you manage all of this?

It's teams. So I don't do anything that I don't absolutely love to do. So I have. If it's. I look at any business, I always want someone else to run the business. I don't want to run any business because I don't want a job. I don't want to be a CEO. I darn sure don't want to be COO or CMO or any of those Cs. I want to be board. And the board is, here's your strategic direction. And the officers execute the strategic direction of the board. Right. So for me, the way that I manage all of that is I'm not on the organizational chart of any of those companies because I consider myself an investor and an advisor, not an operator.

Right, Right.

And I'm actually not really great at operating. I don't have the patience I'm supposed to have with people. I'm too direct. And as my wife Tells me with our kids. And I don't mean to be. I just say it like it is. Right. So that's not necessarily culturally effective.

Yeah, it doesn't work sometimes. Right.

So what I do is I know my weakness there, and I know my strength and strategy and direction. So I don't operate in any of the companies. I don't do anything I don't want to do, even outside that. So I don't like being on a schedule where I have to be somebody, someplace at a specific time on a regular basis, because I spend a lot of time with my family, and I like to hang out. I like to travel and do that kind of stuff. So I just structure my entire life around that. There are. If you don't have money, there are interns that are free. There are partners that are expensive but free, and that you don't have to pay them. So if you're starting out, there are contractors that can do stuff. And then I just bring people in to run the companies. And my strategy for bringing people to run the companies, it almost always happens that someone I know asks. So my accountant asked, gosh, you got all this cool stuff going on. Is there any way I could be a part of it? I said, yeah, you can buy in and you can be cfo. And he did, and so he bought in. And I think he got a loan against his house to invest and come in, and he's done incredibly well. My banker did the same thing. She's like, oh, my God, this is really great. I see you coming in with these bags of checks and things like that. I'd kind of be interested in doing that. And she ended up leaving the bank and buying into the company. So now they operate two companies that I don't have to go in and do all the work for. They're vested. They have an ownership interest that they actually skin in the game, took money out of their pocket and put into it, and they're fantastic operators.

So that's kind of it, really. It's that idea of being the dumbest person in the room, so really surrounding yourself with people that are experts in those areas for your business so that you can really step back because you find a way.

We're very creative people. Right. You'll find a way not to do the things you don't want to do.

Yeah.

Even if it's that you just don't do it because you. You have to be some other place or something like that. And then the stuff that you're. That you don't want to do that with kind of goes down. So you got to get somebody that actually is excited about that. The cool thing is, is that there's a market, an old ebay ad. It's like there's a market for people that like lime green gremlins. Right. You just have to find the few people that do that.

Yeah, they're out there.

Yeah.

And I was wondering about that actually.

I know you were probably thinking about this most of the people in the audience, but, but that's the key is, is finding the people who want that thing that you don't want. Those. Both of them were in corporate y kinds of jobs and they were like, you know, I don't not completely happy here and my future isn't super exciting because there's a lot of time between getting up and this seemed like a really cool thing. And both of them just kind of took to it really.

And they really just transferred their skills from what they were doing to then now being able to take ownership with that. So that's awesome. And so you're really, you know, it's a way for you to grow the business and then you're helping other people create a wonderful life for themselves.

And it's, it's kind of interesting. I watched the founder again last night, the story of McDonald's and it was really funny watching the difference between when Ray Kroc started at his country club selling investors and then when he started selling owner operators.

Right, right. Yeah.

I think like for me, investors are fantastic. Love them. For my operators, I really want them to come out of pocket. I really do. And I. And consistently I found the people that come out of pocket to be part of the business outperform by multiples and multiples. People who you just hire.

Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, they. It's their baby.

Yeah.

Right. Because otherwise, I mean, your team is never going to love it the way that you do.

Yes.

Right. And that's therefore the frustration sometimes. Why? How would you expect that? I mean, you want them to be passionate, but they're never going to be fully passionate because it's not theirs.

Exactly.

Well, my next question is kind of like what we've been talking about. But when you think of scaling, what do you think are the most important things? I mean, you just said, of course, be prepared cash wise. But what are some other things that maybe we're missing?

I think the big thing that I experience and that I see happen more than anything else is bottlenecking. So there's a fantastic book. I don't know if you've read it called the Goal by Elihu Goldrat, I believe.

Yeah, I have not. I have not read that.

It's really hard to read. Okay, so I owned it. It's a big, thick book. It's a big, scary thick book. And I owned it for maybe 10, 12 years before I finally got the idea to buy it on tape and listen to it. And I started reading and I was talking to a couple of my business partners. I'm like, yeah, I finally got through this book and it's actually fantastic. But I never could read it before. And they're like, yeah, I started a couple times, I just couldn't get to it. But the, the audiobook is outstanding. It's like listening to a play because it is parabolic. I mean, it's a story, right, about somebody in a manufacturing plant and it talks about where the bottlenecks are and that each time that they identified those, another bottleneck came. But eventually you keep knocking these things out and things go smooth. So I would highly recommend that you buy the audio.

I plan on doing that right away. And then.

So then you identify. Okay, I need to find out where are the bottlenecks. I can scale, but there's probably just one thing, one place where flow is stopping or inventory is piling up. If you have an inventory type business, Right. And if you can identify those things and, and they may not always be where they initially appear to be, but if you can identify those things, then you can really scale infinitely because it's just removing the blocks. Frequently the block is the entrepreneur, right?

Yes. The control freak.

Yeah. So that, and then I think that. I think it's. It's team capital and systems. The other thing is systems that I see. I'd say a lot of people have fallen into a successful business and they haven't taken the time yet to build the systems around it to support everything that needs to be supported and do SOPs and all that kind of stuff is actually important.

It is important. And you're probably not someone that is going to sit down and create the system.

I never do that.

I'm not that either. I know my team has tried really hard to get me to follow the system. However, you really want to look at your business as a separate entity, as an investment, and that you're going to possibly sell this business at some point or pass it down, and you need to be able to have someone just step in. Right. And that's where the systems come in.

Which is also, if you think about it, I've had the benefit of working with people whose business was their brand, whose. Whose personal brand was the business. And it's almost impossible to sell. Right. So right off the bat, like, when I came into Digital Marketer, Digital Marketer was one of my partners, Ryan Dice. Everything was Ryan Dice. Ryan Dice was on the homepage. If you look at Digital Marketer, now it's Digital Marketer. It's not Ryan Dice. Ryan Dice doesn't show up on the homepage. He's still a spokesperson.

Yeah.

And really effectively, he's been celebritized, which is great. So it's just like we hired somebody to say, hey, I eat this kind of yogurt. You should eat this kind of yogurt.

Right.

But he's not critical to the business in terms of the actual branding. And so I think that's a big deal. I think a lot of people kind.

Of run into that challenge.

But I think that's.

Yeah, that's what we did in our mastermind, which is Pinnacle Global Network. And it's all about the team.

Yes.

You know, because that's something that, you know, I really had to make. Make that shift over time, because otherwise, you can't.

You can't leave. Right?

I can't leave, and I can only help so many people.

Correct.

Right. And now I have this team that are. They're incredible, and I've been able to train and teach, and they're. They're out there, and they're successful in their own rights. And so that it is. Is something that can grow and scale.

Right. So to me, the key is, like, so how do I remove myself from the business? Because if I remove myself from the business, I don't have a job. I'm not on the organizational chart. I can have a life. I can travel. I can have fun. Right.

Very cool. You got that? Okay. That's what you're gonna start doing tomorrow. And what do you think the biggest mistakes are that the business owners make that you see when they're. They're having trouble scaling, when they're having.

Trouble scaling, probably building, trying to scale too fast. Especially team. Team is hard. Right. Team is finding good people is. It's dating. And you don't want to get married before you date a little bit. So I think a lot of it is they're so desperate to have the help that they hire the wrong people, you know, and, you know, guilty of that. They hire the wrong people to help them too fast. Like, the first meeting, I think I read something from you or watched something from you that said, you like to have three different people interview three times in three different places. And I think that's really, really fantastic advice because people come across differently. I also do the same thing that you mentioned. I'll watch to see how they treat other people. Because seeing how people treat other people outside of the artificial. I've got my best mask on while I'm meeting you is incredibly insightful as to how they're going to treat everyone in the business.

Right? Yeah, it's true. It's true. And I'm looking. And that's why we do even three different places to interview too, because people will show up differently in different environments. Are they opening the door for someone? You know, do they pick up something when they drop? Do they show up on time? What are they wearing? You know, it's all those things. And some people are really good at interviewing.

They are, yes.

They're just really good at interviewing. But then after that, it just goes downhill. And I always tell my clients, they're like, oh, I found someone great. I go, good. How many times did you interview? Oh, just once. And I just. They were so good. I hired them right on the spot and I said they didn't work out, they didn't have to work for it. I think that's another thing too, too is showing how committed are they.

Yeah, I agree. There's a hotel in Las Vegas and I don't know if they still do this, but when they first opened, it's called the M Hotel. It's kind of out in the desert and it's more of a locals hotel. But the folks that were running it, I was talking about how they hire people and they said from the very. We tell the people in the parking lot, in the parking deck that an interviewee is coming and to watch for them, and they report back on how they were interact. You know, the door person, everybody knows the interviewee is coming in and the interviewee doesn't realize it, but how they're treating everybody along the way, they said, is probably how they're going to be treating a customer. So if they're happy and smiley and nice, then that's a really good sign. But if they treat those people poorly, then chances are that's going to carry over to the. To the actual customer experience.

Yeah. And you know, that one higher, I mean, that could be six months, could be a year or longer that you're struggling in that situation. So take an extra people.

It costs money.

People take an extra couple of weeks on that. So, you know, I was you know, was looking at all the things that you've done. And my guess is that you're a probably a good negotiator. And I think that that's. I don't know. Do you think you're a good negotiator?

Everyone considers themselves a good negotiator, so I consider myself a good negotiator. Some people say they think I.

Well, I think that it is somewhat of an art, and I think that if you don't ask, you don't get, but you have to be confident enough to put yourself out there and be, you know, it's okay if someone says no, but what are some tips on that?

Well, so when I was younger and first starting out, it was a game for me to see how good a deal I could get. Right? And after experience in dealing with people and having real life experience, you learn that getting the best deal is not always a win for you or the other person. So I have come up with the fairness zone. So to me, there's a zone of fairness in any deal, in any transaction, any negotiation, where everybody's going to be feeling like they've won. Right? It's a good. It's a win win. And then there's too much on either side. There's where you give and you feel bad, or there's where they've agreed to something and they feel bad. And so my first place of starting out in everything is always I'm going to define the fairness zone. And if I find in talking with the person that I'm outside of it in their mind because their fairness zone might be different than mine.

Right, Right.

Then I won't do the deal. And that goes straight. I was buying a camera lens for my son for Christmas off of ebay. And of course, the buy it now price was X and I offered X minus a lot. And. And they said. They said, well, I really wanted to get more for it, but. But okay. And I said, I said, listen, this is back and forth on email. I said, listen, I don't want to buy it from you, and I won't buy it from you if you're not absolutely happy about it. And they said, well, no, I really think I can get more for it. And I said, okay. I said, I'm not gonna buy it. No hard feelings, but I don't want the, you know, I don't know if you call it karma or whatever. I just don't want the energy of somebody feeling bad about something, even if I'm never going to see them again. I'm going to think about it every time I see that camera lens. Right. And in every deal, I want to know. I asked the other person at the end of every negotiation, I said, are you absolutely excited about this? And if they say no, then I either have to give something more or I have to decide that it's just not a deal that's going to work. Right. So I think that's. That's really important.

I like that. The fairness zone. And it's true, because you want to feel good about it, and you want them to feel good about it, and then at the same time, it's got to work for you. Right. Everything's got to fit.

Yeah. I also follow the. Are you familiar with the five whys? I think it's. I think it's the guy from Toyota. Toyota. But he says that to get to the bottom of any challenge in, say, a factory, you have to ask why? Well, the line broke down. Why did the line broke down? The line broke down because a part gave out. Why did the part give out? Because it wasn't greased. And you get back to that. The schedule for putting oil on the part wasn't proper. Right. But you have to go back.

You have to keep going deeper.

Yeah. So to me, in negotiation, it's the same thing. I want to know, so if we're doing a deal, I want to know what you want. You're going to tell me what you want, and then I'm going to say, why do you want that? And you're going to say, because whatever. Right. Because I like to have money. So I did a software company we just bought at the end of the year, and I asked the guy, I said, what do you want? He said, I want to sell the company. I said, awesome. Why do you want to sell the company? Because I want money. Okay. Why do you want money? And it's because I want to do this other deal. Awesome. Tell me about the deal. What do you need to do the deal? Well, to do the deal, I need this much money, which was way less than he was asking for it. And then I'm going to do this and this. And after going through all of that, now I know exactly what I can give him to make him happy. And it's probably a lot less than he's asking for, or I might be able to provide him some of the things that he wants through other resources.

Or assets that I've got.

So I don't, you know, again, come out of pocket. So. So I think that five whys Deal is important. And then when I've got that, I do Socratic method. So recovering attorney Socratic method is asking questions to lead people to the place that you want them to go. Right. It's not manipulatively, but it helps them to believe that they reached that conclusion and that it's their idea. So now I know I do that.

With my husband all the time. Exactly.

Exactly. I can't do it with my wife if she says, you're lawyering me.

Yeah.

But it's actually helpful. I don't care. But anyway, so I think those things, I think it's fairness zone. Lead them through asking questions and answering questions to the place that you both want to be. Hopefully you use these powers for good and then find out really what's underlying whatever it is that they want. I think if you do that negotiation is really collaborative. It should be not adversarial. It should be, hey, we're partnered together to find out how do we get to this result.

Yes. It's a win, win situation, especially too with partners and things that you're going to be working over a longer period of time as well.

Yes.

Yeah. So very cool. Thanks for sharing that. And you know, I think we've kind of answered this, but. And I'm just. The questions I'm asking you are some of the biggest challenges that I hear business owners struggle with. And I see it, and one of it is where they are trying to manage it all. But there is such a fear to take that leap to grow the team. I call it hiring forward, like putting people in places when you're not, you know, you may not have the finances yet to do it. I mean, from my experience, I know when I put the person there, the business just grows.

Sure. I think the way to take the fear out is to say, what is it that you're afraid? It's my why thing, Right.

Yeah.

Why are you afraid? Are you afraid that you don't have the money to do it? Then that's not a problem. If you're afraid that a lot of people, I think, are afraid that someone else will come in, either reveal mistakes that they have made, which makes them feel foolish, or they'll do it better than them, which makes them feel less Right.

Interesting. Yeah.

And so to me, that's where you start is like, is what's standing in the way of you bringing this person in? Really money? Okay. Now if we can get past that. If we can't get past that, then we have to talk about that. But if we can get Past that and say it's really down to money. Yeah, it's really money. I'm just afraid I'm going to bring this person in and sales aren't going to grow. And now I'm eating cat food.

So very tasty.

The answer to that to me is then find a way to bring the people in that don't cost money. We actually have found some of our best employees by doing an internship program. So we'll have interns come in and they'll work and we'll fire half of them after a week. We'll fire another half of them after another week. And then we have a little pool of people that have some potential that we can work with and that doesn't cost anything. And you kind of get to try before you buy another way. As I said earlier, I think it's more expensive, but ultimately it's a better lifestyle to get partners. I don't own 100% of anything that I do. No company, zero. Because I don't like to do everything. So I get the partner in and again, the partners vested. So you actually might turn your hiring into capital, into the company. You might say, okay, well I need to hire. And not obviously not for a lower level thing, but let's say I need to hire a director of acquisition or monetization or sales or something like that. Well, then I can say, listen, I'd love to have you come in the company. I would like for you to benefit from the growth that you're going to bring as much as me. So how about if you come in and do this, and this is where the company is now in terms of value and it's this much. And if you invest this much, then I'll give you a piece of the upside. Now you've got capital plus a person. So I think that's a way to do it. And then contracting services, so you can temp out almost anything all the way up into the C suite. So why not just hire somebody on a contract? Now your obligation financially is for a fixed period and they either perform an add value or they don't. But you're not on the hook for feeling like you caused somebody to give up another job or something like that.

Lots of great solutions, a few things. Yeah, there's answers for everything. Yeah. And you know, partnerships. I've had two partnerships. One was fantastic and one was pretty bad. So you know that there, you know, there's lots of little details with that, of course. Do you get along, especially if you're more in the Business. Because it is like a marriage.

Yes. And I'll tell you something. If you ever read the book, blink. Malcolm Gladwell, right? You can look at a statue if you're an art collector and tell if it's a fake, even though you don't know it's a fake, it's something wrong. To me, that little voice inside, if it ever says ever, ever, ever with a partner that I don't know about, and then you try to dismiss it, you've made a huge mistake, you immediately have to say, I don't know what it is.

But that's with any relationship, right?

Yeah. You really do.

You know, those red flags are there. We. But we just, like. We pretend like they're speaking Italian or something and we don't understand.

And then the second thing is that I learned as an attorney that is that people don't sue people they like. They just don't. So if you don't actually like the partner and they don't actually like you, I mean, I've never seen a partnership work, Right. I practiced law for 13 years. I never saw a partnership work where you could tell that one person, like, it was like, well, they're really good at this, so I'm gonna have them. And I think they're kind of weird, or I don't like the way they do this, or they don't treat people very. No, no, no. Yeah, yeah, let it go.

Right. And that's not necessarily in a partnership agreement, but those are things that you really have to pay attention to, because it is.

And you mentioned partnership agreement. That's the other thing that, as an attorney, I would tell people is people would come and they'd say, we're thinking about going to business. We're best friends, or we're husband and wife, or we're brother and sister. And I'd say, say, listen, this is as good as it's ever going to get. So now is the time for us to talk about who's going to do what and define everything. Because right now you both think you understand what the other person thinks they need to do and are supposed to do, but neither of you do. You're both coming from different places. So if we don't take that and put it into some sort of document, then there's going to be a misunderstanding down the road, and neither of you is going to be wrong, because it's going to be. You expected him to do that, and you expected her to do that, but you never talked about it, right? So it's. I think that if you're going to get a partner, which I highly recommend, a written agreement is very, very, very important.

Yes. And one thing that I've seen in partnerships that should be in the partnership agreement, that is, I hardly ever see in there, is how much time is each partner going to devote to the business. Because that's where resentments happen, where one is working really hard and the other one's kind of flitting in and out and then they're like, this isn't what I bargained for.

Yeah. And duties. Duties and outcome. I think so for me, I'm not necessarily going to spend a great deal of time. We're going. I had a meeting at lunch before this with some people that were going to do a partnership deal. And I told him, I said, I'm not going to spend much time on this at all, but I'm going to contribute a lot because I'm going to bring this, this, this and this. Oh, yeah, no, totally. Okay. I just want you to know.

Right. But it's understood from the beginning where your contribution lies.

Correct.

So you're absolutely right. All those expectations. So. Well, this is. This is such cool stuff. And so technology, I mean, you seem to be very connected to a lot of technology and things happen. Technology is moving so fast now, we could barely keep up. Are there some things out there that you're excited about that are down the pipeline that you see?

I'm very excited about marketing automation, the marketing world. I'm very excited about marketing automation, particularly programmatic buying and programmatic pixeling. So as if you look, there's I think 4700 different marketing tech companies right now, which at Traffic Conversion Summit we said that's job security for marketers. Right?

Yeah.

But it's really cool to see how far that's come. And each, each thing that you now say, it's kind of silly that I have to take this code and copy it and paste it in and do this. That's all in the process of going away. And I think that's really exciting. You have companies like Russell Brunson's Clickfunnels and Clay's lead pages and things like that that are allowing us to do things so much faster now to iterate to launch without all this investment of time and money we used to have. So I'm excited about where that's going. The Internet of Things and I think the integration of. They call it cognitive technology or sentient tools, where the tools in things that we are using daily in our lives are contextually Aware of where they fit in our lives and are responsive to that and save us a ton of time. I think that's really exciting. I think the stuff they're doing with drones and all of these. What's exciting to me is all of these things have opportunities for people like us to play a part. Right.

Yeah.

And so that to me is the most. And mixed reality and artificial intelligence and self driving cars.

Yeah.

Autonomous cars, like that's a huge category. I think that's going to be.

How would you feel? I mean, it's happening. The cars are already out there. They're, you know. But you've got a pretty cool car out there. Would you like just sitting there?

No.

Yeah. I mean, I like driving my car.

Yeah. But here's the deal. So I have a few friends that are in their 80s who don't drive anymore. So what I'm thinking about for you and me and our kids is when it comes to the point where maybe you don't always want to drive. Right. You know, I mean, I really like driving, but you don't always want to drive. And when you get older especially it's going to open up commerce and mobility for like independence. Right? Yeah. And that's amazing.

That's true. I hadn't thought about that. And I also know that lives will be saved because they say that it's like a 90% human error for most accidents.

We'll see what happens. Because you're going to have hackers, right. You're going to have people that threw viruses into those cars because they're. They have to be connected to navigate. So it'll be interesting to see if it truly does reduce that. Remember when computers were going to cause us to only have to work like 10 hours a week?

Yeah.

That didn't work out.

I know. I think that's actually gone the other way. So it's more to do faster anyway. Well, this has been so great. So what's something you're really excited about now, personally or in your business that you're looking forward to?

Personally, I'm excited to add Antarctica to my. To my continents. It's been absent for way too long, so I'm excited to get down there and do that.

That's exciting.

Yeah, I really.

And you're gonna dress warm and, you know.

Do you think I need to?

I think so.

The. So I'm gonna do that and then I am. Business wise.

Gosh.

It's just. I just like business. I mean, I tell people all the time. It's like I would I would go and flip burgers to earn enough money to be able to do this for free if I could. If I couldn't make money doing this. So, to me, it's just. This is just exciting.

What's the most exciting thing about business for you?

That's a really good question. It's a game. I'm a video game guy. I'm playing a game. And it's measured in success. It's measured in how does that company grow, how does it perform. I like that. And I'm not a big enough person to say that this secondary thing is number one for me, because number one is the game. But number two is I look at the hundreds and hundreds of employees that we've got and how the impact that we have on them and their families and how we can take care of them and help them grow. And I like mentoring a whole lot, so I love to get people who are smart and sharp and interested in getting better, and this gives me the opportunity to find those people and kind of help them see a path. So I think that's really exciting. But that's not number one. I admit. It's not.

You do like the game, right? So. Well, that's cool. It is. It's so much fun. And, you know, there's ups, there's downs, but it's. It's all part of it, right? It's all part of the growth. Well, gosh, this was so fascinating. I hope you're as engaged as I am, and thank you for coming today.

Thank you for having me.

All right, so until next time on Allie. And you'd get out there, elevate yourself, because you are worth it. Bye, everybody.