290: Getting Real with David Mammano — Gonzo Experience Podcast

Are you thinking about how to grow your business with near and offshore staffing, but you're also wanting to make sure that it's reliable, cost effective, and really well done? I think docsa Talent is the way to go. Here's why. They don't just fill your jobs. They bring integrity, top talent, and a people first approach that's hard to find. I've known the people at Doxa talent for over 20 years now and I say that you can count on them. I have. Talk to Docs of Talent and you won't be disappointed. Go to docsatant.com Bill G Again, that's doxatant.com Bill G One more time. Doxatalent.com Bill G Check it out. Today. We're talking with an entrepreneur. He's got a lot of experience to share. He runs Masterminds, does coaching kinds of things today. He's also comedian, podcast host, speaker, etc. Listenings good conversation hey everyone, I'm Bill Gallagher, host of the Scaling Up Business podcast, your friendly neighborhood Scaling Coach. And we bring these Getting Real Episodes to you all the time now where we talk with entrepreneurs about their journey, about their experience, that kind of thing as they go. And I don't know where I first met David, but I'm looking forward to our conversation today. Before we get into it, reminder that our Getting Real Episodes are sponsored by our local EO chapters in the Bay Area. EO is also known or formerly known as the Entrepreneurs Organization and it's a global organization for entrepreneurs. We have three chapters in the Bay Area. It's a member led organization where you can connect, learn and grow together with entrepreneurs. So if you'd like to connect with more of them or like learn kind of how it goes and what's cool about it and all that, you're going to go to eonetwork.org and either apply or get more information there. Eonetwork.org Anyway, I've been a member of the organization. I first joined about 22 years ago and I've had several different companies in.

It over the years.

So it is the place where Scaling up was born and I encourage you to check out eonetwork.org I'm joined now by David Gonzo Mamano who has been an entrepreneur for decades and done seven businesses from scratch and now also coaches others. Not as one of our Scaling up coaches but in similar way to our work. Very related. He's had multiple companies on the Inc. 5000 list. He's been a TEDx speaker, an adjunct professor. He did our EMP program where the scaling up work was born, initially called the Birthing of Giants program, now known as the EMP program. And his most recent book, Crash and Learn Lessons of Business, is top Amazon business bestseller, Make Love in the Workplace, I think is awesome. I have a friend who's promoting some similar ideas of a appropriate nature. Um, and anyway, he's got a whole world of stuff and he'll show more. Welcome to the show, David.

Thank you, Bill. Happy, happy to be here. And you're making me talking about everything that I'm doing. You make me realize that my ADHD is. Has certainly gotten the best of me, but thank you.

Oh, yeah, you're like a mess. I. In getting ready for the show, I asked people like, oh, what is his. What's your main focus area? And he's like, well, it's Gonzo Enterprises where I'm the CEO of.

Right. Yeah, yeah. You know the saying, Chase two Rabb, catch none. I got about 10 rabbits going on right now. So.

Yeah, yes, we. I think a lot of our listeners will recognize themselves in that. Let's. Let's dive into some of it. I was on David's show recently talking about our work and in particular the leadership areas. But David, talk about getting your start in entrepreneurship and what is it that led you to that? What's the. What's wrong with you for that brought.

You to this place? Yeah, so I started my first company back in 1995 when I was 25. I've been previous to that. I had been working in radio sales for three years, and nice people, you know, nice company, but I just, you know, had that, you know, burning desire to do something right. And for me, it wasn't buying a franchise. It was really to start something from scratch, then be in control of it. And not because I'm like a Mussolini control freak more. I wanted to really create the standards, the quality, the culture of the company and really put my fingerprint on. Like, if I were to launch a restaurant, I probably wouldn't buy a McDonald's franchise. I would want to create my own boutique restaurant. So why don't have my fingerprint on the product? So I started looking at what my hobbies were in my spare time. And I volunteered a lot with youth. I was in a lot of, you know, I was a Big Brother in the City program. You know, I volunteered at a camp for that for kids that had cancer. I was doing junior Achievement. And I just thought, you know, maybe I need to help youth with their future. And in college, I ran the college newspaper and I loved it. I loved, you know, selling, print, creating the articles, all that stuff. So I combined those two. I had the idea, like, I'll start a new magazine for high school students, help them with college, career and life planning. Because so many students at that time especially were going to college without a clue. It was much more affordable. And, you know, it's just kind of like you went. It was the thing to do and you figured it out, you know, now with, you know, college being 40, 50, 60 grand a year, you know, we're getting a little bit more like, why are you going to college? Just really think this through. But back then it was like a free for all. I'm going, you know, I thought, wouldn't it be neat to have a magazine that could help students, like, while they're in high school to help them with college, career and life planning so that they ended up in a good place, good major, all that stuff, or not go to college? Right? Like, that's right. We did articles, you know, careers in welding and plumbing, and, you know, listen, that's your calling. You could be very happy and make a lot of money, too, so. And no student loan debt. So we talked about everything, and it was wonderful. I mean, long story short, we launched it. 95, 10,000 copies gave free to the local high schools in Rochester, New York, my hometown, made a profit, went to Buffalo and Syracuse, our two neighboring cities, made a bigger profit, went to all New York state, and we started franchising the magazine. So we franchised it all over the country, and it worked out very well. We became upwards of $5 million, very profitable company. That's, you know, that's when we were the Ink 5000 years and Rochester top 100 years. And, you know, my, you know, feeling like king of the jungle, you know, my poop didn't stink. Everything I touched turned to gold until, you know, my poop started sticking pretty bad because the digital revolution caught up with print and especially with teens, right? And so we ended up really getting our asses kicked. Our revenue went down, like by 60% in about three years. And really, you know, and I made the typical entrepreneurial mistake. I was so kind of young and quote, unquote, bold. But we're going to save this, right? So we'll bundle it with the Internet offerings. And so we just, we really kept the print going and I kept the staff going. So I went from a very profitable company to not making money to building up debt. Right. And finally, you know, I like to Think it was because of my own intelligence. But I ran out.

I've definitely done that. I bet lots of our listeners have times where they got deeper in debt, deeper behind and did and kept thinking they were pulling it out or saving it, but in fact weren't making the fundamental changes that would find a way. Right.

You know, it's always, we've always worked it out before until you don't.

We're losing money, but we'll make it up in volume, right?

Yeah, yeah. And so I ended up, we ended up putting the whole magazine online and it became really like a cost per lead business for colleges. Advertising, very transactional. I didn't enjoy it anymore. So I found somebody in New York City that was more of a digital marketer person and I sold it to them. So, you know, I was able to stop the bleeding, plug some holes. And then I've started a few businesses since then. Most recently in 2016, I started this company called Avanti, which means move forward in Italians are kind of like next step. And I developed a coaching program. I developed, I was doing events for entrepreneurs, my podcast, all that great stuff. But it really naturally turned into a monthly meetup for entrepreneurs in Rochester. We got about 100 members paying annual fee and you know, after work, first half, beer, Weinojers, networking, second half, I'd bring in a great speaker, you know, somebody like you, to teach them about sales, marketing, leadership, culture. Sometimes it was an entrepreneur sharing their story. It was really great. But then, you know, actually we built it up big time. Like I said, Over 100 members. We started expanding chapter models, different cities, Buffalo, Toronto, New York, New Jersey, et cetera. And then what happened was this thing called Covid that were in person events were not all the rage. And so we went online and you know, and people were showing up at first, but I think people got zoomed out, you know, zoom fatigue quickly. Less and less people showing up and then certainly not signing up any new members. Right. For this in person event thing. And you know, unfortunately I kind of lost interest. I still have some people that we do events for online, but I rebranded about a year ago to Gonzo. And that's my, that's my nickname, that's my fraternity name. That kind of stuck. You know, I like to think it's because again, so journalism, you know, like maybe gonzo entrepreneurship. I'm like immersed in entrepreneurship to be able to tell the story. But no, it's because I look like the Muppet. So we'll get that straight. But I rebranded my podcast now. Which you were on last week, it's called or two weeks ago called the Gonzo Experience. And you know, I interview great entrepreneurs like yourself and have them, have them share the good, bad and ugly. Right. Have the story behind the curtain when they crashed and maybe almost burned, but instead they rose like the phoenix again. In fact, that's my most recent book called Crash and Learn. And now that's developing into coaching programs. And we do, we do different coaching than scaling. We focus on helping people develop their thought leadership either into like a podcast or a book or speaking. So that's what we focus on. But more so I'm starting to create mastermind groups and retreats and my retreats are mixed with adventures. So we'll go to like Sedona and you know, in the morning we'll do the typical retreat agenda. Then in the afternoon we'll go, you know, hiking, mountain climbing, horseback riding, things like so kind of really good for the ADHD entrepreneur who can't sit in a room all day. So we'll get you for a half day and then we'll get you outside doing some stuff. So that's where I'm kind of like my 3.0 businesses is leaning towards love, love, love this.

You know, I also had a newspaper in high school started in high school while I in high school. Mine was not gonzo, it was the Guzzler. And you can guess our subjects were about where the parties were and what, what kind drink cocktail mixes and. And then how to sneak alcohol into major events. Those are some of our major topics in.

Yeah, that's great.

I would not call that a for profit venture.

No, it was 5,000 last. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's for fun adventure. Right? So.

Yes. So share a couple things. I think it's always interesting to notice the lucky breaks and the setbacks and the big mistakes and regrets and like the range of. It's why we call these episodes getting real. Tell us first about what do you, when you look back on your career, what do you think has been your biggest or the, the lucky break that, that first comes to mind?

I think, I think with my first business I just, you know, I hit a great wave because what happened in 1995 was there was, we were reaching like the peak of teenagers in America. It was all baby boomers, kids growing up, yada, yada and all that stuff. And there was just so many kids going to school and colleges had a lot of money to market and advertise and do some. And then it became like a pissing match where they would try to outspend each other with marketing. And so there was a lot of money going around in the education market. So I was able to really ride that wave and grab a lot of those ad dollars for the magazine and our website. Then as we hit the late 2000s, you know, we peaked then. And then that population started to go down. And then you add the digital revolution kicking, you know, Prince butt. So that, that's what hurt. But I think the big break is, you know, I think it was divine timing, right, for me to start that.

Business at that time and then to ride that for a while. So what if you think about your biggest breakdown crisis challenge, what would you say that was?

Well, I think so in 2014, that's when really the shit hit the fan. That's when I realized we weren't going to make it with their current model. I finally admitted and added up all the debt that I had a significant amount of debt. And I realized that we needed to do some drastic things like letting people go, changing the business model, thinking about selling, it was very tough. It was very tough. And you know, and you know, five years before that, I thought I had the Midas touch, right. I'm like. And you know, people joke that being an entrepreneur, like, you know, at some points you feel like king of the world and some points you feel like you want to jump off a cliff. And often that could be the same day. Right. So I certainly had, you know, was, was. Was definitely feeling like maybe, maybe I don't have it. Maybe I just got lucky. And then I realized that that's not true. You know, I mean, I did have a great timing and a great break with writing that way, but at the same time, I created a, you know, a multimillion dollar business from scratch. And I know I can do it again.

Yeah. You know, it's interesting I'm reminded when you said that I bet others have a similar thing, but there was a time early in my career where I grew a business for that I didn't own. Right. But I started a unit within another business and grew it over 500 million. And I really thought it was me. Not consciously so much, but really like there was a. I'm still arrogant today, but then it was maybe higher and I was younger and, and I really thought, yeah, I'm brilliant, I know what's up, that kind of thing. And then when I started on the next couple of different business ventures, I was really humbled by the fact that I couldn't just say it. And it would happen. I couldn't just, you know, like, it wasn't so much me, and it wasn't. It was about a whole bunch of things. And I was really humbled by how much I needed other people and. And needed a better relationships and wasn't as brilliant as I thought I was in my mind and, like, that kind of thing. I think there's a lot of times where we stumble into something and then we're kind of going along and we. And we forget that it's. We're at the center of something, we're in service of something, but it might not. We might not be quite as brilliant as we think we are.

Yeah. And, you know, I think that is a humbling moment. But at the same time, pat yourself, because I'm sure you were a crucial piece of the pie. But I think organizations like EO teach us to not get alone when we do succeed, share the credit, and when we do is that it just wasn't all on you either, you know, And I think I kind of write a book today. Don't go at it alone. Because I think that's the thing entrepreneur can do is to like, I got this. No, no, no. Get a coach, surround yourself with your peers to kind of round out those good days and bad days and be able to talk things through. You know, as a coach, you may say three words sometimes, but you just ask one question and just. The entrepreneur is able to really formulate a response and just focus and think something through, and all you're doing is nodding your head. But that was so helpful, entrepreneur, to be able to actually take a moment, take a deep breath, get the thoughts together, express them. You know, I mean, therapy, right? I mean, Verne Harnish talks about forum entrepreneur therapy, right? And I read a book, the guy, he was a coach, and he goes, listen, he goes, I feel like if someone just went home and talked to their lantern, you know, in their house or in their front yard every. Every day and just got everything out to the lantern, that would help, you know. Now if you're a good coach, obviously, you can bring that to the next level. But just getting people to talk things through and just being able to talk things through is just so helpful. And that's. That's one thing that I really urge new entrepreneurs to do, is to take organizations like EO and coaches like yourself.

You know, this time of the year, maybe every time of the year. But I always notice as we're recording this, we' heading into the home stretch for the year, and. And people are feeling overwhelmed and pressure to, to deliver in the fourth quarter. I think it's easy to feel overwhelmed and, and I'm reminded as you, as you're saying that that like sometimes that, that just like listening, asking the right question and appreciating the, the struggle is, is really useful. I've had a number of conversations in the last couple weeks with entrepreneurs all over the. Well around the world actually. And I'm kind of like, well, you're doing the right things, you're setting priorities, you're having meetings, you've got dashboards. It's all lining up against the strategy. But it's still hard. It's never going to not be hard. It's going to be hard for the rest of your life until you quit, until die or retire. And so you might as well just embrace the suck and, and honor who you are that seeks out these kinds of challenges, that lives life this way because it's, you know, there's moments of success or setbacks, there's more that you should be doing right, like so embrace it.

I mean, you know, if you're meant to be an entrepreneur, it's like your drug of choice, you know, like the good, bad and ugly. We love it all the messy birth and, and growing up of a business, it's, you know, it's tough. It's tough like you know, we're the ones that wake up at three in the morning wondering how we're gonna make payroll or how we're gonna deal with that problem employee. Right? And but you know what, if you're meant to be an entrepreneur, you do like you said, you embrace all the good, bad, ugly about that, you know, and a mentor that said that one time, like you gotta have the bad times to appreciate the good times. And I think that's very true.

I so did that for years. And I know lots of our coaches, they sweat the production, the capacity, the next release, they sweat making payroll. They have all of these things that they really, that keeps them up at night, wakes them up at three in.

The morning.

And, and it is kind of what it is. There was a guy in our neighborhood here, just another billionaire who started a company pre Internet in the good old fashioned days of like doing physical things in the world, moving things around, selling things, that kind of thing. And he was sharing about his experience and that kind of thing with me over lunch one day and he's like, look, I have learned to appreciate my problems. I was telling him about some of our problems and he's like, I've Learned to appreciate my problems. He said, I drive down the road and in his super nice car, right? And he's like, I see somebody working on the side of the road doing this or that, and I think, what kind of life do they live? What kind of problems are they struggling with? And it's in that moment that I embrace my own problems. And I think, you know what? I, I have high quality problems. I should lean into this. And yes, I chose this life. Remember that? You chose it?

Yeah, it was, I say first world problems, right? I mean, you're not, you know, you, you're not going to go hungry, right? You'll figure out a way to, to continue to move forward. Right?

Okay, so 2014 happens. Your business craters essentially, in some fashion or another. What did you learn from that experience? How did you get better? What happened in that? How did you navigate that? What'd you learn?

Well, I learned that I really need to pay attention to the details more and surround myself with people that can help me pay attention to the details, especially the financial details. You know, when you're making, when you're making, you know, when you're bringing in millions of dollars and there's, there's. And you have the expenses in mind, there's a lot of room for error. Right? And so I was doing, I was spending money on things. Looking back, like, never should have done that. Never should have done that. Should have, never should have hired him. Never should have hired her. You know, like, looking back. So I think going forward, I've been very careful and I realized, like, I do make mistakes and I know what my superpowers are. You know, I know what my zone of genius is. And to stick to that and surround myself with people that can, that can help, you know, compliment me and my weaknesses and listen to them and give them the authority and the permission to not be yes men, yes women, but no men and no women. Tell me when I'm sounding crazy. Tell me when I'm sounding like the, the, you know, entrepreneur that could do anything, right. The Pollyanna. Let, please, like, let's talk this through. And, and for me to really take.

A deep breath, tell the story of that. So you kind of see it, what happened? How did you handle it? Like, share the experience of it to the detail that you can.

Yeah. So, you know, when we were bringing in, you know, in revenue, it was a small company. We're bringing in over $5 million, but, you know, our expenses were well below that. Right. So I was riding high. You know, I was able to pay for my house and cars, cash, investment properties, a lot of money, everything was fantastic. But when everything started to go down a lot people on my advisors were, you know, hey, you have to make decisions. You're going to have to let some people go change the model. And I really didn't listen. Right. We can, we can ride this through. You know, we'll bundle, we'll bundle print and web together. This work, you know, it came to a point where I was forced to listen to the people helping me and I had to work some advice on how to get through this period of life that I never got through before, you know. You know, and I did work with a scaling up coach Les from Toronto. You know, he helped me when at one crucial point of my business life where I was running out of cash flow. You know, we only printed during the school year because we were magazine for high school students and summer used to be very low cash flow. And I just did my projections, we were going to run out of cash over the summer. Like we literally by like June or July, I was like, where am I going to get cash from? Because I didn't have investors and all that stuff and brought lesson somehow afforded him. And he helped me like reimagine my cash flow, you know. And you know, he asked me how do we bill our customers? And I said, well, we bill them on a per issue basis. You know, the magazine comes out, will take the invoice or rip out their ad from a magazine and we'll send it to them. So that's proof that the ad ran and then 36 days they pass. And that, that is standard for magazine, newspaper, magazine publishing, per issue tear sheet with the invoice, 30, 60 days, right. And, and so less what, what a guy, he's like, well, why don't you just bill them up front when you get the order for the whole school year. And oh, by the way, most of our advertisers were colleges and most of them got their budgets approved and placed orders in May, June or July. Right. For the next school year.

Yep.

So I was like, well, at first I think I said, no, we can't do that. It's not the way it's done. He goes, why don't you just try it, see what happens. Okay, I listen to, I listen to my advice.

Hang on one second there, because that right there is fricking gold. Your business is failing. The outside coach come and you're doing things the normal way the industry does. And he looks at it from outside eyes and he's like, yeah, why don't you just bill it like this? Like there's the money there. It's just not the industry standard. And your initial response is that's not the way we do things in this industry. Right. That there's so much money in that little vignette. That little bit right there.

Right.

That is gold. Don't do things just because everybody's always done them that way in your industry.

Yes, very much. That was, that. That saved my business. It transformed us at that time because. So then we were able to. We were able to invoice everybody for the whole school year, the additions, not just one time, early June. And, you know, we billed like, you know, $3 million because that's, that's what we had on the books for the next school year. And I would say about 80% of the clients paid the whole bill up front. Some couldn't, like some of the state schools, you know, and the armed services, they didn't need proof. But most of the other clients. And I even got some phone calls like, thanks, Dave, that's a great idea. Instead of having to cut you a check five times a year and blah, blah, blah. One and done. So people, some people were thanking me. Right. So I went from what's going to be a devastating, like, cash flow time period that I didn't know if I was going to survive to because of less having the most money I ever had in the bank in my business, because we had all those prepayments. Right. So now the trick was that we couldn't spend it all. Right. Like, we definitely had to allocate it throughout the school year for, you know, payroll and other expenses. But it was nice having all that cash in the bank up front to take a deep breath with. I'd rather have the cash now than later. Right? Yeah.

Massive breakthrough there.

Yeah.

And then did you end up folding it? So that sounds like you had a breakthrough that addressed your cash, but then. But it sounds like you're not in that business anymore.

Yeah, well. So, yeah, when I worked with less, it probably was about three or four years before the crap at the fan. It was like just growing cash flow concerns as a business because we were, we were expanding when we started working with less. So but then, you know, in 2014, that's when the poop hit the fan big time with the digital revolution. And that's when it really started to decline. So what happened was I put it all online. I convinced the franchisees, let's go all online. And then I sold it. So someone Bought it in New York City and she's still doing it today.

Awesome.

Get out. Get out. Exactly. Yeah. It was not my zone of genius anymore.

So when you think about it, what is your zone of genius? What's your superpower? What are you good at?

You know, well, like you, I have my own podcast. I host events. I, as you mentioned, I'm doing a stand up comedy show next month. I used to do some comedy back, you know, when I in my 20s and I'm combining business and comedy into like a Tony Robbins meets Jerry Seinfeld type of show. And so being on stage, hosting, podcasting, I think that is really my zone of genius. Love doing it. And then the way I monetize that is, you know, making connections and then, you know, these mastermind groups and these retreats and everything. That, that's the way I'm going to monetize the, the, the, you know, utilizing my zone of genius.

Yeah, yeah, I, so I. Right. That is a core kind of thing that interviewing people and speaking and entertaining. But you do have to think about if you're going to make it a business or not, right?

Yeah. There's got to be a business model behind it, you know, unless, you know, you're going to be John, you know, the John Stewart of entrepreneurs or just be a professional public speaker, which, you know, I don't know if I want to do that. Right. I mean, I have three kids at home and I don't know if I want to, you know, be on the road 200 days a year. Right. When.

And it's some of our friends and past guests and that kind of thing. Dave Rendall, Mike Michalowicz, Jack Daly, many of those guys are working the public speaking circuit on a regular basis. Right. Getting that next gig in the next town and that kind of thing. I watch my dad do that and I watch some of these friends do that and I'm like, I like the speaking, but just doing that can be a little bit challenging. There's certain things about, like the podcast, our coaching, our workshops that are nice, consistent revenue over time without that up and down of, oh, I booked a gig here, I booked a gig there, that kind of thing. Which, and of course the public speaking was tough in the last year.

Yeah, yeah. Well, fun. She mentioned. Funny. You mentioned Jack Daly. I've been, I was just texting with him about an hour ago and yeah, he's kind of my idol. Love the guy. I'm fit. You know, he was just, he just put on Facebook that, you know, he's his melanoma has returned so he can't donate blood and he was urging people to donate blood. Right. And yeah, I, so I made an appointment and I showed him and then I actually have given blood three times now because of his posts of him giving blood. He inspired me to give blood. So Jack's kind of my idol. Big, big mentor and a lot of respect for Jack. And yeah, Jack's one of those guys. It's, you know, when there's not a pandemic. He's on the road, you know, 200 plus days a year. Guys like 70 something and he is just, he could, you know, he could out energy, probably beat the crap out of me type of guy. He's, he's quite, he's quite the, a.

Lot of energy, but especially at this age, he is unstoppable.

If he was 40, I'd say he got a lot of energy, let alone 70. Right.

You know the other thing that you mentioned you, you do is the stand up comedy. And I've done one set, one time of stand up comedy at Caroline's in New York and I got a coach and we've had him on before. Matt Kazam was who helped me, coached me to do standup and help me develop a set and like that kind of thing. And I find that was among the most challenging things that I've ever done, most confronting. And I'm like very happy to take the mic, but the idea that I would take the mic and then deliver a prepared set of remarks and try to be funny the whole time, like to make a wise crack in the middle of my things. I, I've been doing that forever but like to build it. Wow. The pressure on that was unbelievable. It really, but it, wow, did it develop me. So I highly recommend, if you haven't done it before, try that out. And a great guy to go to is Matt Kazam who does a variety of things. They laugh, you win. Stand up challenge humor scientists.

Those are some of his last name. K. Zam. Yeah.

Kazam.

Kazam. He's even got a great last name for that. It's kind of like Kazam, you know. Right.

Is that not a great comedy? Got a K. So it's, it's already, it's, it's up to a good start.

I'm gonna contact it. Maybe I got my routine coming up next month and maybe I'll, maybe I'll work with him a little bit to bring it to the next level.

Punch it up a little bit.

Yeah.

And he's a Good one. He'd be a good one on your show as well. Talk a little bit about teaching comedy, too. He does a lot. Yeah. Awesome. So that's your superpower, then. What's your bad habit? What's your weakness?

That's a great question. I would say focused. As you were reading my bio, I'm joking. In the beginning of this interview, like, my God, I'm frenetic, and I think I am adhd. I mean, I'm not, like, off the charts crazy, but focus is my crypto. Right. It's just I do, for some reason, need a lot of different types of water running through my nose and. And I just. I had a sense of excitement on a regular basis, I guess. So, you know, so I'm probably working on five things every day instead of doing one really well. And as a coach, you probably. David. But I am working on it. I'll share with you. So I had a guy in my podcast, the gonzalexperience. His name is John Torrence, and he's a. He is a very successful business owner, YPO member, but he's also a PhD, and he did a text talk on ADHD entrepreneurs using it as a superpower. And I took one of his assessments, and sure enough, he's like, you're definitely adhd. Go to a doctor if you want to see what level, but you have some level of it. So I did go to my doctor, and, you know, she said, you know, you're not that bad. I mean, I could put you on prescription drugs. And I'm like, no, no, no. But then I went to go see a holistic nutritionist, and. And she. And you don't have to have a prescription for. You can just buy it at the store. But I bought it from her. This. It's a. It's a natural supplement called GABA G A B A. And it's natural. There's no. Nothing, you know, prescription in there at all. It's all natural supplements. But if any of your viewers or any of the Bill tribe here feels like they have some version of adhd, I encourage them to try GABA G A B A. I've been using it, and it has helped me focus. It has calmed me down. I do feel it. Right? And what it does, it actually calms your synapses down and just lets them. It relaxes them a little bit, but not too much where you're, like, feeling like a zombie. It just calms you down a little bit, you know, and so that. That is the first thing I'VE ever taken to kind of deal with my ADHD and. And it seems to be helpful.

Well, you know, a lot of people who have things like ADHD and we know around entrepreneurship, one of the. Some of the signs are drug and alcohol abuse. And it starts off a little bit, hey, I just, you know, I have a drink to calm down, or I, you know, I hit a joint to calm down. And maybe today people are trying things like CBD that are a little less, but that can become an issue also at a time if it's unchecked. And we see a higher incidence of different kinds of addiction behaviors that develop. And then as you go in life and you work out, they become bigger and bigger problems. If you don't find something that manages. I've never heard of the GABA before, but, um, but it's probably worth looking at, like, how do I manage it? But then also, like, how do you leverage it? Right. So not necessarily just to mute it, but we've had Dave Rendell on before, talking about Freak Factor and how to embrace your weirdness, to find your superpower and to exploit things. I know that a big part of my ADHD is the source of creativity. I find the connections and the inspirations and the remixes of things that other people don't necessarily see right along the way. And we have a lot of that around. Actually. It's a good place to mention our sponsor, eo. The Entrepreneurs Organization's filled with people with varying degrees of ADHD and turning them into profitable things. Learning how to live with them and balance it and go through all that. Some of that you get in forum or small, intimate groups where they support each other as well as learning about it. Dave Rendle was a recent speaker. We've also had Cameron Herold speak, and he's another guy in our work world who talks about ADHD and managing some of that, learning to use it, but also then to keep it from getting out of control. So to join a tribe of entrepreneurs to learn and grow together, to find some people to really connect and share sometimes your problems as an entrepreneur can feel like bragging to everyone else. We have three chapters in the Bay Area. I'm president of one of them this year. But I've been around the organization for 22 years, back to when it was known as Yeo. So highly recommend you check out and see if it's a fit for you. Eonetwork.org for the entrepreneurs organization, this is unsolicited.

I will add to that bill that I started Years ago in 2003, I started local chapter of El it was in Rochester, New York. And then we combined it with Buffalo to call it E.O. western New York. But I was in it for about 15 years and it's an incredible organization. And Vern Harnish, the founder and now is the CEO founder of Scaling Up. Tremendous resources that definitely have left his mark between EO and Scaling up in the entrepreneurial universe. For sure.

Yeah. Eo, ypo, very similar kinds of organizations. Probably a little bit more of our clients are YPO type folks today. We also have a lot of people from Vistage and from other groups. Think if you're coming from a vistage, you'll find a very different character and personality in either EO or ypo. So worth looking into EO a little bit more.

More of the founders, right? I think an EO little, little bit more of. We'll say the, the fraternity house of entrepreneurs. We do some great things, but we're a lot of fun too, you know.

So fraternity and sorority, we have number of women entrepreneurs in both the Bay Area chapters.

Oh yeah, yeah. Well, I think, I think in Rochester, in Buffalo, I think there's even more female members now, so. Absolutely.

So what is your biggest goal now? Do you have a BHAG today or something that you're working towards in the long term?

Well, what I would love to do and I'm working on this is have a daily show. Much like what you're doing right now. Have a daily show. It may be every weekday morning at 8 o' clock and have great guests like you and really be like the Johnny Carson of entrepreneurship, you know. Exactly.

Man, I don't know if I need.

The six wives, but you know, the professional party, maybe the Larry King. Well, that's another guy with a lot of wives. But you know what I'm saying?

Wasn't his character. Oh yeah, going back, Johnny Carson is.

Like, yeah, the King. The King. We could say Larry King. You know, that's a little bit more recent. Right. But you know, and, and then of course like we're talking about having a model behind that too for, for revenue, but just really being known as like, you know, the host of entrepreneurship. That's kind of a b hat. But I, I feel like I have it in me and I know that I would love it.

Nice. And so what do you think is the gap for you? Why aren't you there yet? What do you have to get good at between here and there to achieve that? What do you think?

That's a great question. That's a great coaching question. And I think it's just. I just got to start doing it. I just keep on saying, next month. I'm going to start this Daily show next month. And I think it's just the courage and the focus to just say, you know what? Damn it, starting on Monday, and I'm not going to be perfect. You know, like Gary Vee says He had, like, three views on his first YouTube video. And that's okay. Right. So to your point, I just think it's a matter of just. Just doing it, learning what's going well, what's not going well, and continuing to work on improvement.

So it's funny that reflection, right. Things are always clear in reverse. When you look like you were just talking about Larry King and being Larry King, of that, I immediately started thinking of Johnny Carson. I started talking about that. It wasn't till like a second later I realized I'm talking about a totally different person. But we're both kind of talking about icons of talk shows and that kind of thing, that reflecting back. But that willingness to then start something, right, and begin something, even if there's nobody listening or only a tiny number of folks listening, there's real magic in that. Right? Like, we started our show, nobody was listening. Now we have thousands of downloads. But it's been a few years that it's taken to build up to that point. And, you know, you could look around, you could go, oh, my God, that Joe Rogan's got a few more listeners than me. But maybe if I was a fighting champion or. You were. Yeah.

I mean, you know, try to compare yourself against, you know, somebody who was already a superstar before they got into podcasting. Right. You know, Michelle Obama, you know, she's got millions of downloads already, but she's Michelle Obama, damn it. You know, and already, yes, he's got a great podcast that I love, but, you know, he's Conan o', Brien. Right. So, yeah, that's. You know, and don't. You know, there's a saying, don't compare yourself to others. Compare yourself to yourself. Are you doing the best that you can do? And let the compound effect of that day after day speak for itself.

Yeah, it's really. It's a really telling thing. And that willingness to just leap out there. My first radio show was a complete accident. I was in a radio station late one night, and the next guy didn't show up. And the guy who I was visiting was leaving. He had to go. And station director, program director, got on the phone with me. He's like, bill, you know what to do. Like you've been in the station, like just play whatever you want. Like, have a good night. You know, I'm like doing my best impression of Ken Jordan at three in the morning or something and it was an accident. Then he called me the next morning. He's like, bill, I listened to your show last night. It was pretty good, man, why don't you take that guy's spot? I'm firing the other guy.

As Bob Ross would say, that's a happy accident, right?

So, yeah, happy little accidents back in the news again. Let's maybe add a little babbling brook right here.

Yeah, yeah. Happy little tree over there. Yeah.

Oh, that's probably a good place to end our show. I want to give a shout out to Lucy Summers, who's there. I could see her on my screen in the background helping and our show scheduled and promoted and all that kind of thing. Also to Vern Harnish, author and creator of the original Scaling up framework and the Rockefeller habits and all that. Our show is produced, our audio is edited by the good folks at Podfly Productions. Alvi Burge, Ian Kodina, Tim McGowan, who get it all prepared, produced out the door, get the show notes up and ready and all that kind of thing. Thanks again everyone for listening for watching. Keep scaling up. We'll talk to you again next time. Bye bye. Now, Are you ready to turn your goals into daily wins? You should check out our scoreboard software. Powered by Align, it's the official software for scaling up. With Scoreboard, you'll get an AI driven coach for priorities and KPIs and it'll help keep your team focused on what matters most. With Align, you can track your goals in real time and you'll even see results on the go. With their mobile app, you can rest easy knowing that Align has world class onboarding and support to set your team up for success. This is really more than just software. It's what I actually use to manage growth in our scaling up client teams. Unlock clarity and results with Scoreboard by Align. To try it now, go to aligntoday.com Bill G One more time. Aligntoday.com Bill G that's aligntoday.com Bill G. Check it out and try it now.