Vinnie Fisher On Execution: The Remedy For Any Strategy

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Proven recipes for ramping up your revenue. Now here's your host, Brad Costanzo. All right, everybody. So I'm here with Vinnie Fisher. Vinnie, how are you, my brother?

Doing great, Brad. Thanks, bud. Thanks for having me on today, man. Thanks for.

Thanks for being on the show. I've been looking forward to having you as a guest on here ever since we talked about it in the Build Grow Scale event. And as I mentioned in the intro about you, one of the things I love is that every time I sit down with you and every time we talk, it's like I learned something new. And, you know, I get inspired to do different things. And, you know, this last podcast episode, I brought your name up because you helped inspire me to take this show and a little bit of my life in a different direction. So I, first of all want to thank you for just all the inspiration and friendship and mentorship that you've given me since we've known each other. One of the things, Vinny, that really impresses me about you, and not just, I'm not doing this to blow up your ego, but to let the audience know, is that you've done a lot. You've had a lot of success in different areas of your life. You're an attorney, an entrepreneur, multiple business owner, serial entrepreneur, etc. And you've also been through the fire. You've been down in the depths of entrepreneurial hell and built yourself back up. And there's no pretense about you. When somebody meets you for the first time, you're literally just. You seem like one of the guys. You're not intimidating to other people. And I think you build some amazing relationships because of that. And I know that you make people feel, you know, welcome. There's. That's a big problem for a lot of folks who are, you know, meeting potential mentors or friends, etc. And that's one of the things I've always liked about you personally. But then also, you're a very giving person when it comes to advice and when it comes to good advice. And you challenge people, too. You kind of smack them around when they need it, myself included. But I wanted to bring that up both to the audience, but also to yourself, to let you know that I recognize you. I appreciate you and looking forward to picking your brain clean on the show.

Yeah, well, hey, I appreciate that. I'll tell you, Brad, the one thing about you. Thanks for. We'll sit here and just keep teetering compliments back and forth. So is, you know, you just know so many people. And so I'm blessed to be one of the guys that you would even speak about them. So I love listening to your show because you're always bringing on somebody who, who has a giving attitude. And I'm thankful to have one of those because I don't believe that the hoarding of information has any value to the world. So the reason why I would naturally be a guy who gives it is because I think that's my natural DNA and I think it was the gift I was given to express an opinion, and I am rarely without one.

That's true. So I went into your intro a little bit earlier, but tell me. Let's give the audience kind of a quick backstory about, you know, you started off your professional career as an attorney, right? Why don't you kind of give us the quick backstory on.

Yeah, so I'm a lawyer. I'm still an active lawyer. I don't practice law for anybody. I would serve as the general counsel in our businesses. I have a legal department that does the work because I'm inherently lazy. But I'm a tax lawyer by trade, so registered, enrolled for the IRS and all the fun stuff that went along with good corporate planning. I had an external practice for almost 10 years, some pretty large clients. During that time, I would have developed the art of operational execution. I would have come alongside, helping to grow and not only developing businesses, but help them operate. And so I took that, started to use my entrepreneurial spirit to do that in my own businesses. And so in the middle 2000s, I developed a wonderful business still runs today called Creative Learning Workshop. We love it. We love the people there, the administrators, the residents. And it was the first big jump out of my big law firm. I had a big staff, a lot of lawyers, and someone thought it was crazy for as a lawyer to jump out. We grew that very successfully. Ten locations in this state of Ohio and had a large staff. And we had an exit that took place starting in 09 and didn't complete until almost 2012. But then I was in the middle of law practice and opening that company when I met a business partner of mine, Mark Jenny. And he came into my offices and needed help in his businesses. And he was an guy and I said, how do you know you're successful? And he's made some comment like, I've got more money in the bank than this month than I did last month. I'm like, oh boy, we got some work to do. And we struck a friend has stayed to this day. And that was late 06, early 6, early 07. I think early 07. And we've been friends and business partners almost ever since. And I have had a series of digital businesses. We had a pretty large run in the work from home space, digital publishing, marketing early on, took that and then sold it and moved into web hosting. We grew a pretty large portfolio there. I've also then wrote a book and told of some of our tragic stories of not only our work from our publishing space, but also some of the stuff that's happened in our hosting life where we took a very large brand, grew it, got cocky and arrogant, moved away from running, only to burn a large portfolio. And so I tell people we probably put about $30 million in losses on the board for something that really was at our arrogance and taking our eye off the ball. And I, and I attribute that almost exclusively to me thinking I could go do a whole bunch of other businesses without either leaving the right proper operational strategy or the right people in place. And so we then took that lesson in life and I created and wanted a mass producing health supplement company, which I did. When I did that, I launched it with a young lad who I plan to make the owner and operator of that business. And that's his business today. And when he took it over for me a year later after we launched it, he has since doubled it in size and I, I'm happy to be a mentor along the way and then given a time back here within the last year, we opened up a service business called Fully Accountable and I'm its CEO and founder. And we built a strategy to fill a hole in the marketplace where we provide back offices, accounting department in nature, for small businesses that can't afford service where they really want the needs of a cfo. They have obviously daily needs of a accountant and bookkeeper. And we found a way to wrap that package into all three of them and offer that service at a very low level. So that's the new stage of our life. Having a blast already. A seven figure business, really building up a lot of passion ambassadors. And that's where we're every day continuing to develop the disciplines of execution.

Right? Yeah. That's awesome. And like if you're listening to this on the other side, you've never met Vinny. Your head should be kind of exploding with, like, wow, how has he done so much? And, you know, when I first met you in the first few times, it's like, all I thought was like, hey, Vinny's this guy who just probably like the Midas touch. Everything he touches turns to gold. Probably never made a big mistake in his life. And it's really funny after I read your book, which is amazing, and I'll be linking to it. Everybody. Everybody should get this. And it really surprised me. Not only didn't surprise me how good it was, I thought it would be good, but just how revealing it was. Like, I had this wow moment. Like, I sat back, like, wow. What I didn't know about Vinnie and what I didn't know about, like, you know, the way you started the. You know, your speech at Build grow scale was amazing. Like, hey, guys, how many here? Raise your hand. If you've lost $30 million, nobody's hands go up.

Hey, I believe too, right?

And, you know, it's one of the things I know I've caught myself being guilty of this is, you know, we're always looking up and aspiring to be at a certain area or a certain level of success. We look at the people who've got it. We. It's so rare that we see the hardships they've had, the battles they fought, the, you know, the near bankruptcy, you know, life falling apart around them. But it's always inspiring to see people climb back out of it and create the opportunities. So a couple of the things I'm looking at my notes over here that I really wanted to talk to you about today stem from conversations that we've had in the past. And these are some things that I desperately want to know. And I know that a lot of my audience will as well, because you're hitting on some very common themes. One of the things that you talked about a minute ago, I just wanted to touch on this because you said, I'm inherently lazy. I was having this conversation with somebody else that I believe that laziness has driven. Laziness has driven us forward as a species more than any other emotion. If you think of all of the technological achievements we've ever had, I forget who planted this idea in my brain. I just let it go. All of the technological achievements we've had have pretty much been to make life easier so we can be lazier, right? So we invented the wheel so we didn't have to walk. We invented cars so we didn't have to Ride on the back of horses. We're lazy. We want cars, comfort. We want to be lazy. We want things to be easier. We don't want to have to walk to the outhouse. We headed into our toilets. And I mean, laziness, comfort. Maybe those two are kind of go hand in hand, but it is kind of. It was funny to me when you said that, because it's like that's we're all inherently lazy. But what are you doing? Are you actually working hard so that you can be lazy later? I don't know. One of those thoughts that I've had kind of swim into my head, the things I want to talk to you about. Because when I think of you.

Besides.

All the romantic feelings that obviously come.

Up, obviously me and all, I get it.

You're pretty cute. When I think of you, the things that I think most about, and especially because I've seen you speak and we talked a lot, is you're really good at building companies, scaling them quickly and going big. You don't just jump in and kind of tinker around. You seem to have the big vision. You bring in the right people, and this is really where I want to go towards. And you execute big, and you execute quickly, and you seem to kind of know what you're doing. The conversation we had at lunch during the meeting in Orlando, you had said you brought in your. The guy who partners with you for the supplement business.

Right.

And I was like, how much experience did he have running a supplement business when you brought him? Zero.

He had none. He didn't even know what an affiliate link was.

Okay. So you brought him in. And I kind of want to dive into this, not him specifically too much. But you brought him in. You had started the business yourself, is that correct?

That's correct, Yep.

Started it going. And then how long had you been running that business before you brought him in and started to mold him into your partner manager?

Yeah. So, you know, I tell you, I told you Mark and I have been together in a lot of businesses. And so I had said to him a comment that I was not going to create a new company unless I identified a quarterback, someone who plans to be the ongoing operator of the business. Because one of the things I'd learned about myself and laziness is I like to tinker and I like to come up with ideas, and I like to want something. I don't want to do something twice. And so I just learned some of those things about me. And so because of that, there is a certain life cycle of a Business where somebody's better at running it after I've created it. And I've learned that about myself. And so because of that, because I have some of those indices of a creative, of an entrepreneur creator more than an entrepreneur sustainer, I just decided I wasn't going to open a new business without an operator. And I realized that probably best served finding somebody who culturally was somebody I would wanted to be around. And life like, at least was willing to strive for the things that we lined up on and then missionally had the same zeal for life and energy that at least I had. And so those were the things that I was shopping for. Competence was way down the list. It would only be a bonus to me. It wasn't a requirement. And so I set out on the journey of teaching them the affiliate process of how to scale it. And so when we talk about scaling it, I early on learned that I would use the mass marketing techniques of affiliates to grow our businesses. And so whether it's online or offline, that's the secret sauce to being able to scale so quickly. But the sustainability has to come with an operator who wakes up every day caring as much or more about the business than I do.

Yeah, that makes so much sense. And it's one of those things I know personally, the feelings that come up is, man, that sounds really good. How the hell do you do that? It also seems like, is it a skill set? Now, I say this rhetorically, but I still want you to answer. Is it a skill set that can be learned to do what you're doing is to bring that operator in and create that, you know, create an effective operator out of somebody who they may, you know, like you said, they don't have. They don't know what an affiliate link is. They haven't been in this business. And how quickly does, you know, can that happen?

Well, I would answer emphatically yes. This is. I have no, I don't know that I'm smarter than the average smart guy. And I love to be. There are some. I've heard you recently on podcast talk about masterminds, and I love to be surrounded by very intelligent people. Some of the guys you run with, you included, who are just immensely intelligent guys. And I'm not going to sit here and even try to advance that. There are certain disciplines that I think make better operators. I don't know that I have those. What I can tell you this is I've made a decision to be available to daily mentoring and training because we have one key ingredient that our Quarterback doesn't have. And that's a little bit of wisdom because we've been through it. And so if you can make the mental mind shift to be there with them while they're on that journey, instead of shutting down and getting frustrated each day, it gets less of you and more of them. And so I got a good friend of mine whose life verse is, it's got to be less about me, right. And so I like to take that and bring it into a business life that if I can make a business less about me, then everybody wins. The ecosystem of that business, the quarterback who ultimately is going to take it to the next stage of its life, and me, because it's not probably the skill set I'm designed with. So back to your thing. This is as soon as you, the operator, the owner, entrepreneur, make a decision to look at this as a journey to hand off to somebody else and you're just investing in front loading that. So on the backside of it, you an operating business that you're not required to run every day, the progress necessary to do this becomes very available to you on a daily basis. Once you change that.

Yeah, that's. I think that's one of the biggest goals, not only of myself, but also a lot of the entrepreneurs and colleagues and friends that I've got. Because we all, people like us, we have a certain gene, like, I think we all do like to tinker. The best entrepreneurs are tinkers. We have this insatiable curiosity about things. We love to dive in. We're not afraid to jump in with both feet and say, ah, screw it, take some risks and try some things. And that's great when you're starting, but then once you've got something going, if you don't know when to turn that off, then you just start spinning 20 plates and one of them is going to break, as they often do. And I know, I've thought many times, like, God, I wish I could just come up with ideas and have people to execute on them. The best thing in the world. But I don't think it's that simple. I think there's more of a formula. And when we talked prior, you said, yeah, this is one of the things that you're, you know, we'll talk about the event you're going to be having before long. But you mentioned growing a quarterback. You mentioned something about stacking. I kind of want you to go into that. But that you also believe that or not you believe, but that somebody can be trained very, you know, who's very green in what you do.

Yeah. So let me jump on two things. You made a comment there. I think it's important to, you know, I think as entrepreneurs, we experience some success, we stack up a whole bunch of failures, and hopefully we have enough success to overcome some of our strikeouts. And one of the things that entrepreneurs do is we find our way to skip to the front of the line. We just want to buy our way to the front of the line. The problem with that is we do that same attitude when we want to get someone to run our business. We. We just want to skip right to the front line. So friends of mine, friends of yours will ask questions like this. Who's the most experienced, best guy at Solve for X, be it Facebook ads or whatever. And none of the cultural missional stuff is being asked because we want to the front of the line. And so the minute that I can help you or another entrepreneur think about the mindset of just having some investment now towards helping them develop the wisdom, and then the letdowns are less with respect to hiring for expertise, because you might not be aligned on owning it together or the numbers on how you pay for somebody and who takes the risk. It's upside down. So I just want to make sure that, like, these things very attainable. And I don't have some special marketplace. I just, I've had the blessing of going through the trials and develop some of this wisdom ahead of everybody else, or maybe not ahead of some of the older guys who've experienced the same thing. But entrepreneurs want to skip this step because it's within our nature. We, you know, Ed o', Keefe, a friend of ours, talks about leapfrogging over, like, why wait when I can leapfrog to the front? And I totally agree. It's why we attend masterminds. But if you're going to grow somebody up, you know, free up some other other time and use it in a mentor training role because it will be the way you leapfrog. Because other, the other way is entrepreneurs grow a business and either sell or smoke it down because they move on to something else. That's the way we all do it. Right. And so if you don't want that to be a continued pattern of behavior, but you'd like to see a going concern running longer, then that upfront investment changes the whole world for you. So you talked about this thing about young persons, and I think that's where you want to go with this. But I wanted to talk about that entrepreneurial mindset because I think it was important before we get here. So you asked the question about the youth and how do we go? I think it's important for us all to know that some of the things you and I have talked about, I believe there are three core parts to a business. Someone who comes up with a vision or the idea, the creator, the technician who's going to implement that idea, and then manager who makes sure that the vision is implemented correctly. And so a creator would be usually your founder, you, me, other entrepreneurs, we have ideas. Your technician would be that simple. A writer, a programmer, a designer, a developer, a product creator, a copywriter. And so the manager is somebody who literally makes sure that the vision and the technician implements that vision correctly. Now, a lot of times solopreneurs, when it's early on, we have to be all three of those now, thankfully for me, I'm a technician in any form or fashion. So I had to find ways to to work with other people in my digital businesses. But I would assume the role of manager and creator. I learned really quickly that a manager needs to be able to execute, follow through, and have the desire to stay on mission. And so early on in my law practice, I met this old guy who gave me this long story, but the punchline was amazing to me and he basically said, all you bring to the table is time and energy. And he was willing to trade his money for my time because I was youthful and I had energy. And so that started a journey for me that made me realize that the best thing a manager can bring to the table is time and energy. And I've been setting out on this journey of this season of my life to prove that competence or vast experience and the idea of managing is unnecessary to being a proper manager. A proper manager needs to have the permission to succeed with all of the opportunity to fail. The belief that they have the access to the resources they need and the access to the vision and focus whenever necessary. Which means you, the entrepreneur, has to be there to mentor and guide along the way so they don't shut down on you. But if you have that three part focus, I believe you can take. And I'm doing this more than just believe. I've taken young interns out of high school, excuse me, college. I could do high school. And I actually, the reason I slipped there is because I have a bigger plan of what I want to do with high school and our education system. But I am taking college students right now who are fresh out and I'm giving them this. And I'm there weekly and daily helping them Mentor through, but they are managing new projects in our business. So one of the things we do as entrepreneurs is we come up with great ideas and we take our existing team and we disrupt the heck out of them by asking them to do something new. Well, I started doing it with an external mindset. Make our young intern what I would consider a project manager. Make them work with external resources, not disrupt any of the internal team. And I'll tell you, we are operating on many different cylinders and I believe that what I'm going to do for this is be able to develop quarterbacks. So at project manager level, I'm hunting for my A quarterbacks. So I at a ten or twelve dollar an hour rate, you can just take your salary entrepreneur, subtract out how much you want to invest at 10 or $12 an hour. Go to your local college, meet your dean, find some marketing people who are hungry and line up with your mission. And I will promise you that if you commit to that, you will be well on your journey to finding and developing quarterbacks. Now you're going to strike out. Babe Ruth was the leader in home runs in his day, but he also struck out. So we haven't batted a perfect. But I'm also willing to look more because I'm not taking as large of a financial risk.

Right, right. You know you mentioned, you mentioned something right there just really quickly, but you had drilled in on it earlier and I think this was your speech at vgs, but it was that you about the resources. So you're saying that you found it really good to not just necessarily say hey, we have all these resources, come use them. Right. We're a company, go find your own resources, develop that. Because A, it doesn't disrupt the internal team, but it probably also proves that if they are industrious enough to, to bring in their own resources or at least find them. Can you explain that in a little bit more detail? Something more.

Yeah. So I think it takes a. I think that's a great question, Brad. I think it takes a different mindset to start something new and something small versus run something big. And I think you have to have a hustler investigative attitude to kind of create and grow something and make something. And so there's three part reason why I would take a young project manager and make them use external resources. One, because I think today's environment has substantially changed even from a couple years ago where resources were not as readily accessible. Do you know that we had 22 million increases in jobs in America last year? And the vast Majority of those, and I mean new businesses and the vast majority of those were solopreneurs who were technicians. And so around the world in the United States today, it's very hireable to hire any of the technicians you need for something. And so one, I think it's very cost affordable to work outside of your office environment, to use people. Two, it teaches and helps develop a skill of figuring out something on your own. With a little bit of guidance from me that we don't need this large team. Two or three, we can run management thin. So there's not a large layer between me and directors. They very accessible between maybe one or two operational managers in our business and me to our project manager team. So that is really why I keep doing this model is because that I'm really hunting for my future quarterbacks. Right on.

So when you're using resources, are you also I'm kind of going for a more tangible example even where I don't know, maybe they need to bring in another contractor to do some graphic design or to do some web programming or something like that.

Okay, so let's get real specific example we have, you know, in our health business, you know, the operator there wanted to work on a viral strategy for using large health topics and then drive them to land that would allow them to have pre sales into the health supplements that they sell over there. And so a project was developed to come up with creating the blog and the type of strategy they're going to go after. Well, we asked our project manager, a young intern to do the entire thing. And so this person has to go hire the technician who's going to build the blog, go out and define. So we would make them define the budget. So, so one of the things that drives me crazy in the office is if that young intern says, well, how much money can I spend? My answer is hilarious to me at least I always say nothing. You tell me how much you need after you figure out what the market's going to cost to go build your projects. So you know, that guy went and did his research and found out he could have the whole blog built, every feature he wants for like $540 or some crazy number. But how do I tell them? And he built it. And had I had some crazy thing and gave him some defined budget, he wouldn't have worked as hard to figure out what the market has to offer. So he had to go out get someone to write the content. He had to get somebody to put up the framework of building in a WordPress environment. And you know, he would come and ask questions about strategy of like why he's doing it or if he hit a roadblock. They aren't going to be perfect. But if they're willing to listen and they're teachable, someone can go and do a lot. If you're willing to help them go in the right direction, that's great.

So then when it comes to paying, when you say they have to go get the resources, as long as they'll do the research, they'll find out what it costs, they'll do the necessary steps. You would pay for that. You're not necessarily making them go pay for it out of their own pocket.

Oh, that sounds like a great idea, but no, right, Exactly.

I wanted to make sure that was clear.

It's our budget, it's our project, right? So in the lawyerly parts, it's our work, things we want done. We just figured out a way to leverage new projects and not disrupt our existing teams. And so, you know, it's, here's the promise I make to our interns. I'm going to pay you like crap. I'm going to work the heck out of you, and you're going to learn a lot. And when you're done, you can either have a spot on this team or somebody's team, but you're going to be immensely more competent when you first came.

In to do it, right? No, that's simple and I can see how effective it is. And it is something that I need to develop more as a skill set on my own. Letting go of doing that. It's really funny, when I got into the whole Internet marketing and online business and entrepreneurship, one of the things that turns out turned me on to it the most was Tim Ferriss book, Four Hour Workweek. And a big part of that was automate, delegate, eliminate. Just understanding how to do this with teams and take yourself out of the equation when you need to. That inspired me so much and I got into it and I did the exact opposite. I became like I would have this tight grip on my own business and just not let go unless I would go. I ended up doing what a lot of people do is go for the cheapest virtual assistants you can find and hoping, you know, you tell them what to do and then you hope they read your mind and you hope they come back with quality work and it never, ever happens.

And then you work yourself into your own job, right? So you actually build your own destiny. When you say, okay, I'm gonna do it this way so a guy will say, well, geez, I don't know if I can afford an intern. I'm like, how much salary reduction willing to take to leverage your time? Because otherwise all you're doing when you wake up and you are successful, successful on your offer or your whatever value you're offering to the world is you just built yourself a decent paying job because your company can't run without you. So I always say, how many weeks can your business, in some cases days or hours, run without you? It's a great litmus test to find out if you're able to leverage your own time.

Yeah, it really is. Hypothetical question. Or you could use a real example. You have a business idea, you could go back to one that you've already done, or you can just pretend if you have a business idea, new product or service, whatever business you want to launch, and you've done the visionary work, you've done kind of the basics, you're setting it up, you're getting the ball rolling before you bring somebody in. How long, typically before you decide it's time to bring the quarterback in and work with them? Kind of do that from the absolute inception. Or do you get the ball rolling to where you've got, you know, a profit or you've got momentum?

It depends. It depends. So if I'm literally testing an idea and I'm not sure it's going to work, then, then it's me. If I actually am more about execution, but I'm convinced it's going to work, then I make the investment right from the beginning. So that's the shift for me. Not about profitability, because that brings in other issues. It's more about whether I'm committed to believing it's something that's actually going to stick around or I'm guessing. If it's guessing, then we try it. We just run something we don't want to invest in a person. But if I'm past that. So I'll give you a great real world example, fully accountable. We're about just going to ask you.

To tell me that example, but go ahead.

We're about to launch an HR compliance department because all of our clients want it. And so our legal department obviously does all kinds of great things there, but it's a new initiative, so I like the idea. I'm not guessing. Everyone needs it. All of our clients are telling us, I need it. So we went and hired a college intern who actually wants to do HR director work. That was what she wants to do. We said, great, now you're going to wash dishes for a while, figuring out how to put the department together. And you know what we're going to do this fall? We're going to launch an HR and compliance department because we're building it. And she is literally building the parts and pieces to it as we speak. Literally right now.

That's awesome. I love that. I love the attitude, the way that you operate with that level. I mean, I think that all of the entrepreneurs that I've spoken with, especially on this show, seem to operate with that kind of the most effective ones, with that kind of philosophy of, if you're going to do it, do it right, do it like this, and put more attention into the talent that you're surrounding yourself with. And more than that, the talent that you're grooming. Because I think the first part of that sentence is the talent you're surrounding yourself with kind of goes back to what you said before. It's like, oh, I just want to hire the best and put them in and let them wind them up and let them go. And you usually end up having frustration there. I know I've done that before. Like, I just expect them to see the vision as much as me, et cetera. And it's when I actually do take the time.

So I read a good book not too long ago, the Hard Thing about Hard Things. Hard Things About Hard Things, by something like that, Ben Horowitz, and he made a great quote in there. And he said, you know, a lot of hires in his career interviewed very well, but didn't work out. And I thought, you know, gosh, that's. That is insightful. I've interviewed people who just looked amazing and they thought they were going to line up and they didn't work out. And then I've had other people who interviewed so poorly, and they're like some of the best people on our team. And so when I hear an entrepreneur say, boy, I just can't afford that, I say, you know, take a reduction of your salary from. Forget adding a new expense to the company. What could you do to play with your salary and be Creative and take $400 a week off your salary by bringing someone in in $200 a week and try these ideas as opposed to just wish you had the time. Would you try things differently? It becomes a much less significant investment than trying to hire an executive in your company that you suddenly have to pay something north of 75 grand for them to join your team. I love that we're all shopping for talent, right? I believe in a farm system. Other people Believe in free agency.

No, I love that, that analogy. And I love what you were just saying with the, with the, with the brain fart that I just had.

What was it hiring about their interviewing skills. Yeah.

And the, I love when I do this.

Oh, about the reduction of your own salary.

Production, your own salary.

So. Yeah.

So where I was going with this was the. Because it kind of brought up a, you know, something that I've done with my own clients. So if I, if I've got a new consulting client and I may have a marketing campaign that I want to run or I may want to do something that would cost a little bit of money. So as opposed to ever telling them to or asking them to invest new marketing dollars at my idea of what I want to do, I said, look, this is not going to cost you any new money. Why don't we take a look at what you're doing right now? Let's look at all the areas you are spending money, all the ad dollars, all the whatever. Let's find the unproductive ad, the unproductive parts of your budget. What's not working for you? Because everybody is spending money on something that's not quite working, but they just haven't quite killed it it off yet. And I said, why don't we redirect, reallocate some of that money over here and just try this and see if this works. Because if it doesn't work, you're not spending any more money. You're not taking it away from something that's winning. And if it wins, you've got a big winner. And if it loses, then it doesn't really affect your bottom line that much.

No harm, no foul.

No harm, no foul. So I love how you phrase that because it's very much in line with that thinking, but it's with your own budget. Hey, you're overworked and over stressed. Or you just have this idea that won't leave you. Like, what can you do? Reallocate some of your own cash that's coming to you, that's going into your personal bank account towards that. And now you're not affecting the rest of the company. Like you said, you're not disturbing, you're not disrupting the parts that are working.

And we're the worst at that. Right. I came in with a million ideas and we'll leave a staff meeting and people are like, what's my new job? And so we've just had to isolate Vinny from Vinny and like learn that the entrepreneur can be the wonderful When I bring in a $10 million idea, great. When I bring in a 10 million dollar loss. Ouch.

One of the other big poignant things that you've said in a speech. I love this. I think it's something that we all have to get better. Probably takes practice to get this mindset. But, you know, be. I forget what percentage it is, but you know, be happy with somebody who's like, what, 70% of what you can do. Then, you know, you're never gonna. You might find somebody who's a lot better than you, and that's awesome. But be happy with what 70% of you?

Well, I think, I think inherently as an entrepreneur, you have a little bit of rebel in you, so you're probably not gonna be a great employee for somebody else, but you're, you're gonna have passion and drive and you know, I'm always accused of high passion, which is a lot of energy and a lot of drive. And I had to get used to a 70% version of myself or I was never going to be able to duplicate people at the executive level. And so when that light bulb kicked on for me, it changed our ability to grow multiple operations.

Right, right. I love that. And it's something I'm going to continue to drill into my head even if somebody can't do it as good as I can. That's okay. It's kind of like that 80, 20 rule. Right.

Which, and there's little stuff too that you can find to test yourself on this. So it's not just a big abstract idea. If you find yourself changing words in copy just because you would have said it differently, but it's equally effective the way someone said it. You're changing it because you need to control it. If you want to redeliver words to your staff because you want it to come out of your mouth as opposed to what you heard, what's right. Then if you have a control issue because you want it, you need it to be said perfectly from your own mouth so you can watch your own signs of what you're doing to prove whether or not you can really live with a 70% version of yourself.

Yeah, that's awesome. I love that point. So you are going to be talking a lot more about this, this topic, strategy and execution. Right. In an upcoming event in about, I don't know, five or six months from now. You told me a little bit about it. I know you're kind of planning, you know, planning it out and it's still in the conceptual phase, but do you feel like sharing, you know, with the audience. What, what's on your mind?

Yeah. So actually the nice thing is it's we are launching the Strategy and Execution Summit. So it's more than a concept. We went live with our website. We have lined up a preliminary phase of speakers.

What's the website?

It's in Cleveland. October 20th and 21st are the dates for the event. On October 19th, we're having a VIP workshop. And on October 18th for the VIPs that sign up the quickest get to do a game day experience and enjoy the other VIP and some of our speaker list at a game day experience where they get a load for the Browns and Broncos on Sunday before the event starts. So we're trying to have some fun as well as a big event. And the reason we're doing this event, I think is as equally important as to when and where the event where. Cleveland, Ohio. When? October 20th and 21st for the two main event days. The why is that I feel so driven to do this is your audience needs to know that. I hear continually from clients, friends, people in my life who call me for execution and strategy advice constantly how to stay focused. And I've been attending all these masterminds, all these wonderful marketing. I think what you guys do at the boardroom, I think what our friends do at Traffic and Conversion and build, grow, scale. All these guys have such amazing events and everyone goes home slightly overwhelmed and they don't know what to do. And I jokingly said to a mutual friend of ours, you know, there's a hole in this industry and the hole is we don't have definable execution. And you know, so I started out, this all started, I'm writing a book, Execution the remedy for Any Strategy. And so that then I'm going to give it away as a gift at the conference. And so it literally what we need, this information out there, we need to have a place where people can be vulnerable and honest enough to to talk about the traps of where they don't have the disciplines for execution. And then you know what, let's give them the exact tools that work, not just talk at a high level. So we're going to be giving away how you go find your quarterbacks, develop them, develop your team, how you put the right tools and tactics for good execution of your marketing strategies that you go learn at all these events. That's what we're going to be launching.

Yeah, I think that's going to be amazingly valuable. I'm absolutely sure that I will be there because you are hitting on some topics that are very near and dear to my heart and areas that I want to continuously develop because I think those are the skill sets that will get me to the next level. Anybody who's had any success in business at all will realize that it's usually not the same skill sets that got you. The skill sets that got you to the level you're at are the skill sets that will prevent you from getting to the next level. It's not that they won't get you there. It's like if you only hone those skills, they will prevent you from taking the next step up. And the skill sets that you're talking about, those topics I know are going to be immensely valuable to me, the other folks who are going to be there.

I want to leave you with this note, Brad. A company sounds like a word that means more than, than one. And I think a team is more than one. And I think it's really hard to play the game of company by yourself. If you can't find ways to want to develop growing your team, it's going to be really hard to play the game a company by yourself.

Yeah, it really is. It really is. I've. I've hesitated. I've only. Personally, I have fully transparent here. Like, I've never had an employee in my life. I've always just used contractors. And part of me is always held back. Maybe it's a fear of commitment, right? Like, am I gonna hire the right person for the right role, etc. And it's never. I know it actually has held me back from growing as much as I could or that I'd like to. And it's a commitment that I'm making.

It's the fear of the unknown. It really is, you know, it's the fear of the unknown because the minute you do once, you'll continue to do it. So it's a lot of reasons why people will spend more time in strategy and less in execution because you don't know that first step to take, right?

And me personally, the areas of life, of business that I seem to excel the most at is actually with people and working with people, being their cheerleader, inspiring them, sharing with them, building relationships. I mean, that's why I, you know, have changed the format of this show and how I'm, you know, even pushing more towards the power of connection, of relationships, of team building, et cetera. And it's. It's one of those areas that I've kind of got a natural talent for, but I've not well, you're.

Let me say this for everyone listening to your show. You're an amazing actor, Brad. You know, if, if. If I need to know somebody, you, even though I probably within 6 degrees of contact, you're probably within 2 degrees of contact. So everyone says that about you. And just true. And you know why? Because you want other people to succeed. And so it's very easy for you to meet other people. And so I've been telling you and other people, you need to give that gift out. You need to show that you need to provide the roadmap and want to come talk at our event about how you properly connect. And we would love that because people really need help on that. We. We think we're good at it. We suck at it, Brad, and you're naturally good at it. So I have to work to be good at it. And I'm excited to see the direction you're heading in. I'm excited to be sitting in the cheap seats watching it. But I think our community is going to not only feel the breath of fresh air, but get immense value from you, dialing into a gift set that you're supposed to be sharing with the world.

I greatly appreciate that and I'll take you up on that offer. I'd love to. I think I'd be honored. That'd be a lot of fun. And I guarantee I'll help bring home the bacon for you.

I bet you will, buddy.

So is there anything else you'd like to add? I mean, we didn't really talk a lot about fully accountable, but I want to give you guys a plug because I know we use fully accountable. We recommend them to everybody we see. It's an amazing, amazing resource that you guys have built and what's really kind of cool. Cool about what you guys do from at least our perspective, like digital people who focus on digital entrepreneurship and kind of a different kind than the just traditional brick and mortar. Although I know you help companies like that is there's very few businesses out there like yourself who get it. What folks like us are doing kind of in the new economy and in new media who really get it, but also understand the financial side, the accounting side of what it takes, and the intricacies and the nuances. I think you really have filled a great hole there. If there's folks out here who are listening, they're like, well, we didn't really talk about fully accountable. I want you to give a plug for who you guys are really set up to help the most and kind of the Ideal client, who they are, what frustrations they're facing that might make them.

Well, thanks for that. The show designed today was to help everyone with this idea of execution. But Fully Accountable is a perfect example of that. Our perfect client is exactly what we set out to change. There's a hole in the industry for the small business owner. The large accounting firms offer the service they offer. The small business person who's established, who's starting to get some traction, needs accounting help, needs back office help, but can't afford to go hire the cfo. And so this was literally birthed out of the vision with me and Chris that we, we needed this issue for ourselves and then we learned other people needed it. It was a way to. The number one thing that most small business owners want is help at the executive level to run a small business. It's that elusive CFO that we really can't afford to buy. And what we decided to do with Fully Accountable because what happens with a small business if you take the risk to go hire a CFO, you got to pay them 100 grand or whatever you got to pay. Now you expect him to be the bookkeeper and the staff accountant too. And that's not really the best use of a cfo. So we figured out a way for small businesses who really only need a CFO for three to five hours a month, find out a cost effective way to get access to high quality CFOs who do that as well as have staff accountants and analysts who do the on the ground grind. Work day to day so you can make those high level decisions. That coupled with the fact that we needed to know our numbers of digital business on a regular basis. The other most popular service for us is our daily stats. We know real time, our numbers from an accounting perspective because we've built the tool and the people in place to actually read and give advice on the fluctuation of the numbers. So those are the two big things that Fully Accountable is doing to build an amazing book of port passion ambassadors and really, really helping the small business owner.

That's awesome. Yeah. So as I said, we're a customer, highly recommend you guys and I can't say enough. So you guys can check out vinny@fullyaccountable.com and Vinny, I really appreciate your time on the show today, sharing this. I think you've got just, I mean, an amazing story and we, I mentioned this earlier for the listeners. If you haven't, if you haven't, if Vinny resonated with you at all Go buy his book. The name of it is what's the full name? Because I don't want to mess it up.

Yeah, so you can. The book's the best investment, a better you. You can find it in Amazon. You can go to vinniefisher.com you can find it there. It's very accessible for you. So appreciate the plug about the book. I wrote it. It's exactly speaking to all of us, the entrepreneurs in our lives.

Yeah, it really is. And it's not really about the business side. It's about what goes on in between your ears. And that's really, I think, as we all know, that's the most important and most valuable real estate out there. It's probably the most neglected in a lot of cases. But when you do take care of it, amazing things happen. I look forward to seeing you at the strategy and execution event. I think it's going to be amazing. And once more, just from friend to friend and whatnot, I just want to tell you I really appreciate you for who you are, for what you share with people, for the way you make people feel when you're around them. As I said, there's no pretense to you. You're always there to help and you give that vibe off. And I always look forward to seeing you. If you're watching this or listening to this show and you want more information on Vinny, you can several places you can go. Obviously fullyaccountable dot com. You also have Vinnie Fisher. That's V I N N I E Fisher F I s h e r.com like you said, I spell it right. No C in there. I don't know if there's any other places that you'd like to offer them to connect with you. I think those are two places they probably can.

I'm very accessible. If you connect on vinniefisher.com and hit contact, it comes right into my email. I'm very accessible. You can go to Facebook and find me. I think in this world your listening audience, one of the gifts, the opportunities that I always would say is if you really have something that you think I can help talk to you about, you just say hey friend of Brad. And I'll be delighted to speak to you and find out if there's any way that I can give you any words of wisdom or help you.

That's awesome. Appreciate it. So my listeners, my watchers, my bacon nation as I'm starting to call them. Because you know, why not?

Love that.

If you have enjoyed this episode, a couple things I Challenge you to do. It's one, find out more information on bidding.

2. Share it.

Share it on social media. Share it on Facebook, Twitter, etc. Talk about it. Say, hey, you heard that great show with Vinnie Fisher. Have you heard bacon wrap business here to brag to Sanzo. It's awesome stuff. That's how the show grows. That's how the network of listeners grows. And this is just an immense opportunity for you to take what you're learning here, apply it to your own life, but also apply some of the principles that you're hearing me talk about, about the way that I connect with people, about how to build these relationships I mentioned in the most previous episode that I'm chasing, changing some things up and talking about the benefits of building out your authentic connections. This podcast is an amazing way for me to do that. This is a great way for Vinny and I to connect even deeper and every person that I've had on the show, something I absolutely love to do. And I'd also like to connect with you. I do have an email address that I read every single email and this is where you can share your challenges, your opportunities, your ideas, your thoughts, your disagreements with me. Connect with me. Because there's a lot of ways that I may be able to help you, but I won't be able to help you unless you do connect. You can always email me directly askbradaconrappedbusiness.com if it's a thoughtful question or a comment, I will absolutely respond to you. This is why I do the show, is to build these connections with you. If there is something I can help you out with, I'm more than happy to. But the best way that you you can help me share the show, review it on itunes. And if you're listening on itunes or watching on YouTube, subscribe, listen on itunes. Hit that subscribe button and you'll never miss an episode. Also, I have a newsletter. It's a totally free newsletter. I don't blow you up. I don't send a million emails a day. But I do share some stuff on the newsletter that I don't share on the podcast. And these are some of the best resources I like to reward those in my inner circle. That being said, I invite you to stay part of the show, help it grow. And until next time, Vinny, my brother, thank you very much. I look forward to seeing you in the next board room and also in your event. So appreciate. Appreciate you. Thanks, guys. Bye.

Bye.