How To Scale A Company (Podcast 345)

Only the paranoid survive. So there's a little bit of that that I think is good. The fear that will keep you focused, but the fear should keep you focused but not paralyze you. Because we have to let our natural energy out. So if we show up every day scared and nervous and restricted, we're sending out this nervous energy into our company. So we have to come in as the chief energizing officer. We have to come in with that. I don't know, but we'll figure it out and then be worried behind the scenes. So a place to be worried is with your mentor, with a coach, with your mastermind community, with your spouse. But when you're entering into the business, you have to open up and be kind of that free energy.

In this edition, we revisit an engaging conversation between yours truly, Cameron Herald, and Dev Gadvi from the passionpreneur podcast. Together, we delve into the intricate world of entrepreneurial success and the crucial art of scaling businesses. We unveil invaluable insights into the pivotal role of attracting and nurturing top tier talent. Drawing from my experiences in catapulting companies like 1-800got junk, from humble beginnings to remarkable revenues, I emphasize the significance of crafting job postings that not only allure ideal candidates, but also repel those who don't resonate with the company's vision. We dissect the challenges and strategies involved in scaling a business, touching upon practical advice for managing growth across different organizational stages. I spotlight the critical transition phase from 30 to 100 employees and stress the imperative need for cultivating managerial skills, emphasizing training in areas like situational leadership and time management as vital pillars for sustainable growth. But it doesn't stop there. Dev and I delve into the personal facets of entrepreneurship. I share my transformative journey from the relentless pursuit of success to leading a fulfilling life centered around travel and focusing on what truly matters. I unveil a shift in mindset, transitioning from a pursuit of monetary gains to a time centric approach that cherishes life experiences over material wealth. Tune in to uncover the nuances of entrepreneurial triumph, scaling businesses and the profound evolution of personal fulfillment in the entrepreneurial sphere.

Aaron, you've been an entrepreneur at a very early age and the people who are watching this video, most of them either they're looking to start a business or they have already started a business. What advice would you give to people who are looking to start a business and want to grow to seven or eight or 10 figures that you've done successfully?

I Guess a couple things come to mind. One is that follow the path of least resistance. If it's hard, if there's a lot of friction, there's probably an easier path. So try to follow the cheat sheet. I almost think of the fly trying to get out the window. It keeps banging its head on the window, trying hard, it ends up dead on the window. So but if it would turn and go out the door that's open right here, it's done. So try to find those, those open doors and those paths. Secondly is remember that there's millions of companies out there that are, have probably done what you're trying to do. They've probably built a funnel, they've probably done a landing page. They've probably hired someone, interviewed someone, grown someone, fired someone. Whatever you're going to be doing, there's hundreds and thousands of companies that have probably done it. Go online, try to find out how they did it and do what they did. Just use the cheat sheets that already exist. Because we no longer have to be the smartest person in the room. You no longer have to know how to do stuff. You have to find the people that have done it or find out the shortcuts in the way to do it. I'd start with those.

I want to go back to your entrepreneurship journey. As you know, you're scaling the business. It's incredible that you took a company from 2 million to 100 plus million in six years. But for people, let's say, who not even hit the 2 million, what is the hardest part as they are starting and how do you overcome those hardest things?

So there's a few hard parts. One is that everyone around you is going to say, don't do it, or they're going to say it's going to be too hard for you to do it, or don't quit your job, or it's too risky, or, you know, there's going to be a thousand of reasons why it's going to be harder or don't do it. So you have to somehow believe in yourself and know that you can. Most entrepreneurs aren't that smart, right? We're just, we've just taken that risk. We've taken that step. So that would be one. I think a second one would be to find something that you really like, right? To find a business area that you like, or a product that you like, or something that really ignites you, that you're really excited about. Because then it's easy. You know, I made a mistake. For about four years I was involved as A partner in a business. And it was in auto body, it was collision repair, fixing cars. I don't like cars, I don't like getting dirty. I didn't like being around mechanic shops. It was just. Nothing felt fun for me in that four years. And it was a very draining. Even though we built it, it was a very hard experience. Whereas other businesses, I just loved it, I had fun with it. It makes it easy. So do that. Next one is try to only work on the stuff that gives you energy and very quickly try to delegate and outsource the parts of the business that are hard for you or are not really your unique ability areas. Because again, there's millions of people out there that are freelancers who can do work for you. One hour a week, two hours a month, doesn't matter, right? You don't always have to hire full time people, but you also don't have to do the work.

Is it actually business running a business different when you are like less than six figure as a CEO, as a founder, your thought process has to be different. Seven figures to be different million.

I call it the ones and the threes. So when you go from 100,000 to 300,000 to 1 million to 3 million to 10 to 30 to 100, or you go from one employee to three employees, from three to 10, 10 to 30. So let me go from the, let's call it the. The one employee to three employees if it's just you. It's all about focus. It's about saying no to all the busy work. It's about working on the highest impact, highest roi, things that will drive momentum and give you revenue. Always in the early days, focus on revenue. Don't worry about the perfect product or the perfect email or the perfect funnel. Momentum creates momentum. Worry about just get more revenue with good gross margin so that you can then take that money to hire a couple of people part time to help you get more stuff done. So drive revenue in the first person. When you go to three people, get a couple of people that are kind of the jack of all trades, master of none. You don't need experts, you need people that can do lots of stuff, who believe in what you're doing, who can just get shit done quickly, but not perfect stuff. So if you get a couple of those master keys, a couple of those people that can do a lot of good stuff and then you can start delegating projects. Keep the ones that energize you, give them stuff that energizes them and keep them again focusing on Revenue, you'll start to scale it. When you get to 10 people, you can start building out the better product, you can start building out the better supplies, you can start building out the better systems, you can start putting right at 10, you start having one person who's now managing some people. So you no longer manage everyone directly. Now the art is to get results.

Now you don't have a flat structure right now you have like a team, a person.

And then you're about probably not even a team. You probably have one person managing five or six people and you're probably managing two or three.

Got it.

But now you have to manage through a person to get results. So now it's the art of growing a person, letting go a little bit. And then, and then when you go to 30 people, you're building out your team of managers and a hundred people, you're building out a solid leadership team of people that have done it before. But yeah, in the early days, hire people based on passion, hire people based on culture, fit. Hire, hire people who can really get a bunch of stuff done. And don't worry about perfect.

But how do you find these people? Because typically when I, you know, when I'm talking to entrepreneurs, they're like six figure going to be seven figure, like how? The biggest question is how do I find good people? Where do I find good people?

Yeah. So you have to start turning your company, even in the earliest stage, into a magnet. And the easiest way to do that is craft that vivid vision that you talked about. So the vivid vision that everybody can do and we can share or you can share an example of my personal vivid vision and my business vivid vision. We'll give them examples. The vivid vision is a four page or five page description of your company three years from now. Almost like you're walking around your business and you describe everything you can see. So if a person writes their vivid vision describing their company in three years without worrying about how they're going to do it, and they share that vivid vision with everyone, people be like, oh, I love what you're building, I want to help you build that. But if you just show them what you have today, it's not that exciting. People are inspired by where you're going and what you're building, not by what you have right now.

So you know, if you're a money driven person, people will not follow you. No, it has to be a core. You want money, it has to be beyond money.

You say you call yourself like that passion for neuro, right?

Yes.

So you have to describe your core purpose, you have to describe your passion, you have to describe your core values, you have to describe your business. So here's an example. Let's talk about your business by your passion, partner, project and what you're doing with the world. What is your business? Give us two or three things describing your company. December 31, 2025. So three years out, I'm going to.

Give you a perspective in terms of money, in terms of impact and all the things. Right. We are originally from India. Three years from now, we want to go global. How many countries actually thought of two continents to start with? Africa and Middle East. That is the closest. You know, we can easily relate to people, connect with people. Those are the two continents that we want to start with in next three years.

And are you running in person events? Are you only online, Are you a bit of both.

We have a dream to run a big event in Dubai with 20,000 people.

And will that be in three years?

That is within three years.

Okay, so in three years, a big event in Dubai, 20,000 people. I'm clearly going to be speaking at that event. It's on Docker. And then what kind of. Lastly, talk about your, your team. What's your company look like? You've got 50 employees right now. How many employees? Are they remote? Are they in an office?

Most of them will be remote. Right now we have remote team, 50 people, it will still be remote. And we may have office in Dubai, they may have office in India. Fixed office. We do not have it. We don't have it until yet.

What's your office look like?

I can see a space which has the podcast area, Passion Builder Studio that I have thought of.

But on the physical, we're going to spend some time later and we're going to dream about what your space looks like. And when you describe that to everybody who's listening, there's going to be people who say, I want to come and work with Dev in Dubai, I want to come and work with Dev in Mumbai because I see the space, I can see myself in there. They need to see themselves and feel themselves in this space that they're then doing the work to help you towards the passion. But that's what everybody listening, that's what you can start to describe with your business. Don't worry about how you're going to get there. Don't worry about how you're going to build it. Just like building a home. If I was building a home, I'm going to hire a contractor to build the home. But I'm not going to worry about how they do the electrical and how they do the plumbing.

Do you just dream of the house.

And they figure out, like, how can figure out.

Yeah, exactly.

And by the way, the reason it's so important is if you can't see it clearly, your employees can't build it for you. But if you focus on what you're building and what it looks like, they can figure out how to make it come true.

So how do we actually get the people? So one is having the vision. Articulating the vision.

You're going to now describe the person. So what I like doing is thinking about what are the core functions that I'm hiring for. I put all those functions into a bucket or a few buckets. Now it's like, oh, bucket one is called a head of marketing. Now what would I be willing to pay that head of marketing? Okay, based on what I'm paying and based on what they're doing, let's call them a marketing manager. Or if I'm paying a little bit more, they're doing more strategic. Maybe they're a director of marketing, or maybe they're doing very strategic marketing. Maybe they're now a VP of marketing or a chief marketing officer. So the bucket of stuff they're doing, when you describe that and when you think about the compensation, kind of describes the title. When you put that job posting out into the world. If I wrote it, it would be okay. But if I gave my job posting to a copywriter and they polished the job posting and make it pop off the page, and someone who reads the job posting and reads my vivid vision, they want to come work with me. You share your vivid vision for the company, and you share a very solid, polished job description that a copywriter helps you polish. And then you share it with the world.

Well, to me, the copywriter was only for the landing pages, but it just actually expanded my context. And you can actually write a copy because actually, no different than acquiring a client, you have to acquire one of the most important assets in the business. The other they are the people.

And write your job posting so that 50% of the people who read it go. I would never want to work there. Good. Then I don't have to waste my time reading your resume. But you want it to magnetize. You want it to pull people in and push some people away. Like Mindvalley. There's a lot of people who, if they. If they see what Mindvalley is all about, there's no way I would want to go now. There's other people that go, oh my gosh, I want to be there for three weeks. But if you water it down so that it's for everybody, then it doesn't really work.

How is it different when you are at 50 people, 100 people.

So let's go, let's go the ones and threes. So we'll go 10 to 30? Yes, 30 to the 100. So from 10 people you have kind of one manager managing a few people. When you have 30, you now have your first management team, probably four or five people managing everybody else. And you're now managing the four or five. Most of the managers have never really built a company before. Most of the managers don't really have the strong leadership skills to scale a business. So your job is about growing them, growing their skills and growing their confidence. So pretend that those four managers are each climbing up two ladders. They have a 40 foot ladder right beside each other and their left foot and their left hand is climbing up the skills ladder and their right hand and right foot are climbing up the confidence ladder. They have to gain confidence, gain skills, gain confidence, gain skills, gain confidence, gain skills. Your job is to grow both. So an example of the skills that the managers need, they need to be good at situational leadership. They need to be good at coaching. They need to be trained in delegation, time management, conflict management, project management. They need to be good at managing emails and slack messaging. They need to be good at coaching and running one on one meetings and interviewing. But if we don't train those managers on those skills, the business starts to shake and falter. If we grow their skills and then cheer them on and praise them, and cheer them on and praise them, they're more excited to take on more work. They're climbing up the ladders. That's how you go from 30 people to the 100 is by growing people's skills. So I launched a course called invest in your leaders. And the whole reason for that is so it's not even just for you, it's now you get your four or five core managers to go through it so they their skills. That's what happens at the 30 to the 100 mark. And then when you get to the hundred mark, you're now having to hire people from the outside. Now it's all about managing politics and managing silos and managing people.

So, so, so what you're saying is until 100 you can still have the people growing within the company?

Yes.

And they can come at the mid level or manager level and they can.

Still climb the ladder and you keep growing. Only if you grow their skills, though.

Yes.

So when you take a company from 2 million to 4 million. Yes. And then from 4 to 8, it's really hard for a manager to keep running the business at 16. If, let's say that they're the manager of marketing as a $2 million business, when it goes to four, they can probably still be the marketing manager. When it goes to eight, they can be a marketing manager. But that's 400 times bigger. When it gets to 16, most of them can't do it anymore. It's too big. Right. They're running a different kind of a company at that point. Their budgets are bigger, the people issues are bigger, there's more employees. The meeting rhythms are different. So you tend to have. Have their skills not really grown. You tend to start having to hire the experts from the outside. They probably move to another company and grow or they get mentored by a new leader and that person helps grow their skills. But yeah, you start hiring that expert from the outside.

Yeah, that's actually a very interesting stage. So I'm.

I'm somewhat kind of in there.

I'm somewhere there. So right now we've made some changes and we've got people from manager to becoming. You know, they hire authorities very soon.

Well, here's an interesting question. So think about your manager. How many managers do you have? How many people that work for you manage people?

I would say five, if I'm not mistaken.

Okay, so of those five people, how many of them have been really trained well on how to do job interviews? And how many of them interview people? All of them. How many of them have been trained on how to run good meetings?

We starting to get there because of your course.

Now, this is scary, right? How many of them run meetings?

All of them.

How many of them trained on coaching? None. And how many of them coach? So what's hard in this stage is all of our managers have to do stuff, and we've never trained them in it. So here's a funny example, and listen to this. Would you ever send your child out to play cricket for the first time without teaching them how to hold the bat and throw the ball and catch the ball? No, you teach them the basics. Because it would be horrible to go and play cricket without understanding the basics. Why do we allow our managers to run a business every day without giving them the basic training? So what happens is they come home and they go, daddy, cricket sucks. No, you suck at cricket. But if you give them so business Isn't hard. We make it hard on ourselves. What happens in most companies is. So you probably train your people on social media and YouTube marketing and landing pages. That's the what we do, right? In the famous Simon Sinek world of the why, how, what? We're training them in the what. We don't train them on the how. The how is coaching, situational leadership, time management. Right. It's the soft skills of management. That's what gets you from 30 people to the hundred.

And is that the reason why people get stuck, you know, up to a certain, like a glass ceiling and they don't go forward? Is that the core?

It is. And. And the other thing that you'll hear people say is, oh, I have 20 years experience. No, you have five years experience four times in a row.

He did.

You're still doing the same thing you've always done. So my dad ran his own company forever, sold it to my brother 20 years ago. And my dad, before he passed away, recently said, I really wish I'd read your business books when I was younger. I would have been much more successful. He had no business training. There was no real Internet to learn from. He didn't know about business leaders and business books. So he just kept learning by doing the same thing over and over again, hoping for a different result. That's why people get stuck. The other reason they get stuck is they think that it must be hard. Business must be hard. No, it's actually pretty simple. If you follow all of grandmother's rules, right, don't put all your eggs in one basket and be nice to people. And like all of the things that our grandma told us is how you scale a company, but grow your people, give them the skills.

Interesting. That brings me to another question. A lot of people are starting the business or have already started the business. I see a lot of them are consumed by the fear that, what if I fail? What if it doesn't work? What if it becomes painful? What if some people have fear of success, some people have fear of failure. How do you handle this? The mental game, A chitter chatter.

There's two parts. There's a few parts to that. So Andy Grove, the founder of intel, said, only the paranoid survive. So there's a little bit of that that I think is good. The fear that will keep you focused, but the fear should keep you focused but not paralyze you, because we have to let our natural energy out. So if we show up every day scared and nervous and restricted, we're sending out this nervous energy into Our company. So we have to come in as the chief energizing officer. We have to come in with that. I don't know, but we'll figure it out and then be worried behind the scenes. So a place to be worried is with your mentor, with a coach, with your mastermind, community, with your spouse. But when you're entering into the business, you have to open up and be kind of that free energy, bold. Yeah.

Abundant thinking.

Yeah.

And I think somewhere I heard that most of the entrepreneurs, if you're optimistic, people rally around you.

Right. Because they like that energy.

Yeah, right.

It's all about. It's all quantum mechanics. It's all quantum physics that, like energy attracts like energy. Think about last time you went to a party and you saw a few fun people that are chatting in the corner is where you're naturally pulled towards. You pull towards that energy. And then if you feel. If you see someone off in the other corner and they're grumpy and they're negative, and you kind of stay away from them. So if you're showing up as a business leader and you have that optimistic, unbridled. We'll figure it out. Let's go for it. Passionate energy, people. Like, hell, yeah, I'll follow you.

But how do you handle the failure? Let's say somebody has courage, somebody is optimistic. But let's say campaigns are not working, business not growing. There are some challenges. And let's say you go to the swamp period, by the way, for so many decades, I don't know, 30, 40 years, you've been, you know, doing business. Did you have your swamp period?

Lots of swamp period.

Really?

Yeah. So. But let me tell you a couple of things about. For me with failure. For 18 years that I was in school, from kindergarten through the end of high school, through university, I was routinely told I was stupid. I never really did well in it. All of my classes were 60%, 58%, 64%. Like, I got terrible grades. I was never used to doing great, so I was used to failing every test. So I'm like, I was already making money when I was a kid. I was like, selling stuff during class, so I didn't really care. So for me, overcoming failure was just like, I understood what mattered and I got my confidence from other things. And I also understood that momentum created momentum, not perfection. So for me, it's like, as long as I fail forward, just fail forward. Don't fall backwards. Like, as long as you're trying and moving forward. But I also.

Would you like to explain more like what is failing forward mean? Because a lot of people don't understand feeling.

It's not sitting back and feeling horrible and not. It's trying something.

It's trying and trying new things, feeling at new things and not repeating the old mistakes.

Don't keep doing the old stuff.

Got it.

And it's also trying to remember that there's people out there that are really smart that have done it before. Just do what they're doing. Right. Like you talk about Grant Cardone. He's developed some amazing systems. Follow them, just use them. Alex Hormozy, Amazing systems. Just follow them. Right? Like I'm actually in the process of starting to build out my YouTube channel. Guess who's I'm going to be watching a lot of yours. I'm going to be sitting in a rip off and duplicate not the same content. But how has Dev done this? How is this guy from India built up this massive channel? Right. What can I learn from what you're doing and how can I apply that? That's how you fail forward. You just try it, you move. You try it and you move.

That's very humble of you to say. You don't need to copy somebody like Dave Gad.

No, you've done an amazing. You've got like almost 200,000 followers or something crazy.

It's amazing talking about the scaling and growth. So we've got to, you know, a place maybe 30 and 100. I know this will be a little advanced for a lot of people watching this. This is my personal interest as well, that let's say If I'm at 50 people crossing 6 million next year, going across 10 million, what is the advice that you will give to somebody like me?

Be really, really focused on your core values. And any time that you find someone in your organization who does not live your core values, obsess about your core values, focus on your core values. You have to get rid of them even if they're getting you great results. If I came to you as your doctor tomorrow and said, dev, you have a cancerous tumor. So somewhere, how long would you like to keep it in your body? If you have a cancerous tumor in your company, get them out. The way that you scale from where you are now up is by focusing on the core values, by giving your time to your A players and your B players and getting rid of your C players and by getting rid of any company politics. Right? You don't really have company politics yet at 50, but as you approach a hundred people, they're jockeying for Position, they're jockeying for title. They're jockeying for time with you. They want more pay. They're worried more about their career. You have to be careful with that stuff.

How do you identify those people?

You can see it. You can see it and feel the energy.

You can.

You can understand their response. You can. You can see the way they approach problems. You can just see the energy.

And if you have to let somebody go because I've had bad experiences of letting somebody go. I'm sure in your experience, you would have had, you know, many incidents.

Is there a process firing them or it just feels bad firing them, not.

Having a right way of.

So the best way to fire someone is to say one of two things. I'm sorry, it's not working out because of the results. We're letting you go. Here are your papers. Or I'm sorry, you're just not a core values fit, or you're just not a culture fit anymore. We're letting you go. Here are your papers. And when the person says, but what about it? I'm sorry, it's just not a culture fit anymore here. I'm sorry, it's like you just keep repeating the same thing. It's like, you can't come into the bar. You're wearing running shoes, but my friend's inside. I'm sorry, you can't come in. You're wearing running shoes, but my girlfriend's inside. Sorry, you can't come inside. You're wearing running shoes. The bouncer says the same thing to you seven times until you're like, I'm walking away.

Yeah.

Don't get dragged into the discussion because the why doesn't really matter. It's either results or culture fit. That's it. And then the second part is, try to be nice to them when you're doing it, because it is someone's mother or someone's sister or someone's brother or.

Someone'S dad or someone's son.

Like they're a human. Right, Right. And they have. But. But you do have to get them out because you have to take care of your A players and your B players, not your C players.

So coming back to the. The aspect, you. You coached and mentored thousands, you know, thousands of, you know, entrepreneurs. Now people are following you all over the world. Your copies of books have sold. What is your personal drive? When you talk about the passion, what is your personal drive as an individual who would say, man, I'm living the life of my dream? Are you living life of your dream?

Yeah, I Mean, yeah, we've sold everything. I sold my home in Canada, sold my home in the us Sold our cars, sold. We just travel. We live full time on the road. So it's amazing. My wife and I just get to go and explore. The reason I'm doing what I'm doing is I see all these entrepreneurs banging their head against the window, and I know there's a shortcut. I know there's another door. And I just want to help more real companies actually understand the path to make their dreams happen. And there's just easier ways to do it than what they're doing right now. So that's why, like, I don't help government. I don't help nonprofits. I don't help. You know, there's all kinds of other people I could be helping. That's not my zone. Right. And I. I love the people that are doing. Those that work to my zone are entrepreneurial organizations.

So I think we all have our own definition of dream life. This is your definition of dream life?

Yeah.

Let's say 10 years from now, would you still be doing the same thing or do you think it changes over a period of time? Because a lot of people watching this, I would. I would say they are still into money. Making game, make it big. Does it change you as a person when you make a lot of money and when you don't have the money and you've seen it and been there?

Yeah, there's. There's definitely. So I'm. I'm older. I'm 57. So I'm. I'm at a different stage of life where I'm not trying. You know, I've already had my kids, and my kids are out at university. I've had the big homes. I've had the stuff. I had to have homes to raise kids in. So I've done a lot of those things now. And now I'm trying to understand what's more important. So I want to travel the world now more. I want to spend more time with my wife and friends now. I say no to lots of things that don't give me energy, and I say yes to things like this that do give me energy. So I'm not driving towards a goal. So the only reason we start companies is one of three reasons. To give us money, to give us free time, or to put a flag in the ground and say, we did it. I've done it. I already feel that. I feel good about my success in business, having done it enough times that I could stand in front of Every teacher and say, I did it. If he could, if he would only apply himself and say, focused. I can't focus. I have add, but I did it. Okay, that's one. The second one is money. Well, how much money do you need now? I could want to fly private jets or I could want to live. I don't need those things. Right. I have enough money now and enough money coming in that I can travel where I want to travel to. I've been to Antarctica. I've been like, I've. I've been all over. Been to 34 countries with my wife in the last four years. So for me, there's a level of comfort that I want, but there's also a life that I want. So now is about time. Now it's about how many weeks off vacation can I get every year? How few hours in the week can I work? Like never working Saturday, never working Sunday, never working past 5, 30 at night. It's all about giving myself time. Time to spend with my kids, time to spend with my friends, time to do activities like this that feel, feel great and are fun. That's really why I'm doing what I'm doing now. In the beginning, you know, Yeah. I had to drive hard towards money and pull money aside and save money. I had to find ways to invest money. I had to be more strategic with understanding what was important, buying something or investing. So all of my life, I've always saved and invested. Always. I had a stockbroker when I was 16. Right. I have public posts on Facebook in 2014. You can still see my posts telling people I was accepting payment in bitcoin eight years ago. So I've always invested, I've always saved. And then I've always not worried about, you know, I don't need to have the designer everything, but I like to live nice, know there's a balance.

And as a CEO, what are the most important ingredients or attributes that one needs to develop constantly?

So let's talk about as a CEO and first as an entrepreneur, because I think you start as an entrepreneur and you become a CEO when you're running a real company with real employees and real, you know, I think what's important to develop as an entrepreneur is the minimum viable everything. Just get it done and get it out the door that quick is better than perfect. The ability to attract and grow people is so important as an entrepreneur. It's all about how can I attract people and grow them part time, full time, and then the ability to sell a vision. If you can really Sell your vision on where you're going. You'll attract people, you'll attract investors, you'll attract customers, you'll attract media attention. That'll help you scale. That's the early stage entrepreneur. And then probably the ability to grow yourself. Just always grow, getting stronger in all the areas of business. As a CEO, it's about developing communication skills, it's about developing strategy skills. It's about building out your connection and your network to other strategic partners that can help you figure out the who's. Because it's no longer how do I do stuff? It's a who can help me do stuff. It's a who problem, not a how problem. So I think it's, yeah, it's about communication strategy and probably then again developing kind of why are we doing what we're doing? Because at the end of the day, none of this matters. Right? We're all going to die. And I think. I think we have an obligation, maybe not even an obligation as a CEO. We have an opportunity as a CEO to build an amazing company that takes care of people, that really helps all of the people that touch us. Right. We have an opportunity as a CEO to build an amazing company that gives all of our employees a great life. Right. Gives them more vacation time and more money and more fun and more passion and treats them with respect. I think that's an. Maybe it should be an obligation for a CEO.

Wow, that's a good word. Obligation for a CEO to create a better environment, better culture.

There's like a moral obligation. Right. Or we're humans, like we should. We should because we can. Right. We don't need the government telling us to take care of our people. We should do that because it creates a better place for everybody anyway. And by the way, when you do all of that, you make more money than you can ever imagine your business scales. Because everybody's so happy, they'll say, hell yeah, what do you want me to do next?

But. But then why is the reason only there's only certain percentage of people actually start a business, become an entrepreneur. Majority of the people don't want to get into business.

Yeah. So I think only 3% of the population should be an entrepreneur.

Okay.

97 should be working for entrepreneurs.

Really?

Well, there's. You only have so many companies. We actually need people to do the work too.

Right.

But I think people should be entrepreneurial. People shouldn't wait for the next paycheck. They shouldn't wait for the next government handout. They shouldn't wait for someone to help them with their career. They shouldn't wait for someone to help them be happy. They should look for opportunities to grow their skills. They should look for opportunities to grow themselves. They should look for better companies to work in. They should look for better projects within the company that inspire them. They should look to collaborate with others. Almost like you're playing a video game like Minecraft where you're collaborating and sharing and you know, I think you have to be entrepreneurial. But being an entrepreneur where you go out on your own, you start your own business, you're hiring other people to do work, I think is a very, it's a, it's a DNA trait and it's a skill set. Both. Right. I think you're a type of person who does that and then you also can build the skills to do it.

Got it. Are you a spiritual person?

Yes and no. I, I don't necessarily believe in God mostly because I don't think that there's one religion that could possibly be right. Like who's right and then is everybody else wrong. But I definitely believe in a connection and an energy connection and that there's something bigger that has us all connected. So I think I'm spiritual.

Yes, I think that is the right definition because I think spirituality is nothing to do with, you know, religion as such. A lot of people actually don't. I used to think I'm not religious, I'm not spiritual. But slowly, slowly I started realizing, oh, spirituality doesn't mean that you have to be, you know, religious person or God. No God loving person, praying and going to temples or mosque and all.

I mean, the book that I'm reading right now is called the Celestine Prophecy. It's a huge book on spirituality that was written about 35 years ago and I'm rereading it again. I was rereading it again this morning. So yes, I guess I'm. And I was just in Bhutan praying and meditating with monks. Yeah, I'm sure. I think I'm probably fairly spiritual. Yeah. But I'm not religious anymore.

Interesting, interesting. So what do you do to keep your mind calm and peaceful in the chaos? Because running a business can be really chaotic.

One is to not work constantly that I realize that my to do list will never get done because as I get close to having it completed, I'll have more goals of another project. I'll write a seventh book like so I know I'm never going to get it done. So I'm not chasing complete. So that's one. Another one is Making sure that I just, I turn it off at the end of the day that I actually decompress and spend time with my wife. I take every Friday off where I don't work on Fridays. It's a very rare one because I'm doing a podcast over in Dubai, but. And I don't work Saturdays or Sundays. So I really do decompress. Do a lot of hiking. I'm playing golf here this weekend in Dubai. Like I just try to go and have a good time, have fun.

One last question before we go. If you go back, let's say 30 years and reliving those moments and you were entrepreneurial, hiring people, building businesses, what would you do differently this time? Knowing what you know now, I think.

It would have been two things. I would have tried to have let go my ego and harnessed my confidence earlier. I think because I'd been an entrepreneur at a young age, I felt I, I was cockier or had too much ego. And I think I could have come in with more of a quiet confidence that would have served me better. Because I look back now and I'm like, I Knew Nothing at 21, right. I knew nothing at 26, 27, which was 30 years ago. The second thing would have been to delegate faster. I was such a radical, radically self reliant and I could do it myself because I'd done it all myself, that I would work hard getting a bunch of stuff done. But it was so far below my pay grade that I could have delegated or outsourced much, much faster to, to have had a better life and to have gotten stuff done, done faster. And I wasn't worried that others couldn't do it. I just wasn't thinking about get, I was just working harder. I was that fly. Trying to get through the window didn't even occur to me. And now I realize, like there's almost nothing that I need to do except the stuff that really gives me energy.

And I forgot to ask this question, but I'm very curious. Did you have the mentors and coaches in your life?

Yeah. So I'm very fortunate. I got involved in an organization when I was 20 years old called College Pro Painters. And College Pro ended up becoming the largest residential house PA company on the planet. And it was a very big coaching and leadership based organization where we got a ton of training from our supervisor and I became one of the very top people in the organization. We had 9,000 employees. I was in the top 30 people in the company, but I was trained by some VPs and presidents there who were really really strong at growing people and they gave me the core skills and then I had coaches throughout my career as well and then I also was a part of an organization called the Entrepreneurs Organization I've also been a part of seven Mastermind groups so I'm in the genius network I've done Strategic coach I've been to Baby Bathwater I've gone to War room I've gone to Mastermind talks I've been an EO I worked with YPO in a dozen countries so I've been mindvalley like I've gone to so many of these organizations that I'm always around those those groups and.

Growth as well Very very powerful Ladies and gentlemen Cameron Howell for us like.

We kind of categorize chat advice into three categories One is reputation management Someone comes to us with that need we tend to win them right off the bat but us trying to find that need for someone it tends to be a six month conversation if it's going to happen.