Top Business Lessons From Decades of Entrepreneurship

I'm interviewed a lot in the media, right? And I'm interviewed a lot by, you know, business people. And I spend a lot of time on stages and I spend a lot of time working with CEOs all over the world. And at the end of the day, yeah, none of this actually matters. This is just what we do to make money. What matters is our relationship with ourself, our relationship with our spouse, our relationship with our kids and our friends. We're all just walking each other home. None of us are getting out of this alive, right? We're all going to die. So at some point, is this that important? No. Like, we're gone. We're snuffed out in a fraction of, like, the world has been here for how many millions and millions of years? And we think this podcast matters or the meeting that we're going to or the customer interaction that we have, like, doesn't matter. So when you detach from that, if you really care about your employees, like you really care about them, not their birthday and their dog's name, but, you know, their fears and their insecurities and their passion and their bucket list, you help them craft a vivid vision. You help them connect with themselves and connect with their spouse. And when they feel like you care about them so much, they'll go through brick walls to build your company. I've had clients have landed funding because of it. They've had bankers finally understand their business because of it. I've had clients land multi million dollar without exaggeration clients because of it, landed amazing employees who have come and joined because they're excited to build what they're going to be building. But you can also write a vivid vision for your personal life and for your marriage. So imagine a couple, whether it's a husband and wife or gay couple, whatever, getting both people on the same page, finally deciding what you're doing for fun, for fitness, for faith, for food, for time with friends, with. With your, you know, for festivals, for learning, like self growth, self care. You get a four or five page description of your relationship and start sharing that with the world. That changes everything as well. And then I even have one for me as a, you know, as a. A guy, right? Like, who am I as a dad, as a lover, as a friend, as a. A confidant. How am I showing up, you know, with my kids and vacations? So I have a document just for myself. I love that our. Our marriage and the company. Our marriage, one for my wife and I is on my wife's websites. On it's called Ever Wander Travel. I send links out. We can share it in the show notes if you'd like. I link to everybody. The more people that know where we're going, either as a couple or me or the company, the more they try to help make certain sentences come true. And they're also like excited about. It's like, oh, this sounds really cool. Can we join you on this part of, you know, whatever your adventure is in life? I'll tell you how you use a vivid vision in your business in a really powerful way. So the vivid vision is this four or five page description of your company three years in the future. Every time someone applies for a job with me, I email them back right away. We say, thanks for your resume. Not reading it yet. Please read this vivid vision that describes our company three years from now. Reply back with a two to three minute video of how you want to help us make it come true and what you love about it. If we love your video, then we'll read your resume. So I can take 100 resumes, get it down to 10 videos, watch the 10 videos and know for sure. There's five people I'm like super intrigued to get to know. So then I look at their resume, but I've already got a good cultural glimpse. And it's almost like I've interviewed all these people because you can just tell. Plus I've polarized. I've pushed a whole bunch of people away, like I don't want to work for a company like that. And I've magnetized the others who are like, oh my gosh, I just want in. So now you don't even waste any time on that. Your team doesn't waste any time on that. You only look at the ones that are super excited, super inspired, and, and they're pre sold on your vivid vision, like on your company. So now you can spend all the time interviewing them and they really want in. Cause they're excited and they've never seen anything like this. I'm interviewed a lot in the media, right? And I'm interviewed a lot by, you know, business people. And I spend a lot of time on stages and I spend a lot of time working with CEOs all over the world. And at the end of the day, yeah, none of this actually matters. This is just what we do to make money. What matters is our relationship with ourself, our relationship with our spouse, our relationship with our kids and our friends. We're all just walking each other home. None of us are getting out of this Alive, Right. We're all going to die. So at some point, is this that important? No. Like, we're gone. We're snuffed out in a fraction of, like, the world has been here for how many millions and millions of years? And we think this podcast matters or the meeting that we're going to or the customer interaction that we have, like, doesn't matter. So if. When you detach from that, if you really care about your employees, like, you really care about them, not their birthday and their dog's name, but you know, their fears and their insecurities and their passion and their bucket list, your. You help them craft a vivid vision. You help them connect with themselves and connect with their spouse. When they feel like you care about them so much, they'll go through brick walls to build your company. But when all you're focused on in the company, they don't feel like you care about them at all. So it's almost like we get better results by not caring about the business and obsessing about really growing our people and caring for our people. Get all your employees, in the first week they're working with you, or if they're already with you now, get them to spend a half an hour and write down a bucket list. Get up to as close to 101 things that they want to do or try or learn or achieve or experience. And it can be 101 things in your own city. Like, it doesn't require traveling around the world. It can be, I want to do these six hikes in the Scottsdale area. I want to go to these three malls. I want to learn how to play guitar. I want to reconnect with my mom. I want to, you know, read these six books. I want to take a pottery class. I want to take a cooking course. I want to whatever. When you help them create that list, they wake up in the morning with meaning. Then when you start sharing their lists, their bucket list with all the other people in your company, all of a sudden you realize there's seven people that want to learn guitar. There's four that want to go hike Tom Thumb. There's three people that want to, you know, get out of personal debt. So then you pull the ones that want to get out of debt, and you help them do a personal P and L and a personal cash flow statement. Cost you nothing except lunch. That's the kind of stuff you're doing. You know, I had one employee, and on her 101 dream goals, or on her bucket list, it said, I want to go to San Francisco. Now, I'd been to San Francisco a dozen times by that point. Like, I'm like, really? That's on your bucket? San Francisco, like, that's a throwaway. Not for her. She'd never been to San Francisco. She desperately wanted to go to San Francisco. Well, we had all of our employees spend two days in the trucks at 1-800-got junk driving around in the trucks to experience what it was like to work in the trucks. So. But we always sent them out with our Vancouver franchise because we were based in Vancouver. So I said, jen, I have a favor to ask of you. I need you to spend a couple days in the trucks, but I don't want you to do it in Vancouver where everyone else is. I'd like you to go and spend time with one of our franchisees. I need you to go and spend time with Tom and Jocelyn in San Francisco. And she shrieked and then started crying, and she's like, oh, my God. Oh, my God, oh, my God. She goes, that's on my bucket list. I go, yes, Jen, I know it's on your bucket list. And what did it cost me? A $400 flight. She stayed in the spare bedroom of the. Of the franchisees. It cost me nothing. I still, to this day, 21 years later, get Facebook messages from Jennifer Huffnagle. I haven't worked with her for 17 years, but because I cared about one little thing for her, she would go to the ends of the earth for me, and she'll remember that. And I could give you case after case after case of people we did that with. When you show that you care about them more than their friends do, more than their family does, more than they're, like, when you're helping them out of debt, when you're helping them reconnect with their dad, when you're helping them, you know, lose weight or quit smoking, and they realize, like, none of their close friends around them care that much about them. And then you say, hey, I need you to work late. How late? Right. I need you to work on this. Absolutely. Like, it's always a yes, yes, yes. Because they know that you care about. They don't want to lose that. Well, I've coached a few people in the space, too. I coached the team at fitbody boot Camp. I did some work with the guys that I love kickboxing. I did some work with Loud Rumor Mike Garcia, Coach Mike and his second in command. So I've been around the industry a little bit. Another group up in Canada called Innovative Fitness So been around the industry a little bit and the second command is absolutely critical for that company too. It's first about the CEO understanding themselves so that then they know how to find the perfect match for themselves. Right? That's why the COVID of my book has the. The symbol of the yin and yang is we're looking for. If the white is the CEO we're looking for, the blue is the coo. I have to understand myself first to understand how they fit. So the way that you understand yourself is as the entrepreneur, right, as the CEO. What parts of my business drain me of energy? What parts of my business fuel me up? Like, what parts would I do for free except I have to pay the bills, right? What parts of my business do I suck at? What parts am I really good at? So you're going to take all the areas that you suck at, all the areas that you're merely okay at, and even some of the areas you might be amazing at, but they don't fuel you up. You're not fired up from doing it. And you're going to look to hire somebody who's good at all the stuff that you're not and who loves doing all the stuff that drain you. That's number one. Number two is you're looking for somebody who can come in to match the level of P and L responsibility. You want to give them the level of strategic insight you need or industry IP that you want them to bring in, and then somebody who has the level of autonomy that you're willing to give them. Sometimes you're looking for that second in command who can just run and hit the ground running. Other times you need them to execute on your vision and your plan. So that's a key thing to be matching as well. And then thirdly, it's about understanding the pay grade that you need to be paying so that you can put a proper title in place. It's even why I called the book, the second in command and not the CEO. Because often they're not CEOs. They're a VP of operations or a Director of Operations or a Project Manager, maybe even Executive VP or Executive Assistant. Those are all different types of second in commands. They're based on what the roles and responsibilities are in compensation. So let's say that you're running a company right now. You've got, you know, however many employees. Could be two, it could be 20, it could be 200. If you don't have an executive assistant, it tends to mean that you're working on jobs that are far below your pay grade. Right. So if you're earning a half million dollars a year with profit and the salary you're paying yourself running your company, that's $250 an hour. Why are you doing $20 an hour tasks? Why are you doing tasks that you could outsource to the Philippines for $6 an hour? Right. If I was paying you 250 bucks an hour and I found out you were doing $10 an hour tasks, I would lose my. But if you're the entrepreneur, you should be losing your as well. Right? Why are you paying yourself to do minimum wage work? So that's number one. Number two is why are you working on jobs that are draining you of energy when you could free up that time to either have a better life, get more exercise, spend time with your spouse or your kids or yourself, or work on the areas of the business that fuel you, that you're really, really good at. You can hire an EA to get all the admin off your plate first. That'll save you about six to 12 months, maybe 18 months before you really need to hire a true second in command. That costs more than an executive assistant does. Most COOs have no desire to be a CEO or an entrepreneur. It's like most women don't want to be a guy and most guys don't want to be a woman. Most CEOs don't want to be a CEO. Most CEOs don't want to BE a CEO. We're wired differently. We have different personality profiles, we have different skill sets, we have different levels of risk tolerance. So. So it's not like COOs are ever trying to vie for the next role. There is no next role. Maybe it's a better company or a bigger company, but Sheryl Sandberg, who is the COO at Facebook, hasn't gone out to find a CEO job. She was quite happy being the COO of Facebook for 15 years. It's very similar to a husband and wife in a traditional marriage. Okay? You have to stay on the same page. You have to have date night. You have to have time away from the kids. You have to be able to have a vision that you're both driving towards together. You got to be able to have time to like decompress and talk about what really matters. So you need to build that into your schedule. So the CEO and CEO need to have date night. That's time away from the rest of the team, time away from the office. Maybe it's going for lunch, maybe it's going for coffees. Maybe it's just like a regular thing in your schedule where you go for golf together or go for a hike together, but you just go and hang out and reconnect. That connects your energy, it connects the communication, and it makes sure that you still like each other. That's number one. Number two is to remember that the CEO's job is to make the COO look good, and the COO's job is to make the CEO look good. So you need to have time to debate and argue and fight for the good of the company, for the good of the core values, but never in front of the kids. Right. Mom and dad need to have time to fight and debate and argue, but never in front of the kids. Mom and dad have to realize they'll have differences, but they need to have a space to do that. Right. So that then they can show up in front of the kids as this force together. You never walk out saying, well, here, have some cookies, but don't tell mom. You just don't do that. Right. Like that's a really thing that a spouse would ever do to their spouse. Well, the COO doesn't ever say to the team, yeah, I don't agree with what the CEO is doing, but we kind of have to go along. My job is to make the CEO look good, and then their job is to say, hey, Cameron needs to roll out the tough decisions. I needed Cameron to fire those people. I needed Cameron to say no to these three last decisions that you were all in favor of. He's kind of playing the bad cop for us, but he loves our company, so he's making me look good. At the same time, I'm taking all the tough stuff off his plate. So there's always that shining light for the culture of the organization. You really don't want to hire anyone as your second in command that you don't want to hang out with. Sure. You're not necessarily going to be best friends, right? Brian and I actually were best friends. We had a bit of an unfair advantage. He was the best man at my wedding three months before I started to work with him as his COO. At 1 8, Thunder got junk. So we knew everything about each other before I even started to work with him. We'd also been in an EO Forum group together for four years. So he watched me build two companies and knew my skill set. So we had that unfair advantage. But. But yes, you want to be able to spend time with the person connecting with them as a human so that then when you're going to war together. When you're making the tough decisions together, you like hanging out with them. You want to spend time. It's not like, oh, I have to go spend time with Kelly as like, yeah, Kelly and I get to go make some tough decisions together. But at least I like her. She's fun, she's got a cool energy. Right. Of course that's what you're looking for. Let's say we're going to hire a $200,000 second in command. We need them annually to make at least $800,000 in gross margin to pay for themselves and to make it worthwhile to build that extra layer of complexity in the business. Otherwise it's better just to flatline where we are and just scrape more money off the table. Right? Sure. So, yeah, I'm looking for about a four times return on a second command as well. The way that happens is often they take stuff off our plate, which frees up our energy. Now we are both coming into the business spraying this amazing energy. We're all stirring the Kool Aid. You're showing up as the chief energizing officer because you are only working on the cool, fun stuff. That electricity infuses the whole organization so we get more out of people. That's number one. Often the CEO is a bit of a rainmaker as well. They're good at landing deals. And if we take all the stuff off your plate that drain you of energy and you can land a few more deals, we pay for ourselves often as if we're running the business by ourselves. We don't have time to grow our people. We don't have time to grow their skills. We don't have time to grow their confidence. We don't have time to remove obstacles for them and to align them. When you can divide and conquer and you've got the COO leading a group of people for you and you can lead a couple, you tend to be able to drop down a layer where you can actually grow them. You can do skip level meetings, you can be strategic with them, and now you're getting more results through them as well. And then there's the networking component that the CEO can now do or the coo. You drop the COO into the COO alliance, you drop the CEO into a couple masterminds. Now it's not about how do I do something. It's like Ben Hardy and Dan Sullivan wrote the book who not how. Now, because you're plugged into these networks, you know a lot of who's that can help you do things or they can connect the dots for you so you get additional leverage there. It's just a no brainer when, when you hire the right person, the whole like autocratic, dictatorial corner office, you know, do as I say. That's a very 1970s, 1980s methodology for leadership that doesn't work anymore. So if you're coming in as that drill sergeant person or even the person who's disconnected from people and emotions, you'll build an average company, you might even build a really good company, but you'll never build a fantastic or a great company or a company that, that starts achieving hyper growth. Right? What, what I've always built is, is really, really strong brands. Like, there was one year where in one year I coached a company in the United States that went on to become number two to work for on Glassdoor. The same year another company was number 12 in the United States on Glassdoor. The same year I coached the number one company to work for in Florida and the number one company in Cincinnati and the one that went on to become number one in Australia, all in the same year. That's not by accident. And they weren't there when I started working with them. But one of the ways we got them there was by the CEO actually caring about employees more than they cared about anything else. And because the employees knew that they cared so much about them, the employees went through brick walls to scale the company and to take care of the customers. Because I've always said customers are number two. When you obsess about your employees being happy, they're going to take care of your customers and then by default your customers are happy. When you have super happy employees and super happy customers, you have no turnover, you got high retention, you've got, you can start charging whatever you want because nobody's quitting, you have no turnover, you have no training costs and no recruiting costs because nobody's quitting. You get way more return on your people because you've got them for longer, but they're also super fired up. It just kind of is simple. Some of it was showing them the data points of where culture trumps strategy. Some of it was showing them the data points of where if you have a really strong company culture and you have low turnover, you have a low training cost, you have low recruiting costs, you have high output from the people you, you've got, you know, great recruiting because they're telling all of their friends, like the data starts to show, oh, this is powerful. Right? The way you can start getting more done with Less people, faster is by having people that are excited and aligned and aren't quitting, they get that. They can see that. And then when you also show them how hard it is now with turnover and the revolving door and grumpy employees and they're frustrated, they're always dealing with the negativity. I'm just like, you pick. Well, I don't know which, like, I'll help you with that if that's the path you want. They're like, I don't want that path. Okay, then let's do this path. So I'll talk about core values, but I'm also going to talk about what culture where comes from. So let's pretend that every business is like a jigsaw puzzle. The vivid vision is the picture on the front of the box. If you can't see the picture on the front of the box, it's really hard to make a jigsaw puzzle. If I gave you a jigsaw puzzle and all the pieces were red, it would take you forever and a day to make that jigsaw puzzle. Right? The picture is critical. The vivid vision of where we're going and what it looks like is critical. Then you have the four corners of your jigsaw puzzle. Those are your core values, your core purpose, your bhag, which is the big hairy, audacious goal, and your one year plan. Those are the four corners that every company needs where culture starts to emerge. And then the four sides of your puzzle are the employee systems. That's the recruiting, interviewing, selection, hiring, onboarding, leadership, development of people. Then you have your strategic thinking, which is like your annual planning, strategy meetings, quarterly planning, skip level meetings, town halls, anything around. And then you have your meeting rhythms and then you have your financial systems. Culture emerges from there. So core values is one component of culture. Where most companies get core values wrong is they have too many. I say you can only have a maximum of four or five core values. You have to be willing to fire people if they break the core values. Lots of companies don't fire people if they're breaking them. You want to be able to recruit based on them and fire based on them. Next, you should never have a single word as a core value. They should be short, easy to understand phrases. So best examples I've come up with from a company called College Pro Painters that I help build, Deliver what you promise, respect the individual pride in all you do, and find a better way. Super clear. They don't need any explanation. You can fire people based on them. Nobody needs a Bunch of bullet points to explain them any further. They get it. The only time I've ever been okay with a single word as a core value was this company that went on to become number one in Florida. I coached them from 40 people up to 700 one of their core values and they had five was simplify. I'm like, it's so good. So good. Like it's so. It's so perfect. Right. Like that was the only time because like to have a short phrase when simplified. Just simplified. Yes. So that's the only, only caveat I ever had to that. But that's my rules around core values. Core purpose is, is when you're driving towards something. Right. It's like, what's that long term? It's like your why. Right. Simon Sinek's. So Simon helped me actually craft my core purpose. We were in my kitchen in Vancouver five years before he wrote his book Start with why he was on our board of advisors. And I've always wanted to help entrepreneurs make their dreams happen. So he said, well, your core purpose is to help entrepreneurs make their dreams happen. Like, yeah, everything I do is that this book is that. My other five books are that my CEO alliance, my coaching, my course. Everything I do helps entrepreneurs make their dreams happen. If your podcast was about government or corporate, I wouldn't want to do it. Sure. Because it has, it's not aligned with. So core purpose allows a company and employees to say no or to say hell yes. Right. Your BHAG is that big, hairy, audacious goal. Most companies mess that up. They have a big number. That's not a BHAG by Jim Collins definition, it has to be a 20 or 30 year stretch that from the outside seems impossible and from the inside seems plausible. So my BHAG is to replace vision statements with vivid visions worldwide. Right. Microsoft's BHAG was put a computer on every desk and they didn't even make computers. Nike's BHAG in 1972 was to crush Adidas. Boeing's BHAG in the 50s was to democratize air travel. Google's BHAG democratize the world's information. So that's that. And what that does, when company people just get excited about that bhag and they drive towards that. And then the plan is the last aspect, the last corner that you need. A one year plan that helps you drive towards your bhag, drive towards your core purpose, live your core values and drive your vivid vision. But people put three year plans in place. It's too Much changes by the time you get out there. So it's like, focus on the future, but execute on today. If your company doubles in size over the next 12 to 24 or 36 months, your people need to have twice the skills that they have today. So I've always believed in growing people, right? I flip the org chart upside down where I have the CEO and the CEO at the bottom, supporting the VPs, supporting the managers, supporting the employees, supporting the customers. I think you have to really focus on growing people. A lot of entrepreneurial CEOs tend to not say no as often as they should, right? We tend to be a little bit too inclusive. We don't want to hurt people's feelings. We don't want conflict. So we end up saying yes, and we end up giving up participation ribbons for everything. And that helps no one. Or because we're not saying no, we're working on too many things versus the critical few things. So I think there's often a lack of focus in entrepreneurial companies. I'll give you one of my big ones was we almost bankrupted 1-800-got junk when we hit about 100 million in revenue because we weren't listening to our head of finance. We had a very quiet, very amiable, very smart, but he was Indonesian. Very quiet. Brian and I were like driving hard, right? 100 miles an hour growth like crazy. Big culture people. And our head of finance kept saying, are you sure we're not growing too quickly? Are you sure you're not overspending? Are you sure we should do this? And we're like, yeah, yeah, we got it. Yeah, yeah, we got it. When we didn't get it, and we spent all of our money and we went to the bank to borrow, and they wouldn't loan to us. We had to borrow 420 grand from Brian's mom to meet payroll. We realized we didn't understand how to run the finance of a business. But the big lesson that I got was, if you're not willing to listen to your people, hire people you're willing to listen to, right? We should have shut up and listen. God gave us two ears and one mouth. We should have used them in that ratio more. And we didn't. And because of that, he was so quiet, we should have either hired someone stronger or learned how to listen to a quiet person. When Elon Musk sent a tweet out about five years ago, he said, you know, if you're in a meeting, stand up and leave the meeting. And I've known Elon since 95. Because I was a reference for he and his brother in their first round of funding for Zip2. His brother used to work for me in 93. So I sent Elon a text. I'm like, don't tell people to leave meetings. Teach them how to run meetings that aren't right. Like, if you were running proper meetings, no one would be standing up and leaving. Fix the root cause first principles. Fix the problem. There's a principle in adult learning that the student controls the learning. So until the student's ready to learn, they're not going to learn, right? Until the kid is like, why am I learning this? Until you attach it to a goal or attach it to some greater outcome, and they go, oh, now I understand why I need to pay attention or why I want to pay attention. Entrepreneurs often need to trip and fall a couple of times, skin their knee, realize they're failing, lose some money, lose some time before they go, okay, teach me so you can be. Because entrepreneurs need to be narcissistic, right? We need to be able to say, I know how to do this. I can figure this out. When the whole world is saying no, it's hard for them to say, I don't know how to do something, because they see that as a weakness. So when you can start showing them, look like there's all these parts of failure that you've got. You're kind of like a fly trying to get out the window. You're going to keep banging your head on the window until you get out. Most flies end up dead on the windowsill. I can show you a better path. Let me know when you're ready. All of a sudden, they pick up the phone, they go, I'm ready. I've gotten there. So some of it's just being aware that they might not be ready to learn, but when they are ready to learn, focus on the core, the kind of foundational parts first, right? There's a. There's an old saying that you'll sell them what they want, but you give them what they need. Sometimes the stuff that you're ready to teach them isn't the stuff they're asking for, but it's the foundational parts of the business. Core values, core purpose, vivid vision. They're like, I need a better marketing plan. No, you have employees, right? If you don't get your employees fixed and you don't get your employees aligned, you don't have proper strategy. You could have the best head of marketing, the best marketing plan, but you can't deliver on it, right. So you work on the foundational things. The reason I call that the second in command is you're hiring a person who is going to complement you and help you grow your business. That could be a CEO. But to be a CEO, you should be at least 250,000 or more in compensation. They should be managing the P and L in your budgets, they should have access to your passwords. They should be coming in with strategy. They should be able to literally run it for you and you don't need to oversee them on a day to day basis. A vice president of operations might not have as much strategy, might not have as much oversight, maybe needs some more of your time. A director, you're often telling them what to do and then they're able to go and execute. So for many of the people that are watching or listening right now, it's probably a director of operations that you're hiring who is someone who can direct operations, right? They can take parts of the business for you and they can run that for you. And then you're going to grow them, you're going to give them skills and confidence. But they may not be that COO title. So this book tells you how to find one, how to understand yourself so you know what you're looking for first, right? Then how to find one once you've got one. How do you onboard them? How do you bring them into your company and indoctrinate them in your culture, get them up to speed so that they're onboarded and they understand the business and the people and the systems so that then they can be successful. And then how do you, once you have them and they're onboarded, how do you build a strong relationship with them so that you can really supercharge the organization? Most companies know how to interview and hire, but then they're like, okay, here's Kelly and Fred and here's a photocopier. Go hard. I'm like, that was like five minutes of onboarding and you expect them to start like at 1-800-got junk. We were six weeks into a job before we let anyone doing their job. They had to go through call center training, they had to ride in the trucks, they had to go through franchise training, they had to listen in on call center calls for two days, listen in on sales calls, listen in on PR calls, ride in the trucks for two days, do each of the marketing tactics, read the operations manual, read the call center manual, do they had to write a test on the operations manual that was open book A. They had to go for lunch or dinner or breakfast with every man, everyone who managed people in the company. Six weeks later they were able to start their job. But by the time they started their job, they really understood the whole business. And that doesn't cost you really that much. But then they won't make the mistakes that people make, right? They won't be as frustrated. The last thing you want to do is hire a really good person. And then four hours after they start, they're all bewildered and they don't know what's going on and they're frustrated. And then some other company poaches them or that they're coming in and they don't really understand the business and they're making decisions without really truly understanding the culture, the history, the core values, the core purpose, how we really do things, why we really do things, who these people are that we're working with before they have a few best friends. You don't want them making decisions at that point. So I kind of follow Simon Sinek's golden circles of the why, the how and the what. More often than not, we teach them what to do. Yes, we show them. Here's our software, here's the job, here's how to do your job. What I want to do is first indoctrinate them in the cult. The why, Our core purpose, our bhag, our history of our company, our core values. You know, how we got to where we are, all the crazy success and failures that you've had over the years, like we got to teach them, like what job you were in the day you started this, like how you were all leveraged, how you went three months without paying yourself. They need to understand all of that. Then they need to get to meet all the people so they understand and know people and like people. That's the cultural indoctrination. Often that can be the CEO teaching some stuff, running a few sessions, getting it videoed, teaching a few more, videoing them. Maybe you've taught it three or four times and you splice in different sections and now it's all videoed. So now they can watch that. Right? That's a good leverage of your time. That's the indoctrination in the cult. The second ring is the how. That's all the systems that I even put into my course. Invest in your leaders is all around situational leadership, coaching, delegation, one on one meetings, interviewing, hiring, you know, running coaching, meetings, classroom teaching. It's all the executive functioning skills that people need to be good in their jobs. So I Train them hard in that. Then I get into what we do. I'll ask you a question. You have interviewed and hired how many people approximately for your companies? So you've hired 50 to 75 people. How much training have you had on how to do proper interviews? There's systems in place for this. Right. When you got. So you might have done it wrong. All 50 to 75. I probably did a ton of them wrong. Imagine if you actually knew how to do it properly. And if anybody here knew how to do it properly, how much easier business gets. Because right now people are like, oh, it's hard to find good people. No, you suck at finding good people. We would never send our kid off to play little league baseball without teaching them how to hold the bat and toss the ball and catch the ball. Otherwise, Johnny would come home from baseball and go, daddy, baseball sucks. No, Johnny, you suck at baseball. For real. Right? And yet we let managers go do the jobs every day. All of our managers run meetings. They've never been trained on how to run meetings. All of our employees go to meetings. We've never trained them how to attend and participate in meetings. All of our managers do one on ones with their staff without any training. All of our managers coach people. All of our managers delegate. They're all doing with no training. That's why business is difficult. I love that when you go to the gym. Right. There is a proper way to do a bench press. Yes. Do you know what? You probably know exactly how to do it. I don't. So I go in there and my elbows are in the wrong spot. And I'm trying my best. And I'm sure these guys, like, you were looking at me going, nice workout. You were getting like 50 of what you should if you just did that. Right? Yeah. Or. Or like a. Whatever it is, a curl. Like, I don't know how to do this. So I'm in there trying my hardest and working out. You're like, no, if you just did this this this way, you'd get a way better result. It's the same with training your people. That's why I'm like, maniacal around my invest in your leaders course. Like, I don't get why every company wouldn't spend 750 bucks to have people go through this. I'm trying to impact all these companies because then the employees go home and they have better relationships with their spouses, with their kids. Like, anyway, I'm manic about it. No, I love that. Where can people go to get that? By the way, it's called investinyourleaders.com easy. That's awesome.