$1m vs. $10m - What's The Difference? With Jaime Masters

Welcome to Freedom Fastlane.

This is Ryan Daniel Moran at Freedom Fastlane Live 2015.

I asked Robert Herjavec a question, and his answer really surprised me. Now, we have not released the recording of our interview with Robert Herjavec, and.

We don't plan to. We wanted to keep that private for.

Those who attended Freedom Fast Lane last year.

But he said something interesting and that.

Was that he got really depressed when his business crossed $50 million.

That was really weird.

Like, if you cross $50 million a year, why would you be depressed?

And he said a couple things.

One, he felt like he didn't feel that much different. You know, I have a 50 million dollar company. Why don't I feel much different?

He also said, why didn't I make my goal higher?

If I can achieve all my goals, why wouldn't I just make them even higher? That was really interesting to me. And I did notice that when I became a millionaire, I didn't feel all that much different. It did give me a huge boost of confidence because it was something I always wanted, to be considered a millionaire. And then when my businesses collectively did $10 million, I think that was a nice shot in the arm. But really as a person, I didn't feel all that much different. So, you know, I started to have this question of is there really a difference in the numbers? Is 1 million different than 10 million versus 100 million? And I don't know, I've never made $100 million. I know what it feels like to have 10 or to do $10 million across my businesses, but I'm not really sure what a hundred million dollars feels like. But I wonder what the difference is or if there is a difference. So I brought Jamie Masters to Freedom Fast Lane live, and she's interviewed as many millionaires as maybe anyone else alive except for maybe Amy Wilkinson.

I don't know.

I'll put.

I should put the two against each other and see who's interviewed more millionaires. But I asked Jamie, you know, I want you to go through all of the interviews that you've done of people running businesses $10 million and up.

And I want you to find out.

What the habits were that aligned across all of those different individuals. Let's look at that versus the million dollar point.

Like we can cover that.

I can cover how to become how to run a million dollar business in about an hour. I've done it. It's my most popular YouTube video ever. But let's talk about $10 million and up. What are the crossover points there? And so she and I sat down at Freedom Fast on Live to go through that. During this time, I also brought someone on stage and I worked with him on his business to start transitioning so he could work on his business rather than in his business. So one of the things that Jamie brought up was the fact that people who do $10 million businesses, they have a team and they work on their business. So I ran an exercise where I brought someone on stage and I taught how he could start pulling himself out of his business. This is really kind of a visual practice that I wish you could see, but it's worth listening to. And if you look up the box exercise, you might be able to find it on YouTube or@freedomfastlane.com because we have taught this before. So I'd encourage you to check it out. Hey, this December we're doing it again. You are listening to the binge of Freedom Fast Lane lives never before release recordings from last year. This year's lineup is, I think it's going to be the most intense amount of wealth and abundant information that has ever been assembled on a stage before. And you're going to want to be there. It's a place you come where you naturally level up because you're in the presence of billionaire entrepreneurs, multimillion dollar investors, tech startups, people who are changing the world with business. And we need more entrepreneurs like that. Entrepreneurship capitalism is how we solve all the world's greatest problems. And that's why we need you on board. So. Tickets go on sale at the end of September. If you're on the freedomfastlane.com newsletter, you've already received an Early Bird link. If you're not on the newsletter, you can either sign up@freedomfastline.com or you can wait for them to go on sale at the end of September to the general public. But I hope you'll join us in Austin, Texas. Until then, enjoy this discussion with Jamie Masters.

So you guys fired up for today? Our first guest this morning has probably interviewed and been around more millionaires and multimillionaires than anyone that I know. I think she's interviewed like half a billion people on her podcast, Eventual Millionaire, who have all of a net worth of at least $1 million.

And she just told me backstage.

This blew me away at the level of commitment that she wanted to do to bring value to all of you. She said what we did and we talked a little bit about this beforehand. She said we filtered out just the most successful people, those who were doing who were $10 million and up. And we looked at the data points of what was different about them. And then I called a bunch of.

Them and I asked them because I know you wanted to talk about. And she pointed to me, I know.

You wanted to talk about what's different about them. So I just called them, I asked them, and she's going to help us deconstruct what those habits are for the really successful multimillionaires that have been in her network. Sound good?

All right.

Please help me welcome Ms. Jamie Tarday.

That's a great introduction. Thank you very much, Ryan. So the reason why I had to do this, by the way, is because I have a three habits that I usually talk about. But he's like, my people are better than all of the regular people, so we need better things. So therefore, I had to go and call all the better millionaires, supposedly, and get better advice for everybody.

Just so you know.

Yes. You're only hearing this here, so let's talk about that.

I mean, I think of you like today's Napoleon Hill. I mean, Napoleon Hill kind of set this idea of he spent his life deconstructing the habits of the tycoons. And you're doing that in 2015, 2016, probably more than anybody I know or have ever met. So let's go into that. I mean, you interview countless millionaires.

Best job ever, by the way. Just so everybody knows.

Well, it does force you to hang out with me sometimes. And you've got. I imagine you've found some patterns. I imagine some things come up all of the time.

And I want to know, what are.

Those patterns that you see? And like yesterday when we had the Mastermind panel up, I asked very specifically, all of you have a focus on fitness. All of you have an emphasis in taking care of your body. And I was just curious, is there correlation there of somebody focusing on their.

Most precious asset, their health and their body?

Does that have an impact in the.

Results that you get?

So I imagine stuff like that comes up. A lot of things that we don't think of being a correlation to success, but you see it all the time, so help us understand.

Okay, so this is the exact reason why I even started interviewing millionaires to begin with, because there are gurus that write books that tell you what to do. Right. But I wanted to know the people that actually were in the trenches actually doing it instead of like, oh, the guy wrote a book, Yay. Now we pay him money to give him stuff. So when I'm told that I'm like.

Napoleon Hill, I think that's amazing and awesome.

Totally cool that I could just copy what someone did in the 1920s and still be cool nowadays, right? But nowadays we have a lot more technology and a lot more ways to hold data points. I'm a big geek. Huge geek, right? So what I wanted to do is survey a bunch of them. So in my book, I actually asked them the fitness question, too, because I had the exact same question. The data wasn't what I thought it.

Was going to be. Just to tell you the truth, I always make all these assumptions like, oh.

I think it's going to be like this. Based on all the interviews, I've interviewed almost 300 now, and about half of them said they eat Paleo or really pay attention to that stuff. The other half said that they do an entrepreneur's diet, which means they eat whenever they can.

They wrote that in.

That wasn't even a selection. They all actually wrote that in.

A couple other things in the survey.

That I thought was really interesting at.

The beginning, because one of the premises of figuring this out for me was to find out, can you do this without working a bazillion hours? Because I have two kids, right? My son got Legos, by the way.

Which is cheaper than what he could have gotten.

But being able to have that big piece of figuring out where they spend their time at the very, very beginning of their company. So I wrote down, and I had a check mark of how many hours, whether it be 10 to 20, blah, blah. I was really hoping you could make a lot of money without necessarily having to be Gary Vee, right?

Because he works so many hours. I'm like, I can't be you.

I have kids.

I know he has kids, too, but.

I'm the mom, right?

I can't be you, but you're a bad father.

I'm trying to say I'm the mom. I was going somewhere else.

I thought that's where you were going for a second.

No, I love Gary. I've interviewed him also, and Grant, But.

I was really trying to find out. And what was so funny is at the beginning, the most common answer, which.

Sucked for me at the time, this was a little bit ago, wasn't like.

An hourly number, like 60 hours a week or 70 hours a week. They actually wrote in all of them. I was like, you work all of the hours you can. And then I asked people to clarify.

Because, again, I don't want to work all of them.

But they said at the beginning, when you're at the very, very beginning, it's very different than when you're at the million to $10 million range, right at the very, very beginning. You're working your butt off trying to figure out, trying to validate, trying to.

Get where you want to go.

And that's where you have to work all of them. And then you have to get smarter.

Right?

And this leads me into. When I talk to the people that were doing over 10 million, right? I called up my friend Rick Day. He runs a site called businessbyday.com, which is hilarious. But he owns a yacht company and.

A bunch of other things. He sold a $25 million company.

Really? Smart guy. And it's so interesting to hear the perspective of somebody that's just been there, done that.

Like, talking to Jeff Hoffman is like, oh, my gosh.

And the correlation, the difference between Jeff.

Hoffman and Gary Vee and Grant Cardone. I was just. We were chatting about this at dinner time.

It's so funny to sort of see. So one of the very first things that kept coming up over and over and over again when I was trying to get your data, I was researching for you.

Appreciate it.

Was. And you've heard it here before. So I don't want it to sound cliche because that's the thing that sucks.

You're like, yeah, I heard that, Jamie. Thanks. Appreciate it.

It's that you need to know what your strengths are.

Okay.

And you know this. It's not like I'm. It's not like this is brand new, but do you actually know that? Like, if I were to ask and poll the audience right now, like, raise your hand. Do you know what your core strengths are right now?

Thank you. See?

Wait, let's go completely off script for a second.

Let's do this.

Put your hands back up. If you are clear on what your strengths are on where you need to be operating. Now. Keep your hand up. Keep your hand up. If you spend more than two hours a day in that strength.

Half the hands went down. I'd be very interested to survey those of you who still had your hands.

Up to see the difference.

Everyone's like, I want that.

Well, and that's the thing.

We're all missing something.

Don't worry.

Millionaires are missing things, too.

Horrible spellers.

Just so you know, I'm. I'm missing pants and shirts and keys and phones all over the house.

I'll have my personal assistant come talk.

Thanks, I appreciate that.

But that Finding your strength. So if you listen to podcasts.

I don't listen to podcasts either. Which is hilarious, right?

And I tell my clients not to.

Listen to podcasts either.

So not good.

I'm so bad for both of us.

But it's because knowing what you're good at and knowing that information overload over and over and over again isn't really helpful. It isn't. It's a waste of time. No offense. Okay, so knowing what your strengths are and increasing that and figuring that stuff.

Out, I mean, I'm not going to ask this question, but here I go.

I know. So don't answer it.

I should say, I'm going to ask the question. Don't answer it.

How many.

Ryan just asked, how many hours are you spending on your strengths?

I want to say, how many hours.

Are you listening to podcasts and reading.

Stuff that you never do anything with?

Just saying, don't answer because you'll feel bad. And I'm not here to make you feel bad.

But what I want you to do is shift the time that you're taking on that stuff and move it into what you're actually doing that's going to further your business. So I interviewed a guy, and he was talking about, we all have the same 24 hours in a day. And that's what I get. I get questions on podcasts about this a lot. They're like, well, millionaires only have 24 hours in a day.

It's like, of course Everybody only has 24 hours in a the day.

But when you think of that time investment, and we talk about time management all the time, everyone's like, I know I'm really productive and efficient. I take nootropics and I'm awesome. Right? But it's really about imagining every single day that you are here as an investment, as if you're investing your money. Okay. And what that means is taking those strengths and upping those, because, you know, you get the best ROI on those strengths, and yet none of you are really doing that.

Is there a financial return on your time on your T point?

Go on.

I love how they just. You just tell them things and they.

Shout back, everything is an investment.

Everything. Everything is an investment. Where you spend your time is an investment. It has an roi. Who you hang out with has an roi. Now this. If we're not careful with this, then we can become overly obsessed and miss the point. Meaning there is an ROI to me having free time, because when I don't disconnect, I burn out, and I'm terrible in the office and in business. My team knows when they're like, you need to go Home. And you need to not answer any more emails because you ain't getting anything done. So stop working. Which is counterintuitive at first, but then when I leave and I come back to it, I kill it. So there's an ROI to free time, and it's different for everybody. So it's not just every second needs to be an input. There's a return on me disconnecting in the same way.

So that's the thing that I think.

Is really interesting in general, when you're an employee. I don't know how many of you were employees before, but it didn't matter.

You clocked in. You just had to do a certain amount of time and clock out. Your level of ROI and productivity really.

Didn'T matter too much.

I know I made six figures when.

I was 22, and I did not, like, make six.

I was good, don't get me wrong. But it wasn't the same thing.

Right?

So when you think about every minute and how much you can get for roi, if you're feeling at that peak capacity, that matters, because you know what it feels like.

It's really early, by the way.

And I did stay up and watch.

The UFC fight last night, by the way, because I had to.

That's your meditation.

These are my jets.

I don't know.

Both my fighters won. No one else in this room cares, but both my fighters won. Okay, so. Lost my train of thought. No.

So being able to make sure that we're investing the right time on the right thing. I was actually out here when Jeff Hoffman was talking, actually Periscope to him.

Everybody wants to see some spouting, more wisdom for everyone.

And he was telling the story, and.

I think, this is awesome.

First company, he has an engineering degree. And I was like, oh, I have an engineering degree, too. Awesome. And he goes, so we start programming, because that's what we do. You know, it was a tech company, and one day they all sort of sat around me and went, we have to have a talk.

And he's like, what? Cause he, like, owned the.

Like, it's his.

You know?

And they're like, you can't program anymore.

And he's like, I went to school for this. This is what I do. And they're like, you're not very good at it. Like, imagine. I mean, now he's a billionaire, but, like, imagine telling the guy that owns.

The company, you suck at that. You suck at email, Ryan.

You probably do. I mean, that's why I outsourced it.

Come on.

I mean, that's sort of the whole point.

So really figuring out what those strengths are. And the thing is, I think what's confusing for people is they go, well, how do I do that? Because it's one thing to be like, great, they're your strengths. Thanks. Appreciate it. And it's another thing to actually know. So I think I've heard three times from this very stage to do this. And I don't know if any of you have actually done this at all, but they say, call or email 10 people and ask them what your strengths and weaknesses are. Did anyone do that? Or write it down at least and be like, action item.

Yes.

Yay.

I care about action so much. Yay. You don't get a reward or anything, but, you know, life will treat you better.

But I think that's the thing. We've heard it over and over and over and over again. But how many people actually did that? And that has come up on my show, I don't know how many times. And after a while you're like, I've heard this before. But if you haven't actually done it, whether you heard it before or not does not matter.

The fact that you took action on it and got some sort of result, that's what matters. And that's what Gary Vee and Grant Cardone talked about. Hustle. It's all about the hustle. It's about doing the right action so that way you can make those shifts that's Ryan's really talking about to move forward.

Does that make sense to everybody?

I think there's a confusion. When we talk about something like hustle, we talk about hustle, meaning do it all, do everything until you can't go anymore and then go some more. And I think that's the misunderstanding, because.

One of the things that I picked up from Gary when he was here.

And I had never gotten this distinction before, it's a game to him. He's playing a game. He treats it like a game, and it's the most fun game that he could imagine playing. And part of that means focusing on those things that move the needle the most. It doesn't mean doing everything and hustling. There's smart hustle and really dumb hustle and trying to do everything and never operating in your zone of genius that really makes a difference is not smart hustle. That's how I'm interpreting what you're. What you're saying.

Well, okay, that. And let me add this, too. I have. I have a course called Millionaire Hustlers. Okay, so. But don't get me wrong, I get the hustle. It's three months though. And I go after those three months, take a freaking two week break. Because I think you can only go for so long. We all as entrepreneurs have bad days, right?

Cause if you don't, you're not doing it right.

This is what happens. I work with multi millionaires constantly and they say the same shit that you guys do. Like, oh my gosh, I had a really bad day. I don't know if I can do this right. It's not just you. This is so common, it's ridiculous.

I want to add to that because my mindset coach, he and I like to talk about this. Our calls are usually on Fridays and that's relevant because he says on Mondays.

Most of his clients and he works.

With hundred million dollar tech companies and venture capitalist funds. And then me and we were talking.

On, he says on Mondays the common.

Thread is like, yeah, I'm going to crush this week.

It's going to be amazing.

And most Fridays are, I don't know anymore, man.

And I think this came up because I'm usually on Friday. I take Fridays off because I work Saturdays. So my Fridays, when we chat, I'm.

Like, yeah, let's do this.

And he says complete opposite to what he usually hears on Friday. And it was kind of nice to hear that there's people who are even more successful than me that have that same thought of I don't know anymore, man.

I think we've all thought about giving.

Up and we think we're the only one and it's actually all of us.

So I blogged for six. You guys probably don't know my story or anything like that, but I had a six figure job, quit it. 70 grand in debt. Paid that off like when I was 22, 23. Started this blog as a test because I was like, oh, I need to learn. I'm a geek. I need to learn this stuff.

I actually had a mentor in business.

Coaching when I was 24, but I'm a geek. So I start this blog, I did for six months and was like, this is stupid. This is no real clients. No real. I was like, this is dumb.

I'm going to give it up.

And I told my mentor that. He goes, okay, we'll email everybody and you know, just let them know, maybe you'll go on hiatus or whatever.

I was like, okay, great.

And I couldn't pull the trigger. Like I couldn't send the email for some reason. I didn't know why I was Just like, oh, this is weird. Like, I wasn't even interviewing millionaires at the time.

Right.

It was still called eventual millionaire, but it talked about my debt free journey. And that week CNN emailed me and they're like, we want to have you on our show.

And I was like, oh, well, then there we go. I was like, a nobody.

I live in the middle of nowhere.

In Maine, by the way. So now I live in Austin, but it was like trees and then cnn. Hey.

And I was like, if I stopped, like, imagine I'd send that email and was like, nevermind. And they were on my list.

And I'm like, oh, there goes that.

That's what started everything. I was on Yahoo's homepage that same week.

That was a big turning point for you.

It was fre week before I was going to give up.

You know what? Because you got in front of an audience.

Exactly.

Hey, guys.

So let's continue to unpack this. So most of the really high level millionaires know their strengths and operate in their strengths. What other habits have you found that some of the higher echelon millionaires follow that's different from people at 1 million or below?

So what's funny is it's sort of an evolutionary process, right? So you need to know the strengths first. So if you guys haven't had that.

Which was a lot of you, do.

That first before this next one.

Pause. What if we don't know?

What if someone doesn't know?

I already told them what to do. All right, write this down. Action items. What? Everybody already said email 10 people.

Oh, right.

What you're. Thanks for listening to me, Ryan.

I'll be. I'll be over here.

I'm the girl.

I'm allowed to be so mean to you.

What?

I wasn't paying attention.

But do that for real. That's your one thing. Whenever I do speeches in general, I do action items after each one of these. And at the end I go pick one. I know you're not gonna do them all. Like, I know. No offense. Conferences, you have so much information in there. I want you to do one.

One thing that'll actually make a difference. Okay. Do I have like, everyone's like, yes, it's very early. Thanks for telling me what to do.

But for real, like, at the end of this, you're gonna do one, right? Like, raise your.

Raise your hand.

Come on.

This would be really pitiful if not everybody in the audience raises their hand.

Thank you.

Okay, good.

Like, you suck.

Jamie, get off the stage.

Okay, so that's first, okay. Second, once you have that, and don't get me wrong again, it's an evolutionary process. I never thought I'd be on stage. I was an introvert before. Like every millionaire that I interview, it's an evolutionary process. Just like what Gary V. Said.

Like, I'm amazing at so many things, so hard, right?

But then it starts. You start to chisel away more and.

More and more at it.

Does that make sense? So, like, oh, I'm really good at these five things. So says all these people, you start doing more of those five things and go, oh, you know what? Maybe I could find someone that's really good at these two, so I can just stick on these three. Does that make sense? Okay, which leads me perfectly into the next one, which is having a team, right? So we, we can only do so much alone.

It's just true. There's only one of us.

There's only 24 hours in a day. You can have leverage and passive income Pat, all that fun stuff, and he.

Still has a team. Everybody needs a team, okay?

So once you start trying to get especially 10 million, especially billion, you need a team. And I like to liken it like this.

I was chatting with one of the millionaires that I was talking to for.

This, and I was like, what do.

You think about this analogy? Because we're friends, so it's good. So you can be like, that's shitty.

So I'm like, okay, imagine you're a solopreneur, right? And that's like you on a sidewalk with a scooter with your leg, pushing, going, like, sales, marketing, like, everything. And you can only go so fast, right?

Like, I got this, it's awesome. Quit my day job, right?

But then once you get off the sidewalk, right, this is fast lane.

This is fast lane, people, right? I'm going to totally screw up this analogy with a fast lane thing. That's not going to work.

So then we move into a car. So in your car, you're still driving, but you can have other people on the team driving with you and helping.

You right to your car.

Great systems. We're going faster. We can get to places, but we can't go across, like, the ocean. So when I'm chatting with Rick, he.

Owns a yacht company, I was like.

Okay, so when, when we're 10 million, we're like the captain of the ship. We're not doing the navigation, we're not.

Doing the pulling of the sail.

We're not doing anything of that anymore. We're looking to the future of where we want to go. And that's where you guys want to be. You want to be in the owner's box looking where you want to go. And don't get me wrong, that takes time, but you need all those other people below you to do that. So the way that we start thinking about it, because when you go from a million, usually have a. No offense, a cobbled together team, right?

Like, I work with a lot of people that do over a million and stuff like that.

Million, two, three, they're like, I got my team.

And they're all like.

And then he kind of does six.

Things and he kind of does that.

But we work it and it works. And we're all kind of like tripping and running and we got this, right? But as soon as you start to get to 10 million, your direct reports. Have direct reports, right? He goes, you're not managing anymore. You're inspiring. You're leading. That is your main goal instead of what we worked so hard at doing. So knowing your strengths was going to be really, really important. I was chatting with someone the other day, and he's like, I'm a startup guy. I don't want to manage the direct.

Reports of direct reports.

Like, I don't want to deal with that. That's not me.

I want to be on the scooter.

And in the car and I don't want to worry about having a huge. So you do have to know your strengths in order to figure out where you fit. But that's sort of the trajectory of where you're going to go. If you want a 10. $10 million company, it's way bigger, right? I love how Ryan goes. 10 million. A billion.

Like, not 100 million. I want to go to a billion, right? And I have other friends that want to be billionaires. Like, I don't know. I just hang out with people that want to be billionaires, which is awesome.

You guys are going to be great later.

It's going to be awesome being friends with you later.

Just. This is why I hang out with people like this. You want to be a millionaire. I want to hang out with you more now.

Right?

It does.

I mean, seriously, I feel so special.

I know.

I only want you for your money.

I feel so.

I only want.

I met Jeff yesterday, so I guess I don't need you anymore.

All this time, I thought you wanted me for my body.

No, sorry.

You're blind.

Does that make sense, though? Everyone, like, so we need the strengths before you can even get to that other piece. Cool.

Did that Answer your question, Ryan?

Yes.

So strengths, operating more in those strengths, building a team around you so that you are fully in those strengths.

Yes, sir. And that's a totally different skill set, too. Like, if you've never built a team that can be a little insane and crazy, working with people, they all have, like their own minds and stuff. It's kind of a pain in the butt sometimes.

Yeah. Have you seen, have you heard or interviewed anybody in this process that talked about some of that difficulty of shifting from having the hodgepodge team to having the team that had direct reports and all this stuff and they were just leading the charge? And if so, what did that transition look like?

Well, the biggest thing that they said for advice on that transition is you have to have the right people in that management team, because if you don't.

It all goes to hell, apparently. So they say.

So when you don't have a clear foundation. So if you've got a cobbled together team, you have to fix that, Right. You have to make it so that they know what their job description is very clearly. Like, okay, you're CIO or your cto, you are these now big things instead of you're the tech guy. Hey, you're a tech guy.

You just do this stuff, right?

And you have to make sure that they are the right people. Gary Keller, who's here in Austin, too.

He wrote the book the One Thing with Jay Papas on who's a friend of mine, and Pat just interviewed him. I wish he was on stage. He's utterly amazing.

But Gary Keller talks about, if you want to have a million dollar company, just hire five of the right people. And if you want to grow that, you have to take those five right people and then grow direct reports underneath them.

Of course, then the question's like, well, how the heck do we hire the right people?

But if you don't hire the right people, that could make a CTO later. If you're just the tech guy that hates managing things and you're like, we're going to put you as cto that doesn't work. You will cause so many problems and headaches and you will want to hate yourself. So we really need to make sure that maybe we fire him because we.

Know we want a billion dollar company or whatever it is, we have to.

Let him go, or maybe not even let him go, but just hire somebody in between that actually manages him.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does. So I'm curious, that feels like a big jump for a lot of people. And the millionaires that you've interviewed that have talked about this. Did they talk at all about having a flinch at that thought in that transition?

That's a.

That's a big transition. We don't hear about it, though.

Yeah.

We just see it happen.

I know millionaires don't want to tell you all their crap.

We don't hear the internal noise that goes on. And so we just think our own internal noise is the only real internal noise. So I want to unpack that.

I know it's great for us to, like, look at everybody else, be like.

You got all your stuff together.

I see. Suck, but you have everything together. No. So Doug Kisgen is a guy that I interviewed that had an amazing company with 130 employees, and he hired a consultant because this is the third habit that I found asking for help ridiculously important. I know you guys know this. Again, don't just take it as cliche, like, actually ask people that actually know what they're talking about. Right. That did it before or know. Or don't do this all the time. Ask them. So Doug was like, my company wasn't really. It was doing great. But the people we had lots of issues, so we hired. There's a thing called the Culture Index. It's very similar. Have you heard of it?

Did I tell you about it?

I've heard some people swear by it, yes.

Okay.

And this is Doug.

Doug became. He sold his company and became a.

Culture Index consultant because he was so obsessed with it.

And I've tried. Like I said, I'm a huge geek, so I love data points in any way, shape, or form. So I make people take like a.

17 different assessments before I hire them.

So Culture Index is one of them. And this is what Doug said. He goes, people, Culture Index came in. They were like, pretty much need to fire half of your people.

And he's like, thought there was something wrong. Right?

Then he did that. Can you imagine?

A.

He said, that was dumb.

He shouldn't have done that. Like, he got a little too excited. Like, don't fire half of your people in, like, a short period of time. Not a good idea. Learn from that.

But he was like, I am so ready to get this figured out. It's just been such a thing that I've had the wrong people. And of course he was scared as all hell, like, hearing him go back. And that's the thing that's so hard. Even in interviews, you're hearing what somebody has already done and apparently succeeded with.

Right.

It's easy for us to Hear a success story when you're actually going through that. Nobody really talks about that. They're like, oh, well, when I did this, it sucked. Because it's easy to say way later when you know you're fine now. But that's the thing about having millionaire friends or people that are really, really successful and friends that will come to you when you have. When they're having problems and you can actually hear what's going on. That's mastermind groups.

You're like, oh, I'm not weird.

Doug said that he had a ridiculously hard time in his brain trying to get over the fact that he was going to have to fire half of his people. Again, he didn't do it in the best way possible, but because he had so much faith in the culture index, it worked out really, really well for him.

Then he had to hire all new people. Crazy. But the funny thing is, and then let me just say one thing on the culture index because now I swear by it also, like a lot.

I hop on the line. I'd met him at a conference before and you never know who's a millionaire. Out of everybody in this room. I can go up to someone and go, are you a millionaire? I'm allowed to do that. You guys can't do that. That's weird.

But I am allowed to.

I didn't do that with Doug. Doug emailed me later. He's amazing. I had no idea he had such.

A big company because I thought he was just a culture index consultant guy.

I was like, okay, I'll interview you. This is going to be awesome. He comes on the show because he apparently had sent my whole team the culture index beforehand. And I was like, okay, it takes like five minutes. I didn't actually know what it was. I was like, why is a millionaire.

Having me do something like this?

Silly. It took me. I apparently completed it faster than anyone.

Else had ever completed. That went through him because I was busy. I was like, I hope I didn't do it horribly wrong.

So the funny thing is, he goes, so your assistant.

And this was probably two years ago, three years ago that I interviewed him.

He's like, so, your assistant, how's that.

Working out for you? And I was like, I fired her on Monday, by the way. And he's like, oh, good. Because she was not good in any.

Way, shape or form from a five minute test that he had had her take.

Wow.

It's insane. So you need to get the I care about data, right? And millionaires, like, their hiring processes are ridiculous. Like, if they do it right, they're utterly ridiculous. And I don't know where you guys are at in your business in terms of hiring and what you've done and what you haven't before. But getting really good at that process is extremely important because it's your people that are going to elevate your company.

Right?

You can't be babysitting everyone. You just can't. There's not enough hours in the day.

So I have two questions that I want to ask.

What does.

Yeah. And the first is I want to hear more about those hiring processes and what they actually look like. And second, I'm curious if you've seen a thread among the people you've interviewed at the highest level, say, which positions or which people or a number of people that were most impactful for them growing.

Ooh, that's great.

Okay, so the first piece. So Danny, you know Danny, right? So I love Danny. He's a good friend. He's the one that wants to be a billionaire too, by the way. And I know he's not at 10 million yet, but he's.

He's the one who wants to be a billionaire.

He's.

That nobody wants to be a billionaire, but Danny Eney.

I know, the only one.

I own a ventual billionaire too, by the way.

Just so everybody knows.

But he went through his entire hiring process, and it's very similar. I've interviewed a lot of recruiting companies. So guys that run recruiting companies, the processes actually were not as crazy as Danny's, which was nuts.

Which is why I'm going to tell you Danny's. Because his was amazing and crazy.

So Danny also does a lot of assessments and stuff like that, too. I highly recommend, like, getting whatever points.

That science can get us so far.

Like, let's get as many points as we can to figure this out. I use the disc assessment, the culture index. Danny has them do a typing test. Typing test.

Like, okay, great, go online.

A free typing test.

Because he wants do the mastermind guys so that they did that as well.

Really? See, smart people do this. Okay, Write that down. But a typing test, so that way they could see a. How fast they could type and how many mistakes they make.

Right?

And it makes them go do something and see how quickly you can get it back. But it keeps evolving, right? So his hiring process is extremely long. One of the last things that he.

Does in the hiring process, which is.

Really interesting, they have to go through so many series, and if somebody's that dedicated to go through that series of Things, they really want this job. So at the end, towards the end, he goes, I want you to create a website. I want you to make a PowerPoint presentation and a video answering these questions on why you're fit for this job. What you would do if you would first be in this position, what would.

Be the first few changes you would make?

Put it up on a WordPress site.

Within 24 hours, and everyone's like, but.

The only people that do it are that dedicated to his company. I tried that. So he told me that, like, last week, and I'm hiring right now.

And so I had one girl called.

Past Culture Index, all that fun stuff. And she was like, yeah, no, not gonna do that.

I was like, well, there goes that.

Bye.

Right.

But who knows? Like, if I didn't have her try and do that, she wasn't dedicated. Really glad to find that out now.

Before I hired her on full time.

Does that make sense?

Yeah. That's beautiful. Okay, thank you for that. Can I go into.

No, I'm just gonna keep talking.

All right, cool.

Go for it.

So what we're gonna do now is I'm gonna walk you through an exercise that we walk through for starting this process of starting to get moving towards building this team and out of the just total mess that's going on. So for this, I need a volunteer, and I need a volunteer, preferably somebody who is in either a solopreneur or has a small team. And you are just exceptionally lost in your business by that means you are doing everything. It is just a mess of a.

Process, and, you know, you need to start clearing this up.

So I need a volunteer.

I love people that are like, what's your name?

You have to admit it.

Come on, what is it?

Gary? Jared. Let's give it up for Jared.

Jared. Jamie Tardy.

Jamie Tardy.

Jared, nice to meet you.

So, Jared, have a seat.

I'm gonna be interviewing you.

Now, keep in mind, we usually spend, like 60 to 90 minutes going through this process, and I'm gonna try and get it done in, like, 18 or 20. We're going to give kind of the Cliff Notes version. I'm going to try and race through. Is it J A R E D?

Yeah.

Okay. So the company of Jared. Now, Jared, what is your role in the company?

What is your title in the company?

Or what would you like it to be? Is CEO appropriate? I mean, what I want to be is, like, the head of the company is called the what a CEO.

All right, cool.

Jared is the CEO. What are the tasks of the CEO. What I mean is, when you are.

In the captain of the ship's position, seeing the future. Cool.

Being a psychic.

So seeing future, what else are these tasks of the CEO? And if anything comes up during this process and you want to throw them at Jared, Jared will be the filter. But if you want to throw them out at Jared and then he's going to feed him over to me on the board.

I'm only going to listen to you, though, Jared.

Okay. Strategy. I like the strategy. Steering the ship, the director, the man who's making sure that. Or the guy or the person who's making sure that everything's. The man or the guy or the woman. The person.

Us.

I do ufc. You know, you can't.

Yeah, well, you know, I don't. Don't hurt me.

Good.

Yeah.

Directing the culture of the company.

I'm going to call that hiring.

Okay.

Okay.

So this is good, right? CEO is. Their job is to see the future set, strategic direction and hiring. Fair enough. It's a good start. All right, let's move on. Would it be fair to say that you are not always operating in these areas?

Yes.

Okay, so what other hats?

When you're not wearing your CEO hat.

What other hats do you usually play?

Marketing.

Okay.

And what falls in your business under marketing?

Product design and product development.

And can I ask what his business is? I don't even know. What is your business?

We sell physical products on Amazon.

Oh, what a surprise. Okay.

Good.

Good job, boss.

All right, keep going. What else falls under marketing? You can throw them at Jared if you want to help him.

Yeah, copywriting, definitely.

Keep coming, Keep going.

Advertising, Landing pages. Advertising. Yeah.

What type of advertising?

Online advertising.

I mean, thank you for narrowing that down.

Yeah.

Facebook, Amazon ads.

Okay, so Amazon pay per click.

It's really basic, man.

It's cool.

I'm up here. It's all messed up.

Yeah, but you said you're completely lost in the details of your business, so throw these details back at me. We're organizing. So what are these other things that fall under marketing?

Yeah. Email blast. If I had an email list.

And think about what you're doing, like, last week, like, what were you doing last week for marketing?

He's like, crap.

The only thing I do for advertising is I put it on Thomason.

Okay.

And I get out.

Those are bloggers, right?

Yeah.

I don't know anything about Amazon, so.

Yeah, those are bloggers.

All right, cool. So when you're not wearing your marketing.

Hat, what is one of the other hats that you wear in your Company.

We fulfill products, so I fill products myself.

And so you're doing your own fulfillment?

Yeah. Okay, well, I do both, but yeah.

Okay, so what are you doing regularly under fulfillment?

We package the products in a mailer and ship and use the post office.

And you're doing this yourself?

Yep.

Okay, so you're sending or like sending packages?

Yep.

Okay, what else are you doing under fulfillment?

Send palace to fba.

So managing shipping and.

Yep, managing shipping.

Okay, what else?

We do all the customer service.

I mean, so we're going to make.

That a different hat.

Okay.

And you can throw them at me now if it's fresh in your mind. But let's keep under fulfillment if possible.

Yeah. Inventory management, definitely. Thank you, everybody, for your help.

Keep throwing them at me.

Jared, what else falls under fulfillment, if anything? You can tell me if you're done.

I'm done.

Okay, let's move over to customer service then. What are some of the things that fall under customer service?

We answer the emails. I answer the emails.

Okay.

Solve any of the problems that they have.

So I'm going to call that fires, because there's always a fire that comes up.

Right.

Go on refunds?

Yeah, refunds.

Okay.

Feedback, definitely. We have an automated system that asks for feedback.

Okay, so you're managing some tool or software here?

Yes.

Okay. Are you getting reviews?

We are.

Okay.

And would that be fair to put under customer service in your company?

Yeah.

Okay, what else would fall under customer service, if anything?

I mean, just all the relationships with our customers. Anything.

That's a pretty generic thing under customer service. I'll leave it. That's about it. Okay, what other hats? When you're not operating a CEO's position, a fulfillment position, customer service position, or.

A marketing position, what other hats do.

You wear in your company?

Finance? All the accounting and bookkeeping and balancing everything.

All that finance. So bookkeeping, what else, Jared?

Yeah, Budgeting.

What does that mean exactly in your business?

What does that mean?

Do I have the money to buy inventory or not?

That's budget.

Do I have the money to stay in business or not?

All right. If we had the full 90 minutes, I'd go way into this deeper. But in the interest of time, we'll just say budgets go on cash flow management.

Thank you.

I need you to tell me what this means in your business.

I just make sure that I can keep running my business. So whenever I have events like this, we just always go through our expenses and our income and determine what we can do to make it all work.

Okay.

So I make pretty much It.

I'm totally interrupting.

Who's we?

We.

I have one. I have one person who helps me, and that's my spouse.

Oh, yes, she's right.

Welcome to work. Oh, yeah, yeah.

She helps me out a lot.

Cool.

Now, what's that?

Honest question. Do you both want to be in the business?

For now, Yeah.

I want what you want, not what is. Okay, now is what you want for.

One of you to exit.

Yes.

Okay, cool.

I want to get her out of the business as soon as we can.

And what. And.

Where'S your wife?

She's over there.

Wife. Do you want that, too?

Okay, great. So that's what we're gonna go with. So that's what we're gonna go with.

Yeah, that's what I meant.

Yeah.

So what other hats would you wear in this business?

I'm tempted because there's so much I want to go into. Really deep on these points.

But let's get a high level.

What about tech? You know how tech.

Yeah, we research. I research. Sorry.

New products, product development. I think we have it right now. We have it under marketing and we could massage this, but let's leave it here for now.

What other hats?

Well, legal. I hired a company to do any legal. But I get advice from a legal person, so any problems that I have with registering the brand, I do as well, you know?

Okay.

Registering the business.

I'm actually just in the interest.

Everything.

I'm actually going to put it up here, so. Because that's kind of just strategic decisions.

Yeah.

We're going to just let it fall under here.

In the interest of time, is there.

Anything that you're doing regularly that requires.

And let's include your wife on this since we want to separate that. We want to cut those ties eventually. Not with the wife, but.

Let'S.

What's your name, by the way?

Kelly.

Kelly.

What things are you or Kelly stuck in right now?

Where there is just mess and it takes up a lot of your time and.

Or energy.

The most of the time that we take is fulfilling the orders and the customer service.

Okay, so these two points here. Fulfillment and customer service.

Yes.

Just so we make sure we've got.

All of the junk on the board.

Is there anything else that.

And Kelly, you can shout this out, too.

Are there any other hats that you.

Guys wear that are taking up time.

And energy from your business?

I think we got it covered.

Pretty nelly. Would you say that this is at least 80% of your business? Okay, cool. So.

Okay.

Ryan, can I step in? I know I do this exact Same thing. And so now I'm just gonna interrupt. So it's hard to just sit at one place and just think of them all. So record for two days. I make my clients do this. They hate me. But in 15 minute increments, record what you're actually doing. Or get like rescue time or something like that. And put that on your site, on your computer. That way you can start to get all the other pieces. Because I'm sure there are other things too. And he just. We can't think of them right now.

So, Jared, you are the CEO of your company, correct?

Yes.

Okay, so in a perfect world, you'd be operating as the CEO, seeing the.

Future, setting strategic direction and hiring, correct?

Yes.

All right, we're on the same page.

That's what the CEO does. What are you actually doing?

Everything else.

All right, so stand up with me.

Are you sending packages?

Yes.

Shipping?

Yes.

Inventory?

Yes.

Are you doing your own bookkeeping?

Yes.

Are you setting budgets?

Yes.

Do you get reviews?

Yes.

Do you get. Do you manage tools?

Yes.

Feedback, refunds, fires, send emails. Marketing, product design. Is that you?

Yep.

You don't have anybody who's doing the design? You do it yourself?

I did hire somebody recently do to do this specific design.

Oh, great.

But I have to manage him to get what I want. I have to tell him what the design needs to look like.

Just for fun. I'm going to let you have that one. Okay, we'll skip it. Are you doing the development?

Yes.

Copywriting yourself?

Yes.

Landing pages?

Yes.

You build them yourself, Lead pages, but you do them in that tool.

Okay.

Amazon ppc.

Yes. You're doing that yourself?

Yes.

Okay.

Sending out emails. If you had a list.

Yes.

That's you. And working with bloggers.

Yes.

You do that yourself? Yes. Okay, so that's not product design. The rest. Okay. And. Oh, we forgot finance. Oh, no, we got it already.

Dang it.

So you're doing all of this and you are doing the CEO stuff up here, right?

Yes.

Are you seeing the future? I hope so. I mean, so you're not really doing it. You're not really setting. You're so in this that you're really not looking out into the future.

Yeah, not enough.

Okay.

I mean, I could maybe a day or two.

Do you. I see the future instead of like a year.

You know what I mean? Like a long term plan.

Are you setting any strategic direction? Do you guys have like a target, 3, 6, 12 months out?

Did you have a stake in the ground saying of where you guys are going next?

Not a stake in the ground? I have a vague idea.

Okay. And how many people have you hired?

Well, sort of one.

Full time employees? None.

So it's like sort of one?

Sort of one, yeah.

So this is what you're actually doing, right? Right.

So this is where the CEO operates and this is where you are.

You're the red line. Pretty much everything but product design.

So how's your CEO doing?

Well, I'm doing okay. I'm not where I want to be. I'm not doing my strengths.

So let me try differently. This is Bill. Bill is your CEO and he's doing redline stuff. How's your CEO? How's Bill doing?

He's overwhelmed completely.

So let me. Why don't you help him out?

Yeah.

Bill ain't doing his job. Your company doesn't have a CEO, so no wonder we're busy and overwhelmed. Now, of course, I'm only talking to Jared. None of you can relate with any of this, right?

You're in good company, Jared. Okay. Thanks for playing along. Sure.

So Bill, the CEO ain't doing his job. So how is this company gonna do if they don't have a CEO? How long are they gonna be around? Would it be reasonable to think that whoever is doing this red line piece, since they don't have a CEO who's leading the charge, would worry that it's all gonna go away one day because there's nobody actually leading the charge of where we're going. So this guy redline has a lack of job security because he doesn't have a CEO telling him where they're going. And we all know that naturally, if there is not this being set in a direction, if there is not leadership, if we aren't going anywhere, then activities are naturally going to fall to the lowest return items because fires are going to come up and fires are going to be put out faster than anybody is going to lead the charge. Can you relate with this? So we tend to fall down to the lowest ROI activities. So this is the prescription. What would you say are the lowest ROI activities? Meaning which things on here do not.

Put money in your bank account?

Refunds for sure.

Okay.

What else does not put money in your bank account?

Well, I mean, there's a lot of things that don't directly put money in the bank account.

So tell me which ones they are.

Managing my inventory doesn't directly put money in my bank account. I mean, it's important, obviously, but managing the tools doesn't put money in my bank account.

Okay, what else?

You can probably click them all you could probably.

How about over here? I mean, this.

Sending packages would be probably the biggest, the most thing that puts money in my account.

So you get paid to go to the post office?

I get paid when they. When I click that, it's shipped.

Great.

So that's sales.

Yeah.

Do you get paid to go to the post office?

No, I don't.

Oh, specifically.

Oh, okay. Well, then we'll add that one. What about shipping stuff? Do you get paid to manage shipping?

No.

Oh, okay. Now we're getting somewhere. Anything else that doesn't add money to your bank account?

All of them.

I'd argue that some of these actually do.

For example, I'd say in a vacuum, if we've got somebody who's leading the.

Charge to increase reviews and conversions, that.

Would be something that puts money in your bank account. If you have somebody who's emailing a list that puts money in your bank account.

If you've got somebody who is growing the sales and driving down the cost for pay per click and outside channels.

That would be putting money in your bank account.

Are we on the same page now? Sure. There's certain things, like running to the post office does not put money in your bank account.

It probably takes money out of your bank account. Yeah.

So while this is sales related because it came as a result of sales.

It doesn't put money in your bank account.

These things do drive sales, bookkeeping and.

Managing budgets does not put money in your bank account.

Cool, Cool.

So let's start here because it's a really easy one. Our role now, our objective is to take these hats that don't have activities that drive sales and drive the bank account. And before I do that, we want Bill to be here.

I'm still calling him Bill.

You can call me Bill.

Okay, Bill.

We want Bill here. We want you operating here because anything that would fall outside of here is a threat. It's now removing the CEO from running the company. In the same way, we want to box in this as a role, meaning.

If this person does anything that falls outside of here, it's now a threat.

At first, this is messy and we'll go into what that looks like. But for now, we want ideally this to be its own box. And we want customer service to be locked into its own box. And we want marketing to be in its own box, and we want finance to be in its own box. And if this person, if marketing person.

Starts to do customer service, they have.

Now stopped being the marketing leader and.

They have become the customer service person.

What do you think this does to this person, it throws them into this.

Which throws them into this.

And now we've got more red lines all over the place. And since it's multiple people, it's going to be multiple colors. It's going to be an even bigger clusterfuck. So that's what it's going to look like if these people fall outside of their boxes. But if they stay in, then you are here to lead the charge. And these are your highest dollar an hour activities because we're actually building something lasting. You guys getting this? Making sense. So this is how we start to identify what we need to do in order to break free of our business. There are a few caveats to this. If, for example, you say, you know.

What, look, Ryan, you're handsome, but I don't really need a full time person here. I don't really need to do anything with this.

Bookkeeping is kind of a pain and.

A half, but I'm not going to.

Hire somebody to do bookkeeping. But budgets like we worry about, that's, that's a case by case decision. I'm not going to put someone in this box. Okay, great. So what we can do is we box in.

Let's get a different color.

We're going to box in just this piece. This is a freelancer. If it doesn't fall under an entire hat, then this is just a freelancer. And look, I have had somebody manage bookkeeping for me. Same girl for like eight years. And she manages all the books. And I pay her $50 an hour and she works six hours a month, pays bills, pays affiliates, does P and L, gets everything ready to send over to the accountant for end of the year stuff. I never think about books unless it's from. You know, we need to evaluate what the numbers look like. Where do these expenses go?

I don't, I never think about it.

If there's a mystery expense and my assistant doesn't know where it goes, I.

Might have to give input. But I'm never doing this for a.

Total of $300 a month. I don't have a finance person.

I just have this.

So if this is not a full time thing, we can spin this off to a dollar per hour person or freelancer who's now taking this off the same thing here. If right now where you are in your business is, look, inventory is really.

Something that Kelly and I need to stay on top of. And maybe if we stripped out a.

Lot of this other stuff and Kelly was just worrying about this, she could.

Spend fewer hours and she was just worrying about this.

It would clear up some room for me to start managing these other boxes. So that means first thing you do when you go back to Utah, when you go back to Utah is you're going to be, at the very least, boxing this in. Because for $8 an hour, $10 an.

Hour, $15 an hour if you want, the fastest package shipper ever is taking all this off your plate and running and doing this on a per shipment.

Basis or a per hour basis.

Freeing up, just for example, versus Kelly.

To only worry about this. And now we have two boxes off of the CEO's plate. So now we're getting some clarity. So Matt and I did this for a while. This process came out of late night frustration of why is nothing getting done? Why are we all on the same page but nothing is moving? And went for a two hour walk, just frustrated as all get out. Pulling out old journals and realizing that I had started to kind of massage this process. And we did it in my old business and it worked beautifully. And all of a sudden I got to operate way more here than I was down here. But we weren't doing it anymore. So we started to reverse engineer this. When I put it like this, Matt and I looked at it and was.

Like, get it now.

I understand why we're all frustrated and.

Stressed and nothing gets done. Get it now.

Because we don't have CEOs and leaders. We call ourselves CEOs and leaders, but we're really bad CEOs and presidents. There's actually nobody in that role. We're doing all this instead. So we start to move all this off. And for a while, it was okay for us to say, for a short time, we're gonna wear multiple hats. For a short time, I am gonna be in ours. I think it was, I'm gonna be CEO and marketing guy. Mo Kitwick is not perfect. I don't want to be marketing guy forever. But as we're building, I'm okay wearing.

Two hats for now.

And then Matt was product development and product management, inventory, all that. He's going to wear those two hats for now and we can fill in the rest. But eventually we're on the same page that we got to be up here. So it's okay to wear multiple hats at certain times as long as we're clear about what's in the box. And if at any point I step out of the hats I wear and come to customer service. Red Rum. I have now stopped doing my job. I have now started redlining the whole Thing, and that's a problem.

Does this make sense so far?

Yeah.

So what out of this are action.

Items for you to start clearing up these boxes?

Well, like you said, this is going to be my first action item when I get home is this is going to be easy for me to implement. The hiring process, when we're talking about that, is important to me because I've been trying to think, oh, yeah, I can really do this. Just how do I get the right person to handle this?

Great. So I can't give you a magic wand for good people to show up, but I can give you the first step. For all of you, the first step here is when you've got a box that you need to clear off. You are to write a job description for this box. You have all of the tasks in here of what that person will be doing, which makes it really, really easy for you to start mapping out what that job is. How many of you are like, I know I need help, but I don't know what I need help with. You get clear by writing the description of what this box is. Now, at first, you'll hate me for this because you'll bring in somebody eventually. This is what invariably happens. What do I do in this situation?

Damn it. All right, here's what you do.

This, this, this.

I'm gonna go operate in my marketing box. Fucking Ryan. And then they're gonna say, what do I do in this situation?

And at first, it'll feel like another thing, but by day five, as they're starting to develop these, all of a sudden, this box starts to get off.

Of your plate, and it gets locked in. Make sense?

Yep.

So, first task. Write a description for the first box that you are going to hand off to somebody. Step two, write a process.

For one of the points underneath the headline. We write how we do the process. This is the way to start building clarity systems and processes in the businesses that you run. We like to hear about systems and processes, and we're like, oh, great, that sounds like two years of my life.

Thank you very much.

But we can start the process by getting clear on what the role is and what the process is. And now it becomes a little bit more clear about what the right person.

Looks like, because we have them described and we have some processes, and we.

Can know, does this process make sense to you?

Are you capable of doing this process? And if so, we have a candidate. Does it make sense? Does this provide some clarity for you.

And Kelly about how to start getting things off your plate so that your Company has a CEO again?

Yeah, it does. Cool.

Give it up for Jared.

Thank you, sir.

Good to meet you.

Turning off microphones is not in my box.

I have people for that.

Do this.

I got people for that.

You do, though. Wait, let me say this really quick. So it's really interesting to see Ryan's trajectory too, because when I first interviewed Ryan, he was like, oh, you can come do an interview at my apartment, blah, blah, blah.

And then we just did another interview. He's like, come to my office. You can meet my team. They're amazing. It's like, oh, my gosh.

You can see how much you've grown, like, insanely.

And that only happened as a result of clarity. That only happened as a result of getting very, very clear on what it is that we wanted to do and where we were going and who we needed and that. I told the story yesterday, but one of our team members, Chris, said, I need you to put a stake in the ground and tell us where we're going. I can build anything, but I have no idea what you want me to build. And that was a cool moment for me to realize I really haven't been operating in the strategic direction piece. And that brought so much clarity and trajectory to our team and where we were going.

I think that's what's so interesting is as you start moving forward, these things will come up.

Like, don't be like, oh, well, then.

I have to know that in advance. You won't know that until someone on your team necessarily goes, oh, and then you need to tell us.

Right.

Ideally you would.

Don't get me wrong.

Ideally you'd be like, I'm the CEO. This is the way we go. But I'm sure as you were going through, you're cobbling it together and figuring.

It out as you go and getting.

Better and better and better. Because most of the time you guys see this and you're like, it's kind.

Of scary hiring somebody. And like, cash flow. We were just all really worried about cash flow.

And how do we do all of that? How did you deal with all that?

Yeah, well, first of all, if you.

Can'T afford to pay someone $20 an.

Hour to take this off your plate, something else is very, very wrong. You're not thinking on high value activities enough. So if $20 an hour to start.

Moving things off your plate is a.

Threat to the books, something else is very, very broken. Because the stuff at the top line of it is $1,000 an hour is $10,000 an hour, what is releasing A new product, selling a new product, working with, getting your customer base to rally behind a product. What is that all worth? At first there's grunt work and then it staves off and it's immeasurably valuable. It's immeasurably profitable on an per hour basis. So the longer you spent, you as CEO spend doing $20. Just to think of the arbitrage there. If you have activities that are $5,000 an hour and you're spending time doing things that are $20 an hour, you are losing $4,980 per hour that you do that thing. And when you look at it that way, the initial process is to say, you know, it's quicker if I just handle this. I'm just going to handle this this one time. I'm just going to take care of it. If you recognize that you taking care.

Of it for the next half hour.

Is actually costing your business $2,490. Oh, it would actually be better for me to pay somebody the $20 an hour for me to do that.

That was the shift in that type of thinking.

Well, it's funny millionaires that I think every single millionaire I've ever interviewed said they wish they had hired sooner.

Amen.

Right? And it's scary and I totally understand that a thousand times over. And like I, when you hire somebody.

You'Re like crap, right?

But thankfully we now have upwork and all these other places where you can get places that are freelancers and you can attempt it. You don't need to hire a full time person with benefits or anything like that. There is no, thankfully, nowadays there is no huge jump. We can take little baby steps. I hired a VA who apparently had hired another VA to do her work.

She was so crappy.

It was so bad. Like I didn't know what the heck I was doing.

Now I have a full time team like that are utterly amazing and you.

Learn, you mess up over and over and you're like, that was dumb. That was really dumb. That was dumb again. And then you get better and better and better.

So tell us a time or two or three that you were dumb, Ryan, in this process because we want to feel better about ourselves knowing that you're.

Dumb in this process too. You're welcome.

I've probably felt the dumbest when I.

Ignore big problems and don't address them. And in this context, it means keeping people too long.

Ooh.

Okay, so Travis said something to me.

I don't know when, but, but I heard, I heard his voice. In my head the other day at.

3Am where he said that stress is the result of us ignoring something. We get stress when we are ignoring problems.

And a couple weeks ago at 3am Esther started screaming. And I get up, I change the.

Diaper, she's still screaming.

And now I'm angry and I can't sleep because now I'm just worked up.

And all of a sudden, because now.

I'm in a pissed off state, I'm thinking about everybody, I'm pissed off at everybody.

Not me, right?

We'll talk later.

All of a sudden I'm not even thinking about Esther anymore. I'm thinking about all the people I'm pissed off at.

And I heard Travis Sago in my head, I heard Travis Sago in bed at 3am Say to me, we get stressed out because we're ignoring problems.

Couldn't sleep, I get up, I get.

My journal out, I start to write down who I'm angry at, why I'm angry at them, and how I'm going to fucking handle it. And what's interesting is as I start to just even think about how I'm.

Going to handle it now it can.

Be managed, now I can do something about it. And for three months I've been angry.

At this thing when all I had.

To do was be real with myself and handle it. And I felt really dumb that I had let this fester for so long without just calling it out.

Because you know what?

Those conversations with those people weren't nearly as hard as I thought because it.

Was simply as, you know, I'm noticing.

Some problems and I need to address these. And doing that, I have some concerns about X. And doing that was I've. In two days I cleared up 80% of the things that were stressing me out and I felt so dumb that I had let them fester. And sometimes it's, I have some concerns about this and I don't want to have to have this conversation again. And if I have to have this conversation again, we need to make some decisions.

And if that comes up again, then.

It'S just simply making a decision.

See, and I love that. So one of the quick tips, because a lot of people are we don't fire fast enough. You've heard this a thousand times. Hire slowly, fire fast.

Right.

I like to set expectations up in advance so it's easier to fire people because that sucks. Everybody hates firing people.

It's the worst thing in the freaking world.

Sucks. So what I do, and I don't know what you do on this, I'd love to hear it in a sec. Is whenever I hire anyone, even a freelancer, I give them a time limit. I go, we're going to do a test. It's going to be a month, two months, three months. We're going to do reviews at certain checkpoints so I can give you feedback and let you know whether you suck or not.

And I actually sometimes say that.

And then if they don't perform, it's way easier to let. I let someone go a couple weeks ago. Not that it was fun in any way, shape, or form, but. But we had already performed. Every expectation was very clear when we go through. And when you do that, you can at least feel good. That, like crap. I know I have to have this conversation because it's the date I said I was going to have this conversation.

Even though I really, really don't want.

To have this conversation. And that's why you do employee reviews.

Later on and stuff like that, too.

That is the difference between agreements and expectations.

Ooh, I like it.

Expectations are loose ideas in our head that can be violated and nobody knows it.

An agreement that you have up front is just a simple evaluation.

It's a pass fail. It's did it happen or did it not happen? And so if you have an agreement.

Upfront rather than an expectation, there's clarity.

That's true in. I mean, just other examples like romantic relationships. How many of you get mad at your romantic partner because you had an expectation that wasn't met, had nothing to do with what you agreed upon, had everything to do with you just had an expectation. Guess what? You made that up. And we blame the other person for not meeting the expectation that we made up.

It's the same exact thing with hiring and managing teams. If there's expectations, great. I have a bridge to sell you too. It's gonna be great. But agreements are clear. We can manage them, and we can easily evaluate them.

I think what's so funny is that business, we say business is simple. It's not easy.

Not easy, but very simple.

When we look at this, you're like, oh, that makes perfect sense. Like, you just drawn the boxes. Ryan, good job. Oh, you can.

With colors.

Great. Great job. But being able to see that and going, oh, my gosh, that changes what I now do, right? And whatever those things that we're going to do might not be easy because, heck, we're entrepreneurs.

We, like, do really crappy hard stuff all the time because we're crazy.

But being able to push through that and do that Anyway, and having these shifts that will change your trajectory. Like, if he. If Jared kept going, he would drive him and his wife both crazy. Just doing that forever without shifting anything. Thank goodness you came here. Right? And we'll come back next year. Okay.

I'm working for you. I'm working for you, Ryan.

But what do you think? Because I know we only have a few minutes left. Like, what do you think is the parting advice for them to go, like, okay, this is great. Let's hope. Give them something to, like, take away.

Well, I think that the big takeaway.

Is being very clear of what's in that top box. What is.

You call them strengths.

I keep saying things that move the.

Needle, things that make a difference.

And what are those activities or what are those habits? Or what are those things that make a difference? And we build around that, but when we don't have that identified, it's easy to get just lost in the noise and lost in the mishmash, and you get all these red lines everywhere.

Well, and let me clarify, though, too, because you might not be a good CEO, by the way. Let's just say that I'm not saying everybody should be trying to be the CEO, because some of you might suck at that stuff, right? Like, if you're horrible at seeing the future, you don't want to be the guy trying to see the future or hiring any of those things. You really have to figure out what those strengths are, and then you live in whatever that box is. It's not as though you have to.

Be the CEO right now.

Does that make sense?

Okay, Sorry.

Are you cool taking a couple questions?

Oh, sure.

Cool. Let's do that.

So.

Wow.

All right, let's go into it.

That's an interesting point, actually, that you don't necessarily have to be the CEO.

It's your business. You can do whatever you want. So if you want to be the investor, what are the responsibilities there, and what do you need to build around that? If you want to be the face, like, if there's nothing that you would rather do but be on stage talking and leading workshops, how do you build around that?

My team calls me the talent. I think I feel like an idiot.

They're like, she's the talent.

Careful.

She's the talent. I'm like, shut up.

Hey, guys, I just got to say that your collaboration is speaking right to me, so I suggest you guys keep doing that. So I'll go right into it. So when you're in the leadership position, and what I've heard a lot is you want to get the right people on the bus first and then figure out where they supposed to be. And that's what I'm getting from this. So my question is, what if you see somebody who should be driving their own bus? What if there's somebody who's tackling every single thing you give them, and it's never enough for them, and they need to be doing their own thing? And you guys working together is never gonna get.

I know.

We're both like, Christian, I want this one.

Okay.

I need an answer for both of you guys.

Hold on.

Good.

Thanks.

We're do one out of one. Rock, paper, scissors. It's gonna be rock, paper, scissors, shoot. Ready?

We're just gonna fight him.

Okay. Rock. Hold on. Let's get on. Let's get in sync here.

Ready?

Rock, paper, scissors, shoot.

Dang.

Go ahead.

I'm a winner. Just so you know. So.

Okay.

I had this exact same thing actually happen to me not that long ago. I knew in advance, and she's amazing. I knew in advance that she always kind of wanted to do her own thing, and that makes it really tough to hire somebody, because we're entrepreneurs. We want them to do what they want to do.

Right?

But things started to change. You start seeing issues, and I go, we need to have a heart to heart. I don't think you're really in this anymore. And she goes, I'm a bad employee right now.

And I was like, you said it.

But it's one of those things where everybody sort of knows. Do you know what I mean? And you want them to be happy as a human being, not just in your company. Like, being an upset employee. Was that fast enough? So you can answer.

Yeah, I have a whole. I have a completely different answer.

Good.

First of all, you're not getting the right people on the bus. And then figure out where you're going.

You're figuring out where you're going, and.

You'Re picking up people along the way. So figure out where you're going so that you know what the route is so you can pick the right people up. So that's a completely different question. The original question is, what if I see somebody who. It's never enough for them, and they need to be running their own thing. You evaluating that they need to be running their own thing is your projection. They may be perfectly happy running your company. And if that's the case, that's just what we call a keeper. And that's somebody that moves up in our company, and we're very, very thankful. For those people, not everybody wants to be an entrepreneur. Not everybody wants to be up on stage. Not everybody wants to be answering customer service emails. But for all of those things, there are people who absolutely love it. There's a story that Dan Sullivan likes to tell where he talks about his.

Bookkeeper who's been with him for, like.

15 years, and he thinks that's the most boring job in the whole world. Who would want to do the same thing every day? And so he asked her one day, are you happy in this work?

And she says, oh, Dan, it is.

Never a dull day here in the office.

You never know what you are going to find. And it's like, we have different strengths. And so when you say that person really needs to be running their own thing or doing their own thing, that's your projection. And if they do want to run their own thing, either a, awesome. Because now you can give them their own department or their own company that you now have a good partner in, or you have that and you address it, and you get really good work for a while until they figure out.

How they're going to go out on their own.

Okay, so I need to say something. Gary Keller talks about this too, because the reason why I couldn't do that, because I agree with you, I think that's exactly what you should do if your people don't care about money. Because I was like, we can put you in your own department. We can make you happy. You can charge for it. You can make as much money as if you were on your own.

Right?

But if freedom and not having a boss is important to them, and these are all clarifying questions that you need.

To find out, Right.

If you can move them up because they're a rock star and they're utterly amazing, please do that. Hiring a new person sucks.

Right?

But if you cannot, that's. That's where that happens. Have you had that conversation with them yet or. No.

And that's what sucks. Because you're like, crap.

And you've known it for a long.

Time that you've had to have that conversation.

It's something you're ignoring that you just need to say, I have some concerns.

Yep. Action item number one.

Crap.

Does this make sense? All right, cool. Thank you. Okay, we're gonna have time for two more over here. Hey, guys.

Ari Cohen from Los Angeles and Chelsea here.

Not for long.

Yeah, not for long. Soon to be Austin. Yeah. Moving next month. Really awesome collaboration. I used to be a business consultant at my day job before I quit to do this Full time. And I would do similar things. And of course, being in the problem, you don't see your own situation as clearly. So one question was, Jamie, you said that if you don't like doing the CEO stuff, you don't have to do it. But then the question would be, how would you find someone to run a company? And then they would be your boss.

There are millionaires. Yes. They have done that. So this is a long. This is not really you. You guys don't, unfortunately, probably have to do this because you don't have the.

Money to pay the CEO that's going to be better than you at this point, just so you know.

But, yes, there are millionaires that I have interviewed that now have a CEO because, okay, when you look at this, no offense, CEO is still a job. Like, the people that I work with are owners. CEO here, owner here, Very different. Does that make sense?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

I think that's cool. The other one, real quickly is let's say you hire, like, we just hired our first two VAs, which we are now talking about. We want to hire an actual employee that is in town. We can meet with them and manage them and lead them, but with a VA. Let's say they do. You give them 10 tasks, and they do five of them well, and five of them not so well. And we're like, we just want to fire you because you suck. Or should we just cut back their tasks and hire a second person?

Fire them.

Fire them.

Because you can. Because as a VA, you can find somebody who can do 10 tasks really, really well, I hope. Right. Unless they're in different boxes and you're trying to, like, mesh somebody together, because hiring is kind of a pain. You're always trying to find. And don't get me wrong, there's never like, perfect, perfect, perfect, everybody for every task. But in general, if half of their work is crappy.

Half of their work is crappy, then.

Probably more than half of it is, and you just don't know it.

Yes.

Which sucks.

Cool.

Thank you. Is Jeff woods in the house?

Yeah.

Give it up for Jeff Woods. So you saying this reminded me of Jeff woods is sit. Is that you way in the back? Yeah. So he's sitting way in the back. He's actually a really big deal. He is. I hope you're okay with me saying this if it's not. Well, I have the microphone. Jeff is the CEO of one of Gary Keller's new companies. And so Gary is the owner, Jeff is the CEO setting the strategic direction, making big decisions. And then proposing to the owner.

So it follows that process.

So Jeff is a super big deal. I'm really proud that he's here.

He's amazing. He just introduced me to Bruce Buffer from ufc, by the way, yesterday. I'm so excited.

We need to do one quick one.

And we'll go here.

Hey, how are you doing? My name is Raymond. I'm from Miami, Florida. And this is for you, Jamie. So I own several different businesses, not all of them inside the tech industry. So I've hired plenty of employees. I want to go.

Or.

I would like for you to elaborate a little bit more on what the culture test is. I mean, you mentioned it, but you didn't say what it was and what you look for in.

Okay, so there's. So I have so many, like, email me because I will send you specific interviews that sort of talk a little bit more. Because we have like two minutes. Great. Because there's culture. And then what I was talking about specifically, it's called the Culture Index.

Right.

I think you can go to kisigengroup.com which is Doug.

That sounds easy to spot.

I know, it's horrible. I'll introduce you to Doug. He'll tell you if you want the Culture Index, which I highly recommend.

This is not for Doug. I'm not an affiliate in any way, shape or form.

Let's do a podcast episode on it. We'll do a Freedom Fast Lane podcast about the culture.

That'd be perfect.

Well, no, I'll have Doug be on your. Yeah, we'll just. I'll just introduce you to Doug. Doug will tell you everything.

Okay, great.

Well, we'll make it happen in some fast.

Problem solved.

I once had a friend who bought.

And sold a lot of businesses, both online and offline.

And he said something really interesting to me. He invested in a lot of real.

Estate as well and did a lot.

Of mentoring for new entrepreneurs. And he said it takes just amount. He was kind of gruff. And it takes just as amount of.

The same amount of work to do.

A million dollar deal as it takes to do a thousand dollar deal. So you might as well just do a million dollar deal. I thought that was really interesting. And the more I hang out with.

Really successful people, I realize it takes.

Just amount of the same amount of.

Work to build a hundred million dollar.

Business as it does to build a 10 million dollar business. So you might as well just build $100 million business. That's what Gary Vaynerchuk had to say. He said, the way you go to $100 million is you focus on your core strength. You surround yourself with a players and you put everything into that that people are the reason that you can scale. And if you want to have a big business, you're going to have to get good people. Jeff Hoffman echoed that. Jamie echoed that in this talk. We echoed it on stage. Going through the box exercise and I learn it more and more. The more successful I get.

How important it is is to have.

Your customers rally behind you, your investors rally behind you, your employees rally behind you. Building a business is not something that you just use to pay for your life. That's called a cash flow business. A business becomes a community that serves an even larger community. John Mackey talks about this inside of conscious capitalism. How the real beauty of capitalism is that it is not a zero sum game. Capitalism brings new wealth and new value to the marketplace. It makes everyone better off. When a community is rallied behind something and they're serving something greater than themselves, that's when new wealth and new opportunity is created out of thin air. Not by printing money, but by building new value. That's when everyone's lives are better. It's not a zero sum game. Everybody wins. As opposed to socialism or a different form like communism where everyone loses. So that is why we need more entrepreneurs, is why we need more capitalists. And that's why I want you to join us in Austin, Texas this December for Freedom fast lane live 2016. Head over to freedomfastlanelive.com if tickets are on sale by the time you're listening to this, grab one, join us. If they're not on sale, sign up for the notification list and you will get the updates of when they go live.

Cool.

All right.

It's going to be a great time. I hope you've enjoyed your binge on Freedom Fast and Live so far. We've got more to come, so stay tuned. And if you're finding value here, please share it with someone that you know needs to be in that room this December in Austin, Texas. Thanks for listening and I'll see you on the next episode.