Brian Creager: Lessons From The Corporate World

Foreigners. Ryan. Daniel Moran here with another episode of Freedom Fastlane. Hey. Today we're going to be joined by my buddy, Brian Krieger. I wanted to have Brian on the show now because Brian just left his corporate job. And that's the dream, right? For a lot of people who listen to Freedom Fast Lane, it's to quit a job and retire with the businesses that you've got. Although sometimes it doesn't feel like you're retired, sometimes it feels like you work even more. So I wanted to bring on Brian to ask, okay, when did you feel comfortable? When was the time to move away from the cushy job and move into this business? And how did your corporate background influence how you built your business? Look, let's face it, we get a lot of things right in our community with entrepreneurship and efficiency and cost effectiveness, but we also mess up a lot of the process. We know nothing about systems and processes. We delay hiring way longer than we should, and when we do it, we do it horribly wrong. So with 20 odd some years of corporate experience, Brian brings a completely different skill set to entrepreneurship and it makes for a very interesting topic. And you will definitely get a lot of golden nuggets out of this interview with Brian Krieger.

Brian Krieger, welcome to Freedom Fast Lane.

Thanks, Ryan. Great to be here.

I want to start off by saying congratulations because you have just exited the corporate world and entered the world of calling your own shots. So congratulations. How's it feel?

Thanks. It feels great. You know, I could say it's been 23 years in the planning, that's how long I worked in corporate. But the reality is it's really been the last year to two years where I've been actively planning an exit and it feels wonderful.

So would you catch us up to speed for those of us who don't know you well, what has kind of transpired in the last two years?

Sure. As I just said, I was working in the corporate world for 23 years and a couple things happened in the corporate job about two years ago, which was a real strong motivator for me to find my own path in my work history at the corporate world. I had built two seven figure subsidiaries, one in the uk, one in Belgium, my base in Atlanta. And I decided that I didn't want to do that for anybody else again. And if I'm going to build another seven figure company, it's going to be for me. So that was the motivation for finding something to do. And lo and behold, here we are.

And what was the process I obviously know the story because we met in the Philippines and I knew where you were starting out. But share that story with those that aren't familiar with it.

Sure, I will. And I'll actually take it back probably about 12 months prior to when we met in the Philippines. Give you a little background on that.

In my corporate world, I had been involved in business development, as I had said, foreign subsidiaries. I had been involved in product development and packaging and product positioning and branding and all of the other things that went along with that. And I was at a day long mastermind about two years ago now with a fellow that you and I both know, Chris Ducker. And he said to me, and it was one of those aha moments where in your life. And Chris said to me, he said, brian, you've got over 20 years of experience. Somebody wants what you know. And that was kind of one of those sentences which galvanized me into action and made me think, what is it that I really know and what could that mean to other folks? And I started thinking about what I had done in my career and that whole notion of business development and starting things from nothing and creating something out of them was something I really enjoyed doing. And a friend of mine is a master barber and he came to me and he said, brian, I'd like your help in starting a barber shop, because that's kind of what business development is, starting businesses. So we started meeting and chatting and whatnot over the course of a couple months. And he said, brian, you know, a lot of barbers make a reasonable amount of money selling product. And it was as if another light bulb went off in my head. Another aha moment. Well, I know branding, I know packaging. I can create my own brand of men's hair care products. And there's a limited number of competitors. They're big multinationals. And I had this notion that I could create this line of physical products and sell it direct to independent barbers and barbershop owners. Hey, these guys are entrepreneurs. They're looking for a differentiated product. Buy it direct from the manufacturer, make some more money on it. And I was all ready to go. And that's when we met in the Philippines. And you, in your very subtle, very quiet way, said, brian, it's to you, but you might just want to think about maybe consider selling your products on Amazon. Yeah. And I did. And a year later, I've got a business which in about five, six months from when I started selling was income replacement from the corporate job.

Amazing. Well, congratulations. And I just want to highlight A couple things from that story. First of all, that you took what was an asset to yourself and you use that as a leverage point for starting to look for opportunities. And the second is that you pursue the best opportunity, not following a passion or some sort of gimmicky hook, which are two very calculated things that I think people miss. Where there are people who I think the world is changing to the point where full time jobs, if you have a skill set in that job, can now be leveraged to start a business. There are for example, social media companies, it used to be a full time job, now there are companies who just will do it for you and you can hire them and be a client. And now that is fairly commonplace and that's becoming more and more common. And second, you were just pursuing, looking for the next opportunity, not necessarily asking yourself what am I passionate about? What do I want to go into? Would you comment on the pursuit of opportunity? Because as you started to look for what was going to be next for you to take you from the corporate job, I'm sure as most entrepreneurs do, there was a process of well, that looks cool and that looks cool too. And there's this idea over here and this person says to do this. So how did you filter through that? Because I know this was your, as far as I know, your first personal business and it was pretty successful very quickly. So how did you filter out all of the noise?

Very interesting question and something I was thinking about as you were talking there.

There's a critical component when you look back at a two or three year journey and you talk about it, you talk about what the successes are and very often you don't talk about the other things that you did. And I, of those I didn't know for sure what I wanted to do. So I did some one on one coaching and consulting work and I did some contract packaging work and I did some contract business development work, all kind of stuff on the side. And it was, you know, gave me a little bit of income but nothing super successful. And as I started getting some success after I started selling the products on Amazon, for me selling on Amazon was just another experiment in something to do. And once I started getting some success, getting some traction with those products, then I really put my shoulder behind it, put some money behind it as far as advertising and scaled it to the point where about two, three months into it I said I'm getting some traction here and I think I want to, if I can build this to income replacement by February of 2015, I'll consider it a success. And I actually hit that at the end of December 2014. And, you know, income replacement for me at a multiple six figure corporate job plus the supporting the family and everything else was not a small number. And then I actually made a second decision. Once I had income replacement, I said, okay, this is good, but I'm going to take this income and rather than pay myself, I'm going to go hire some people so I can do more of this and scale it. And that's the, that's the unifying thread here that I wanted to reinforce. Try some things, but once you find something that has traction, put some effort and some money and some willpower behind it and scale it.

I 100% agree. It's really kind of popular to say just pick something and go straight into it. And I think that if you're delaying action taking and if you're delaying decision making, that can be a good mantra to live by. But if you're not sure which way to go. I had the exact same experience where I tried several different things and then I put all my chips in. The one that showed the most promise and cut out everything else went full in. And that made all of the difference. And I didn't have that immediate, this is what I'm gonna do. This is what I'm passionate about. I'm gonna jump into this. I dip my toe into a bunch of different things until one caught fire and then I put all my chips in. It sounds like you pretty much did kind of the same thing.

Yes, for sure. And also I want to emphasize something there. Be thinking about what you're doing strategically and not tactically. You've said numerous times before in this podcast about Amazon being a channel within a business, and that same mantra applies here. If you find something that you're successful with, think about it strategically and not just one product or one brand. Think about what you're doing and then figure out how to scale that to other things that are of the same strategy.

So let's go into that because you instead of taking a salary, invested back into your team. And that's something that's really scary for a lot of solopreneurs, a lot of Internet entrepreneurs. So was it the corporate background that gave you the confidence to move forward? And how the heck did you get started building that team?

Great questions. I would say. Yeah, the corporate background gave me confidence with big numbers.

I remember the first month I hit 10, 20, $30,000 in sales and looked at the profit off of that.

Those are some decent sized Numbers. But. But I deal with multimillion dollar budgets in the corporate world, so I'm comfortable with big numbers. And the reality is it's just numbers and zeros on an income statement. So I really looked at this and I said, okay, I've got this money here. I really don't need it because I'm deferring my exit from the corporate world for a variety of other reasons. I'm not going to exit in February. I'm going to defer that. I'm going to take this money and invest it in other people, invest it in my team, what became my team, and really grow this business exponentially. And you asked the question about how I went about finding the team. I did it through networking. As much as somebody says go out and find a recruiter or post a job somewhere, etc. Word of mouth, especially when you're a startup entrepreneur and the potential for making a wrong hiring decision is great. Network and take your time to get connected with the right people, not just in skill set match. It's more important to get connected with people who are of the right personality. Skills can be learned, personalities can't be.

I agree.

So be very careful in how you select people. And there's loads of standardized tests and whatnot out there. My personal weapon is a good friend of mine. He's just got the ability to read people and I always use him when I go to hire somebody.

Now, Brian, I want to tell you about a fear that I have and I think this is common in our Internet world. In the Internet community where we work in our underwear at our computer, we tend to resent kind of the corporate world. We don't want to work for the man. And it talked like it's all bad. But I find that there's a lot to be learned from a corporate structure as I go to build teams. And I have this fear. I have this fear, Brian, that if I start to hire and build a big team, then one day sales will drop a little bit. Now I'll be in the red because I got to pay all this overhead for all of these people and it's gonna take money out of my pocket. And then of course I'll look like a failure. I'll lose all my money. I'll have to move back to Cleveland and work at Walmart. That's obviously an exaggeration, but that's kind of where the story goes. There's a fear of giving up profits that are ours to build a team because a. What are you gonna have them do? To, to justify a full time position. And B, there's all my money, it's going to people. So from your corporate background, what was kind of the strategy of, of building this team? And did you kind of have that same fear that I've had and a lot of my small business Internet based entrepreneurs have had about building teams?

No, I didn't have that fear. And I'll share with you the reason why. And it's purely a mindset. You said something a little bit ago that it's my money, meaning your money. You're the entrepreneur, it's your money. Look at it differently. If you're really an entrepreneur and you're conducting business under your Social Security number, go set up an llc, get an ein, look at it as a proper business. I know you've done that. This is for your listeners.

The money is not yours, it's the company's. So it's a simple mindset. How much do you need to live on per month? And that's a good way to look at things per month or per week and take that as an owner's draw from the company. The balance of the money remains in the company to be invested in growing your company. So hiring people is an economic calculation with the remaining money, okay, you can invest your time and effort into continuing to grow something. Your time and effort has value. And you can apply a dollar amount per hour, per week or per month. And if you can get somebody else to do the work and pay them less than you would pay yourself to do the work, it makes sense to hire them. Another good technique when possible, and it depends on what the role is.

But if you can tie an employee's compensation to a variable, for example, tie it to sales, tie it to profit, particularly in higher level positions, that, that is something you should definitely do. And also don't be afraid to invest in people, to teach, to teach them, let them go to courses, pay for them to take courses, develop themselves. Personally, you would be amazed at the dedication that you can get from staff when you're investing in them. They see that you're investing them and you're interested in their long term growth, their long term security. And when you have dedicated employees that you really take care of, those are the folks that are doing the work and they're going to prevent your company from faltering and stumbling and failing. And that's what it's all about, being successful in the long run. So take a minimal amount from your company, reinvest the balance of your profits back into the company. Either in people or products or whatever your business is. Invest and continue to grow.

I 100% agree. And that shift happened for me when I don't think it was a money thing. I think it was just an internal confidence thing that I felt okay putting letting the company keep its money, seeing it it's the company's money, knowing that I would be just fine. I think for some people it is a money thing where when I've got enough money that makes me feel safe, then I'm okay leaving more money in the business. What was it for you? Or do you think it was just coming from the mindset of I'm gonna build a business independent of myself and that's how I'm gonna structure all of the decisions that I make in this company.

So there's two ways to look at what I had said. One, if you're in the corporate world, and that's a little bit what this podcast episode is about. When to Leave work Whether it's corporate or some other job, there's really two ways to do it. One is to bank cash to give you a long enough Runway so you can cover your expenses while you grow your business. The second way is reduce your expenses down to the level of cash that you already have in the bank. So nobody's going to be profitable, likely with their company within the first month or two. But sit down and plan what you want to do and get yourself a good accounting software. There's a number of online applications, but the point is get a good accounting software to track so you know exactly where you are, what are your expenses personally in the business, what's your cash coming in and how much extra do you have to continue to invest and grow if you don't have any extra cash, Maybe you need to take a look at your business and what you're doing and you might be going down a trail that is not in your good long term interest. As far as profitability, going back to what we were saying at the very beginning, try a couple different things and when you find something that is working, scale that and put effort behind it.

I think that's good advice. And you mentioned that idea of when is it that you can leave your your corporate job for you? Would you share a little bit about that experience of deciding you were gonna leave and then actually leaving? Because a lot of people say they want to, but then it becomes they get used to having two incomes. They get used to splitting their time. All of a sudden leaving the job doesn't feel so safe anymore because they are afraid that their business is going to go under or they'll be unhirable if anything happens. So would you share about that experience, about deciding that you were going to leave and then actually moving towards leaving?

Yes, absolutely. Early on in my working career, this is about 20 years ago, a mentor of mine at the time shared something with me that stuck with me and is applicable here. And it doesn't matter if you're in a job and you're building your own company or if you're in a job and you want to go to another job. This is the key piece of advice he shared with me. If you want to make a move, make sure you're not running away from something. Make sure you're running towards something. So if you're having, if you're in your job and you've built a side gig and you've got doubts about whether you should leave your job, that means whatever you built in your side gig isn't attractive to you. You should always be going towards something and not running away from something. And if you take that thought and that method and apply it to the company that you're building, the job that you're in, the next job you want to go to, the income that you're trying to replace.

You can help yourself make a lot of decisions.

I think that's fantastic advice. That's, that's interesting because you could apply that to a lot of different areas of life. When you have a difficult decision, what are you running from if anything? And what do you want to be running toward? That's really interesting advice. Now did you have any resistance to that by following that advice or was the fact that you were running towards something, did that kind of liberate you from the fear that most people have when they leave a job?

I, what had happened in me at the corporate job was somewhat scarring to my psyche and I wanted to create something that was better and more attractive to the position that I was in. I've always had this underlying fear in my 23 year corporate career. And you know, there's employment law in the U.S. virtually every state is at will employment. The employer could walk into you, your office and fire you. It's not that stable of a long term environment. The equivalent in entrepreneurship is Google changes their algorithm and you're instantly, you know, down. But you know.

The way you balance that out is you build your own company which has multiple streams of income, so you're not reliant on a single stream of income. A job is the ultimate in A single stream income. And if you think about it that way, build your own company which has multiple streams, you'll be in a much better mindset. And I want to address one other thing that relates to leaving the job. I hear oftentimes folks don't have enough time or say they don't have enough time to do what they want to do. And you know this story, but I'll share it with your listeners. When I made the decision that I was going to build my own company, I was working eight to five normal corporate job hours, usually eight to six or seven to six or something like that. But I changed my hours firmly to 8 to 5 because I was getting up at 3am I worked on my own company from 3 to 7 in the morning. And then I went and worked the corporate job from eight to five and I did that for two and a half years as I built my side job. And the most important thing you can do when you're trying to reallocate time is cut out a lot of the fun fluff that sucks up so much time, whether it's television or Facebook or social media, whatever else it might be, cut that out. Free up those hours. Spend the conscious time with your family as well, if you've got a family, but focus on what your objective is. And for me, that was building something that I could run towards for the long term.

Brian, coming from that experience of A, the corporate structure and B, being forced to cut out things that distract you and have focus time for your business, have you noticed any mistakes that you see most solopreneurs and Internet entrepreneurs making that coming from your background, you have a different perspective on and would you share those?

Yeah, I think.

One big challenge that a lot of solopreneurs have is indecision. They'll try something and then not be sure if it works. Maybe go try something else versus carrying something through till they can really determine if it's been successful or not. Believe it or not, a lot of folks give up easily or give up too soon.

Thinking back to my own experience, I could have said, well, I'm not having any luck with this business development stuff. I ought to go do something else. And I'm glad I didn't. We wouldn't be here today. But there's another aspect to this and that is for.

Individuals to have a fear of the unknown. The more personal confidence that you can have in what you're doing, the more successful you're going to be. And there's a famous quote out there, something about the willpower gets you through. And that's very true with a lot of things, especially when you're trying to build something on your own.

I am curious if you have. I'm fascinated by the fact that you have just right from the get go, decided to build the team and do things that I think is the right way. So I'm curious if you've seen people who have Internet based businesses or are small entrepreneurs who have decided to take on everything themselves and if you don't just kind of look at them funny because that's not the way that you've seen any business run for the last 20 years because you've been in the corporate world. And I'm just, I'm just curious if, if that gives you a reason to pause and if you have a different perspective on that than most of the people who are talking about this kind of stuff in our community.

Sure, I wouldn't say I look at them funny, but I would say take a calculated approach to what you're doing in your business. You as the business owner, are the most expensive employee in your company. Should you be reconciling bank transactions for two or three hours a month? Or is there somebody else that can do that? That's just one small example. But look at business decisions both from a financial standpoint, which is what I was just talking about there, you're the most expensive. Get somebody else to do it for less. But also from the emotional standpoint. When I hired a bookkeeper, and it's not that been that long ago, but when I hired a bookkeeper, relieving that anxiety of making sure things were done.

Was emotional as well. And it put my mind in a different place and allowed me to create new things, new ideas in my business, to take it to where I couldn't have imagined before.

I totally get that because I know that when I turn off my phone, turn off email and go for a walk or go out with friends or have fun, all of a sudden, all sorts of creative, entrepreneurial ideas, copywriting, ways to grow my business, new things we should try just pour out of me like it's natural. But put me in front of a computer, sitting at a desk and come off of checking email for an hour and answering things that I shouldn't be answering and taking phone calls and then asking me to be creative and I can't. And I've always known kind of in the back of my mind that if I was able to systemize and task out everything that takes up that time, I could really run a much Better company. And that's what I'm hearing you say, just in different words.

Absolutely. The notion. And I want to drill in on something you just said there. Systematize what you're doing. That applies to individuals you hire to do things in your business that don't make sense for you to do. It also applies to what you're doing on a weekly, daily, monthly basis.

I'm an admin in a couple Facebook groups, the tribe included, thank you very much. But one of the ways I do that is I actually block out time every 24 to 48 hours, and I go in, and that's when I do that work in the Facebook group. Other than that, I don't go into the group and look unless something urgent pops up in a message or something like that. But the point is, block out time and stick to a schedule. I've got a big whiteboard in my office with seven columns on it Monday through Sunday, and then three underneath daily, weekly, monthly, and other. And those. That's my list. That's my task. That's how I manage my time for those routine things that everybody needs to do in their business. And the notion with that is I block those tasks into this routine time so that I can free up my mind and my time for those aha moments, those brainstorming moments when you pull out your phone and open the notes app and you. And you take a couple notes on some idea you just had, or you pull out a sheet of paper and you scribble some stuff down. And the more that you can systematize and crunch down the amount of time that you need to spend in the routine tasks, the more time you'll have to do other stuff. Thinking about strategy, going and having fun with friends or whatever it might be.

I think that's such good advice.

You've just inspired me because I used to do that, and it worked really, really well. And it worked so well that I stopped doing it, which was having really structured time for this is when I'm working on this project, and nothing else distracts me during that time, and I don't think about it outside of this block. And if I could add one thing, that helped. And you got me all excited because I'm gonna go resurface this in my life. But one thing that I added that made a big difference was after I drew out my schedule, after I planned out where everything was gonna fall, I gave it to a woman and said, what do you think of this? And two hours later, a much, much, much more efficient way of getting things done was handed back to me. My work hours went from like 80 to 30 and I was done every day at 3 o'. Clock. So I hand it over to somebody else who can clean it up for you and that helped me a lot.

And I'll just emphasize that point, whether it's a woman or a friend or somebody else having somebody to bounce ideas off of. And you talked about the critical people to have in your life in a podcast episode about six months ago. Having those individuals who can give you a reality check and pull you out of the weeds and help you see another way to do things is extremely powerful both personally and professionally.

Well Brian, what are you up to now? Why don't you share a little bit about where people can find you and what you're doing? Because you're slowly but very strategically.

Establishing yourself as kind of the go to guy on a lot of what you're doing. So why don't you share a little about what you're doing now?

Sure I will.

I finished my 23 year corporate career at the end of May 2015 and the first thing that I decided to do was take a 12 week sabbatic which I'm in the middle of right now. So to answer your question directly, what am I working on immediately? It's as little as possible. I'm trying to have a mid career recharge to.

Really figure out where I want to go and what I want to do. I've got some ideas. I've hired three people in the last week and a half. One is a full time, two are part time doing a variety of tasks in my business. And I decided in the first and actually in the second week of my sabbatical that I have a 1:1:1 strategy for the next 24 months. By June of 2017 I want to have I will have a million dollars in revenue with a minimum of $100,000 in net income per month working no more than 100 hours per month. That's my 1:1:1 strategy and that is what is I am focused on and I'm looking at different products, different services, different ways to do that. And as I'm building my organization that is my focus. So as far as getting a hold of me, it's really simple. BrianKrieger.com is my website. B R I A N C R E A G E R Brian Krieger.

Well Brian, congratulations on your success, Congratulations on your new freedom and thanks for hanging out with us at Freedom Fast Lane.

Thanks Brian.

It's been great.

I really thought that Brian had some interesting insights coming from the corporate world and seeing how we could apply them to the the world of entrepreneurship. The idea of just carving out specific top per project with that being uninterrupted by other projects. We as entrepreneurs, we've got a thousand ideas bouncing around our brain all the time. And if we don't structure that that time to implement those things, I mean, I go crazy and I catch myself still doing it. And talking to Brian was a great inspiration to go back to that system. Great book on that topic is called Getting Things Done. It kind of outlines a little bit more of the process that Brian outlined. I also loved his point about reinvesting in your business, delaying the gratification of paying yourself to build up a team that will build your business far beyond what you can do yourself. I think if more entrepreneurs did that, they would grow a lot faster. Hope you got a lot out of today's chat with Brian Krieger, and we'll see you on the next episode of Freedom Fastlane.