Ep 64 Recap & Lessons w Ron Holt | #MUIYB Podcast Mike Up In Your Business Podcast

Ron Holt, you are in for a full interview. Here's the thing, when you listen in, listen for the part about Highway 10 or Interstate 10, whatever it is. That's my favorite part of this interview. So listen in, then we'll discuss.

That's good. That's good. That's good.

That's good. Name what movie that's from. The actor goes, "It's good. It's good.

It's good." I know that. I know it, but I can't see it.

I'll give you a little more context. It's during around a popular holiday and he is frustrated extremely of all the problems. So he runs over and gets eggnog, drinks it, and he takes a big swig of this eggnog and goes, it's good, it's good, it's good.

Is it Elf?

What?

Is it Elf? Close.

It's a Christmas movie.

National Lampoons.

National Lampoons.

Chevy Chase.

I see him now. I see it. I see it now.

Yeah, the moose. Mug, right? It's a moose mug.

Is that how the moose thing came to be your house's icon?

Oh, not from that movie. It came from when we were in Maine. We saw so many meese.

Meese, plural for moose. Yes, of course.

Wait, there's meese everywhere? There's moose everywhere. And, uh, we had so much enjoyment there. Chris was like, oh my God, there's another McCallowits moose. Oh, and then it became our Family crest. So, ah, when we were young, we made a family crest. The family made it, and the center was the McCallowitsch Moose.

That should be your nickname. Moose. Moose.

I love it.

Moose. My nickname was Stork. That was my high school nickname from the college, from the football team, because of my lankiness. Oh yes, I looked like a stork when I left.

I love that.

It's a good nickname.

It's a good visual too when you say stork. Yeah.

Were you like really big on the top and with these just like skinny chicken legs? Is that what it was?

No, I was just skinny. I was just same height and in half my current weight. I'm skinny now, half my weight.

Get out of here.

Yeah, you were built like John Henry, like my son.

Yeah, like John Henry. Well, actually, they used to call me John Henry also. Like, you're the future John Henry.

Sometimes they just called you Cartelli.

Oh, lanky. I walked like this down the hallway. Big floppy goofy shoes right now.

What? How much do you weigh?

I weigh 188 this morning.

All right, I'm 6'2". When I was in high school, I was the same height that I am now. I wrestled 145.

Wow.

I was like skinnier than you.

Skinny but jacked?

No, I had the— there was like nothing. It was awful. I hated it. Like my, uh, I didn't wrestle my senior year because I worked, but my junior year I, uh, I, I was miserable because I cut so much weight. I shouldn't have been down that low weight class.

Yeah, there's a certain point where it becomes dangerous. Yeah.

Um, yeah, segue to Ron. How do you segue?

How do you segue to that one?

He's good at it.

He'll figure it out.

Yes.

No, so Ron, the interesting thing about Ron, he's obese. He is massive. Like you've never seen a guy this big. No, he's not at all. You saw the video. Here's what's so interesting about Ron to me. First of all, he never expected to clean houses, right?

Right.

Um, are we back from the interview? I can't remember.

I can't remember either.

We are back.

Yeah, I don't remember.

Okay, I forgot where we were. Yeah, he's never, uh, he never intended or whatever to clean houses, but he did. He did to learn the work. I only alluded to that briefly, but my favorite thing was riding down Highway 10, going to competitor after competitor, to saying, hey, what's your ideas? Like, who does that?

That's what I was thinking. Like, wait, wait, wait, wait. I kept saying, well, how did that work? And then you asked the question for me, so I was very grateful for your interview just then because you said, you know, like, they took you in. He's like, well, yeah, I was down in Florida, and then, you know, this was out in Austin or wherever it was, and it makes sense. But brilliant. That's brilliant to do that.

You know, I'm surprised how many people will just invite you in, sometimes out of bravado to show off what they've done.

Yeah.

Um, but sometimes it's out of kindness. Kindness.

A willingness to share. A willingness to just help another guy out.

Yeah, the abundance mindset.

Yeah, I love that.

I see it a lot. Like, I guess the industry that we're in in particular, I can't think of one author— I can, I can take back. I, I can think of very few authors who say, get outta here, they're a closed book. Most of 'em, everything they know.

Yeah.

And that's, that's wonderful. The belief, I think, in the authorship industry is if, um, you know, whoever sells a book on systemization of a business And that served that person. That person's gonna wanna read more books about systemizing their business to perfect it, and then they may discover Clockwork or something.

Right.

So, so these authors get that the success of their book or someone else's book furthers the interest in that category and everyone gets elevated.

Right. Smart. I like that. Yeah. I love the attitude or the, the mindset of that.

Yeah. And I think with cleaning, like, you know, listen, these competitors, maybe they said it out of arrogance just to show off how successful they were. But also the more people nationally that buy into the idea of I can get my house cleaned, you know, this used to be something for the elite, right? Now people that are middle income, um, are doing it for the convenience, right? And maybe that, you know, if my competitor in another state is successful, it just furthers that belief and we'll get more business here because people will talk about it more, right?

Right. It was interesting. I was— go ahead, Jer.

I was just gonna say there's a lot of industries that are, uh, adopting similar models that, like, even private flights now, they're not relegated only for the rich. You can actually, um, charter a private flight with a small group of people and you pay— it's less than a first-class ticket depending.

In some cases, yeah.

The way that it works is once they fly out to their destination with the private party, whoever rented the whole plane, they have to fly it back So instead of wasting that, then they just try and book other people individually and make a group in order to, to get back to—

just saying. I haven't heard that. That's really cool.

I have a friend, uh, he used to fly out of Morristown. He had to go to Chicago or something regularly, but instead of flying Newark, New Jersey to Chicago, he'd fly Morristown, which is the nearest airport here, which is a small pri— I think it's private., to, uh, an, a similar size airport outside Chicago, which was actually closer to his client. And he'd be on a private jet that has like 12 people on it. And, and to your point, it was just jets returning back and they have 12 seats. It filled up and, and he was paying less than first class. And this was a regular route because it was like a corporate jet or something.

Mm-hmm.

Um, that some business was using and they would just outsource it for the return flight. That was so cool.

That's gonna be cool too, cuz you can just, you you get to the airport, you don't have to go through all that security stuff. You just— no, somehow, I don't know how, you get on the tarmac and then you literally just walk out to the plane.

I've been on a private jet twice in my life.

Oh, what was that like?

Just what Jeremy said. Like, you show up at the airport and, uh, just walk in. Like, like there was nothing.

There was—

you got to walk through a little security thing, but there was no security line, right? But my favorite part is we sit down, the whole party was like 6 of us or something flying together. And, um, the pilot is sitting with us and he looks around, he's like, hey, is everyone here? Like, yeah. And we're leaving in an hour because like no one has flew private before. He's like, well, you guys want to go now? We're like, we could do that. Doesn't the flight depart in 1 hour? He's like, we're all here. We're like, uh, yeah, okay.

Yeah, what's it like to not sit in an airport for an hour before you fly?

That's awesome.

Bizarre. That would make me so much more comfortable. That it's the sitting around and—

oh, no sitting.

Oh, I love that.

The whole Cartelli family's here.

Let's go, let's go.

Yeah, and there's like no waiting. You don't have to wait like over the 10th flight to take off. It just— we went down a runway and, um, it's like clear for airplanes. They still have 2 pilots. They had an attendant, so you still did like drink service or something, or— I can't remember the safety instructions. I think they still did that. And, um, yeah, whatever they want. It's like, oh, what would you like for, for your meal? I was like, uh, what do you have?

Right.

Well, what do you want? And now in advance you could ask like 6 different things. So, but they were like, they cooked the steak there. It wasn't like, oh yeah, we're gonna throw it in the microwave. I think they actually cooked it. I remember it was crazy.

That would be lovely.

You're all relaxed and you're, you're having a couple drinks at the bar until you realize halfway through that the guy you're doing shots with is a pilot. All right, come on guys.

That's so funny. You know what I loved about Ron's story, or his, his business, is this employee dream program he's, he's doing with them. You know, he's facilitating these things and making it something bigger than just himself for all of his employees. That was really admirable and really, really cool.

That's derived from a book called Dream Manager by a guy named Matthew Kelly. It's a great book. And the book is about this company called Janko. I mentioned it during the interview. Mary Miller and I have become friends and spoke with her about 6 months ago. They've advanced that Dream Manager program even further. So I'm just learning more about it. They don't call it the Dream Manager, by the way. That was a term that the author Matthew Kelly assigned to it. Okay. I really do think that insight is fascinating, that no one dreams, you know, is born saying, one day I'll be a janitor, right? Or, um, and maybe that's not true, but she said, you know, all these people hire— job is a means to a certain outcome. And I think that's true for a lot of jobs. A lot of people don't say, ah, this has been my, my whole life, I couldn't wait to do X, right? But we do all have a whole life. My, my whole life, I can't wait to do something. And then the jobs can be a means to get there. And if we as a business owner understand that, we can help facilitate that. I thought that was pretty cool.

That is really cool. That's really cool. And for the first time, I put in my head that my son, who's a biochem major like Ron, could end up doing something else, which never occurred to me. And I thought, huh, I wonder if he's even, uh, thought about the entrepreneur bug.

What would you study in school?

Me? I was a psych major.

Psych. What did you study, Jay Bone? Business. Okay, so you're in it. But it's like, well, listen, it all applies, but who knows what their vocation is going to be? I didn't study writing or literature.

Yeah, I know. Look at you. Look at you. Look at me.

I studied how to drink a lot. Um, the other thing I thought was interesting that Ron shared was that with his licensees, or franchisees, I guess, that the— when they have no money, they listen intently. Do you have money? What have you done for me lately?

Yeah, Tim, we, we had it, we, we circled on this recently, I thought, in one of our conversations with— was it you, Jeremy? Was that you, Jeremy, that we circled on that, that, that thing that in the beginning when they have no money, they're going to listen intently, and when they do have money, they're going to want to just do their own thing? I thought you had mentioned that recently.

Talk about that. I can't remember if that was on another episode or if that was just internally. I can't remember.

Yeah.

Yeah, you know, there is something about these types of jobs too that, that, um, they don't get credit for, where some jobs are so mentally draining that you're constantly thinking and using your brain all day long, and you're just, you're mentally exhausted by the end of the day. But with a job where you're doing like house cleaning, it's not super mentally exhausting, it's like a little bit of physical work, but you can get in your own head and and almost like meditate while you're doing it because you don't have to think about it. And I think that there's a benefit to that kind of work. When I worked grocery store and I was just doing stocking, I loved, my favorite thing was working in the cooler because it's like I just could shut my brain down and just stock stuff and it was—

Yeah. I worked at a county library doing shelving for 8 hours a day. And I know that sounds horrible, but honestly, it was meditative for me. It was just organizing, putting things into the proper place. And I was in my own world. I didn't interact with people. And I just like the— yeah, just there, it was meditative. I like that. I could see myself doing house cleaning too, actually, because I like the before and after effect. I like the— yeah, I like all of that and the ability to stay in your own head constantly.

I do like repetitive processes that are so repetitive that there is no active thought required. It just becomes subconscious because then your mind, like, to your point, goes— becomes meditative. Yeah. So when we first started out and it was just me, um, and we were selling used books, I was selling like 50— 20 to 50 books a day through our office and the rest elsewhere. So I'm packing 20 to 50 books a day, and each one would take like 2 or 3 minutes. So it's a couple hours a day, in some cases, of packing books. I had such a routine down. Yeah, it was awesome.

Yeah, yeah.

And then going to the post office, you know, with bins of books, it felt so good.

Yeah, yeah.

One of the things that I was always impressed by, Mike, uh, was when, um, we worked at the other office, um, factory— no, Myrtle before that. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And some days it would just be like you and me, but you'd be doing a ton of interviews and So I would be able to like, you know, hear the interviews and depending on the topic subject, because it's new information, even though you've already said this information a million times, it's new to the, to the, you're, yeah, you present to. And it was, you made, you were still enthusiastic and you still made it, um, you know, fun for them. And I was always amazed by that because me, I'm thinking, wow, like that's awesome that you have that memory to like, you know, just go on these, these talks. But it's like you would have specific points throughout the talk, and to do that with enthusiasm and continually do that daily— thank you— it's like, it's really something cool.

It's impressive. It really is.

It's impressive. I heard, um, two bands, and one band interview, uh, do you remember the band called Warrant from the '80s? Okay, they had a song called, uh, Cherry Pie. Uh, you know, My Cherry Pie, whatever. The writer of that song, who sadly, uh, I can't remember his name, Leaney, something, he committed suicide. But, um, what was interesting was he was interviewed and he says, I wish I never, never created that effing song. He's like, I sang it, I hated it because that's all people wanted. As a juxtaposition, there was another band I can't remember who it was, but it was a massive band. Say it was the Eagles. And they were being interviewed about Hotel California. They play millions of times. And they said, thank God we invited that, we created that song because that is our theme. That's what everyone wants to hear. And we play it with such excitement, even though we've heard it a million times. The person listening, it may be their first time experiencing it live or first time experiencing it at all. It was just such an interesting, we're so grateful for this because I gotta do it over and over, or I hate it 'cause I have to do it over and over.

It's perspective.

And both are defining you, like, so yeah, it's perspective.

That is so cool.

I always wondered that about bands, you know, because they become big because of, you know, one song. And at a concert, they have to play that song. Have to. Yeah, people are going to be upset if they don't play that song. And so I, I kind of always felt bad for musicians because they're in this creative space where they, they want to play like the newest thing that they came up with because to them it's exciting and new and they're showing like their side. But then it's like Okay, now we got to go back to the hits and play the hits just to make everyone happy.

Isn't that the entrepreneurial journey? Like, you know, the creativity, that's in your lab. Go do that in the studio, and you should. But once you have that hit, that's what serves the market. That's that person hearing that song that's giving them joy or something like that. That's the product. And, um, I think we have an obligation to serve the product that consumers want. Agreed.

Yeah, agreed.

Good point. All right, you got a game? It better be about, uh, hit songs or music.

Yeah, so, uh, Ron apparently survived when he was building his company on fish sticks.

Yeah, yeah, right.

Wait, fish sticks and what was it?

Rice.

Rice.

Oh yeah, so this is fish stick trivia. Oh, all about the fish stick.

Say, oh my God. True or false, does the fish stick have any fish in it?

Yeah, it does. It does have fish, actually. Hey, first question: what is the most commonly used fish in fish sticks? Uh, is it cod, halibut, pollock, or tilapia?

I thought I had it, but I think I got it.

The history of fish sticks was really fascinating too. It started with like Gordon's Fisherman I think it was like the '30s or '40s.

I remember those commercials, that guy in the yellow—

the yellow raincoat.

Yeah, he felt like such a fisherman. I would eat any of that stuff.

You know that guy, as soon as they were done shooting, was like, get me out of this thing. Yeah, yeah, fish.

He was like, ew, fish are disgusting, and he'd run off set. All flamboyant.

Question 2: What fish are most closely related to goldfish? Is it tuna, shark, salmon, or carp?

I've never eaten shark, I don't think.

I've never eaten—

so you guys know, I don't think— I don't even know what they what shark would be served?

I'm assuming shark probably is mahi. Ahi? Swordfish.

Swordfish would probably be the closest to shark.

Yeah, that— you mean the closest thing to it?

Like, can they serve— is it legal to serve shark?

I don't know about in the States, but I think they do in Japan, don't they?

Yeah, they definitely do. Like, uh, in Japan— is it Japan or China? Um, they do shark fin soup. They actually had to create regulations because, uh, the population of sharks was dying because they see it as like a, uh, it's for like weddings and stuff. I think it's illegal, um, but they still— it's like seen as like a super, um, fertility drug too.

They consider it as a fertility drug or something, I thought. Yeah.

Um, okay, question 3. In Japan, what is considered dangerous to eat? Is it piranha, pufferfish, shark, or pomfret? Not pommes frites, pomfret, which is a fish.

Okay, I'm not confident in my first one.

The most common— what do you say?

Oh, I'm sorry, cod.

Uh, both wrong.

It's pollock.

Oh, that was my second guess. That was my second guess. And when you said Pollock, I was like, oh, no longer confident in cod. Then I went with my first choice.

Cod is actually pretty good fish. I had Atlantic— is it called black cod? Black cod. That was good. Yeah, that's not bad.

Uh, I like mahi. That's one of my favorites. It's like very, uh, mahi's a cod.

Fleshy.

My tuna is—

it's not He's not.

Okay, but that's my favorite.

That's my favorite. Sea bass. Chilean sea bass.

But I love Chilean sea bass.

Oh my God, the flakiness.

It's on the endangered list.

I know, I can't— that's why I don't eat it. I've turned it off because it's so expensive. Anything that's expensive is endangered. It has to be. That's the law of economics, I assume. So the second it goes above a certain point, I'm like, oh, not only is it not cost effective, it is also endangered. So slow down.

But dude, of course are hard to fish. If then sometimes they raise the price if it's like really hard to fish.

Yeah. Um, okay, questions like sea monkeys, very hard to fish.

Yeah. Damn it, they never arrived. I ordered them off the back of the comic book and they never came. They never came every time.

Do you remember? I never got one time and it was like these little dead shrimp. I'm like, where's the monkeys?

Where's the monkeys? In the comic book, it's a monkey with arms. There's a mother and dad and a child and a— yeah.

I don't know.

Are you serious, Jeremy? Do you not know about—

he's too young, he's too young.

Okay, there's, there's a mail order sea monkey.

Okay, mail order sea monkeys on the back of comic books. I particularly remember it being on the back of Archie comic books. Yep, exactly. And what else was in there?

Um, what other products could you buy that didn't work? Um, x-ray glasses.

X-ray glasses. And encoders, decoders, decoders, never fucking worked. Nothing came or it didn't work if it did come. I know, me too. All of it. Saved up my Bazooka Joe wrappers for stuff. That stuff never came.

And the funny thing was, for the x-ray glasses, it was a pervy ad.

It was a woman, a girl walking by a guy.

Yeah, and he can look through. She has like a towel on, he looks through it, but she's not naked under. She wears a bikini underneath. He could see through the towel but not the bikini.

Not the bikini.

And I'm like, these are the best glasses ever. I want x-ray glasses.

Your 9-year-old self was like, I totally need these.

Totally need this.

Nothing. Oh, that's so funny.

And that was a whole scam. Nothing showed. You kept on sending money in.

Nothing ever arrived in the mail. Ever.

Never.

I gotta admit this, this is because this is too good. Um, when I was probably 11 or 12, uh, my cousin and I, we would look at the Sears catalog because the models back then would wear lingerie, and it was like, it was risqué. Yeah, because like they would show like breasts and they don't do that anymore. They like blur everything out.

Do they really? Yeah, you could see the whole breast, exposed breast.

You could see nipple. Yeah, you could see like—

yeah. So this catalog, did you get—

I just— a regular, the standard regular one.

I have to tell you, there's You know those, those catalogs that sell walkers and, and orthopedic shoes for the old people and stuff like that? It's— there's a catalog that comes to our house, um, because of Christopher's work. I don't think I should say the name, but anyway, the catalog came— comes to the house and you're going through and it's like those old house dresses that your grandmother used to wear and the orthopedic shoes and the different canes where one's a seat. And it's pages and pages and pages of this stuff. The handlebars for the shower and all this kind of stuff. And you get to like page 25, a whole assortment of sexual health products, all in their glory, purples and pinks. And oh, I don't know what's happening with the elder generation, but there's— they're really getting hot doggy. There's a demand for this stuff I've heard it's their best-selling pages in the catalog. I mean, it's like, oh, they have good names for them. They have horrible names. I, I actually— and the worst part was 6 of the same catalog arrived the other day, so I had like, I had like 20 pages of this smut sitting on my kitchen counter.

That is awesome.

I don't even know how we got on this conversation. How did I get on this conversation?

Because we were talking about sea monkeys.

You're like, oh, sex products. Toys. Yeah, yeah, sex toys. That's it. I love the name.

They come up with sex toys.

I should—

the Triple Threat Penetrator. Like, it sounds like— I don't want any of that. First of all, triple, like, it's way too much threat going on. It's way too much threat.

That threat is way too high. That threat is way too high.

You know, there's a, there's a grandmother out there who is just out of it and she's rolling out dough and—

exactly.

Using a vibrator instead of a rolling pin. This new rolling pin's great.

It's amazing. It's a modern rolling pin.

Yeah, why do I got to use AA batteries?

It's this beautiful wave pattern in my pie crust.

That is funny.

That's great. It's definitely happened, right? Anything you can imagine has happened at least once somewhere on this planet at some time.

Oh my God, I don't want to think about returns. Oh my goodness gracious.

All right, sorry, now we got to get back to goldfish. Okay, uh, what fish is most closely related to the goldfish?

Carp. Tuna.

It is carp. Very good, Amy.

Amy, you're on fire!

If you know— I got the wrong— I got cod, remember?

No, I know, but you were— you thought it was pollock. I didn't even think— I was like, the one thing it definitely isn't is pollock.

So, all right, and then finally, uh, in Japan, what's considered dangerous to eat?

I say puffer fish.

So I'm with Amy, and I also want to add a thing. It doesn't mean they don't eat it, it's just there's a risk associated with it, right? And that's why I said puffer fish. I think there's a poisonous—

like a high adrenaline junkie kind of, uh, yeah.

So you have to cut out the right part of the fish, otherwise it's deadly, I think.

Yeah, there's a poison sac, and I believe that, uh, sushi chefs have to get, um, some sort of training freakation, uh, because it's— you have to be very, very careful because if you pierce it, then it taints all of it, and then you can—

you could be very sick. Is it pufferfish then? It is.

It is. Wow, I got one right. Amy got two. This is two weeks in a row, Amy, that you're just—

I know, I don't know what's going on with me. I'm just on fire.

Just so far, it's really— you've bounced back. I mean, that's what it is. Thanks. You're like, oh, Mike, I've had a bad week, we have all these things going on at home, and now you're like, I'm back. I told you it was coming back.

Who knew it'd be this fast? Yeah, right? You said it would pass. I didn't know it would pass within the episode. Yeah, exactly. Who knew?

All right, my friends, uh, hope you enjoyed this episode of Mike Up In Your Business and, uh, discussion with Ron Holt. Definitely check out his business because maybe you can emulate it. I'll tell you, even if you don't aspire to own a franchise one day or have a franchise, you should always build your business that with that mentality of systemization. And talking about systemization, we have a little system we set up for you is how to rate our podcast. So go to rateourpodcast.com. Yeah, that's our domain, rateourpodcast.com. And give us a rating and please subscribe. We appreciate it. And ask any questions you have at askmike@mikeandholloway.com.

Good.

Cool. Wishing you good times.

Wishing you good times.