“Sharpen Your Business Game: 30+ Years of Entrepreneurial Wisdom with Richard Walsh”

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What's up, my good people? Welcome to the CJ Moneyway Johnson Show, the podcast that brings you stories behind the success. Today we have a serial entrepreneur with over 30 years in the game, the CEO of Sharpen the Spear Coaching and author Richard Walsh. How you doing today, Rich?

CJ, I am fantastic, man. Thanks for having me here.

Oh man, thank you for coming on. Thank you for taking time out your day, man, to spend a little time on the CJ Moneyway Show. Rich, man, tell us a little bit about yourself and about your background.

Yeah, so like you mentioned, 35— about 35 years now in entrepreneurship. I started when I got out of the Marine Corps in late '80s, started just working, swinging a pickaxe, digging trench all day, $5 an hour. The good old days, you know, high pay, $5. Yeah, I think they put you in jail now if you pay someone that. I don't know. But that's what they paid us. Luckily for me, CJ, I wasn't like seeing a lot of future in that. But a guy asked me to do a side gig, and that was to move a bunch of granite, like crushed granite, down in Tucson, Arizona. He said, move it from the street to the backyard. There's about 35 tons. So I'm like, I can do that. I work hard every day. So I spent my last $85 before payday on a wheelbarrow and a shovel. And that Saturday, I knocked that thing out, got it done, put it on there, came out to the front, and he came out. And he put $1,000 in my hand, CJ. And I looked at $1,000 and I think, dang, I did this yesterday for $45. Wow. That's what I'm like. I know my path. I know my path. I'm going to work for myself from now on. Yeah. And that's what launched the landscape business that became a custom water feature building business that became my niche. I moved back to Chicago, grew that, became award-winning, nationally recognized. Started incorporating steel sculpture with that, became a world-class exhibit builder, steel sculpture and water features and all that. It was really awesome. Uh, won awards, published, like I said, all that. Then '08-'09 came, the big financial collapse, and that took me out. Actually, I took me out because I didn't do a lot of things in my business except make money and be out front. I wasn't paying attention to the house, so to speak. So, so it kind of wiped me out. At that time, I had 6 kids, 4 years and younger and my wife's. We lost the business, the home, everything. So now I have to start over, relocate and all that. And that was not pleasant at all. Did that, started to kind of recline the mountain. Let's get back up, figure out what I'm going to do. I wasn't going to do what I did. I want to do something completely different. So kind of found my way through that, started another business, then 2 businesses, started doing well with both of those. People started asking me how I did it. So I would give them advice and mentor them a bit. And that then turned into coaching. So I'm like, well, you know, mentors, you know, that's free advice. Coaching, that's paid advice.

Yeah.

So I'm an entrepreneur, so I'm going to get paid advice.

Okay.

Yeah.

It just makes the advice better. Yeah. Because you're paying for it. Then I wrote my bestselling book, Escape the Owner Prison: The Contractor's New Way to Scale, Regain Control, and Fast-Track Growth While Loving Life. That was a big hit. And now I focus on the service and trades industries. To help them prepare to scale, to escape the owner prison, which is you start a business working really hard the first 2 years, CJ. You know, you got to wear all the hats, you got to get a lot of things done, no way around that. But then next thing you know, 10 years has gone by and you've repeated the first 2 5 times, and that's why you're trapped. You can't really take time off. You can go on vacation, we get a call in every day, make sure the place didn't burn down, right, that people are doing what they're supposed to do. So you're really, really owned by your business. You're serving it. It's not serving you. So my goal was like, I'm not going to— actually happened to me the first 20 years. Like, I don't want to have that. I got 6 small children. We're going to homeschool them. I want to be around when I can be around. I still love business. I want to grow business and do well, but I want to balance things out. So that became my mission. Now my big movement is to help 10,000 business owners create freedom, profit, impact in their business. Get them out of the owner prison, get them living the life they originally started a business for, because they all want all that. Everyone wants freedom, profit, impact. Who doesn't? But they seldom get it because they get trapped in that prison.

So, man, that's deep right there, man. You know, I've interviewed so many people that, you know, entrepreneurs like yourself and had successful businesses and had things going on, and everybody keep coming back to 2008, 2009 when we had the crash, man, and How they lost everything and had it. But what's amazing by listening to you guys talk about your stories is that how you didn't give up on your dreams and things of that nature. Well, although you fell down and things didn't go this way, and I know that mentally, physically, and everything, that is tough. When you sitting high and then all of a sudden you back at the bottom and it's good that got somebody that's still sticking there with you. That's sticking it out because a lot of time people run, you know, when the bottom fall out. But I'm encouraged by you guys' strength to build again, you know, start over and build again. And now you doing the things that you love to do and you being successful in it, man. And I think that's wonderful.

You know what's funny about that? And this is gonna, and they'll all agree, all the entrepreneurs, you know why we push through? Because we're unemployable. That's why we can't work for anyone else. We don't have an option, okay? We can't go get a job. We don't work that way, so we don't have much of a choice. So we had to, had to make something work because, man, you do something for 20 years and you're working for yourself, even though you're trapped, kind of. Yeah, you know, like I said, but it's still— I choose to be trapped. Someone else doesn't trap me. So I just think that's always kind of funny. When I think about it, you know, like we really didn't have any options. I had to do it.

I'm sure. Yeah, I get it. I get it. You know, although like you say, as your book, you know, about the prison, I never forget, man. 'Cause you know, you've worked some, I've worked some jobs. I'm like, I'm never, I would never do that again. And I ain't gonna say no name, but it's one of the biggest companies it is 'cause they bringing packages to your doorstep every day. And working in they warehouse doing that, "I would never go back. I ain't doing that no more." Now that's a prison mentality right there. I'm not doing it. So Rich, you've been in the game for 30 years and that's a long time for anybody to be, you know, doing something and doing it at the level that you're doing. Can you give us some of the key insights you gained including your success and your failures?

Sure. So success, CJ, is, I mean, it's a relative term, right?

Mm-hmm.

There's some people gauge it by gross revenue. Some people gauge it by real profit. Some people gauge it by time, margin of time, quality of life, right? A lot of different ways you can measure success. So the important thing is you have to understand what success means to you.

Mm-hmm.

You know, what is truly valuable, right? Because you, it's hard to build a business if you don't understand what success is.

Mm-hmm.

If I don't understand, even if I have employees, How do they know what success is? Every day, every week, every month, every quarter, every year. What does success look like to them? So I have to build that for them, but I'm not going to do it for me. Right? Because we can't operate if we don't know how to win.

Yeah.

You don't want to play a game if you don't know how to win. Right? So we want to make sure we understand how we're going to win at this endeavor of entrepreneurship. Right? Whatever that lane is we're going to run in, how do we do that? That's really important. And it doesn't matter what you do. That's another thing I always tell people. I don't care if you dig dishes. I was literally a hole digger for 20 years. I mean, I built water features, I built ponds. I mean, I dug holes for a living, right? So, you know, it didn't— but then I made a ton of money, you know, doing beautiful things. So that was a lot of fun. But it doesn't matter what you do. You could be on the keyboard, you know, you could play music, you could be on the laptop, you could be whatever. It doesn't matter. It's all work. You have to understand that it's all work, right? Now the failures are always going to be there. You're always going to fail. You may not lose everything, and I hope you don't. I hope you're wise enough to get, you know, seek wise counsel to keep you from doing that. But you got to understand that entrepreneurship, there's always little failures and they're just stepping stones. They're just how you learn. You know, you can't let them crush you. Like you said, we, and a lot of us, I'm kind of joking about the one employable kind of, but it really is like there's, there's a resilience in entrepreneurship that's seldom matched in the world. Our ability to push through and believe in ourselves, they call it grit, right? To have that grit that we can push through and make something happen when everybody else has given up. Everybody, right? And you just, it's one more week, it's one more month, but now it's a year. But then it finally happens and it comes through and now you're on the other side, right? And you're at success and you've got all the pieces put together and everyone thinks you're an overnight success. Right? But it only took 10 years.

Yeah, so that's not overnight.

That's right. But they think it is because they only see you when you get good. No one knows you when you're struggling and crawling and begging and doing what you had to do and working the hours and doing all that kind of stuff. So I think from an entrepreneurship standpoint, people have to understand both sides of the coin, you know, the victories, the failures. The losses, the overcoming, the staying in the game. As I like to say, if you can breathe, you're still in the fight. Okay, if you can take a breath, you're still in the fight. And you got to stay in there because you can outlast most people. You know the saying, there's many starters but very few finishers.

Yeah, right.

You got to be a finisher.

Yeah, well, I know that you can say that. There's some things I want to talk about later because you got that grit and you got that iron and you got some hardware and a little bit of prestige behind you in that. So we'll get to that in a minute. Hey, so you touched on it a little bit earlier, Richard. Tell us about your book, Escape the Owner Prison. What inspired you to write it and what's the main message that you want readers to take away from it?

So what inspired me was when I started working and helping businesses, even from the mentorship process, right at the beginning, and then started coaching, I started to see the same pattern again and again and again with all these businesses. Like I said, they start the 2 years. Work really hard. Maybe they're a great craftsman, right? They're working for someone, say, I can do it better than he does. So they start a business, right? Because they can do the thing really well. So they do the thing and they get some help, and now they have a business, but they really don't know how to run a business. I didn't know how to run a business. I just know how to work hard. Okay, I'll just outwork you. No one will outwork me. That was my principle. That's my business knowledge. That's all I knew. You know, now they get in that and that's why they kind of get trapped. They don't know how to delegate. I do it 3 things. They don't automate, delegate, and eliminate, right? We can talk about that later. But those 3 things, so they get trapped in a cycle, a hamster wheel. Every 2 years they're doing the same thing and they can't quite expand. They make a little more money. They're kind of choosing their schedule, but it's a very full schedule. They have to open the door. So I'm like, we got to free them from that because I realized in '08, '09, I had a big epiphany that I'm thinking about my 6 little kids, 4 years and younger. I come home at night, they run, they attack me, they love to see me. I'm leaving one day and one of my sons is chasing my truck down the driveway crying. I'm looking at him in the rearview mirror as he gets smaller because, you know, I got to go to work. I got business to do. You know, I can't spend 10 minutes to say goodbye. Work's too important. I mean, that's where I was. Corwin CJ Moneyway Johnson, right? I'm like, you know, if I stay on this path, CJ, businesses first, win the awards, make more money, have the cool house, have the fleet of trucks, I said, my kids are going to grow up and they're going to have failed marriages, ruined relationships. They might be good at business. Everything else in their life will be trash. It will. And I'm like, I can't do that. Yeah, I can't do that to my children. So I walked in that day and shut the business down. Because we were going to collapse anyways. We were on the road. I'm just trying to limp through, right, to keep things going because I, I'm too dumb to quit, you know. But that epiphany was like, okay, I'm not doing this anymore. And I literally had a video of me burning all my uniforms in the backyard. I'm like, brand new, I'm like, never, I'm never gonna have my identity in business again. I'm not gonna do this. I'm finished. So that for me was a big revelation, you know, to like, how do I now— but I'm still a business guy, right? I'm still an entrepreneur. So how do I do it right this time? I screwed up for 20 years. Okay, I gotta restart. You know, '08, '09, all the stuff I didn't do caused me to collapse. That's just a restart. That's a blank slate. So let me do it right this time. And what does that look like? And I had to figure it out from there.

So Rich, you said something I want to get back to. You said we'd get to it later because, you know, that sounds familiar. Delegate. Eliminate and automate. So when you say that, I've heard that before. And when I heard it, because even in this space, and I think that's my next question with you about being a podcast host, because in this space there's a lot of things that you try to take on to do that, you know, you're trying to do the marketing, you're trying to do the editing, you're trying to do the videos, you're trying to do this. And when I heard that eliminate, delegate, and automate, it just clicked to me and say, you know what, I gotta build me a team around me that I can trust to do some of the things or the tedious things that I really don't want to do. Plus some of the things that I don't have expertise in. And so with you and with that phrase that you just said, man, how do you feel about that and what made you come to that conclusion with that?

Because let's start with Automate. Okay, so some— when you look at your business— so I help business now systemize, right? To get a business to run itself, it has to have systems and processes, right? You can't just wish it to do it, right? You have to build something that people can operate in because we put people into systems. You don't put systems into people, right? So we want to make sure we can insert people and they can do the job at their level of competency and they can run with the ball and score, right? So Automate Anything you can do to automate, meaning, can I get better software that handles more of the work? And here's a current AI, right? Do I have AI that can do things? Can I hire a virtual assistant? You know, the country I can pay a little bit, they do a lot of the work. They're experts. They can do it. They can save me a lot of money, right? All my process. What can I do to automate things? You know, the more that I can automate, the less management I need. Because there's nothing wrong with people and you're always going to have people, but sometimes too many people. And now you have to manage those people. It can be a couple things. It can be cost prohibitive, for one. So now you actually can't do it because you can't afford 3 more people. You know, if you think about that, like, wow, if I can automate and I've got someone in the Philippines working for $4 to $6 an hour doing my bookkeeping, wow, that's amazing. And they're accurate and they're good. And it's just bookkeeping. It's not taxes. It's bookkeeping. So start to do things like that, right? And then you go to delegate. And this is where people mess up, CJ, the delegation part. They tell people to do something and they call that delegating. Okay, that's abdicating.

Yeah.

Okay. Because if the people don't know how to do it, how can you tell them to do it? And that's what most owners do. So if they're a sales manager and you tell them to like increase the sales or do whatever, they're like, Well, I'm just a salesman. How do I do that? Like, what is their lane? What are all what we call their job functions? What are all the things they're expected to do in their job? And it could be once on every third Wednesday for 10 minutes, they send a report. That's a job function, right? But they need to know what all that is. And then the next column, it's how you do it. So here's how you do it. Then there's a third column that has the training of the how. Right? So how do I train that person to do the how so they can do the what? Right? Now I can delegate because they have a place to go, to be trained, to understand, and to execute flawlessly. Now, if they're skilled, they're— I have a great salesman who's a great closer. They don't want to come and fix my business. They don't want to come and systemize my business. They want to come and close deals and make money. Okay? I want them to close deals and make money. They make money, I make money. Exactly. I want them to take the ball and run all the way to the goalpost with nothing in their way. I want to open the field so they can run. I want that with every position in my company. And you can only do that once you've done that. Now you can delegate all day long and you'll get competent people who you can skill up even more to your way, drop them in that lane and they can get off running. Right now there's eliminate. That's the third one, right? Eliminate is your cost overruns, inefficiencies, redundancies. We get that for the most part, right? But people always leave out the most important elimination, and that's you as the owner. You eliminate you from the day-to-day.

Mm-hmm.

I want you to focus on the 5% only you can do in the business. You're the vision guy. You're looking at new markets. You're reeling in the big clients. You're making the big deals because you're it. You're the guy, right? And everyone else will handle it once you close that deal or bring those people in, right? So, that's the eliminate part people leave out. You've got to get to that part too. So, when you automate, delegate, eliminate, can you see what that'll do for a business? But it gives you focus. It gives you the focus, CJ, where you're like, okay, automate. I can automate. Pick something. Automate it. Pick another thing. Automate it. Pick another thing. Automate to whatever degree you can. If it's fully, great. If it's half, 50%, 30%, that's 30% of a workload off someone's shoulders.

Mm-hmm.

So it's really powerful. So you want to, you know, go fine-tooth comb through the whole business from an automation standpoint, you know, and then now things start to run and your people are way happier.

Yeah.

Because not doing this tedious stuff that literally some other machine could do, you know. So that's where that's at, those three.

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Man, I like the way you broke it down, especially, you know, like you say about the elimination part of yourself, you know, the owner, and you focus on the 5% on the things that you need to focus on. And then once you focus on that, then you can bring it to the team. Now they, you know, even with the training stuff that you was talking about, as far as giving them the direction and giving them the training on the things that, you know, that you're looking for and that you need for them to do. So the way that you broke down, man, I'm not gonna even try to redo it because that was cool. Hey, so Rich, you also a podcast host, man. So what is it about and how does it connect with your work as an entrepreneur and a coach?

So I've done a couple. So my first one was based off my book, Escape the Owner Prison. It's called the ETOP Podcast. I had guests. I had about 115 episodes, 1 hour long, with guests I brought on. And in the beginning, it was just fun. Like, it was for business, but it was fun because all of a sudden I'm hosting NBA coaches and Navy SEALs and bestselling authors. Like, all that. I'm like, man, back in our day, you have to be like NBC to do this. Yeah, right.

Yeah.

And I'm talking to all these people. I'm like, I was having the best time of my life, CJ. This is the greatest thing ever. Knock working these things out. But I'm, I'm driving traffic though, right? Well, literally driving traffic to my business. Hey, if you want to know more about coaching, about running your business, that's what it was for, for me. Shut that one down, took a little break, started Sharpen the Spear. So I moved through some iterations, got to Sharpen the Spear. Now I'm relaunching Sharpen the Spear podcast, which is going to be a little more focused on my niche, which is a service and trades industry. And that's what I'm really going to focus on is high-end guests. Okay, bring them on, drop real value, right? So my people can learn real good stuff and then also talk to me about coaching, right? And bring them in. I can talk and show I can help them, right? So that's kind of my— and I've— and what I've done, like you were talking about, I've got a very automated podcast system now. So my work is minimal, way less. Yeah, like from editing to making clips, all that stuff's automated. Using AI and a bunch of other tech. There's phenomenal software out there. Yeah, like I said, you want to automate, brother? Like, we can talk after. I'll share what I got. You'll love it. It's unbelievable. But I just love where the world is now in that way. Yeah, you can do so much with so little. It's just amazing, you know? And the quality is 10x anything we could ever think of, you know? It's maybe more, you know? It's great.

Yeah, definitely. When we get done, just shoot me something that you got, man, because like you say, there's a lot of stuff that I'm still learning. And I've been doing video. I mean, I got 160 videos on YouTube, and I just found out the other day on how to work this one thing that I was working on, on how to get the full value of it. I was talking to a friend of mine. I'm like, man, I've been doing this for— but somebody told me about, you know what I'm saying, hey CJ, you need to do this, you need to do this.. And so I had it in my grasp the whole time, but because I didn't know, you know, because I just didn't know because that's not my lane, it took somebody to tell me to start looking deeper into it, you know, and things of that nature. So yeah, please inform me with that. Hey Richard, so you served in the Marines. What was that experience like and how has it influenced your leadership and business strategies?

Yeah, so the Marine Corps is It's a tough place. You know, it's a good place to harden yourself. You know, my son is currently in the Marine Corps now, been in about almost a year. He's doing awesome. What it does, CJ, and I think about this a lot, people ask me in the application of business and everything else, I truly believe it's just there's a mission accomplishment mentality. It's not there's no failure, it's not an option. You hear that. I mean, that's cute and all, but what it really is about is mission accomplishment. You know, so it's adapting, overcoming, persevering through whatever it's going to take to achieve the mission, right? The objective, whatever the objective is, we're going to achieve it. Now, in the Marine Corps, depending on the situation, you'll achieve it or you may die. Okay, so there's some extra motivation there, right, to keep going. But, but we're trained to do that with everything. Everything we do, we have to just— we're going to achieve, right? We don't Live by excuses ever. I was telling someone the other day, I have an equation with no excuses kind of thing. And they— I said, in the Marine Corps, if you don't do something, you get a high-ranked officer says something to you, why didn't you complete this? I said, there's only one answer. Sir, no excuse, sir. That's the only answer that's acceptable. Yeah, there is no other acceptable answer. Live that way for a while and see how you do, see how you get through your day. Okay. So it's, you know, so that becomes part of who you are. And then you realize that mentality really serves you well. You know, the difference is when you get back in the civilian world, nobody operates that way.

Yeah.

So I'm expecting the people who work for me, when I say, why didn't it get done? What am I expecting? Sir, no excuse, sir. No, they, I get a laundry list of why they couldn't do it.

Okay.

I'm like, well, that don't fly. Okay. Come with me, we're going to talk, and let's go for a walk, you know. Oh, but you know, so, so that's the mindset, right?

Yeah.

So we're really trying to push through and get it finished because we're doing what's asked of us. That's— I mean, it's like an integrity thing, really. If I ask you to do it, you say, okay, I'll do it. Well, guess what you got to do, CJ?

Gotta do it.

You gotta do it.

Yeah, right.

So that's simple. It's just not easy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like that. I didn't know that Marine's motto, uh, no excuses. Yeah, yeah, that was the first time I heard that one. So being in Marine Corps, you also had an interesting career as a boxing champion and a black belt. So how did you come across these professions and how has it impact your life?

So after the Marine Corps, I started boxing because I had a friend who boxed. I was working at a big college bar in Tucson, Arizona. A guy named Dave, he was our head doorman. What would you call it? It's, uh, I forget the term. Oh, well, our term of endearment, we called him Crazy Dave. Okay. So his name was Crazy Dave. That's what we called him. So you're kind of getting a picture of who he is. And he's like 6'4", 240, 10% body fat. Okay. And he's boxing. I go, I want to box. Well, come on down to the gym. So, I go down to the gym and get in the ring with him. And, yeah, Dave could hit kind of hard. Now, I'm chasing around the ring, CJ, can't lay a glove on him. Throwing shots, he's just slipping and moving, right? He's doing all this. And, I'm like, "Ah." And, he just kind of looks at me and pop, he nails me with a jab, breaks my nose. One shot, he hit me one time. The blood's coming out, I'm okay. I'm after him, after him. I still can't lay a glove on him. And then, pop, he throws a left hook, And I kid you not, my mouthpiece out of my mouth, out of the ring and across the gym.

Wow.

Okay. And I'm like, oh, whoa, whoa, what was that? So kid comes running up with my mouthpiece, honestly, like a hair and dust bunnies on it and stuff, you know, I like stuck it in my mouth, you know, finished the round, but that was it. So I had a broken nose. I couldn't chew for like 3 days. Go back to the bar where we worked that night and my general manager comes, he goes, I got 2 black eyes, you know, I'm looking real pretty. What happened to you? And I'm like, well, I was boxing with Dave. He's like, "You can't do that. You can't go." I go, "I'm going back tomorrow. I'm going back tomorrow. I'm going to get better at this." And, that was the start. And, I went back and I trained, trained, trained at 6 days a week for years and won Golden Gloves Championships, regionals, all kinds of cool stuff. And, yeah, I just kind of made my way up until finally I lost— my cheekbone got smashed. I had 7 breaks in my nose, detached from my face. I have plates, wires, new nose. So, I don't get the box anymore. So instead I said, let's do taekwondo. Yeah, let's get a black belt. So now it's like 35, I decided let's do that. So I went 5 days a week for 2 and a half years, got my first degree, but first degree black belt in taekwondo. You know, that was fun. It wasn't nearly as good as boxing.

Yeah, it wasn't near as good as boxing. Hey man, you just said you had your nose detached from your face and—

right, 7. That's right.

Hey, what did you say his name was? Crazy Dave.

Crazy Dave. Crazy Dave. Crazy He was the South London kickboxing champion, right? The guy from England, South London kickboxing champion too. So he's no slouch, man. He was— he played with 350 on the bench like it was nothing, okay? And I'm in there like, I got this guy.

Crazy Dave. I'm gonna go with Crazy Rich.

That's right.

Hey, so Rich, man, so back to the business element of this. When it comes to business, how can someone effectively combine strategic thinking with technical execution?

Yeah, so you have to understand, in business you're going to get what I call the tactical little fires that flare up. You got a problem, right? Oh, this is broke. This didn't go well. Oh, so-and-so's complaining. You got all these little tactical issues, right? Those have to be addressed immediately. The problem is, CJ, people live in the tactical. So they're always putting out fires. They'll put the fire out, it'll flare back up next week or 3 weeks later or 2 months later because they never fix it. They just soak it with water, if you will, and then it, boop, a spark comes and now it starts going again. So what we do is you take the tactical, you correct it, then go, okay, what was the cause of the tactical? Let's build a system that prevents that from happening again. So we reverse engineer it, right? Okay. Oh, it's because this wasn't done. This person wasn't notified and this wasn't executed. Okay. Make a system so all that 3 things can handle now. Now that fire's out permanently. Well, eventually you run out of fires. Yeah. Right. You fix all the problems. That's part of systemization. Now no one's running into your office crying. They need your help. Hey boss. Hey boss. Hey boss. We got this problem, and you're out, you never get anything done because you're going fixing these, these tactical issues. So we want to have a focus on both. So as far as my coaching goes, my coaching program, we do both. So we want to build strategic thinking, we want to build a plan, build the systems, where we're going, how we're going to get there. But we also want to put these fires out as quickly as possible, permanently. So you combine those two, and that takes us somewhat of a special ability, right? You have to understand you can't just tell people all the good stuff. Yeah, you got to deal with the bad stuff that they would deal with every day. Yeah, because that's business.

This is life problems.

Yeah, but you also have to remember that problems are opportunities. Yeah, if you can change your mindset, it's an opportunity to learn, to grow, to fix, systemize, make my business better so that we never have that problem we become a better business. My people are happier because they don't have a mystery job anymore. They understand what happens every day and what they're supposed to do. They're not getting hit, you know, get hit upside the head with something weird that someone thought of, never thought of, never knew they were supposed to do. People are making them— so it's a mystery job. Every day is anxiety, you know. No, no one's staying at a job like that.

Yeah, you want to have a great working environment where everybody's happy. And like you said earlier, not only happy, but like that salesman that's coming in, you want to come and make money. That's the bottom line. You want to come make money. And so talking about money, Rich, why do so many business owners struggle with scaling their businesses and what advice would you give to some of them?

So scaling's hard. A lot of business will scale prematurely. They want to grow. They have a great product or service. They want to grow and they're going to get out there. So they're going to push the edge, right? Get out there, run fast, borrow a lot of money, expand, expand, expand. But what they haven't done, CJ, they haven't prepared for expansion. They haven't fully systemized their business. They don't have a duplicatable process that you can go put in another location, another location, another location. You don't have the manpower. You don't have to recruit the manpower. You don't have the delegation done properly, right? You don't have the systems in place. So they can go out and try to repeat what they did the first time. But by the time they get to the third or fourth one, they realize there's still one person. There's no more time in the day. I can't travel that fast. You know, there's no way I can't get the right people because I haven't built the right place for them to come. Right. So people have to really perfect number one, where they're at, get it fully systemized, get it operating. Can they leave for a month, come back, and everything is running just like you left it? Can they do that? If you can do that, let's talk about the expansion. Let's talk about scaling, right? You really have to understand where you want to go. That's, that's a critical thing too. Do you want to scale? Are you prepared to scale? What, you know, because there's stress in scaling. It's not— it can be comfortable, but still you're expanding. There's all new problems you're going to create with another location, taking on more market share. So there's a lot of preparation in this, both physically and mentally. You know, do you discuss with your family? Do you let them know what the next phase is? And how much time is going to take for you in the next year to go break into these new marketplaces and establish yourself? Because there's commitment, even though you're working on your 5%. Now you're going to scale. It's going to need you. You're the captain of the ship. You got to stay at the helm. Right? So I think that's where they get confused. And then they get excited and they have something good, but if they didn't prepare, it's going to turn into ash, you know, it's going to burn up because they haven't, you know, prepared properly.

And a lot of wisdom, man. You're giving us a lot of business wisdom and, you know, saying how things work, man. And I'm listening, I'm a fan myself. Hey, so Rich, man, I appreciate you coming on. I just got one more question for you, man, and I'm gonna let you go. Finally, Why is having an exit strategy so important for business owners, and what should they consider when planning one?

Right, so here's the key. If you want to start a business, the best time to do your exit strategy is before you launch your business. The second best time is right now. If you've been in business 5 years, 7 years, 10 years, you need an exit strategy right now. Even if you don't think you're getting out of business, you're going to do it till you die, hand it down to the kids, whatever your thoughts may be, you want to start with the end in mind. So that— and what that means, CJ, is how long do you want to do this business? And let's— I'll just pick numbers. What are you gonna do it for? 10 years. And then you want to exit for $10 million. Okay, great. So I want to do this for 10 years, I want to exit at $10 million. Um, great. Okay, that's my, my really simple— that's where I'm at. Well, now reverse engineer that. What do I have to do to get to that point? So today, day one of my business, okay, I'm going to do a lot of this stuff, right? But now if I know where the end is, I know when I got to hire my first person, where that comes in, my second one. It keeps me focused on the exit, right? So I understand I have goals. I set everything for that mission to exit in 10 years, which means to get $10 million or whatever the number is for your business. No one's going to buy a broken business. They want it systemized. They want it running themselves. So you want the exchange to look like this. CJ, you come in, you want to buy my business, we negotiate. I get— I end up getting 10.5 instead of 10 because I'm a heck of a negotiator, right? We shake hands, I get the check, I'm out the door, you're in, and nobody knows the business sold. That's how good you want your business to run, right? You don't have to fix anything as a new owner. You just get the Live it. Get the profits, tweak it, make it better, do whatever. But you grab that, that section of the market, right? Because you bought my business. That's what they do. So, Exit Strategy forces you to do that. It forces you to build that business and have a smooth-running, self-sustaining business where you can work on your 5% and have a ton of margin in your life to do the things you truly want to do because of that business. That's the high level of it. There's a lot of detail in there as well.. But how can you get somewhere you don't know where you're going?

Yeah.

If you're in New York in your car and you wanna go to California, well, all you know is to go west, right?

Yeah.

Well, there's good news. You're probably gonna see all of the United States cuz you're lost. Okay. And the bad news is you're gonna end up at the Gulf of Mexico and think you're at the Pacific.

Yeah.

You're not gonna know. Right. So you're never gonna get there. So you've gotta have that and it's never too late to start one.

Mm-hmm.

You know? Some people, oh, I think I'd like to sell the business in a year or two, and they decide they're going to do that. They haven't built the business to sell, so they're going to get 10 cents on the dollar and they're going to outlive their money. You know what I mean? It's like, you can't— you got to think, you got to get strategic on this and think about that exit strategy and reverse engineer so you can actually have something worth selling, right? And worth working in, both.

Man, like I say, man, you dropped some nuggets on us today, Richard, man. You really did. I appreciate you coming on the show. Before we leave, Matt, where can we follow you on your social media and find your books and your coaching program?

Well, you can always find me on LinkedIn or Facebook. That's really the only two I have right now. Sharpenthespiritcoaching.com, you can go there. You can get my book on Amazon, Escape the Owner Prison, Richard Walsh. You go on Amazon and get that. And look, I'm going to make it even easier because we're on the CJ Moneyway Show. If your listeners go to sharpenthespiritcoaching.com go to my contact page, send me a one-sentence email, said, hey, I saw you on CJ's show, I'd love to get a free copy of your audiobook Escape the Honor Prison. Poof, I'll send it to him. How about that?

That's cool, man. I appreciate that. So am I a part of the audience too? Could I go there? I appreciate it, Rich. Hey, so, uh, in closing, man, is there anything else that you would like to share? Any upcoming projects that you have going on? Anything before we get out of here?

Last thing I have, I've just launched startupcoachingcall.com. If you're a startup, if you're just starting the business, you have an idea to start a business, you're in your first year, I'm doing a live coaching call every Monday evening, 7:30 Eastern. It's a subscription. It's only $99 a month. And you'll get stuff like you and I just did. I'm solving problems, answering questions. It's live. Okay. It's gonna be every Monday night. Of guests and everything else would be really awesome. So if you're looking to launch and you want to increase the probability of success, startupcoachingcall.com. Go there, go to the webpage, read all about it, figure it out, subscribe if you want to get going. It'll really help you do the business right from the very beginning.

Oh, okay. Well, you heard it here, Startup Coaching Call every Monday night with my man Richard Walsh. If you want to learn the business side, the technical side, I would want to know how to do an exit plan for your business when you started, he is the man to tune into. You have been listening to the CJ Moneyway Show, and we outta here. Peace.

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