How To Break Stagnation In Life and Build A Winning Legacy With Frankie Russo #207

Welcome back, everybody, to unemployable with Jeff Duden. If you grew up in a family with purpose operating a homeless shelter, crashed once along with his mortgage business in 2008, including entering recovery, and crashed again in 2017 with a divorce. And through the challenges, learned the secret of business success by unleashing innovation through imagination and learning to love your weird. And today are a globally recognized thought leader, speaker, incredible business builder and author. Your name can only be Frankie Russo.

Welcome. Am I allowed to curse?

Is that. Yeah, absolutely.

Okay. Okay, good. Well, damn.

Did you not like it? Did you not like it?

I was gonna say, well, damn, Jeff, I don't. I can't wait to hear what I have to say after all that.

Yeah, well, you know, now expectations are high.

But.

But expectations should be high. I mean, expectations should be high because I've consumed a lot of your content. I've really enjoyed it. I. You've got a hot take. And I know that love you're weird is not like, out and ready and available yet, but I've. I've heard you talk about the concepts and. And I think they're great. But here. Well, so here's the deal.

Just the book isn't out yet.

Got it. Yeah. The movement. So look, so here's the opener. How does loving your weird help get people unstuck from their current state or condition?

Oh, man, great question. So I call stuck. Good.

Because it's the only one I wrote. Okay, that's 55 minutes on that.

When I think of stuck, the word that I. I usually go to is stagnation. And stagnation is one of those words that is more universal for people because a lot of people haven't recognized or even organizations that they're stuck. But almost everybody can resonate with stagnation. Now, through the journey, you. You can sometimes realize you're more stuck than you are. But the first horseman of the stagnation spiral that I call it is denial. So first off, that means you barely can see it without somebody helping you. Then you have status quo. You've got silos, which could be inside of your life, could be inside your business. You've got rigid thinking and processes, and then you've got this disengagement that's either creeping or full blown. So how do we get from that, out of that into something else? And what does love your weird have to do with it? All right, so let me take you on a journey down the ladder with the top is breaking free of stagnation. All right, I'm Going to take you down the ladder, and we're going to land on Love your weird. Is that cool?

Yes, sir.

All right, here we go. So, stagnation spiral. These things when we're in these stagnation places, they. The only way you break out of that, when things start to curve down, whether it's revenue, whether it's relationship, it doesn't matter. You have to create an inflection point to hijack that downward curve. And so what I've done over the years is I've developed an inflection point hijacker. It's called the infinity growth loop. And the growth loop is really important because you can't just have love. You're weird and automatically be out of stagnation or automatically have what I call continuous growth. Continuous growth requires an operating system. That operating system is called the infinity growth loop. And it's. It's essentially a loop of getting honest about the problem, getting curious and imaginative about the solution, and then collaborating outside of the boundaries, outside of the silos. Now, here's where Love youe Weird comes in, Jeff. Most of these loops, frameworks, flywheels, they're very difficult to be continuous. And there's a reason for that, because they require a tremendous amount of power to make them continuous. And that's why so many times people see these frameworks, they see these. These flywheels, and they don't stick. They try them once, they don't stick. And there's a reason for that. And that's because they don't have the fuel required to fuel that loop. And it turns out that what fuels this loop for this inflection point is the collective genius of every person in the organization, or if it's an individual, they're genius. Now, this creates a problem, Jeff, because many people don't identify as a genius. And so all the time I work with people that they love the loop, they're excited about this, they're in. And then I tell them about this genius thing, and they're like, well, man, I'm not a genius. And so a lot of the work I've done is helping people uncover from both science and intuition that there is a genius inside of us that's trapped and that's it's been conditioned out of us, but that genius is still in there. This is where the weird comes in. First off, I spell love your weird the normal way, because if I spelled it the way I want to spell it, nobody would know what the hell it means, the way I want to spell it. And the Way I spell it once I'm in the room with someone is the way it was originally spelled. W, Y, R, D. And it had a very different meaning too. So what happened was you have Shakespeare, who changed the word fundamentally with the Weird sisters. He's the one that spun it out into this negative connotation. And look, I got nothing against Shakespeare, but weird got caught in the mix. The original word weird meant the power to control or influence your fate, destiny, and my personal favorite, supernatural qualities. This is straight out of the old English dictionary. So I was already on this Love youe Weird Journey, which we'll get into in a minute. And then I accidentally found out about this wyrd and it was the best gift that was ever given to me. And the reason it was a gift is because the correlation between that thing that you've been hiding, the thing that used to be innate in you at 5 years old, that weird kid, there is a direct correlation to that as an adult that is tied to unlocking your genius that is necessary to go up the ladder, through the loop, to unstuck and to limitless growth.

When you talk about going back to that five year old, and I've heard you talk about it several times, you know, I, I really resonated with it because, you know, your, your spouse, your partner, your, your best friends, they know you're weird. Like, they, like, like when you get unfiltered or you go back to, and you go with your high school buddies, it's like time, like you're this corporate person or it's whatever you've done in your life and then you go back with this group of people and all of a sudden, man, you're in middle school again. And, and, and they, people know and they're like, remember when you did this? Remember when you did that? And man, it has this way, like it's, it's kind of like a funeral. When you go to a funeral while you're there and you're listening to people talk about this person and their life and the things that they did, and then, you know, you get connected with the finality of your own existence and you start looking around thinking, well, how many years until I'm in the box and I'm not, I'm not in the audience, right? And you have this temporary perspective shift. And it's the same way when you go and you get around the people that know you're weird. Like they, they, they. Yeah, and then you go back and you go back into your professional life and then you get and then you kind of forget all of that kind of stuff. But what you're. Is that inside of companies and organizations, you know, being authentic enough to unleash that in front of people without fear of retribution. Retribution or judgment, and be able to say things. And one of the things I heard you say, what I like so much, was when you're doing a brainstorming session, don't take action items or decisions out of it. Just make it a brainstorming session. You can get as weird and wild as you want to, which, you know, is expansive thinking and all that kind of stuff. And. And I. So absolutely. That connection between our youngest memory of ourselves and then who we are today and when. When we. When we tie that boundary or we. When we make that reconnection, it changes the way you think about things. So I can only think that doing that in an intentional way can change the way that you think about your business. And imagine.

Imagine 10,000 people stepping into that. The power of that. And what's interesting, Jeff, is that it's a very, very simple unlock at the bottom of this. The whole love your weird thing is super simple. And it's one word, permission. You see, all of us were into something at 5 years old. Like, for me, it was an astronaut, cowboy, inventor, and a TV preacher all at the same time, right? That's weird. Nobody really caught that. They weren't getting on board, like, go play soccer. Like, play on the students, do something else. And my parents were really good about creating a container where I could be that. I had labs in the basement, all this other stuff. So I kept my weird for a long time, and in some ways, I always kept it. But it got real dim. You know, some people, it's completely squashed out, and it doesn't mean that the kid's not in there. But giving permission to it is key. Now, that doesn't just mean, oh, we're going to be playful or we're going to be quirky, or I'm just going to be whoever I am, because that's cool, too. I mean, what happens with your old friends, like you said, like, going back to middle school, is that in that setting, you feel like you have permission to be that.

Right?

And that's why it feels so freaking good. And I'm not taken away from that is an element that creates a great culture at a company, all right? But going even deeper, there is a supernatural quality that's baked into us that has nothing to do with conditioning. In fact, conditioning is what squashes it, right? Because we at five we're not. We don't even know that it's weird. At 5, the Make Believe that we do then the ideas we have then the imagination we have then is normal and permissible until you get to school. And I'm not crapping on schools, but at school we have an objective. And that objective is to count something, to read something, to see something so that you will be better prepared for the factory. Right? That's the facts. All right. And so of course we're going to slowly stop worrying about these childish imagination and move away from it. And what I have found that's a super powerful unlock for each person is I've actually so love your weird became this thing after I was a 10 year journey on why. So up until weird, I was the why guy. Until somebody walked up to me about three or four years ago and said, dude, you cannot be the little Simon Sinek. You've got to go all in on the weird. And, and I was like, look, I've been trying to like do everything I can to make my weird not show up because I was afraid of like what people would think of me. The same thing everybody thinks. So I'm sitting here hiding in a business suit and like accolades and all this perfect stuff. And it was the divorce in fact that broke me and burned my pedestal to the ground. And this is right after I wrote a book called Master your Purpose. Okay, so this is a kind of crazy mofo you invited to your show. And, and so all this is happening. The Love youe Weird thing came from this like crazy retreat called On Site where you can't say what you do for a living. You're. You're around people that nobody has their phones. And it's this journey into the inner child. And I'm thinking this is a whole personal thing. But on the second to last date, it struck me like lightning that my, my holdback that's keeping me stuck is that I don't love my weird. Which goes beyond accepting you're weird, by the way. It wasn't until I started implementing that at my companies that something profound happened. We became this fastest growing company in America, 60x growth in three years, and then sold to a Fortune 500. And one of the main differences was that one thing. And so it, it, I was like, I can't ignore this. Even though my, my adult self is like, yeah, why it's safe Art A why breaking Y It's super safe. You know, and those are good books and they're good things. But I realized the why is is not enough without the weird. So then I went all in on weird thinking I was done with Y. And this is where it got interesting, Jeff. This last 12 months, I've. I've discovered a formula, and it's G equals WW squared. All right.

Okay.

We're going to pinpack that, but the short description is it's genius equals weird times Y.

Okay, I noticed that.

You want to go from here? I can. I can. We can do the formula on you if you want.

No, sure, yeah, I'd love to do that. That would be great. Your work seems to vacillate seamlessly between personal and business. It's almost like there's not a wall there. Is that intentional?

That's inevitable. Okay, that's inevitable. It's not intentional. It is inevitable. I. I don't see a scenario where it can't. And I think the people that think it can are still living in denial. And there's more work to be done, in my opinion.

If your authentic self is not coming out, that's just not going to work.

No. I had so many containers that I lived in. That's why I got divorced. You know, as much as I would have wanted to blame my ex wife, the fact is, is I walked. I volunteered to have nine versions of myself and thought that's how you master it, is that you be all things to all people and whatever people need. And like, I could be whatever I needed. I was one person at recovery and I was one person at work, and I was one person at the house, and I was one person here and one person on the field. And so I. I literally went up when I inventoried it. I had at least nine different versions of myself through the divorce. That is not the. That's not the answer.

Did. Through the divorce, did your give a damn just go completely away and that allowed you to see this?

100%. I. I got set free. And I'm going to tell you, Jeff, it was through a ton of pain. A ton of pain. And a life of, like, being glossy and a life of, like, being buttoned up because I thought I was supposed to, but it never fitting and seeing all these standards out there that I could never fit, which created lies, it created dishonesty that I couldn't even see because it was so sophisticated. It wasn't the obvious stuff, right, like, you know, cheating on your wife and, you know, doing scandals and stupid stuff like that. It was the little stuff. And that's what gets us. It's not the big stuff. It's the small denial of self in the name of whatever story I'm telling myself that I should. And so, yes, I, that's when I say burnt the pedestal to the ground. That's what I did. And today I have to actively burn that pedestal to the ground every day. And it is hard because pedestals grow themselves sometimes, especially in our positions, and I have to tear them down. Otherwise somebody else will eventually.

Yeah, look, we, you know, you get up on stage, you do a lot of speaking, you're very successful at it. You now you're reading your own press clippings because everybody's clapping for you and they want to sign the books and all that kind of stuff. And, and then, you know, and then just then you're, okay, can you come on this podcast? Can you. And all of a sudden, you know, you're, you're building, you're, you're allowing yourself to be built in something constructed by others.

That's right. And it's a setup.

Yeah.

Look, the fact is, in this world, you have to be in on it. You've gotta do pr. You got to do all these things. The only problem is when you forget it's a game, right? So I tell people all the time. Some people like, oh, man, that doesn't seem authentic. I'm like, first of all, my authenticity happens in a room with 500 to a thousand people or five people, I don't really care. But it doesn't. I'm not. My platform is not social media. My platform is people. And so if I use social media and PR on the crap to like, get to that objective, great. But the second I forget that's a game is when you start to get sideways again. It's a frickin game. And look, you got to play the game because it's fucking America.

Yeah. Wow. Yeah, it is a game. And so, you know, in, in my generation, we're very reluctant and reticent to put ourselves out there on social media. I don't post personally or we have a great team here. And they're like, but you got to sprinkle in some personal stuff. You got to show some personality. You got to do this, that, and the other thing. But like, our business content is good and it's consistent and it's helpful and it, it does well and it delivers the message to the avatars that we' delivers the message to the people that we're trying to speak to and that we're trying to speak into. So it all works and stuff like that. But at the End of the day, you know, you know, take. Give or take social media. I. I would leave it. I mean, I would. I would leave it.

Yes.

Yeah. And I throw. I would.

Yeah, I throw.

Throw myself into a book and a fishing boat.

We could leave phones all together.

I'd leave them 100%. Yeah. I was listening to Simon Cowell was doing an interview, and, you know, he doesn't even have a phone now. He has people, right? Because I have a phone in the car. I don't. I don't answer anything after 5 o'.

Clock.

I don't even have a phone. Somebody has to call. I use somebody else's phone if I've got to call somebody. I kind of find that hard to believe. But, you know, the.

But, you know, like you said, you got to have a setup to pull that off. Yeah, he's off the grid. But it's a phenomenal way of do. Of, like, looking at it from, like, what he should be doing in his position. Yeah, phenomenal. It takes a lot. A lot of courage, and it takes a lot of, like, discipline to do that. And I'm. And. And I'm still in that journey, you know, and it ebbs and flows, depending on demand and depending on, like, how big your team is, you know, My team used to be 100 plus, and now it's basically 10 robots.

Right.

Which is pretty good. Yeah, that too. My 10 robots are about as good as a thousand employees, but that's a different story.

Yeah, well, I've got that on the list. I know that you had mentioned that you were. You were. You know, of course, as we all are digging into AI and. But I do have a question. So is it genius equals your Y times your weird.

It is.

All right, do you want to unpack that for us? I'm horrible. Is this. Now is this math or geometry? What are we doing here?

This is math from another planet.

Okay.

I don't know what this is. So, yeah, don't bring it to your geometry teacher and be like, does this compute? Like. No, this is a hashtag to look like Einstein. Okay? So G equals WW squared. So let's talk about the Y first for you. All right, Jeff, do you mind saying how old you're.

I don't mind saying I'm 57.

57. All right, cool. What would you say, And I want you to tell me from a business standpoint. All right, Nothing soft. If I was going to call you today, because I need the thing that you're the most expert at and good at in Business, what would you say that you're an expert at from a business standpoint?

Franchising.

Perfect. All right. And when you say franchising, is there anything else associated with that? Like just franchising in general or scaling franchises?

Scaling franchises through intentional informed leadership.

Hold on, don't give me all the gooey gooey yet. I just want to know. Okay, yeah, scaling, Scaling would be franchise. It's not scaling, scaling. You're a scaling franchise expert, right?

Yes.

That's what you do. You help people scale franchises.

Yes, we do it for ourselves, but yes. And I, and I have helped. Yes.

You could help.

Absolutely.

Could you help me do it?

I could.

Great. Then you help people scale franchises. That's what Jeff does.

Yes.

That's why you called Jeff. Let's just say that. Right. That's what you're an expert at at the end of the day, right? Would you say?

Yes, sir.

All right. All right. So a lot of people scale franchises. A lot of people scale franchises. Not a million. Right. But there's, there's other people scaling franchises. You might know some of them. So this is where it gets interesting because either somebody is under indexed on their weird or they're under indexed on their why. You struck me as a guy that knows his why. You know what I'm saying? That doesn't struggle with the why part. This is what we do. We've got a framework. This is going to happen. It's repeatable. We are experts at that. You have a problem with that, you're going to call us. All right, So I want you to think of this as like a Trojan horse, this whole genius equation. And the. And so on the outside of the horse is the why. Because you got a king. Now, kings are called CEOs. And he's up all night and he's worried about something and he's only going to bring a horse in if it makes sense on what he's worried about. Now, how you're going to scale something that's sustainable, like a franchise, which in the word franchise includes sustainability. Basically we're thinking that, right? So how am I going to sustainably grow something or scale a franchise? I'm worried about that. I'm staying up at night. I need somebody to help me with that. For third quarter of 2025, I'm pulling that horse in. Right. That's a no brainer. And you can articulate how long you been doing this whole scaling franchises then?

25 years.

25 years. So you're a 25 year expert at that. I'M pulling that horse in. All right, now, where people go sideways is they oversell the little people inside the horse. Okay. Or undersell it in some cases. But in most cases, I have found they're either overselling that because I ask people, are you, what are you an expert on? They're like communication or fun or, you know, helping people come together or collaboration. I'm like, wrong answer. Okay. What do you do? Like, what's your business card say Kind of thing. And that's something I've realized I was trying to cram everything into. Why? Why? Can just be. Why do I call Jeff? Okay, right. That simple. You are going to get your purpose out of the two of them coming together. Okay. And that genius and purpose are almost the same thing. So. All right, cool. So that's you. But a lot of people do that, so if you had to tell me, well, let's do this. Jeff, what were you into at 5, 6 years old? Kind of make believe we talking about here? Hmm.

Trouble, for one. Of course, man. I, I, you know, as I was preparing for this, I was thinking about that. I don't remember doing much at five. I mean, I played, I know we played. I grew up in Chicago. I played a lot of basketball, street basketball. You know, we played football. So I would say it was sports in general is what I was doing.

And what did you like about playing sports back then?

Man, I loved the competitiveness of it. I love to run, I love to tackle. I loved contact, so I liked contact sports.

Why do you like the contact?

I don't know.

You liked it back then, though, right?

I liked what?

I'm sorry, like, you, you like, y' all were doing contact football back then?

Yeah, football. I mean, we were, we were playing football and basketball, you know, but like tackle basketball and stuff like that.

Basketball with elbows. Yeah.

And, you know, even at the younger age, you know, tackling each other. We lived in Chicago, so, like, yeah, we tackle each other into the snow bank at that age. We were, we would sled a lot. You know, we'd sled around and, and do, do stuff. But yeah, all boy for sure.

Yeah. And so you like the competitive part, you like the contact part. Anything else that comes up when you're thinking about playing make believe. Did you ever imagine being like one of the superstars or did that make you feel a certain way?

You know, I was a big Chicago Bears fan. I always thought maybe I would play safety for the Bears. I was a big Doug Plank fan.

Why safety? Just because you like the guy or.

Probably because I like the guy and I like the, I don't know.

Position.

Yeah, I like the position, but I also like Lynn Swan. I was, you know, I like to catch the ball. I ended up playing college football as a receiver, tight end. So, you know, so that, so the dream didn't die. I mean, but yeah, from a very young age, I, I remember and I was one of the younger kids in our friend group and you know, one of the older high school kids was like the quarterback and I was, you know, and I, I, you know, we were, I remember being like the favorite receiver even though I was younger. And I, that's one thing that I remember is just like catching the ball and running and you know, not being able to get tackled and things like that. So. Yeah, but I, but I like the contact. I mean I was definitely, definitely into, you know, but I think, I don't know, I think most, most, most young boys at that age are into, you know, rolling around.

Yeah, no doubt. Okay, so let's take that for a second and then let's go into one more little piece here. And this is important. So you've been doing this 25 years?

Yes.

So I want you to tell me if you had to put it into one, two or three words, if there was a key that you found that is unsuspecting. Okay. And if you use that key, you can essentially unlock scaling franchises in one or two words. That is surprising. What have you found that you didn't expect and most other people don't expect? What is that key?

Clarity and coaching.

And when you say coaching, you mean like kind of mentoring people?

You know, it's, it's every, even the most capable people come from backgrounds where they have the curse of knowledge. And there's usually one way to run a franchise and everybody.

Franchise.

Yeah, it's a free, you know, there's one way to run it, but everybody tries to bend it to what makes them most comfortable. So it's a change management project really in taking a franchise owner, giving absolute clarity around the priorities of things that are going to make the business go. What it like if there's 22 KPIs, like these are them. Here's the, here's the three levers for each one. Here's what you need to do. And then working with that franchise owner and letting them know like giving them permission that they don't have to be good at everything, but they do need to pick a role that lends their is leans into their unique ability and highest value. And then they need to be able to build a team around them to make sure that everything gets done with excellence. So it's. It's really a coaching thing. So what does that lead to? That leads to relationship equity. That leads to servant leadership. That leads to, you know, getting people to change who are under stress to change the word from I have to do this to I get to do this. It's a. It's a. It's a. Yes.

You nailed it. It's clarity.

Okay.

The surprising unlock that people don't suspect that makes the way you scale franchises unique is clarity. Because mentoring is a core value for you. And I have a feeling it's just a part of how you do everything. The power of mentoring. We'll talk more about that if we want to get into the limitless drug, if we have time. So let's go up the ladder. And I'm going to say that the bottom of this ladder is clarity. Okay, so you're actually an expert at clarity, but nobody calls for clarity experts in the yellow Pages. Right. For those kids out there, Yellow pages is a book that we use before. Search that you. Anyway, so. So anyway. Clarity. Okay. Now I'm wondering if. I think we're going to have to go down the ladder a bit and then we'll go back up. So let's talk about what is the first step towards getting clarity?

Specification. Being specific. Specificity. Perfect.

And before specificity, what do you think has to happen?

Knowledge. You got to know what to do before you can create specificity around it.

And to get this knowledge, what has to happen?

There has to be experience. Somebody has to have experience. Either a business that I've run, which was my first national franchise, we built, or acquiring businesses that had the expertise, operating a business model that then we were able to wrap a franchise system around.

I got it. Sounds like we're talking about willingness to learn. If I'm willing to learn, that's actually the first step, then I can go get the knowledge. Then I can turn that knowledge into specificity. That can then turn into experience, which then turns into clarity. Would you agree with that?

I would.

Excellent. So that's the bottom third of our ladder. Okay. Because we're about to bring clarity into franchising. But for right now, willingness to learn is the first step in this process. If you don't have that, there's nothing you will fail as a franchise. Yes or no?

Absolutely.

Excellent. All right, so willingness to learn, getting the knowledge from someone, turning that knowledge into more specificity, then becomes an experience that you Own. Which then results in clarity. Now once you have clarity, Jeff, what happens?

Well, then we build systems.

Excellent. And when you build systems, what happens?

Then we document them. Ah.

What'S a funner word for that? Then you have repeatable process. Maybe.

Sure. Yeah. I mean, we, we.

What we have to do is one of the problems. So yeah, I'm going to include documenting in systems, but we have to turn.

It into education is what you know there. So once you get the clarity, then you have it. But then now you have to transform that into an education platform that you can.

Now we found. Now we found the mentoring others. Then when you have a repeatable process, what happens, Jeff, when you have a.

Well, then we can, then we can deploy. We can invite people in to use it.

Yes, that's when we bring it. Let's say we bring it to the stakeholders, which is going to include users, it's going to include restaurant goers, it's going to include patients, members, whatever. Right. Bring it to. Let's call it the customer. And once we bring it to the customer and it's a repeatable system, what can happen?

Then the customers can execute the model and build a business for themselves.

Interesting. So once they, once the, they bring it to the customers. Let's, let's bring this into. Okay, so for you, what kind of franchise we even talk about here?

Now we do property service. So we have a kitchen, bath and closet. We got a fencing, cleaning, home services.

And things like that.

All home services. Yep.

Oh, you bring it to the. Okay, so that's, that is the stakeholder. And then the stakeholder is able to. Well, because I brought it. I. I brought it to the stakeholder here, bring it to the customers. So let's assume that the customer is the guy ordering the fence. Okay.

Okay.

Because this is not. This is. You're bringing all these other people to the journey. Right. And so assuming that in this. I'm going to tell you where in a second I already brought in your stakeholders. And then from that created a repeatable process, then we bring it to their customer. Then what happens?

Well, then we make a sale and we deliver a product or service.

Growth happens. And once growth happens for your franchises, then what happens?

Well, they, they grow and they create wealth and expand.

After growth is scale, and then after scale is wealth. And what's after wealth?

H. Fulfill optionality or fulfillment is optionality.

Kind of freedom.

Freedom.

Let's call it freedom freedom. Because I don't know if wealth leads to fulfillment, but it does lead to freedom. Right, but what does freedom lead to.

Fulfillment?

I like you. And a person who's done this process, if you had all the freedom, you already got the wealth and success, what happens next?

Well, I think. I think that's a choice, yes.

And what choice is that for you?

For me specifically.

For you specifically.

Well, for. For me, that means that I have more choice to do what I want to do, to focus on the things that I want to do.

And what would that be?

Well, you know, I'm building a great franchise platform. That's great. We're building an education business or franchisors so other people can do with excellence what we've done with excellence.

Jeff, what if we called it legacy?

Okay. Yeah, there you go.

Because I think that's what. I think that's what you would do when you get there, and I think you're going to get there soon, and I want to make sure you know where you're headed.

Okay.

All right. And then after limit. After legacy, we get to limitlessness or whatever we want. We can. We can keep going up the ladder, but let's stop, all right?

Because now I want to get to the point where I'm a genius.

Okay, good. Well, it takes a second. Okay.

It's been a long time, and I'm not. I haven't been able to find that.

Trying to pull your genius out, bro. It's not like you just, like, automatically know this. I'm not a wizard, all right?

I'm just. I. I just doubt it's in there, but come on, show me.

I love it. Jeff. Nice punch in the gut. Ready? Okay, here's the deal. So the thing about you is that you are unique because you know that if you have a willingness to learn that can be built on with knowledge that goes into specificity, that then becomes experience, that becomes clarity. All right? The clarity leads to systems that allow you to mentor others. In your case, I. E. The. The person building fences, whatnot, whatever, that becomes a repeatable process that allows you to then bring it to customers. When you bring it to customers, you have the opportunity to growth, okay? To have growth. Then you get to scale, which is where you live now. Above scale, you get wealth and you get freedom, and you get legacy. But you live in scale. And what makes your genius, Jeff, you, is the intersection of your why, which is scaling, okay? Franchises is your why, and your weird, which is this deep, deep willingness to learn. And at that intersection where willingness to learn meets the deep desire to franchise. At scale of franchise. That's your genius, Jeff. And I think you know what I'm talking about? Because when you are in moment where you're with somebody at ground zero and they're willing to learn, and we are both on a journey to get to scaling your franchise, is there any better fucking feeling for you, Jeff?

No. No. I think, I think you nailed it. Yeah, Love it.

And what's interesting, Jeff, about that is that one of the things about your obsession as a kid is that you were constantly learning the game. You were constantly willing to lean in. You. You knew you wanted to be like these other things. You were willing to make contact through the hard work in order to own the game and scale your sport. Deal. And it that you stayed willing to learn the game. And that, my friend, is your genius.

Well, what's, what's interesting is there's. Now that you mention it, the one thing that you left out is I was a voracious reader. Like I read everything, like as a bad student, but I was a voracious read. Like I read every. I mean, I would run through 25 Hardy's Boy books and then whatever it.

Was inside of you, just.

Yeah, man. And I would order magazines and just to read them and read them and read them. So I mean, I just, I always love to read. And. And there's a, you know, there's a curiosity there. Yeah, there's a curiosity.

Not willing to learn. It's obsession to learn.

Yeah, absolutely.

And where that intersects with. With franchise scaling, that's your genius, Jeff. As long as you stay at that intersection, you're unstoppable. Your growth is evergreen.

Love it.

There you go. Yeah, it takes a minute. Look, I'm not a wizard.

Yeah, right.

You didn't think I was going to bring it together, did you?

No, no, I was just. I was just saying, like, I know I'm not a genius, so I didn't know.

Oh, okay. I didn't know that was a locker room taunt or something.

No, I was. I knew you'd get there. I just didn't know that you could get there with me. Me.

Right. But there it is, Jeff, because genius has nothing to do with schooling. That's the first thing, right? Like you're a bad student. That's. That's the first indicator. Okay. Being a good student has nothing to do with the genius. In fact, school is what makes it come out like the genius thing. The science that I mentioned earlier was from NASA. And you may have heard me talk about this on one of the other podcasts, but the fact is, is that they. NASA had to Figure out in the space race, how do we become the most, you know, powerful superpower in the, in the world and stay a superpower, right? And they figured out we got to innovate. We got to innovate continuously, man. We got to be on this. And whether they. We made it to the moon or not, they had to do a bunch of shit to be like, making it to the moon. So it's just still freaking genius. They had. And I don't want to debate that. We can do that on another call. Anyway, so you got these. They had to create a test that could figure out who's a freaking genius, right? Who's the most divergent, most imaginative at a genius level. All right, great. Well, the test was so simple, they said, what if we gave it to kids? So they were like, they want to figure out, is this genius thing, this crazy powerful imagination, are you born with it or is it learned? So they gave it to 1600 kids, all different sample sizes in the United States. How many of them you think tested at that genius level on this NASA.

Test out of 1600? Did you say?

Yeah. Would you say. And you can give it as a percentage whatever way your works?

Three percent.

Three percent. Perfect. Yeah. Because they're five year olds, right?

Yeah.

What if I told you it was 98%?

Really?

98%. Now, they were excited too, and surprised. So they said, hey, let's do this again. Let's make it longitudinal. They brought all the kids back at 10 years old. What do you think the percentage was then?

50?

30 out of 100,000 adults taking this test, Jeff, that's when you got close because it was 2%. 2%. The same people that all test as geniuses at 5 or at 2%.

Hey, look, this world we've designed, a world that sucks the life out of us.

The good news is the reason we were a genius back then is the conditions were ripe for it because we had permission. And so our job is to not wait for permission. It's to give ourselves permission and in turn, create a ground surge that gives other people around us permission to create a movement that allows for the genius to flourish, be protected and aligned for continuous growth.

Frankie, I believe you're remarried and that you've got a blended family with six kids.

I do.

And so how do you. How do you use your work and communicate with your kids around this stuff? Are they. Are they interested in it? Do you have. Do you have any. Any experiences that you could share that might help people with their kids, giving them permission to maintain Their creativity and their weirdness, telling them it's okay kids.

Jeff, most people know me for fast growing company. Truth is I'm also fast growing family in America. It's blended, six kids, nothing funny. But listen, it is way easier to help you and other adults love their weird than to continue to create a container where the kids can. It's freaking nuts. And it's in my face. My wife, if we get in a fight, she'll throw my body at work, at me. She'll be like, oh, you're really loving your weird now. Why don't I video this and everybody will see you. I'm like, damn it. So I get my, my work thrown back in my face all the time. But it is hard. Like there's two parts to it. One, one of my kids is 10 year old twin boy and he feels uncomfortable wearing the love your weird T shirt because people have told him that, you know, he's, that that's bad. And so he's already there with that concept. Right. But that's like identifying with the new Shakespeare version of weird is not a priority. Actually, you definitely don't have to look weird to love your weird, which is a big thing that I try to instill. But the thing is about like what makes it hard as a parent is that it's freaking messy. You know, my wife calls it the messy middle. I hate the mess. I'm ocd. I struggle with the mess. But over the course of my life I've realized that without the mess, which painful and can sometimes look like failure, we get nowhere. Like the one thing I've that I try to help teach my kids and I'm not great at it. I just try to show it because it happens, which is failure. Failure happens. The difference between somebody who's done anything great in this world and anybody else is that the person that did something great in this world, they don't think failure is something that just happens. They know it's a non negotiable part of the process.

Right?

But letting them fail, letting them make a mess, letting them draw on the walls, letting them do their weird thing is not that easy as a parent.

Right.

You know, and it has challenged us. But I'm so glad I have this north because I don't want them to grow up and me to get old and them to ever feel like they couldn't be anything they believed they could be. Because that's the thing, Jeff. Whether you were into the Chicago Bears or whether you were into sports or whatever it is, it doesn't matter. The one thing that was consistent, Jeff, is that back then you actually thought you could be a Chicago Bear. Am I right?

Oh, absolutely.

You absolutely believed it. So whether you were the mermaids and astronauts and Chicago Bears or world wrestling does not matter. That's one thing that was consistent and is so important in today's world as we move into a world where AI is changing everything and shit that we could not believe would happen two years ago is now everyday thing, right? Put in a line of text, all of a sudden you got a movie, right? No extra thing there it is like that crap didn't exist, right? And whether you like AI or hate AI, it doesn't change the fact that there is only one mindset in this new world of work, this new era. To go into this then believing again that you can see something that is invisible. Believing in anything is possible because we're looking at it. We're looking at it. And that's the ultimate part of the weird that's so important, Jeff, is that part of us that actually believed it was possible. And now is the time when you should go back to that as quickly as possible.

You built some great companies. 360 IA, which looks like it was a auto industry advertising platform. Potenza, which was eight times on the Inc. 500 5000, which was also marketing related, look like tech. Marketing. Marketing technology. What do you see today as the future of marketing and what work are you doing with this new world of work? What is the new world of work to you? What can we expect?

What.

What's coming down the road and what are you doing about it?

Here's what's coming. I'm going give you the short story on the marketing and the long story on the new world of work.

Got it.

Short story on the marketing. We are going into, as far as advertising is concerned, a murky moment, okay? Because for a while now, search has been the 800 pound gorilla.

That's right.

Okay. And generative AI is a replacement for search, but it's not a replacement for AdWords. So that's the first thing that everybody needs to get in touch with. Especially if you're out there right now listening and you sell it. Because I used to sell millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars of that stuff. In fact, the tech. So just to correct you, Jeff, Potenza was five times on Inc. 5000, okay? We had 360 IA was three times. So it's eight together. So it's three times. That was the one that was like the number One fast growing company in Louisiana. That's when I got into the tech piece.

Got, got it.

And we'll cover that later. But anyway, that, that was this tech and it got into the early stages of this stuff. But you know, the biggest thing right now with, with anything with AI is that fundamentally the most important language is not English language, not into the stuff. The language that you need to be focused on right now is the language that a lot of us are just like, oh, I'm gonna let somebody else do that. And that language is code. Code is, is the most important language because what's changing right now right underneath us is that everyone will be able to build their own software. I built softwares over a cup of coffee now, Jeff, by having one AI prompt another AI. And you don't have to be good at prompts, just get one to prompt the other. I call it remixing with friends. And it's remixing eight or nine of these AIs together and not just staying stuck in Grok or ChatGPT or that really starts to simulate the architecture of what's coming. And what's coming is Agentic. And Agentic is going to flatline front end software as we as we know it. Agents are flatlining search. Agentic will flatline front end software. Software will still exist, but it will only exist as good as you are as being generative engine optimized. Plus so easy for the Agentic folks and the Agentic team and the Agentic people all living inside these robots of networks to access that core thing that you offer. So my suggestion to people is if you're going into SaaS, you know, make damn sure that you are confident on what the genius core is of that, that deal and make sure it is so easy to connect with anything out there that's looking. But because all we're going to say is, is we want some sense of direction and the Agentic will go update. It's. That's the new world, right? And that's what's happening right now. And I think not everybody is wise to that.

No, that's. Yeah, I was recently connected with somebody and we're going to have him on the podcast. But his work is all around executives using a myriad of AI as thought leadership partners. So basically we, I want to call a meeting or I want to call one of my other executives. What do you think about this? What do you think about that? This is replacing that thought leadership and you know, and building it. And of course it's going to be incorporating everything you've already thought about. And so I just got the book. I saw it come in and I was just introduced to this guy. But I met somebody at a meeting in Chicago and he was a high, high level executive at one of the largest, you know, tax firms in the world. And you know, he, he was bringing this to his exec. He's a partner and he's kind of on the way out and he's just like, this is the most incredible, thoughtful stuff that I've seen in my career. I've adopted it and I'm bringing it in. He goes, it's going to be my parting gift to my firm as I get out of the firm. But, but yeah, I mean, it's, it's. You can't let other people just do it. I mean, you just unfortunately, like, like.

It'S like that to my son or my uncle or my, the, the techie people that. That's the first mistake.

Yeah, yeah, it's. It's almost like it's on you. You know, when Salesforce came out, I was an early adopter to Salesforce. We. I went to one of the first dream forces out there. There was only 3, 000 people there. Now I think it's half a million or, you know, last time I went, it was like 300, 000 people out there. When I was there, you know, it's 2004, Marc Benioff was just walking around in the room. There was top shelf liquor, lamb kebabs between every one of my little fingers. I mean, it was just. Everything was top shelf. He was, you know, he knew where they were going. And. But like at the end of the day, I mean, you. Comparatively to AI, I mean, and it was innovative and it was groundbreaking and it was, it was not no code, but it was low code tools that you had inside of it. And. But it, it took forever for those things to develop and to integrate. And then they had their little app thing and all of that. But you know, at the end of the day, you know, and then I saw him the other day, it's like, hey, 60% of our code's written by AI now. And we only write the stuff because we kind of want to and.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah. So it's like, so like we, we can't just sit here as a business and say, well, let's see who wins between this software and that software. Because every week there's five more softwares that do more than that for cheaper. And you know, so at the end of the day, like who's ultimate. There's. There's a bunch of people. Yeah, they're becoming billionaires right now, but everybody's building it. Everybody, you know, any. And it's getting easier and easier. And then when there's.

There's zero room for like, oh, I found out this great idea. Look what this can do. Usually that. Jeff, that was a secret, right?

Yeah.

Did that. And nobody would figure out for 24 months.

Yeah, you are. You'd ride that for years. That's right.

Okay. And, you know, there's so many things I could say about AI. I think there's two things I want to leave everybody with. This is super important. Number one, assume that it is a species or. Or a person with the way that you show up with it versus a tool. Now, I'm not saying it's a species or a tool yet, but I'd rather live my life assuming it's a species and find out that it isn't than the other way around. Yeah, that's the first assumption. Now, that's good and bad, right? And you should be equally terrified as you are excited. That always hold on to both of those. But if you treat a treat AI like a person, it becomes normal. It becomes plain English. It becomes the more I give, the more curious I am, the better that relationship is. Straight up. So just be thinking about that and run down the rabbit hole, okay? Figure out where your guard. Guard rails are. Smash up against them. All you can use is copilot. I don't give a shit. Smash up against the edge of it. That's number one if you don't want to get left behind. And number two, do not underestimate the speed. So I'll give you this real quick before we wrap, Jeff. Number one, you think about this, okay? With Thomas Edison, he invented a light bulb. 1800s. It took 80 years, 80 years before 100 million households had electricity to run the bulb. Now, fast forward. Netflix got to 100 million households in three and a half years. Instagram got to 100 million households in two years. ChatGPT got to 100 million households in essentially five days. Five days. So that is the exponential speed of this that no one can underestimate, because we're thinking, oh, I get it. The Internet, right? It's a will dial up, it's an instant messenger, and we can send mail without a stamp. I get it. The Internet. And then 30 years later, my kids have a mental crisis when fortnight goes down. Right. In everything. Yeah, I can't live without it. We ain't we don't have 30 years, okay? But our bodies think we do. And so this is a. This is a call to arms, because this is one of this year, next year, the last years that you have an opportunity to put a stake in the ground. And that doesn't mean build AI it means use the out of it. And don't use it just for efficiencies, because that's like delivering pizza with a Ferrari. Right. What I want you to do is use it as a genius multiplier, which starts with figuring out what the hell your genius is.

Yeah.

Like we did with Jeff today. So there you go.

Perfectly said. I got a fastball for you. It'll only take a few seconds. Before that tell. Tell people where to get in touch with you.

Oh, this is easy. Go to your favorite AI and ask him about Frankie Russo.

Got it?

Got it. Rock chat. Claude. Deep seat. Manus. I don't care. Co pilot. Ask them.

Basketball. Right down the middle. If you had one sentence to make an impact in somebody's life, what would that be?

Don't flinch.

All right, Anything to add on that, or we're just going to leave it right there?

We're going to leave it right there.

Don't flinch. Got it?

Yep.

Don't flinch. Frankie Russo, you're amazing. Thanks for being on today.

Yeah, buddy. Appreciate you, man. As always, a pleasure. This was a good one.

Yeah. I appreciate you so much. You have a great day. Have a great weekend. This is Jeff Duden. We have been on the unemployable podcast with Frankie Russo. Thanks for listening.