Collapsing Time and Expanding Your Bottom Line With Ed O'Keefe

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I have got a secret to share with you. I know the future. The future is that this episode is going to kick ass. And I say that because I've already recorded it. And now I'm coming to you after having just had an amazing conversation with my guest today named Ed o'. Keefe. So I've known Ed for several years. I've met him in a mastermind when he was building his supplement business, which he's grown to a 50 million dollar a year business. And he did this after having been a successful entrepreneur in multiple other fields. And he's succeeded and failed. He also knows how to balance his life with a very, very busy business. I mean, he's the father of, I believe, seven children. So he and his wife, they've got a lot to manage there. But he seems to pull it off really, really well. Ed is a master at productivity and something that he calls and we're going to go into this time collapsing and leapfrog theory.

He is one of the most inspirational guys you'll meet and he's got such a good grasp on the entrepreneurial journey that quite frankly, during this call, I forget that you're there. I jump into this conversation just me picking Ed's brain and asking questions that I think you like. But I know that I wanted to know. And we go off on a few different tangents, but really the core of this is how to build from scratch and scale a very profitable business in competitive markets and know the real world things that you have to watch out for, but also how to take shortcuts. For instance, we start off the conversation in the first few minutes of me asking him to repeat a story about how to get into extremely valuable social circles using a cool little hack using attorneys that you probably never heard of. And I thought it was amazing. So I'm going to have him repeat that in just a second once more. This entire episode is so valuable if you're an entrepreneur or trying to be one. And I want you to listen to every minute. Now, if this is your first time listening to this show, if you're on the website, you can subscribe to the newsletter, but also if you're listening to this on itunes, click that little subscribe button so you don't miss a single episode at any time. If you ever want my contact information, if you want to send me an email with some feedback, guest suggestions, you can send that to ask bradakenrapbusiness.com now, last but not least, before we jump into Ed's show, I want to let you know I am officially accepting applications for a marketing intern and somebody that I can teach and help grow and can work with me on a brand new venture that is starting to take off. And there is a lot of room to grow here for somebody with the right attitude and some basic skill sets and the desire to learn and potentially earn. If you have any, if you want any more information on that, just send me an email to askbradakenwrapbusiness.com now, without any further ado, let's switch over to this awesome episode with Ed o'. Keefe. By the way, Ed is also the host of his own podcast which you need to go check out called the Ed o' Keefe show. So you can find that on itunes as well. But had to get that plug in before we intro him. Alright, let's bring Ed in on the line.

Okay, so let's welcome Ed o' Keefe to the show. Ed, how are you my friend?

Awesome, awesome, Brett. So, so excited to be here and be a part of your awesome community. Man, this is great stuff.

Yeah, dude, it's been a, it's been a long time coming. I know we've talked about this and you know, we just haven't had a chance to sit down and schedule this and I'm excited to just kind of pick your brain here and hear about some of the cool stuff you are doing now in addition to all the cool stuff you've done. I definitely have some questions I want to dive into as it revolves around jumping into a business that you are, you know, out of your comfort zone on and just doing what you call. I've heard you say this a million times, embracing the grind and pushing through and getting that going. But also you're doing some really cool new things and I want to talk about it, including your the Ed o' Keefe show podcast which you guys need to definitely go subscribe to on itunes. And this will be fun. I mean, as I mentioned in the introduction, Ed and I have known each other for several years ago. We met each other in a mastermind, which by the way, masterminds and events have been the single biggest thing that I've ever done to grow my business. Just strategic networking and understanding that everything is built around relationships.

So.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

Hey, you know, before we dive into a bunch of the, the backstory, I'm actually famous on my show for not going too much into the backstory.

Yeah.

Because it's like, all right, yeah, you were born a poor child in the Midwest, blah blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, it's. I like to jump into the meat of stuff. But I want to selfishly go back to about six months ago. We were at the Build Grow Scale event and you were on stage and you were recanting, I think some advice you got revolving networking and building your social circle or your business circle. And you were talking about using attorneys or lawyers strategically or somebody told you how to do this. Do you remember this conversation?

Yeah. I mean, I can give you, I can give you.

Yeah, I never forgot it. And I was like, I gotta get that back outta ed. Cause I was trying to take notes when you said that. And I love this kind of stuff. I love the art of networking and, and building this out. So repeat what you said.

Yeah. I think we're in a day and age that we have forgotten the art of going deep in relationships.

And it's unfortunate, it's unfortunate, but it's something that you just need to be aware of because I think we all do it. Especially now that Facebook allows us to have massive quantity of a lot of.

1 inch relationships where.

The people that I've studied and I talk about this in my book the Art of Time collapsing a whole chapter on leapfrogging your network. And you actually looked at your net worth as being your network.

And I hate saying the word network because some people might look at that as networking and, and it's got kind.

Of a bad connotation to it sometimes. Like you think of the consummate networker as the guy who's. Hey, how you doing? Here's my business card. Give me a call.

Yeah. Who's like cheesy, right?

Yeah.

So the story I'll share the story that I shared and then I'll share like a one quick example of something that I've done twice recently that.

This isn't my story. It's a good friend of mine who, he would go into countries and he was a, he just had this.

I joke with him. I call him. He's like kind of a James Bond slash, like, you know, CIA, not CIA, but like he's like a spy, but he's really not one. And. But he likes working his way into the.

The most influential, powerful, and wealthy of societies. And so one of the things that he did because he would invest in real estate is he realized that the way you get access to some of the best real estate deals in these countries is you need to be in that network. Right. And so step one for him was identify the law firm that he'd call. Two or three of these law firms and he would stay in. The most expensive Ritz Carlton or something like that. Yeah. The most expensive hotel in the city or town or wherever he's at. He would start pretty much cold calling, but he would limit down. He would figure out who his target law firms would be, and he'd call them and he'd say, you know, I'm a real estate investor and I'm looking to hire a law firm who could do this, this, and this for me, and I'd like to set up a meeting. And then what he would do is say, at the end of the call, I'd say, okay, great, can you have a car pick me up at this hotel? Which positioned him at that hotel. And, you know, he. Obviously there's some power moves there, saying, send the car here. You know, I'm not going to come to this time. And then what he would do is he would interview, I think, a couple attorneys. And the ones he would find the law firms, he'd say he put down a retainer. And what he realized was.

The intelligence of the lawyer might be worth a nickel, but his Rolodex is worth millions.

Yeah.

And so he paid a retainer. And what he was surprised about was that usually to retain some of these attorneys, especially like in.

Real estate, real estate or wealth investing and stuff like that, types of genres, you could put as little as a thousand to three thousand bucks down. And what would happen next is he would be getting invited to all the other cocktail and special VIP.

Cocktail hours and meetings, which then instantly put him in a circle of these billionaires.

You're a client, as far as anybody else knows, you're on equal footing at that point.

That's right. And so then my friend talks a lot about at that point. You need to. But this is true in all occasions. Right. You need to know where you want to fit within that group. And. And so the one thing that you gotta be cognizant of, are you going to try and get something from the group, or are you going to figure out what you can give to the group and create massive value?

So key.

Yeah. And so protecting your position in a structure is ridiculously important.

And when I mean structure, I mean like a social structure. And so if I decide to allow one of these guys to invest in me because he likes me, well, guess what, I may have the money. But guess who has more power? He does, because now I work for him. So it, you know, these are just some of the things that he had shared with me. And we're just ridiculously good stuff about. About relationship and network building.

Yeah. And what I. What I love about that is it's just creatively understanding, like, who has the.

Where's that hinge? That little hinge that swings the big door? Right. Who has those relationships? How can I get in with them, even if I have to buy my way in, especially at those rates, it's not expensive at all. I mean, there's masterminds. I mean, I have one. I have been in ones that cost five times that. And there's just so many ways out there to meet the people that can help, I guess, grease the shoot and make things a lot easier in your life. And that's one of the big themes that I've also heard you talk about a lot, which. And you brought it up already, but I want to go deeper, which is both leapfrog theory and time collapsing.

Yeah.

Right. So. So I'd love for you to kind of give us an overview of what those are and then share how you have used those both when you were building your, you know, your megalith of a supplement company, as well as the stuff that you're doing now with inspiredware and the new projects. So what are they and how are you using them? And how can people really kind of grasp this concept?

Yeah, well, everybody listening can because it's very simple, yet they're big chunks. So I'll do my best to give you the, you know, the edge of the sword type things. So in my book, it's not out yet. It's. But you can get at my website a few chapters free. I talk about the trap, the trap of life. We live in this world where you are made to believe that the things that society has set up for you is designed to make you successful. And the fact of the matter is they're really designed for you to be average, to acquire a massive amount of debt, to never have enough money to accumulate a bunch of stuff at rates you probably don't need it at. You know, and so in my book, I talk about, you know, this starts at preschool level, like where you start putting your child by the way I have seven children, we all my kids go to Catholic or, you know, schools in our area. There's a couple, my twins are still too young. So I'm not, I'm not anti school, by the way, even though I have my strong opinions about learning. But what I talk about is that you learn early, that you're supposed to go to preschool, then kindergarten, then first grade, then second. And you can do the math, you can just keep going up this ladder of.

Parochial school where you pop out the N at. Let's just say you follow all the way through college, you amass a certain amount of debt. That's been proven. That is not 83%, I think is the statistic. People that have gone through four years of college are now in a.

Profession or occupation that has nothing to do with what they spent four years studying. And as you know, as a business owner and a consultant and entrepreneur. I got my degree in nursing, didn't use it, went out on my own, failed for four and a half years, did grassroots level type stuff to try and figure out what entrepreneurship is. But the biggest thing I realized was that this whole thing that we're taught is supposed to be, you're supposed to be becoming more successful is really one big trap.

And I think most entrepreneurs wake up one day and they see the illusion for what it is and they pop themselves out. And the first feeling is like a sense of excitement. Yet there's also this doom and gloom of, of.

Like frustration and overwhelm. Where do I go and how do I do it? And you know, this is where, you know, again, the. When I started learning how to be a motivational speaker, you know, which I'm not, I don't consider myself a motivational speaker, but that's one of the first businesses I tried starting in that world. You know, they recommended that you go to like the local association and then you work your way up to the national association.

Gotta pay your dues, right?

Yeah, you got to pay your dues and you got to put your time in. And the fact of the matter is you could find this in every profession. When I consulted with dentists.

When I coached volleyball, you know, my second year out of college coaching a team, we went to the national championship. I out coached my kids, out played coaches that had been coaching 12 to 15 years, had way more experience, may have been better. But you know, that's like you give them permission to be at this certain level above you. And so the leapfrog theory says that no one has the moral right or no, it actually states, and this comes from Robert Ringer's book Winning through intimidation in the 70s.

Such a great book, such a great.

Book that he actually renamed intimidation to be or not to be.

Yeah.

And really the reason being is because he showed that your level of power and choice and flexibility in a relationship is the inverse degree that you feel intimidated. So if you feel that you are less than, like, the person you're negotiating with or the person them selling you, you're likely going to lose in that interaction. Right. And so there was a lot of positive things out of that book. And I'd recommend everybody get that. The leapfrog theory is that you have. It states that you have no moral right or obligation to work your way through the ranks that at any given moment you can state and just simply leap to the top of whatever it is you want to do. Now, the caveat only is that, that you need to be able to back up what you're doing.

And sometimes I found that you have to back up what you're doing as you're flying your way to the top. And the reason why this works is because that it's crowded on the stairs. It's not crowded at the top. So if you name any kind of network. So years ago, I wanted to learn media buying. Well, very rapidly, I got myself in the circle of all the best media buyers in the world. Did I want to do media buying on a daily basis to grow my company? I wasn't sure. I quickly realized I didn't. However, acquiring all that knowledge and now building those relationships gave me access to. Then either hire the best media buyers in the world, which quite frankly gives you the same level of capability, maybe even more so, because you're leveraged. And so whatever it is, to the listener listening, whatever it is you want to do, whatever it is you want to accomplish, whatever it is you want to have, quit thinking about things that's slow and arduous and just leap to wherever you want to be right now. And sometimes that has to mentally occur. And then you got to back it up with your specialized knowledge or your accelerated learning to acquire it, or the relationships you build or the money you acquire. I'm trying to think about. Or the, you know, the things you do have to. In my book, I talk about accelerated learning, finding your superpower. There are actually things you have to tie together so that you're not.

Disillusioned as you adopt a new philosophy. However, just say, screw it. Why wait? Just put yourself there. Do whatever it takes to get there. And look at everyone around you who are in that field. There's always a 1 to 3% of that group that really feels figured it out. And all the other guys are just kind of walking around bumping into each other, and they're sharing the same shit. That doesn't work. So don't worry about them. Quickly figure out behind the scenes who is the. Who are the people who got it figured out and then go leap yourself into that circle.

That's. Yeah, that's brilliant. How have you done that? You know, like, let's go into some actual examples of how have you done that? Your business?

Yeah. So I mean, you know, I've done everything I've ever done, you know, like, so when I came out of college, I had my nursing degree. I remember seeing Tony Robbins on stage doing like NLP and all this cool stuff, helping people. Well, I don't want to follow Tony around. And no disrespect to Tony, but I wanted to go learn that. So I went and got. Learned the NLP and hypnosis, and I learned all the stuff myself. And I started just doing the work with people and I didn't need permission from anybody. And I started getting just amazing results with people a couple years later after starting one business, which I'll skip that for now. That's fine. It was a mental toughness training business with books and stuff like that.

For athletes.

The market just wasn't big and they don't really have a lot of money if we're talking about how to create wealth. And I really like marketing. So one of the mentors that I was working or studying from was talking about how he went into these niche markets like CP, like teaching CPAs and financial planners and or chiropractors how to grow their businesses. And I was like, well, hey, I'm in the wrong business. Can I work for you guys for free? You know, that's a leapfrog concept.

Love that.

And they were like, no, we don't do that. However, if you want to buy a license off of us, we'll do that. So I bought the license and I ended up doing all the research they told me to do. And I went into the dental. Dental market. Now imagine this. I was 25, maybe 26, didn't know anything about dentistry other than I had to go and get my teeth drilled as a kid. And it was horrible. Had no idea how to teach a dentist how to market his practice. But I bought the licensing rights like a business in a box to go enter that market. And.

You Know, my first ad I ran, we made seven sales, over a thousand bucks each, and I think I spent like 1800 bucks.

There you go. You're hooked.

At that point, yeah, we were off to the races. And, you know, I did that business for nine years, sold. Probably I'm going to be very conservative, but around 45 to $50 million in consulting, seminars, coaching in that market. And I came out of nowhere and it actually frustrated a lot of the people that had been in that market for years and years and years.

I love that. What else I love is the fact that I was just having a couple of conversations that are exactly along this line in the past week, and one of them I posted on my Facebook wall last night, and it ties in perfectly to what you just said. And I had, you know, it's totally unconnected. But so there's a guy named Charlie Hayne who, I don't know if you've heard of him. I think he used to work with Tim Ferriss and Tucker Max and some people. He's got a great TED talk about the new way to work. And it's really about working for free. It's finding, you know, finding that way to, hey, how can I add value? And I'll do it for free. I'll take it even a step further. So you offered to do that, which is cool. Take it even a step further, which is, how can I pay somebody to work for them? Like a reverse internship. Right? And that's really just almost like a mentorship or buy a license, hey, look, I'll put money down so that I can get in the game and that I can learn. The other conversation came up when I was talking to my cousin about her son, my second Cousin Michael, who's 21 years old and you know, he's at that age. You're trying to figure out, you know, what to do, etc. Etc. And a lot of his friends are getting internships and, you know, competing for the zero dollar thing. And I was even saying, you know, so many kids, if they just understood that you can get out there and find what you want to do and instead of working for free for somebody, take some of that money, maybe even take a year or a half a year off of college and you use that money to pay for a mentor, be their apprentice. And now you're saying, listen, I may be your intern, but I'm not. I'm not filing stuff. I want to try and I want to shadow you. I want to learn what you've got. But so few people do that. And it really is leapfrogging what everybody else is doing by thinking creatively, sometimes making a financial sacrifice, sometimes it's time, sometimes it's both. But realizing there's people out there who would welcome you with open arms to work with you and to mentor you and let you get in front of the line versus everybody else. So just funny that, you know, you're bringing these things up and I was having these conversations just the other day that you don't have to. I don't believe in paying your dues either.

Yeah, I take that back. I don't believe you need to. You pay them differently. You're right.

Actually, a better way I would put it is you invest your time, effort, and energy differently with an accelerated intention in mind to be amongst a certain quality of people, and you're not gonna settle for anything but that. Right. So I'll give you a quick example. So.

You'Re going to have a certain guest on one of your shows soon that we just were talking about. Very wealthy guy.

Absolutely.

Total badass in every single way.

And a guy who I would just like to have more.

Access and a deeper relationship with. Right?

Yep.

So after doing an interview with him, one course of action is to say, dude, can I like, go hang out with you? And you know, like, can I take from you? Is really what I would be saying.

Yeah.

Or the other course of action is to say to his marketing coordinator or to him, hey, what are. What are you trying to accomplish here? Like, how, you know, like, what's your plan? And you don't even need to say, how can I best support you? Because, you know, I found recently.

I hate that line, by the way.

Well, because most people will say, no, I'm all good. Yep. So. So let's. Let's look at it differently of, like, listen more intently. And then I've started and you know, like, I guess we connected you with him just on my. On Facebook and perfect timing. But there's people in our industry who know everybody in the podcasting world, in the book promotion world, and that is a type of guy who it's worth. Like I said to one of my guy who works in my office, he used to work for me in a dental business and he just hasn't left, I guess. So he's still here. But.

I said to him, I go, you know, think about it this way. What if I took 10 grand and hired the best PR broker for him and he didn't even know it, but all of a sudden, all the best intros started coming his way on behalf of me.

Isn't that awesome?

So.

That would be worth my ten grand. That really, there's no tangible.

You're playing the long game.

The playing the long game and relationship activity. Man.

Ed, you're gonna love this. Okay, I'm gonna. The listeners won't be able to hear this. We're on Skype. I'm going to share my screen with you. Okay, so this is my conversation.

Yesterday. Can you see what I'm highlighting here?

I have to expand it. One second, buddy.

All right, so here's what I said at the very end, where I was set, where we had just set it up. And I said, PS if you're looking to do more podcast appearances, I'm happy to reach out to others with equally or larger audiences.

Yeah.

So I'm already doing exactly what you said, and, like, you know, just proactively. You and I think a lot alike.

And I think, yeah, well, it's the right place.

So I love bingo. Now, furthermore, I want to. I want to expound on what you just said. Hey, man, how can I support you? So a lot of people ask that. And one of the. There's two problems with that. One, it's. It's so general that it doesn't really, you know, number one, it doesn't jog the person who's being asked that brain to think. Like, I don't know. If nothing's really pressing on your brain right now, you're not going to get an answer out of it. So it's almost like, hey, how are you doing today? I'm doing fine. You don't even think about it. One of the questions I ask on every single one of my podcast guests, and I will actually ask you at the end of this, or maybe I ask you now, I go more specific. I say, ed, what's a nut you're trying to crack right now? Whether it's a resource you're trying to get, a person you're trying to meet, a skill you're trying to learn, a challenge you're having. What's something right now that's just kind of keeping you up at night or causing a headache.

Yeah.

And because that is going to make people think, like, oh, shit, well, I, you know, I need to hire a new director of marketing, or I need to hire a new web designer. I need. Whatever. It just get more specific. And I found when I do that with people, it actually makes them think, and I get answers out of them much more often than if I were to say, hey, how can I support you?

Yeah, I totally love it, love it, love it.

So you are like right now your big. From what I've seen, and correct me if I'm wrong, I know you got your book coming out and you've got inspiredware. You got to the podcast. But inspiredware is you've been working on this here recently for a while. What can you tell us about that and how that ties into a much bigger picture?

Yeah, well, let's give listeners like. So I left Frog again when I went into the health supplement business. I had been in the consulting business, or not coaching and seminar business in the dental field for about nine years and I got really bored around seven years in, like, I really did like six and a half, seven years. And I was just like, man, I'm not. I can't keep doing the same stuff this. And it's not. I mean, I was making good money. We were growing our family. But one of the things that I didn't like Brad, was that, like. And the reason I'm sharing this because of lifestyle design slightly.

Yeah.

And again, leapfrogging and time collapsing into stuff that I didn't know anything about.

I knew my kids were going to get older and that they're going to have activities on the weekends and that dad didn't.

A lot of activities on the weekends.

Yeah. I mean, if you followed me around, I just did Kokoro camp and it's the 51 hour hell week. And some of my endurance training was just purely putting the rucksack on while I walked around my house because I never sit down. My wife's amazing. She never sits down. We are like, literally. I could tell you, but it's been like one time last year where we actually sat on the couch together. It was great.

So I was looking at different business options and I could tell you every way to fail. I think what most people don't realize is the transition out of a successful business or something you're doing successfully into another thing can be way harder than you think if you don't.

This is where mentors come in play, but this is where good friends come into play to give you some real accurate thinking. And.

I, yeah, I don't need to go into all my mistakes here, but I made a lot of them. But I did end up on top and I did end up cracking the nut in this health supplement business. We created a phenomenal formula where we were capable of growing the business. We sold over 50 something million dollars in the last four and a half years. Our best year was 28 million this year, this past year was my best net profit cash flow wise, meaning the net profit that actually we made had great positive cash flow. And.

The year we did close to 30 million, the net profit on the books was higher. But it was, it's a long story there, there was a lot of lessons, let's just put it that way. And what actually was taken up. And so now I'm back to where I want to teach again. And.

That'S where the Ed o' Keeffe show and now writing the books and stuff like that. I do have a small mastermind which.

I'm retooling because.

I'm an entrepreneur first. I like growing businesses. I am not a professional coach like a lot of these guys who all they do is coach. I don't, that's not me. And I have no judgment against that. But I like, like every day I get my reports on what our business is doing and I love seeing that, that PN Daily, P and L. And from a wealth building perspective, I have a system set up now that money gets flushed out of the account every day and goes into my wealth building account. So does that have anything.

Have you ever read Profit first by Mike Michalowicz?

You know what? No. And I heard it's awesome.

And it's exactly about what you were talking about.

I had a mentor years ago, Randy Davis, who I have had on my. Who shared with me a long time ago. The way he built his wealth was at the beginning of every month he went down to a zero based dollar, meaning he had to generate money. So he would take money literally out of his account and it would flush over. So there was no money in the account.

Yeah, that's interesting. Not to, not to rabbit trail too much off this, but Mike was saying.

I've heard it's great, so feel free to go.

Well, like he was saying that most. He goes, my goal is to cure entrepreneurial poverty, right? Which is, hey, yeah, making a lot of money gross. But my net is either the same or smaller because he goes, we look at profit as the bottom line. That's just what we call it because it's revenue minus expenses equals profit. And he says, I train people to do revenue minus profit equals what you're allowed to expend in your business and grow with. So engineer that profit in first. Understand that out of every sale, the first thing that's going to go into an account, he calls it your profit first account. And then he'll have like five accounts set up. Like a tax account, a payroll account, a profit account, and then everything else flows into your operating expenses. So that means you might be up. You know, your revenue may have grown quarter by quarter, year by year. That doesn't mean you necessarily just go spend all that and hire a new employee and get a new office space unless, you know, you've paid yourself first. And that makes so much sense because as entrepreneurs, we don't do that. Back in the corporate world, I did that. Every dollar I made, I put 10% into savings for sure before I did anything else. But as an entrepreneur, I spend everything I got.

Yeah. And, you know.

What'S the guy's name?

Mike. Mike Michalowicz. He also wrote Pumpkin Plan and Toilet Paper Entrepreneur. And I interviewed him on one of my episodes. And I'm happy to make an introduction if you ever want to meet him.

Because he's like, you know, Brad, I turned 40 this past year and I know some listeners are probably like, wow, you're way young. And some are like, yeah, dude, you're getting older. And we, like I said before, my wife And I have seven children under the age of 11. And you know, as an entrepreneur, you earn those bruises in growing, like, you know, like in those, my 20s to even 30s and transition to this business.

The amount of built up wisdom that comes off of that is very high. However, if you don't, the one thing I actually, my wife and I are looking at investing in something right now. Right. And the bank's not giving us the appraisal we wanted.

And I was like, so then that means we would have to use more cash. And I said to my wife, like, you know, why should we go backwards.

This when I mean, as an entrepreneur, I can just go generate more, which I could. Yeah. But I'd rather, I'd rather say that money that we've already put in our wealth account and savings is not touchable for stuff like this.

Yeah, yeah. You got to segregate it out because it's too tempting to just shove it back into your own business.

Yeah. However, if I say, look, I'm gonna go run a seminar in eight weeks, and if I, whatever I generate off that is gonna go to the this, this month count. Yeah, yeah. Or this investment. Like, so then we're just saying, we're going to say, look it, we're going to strategically say, these next eight weeks, I'm going to do a seminar, charge two grand a pop. I'm going to give everybody my best stuff ever. And let's say If I got 100 in there. That's 200 grand. Take out expenses and then say we got 150 grand left over that can be added to what we were going to. You know, really what it was is just how big. It sounds so snotty, but it's not. It's like, how big of an addition are we putting on our already pretty big house?

Right.

But we. We live in a Victorian, so. All the rooms are so freaking small.

Tiny closets.

I mean, you should. It is. We have no mud room. We have no. I mean, it's just. I know. I. It's really. It's really funny. It's. We. I sound slightly spoiled, but it's not. Trust me. There's nowhere for everybody to sit. We can't all sit in the same room. It's comical.

That is funny. But now, anyway, yeah, I didn't want to rabbit trail too much about that, but I think that was brilliant what you said about how. Yeah, you do pay yourself first on that. And it's something that so many entrepreneurs, including myself, have failed to do in the past.

So, Brad, I mean, can I share one more thing? So, like, yeah, you got a seminar coming up in San Diego. It's the, you know, that we all tnc. Yeah. Traffic and conversion. Right. And you're gonna see.

This isn't a real. This is a realization that hit me over the last two years. You know, and you're going to see some of the smartest Internet marketers in the world in a room, but there's probably only a small percentage of the room that actually have any, like, net worth built up.

So why is that? And the reason is probably what Profit first talks about, my mentor Randy said, is that, you know, most guys are, you know, it is cool to have lifestyle design, but why not have lifestyle design after you.

Have profit first in mind so that you're strategically moving so when we wake up 10 years from now, you are in the place that you wanted to be. Right. And my mentor Randy talked about power spending. And what he meant by that was like, look, instead of spending a lot on everything, what gives you true joy in your life, and go ahead and splurge on those things, but don't splurge on everything.

Yeah. You know, selective splurging.

Yeah. If you want to go, like, if you want to take your family on a trip, have two babysitters get in the best suite ever, because that's kind of what we have to do and not stress it, well, earmark that money and then spend 20 grand on your vacation. 99.9% of the population would think you're insane, but who cares? But then again, you can't go. And you know, like, we have one, we have a car we've had for nine years. It's our, it's a Denali, which is an awesome car, but, you know, the check engine light always comes on, the sensors are there, and my wife and I both kind of look like, you know, we should buy another car. But then we both say, like, screw it, let's see, we get another year or two out of it. You know, that's the kind of balance, right?

Bingo. But then you'll go splurge on the big vape. Yeah, I like it. You know, I've got a theory on what you just said. I've thought about this too. Like, why is it that so many people that we know make so much money and have, you know, they're broke, but they make a lot of money. And there's two things, especially as it applies to the world of kind of Internet marketing and quote unquote, lifestyle entrepreneurs. So most of the people that I've met who had a lot of success did not, were not astute businessmen or, you know, did not come from a big business background prior to getting these windfalls of cash online. Maybe they were, you know, bored. They were sitting in their parents, you know, basement or whatever and they figured out how to make money online and hey, here comes the cash. That doesn't mean that they, they really have a good grasp of sound business practices is A, like they stumbled into success and B, in our world, making money is relatively easy. It's a lot easier. Although there's. It's not easy. It's easier than in the world of, I don't know, just the general corporate world. You just said, hey, maybe, well, maybe I'll throw together in the next couple months a seminar, make a couple hundred thousand dollars. Like the rest of the world does not think like that. It's just that would blow their mind to think that that's possible.

Can I, can I expand on this a little bit or just, can you.

Please go for it? I love it.

So I think the first trap, like, and I do talk about this in my book, is like, you know, your first success trap is like, holy shit. You know, and you, sorry if I'm.

Swearing too much now, go for it.

Is like, wow, I got all this money. So, like, I remember one launch we did, we did like 1.6 million in like a 72 hour period right? Now, knowing what I know now what I would have done was said okay, 20% needs to come out because that needs to go to like refunds of problems that we're gonna have with out of the hundred customers, right? Yep. There's, there's gonna be some of these guys that are just not gonna, are gonna flake out and be refund. So let's just take 20% off top. Then you got another. You have literally cost of goods sold of delivering. So that would have came out. And then you literally have. And we didn't do any joint ventures. I've never done those big launches with gajillions of JVs. It's not my style.

And then you have taxes I didn't like. You know what, what Profit first talked about is he has a different account. I have those different accounts. You know why I did it is I forced my bookkeeper to open them up because even though she would say, well, I have it earmarked and even though my accountant thinks he has it all, understood, I was like, you know, I've been down this fricking road before. And the fact of the matter is there's nothing worse than getting to owing taxes, which is all of our largest expenses.

And you know, you owe a couple hundred grand that you didn't budget. So now you're next year. Your next year is you're already behind. Right? So that's a couple things. The other thing is that you're taught, hey, go buy a car, go buy a house. Okay? So now you got two things that necessarily were things you didn't quote unquote need. Especially in the day and age of Uber, dude. I mean you guys are all cruising in San Diego, man.

And then I'm trying to think of my other thing. I think the other thing is that.

Where some guys who have like finance degrees and like go to a more. A little more. Nah, let me go this route. I think there is a little bit of that.

School of hard knocks where you know, you made all this money and you're sitting there going where to go? That forced like me, I'll just share my experience to say screw this shit. Every single dollar is money that either.

Is going towards my kids college funds in my wealth account or it's getting splurged on and it's allowing other people to manage it. And you got to make that choice. There's one other thing I wanted to share with you. There's a guy at Build Grow Scale, which is a great event. Tanner and Los do a great job who talks about as he sends money out for his business. He considers them to be soldiers and they need to be coming back with more than what he sent out.

Who was saying that?

His name's escaping me because I think I remember that.

Yeah, I like that.

I got one more thing to share on the money thing and you know, and let me just frame this for everybody. I am not the money expert. However, this is my journey of learning it. My brother in law, Brian Farley, who has sold a company for. He took it, started from zero, phenomenal entrepreneur and sold it, I think it was just under $500 million. It was a medical device. And then he became a CEO again and ipo the next company sent me over a spreadsheet that he uses to teach his kids about the value and power of money. And so what he said, you know, what it says in the spreadsheet is like $1 of income. Really only has about 60 cents of.

Spending power because of taxes. Yeah, yeah.

And I might be off a little bit. So any of you anal people out there who are like this goes wrong, just relax a little bit. Unloosen your belt. But it's something crazy like that. Like if you look at it, if you start, you know, and that every dollar. So if you go buy this $60,000 car, $100,000 car, you had to generate $140,000 in income to then go buy that $100,000 car. So now that car actually cost you way more.

Yeah, my dad instilled that in me a long, long time ago. And I'm really grateful for that because I think about that like, man, actually okay, this. Well, I actually have to make $14,000 minimum right to afford that. Or maybe more than that. Maybe it's like, what is that, like 16 or $18,000 at 40%. Yeah. So you're absolutely right. That really wakes people up when they see it.

Profound effect on my consciousness today. Profound effect. So every dollar of net profit that we have coming in.

I already know 42. I just, I just hear a mark around 40% goes away. Like I just. It goes in. We put it in a tax account account and there's certain percentages we split off and the rest goes into the wealth account. And then we got. The business has to. So one thing that I'll share with a lot of people is that if you go on, like I'll keep show and stuff like that, you'll see I don't promote my coaching club a lot or my working with me. And the reason I don't, Brad, is Because my business is churning off.

Cash and I've been reading a lot more investment books lately and I realized that like, holy crap, like I could spend 40 hours trying to find one investment that might make over 20. You know, if I was a world class investor, right, I would make, you know, let's just pretend 15 to 30%. That's totally hypothetical because I have another brother that's a super talented investor. And I'm sure, I think you've interviewed a couple guys, like there's people out there who are world class at that. They've spent the last 30, 40 years doing it, right? So I can go start studying that and barely make a dent in my wealth or I can look at. So what we do have an opportunity to do when you have an Internet business or a direct response or a business that can generate customers and create value for customers, is you can for very little money generate an asset that like, let's say you do make.

Let's just say you only made $100,000 net a year. If you put that. If you had a portfolio that was paying you 100,000 net, assuming 10%.

Return rate, you'd have to have a million dollars invested. However you can generate. And this kind of goes to. When you look at time collapsing in a business, the number one place to look at is by focusing on a customer acquisition.

Model that works and that could be profitable or a business model that can be profitable after a certain amount of time.

You can have the same equivalent of what would take somebody a million or 5 million. So like 5 million would require like if you have your net profit 10%.

500,000. Yeah, 500,000.

But then you, you know, like the real way you want to do it is you only take out 5%, reinvest the other 5%, right? That's how compound. So the way you do that is you first, when you're looking at building wealth, is where was my core selling proposition and system that I can build so that I could reap those rewards and then grow from there, right? And so I spent a lot of time not running my business, but managing just the global chunks to make sure that we can still grow and that worst and that my portfolio, quote, unquote, is moving in the right direction.

Now that's so smart. And it's one of those things that obviously it's been learned by hard knocks, right?

And sometimes pulling down businesses. Like we have a mutual friend that I love to death and I know you do that. Really my advice to them right now is slow down Your business because you need to allow cash flow to catch up to your run rate. Your run rate being your top line revenue and your customer acquisition.

One of your recent guests on your show, right? Yeah. How did I know?

They're doing a great job. But one of the things I found when we grew really fast is that sometimes cash flow, unless you have a lot of line of credit, like a lot of like a large line of credit to borrow off of to help fund the growth, like, cause some businesses you can grow to death, you can grow into death. So, you know, one of the things I would have done differently why like I shrunk my business back down is I didn't plan for growing to 30 million, which means I didn't have money set aside to help with inventory demands. With. Yeah, inventory was the main function that really cut into my cash flow.

Sure. Yeah, that's, that's a. I actually want to do it. I want to do a podcast episode about that exact same thing, like in totality. Because I've talked to several people about this and I'm actually, you know, going into a, you know, working with in a physical product business now where, although that's not an issue now, I want to make sure that I'm prepared for it, you know, when, when that time hopefully comes.

So Ed, what about what are you doing right now? Like what is your big, big focus? Obviously you're still running the supplement business, but you got some other cool stuff you're doing.

Yeah. So in the supplement business, I put primarily a acting CEO in place of me. So I'm training right now to run the operation.

And we're training up some people. People because for so what you don't. Sometimes when you've been doing something for a long time, you don't realize how much you actually know and how much people, even though it might be like just two minutes here or three minutes there, they rely on that knowingness.

And so there's some people I'm training up and I'm looking at, we have like a couple strategic initiatives that once we hit those, it's really going to go to probably bring on one or two more talented people e commerce side.

And I, you know, then, you know, possibly acquiring another supplement business. That those are some other things that we're just in discussions and looking at. But my passion right now, so I started a company called Inspired Wear which I, I shut down. And, and the reason I shut it down is because I'm going to move it underneath my Ed o' Keefe show. It was Too demanding to have a shopping cart with. I have to hire a whole new infrastructure. And I didn't love it. Wasn't getting to the end result that I was looking for.

So right now, my podcast and writing my book. So my book, art of Time collapsing is. It should be finished at the end of this month. I've said this to anyone to row.

Nice.

It's kind of funny. The book about collapsing time frames is taking.

Way too.

Ironic, isn't it? Right?

Yeah. And then, you know, I've really freed up. This is the year I'm freeing up time to focus on my podcast and growing my tribe of awesomeness.

And I love it. I'm really loving.

Creating what I, you know, as you had said, like, getting to talk to amazing people like yourself, and also.

Just having this space in my life where I get to read and study people and what they're doing and then actually have an opportunity to share that with the world. I really think it's an honor to be honest with you, and I think we're lucky that this is a new medium now. Going back just for your listeners. You know, what's so powerful about, like, what you're doing here.

With bacon wrap business is I was struggling between ages of 22, like 20, right out of college, and it took me, like, four years. I lived off of interviews.

Yeah, yeah.

There was only really one guy doing interviews back then, and that was Joe Polish. And I would just get his, you know, 29 bucks a month, his genius network. And I literally listened to those interviews over and over and over and over again. And now, man, I mean, I tell you, when I get in the car, I'm listening to podcasts.

Yeah, same here. I don't listen to radio in the car at all. Or music, even.

Yeah. So I think we're blessed, man. I think we're really, really blessed. I think the listeners are blessed because they have an opportunity to tap into things that just, quite frankly, you wouldn't have access to.

Yeah, no, I couldn't agree more. So Ed o' Keefe show is growing and growing, and people can. You definitely need to go over there and listen to that. But so the inspired, where you said you shut it down, but you're bringing it back. So can.

What.

Can you tell us what is inspired where? Well, inspired where was assuming you're bringing it back. If you're not bringing it back, then you can forget it.

Yeah, I mean, so. So I started designing shirts and clothing that. That I felt were I shaping. Inspiring, man. Because, like, listen, like, you can't do great things and be uninspired. You have to frickin believe in yourself, talk to yourself in inspiring ways. If you don't think you're a badass, it's probably because you're not doing anything worth feeling like a badass about, you know, and if that's the case, don't stress about it, but just change it, you know, add it to it and you know. You know what my secret is on this too, man. The thing about resetting like our all like our own personal awesomeness, like the. Is to find the environment where all you got to do is show up and then the rest will take care of itself. And so what I mean by that is like when I did Seal Fic Choro camp, which not everybody would want to do, it's a mini Hell Week experience.

I was just better because of the people around me and I was better because of the coaches. Even though they were yelling at us and beating the shit out of us. Like, it was awesome. It was like awesome. And if you've ever gone and like for me, this is my mode, right. If you've ever gone into the right martial arts gym and trained with the right instructors and been surrounded in the right environment, you could be the biggest weakling ever and come out of there feeling like you found your home. I love CrossFit. Right. My wife loves Zumba. So whatever it might be for you, you gotta find it. And the reason why this is Brad, is the whole power of five, right. You become who you surround yourself with the, you know, daily and whatever.

Yeah.

You know, people like doing in the beginning of the year, all their. What do you call it? Resolutions and stuff. The number one thing is who are you going to spend more time with and who are you going to cut out of your life so that you can kind of accelerate.

Have you, have you ever heard that quote? Do you know who Charlie Tremendous Jones is?

You know that famous quote?

Yeah, give me the quote.

You're the. You're the. You'll be the same person. You are. Wait, you'll be the same person in five years from now as you are today. Except for the books you read and the people you meet.

Zero question.

And it's. And the books you read can be books you read. Like podcasts, you listen to info course. Like the stuff you learn.

Yeah, there's zero question on that. Right.

I also love. We were talking about kids. So he said.

You may have heard this story, but he said when he was raising his son, he told him, you know, there's a lot of books I'd like you to read, son. And, you know, they're not going to give these to you in school. Maybe it's think and grow rich. Maybe it's art. You know, how to influence, win friends and influence people. So he would pay his son for book reports, and depending upon how good the book report was, he'd give him more money. Maybe it was 50 bucks, maybe it was a hundred bucks. But he would give his son assignments. And especially when his son was like, yeah, I want to buy a car someday. And he's like, well, here's how you can buy a car. Read all these books. So he got to. He got to give his son all the books he wanted to read. When it came time when he was 16 years old to buy a car, he had the money to do it, but he decided not to. He invested more into education and maybe into a. Started a business with that money or did something else as opposed to just wasting it on a car. Because now he had developed so much knowledge about really how to do that. I just love. I love Charlie Tremendous Jones. Rest in peace.

Yeah, that's wicked, man.

I am the king of going on rabbit trails.

So that's all right. Hey, so what is. What are stuff like differently now that you're married?

Luckily, almost nothing. So I was, you know, I met my now wife nine years ago when we got married about six months ago. So we dated for. And lived. We dated for nine years. We lived together for about six of those years. And the good news is we've been through the ups, the downs, and the sideways, and luckily there's been no surprises. And it's just, you know, I knew it would work when we went into it. And I could ask for nothing better than no surprises. There is that I do love the fact that, you know, I do love being married and it's awesome. And that just that knowing that we are is kind of cool. I didn't really expect to have that. But as far as lifestyle changes, there have been zero, which is cool because we have a great lifestyle. So no surprises in my, in my. In my life is a kind of a good thing. But.

So let me ask you maybe a couple selfish questions here.

Yeah.

So I have heard you talk about.

Oh, we briefly mentioned how, you know, when every business that you've gone into, you've gone into not. I mean, it's been a new business model, not something you're just continuously building upon the stuff, you know, and getting better at one business model. You're like, screw it, let's get into the supplement business. Because I've never done that. And it's a competitive as hell market. So I have talked very little about this on the podcast, but I'll start to talk about it more. So my wife is launching. And I am helping. I say my wife, My wife and I are both launching a coffee business. You know, it's. And it's a. We're really proud of it. And she's been a. She, you know, she's really an expert. Coffee and roasting and all this other stuff. So we have decided to go into a very, very competitive market and we don't know a lot about it. Luckily, I know a lot about marketing, she knows a lot about coffee. But in general, this is a new world for both of us. I've heard you talk about going into competitive markets and jumping in and collapsing time. Are there any. And this is the very, very beginning for us on this. Is there any advice you have for. And that's a pretty broad question, but in going into those things, like the things to focus on, the things to not be distracted by, because there's a. It always feels like there's a million moving parts when you don't know, you know, when you're, when you're operating out of your comfort zone.

Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, I think very specifically you need to know. I mean I was actually. Yeah. So this would be my. No matter who I'm talking to about this. Right.

Who's in the current market? How are they marketing themselves? Is there anything comparable to what you're trying to do that you can model.

And modeling is huge.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's something I talk a lot about and everything I do. So. Meaning, like, you know, because there is a way to make a fail proof business model. Right. So you, so for example, like, you know, you look at.

Dollar Shave Club.

Yeah.

And then you notice there's a couple other ones that are popping up. The biggest question. So the sales system isn't really. So then that's already out there. So it's working. People like it, don't like it. You're gonna pick up guys who don't like Dollar Shave Club. You're gonna pick up ones who just, you know, who do. But the question then becomes, is, okay, so if we have the same sales model and we can get similar conversion rates, right. So we're getting a similar.

There's ways to figure out where they're getting their traffic. So let's say it's Facebook, YouTube, whatever, then you could pretty much figure out estimated what it's costing them to get a customer. And then at that point you look at your cost of delivering a product and you look at what is our target cost of acquisition and does the money make sense? And if you could be profitable right there, then that's what you want to know what our baseline numbers are. And I could tell you right now that a company like Dollar Shave Club probably goes negative tremendously on their first.

Acquisition experience.

However, they.

They probably know. No, I don't say probably. They know with certainty what their 3 month run rate is. 6 month, 9 month and 12 month. Because they needed to know that before they can go raise whatever amounts of millions they did. And once you know that, then you can go negative six months, nine months. Because the return on invested cash flow is a return on. Yeah, it's return on equity or however these money guys talk is going to turn off more than they're put into the company. So those are the basic things like how are we getting our customers, what is it costing us and what's left over afterwards. And then after that, what's our 3 month, 6 month, 9 month, 12 month.

Actually for most of our businesses it's really 3 and 6. When my brother in law grew his business, it was a little different. Like they had to grow. And this isn't him.

There's not. Yeah, there's no private information here because there's nothing like they were doing medical devices. Well, their biggest thing was they had to get approved by fda. Once they got approved by fda, I think it was fda. Then they had to do doctor education, right?

Yeah.

So they have the same metrics that you and I had. It was like what does it cost for us to get one doctor out of the say 30,000 doctors in this space? There might have been more or less. I'm making that up. And it may have cost them $20,000 to get one doctor to start doing their medical devices. They may have broken even at three years.

Wow.

But after three years it was profitable. So they're looking at, you know, 10, 12, 20 years down the road. So it's just interesting like so that's the difference in how bigger business with, with a lot more money.

Yeah, that's. And that's the interesting part about mine. It's the, it's the only real scary part about what I'm doing is the fact that I don't know what my cost of acquisition will be. I can it. It's even kind of hard for me to approximate it. I know I'm working with a smaller margin, but. And I also have no idea how long that stick rate.

You're only gonna know once you spend a little bit of money and get some data and then once you get that data, you know. And that's why a lot of us that are just cash flowing businesses, which I've cash flowed. Every business on my own.

Is. And when we were in direct mail, I, you know, we got up to almost mailing a million dollars.

A turn, which was like, yeah, oh yeah, yeah. So, and direct mail still have good business. You just got to know what business you're in. So I'll give you a quick example. So for guys like we have some clients that are in the direct mail business, they're spending, you know, 120, $130,000 out of the gate per test and they're doing six of those a year. Well, you got to have some capital, man. So yeah, so it's all positive. It's just a matter.

Were you doing that. Was that supplement business or were you doing that much money?

That was Marine D3, man. You know, and we're looking at possibly going back in it.

As one of our multi channel strategies.

So it worked out well, huh?

It worked out really well. But I again, I didn't have the capital lined up prior to scaling that.

Yeah.

So like, you know, hopefully it makes sense, but it would take me.

Say six weeks to break even. Well, we were already turning over our next thing and six weeks, when you start scaling up to, you know, 800,000 pieces, it probably pushes back to eight to eight weeks, to 12 weeks, because you're renting a lot more lists, which means there's more volatility in your thing. It just takes more time to break even. The good news is those customers are great customers because most of them are supplement buyers. They like product, you know, the downside was it just took you then you had to wait. For me to wait on a cash flow cycle, I'd have to wait like 12 weeks to mail again. And then I started testing online and we were getting our money back within five days. So it was a different business, right, bro?

Yeah, absolutely. So here's one thing that I see, and hopefully my listeners appreciate this. I'm like pulling back the kimono here and talking about some stuff that I'm facing. So my business model in the beginning, it really is, there is a.

The.

Order comes in, we roast, etc. There's not a big inventory issue. It's almost like we can roast this on demand. But as demand hopefully grows and grows and grows.

We will be potentially needing to then go larger scale.

And do this at a very much like you're talking about like plan out. Okay. We're going to need, we know we're going to need to do 2,000 pounds this month or whatever. Hopefully. So what, what. And this applies not just to me, but to anybody. What do you recommend people can do early on in order to prepare for.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so yeah, yeah, to prepare for that. So right out of the gate, I mean, you know, you want to have an inventory line of credit or some kind of capital line of credit for your inventory. So you're not pulling out of cash. That operating cash flow and, or net profit to go and sit in a factory.

Yep.

And those are some of the mistakes I made. Right. So I was cash flowing. I felt good about cash flowing. I was like high fiving myself in the back. But if you can go get a line of credit for I think four and a quarter or whatever, four and a half, I mean, you know, okay, on a hundred grand, I pay an extra five grand a year to borrow all that money and not have to come out of pocket at all.

So do you find that hard to get until you actually need it?

Well, it depends, bro. Like, I mean, in fact, I think it's probably easier if you probably get it early on. You're gonna get a smaller line of credit, but if you start building that re. You know, I never understood when reading books like Rich Dad, Poor dad and some of the other like wealth building books about why you're supposed to build relationships with a banker.

Yeah, now you get.

Yeah, because they really like, even investment bankers and having some of these relationships of what I would call money guys. And I didn't know how to even talk to money guys until like three years ago. And part of increasing your understanding of why people invest in businesses helps you run your existing business better. Warren Buffett actually talks about about it in a couple of his books, but I forget the book it is, but he talks about like being a business, being an investor helps him be a better business owner. Being a business owner helps me be a better, you know.

You know, even like inventory management, bro. I learned that by going through the book the goal, which is really about getting rid of limiting constraints. But it was the first time I ever saw like input throughput and output. And I was like, holy crap, this is. He's really talking about my business. Apply it to that.

So those are a couple things. And then I, Yeah, I mean Besides, you know, from a cap, from cash flow perspective, getting that early on so you have it. I wouldn't bring on partners or people unless like the only way you would like even for money guys, you know, just give them a nice rate on return. So, like, you have friends in your circle right now who would, who would, who would not lend you the money, would invest or lend you based because it's an investment. So one thing I said is I cash flowed everything. One thing's not true. There, there was the one component when we bumped up to 800,000 pieces where I needed like some breathing room. So I went to a friend of mine and I said, Look, I need 150 grand and I'm willing to give this rate. And.

He was like, well, no one's. So he did it right and it helped me out a lot. Now in hindsight, what I would have done is I would have done, I think I asked for a six month line of credit or a line, I would have done 12 months. And actually Randy, my one mentor, said to me, always think you're gonna need more and always think you're gonna need more time.

Yeah, you know, that's a great point.

So.

Yeah, but so, you know, that actually brought up an idea like I need to have an entire podcast episode just on partnerships. The good, the bad, the do's, the don'ts. Because you're absolutely right. Like having, you know, you got to be really careful having partnerships and giving up equity and doing all this other stuff. So I'm with you on that. If you can get debt, it's way, way better than giving away a piece of your business in a lot of cases, but not all.

Yeah, I'm a lone wolf, man. I've always been a lone wolf. And you know, Vinny always jokes to me, he's like, well, you don't like doing partnerships, and I like doing joint venture deals. But I think partnerships, the reason is, is I like waking up. I like knowing that tomorrow I can wake up and say, you know what, I don't like this part about my business and I don't have to go get permission from anybody.

You like being married only to your wife?

Yeah, I think. And I think there's.

You know, you can create a lot of intelligent strategic partnerships that planned out properly on the front side.

Can really make it a win win for everybody while also protecting your flexibility. Especially in our world, man, we have so many people that want flexibility. And there's a lot of disillusionment about like, well, if we do this we're going to grow faster together. Well, that's not always true. And also there's a lot of bullshit about like, well if you scale really fast, you're going to be more acquirable. Well, you may actually look more volatile and have less track history. And also.

You know, people want return on their capital. So I know we're talking a lot about like. But I've tried. There's a couple years where all I wanted to do was sell my supplement business and I actually had a guy call me out of the blue wanting to buy it recently and it made me. And he couldn't because there was, it was crazy. So he had a relief once he found out the ingredients and he was Jewish and once he figured out some of the ingredients in some of our supplements, he's like, oh, I can't buy the company because I'm Jewish. Which I was like, okay, that's cool. Me. But it made me reevaluate my thought process about how I was treating my business right.

But guys want profit, they want free cash flow. Unless they're like bigger investment bankers or private equity firms that are looking for some kind of acquisition to put money into to grow faster, to then flip it or accelerate their.

You know, the speed at which money turns over for them. So it might be a lower rate of return but they get more cash flow. Yeah, there's just stuff like that. So anyhow, I like for what I like doing, I like being capable of doing, not, not having. Now when you bring in like a guy, like the guy I'm training right now for my CEO and some of my team members, you are responsible for them. But then again, I was talking to Vinny about this. If the Average person works 2,080 hours a week or a year.

Some of us are a little crazy. Why not look at that as another investment that if I spend some front side time on these things, this person's going to go out for the next 20, 80 hours this year and drill this down for me. So it's another form of building your wealth by leveraging really, really good people.

Yeah, that's really the key to scaling and to getting bigger because we can only do it ourselves for so long. I mean, unless we're just want to be content being a one man show lifestyle entrepreneur, that's a different story. And that's great. But yeah, that's one of my big focuses this year and as I build this business is to keep my eye on bringing in the right talent and seeing that as a form of leapfrogging Zero question.

Zero question.

Dude, this has been awesome. Ed, I. You know, we're over an hour, and I could talk to you for a couple more hours.

Likewise, man. Likewise.

And this has been fantastic. But what I want to do, I want to wrap this up, but I want to encourage people that if you liked this conversation and I had no set questions, I just wanted to talk to you and let everybody else eavesdrop on whatever topics we decided to come up with. And if you like the way that Ed and I talk together and you, like, want to hear more about this, there's two things you can do. Obviously, hit that subscribe button. If you're listening to this on itunes for the first time and you're not a subscriber to my show, but you can also go hear Ed on his own podcast where he goes into this and a lot of other topics with a lot of other cool people that I haven't had on my show. And Ed is a guy who, as you can obviously hear, has been through a lot, and he's seen it all. And I've been listening to your show, and I love the insights that you bring to the table. And what's the best way? Obviously, they can search Ed o' Keefe show on itunes. Is there another way that they can get to you?

Yeah, I mean, just@okekeepshow.com you can go ahead and log in. I mean, I, I, you know, since I've done the seminars, I'm probably gonna run some seminars in the next year. I'm kind of just still going through it. I love face to face. I love, like, I love just doing this stuff live rather than preparing all this crap and notes.

Totally.

And so Ed O' KeefeShow.com and Ed O' Keefe show on itunes. But can I say one more thing?

Yeah, absolutely.

One thing I've noticed with all the guys that have made it, and gals, too, females as well. Sorry, I didn't mean leaving it up. They were willing to figure it out as they went along, and they just jumped like, you know, the whole leapfrog concept is you go to the top, but sometimes you don't know what that top looks like, and sometimes you don't know how you're gonna get there. But if your intention's that way and you're doing what I would call the right. The bigger chunks. Right. Even though the smaller ones might not be working, it's kind of like if you ever came up behind, like, you know, have you ever seen a wave, a Wake. We have a wake boat at our lake house.

Yeah, yeah, I've seen those.

And if you ever come in. If they ever come in off the ocean, we'll see the ocean. You have the.

You have the waves that are coming in.

But if my kids are in the water and I come in fast and then all of a sudden stop, and then the boat will settle, but then what comes behind it?

Yeah, the wave.

The wave. Yeah, like the wake. And what I like to think about is that by you being the engine and pushing things forward, you have to remember that you're also building this, like, undertow of awake that is going to pull and build momentum. At our last mastermind, I talked about being the tectonic shift, not the tsunami. Everyone sees the tsunami and they go, oh, wow, look how big it is. Well, they forget that something earth shattering happened impossibly hundreds of miles offshore that created that. Yeah. And so if you think about that in a success concept, you may be doing things under the surface for a while before it starts showing up. What you need to just do is decide what is it you want to focus on under the shore so you're not getting immediate gratification so that in a year or two, you just. You rattle the entire planet by what you've created.

I love that. It reminds me of a saying that one of my close friends, big real successful real estate investor, used to say. He's like, I'm not gonna go. I'm not gonna go into the jungle and shake a tree to get a coconut. I'm gonna drop a bomb and get them all right, Like, BB that kind of thing. Like, if you're gonna make an impact, make a big impact.

I love it.

Dude, that's so cool. Ed, man, I appreciate all of your time. I appreciate all the listeners who are tied into this. And I'm starting to get a lot of great. Well, starting to get a lot more great feedback via email. Like, I've got a personal email I give out if you guys want to get ahold of me and let me know what you like, what you hate, who you want to hear more from, or how you want to get more resources on any topic that we talked about. Or even if you think you'd make a great guest for the show, you can always reach me@askbradaconrappedbusiness.com and if you jump on my newsletter, which you can do@baconrappedbusiness.com, you'll notice that there's two things that I deliver. The main thing is you hear every time I release a new episode, send you an email notification so you don't have to always check your itunes app or if you don't use itunes, you can hear them online. But also occasionally I do some really good webinars and some trainings that I don't talk about elsewhere. And I'm going to be doing some of those more in the very, very near future. So if you want to come a little bit more behind the scenes, come over to baconratbusiness.com, click the button and sign up for the newsletter. Go. Also sign up for Ed o' Keefe show and listen closely to what he's doing because if you are trying to grow your business or start a business, Ed is a wealth of information right there. Ed, man, I appreciate your time today and I look forward to connecting. I'm sure I'll see you at Traffic Conversion here in San Diego.

Oh, dude, I'm so. Yeah, I look forward to seeing you. In fact, we're doing a pre day mastermind, so you're welcome. We talk about some flying, but you're welcome to join and hang out with us and stuff like that. I think I have a couple of special guests coming, too.

That's awesome. Let me know.

I love to add the Mr. Brad stands to the list.

You know it. All right, brother. I appreciate you and everybody else, I appreciate you as well. Keep on listening, sharing with your friends and talking about the show and we'll talk to you guys real soon. Bye.

Bye. Thanks, everybody.