Eric Berman - How Company Culture Can Make Or Break Your Business

This is an intro. Intro, intro, intro.

Hustle and Float, Shark with your boy.

My boy, Matt Wolf, and Joe Fear.

Hey, let's do this.

All right. Red lights on. We gotta be professionals now.

When has that ever happened?

Never. That's why people love us.

Oh, man. I don't know if people love us.

It's one of them delirious days into the day.

My kids love me.

At least I think that's true. I don't know. You don't want to hear what they told me about you.

All right, what are we doing?

What are we doing here? Joe, it's cool, man.

What are we doing?

Family loves you. All right? But we got to speed this up, because I actually got to get back to my family now. All right, so today we had a cool chat with Eric Berman, and Berman. Eric is. This is official comma. Berman. Okay, Eric Berman. So this guy, he's. He runs a great agency in San Diego. So he's another San Diego boy for the last 30 years. He runs just a really cool, dynamic agency called Branditize. Works with a lot of great industry leaders and cool businesses that are doing stuff in space and peeing on strips and telling you what you're deficient with and, you know, something like that. I don't know the science. I don't claim to, but he'll be on the podcast soon, I think.

Yeah, we're gonna try to get these with him.

But Eric is just a cool connector dude that's just has a good agency, and he holds an amazing event called Speakeasy that may or may not be.

Happening every year, because every 18 months, as she says.

Yeah, reluctantly, but it's a lot of work. But I tell him it's like the best event that I think we've been to, just in terms of the quality of just people and everything.

Yeah, that's really how we got to know Eric as he puts on this event. And because of this event, we've gotten to know so many people. I would actually venture to say that, like, his event, the first time we went to speakeasy was the turning point for this podcast.

100%. Right?

Because we went to Speakeasy, and at Speakeasy, we met Phil Town, we met Tucker Max, you know, we met Billie Jean Shaw. We met, like, the list just goes on and on of all of these people that we got to know as at that speakeasy that came onto our podcast. And because those people are on our podcast, we then had the credibility to go after names that were at sort of an Equal or higher caliber.

Right.

So, like, I would really quite give. I would give a lot of credit to that event to like being a big catalyst for the success of this podcast.

So obviously, big thanks to Eric. We've already told him thanks, but I'll thank him officially right here without him hearing until he listed the episode. Thanks to or read the notes. Yeah, you might, if it makes the notes, but get the notes. But Brad Costanzo, big shout out to him, man. Business partner. And he's the one that got us in the door there and opened up that whole network. All of this is to say is power masterminds. We talk about that with Eric.

Yep.

Power networking power. Well, in a lot of what we're currently doing, Eric's just doing it in a different form and it's just being cool. Matt calls it consulting for karma, you know, And I think he even told like Roland Frazier that one time. He's like, I like that.

Yeah. And I think Roland adopted it.

Yeah. So, I mean, like, it works. It literally. Sometimes it sucks when you can't just like go for the sale or the pitch or whatever, but just be cool. And when you're cool, cool, even cooler stuff comes back to you. Yeah, that's pretty much what's happened to Eric. So it happened to us.

Yeah. In this episode, we also talked quite a bit about cunt culture and building a good team. A lot of businesses really struggle. He's built an agency. What do you say, 32, 36, 30 ish. In the 30s of amount of employees. He says an exact number on the episode. I'm just drawing a blank on it, but so he built a pretty good size business. And so I wanted to sort of dig in, into how do you find the right people? When do you decide to bring in a new person? So we talk a little bit about team building and then once you have that team, how do you build a culture so that people never want to leave your company? And we dive pretty deep on that sort of cultural element of building a great company culture.

It's having a masseuse in there is the key. Yeah.

And also he started a company that was Facebook before Facebook.

That's right. And his brother was actually one of the founders of MySpace. So that's interesting side notes all around. They're very social.

Yeah.

Those Bermans.

Those Bermans.

Eric's awesome. And he has an official bio here.

But he tells his story better than we will do if I read his bio right now.

So thank you for submitting your bio, Eric. We're not going to read it. Yeah.

But also, thank you for telling us your bio in the episode when we get into it.

Just messing. All right, so those notes. We mentioned the notes. We always mention the notes. Because you know why? Why?

Matt, you gotta get the damn notes.

Well, it's because we always have. You know, we got peeps on there taking notes. Got notes every single time.

But we also mention the notes cause we want them to get the damn notes.

Yeah, that's true. So get the damn notes. Yeah, so you can get those damn notes for free at.

You can either text the word comp c o m p to 38470. If all you got around you is your phone right now, that's probably the easier way to do it if you're at a comp. Or you just prefer like extra steps. You can go To Hustle and Flowchart.com comp and opt in there. We'll send you the notes that way too. So those are your two options.

So the notes are really cool. They are. Oops, sorry, sorry.

I haven't repeated it three times yet.

Got it. Psychology.

So you got to text the word Comp to 38470. That's Comp to 38470. That's comp to 38470.

Wow. Or who's got Hit Brother and the Fricking Parrot.

Or you can go to hustle and flowchart.com computer.

Broken record.

That one only gets said one time.

Yeah, it's not as important. Yeah, but it's still cool to go to.

Yeah.

We don't discriminate where you go get.

The notes pretty quick. Either way, you end up with the notes and we end up with your email address.

Oh, man. But it's not a gotcha because you're gonna get some really cool stuff. So go get them.

All right.

Be quick and thank you. And I thought I was gonna say something else, but I drew a blank, so.

So let's go talk to Eric and let him say something else.

Let's do that. All right, Eric, welcome to the show, man. How you doing?

I'm doing fantastic. Thanks for having me.

Of course. Yeah, you're very welcome. And your fellow Sandy Aun. So you're just technically not too far down the street from us. The least candidate.

I guess if you're here over what, 30 some odd years and I hate to date myself at the top of the show, I guess that makes me a native in San Diego.

Right. I would give you that card. We're from here, but we're in our 30s, so I guess that's about the same.

I've lived here for 36 years. I'm also 36 years old. So.

Where are you from originally?

From La Calabasas now home of the Kardashians. But I wasn't as famous when I was there.

Formerly known as the home of the Bermans.

Actually, I did go to high school with the Menendez brothers for those.

Oh, really?

Oh, damn.

Yeah.

Great crew at the time when I had him in math next to me.

But hey, you don't want to tout that around too much back then. Jeez. Well, what brought you to San Diego originally?

UCSD College out here.

Okay. And you stuck good.

Yeah, I loved it. It was great.

Awesome, man. Well, yeah. Well, let's. You run an awesome agency down. Well, it's near downtown San Diego, I guess it's pretty much downtown. And you run, I would say, the best networking or just mastermind event, one day event that we've ever attended probably. Event in general. Just the caliber of people you bring together and just the format is kind of that I feel like that's how you can gain the most out of an event. And it's called Speakeasy, which is really cool. I don't know if this might not be allowed.

Is it supposed to be a C?

Yeah.

I was just thinking about Speakeasy event. You still can't get in with a password, so I get. That's right.

Yeah, man. It blows us away. I love how you guys put that on and the exclusiveness of it too. Like you said, password looks like you have to knock on a door and, you know, say the code word. But let's get into the backstory, man. How did you get into Branditize your agency and I guess this marketing game as a whole.

Even before that, you mentioned before we hit record that you helped start a company that was kind of like Facebook before Facebook ever existed. So I'm kind of curious about that story because that probably predates the story of what you're doing now.

Yeah, it does actually. It's a good segue into how I got to. We're doing now. And then I can actually come back later and talk about strategy behind networking and masterminding for really a lot of, you know, your listeners out there so passionate about how people can all really learn and it's just right at the tip of their fingers for doing some basic things. But. So we'll come back to that. But yeah, after ucsd, back to that. You know, back to. Then you Know, people graduate. A lot of people run off and get those first jobs. I was a big econ major, did well there. And I guess I didn't really rush to a job. And I wanted to set back and look around. And what really attracted me is, you know, a buddy or a guy that I met through a friend said, hey, we're doing this thing in the college market.

Market.

And, you know, college market. Such a coveted market by advertisers. And we got some tech in there, and if we could capture the eyeballs of the college students, it's worth all that. And I'm just like, eyes are glazing over it. But just really what attracted me is enthusiasm of actually sitting in a room and like, cool, so let's go build something. I'm like, okay, where do I sit? He's like, what? I'm like, let's get started. So it was like three of us. And, you know, I didn't really. I guess in hindsight, that's when I would learn that was an entrepreneur. I didn't realize that until you look back on your life and your career and you hustle through college, you know, focused on getting a high gpa. And I joke now that I've never actually used a resume once in my career.

Correct.

I worked hard to get that gpa. Ucsd, that's useless now.

So we started this company back in 93, dating myself again. And we started. Imagine the world of the Internet and the browser being actually a telephone. What we had built is this tool for students where you would actually using communication to connect them. So think of organizations if you wanted to communicate to your entire. Let's hear a fraternity. Back in the day, it was like, pick up the phone. We're talking pre cell phones here. You got to call everybody. Hey, we're changing the meeting this time. How do you get the word out back there? So back then, it was all like, press one for organizations. You hit one, press one for fraternities, two for sororities, boom, press one, press one for sigma alpha epsilon, press two for whatever. So you click your group and they say, press one to send a group broadcast. And so we'd send. So we were actually having mail being sent through the phone through mail in that fashion.

And then it was like, okay, that. Press two for the weather report, press three for the surf report, press four for movies. So your browser was through the phone. And then we built up this, you know, built up a team. And it was 10, 15 people, 20 people. And then this. This guy named Marc Andreessen came around with this thing called Netscape and other sort of, you know, the Internet sort of, you know, nearly buzz came out. We're like, oh, boy, time to pivot. How do we. There's this Internet coming fast. All the stuff we're doing on the phone, we now got a mirror and do on the computer as well and start doing that. So thus the early, early days of aggregating college eyeballs on the web into one central place was birthed by our company called College Club at the time. And we kept growing and growing, started acquiring companies. The money which was so hard for us to raise for the first few years.

Again, entrepreneurial lesson. Back in the day, I worked over a year, about 18 months without a salary after school just to get in the. Just to get the experience and get in the door and learn and, you know, get my MBA on the fly. Just hustle to make. To make it happen.

So go back to the company. So all of a sudden, money was being thrown at companies left and right. We started growing pretty quickly, and next thing you know, we were the 40th largest site on the Internet, the number one site for college, pure college students.

Wow.

And it was just like we couldn't, you know, people couldn't stop throwing money at some point. So I think we went to 400 employees, raised about $80 million, finally filed our docs to go public, and we were supposed to swallow up all competitors, go out at about a half a billion. And I could have been retired in my late 20s, took our first vacation, applied to Karma, Noble.

Forget it.

Big rainy day. We watching the TVs on that Thursday in April when all of a sudden the markets just totally tanked. The first big Internet crash. CFO flies out that night, doesn't even stay more than a few hours, flies home. We have that following Tuesday, a $10 million bridge to an IPO. So the big companies bridge you because we're burning like $2 million at that time. This is the day where venture capitalists and money was like, spend, spend, spend. Get elbows, get market share. We don't care. You're losing money. We'll fund you, okay? So we're just following the orders. We ended up not having enough money. Instantly, money dries up. They don't give us the $10 million that we were expecting. And now we're like, oh, shit, what do we do now? Immediately going from 400 down to laying off 200 people, going through miserable, miserable time where you're looking around thinking, like, nothing can go wrong. And as an Entrepreneur again. These are life lessons. Like when you think that you know what can go wrong and you're untouchable, there's always something like, you can't even think that. We never even thought that would happen. Inconceivable to think. It's like we made it all this hard work, seven years of grinding, we finally got there and just all came crashing down. So it's very, very difficult time for a lot of founders that were in there just building this thing out. And then another lesson of building a company at that point was understanding board control and how hard, how much, how important it is to keep the number of seats that you control. We didn't control the board and ultimately the board then at that point, their sort of MO is to get rid of the company and cash out as much as they can on assets and all that. Just get rid of it, not knowing how long it's gonna take for the market to get back. So we went from going to require all the competitors to us getting acquired through a bankruptcy, through a 363 bankruptcy cleanse where the assets got bought out, all the founders got let go by the board and you know, here we are trying to, you know, start over again, you know, sitting in the head, scratching and saying, wow, you know, you know, you learn so much in seven years. It's like an MBA could have, you know, I got through experience so I wouldn't trade it for anything. And I like to tell people that it's one thing when you lose money that you had in the bank, it's another thing. We didn't really. Never had money in your life and it's just a bunch of paper. So, you know, it wasn't as tough of a blow.

Yeah.

And you're young and, you know, young and energetic still at that time.

So yeah, you're still 20 something, you know. And you know, entrepreneurs in general are always optimists, it seems like. So it's like even if you're getting knocked down a peg, you're just like.

Ah, there's another way.

I'll just go around this way and that way. How did, how did your mindset change with business after that point? Even though money wasn't flowing in, it was paper, you know, but you were obviously beat around and slapped sideways.

Absolutely. I think when you take a step back and, you know, after you get through the emotional, you know, frustration you go through and get through all that, you take a step back and say, you know, all I could do is focus on what's ahead, you Know, you can learn from. From, you know, all the things we went through and ensure that doesn't happen again. But then you get to say, all right, well, what can I do but move forward? And what I have is still the lessons. And I'm way ahead of anybody, you know, many other people at my age in my life. Cool, let's go at it again. And I get to get to do this the way I want to do it. I don't have to necessarily follow the rules that the company had. And there's some things in culture that I want that I like that, you know, I could take or things I didn't like that I don't have to take, or when I build new teams. And so it was. It was kind of, you know, it's kind of nice to know that you have that confidence really going into, you know, the next part of your life.

Yeah, that's good. That's awesome. So what was after that? What did you do?

So was consulting. And, you know, this is still early Internet days. Anybody that had Internet stuff, you know, I was kind of a guy they'd call and get help with. I was also more like the COO at that company. So understanding systems and operations was. Was one of my strengths. Just so happened that when we were running that company, we were young and trying to learn about life. One of the things, the founder that brought me to the company, he was a big fan of two guys, Tony Robbins and Brian Tracy. And we used to lock ourselves in the room at 6 in the morning, go 6 or 7 in the morning, listen to a Brian Tracy or Tony Robbins audio program, a cassette back in the day, or vhs. And I fell in love with both those guys. And people, I'm going on aside again. People talk about what you give back in life. And my whole thing is that if I am my rocking chair in the future and I'm retired and have lots of money to give back, it would be fixing the educational system to introduce more life skills. The stuff that they don't teach you. Why are they teaching you trigonometry when imagine they taught goal setting and how to communicate, how to actually balance your checkbook, manage money. Manage money to store your credit cards in college and get you in debt so we can screw you over.

So there's a lot of those stuff that we learned from Brian Tracy. Fast forward family friend, worked for Brian Tracy at the time, and she knew of me as the Internet guy. And this is 2001, and Brian needed a website. And so I'm like, D Brian Tracy's in San Diego. Oh, my gosh. And I was starstruck and shaking. Oh, Brian, can I get your autograph?

So I came in and said, brian, I know what you need. Here's your business. I totally get it. Here's what I would do. I'm going to do all these things for you, but don't pay me until I make you money. I may need some help paying a couple of guys out, but I'm not going to earn a dollar until you earn money. You're my kind of guy. One of my personal lessons and things that again, I try to share with others is if you have the opportunity, ability to take a part of what you do and work for free or equity or prove yourself first. Because I was confident in my ability. That gets your foot in the door in any situation. I hear a lot of people complaining about, well, I'll just never get ahead. I'm working for these wages, you know, And I'm like, you know what? There's a lot of hours in the day, so when you get home at 5 o', clock, why don't you do 3 hours of work for a company that you really get inspired about and hustle and get out there?

Love it.

You know, just trade your time for time for equity and experience. You get to really put that on your resume, you know? Another example, I reflect back to a difficult conversation I had. My parents, my mom particularly. When after, about. After I said I didn't make a salary for the first year and a half and she's like crying to me one day, I'm like, what's wrong? She's like, I literally helped you get your education through csd and I just worry about you not making any money. What's going on? I'm scared. I'm like, mom, you don't understand. I go, the education that I'm getting right now, I can go walk into any job and make double whatever I was getting offered when I first started college. I go, I'm perfectly fine. I'm better than fine. It was like understanding that it's the experience that people look for in different jobs. That's what matters.

Sure, I love it. There's no better education than just being in the trenches. And then it's like you said, working for equity. But also, even if you're just working for referrals and expanding your network, just the opportunities that can come from that are just immense. I know we've done that.

We did a lot of portfolio building. Back in the early days, I was building Websites. Joe was making videos for people, and we were doing it for free just so we had something to show other people.

You gotta do that. So, going back to your question, so I started with Brian and then consulted for a few other companies. I remember I had a fun venture to Club Med, and that was a cool one. I got to go out there a few times and build my Club Med for them. And then kind of fast forward many years of consulting from there and about. See, I was 2001 when I started with Brian, and then kind of Fast forward to 2012, 2013. Had a little team out there that was running his online business. And a lot of people kept coming to me and saying, hey, what you do for Brian can you do for me? And I was kind of really not looking down that lane. I was kind of more excited about building something cool and big after college club. And then I realized that, you hear that enough times, I'm like, well, wait a second here. Maybe this is the lane I need to go down. Maybe I need to. There's a market here for this. So I took the two sort of most senior people on my team, my tech guy and my marketing person, and the three of us agreed that say, hey, why don't we partner up and build out an agency to go out and do what we do for Brian, for others? And so thus Branditize conceptually was born. Had to have the conversation with Brian to figure out how we sort of want to flip the relationship on its head. Where now the whole team was essentially became Brandatize employees versus Brian Tracy employees. And we got to work on other clients and no longer have a monogamous relationship. So that was a fun conversation. And Brian and I have such a good relationship. It all worked out well, and he's still one of our best partners and clients today. And then the journey was born into brandotize.

That's awesome, man. And yeah, I saw that he was still a client or is still a client, and he's on your website. I'm like, how cool is that? So he was the inception of this whole path here. And then I'm sure that just built everything else. Just kind of leapfrogs from there, branches out.

Yeah, exactly.

Right on.

Does Brian live in San Diego? Brian Tracy?

Yeah. Solana Beach.

I did not know that. That's cool.

There's a lot of speaker gurus actually in San Diego.

It's kind of cool. We have a mutual friend his wife or his girlfriend was dating. Remember, one of the heads of Brian's company actually Brad's. Oh yeah, random connection. But we have some tight connections to him too.

So branditize, I mean, that's just a full blown agency. Just to kind of lay it out here, it sounds like. Right. So not just websites, but you have the marketing behind the sites. And I'm sure there's a lot more that I don't even know about.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, we say brandotize is really the grouping of brand, brand, build and monetize. And so we kind of look at three phases of any digital marketing business. It's. We look at and say, all right, well how's the brand? Brand meeting? You know, is the, what's the messaging, the logo, the look and feel is. It is the, you know, do you understand your competitors, your avatar? Is that sort of in order? If it is, then I suggest, okay, we go to the next phase, which is build. What do your assets look like? Your website, your social media properties, your email funnels. What happens when your avatar, who's now seen your perfect message, goes to your site? Are you communicating to her correctly? Are they doing what you want them to do? And then monetization, which is what everybody wants to immediately skip one and two and go right to. Third phase is I just need sales and grow my business. And oftentimes we understand we need to do that right away for our clients just to show them that we can deliver. But I always go back to them and say, look, we could get you leads immediately, that's not a hard part. But they're going to go into a leaky bucket of we can't fix first two phases. So ideally we can work in conjunction with all three. Fortunately, we do get some clients that understand that order and have the ability to invest in that and say, okay, yeah, let's get the branding right, the build, and then we'll go into monetization, which is the perfect way to go. But again, it doesn't always happen that way. So we like to brand, build, monetize and then ultimately full service. I love having I have about 35 people working under one roof. For me, it was really important to build a culture and a team, have everybody working collaboratively. I know right now people like having these virtual teams and staffs because the thought of actually paying rent and going into office every day when everybody's so used to convenience and no hassle.

I understand that. But when we're trying to build a team and be working with so many clients and communicating so often, it really makes a difference having everybody work together. So I knew Building a big culture and learning what I need from my other company would be critical. And then when we get back to that, and then of course, our services, full service. We understand the customer journey from start to finish and help with all aspects of the online business from building the sites to funnels, to driving traffic through videos, content marketing, paid media, blogs.

Social media marketing, everything.

Yeah, so cool.

Now so with the new company, it was all pretty much self funded. You didn't raise any capital to build it or anything. So when it, when it came to building this team, what was the first hire? And you know, what's sort of your approach to team building? Because I do think a lot of small businesses are just getting started out. That's probably one of their biggest struggles is, you know, finding the right people and finding the capital and feeling comfortable bringing on the additional payroll. So what was your first hire and then also what's kind of your approach to hiring?

Yeah, so a couple things there. Well, first we were fortunate that when we did sort of spin this off the agency, we knew our numbers from Brian Tracy and we had some profits baked into there. So a lot of it was just saying, okay, we were all, you know, me and my two partners were getting compensated from that. So we had cash to start. It was just, and we had a little bit, you know, making some profits and saying, okay, let's reinvest our profits back in to the business and slowly grow based on what's happening with the, you know, with the clients.

Right.

So we were able to grow off of that and really being conservative on the cash flow. Back to what I said earlier, if I didn't have the case, then it's back to saying, look, I'm the owner of this company. I got to forfeit my salary for a little while to build it. If I see an opportunity to grow based on new client, I got to do what it takes to get that person in there. I think one thing.

People tend to do too much as a CEO and owners, everybody talks about getting out of the way, meaning try not to do everything as the CEO. As soon as you can get out of the weeds on stuff, the better. So I was really big on saying, okay, I constantly have to replace myself on what I'm doing and find something better than me at that area. I'm always going to be easy. I'm always going to be working 12 hours a day no matter what. But if I could be working on the business and trying to, you know, or jump around and fix whatever needs to be fixed, that's better off than me being in the weeds doing, let's say, marketing stuff.

Right.

Let me find somebody who likes doing that marketing stuff and executing better than I and then build off that. So that was a lot of the strategies. Always looking to replace myself and then just building systems in each area. And oftentimes I would start a department, build a system and say, okay, you're now going to take this part over.

Gotcha.

Now, do any of the staff that you have now, do they hire and bring in people underneath them, or do you still handle most of the hiring just to replace the stuff that you do?

As far as hiring and who does the hiring, I think right now it's really the department heads do the hiring. However, I'm still in the interview process.

Gotcha.

So we agree, we all agree, management, I should say, ownership agrees constantly on the position. We're always looking ahead at capacity and where we need, where we need help and resources. And then we'll agree on the positions. And then the department head usually does the interview. And then we jump in. I usually jump on, probably. Interview three, final interview.

Nice. Yeah. And I know you mentioned it earlier and I've seen it and it's like even on your website and you even showed us around on video last time we chatted. But culture is massive in Branditize. All under one roof, talking the same language. It sounds like you're having a fun time too.

Yeah.

Explain, I guess, your beliefs behind why culture is such a key piece of your company and maybe how others can try to introduce that into their own companies. Even if it's a lot smaller, maybe even a virtual company can do a little bit.

Absolutely. I think culture is probably more important now than ever before, especially with the millennial generation or the Gen Z generation and really understanding what people want out there. I'd like to say that when you're going to an office every day and you're working there eight, nine hours a day, you're spending more time at your office than you are at your house. As far as awake.

How do you make this a home and environment that people generally like to go to? They're happy to go to, they're excited.

So really it boils down to. Is what motivates the employee, what gets them excited and understanding that and working around that. And some of the key things, of course, is people want to feel like they're making an impact out there. The work they're doing really has value if you just have them being an order, you push papers their way and move things around, they're just order takers, not really getting creative or thinking that'll frustrate the person, or if they feel like what they're doing really doesn't make a difference out there right now. One of the biggest things when you interview people is they want to learn. They all want to grow and learn. So how do you set up environments to allow that facilitate to happen, Bake that in your culture? For us, we say, look part of your hours or your capacities. We're baking in two hours of learning per month at minimum. You can learn on your own. And we're going to send you to events and give you opportunities to grow. And then we do things like we have something called Fun Friday, which is a big thing here, where once a month we stop, we do a group lunch together, we brainstorm as a company a couple fun topics, and then we go off site and do something fun. Maybe we'll go to an escape room, or maybe we'll just go do happy hour. We'll do a yacht party or something. And the idea is. And people say, well, you know, you just wasting hours. I'm like, no, that's actually work. Because if I'm getting the guy who's the tech guy who doesn't really interact with a social media person together, and they're having fun and drinking a beer and hanging out, they generally like each other. So when conflict comes up, when communication needs to arise, there's actually a good, solid relationship there. Plus they enter. Plus they like, wow, this company really takes care of me. You know, things like unlimited PTO or people, you know, people if they need to take off, if I, hey, I got a, you know, I'm getting married or my best friend's getting married, and I got a chance to go to Italy for three weeks. Cool. You know, that's a cool opportunity. Don't sweat it. You know, we trust you. And that's another thing that this generation wants. They want to feel like they're trusted and they're valued and we have their backs. So doing things like that. And of course, obviously, the, you know, the snacks and the, you know, the dogs in the office and the, you.

Know, the massage room. Come on. You have that. You showed us the massage masseuse comes in weekly.

Yeah. So we have it now monthly. So I always call that the fun, you know, getting. Getting a lot of value for a little money out of a perk, you know, brag perk.

Right.

So, yeah, you do the math and say, and if your employees go tell their friends that, yeah, My company actually has a masseuse coming once a month. You're like, whoa, you got to be kidding me. So 20 minute massage, you actually do the math on that and say, all right, well, if you're paying 30 some odd employees, you know, X number of hours, you know, et cetera, et cetera, to get that, you're looking at maybe 5, 600 bucks.

That's not bad at all. Yeah, yeah.

That opportunity to get a good brag and a good thing over there, it's not just for the brag. It's obviously, it has its benefits, you know, really relieving stress for people, making them feel valued and important and all that. We want to take care of them.

Yeah.

So those are some things we do. But I think for anybody listening, it's really taking a step back. Not everybody works like us. Not everybody has that mentality. We do as entrepreneurs and stepping back and really asking your team, you know, what's important to you? What do you want to see? Let's build this together. I have a culture committee now. They've actually kicked me out. So now they're all about it, really.

Wow.

Let's meet a couple, you know, and I'm like, oh, these all sound like great ideas. But they're all now into it. What can we do to make the company come on? We do a off site retreat once a year. I take them away for two and a half days and overnight for two days and sleep over at a giant house. Wow. Let's all hang out and have drinking games together.

Beer pong all around.

It just adds to the. Wow. It's great.

I feel like you're like a smart. You're not obviously not a startup, but it feels like that startup kind of feel, but not like over the top where it's just fricking ping pong all day long and nothing gets done, you know. But you're creating a solid foundation, it sounds like, because like you said, when the tough times happen, inevitably a client is losing their shit on something or, you know, something just goes wrong and, you know, you could just easily point fingers. But it's not that easy when you have a great relationship with everyone you're working with. And I think that's probably one of the best things you could possibly do for a team. Did you have that from day one or did that start at a certain threshold with your company?

Yeah, I learned that that was one of the things I took away from my first experience is culture and the importance of it. So I got to take the things I Like, and what was important from day one and talking to my two partners was like, look, we got to build a good culture. We have added at certain things we agreed to or didn't agree to. And I was always pushing the envelope on that set of budget. I'm willing to spend X a month on culture and activities. And, you know, and it's funny, over time, they sort of, you know, they all came around and say, okay, we get it when, you know, employees are all talking about why they're here and, you know, the kind of reviews we get. So.

Yeah, I also love, too, that you kind of. You created an environment where essentially people's best friends are at the office. Right. Like, if you're going and drinking with them and doing happy hour and doing, you know, frat parties with them and whatnot, it's like their buddies are the people that they go to the office every day to see. So it kind of creates that. Looking forward to going to the office because I get to see all my best friends every day.

That's right. That's right.

Yeah.

Little things. Celebrating birthdays, giving people, you know, shout outs and just all that kind of stuff. We have our holiday party, and everybody gets to bring a plus one significant other. So try to do two events a year to include the significant others. And that's also just important. Why would you do that? Well, you think about it. People go home every night talking about their business, and you don't. You almost don't want. You want the significant other to feel not threatened by the business. I always feel like you're literally taking that person away from their loved one at home when they're thinking of talking about work. I almost say, I don't want to be the mistress to the relationship at home.

Oh, I like that.

If you think about it. So if you include the partner into what we're doing, they're like, okay, I now get why you always talk about work. And I see that environment. So just always thinking of little things like that is also key.

That's good. Yeah. Because we have a virtual team other than us that don't live that far from each other. But our ops manager, Shannon, lives in Colorado and Denver, but we talk to her every day through Slack. But once a week, we. We have a team call with her, and it's an hour long. It's more like two hours now. But, like, half of that is kind of. I'm not gonna call it B.S. i used to, but it's just catching up. It's talking about movies. It's talking about whatever, just having a great time. And at first we were like, oh man, we just wasted quotes 45 minutes on talking about football or how stupid the Chargers are for going to LA or some dumb thing like that. But we're like, you know what? This is our culture. This is actually us putting meaning behind what we do and just having a good time and, and not taking everything so damn seriously because it's life.

You care about her, though. You're asking questions and actually listening, which means she knows, oh wow, my boss cares about me.

Yeah.

I mean, we know all about her husband, we know about her dogs, we know about what she does on the weekend. We know like we're friends. We're all like really good friends that also happen to support each other in making income for each other.

Hey, I mean, what better life is that? And yeah, you get the buy in from the significant other and haven't actually thought about it in that sense, but you don't want to be that, that mistress, that there, that drains them as a person because that, that energy will get spread everywhere and that's the last thing anyone wants.

One day I'll get the buy in from Joe's wife one day.

Not going to happen.

One day.

Keep working in that buyer. More gold. I don't know, diamonds. How about like the network you've attracted? That's what's interesting. You brought it up before and that's I think probably the biggest thing Matt and I see when we go to, I guess we'll curbs speakeasy for one second. But just your clientele is they're just interesting people. They're interesting companies, but they're doing interesting things. And it seems like you hook up with the right people. Not a lot of people could be a little bit wrong with the quantity.

But I think you said you had like what, 12 clients total or something like that. It's not a huge amount, but you put a lot of focus on a few core clients, right?

Yeah, 14. And we go deep because of the whole, you know, we've become like an extension of their team. That's part of our model is making sure, you know, we're not just gonna do a one off project for, you know, hey, just do some work. It's, it's. No, we're your team and we're gonna go all in. And you know, you know, to your point, you know, we look to make a positive impact out there in the world by the clients we choose. We want to elevate their brands to greatness and so we're looking for really good, solid clients out there that are doing good things and are just good.

Yeah.

Yeah. So how have you. And you know, this is helping the listeners a little bit, but your mentality of attracting f or disqualifying folks, how do you present yourself and your offers in a way that just attracts the best clients that you want to work with for the long term and actually give them great results where they're happy, too?

Yeah. Honestly, I think a lot of it also started with who we started our company with a guy like Brian Tracy and then Jack Canfield from Chicken Soup for this bowl. And we did want to not get stuck just in the author speaker lane. So now, obviously, we've gone above and beyond that and have really cool health clients and a space client and. And other stuff. But I think it started with a having a good core of clients where people look at and say, well, these people are all making a difference in the world. And then just part of our process of who we're taking on and interviewing is we do look at it like a partnership, and we don't want to take on clowns as clients. We've rejected clients that just don't fit the checklist we have. You know, we call it the pain in the ass factor is one of the things we look at. Are these guys going to really just suck to work with? Are they going to be a drain on my team? Is everybody miserable? If that's the case, that is a negative energy. It just drains everybody. Nobody wants to work on it.

Yep.

And so. And that goes back to culture, too. As they get to work on projects, they really feel like they're making a difference in the world by the stuff they're working on.

Yeah.

So we disqualify people that don't fit that mold.

Yeah. So it almost sounds like. And you probably guys have, like, a core set of beliefs. This foundation that's like the. These are the hell yes people. These are the hell nos. Like, this is. We don't want to do this. Do you have some kind of. I'm sure it's just baked into the culture at this point, but was that an intentional thing? Like, hell yeses?

No, that's one of our core values. You know, believe in products that we. That we believe in. It's got to be stuff that we were passionate about, the stuff that they're doing. And again, our mission being, you know, we make a. We make a positive impact by elevating authentic brands to their full potential. And so that's. That's our mission is, is, you know, we want to make a positive impact that's front and center of our mission statement. So if they're not impact brands doing cool stuff, you know, there's a lot of people that I, that I know and heard of that are selling muscle pills and lotions and potions and driving around in a really cool car for a while until that falls away. And they're doing things that are really kind of black hat shady out there. I just can't live with myself on that kind of stuff. That's not for me. If somebody wants to do that, more power to them. But that wouldn't work on our environment, for example.

Yeah, makes sense. And that probably trickles over into now speakeasy. What you've been doing it four years, five years.

We've done four. Well, so we've done four events over the course of five, seven years.

That's right, yeah. The mastermind as well. Yeah, yeah.

So that started that again. That started from the value and understanding the value masterminding, which again is something I really push people towards. I know you guys are big fans of it as well and I respect you guys for that. You understand how cool does do that. It's funny, I don't know if it's a west coast thing or not, but like I've met you on the east coast, you're like, what you guys do, share ideas, collaboration, what.

I think it just maybe it's my own insecurities of knowing that I'm definitely not the smartest guy in the room when it comes to a lot of the marketing stuff, maybe stronger on the op side. So I'm like, well, I know a lot of people. Why don't we all get together and just share ideas and what's working for us, what's not working. And so I've joined organizations like EO and that's been very helpful. And then I said, you know what, I'm getting some value to these companies, but I'm not really getting in the weeds. Value from people I have deep relationship with in my specific field. So I just went out there and started recruiting people in the digital marketing world and other entrepreneurial world. And that was many years ago. We do this monthly dinner and I've got the art form down to doing networking your own dinner groups and some secrets that I'll share. If you're ever going to organize a group, which I highly recommend, finding people in your industry that you want to learn from, bringing them together, doing a monthly meetup or whatever. In our case, dinners is the biggest thing that makes it work is $100 fines if you missed dinner.

That's right. I've heard about this.

So it's just like, you know, we're all busy. You know, we're all extremely busy. If you can't commit to that, great, Put it in the pot, and you're paying for the dinner you don't go to. And it gets people to stick around. I mean, these are all guys that get paid a lot of money for their time, and it's a mutual respect thing. So, you know, that turned into, well, gosh, we all know a lot of really cool people out there, and there's others that can't make this dinner group once a month or at least want to get in. But we're kind of full. What if we all reached out to our networks and just bring everybody we all know into a room together and focus on relationships? And so that was kind of how that idea was put together. We've all been to tons of conferences where you walk around and you end up talking to three or four people that you've met before, and that's about it. And you maybe learned a couple of things in the morning while your brain was fresh, and by the afternoon, you're already off to the bar or something else.

Typical.

And you forgot to follow before. Forgot what's going on. So my focus is, how do we turn this on its head? And what matters is the relationship you build, because that really is what transforms your business more than one tactic is cool. I'm not putting it. Taking it away from learning stuff that's great if you learn the tactic and actually get a chance to implement amongst all the other millions of ideas on your plate. But getting to know somebody like us, getting to know each other, you guys, that's already been. It's transformational. Got me fired up about podcasts, and you got me thinking about it. Now we get to know each other. Now you guys have relationships that you can introduce me to, and vice versa. I can introduce you guys to people like we've already started doing. That's the kind of stuff that matters, you know, for me. And so I think that's important for, you know, anybody listening. It's not hard. I talk to, like, for example, I talk to buddies that I know that own restaurants. I'm like, why don't you mastermind with other restaurant owners?

What?

That seems competitive. I'm like, I go, customers are going to go out and eat and dine. It's not like they're never going to.

You know, they want a variety anyway. Come on.

They want a variety anyway. I hate to tell you, but they're going to go to all your places together.

That's right.

Your ideas and sit around and, you know, what's working for you. You know, you guys are all going to complain about, you know, maybe something with hiring or something, you know, or. Or the, you know, the. Maybe it's the mayor's office in San Diego. You guys could band together. I mean, there's so much stuff you could do about the power of, you know, working together.

Yeah, that's. Yeah. It is interesting because I guess we just grew up and I'm sure you did, too, is like in the collaboration field, it's kind of all we've known.

Yeah.

You know, in terms of being an entrepreneur where it is a little weird and foreign. When you hear these other companies and you're like, wait, what?

You don't.

You're actually thinking of competitors. Like, wow, like, we'll even refer to other podcast people if, like, they're just not a good fit for, like, production or whatever. It's like, yeah, just go to this guy. We trust him, he's great. And it's like, yeah, and technically, competitors, let's just support each other. It's cool.

Yeah.

Well, the other sort of smart thing too is like, I've even done a master on with other digital agencies in town. Now the slide benefit for that is now the poaching situation gets resolved, Right?

That's true.

We all get each other's backs. Like, okay, guys, no poaching rule. If anybody kind of tries to cross over, we'll let each other know. And by the way, my employees kind of know that on network too. Hey, guys, I go, there's a very good likelihood that I know if you guys are interviewing at any other agency in town.

So, like, I got my ears out there. They're everywhere. I love it.

Now, you sort of alluded to, like a process for doing these dinners. Can you, can you talk about that? Like, some of the elements of doing one of these Mastermind dinners.

Yeah, I mean, I mean, for us, I mean, I mean, right now our whole system is like, we found a time. Like, for us, it's the fourth Tuesday of every month, seven o', clock, rotating dinners, different parts of San Diego. We have about 13, 14 people in the group. You guys need to be in it, by the way. We got to get you.

I know. Thank you, man.

And then we just pick a location, send out a time, usually try to find a private dining room. And then at the meeting, we were doing $50 late fines, too. And that's kind of been. I haven't really enforced that as much as I should be, but the $100 notion fine definitely has been enforced. And then what we typically do, we have had a couple style meetings. One is just a quick update in sort of shares, like, what's a big share and what's a big ask? So we go to our room, Everybody gets like five to seven minutes, depending on how much time we have. You know, first there's like a half hour just kind of catching up, and we just go around the horn. Everybody listens up and says, hey, here's a cool hack that I learned. I just did this. But now, great. And here's a need I have. Does anybody know or anybody help me on this? And then we're all helping each other. And plus, of course, there's the, you know, the email group that you do, you know, after the event. We're always out there reaching out, looking after each other. Yeah, it's a good, good, good opportunity for that.

Got it. Yeah. I mean, that's just. And it's so simple to just create something like that. We're a part of a whole bunch of different masterminds. A lot of them are informal, some we pay for. And yeah, I mean, they all have their equal form of value, you know, and, you know, you could get connections out of this stuff. And just the people there just sharing, you know, war stories. It doesn't even mean, like, you need to get something right there in the group. That's where the. Probably the biggest benefits happen for us. I mean, in a form, our podcast has been our mastermind as well. You know, it's all the connections and doesn't matter where you're at.

Yeah, you guys are set up great for that just to what you're doing, which has been fantastic.

Yeah, it's really cool. And then now what? You stepped it up into the actual annual event being speakeasy and what, you have about a hundred ish people in there or so.

Yeah, well, I'd like to say. And it might be like 18 months or so, but.

Periodic. I hate to commit to this, but, yeah, we had, I think, about 75 to 80 at the last one. And it's not for lack of wanting to do it, just a lot of work for. I know, but it's tough wrangling entrepreneurs together. But yeah, so about 75, 80 people. And we'll continue to do them periodically and share and bring everybody together. And the cool thing is, it's like, you know, you get a new crop, about half the people like you guys are gone. You guys probably come again and bring others next time. Yeah, yeah.

That was our second one, actually, this.

Most recent one a couple times. And it's changed drastically in the type of folks that were there. And I think that's the best thing is you guys do a really good job at filtering and kind of qualifying the right people. And I think what, everyone has to be invited by someone who's been there before, right?

Yep.

Yeah, okay.

Exactly. And we just asked it like, hey, is somebody out there doing really big things or having done some really things that would impress others and, you know, could put their ego aside and share. And, you know, some of these people in the room are, you know, big players and some are up and coming players and everybody's there to help each other out for sure.

Yeah. I mean, it's been a benefit of, you know, a lot of those folks we met at the first year have been on our show. You know, like, Phil Town has been on here. Tucker, Max, and a whole bunch I can't think of right now.

Roland, I think we couldn't originally. No, Roland wasn't actually at last year's. So we connected Roland differently.

Yeah, but he was there this year. I know that.

Yeah.

That's awesome.

All great guys. I actually had them. Tucker, I never met him until the actual speakers. He was cool. So now, you know, now we've continued relationship, which is cool.

Now, do you plan on growing that and making it bigger or do you like it that size? You plan on kind of keeping it around that many people each time?

I don't know. What do you guys think? I kind of like the. I kind of like. And I kind of like it not more than, you know, I think if you go too big, it loses its luster a little bit for one day.

Me personally, I think it's. I think it's about right. I mean, if you had a few more than you did, it wouldn't probably even be noticeable, but I think it's pretty close to about the right amount.

Keeping it in that same room, basically maxing that room out is probably the best. And I think it looked pretty maxed out.

I mean, the feeling you get is almost walking out of there. At least I hope this is one of the feelings. It's like, wow, I had a chance to either interact in some way or fashion with almost everybody in that room, or I plan on following up with the People. I would. And if you go much longer, it's going to be hard to. But yeah, that's. At least you feel like it's attainable to some.

And you actually get a book with everybody's sort of bio and their contact details so you could follow up with anybody. And, you know, Joe and I, at the last one, actually got to meet someone who is sort of kind of one of our sort of heroes for a little while in Cam Cameron. Because we grew up in San Diego. We were born and raised in San Diego. He was one of the coaches for the Chargers for a long time. And when we saw Cam Cameron's name on the list, we're like, that. Cam Cameron. Is there more than one? Because the guy from the Chargers couldn't be going to this event. So we were actually really blown away to get the opportunity to meet and chat with him for a little bit. And now we're planning on having him on the podcast, too, so.

Oh, that's great.

Held his super bowl ring.

Can we take a picture?

Yeah.

Did you guys. I got a picture of the super bowl ring. Do you guys get one of those?

I didn't get the picture, but I basically held it and I was like, wait, am I supposed to touch this thing? I'm like, this thing's freaking heavy, man.

For anybody listening, definitely it was not a Chargers super bowl ring.

Baltimore.

But, yeah, people like that, like, it's. It's amazing who you can bring and the beauty behind. I guess any mastermind doesn't mean that you have to be all agencies or podcasters or whatever. I mean, he was a football coach for most of his life. Now he's doing real estate, but he's giving and learning from everyone in the room.

He's the right kind of guy. When I met him, I'm like, this guy is out there hustling, building a really. He's a retired coach, and he's eager to learn, and he wants to give him, like, this has gotta be great. He came in there, he's taking notes. He's like, God, it's just like he doesn't get access to stuff like this normally. So it's like, we did him a huge favor in that aspect.

Oh, yeah.

You guys and others. And you got opportunities out of that.

Yeah. I mean, just in that room, we talked to somebody who is essentially reinventing the rocket launch process by, you know, essentially dragging rockets up into. Into the air first before launching them. We met somebody who's like, reinventing the sort of biohacking space with Little at home test strips where you can find out what sort of food allergies you have and things like that. And I mean, just the caliber of people we met and the types of things that they're working on were just like. I mean, we probably never thought we'd be in a room with people that are working on those types of projects.

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, it's a unique thing. Yeah, it's unique. And I think for a while we might have taken it for granted a little bit, just masterminds and being connected to a bunch of folks, because. Yeah. When you start to branch out of our space, I guess I don't know what our space is really, but I guess marketing, entrepreneurship, a lot of folks just don't chat together and that. Yeah. Talk about. And you can now collaborate, like you said, with someone who's doing stuff in space, sending satellites up there, and you're like, wait, hold on. But there's a way that we can all benefit from each other. And, you know, I think they want to be on the podcast too, and they want to have one of their own. I'm like, there you go. That's cool.

Let's get Jason on the podcast.

What's his company name again?

Phoenix Space with an F, F, E, N, I, X. Phoenix.

And the guys from the Bloom.

Yeah.

Was it just called Bloom?

Bloom Health is now called Vessel Health. In fact, that's what we're doing. My next meeting here is they're doing their beta test. Groups all come to the office right now to get their first test strips.

Oh, really? Yeah, yeah.

He said. He said that he'd send me some strips, and I need to follow up with him about that because I really want to test it. I think that technology is going to be really big.

Well, we're done with this call run over here, and you can be a beta tester.

Yeah.

I guess. For you. So with all this in the mix, I mean, you're just planted right center in the middle of all this stuff, and being the connector, bringing people together is probably the most valuable position. Where do you see yourself or how do you make the most of this? And, I mean, there's a lot that's happening, but what are some of the key, most important takeaways for you being in that position? And where do you see you going with that in the future as well?

Yeah, it's a great question. It's funny because it usually comes after the speakeas where I'm thinking, damn, there's something that I've done here. How Can I take this and do a cool business opportunity for me? And I haven't quite figured that part out. Where I'm able to leverage that, of course, is through my business now and.

Getting referrals for my company by having a network and looking to serve and help others out by connecting them. I mean, I always look the same. I can help other people out. I'm not worried about it. I'm getting the word out there about how I was the connector. Things will come back. If I ever have a need, if I ever have an ask, people are happy to help out. And like I said, it's great for referrals and leads and all that for what we're doing.

Yeah. And that's pretty much what we've always seen too. It's what you started calling it. Consulting for karma.

Yeah, Consulting for karma. Yeah, we do a lot of that.

Yeah. I mean, that's how we got connected with Roland Frazier. Really close. And that's developing into bigger things. And same with all sorts of folks that have been on our show. It's like, hey, just give good out there to the world and things will come. It might not be immediate, but just.

It may not even come from the person that you gave the advice to. It could come in different ways, but.

That'S usually what does happen. You're absolutely right. Exactly.

Yeah, man.

You guys are dead on. I love it. I love what you're saying. That's it.

Wow, dude. A podcast is in your world. Branditized podcast. You got the people right there and.

I know who to go to get some coaching on that.

There you go.

Exactly.

We'll help you out. Consulting for karma right there. That's awesome, man. Well, where do you see. Is Branditize anything in the future there? Or, you know, as agency as a whole, do you see that model changing or branches of that?

Well, it's always evolving. Just, I mean, in the model, how you do an agency. And we've actually been really working the last few years to find the right sweet spot. But people always talk about what's the future of Branditize. And you see some agencies get acquired or rolled up into a bigger agencies and all that. And fortunately the partners and I are kind of aligned to that. We're not really that interested in saying, hey, let's go hustle up and try to squeeze out profits to go get sold. And the reason why is I look at that and say, okay, great, you get an exit and you get some money off the table. Now you're sitting around and I'M not going to go retire in my 40s, late 40s. I'm not going to retire. What am I going to do? Well, first thing is I probably come up with a new idea, of course. And I already have 10 ideas brewing, as always. But what's the first thing you need when you have a good idea? What do you need to build? Got to build a team.

Team. Yeah, you got that?

I'm like, shit, well, I just sat here and spent years building the best culture and team that I'm proud of. I got to start over and do that again.

Hell no.

So we kind of joke around and say, well, I think our goal would be to build enough cash reserves to say, hey, why don't we take 10, 15% and build our own little sort of mini incubator? Be our own incubator in a sense. We have the staff, we have the marketing, we have all the things we need. Tech, the marketing to blow up any idea that's out there. Let's try to get a model where we could quickly test out an MVP minimum viable product of an idea we have and then blow it up with our own internal resources and become essentially our own clients. Use the agency to build up an idea and that way we get to keep both. And then we get opportunities to get our staff involved in the upside of some new projects that can potentially blow up. So that's kind of where we're thinking today. That doesn't mean that it makes sense. And I know there's always the focus issue of stuff, but I believe we could probably pull that off.

Yeah. So you've got basically the team to essentially be a client of your own company, any sort of future projects. Now, I imagine with all the people that you get to know and the speakeasy and all that kind of stuff, you also get opportunities to invest in some of these groundbreaking companies and you have this opportunity to see some of these companies like Bloom and like Phoenix and some of these companies and potentially invest in them. How big of a part of your business is investments and finding some of these companies to put your money into? Because you see some of this unicorn moonshot potential with some of them.

Yeah, well, thanks for. Good question. So, I mean, in some cases it's really been either Eric Berman personally or my company personally, or Brandatize Investing. And the way Brandatize has done it is we've done hybrid equity cash deals where we've come in with a few accounts and said, okay, well, let's work off of what we call a base break Even rate. Well, we're not making a dime. You're sort of paying for my team. And then we'll sort of also earn some equity along the way and do that for a period of time until you're at a better position. There's a couple of things for us. One, that gets us equity in a cool company that we like, and two, assuming things work out and as they get more funding, we already have a foot in the door of a company that we love. And we have really, you know, we'd be really motivated to see them grow. You know, company like Phoenix Space, that's one example. Company like Vessel Bloom Health, we started there, but now their strategy is to build their own internal team. And I think that's actually the right move for the kind of company they're doing. Whereas, like, a Phoenix based doesn't need to necessarily do that. Each case, we own equity in both, which has been exciting. And in other instances, I do see a lot of deal flow just because, like, you know, being connected out there. And I think one of my weaknesses is probably everything looks good to me. So I'm always like, yeah, this is a great idea. So, you know, I probably spent and done some not the smartest investments, but I think in time it'll all pay off. And I'm trying to get a little smarter and wiser about what I'm putting money into. As an angel investor out there, that.

Was going to be one of my questions because just us having this podcast, we talked to so many awesome people, and because of that, there's always more introductions and more extensions of the conversation and then opportunities come, partnerships, clients, whatever.

We've had to hone in our focus of what do we actually want and what can we just have to say no to or refer or say later.

What kind of filters or how have you, I guess, worked on yourself and maybe your team as well, to really hone in your filters and do more than saying no? Because I'm kind of like you, Matt's a little better at this than I am.

But like, I default to no and then figure out if it's a good idea later. Joe defaults to yes, then goes, how do I do this now?

Exactly. So what's your approach around all that?

You talking about more investing or working with clients?

More of the filters of opportunities, I would say probably more the investing side, where it takes you from your core focus, like branditized focus, for instance.

I think I look at it and first, one of the things I'm trying to do is do I understand the space and the business. And even though I don't, I mean even the space investment, I didn't understand space.

I tried to got familiar with it pretty quickly by people that I know in the industry and ask a lot of questions. And now I'm trying to find other smart people that I say are smarter than people, smarter people than I when it comes to the different industries that can help me sort of vet these deals. And you know, so I find friends that, hey, do you mind looking at this? And they get excited too. It really helps give me the confidence. So that's one thing I've learned I'm trying to do more of versus just saying yes to everything.

So I think the other second thing I've tried to do a little bit more of from learning is I get so probably, you know, probably like you again. I get so emotionally hyped up when I hear it. And you get excited and fired up, let's go. Then I'm like, okay, so now I like have this policy mentally to say, okay, I gotta let it sit for like a couple days.

That's smart.

I'm so excited about it. Like, then you start to think of all the things that you didn't ask the first time around when you started the deal. What about this? What about that? And then I think like any other company, it's management, management, management. Like, who really is the person at the end of the day? What's their track record? You know, people talk a lot and get excited about stuff, but what have they really done before out there in the ability to execute? I think that's one of the most important things for anything.

Yeah, it's going to be the longevity of that whole thing anyway. So. Yeah, that's the horse you're trying to ride with.

That's right.

Yeah. I mean with our business, that's definitely one of the things that we struggle with. Having the podcast is just a never ending flow of really amazing people. So, you know, figuring out how to filter it is really a tough thing.

And yeah, no, I think that helps a lot because that helps a lot of folks just in general with shiny object syndrome and, and what direction should I take or what model of business? I mean, a lot of folks that will reach out to us. Those are similar types of questions. And with just the Internet as a whole, it's so simple to just go down rabbit holes. So I think just. I like the two day wait. Derek Sivers.

I think I told you this last time I reminded, I created a Facebook group called Dumb Money getting smarter. Because I consider my money dumb money sometimes. So anybody out there wants to join that and help me out, look at these deals, please.

No, but I got some investments for.

Awesome. He's in for my son.

Yeah, no, it's an evolution, man. I think that's the name of the game. So just keep building ourselves up and learn and day by day, for sure. Dumb money gets smarter. I like that.

Well, we know you got another meeting you got to jump off to here. Do you have any book recommendations that you read or refer back to often or recommend to other people often? They could be about the stuff we talked about or just, you know, a book that you really enjoy sort of referencing.

I mean, right now I just go to like, right now I'm actually listening to a lot of podcasts on.

Agency owner podcasts, so focusing on that. So I don't know how much that would be.

Oh, that's super helpful. What are some of the podcasts you're tuning into?

It's a guy named Jason Swank Agency. And, you know, he's a guy who sold his agency and he's got a really good relative, brings a lot of guys on his podcast that are agency owners. So that's kind of a lot what I'm listening to right now. I don't get a chance to read as much as I'd like to, so I typically get excerpts or some of my team around me will show me some good stuff and I'll read a lot of that. One of the other things I'm looking at is we're doing a lot of reading into Gino Wickman's Traction, and we've been a lot of studying on okrs. We went with OKR System over the last year, which is a way to manage the business through objectives and key results. Which is there's really three big systems for managing the workflow right now that we're hearing a lot of. It's either like OKR Systems, which is started by John Dewar at Planner Perkins that Google uses. There's the traction and there's a scaling up that Vernon Harnish did. And they're sort of.

So those are the three that I've heard a lot of. So doing a lot of studying in those areas as an OPS and CEO from that perspective.

Cool.

And then there's obviously different marketing blogs and stuff, but I try to get bits and pieces of those. I wish my commute sometimes was a little bit longer. I hate to complain that I only have a full time because I can't really get to, you know, I want a long drive every once in a while to listen to more podcasts.

Yeah. Got to take a couple laps around the block and act like, oh, I couldn't find a spot.

I'm just going to keep going around here. I just go walk my dog. The only, I mean, I work out of this home office. I'm at my house right now. So the only time I get to listen to podcasts is when I go and like exercise. So I go on long walks and tune into podcasts then. But what you just explained is the exact reason why we have our evergreen profits newsletter is every single podcast. We have all of the notes taken on it and people could essentially buy Cliffs Notes for these episodes to just save them time.

Yeah, you're smart. I love it.

Well, I know you have an EOS consultant that was at Speakeasy, so I'm sure you knew that though. Chat with him if you want some answers. We did.

Yeah. We actually met with him afterwards.

That's awesome. Yeah, he's a cool guy. He reached out to us too because we've been toying with the traction thing. We're not totally. To a point where I feel like it's totally necessary. But either way, even if just implementing some of those things from the book, traction the other one, there's another one that's rocket fuel. Rocket fuel is one of them. There's like three of them.

But either way, we could talk after the podcast and share and I'll share what I learned and all that.

Awesome, man. Well, cool. All right, Eric. Well, where should folks go? Check your stuff out. You got branditized speakeasy and yeah, I.

Mean, I mean really just branditize would be the easiest, you know, brand and then E t I z e.com, brande ties.com and then I think we're going to be launching a free audit page. So brandatize.com audit should be launching in the next fairly soon. So we're gonna, you know, help kind of do an audit for people that want to explore a little bit. So. Yeah.

Nice. We'll link it all the show notes like always. Go check it out. Go check out Eric's company. It's just check out his clients too. It's just cool people and it just gives you a kind of insight of what's possible out there and deal making. Even if you're agency or whoever, you can do some cool stuff with cool people. So.

Yeah.

Cool.

Well, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it, guys. And we'll catch up more soon.

All right, Eric. Appreciate it, man. Take care.

Have a good day.

You too.

Bye.

Hey, hey, hey. Thank you for listening to that episode. This is Joe Fear. I'm sure you probably already knew that, and Matt is not here right now, but I'm pretty sure he enjoyed the episode just as much as you and I did because, you know, he went into the production of kind of making that thing right along with me. So thank you very much. I want to give a quick shout out to our buddies over at Easy Webinar. These guys have been supporting us for a while, a long time, and Casey Zieman is just a super good guy all around. He's actually been on the show before. He's the founder of EZ Webinar. So if you look up Casey Zman on any podcast platform you're listening to, go check him out. Go check out his backstory, what he's all about. You can learn a lot about webinars as well. And right now, EZ Webinar, these guys are actually hooking you up with a. A great trial. It's a completely free trial to test out their software, soup to nuts. Check it all out and see if it's a good fit for you. If you go to easywebinar.com hustle that's H U S T L E. If you didn't know how to spell hustle, there you go. So if you go to easywebinar.com hustle you can go grab a free trial. And Easy Webinar literally lives up to its name. It's super simple. I mean, super easy, and it does all the stuff that you're looking for in any kind of thing. With webinars, I mean, they literally cover every single type of webinar you possibly can do. So from live to automated to scheduled at specific times, and all these crazy features in between, can't even list them all out. I'll be here way too long. They give you a ton of advanced analytics. What's working, what's not. During your webinar, based off all these actions, you'll see who attended, how long they stayed, if they click the offer or if they didn't. Basically, you're going to make more money and you're going to work less with this thing and you're going to create better relationships with the folks that are listening because it's a good experience. You want to give that good experience along with some great content, of course, and a killer offer if that's what you got for them. So go try it out yourself. Go check out easywebinar.com hustle. That's easywebinar.com hustole. All right. Alrighty. So that is the the end of this episode. Thank you so much for listening to this episode, enjoying it. Hopefully you did. I'm pretty sure you did if you lasted this long. And go check out easy Webinar when you get the chance and we will talk to you next time. Bye Bye.

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