Lee Goff — The Guide To Simplifying Any Business

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

What's up, everybody? You're listening to the Hustle and Flowchart.

Podcast with your boys, Matt Wolf and Joe Fear.

Is this thing on?

It's on.

Does it help if I tap the mic, or am I just hurting someone's eardrums? I'm sorry, Bob or Sally.

Sally. Somewhere. Somebody named Sally's freaking out right now because they think we're talking directly to her.

You hear my voice? Oh, boy. All right. Yeah. This is how we sound at the end of our podcast recording days. A little delirious.

Yeah.

Definitely perched. Alrighty. So today, who do we got on the shows today?

We got Lee Goff.

Holy moly.

Holy moly.

Is this, like. Is he gonna, like, throw a touchdown while we're.

That's Jared Goff. No relation. The funny thing is you're making a joke here, but before we did the interview, you had no idea who Jared Goff was.

The name sounded familiar.

I.

Ever since the Chargers moved away, I've kind of.

I don't know, given up on football.

Yeah. But I. It's entertaining.

Yeah. We're talking to Lee Goff, his distant third cousin.

He wishes.

Yeah. Lee is amazing. And this dude has. He's like a ball of energy. And the second we told him that, yeah, you could say whatever the hell you want and fricking cuss on this show, he just, like, amped it up, like, 10 times more.

Oh, it was awesome. He was banging on the table and getting just all passionate in his. It's awesome because he's really, really passionate about helping entrepreneurs, and he sees all these mistakes that these entrepreneurs are making, and he knows the solution, and you just. You hear the passion come out, and he's so excited to, like, share what he knows that can legitimately help a lot of people.

Yeah, man. Or. Or prevent yourself from some crazy health scare, you know, and which he. He tells his personal story and we got real. But, like, amazing, amazing stuff has come from that incident. And let him tell it his. His journey. And. And keep in mind, like, he's a big agency guy, so he's sold an agency for millions and millions of bucks and helps all these agency owners and whatnot. But if you are not an agency, please listen. Please listen.

Oh, everything is applicable to pretty much any entrepreneur.

Correct. Like, we're not agency owners right now, and we're like, holy moly. Like, there's so many takeaways you can have in this podcast.

Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, we talk about automation, we. We talk about scaling companies, we talk about avoiding health issues while scaling a company and knowing there's like a lot of stress there. We talk about.

So much stuff, just.

Team building, selling, scaling, all that stuff but having a great life too. So you will love it, love everything about it. Matt, anything else you would love to add here?

Lee's got a book coming out.

This would be pretty cool. I think it's about the time of this podcast is dropping so we'll see. Hopefully it's available either way. We'll link you up, show notes and all that stuff and just a quick little plug for selfish. Plug to our own traffic. Course you've heard it before but if you haven't, you should go check it out. Evergreenprofits.com traffic that's basically how we run traffic online to our podcast, to our offers and how we actually monetize everything is using that system. So we lay that all out. Matt does step by step with videos. He could walk through and do the same thing. So that's evergreenprofits.com traffic. Let's go to Lee. Turn up the energy. Let's go. Can it go to 11?

Hey Lee, thanks so much for joining us today.

How are you?

I'm doing great and thank you so much for having me on today.

Yeah man, this is going to be a fun one. I can already tell just from our pre call conversation the energy is going to be high on this one and it's going to be fun.

For sure. Well, you're buddies with, you know, Chris Martinez and Damian Rufus. Like we were saying, two guys that have been on the podcast as well and are just, just all shit ton of fun. Yeah.

I'm game on.

Yeah man, like those, those guys are awesome. They're fun, they're high energy. So if we just get half the energy of what those guys give then this is going to be an amazing show. So.

That's right.

Looking forward to it.

That's some low expectation levels. We're gonna, we're gonna get it down today, so that's good.

So, so any relation to Jared Goff?

No, I wish.

My cool factor would go from like a 1 to like an 8 if that happened, you know what I mean? That'd be like so much cooler. But I wish. No, no, no. I'd be like some kind of cousin or something. I'd be like give me some money. Just 1%.

1%.

Where are you based out of by the way? I actually don't think we asked before we jumped on.

Well, I'm just north of Atlanta. There is a gorgeous Lake. It's called lake Lanier, and it's just north of Atlanta, and we love it. So it's about 30 minutes from the Moun Mountains, about 50 minutes from downtown Atlanta. And all we do is basically, it's like. It's just. It's like a little beach community, but in the mountains, if that makes any sense. We're all running around in flip flops and sandals all summer long on the big. On the lake, and that's what we do.

So that's super cool, man. I have a lot of family in the south, like South Carolina, so it's. Yeah, I know this parts pretty well.

Yeah, we're laid back by some of the most intense people you'll ever meet in your life.

Bring it, man. Well, let's start it off with your story. I mean, for us to get to know you a little bit more and kind of what brought you to where you're at now.

Oh, man. Okay. All right, so let's see here. I grew up in south Mississippi in a small town named Pascagoula, Mississippi. And it's famous for the squirrel in the church. If anybody. You get that joke that's actually funny. Don't get that joke. And there's. You're like, shut up, redneck. So anyway, all right. But if you get it, it's funny.

All right.

So anyway, point being is, and it's what really puts us on the map is the birthplace of Jimmy Buffett. So we got Buffett beach down there. Pretty cool. But needless to say, the school systems in Mississippi at that time were left a little bit desired. Right. So I barely graduated high school, went off to college, flunked out of college looking for a job. Can't get a job, moved to Atlanta, get an IT job. I'm like, this shit's pretty cool, so what can I do with this? And it was the dot com thing. So they literally were hiring anyone to get to literally, like, you could have fallen down into a job in that world at that time. That's what I did. So I had some friends, you know, bend it to fit to get me in with a really cool company, learn some it and then from there, I went on to a leadership position. And I founded my very first business in 2003. The name of that business called get you wired. It's a. It's a very big player in the infusionsoft ecosystem. They're one of the largest partners globally, you know, and have been for. For a long time. I built that business into, you know, a multiple Seven figures digital agency, working with, I mean, huge names, winning all kinds of awards, like entrepreneur magazine type award, all kind of stuff. I mean, this has been crazy. And then I retired from that company at the age of 40 because I had some health issues, some family got burned out. There's just a whole bunch of crap that kind of happened to me personally. And so I eventually wound up selling that company. So I started in the bedroom, made it to the boardroom, retired from it, and then I sold it at the age of 43. That was.

Two and a half years ago.

Nice. Congrats on that one. That's probably a big weight off your chest.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It turned out really cool for, you know, it turned out really, really cool for everybody. And so then I, then I had to figure out what I wanted to do when I grew up because truth is, retirement at the age of 40 sucks. I will never retire again. I will always have something to keep me going because it's boring as boring. How much can I cuss and how much can I cuss and not cuss.

On the hand you say whatever you want to fuck.

Not censored this show at all.

I mean, it is so boring, it's insane. So point being is, okay, so I came out of retirement after I sold the company and spent some time again. I had a heart attack, dude.

Had a heart attack.

Crazy, man. So I spent some time healing from that. And God has a kind of a way of coming out and humbling you, especially whenever he gives you a fucking heart attack. You know what I'm saying? So spent a ton of time with my daughter and that's kind of what I do now, man. I, when I grow up, which is apparently, I consider myself grown up now. I wanted to start a coaching business and that's what I'd done. So I spent a year, I spent about 150, $200,000 just doing nothing but taking all the knowledge that I had learned over 15 years of coaching, consulting and building agencies. And I dumped that into my agency coaching program. There's over 75 tools currently. There's 10 online courses. They're going to be 13, 14 of them in the next 45. There's a book coming out. It's called Agency Success Roadmap. Super excited about that. The agency successroadmap.com is the URL there. Like I said, book, book out there. Free book plus shipping and handling kind of thing.

And dude, by the way, by the way, just stop you for a sec. You showed us the inside of that Book a little bit. And that thing is like maxed out to the T. If you're an agency owner, I mean, that is a must have.

It is. Oh, it's so sexy, dude. I'm so fired up about it. I mean, again, you know, this book is an accumulation of me, you know, just stressing out and figuring it out and getting it done. And it's literally at this point, I guess, what is that? 15, 16 years of experience combined with me and two full time employees researching all of the best practices. And then we went to market with it and we tested all that shit in the real world. Right, because by the way, if you haven't noticed, there's a bunch of bullshit out there.

There's a shit ton of bs.

I don't know if you've noticed that or not, but there is a bunch of bullshit. Okay? So I'm talking about these people will read a book and think they are fucking just a God's gift to anybody out there.

Crazy.

It's true.

The difference is, is that I'm real. I've actually physically done what I'm asking you to do. Not only have I done it, but I can show you exactly how I did it. And I took all that shit, I tested it out in the real world. So what's in this book coming up pretty really soon is, is literally everything I've learned from that, you know, and it's pretty awesome. It gives you the entire framework and a gps, like your own, your own kind of growth positioning system, for lack of a better term. Right.

I like that.

Yeah. Isn't that nice? That's, you know, the GPS actually stands for growth, profits and success. Because you get started in learning how to grow, then you got to figure out how to make profit, and then you got to figure out how to leverage that profit into true success. And so that's what it's all about. Your personal GPS to agency success.

Yeah, man. All right, so there's a lot to dig in there. But before screw all the business shit for a second here, let's talk about that heart attack. Because I got a little history in my family of heart issues, so that just rang in my head big and clear.

Yep.

What did you like? Did you see? I mean, was it a family type of thing or was it business stress? Like, do you know the factors and maybe some things you would have done now that you know what happened?

Yeah, totally. Oh, my gosh. Truth be told is my daughter, My daughter. I've always been an unbelievably active dad. Hands on, dad. I'm always at the events and things like that. But when I was there, one of the reasons I built my first agency was to give me the freedom to do that. But when I was there, I was always, I mean, meaning I was physically there. But the truth of the matter is she probably could have asked me at her soccer game or whatever like, daddy, did you see me do this? And I was probably tuned in on a text, an email or, you know, I was just. I wasn't really physically. I mean, I was physically there, but I wasn't really present. I'm trying to find the word I'm looking for, but my presence wasn't there. I wasn't there, right? I was, I was preoccupied with stress and all these different things, right? And so at the end of the day, you know, whenever, God, like I said, when he comes down and kind of the one I had was called a widowmaker. Okay, that's the big one. That's the one that most people don't get off the ground. Okay? So I had the big one, right? The one that Wheezy's calling you up and shit. I don't know if you'll enough to get that joke. But.

Anyway, so I had to do some soul searching, man. And I figured out what it was. What got me was stress. That is the number one thing. That and smoking.

At the top of the list. All right? Then right below that you're going to be getting into a lot of different stuff, whether it be diabetes, high blood pressure, everything. I'm sorry, genetics. The top three are genetics, stress and.

And smoking, thank you very much. And so I had stress was, was the big one. My father passed away from a heart attack, but he was 73. So it's not as much genetic in my particular case as it was what I call the small business diet, meaning whatever the hell you grab me is fine with me. Just make it fucking fast. I don't care. So, you know, whether it be Taco Bell or whatever, the. Wherever my 22 to 28 year old engineers were going at that day to get food, I was like, just grab me whatever the fuck, you know, so. And of course they brought back what 22 year olds would eat. So, you know, that's what I was eating all the time, right? You know, Mo's. And of course that's what I wanted too. I'd grown accustomed to it. So the small business owner diet, the stress, those were the two major factors in my deal. And so what I would do, the advice that I would Give to you is just one, clean up your eating habits. I've cleaned up mine a lot compared to where I was, which is probably not saying a whole lot compared to some people, but you know, making a lot more home cooked meals and things like that. But the biggest thing is by far is the stress. And so is when, you know, just a little bit of the science behind it is stress acts just like the nicotine does. That's why those two are right there. It's because stress actually, it creates, for whatever reason, stress.

Makes your arteries and veins want to contract. They contract like, just like when nicotine gets hold of them, it contracts. That's where you get that lightheaded or that real nervous feeling or all that anxiety. All that stuff is coming from that contraction, the pressure put in your system. Makes sense.

Yeah.

So doctor, So I don't know the legal medical terms. This is just somebody who went.

Observations. Yeah, yeah.

And so what happens is whenever that stress starts to release, and as I'm going to sell my agency and I don't have all the workload and everything on me, obviously the stress is releasing. Well, if it's been under stress for that long period of time, some of those plaque bubbles that build up, and by the way, they build up at a much higher rate because it's much more contracted. Right. Well, they pop. And that's what happened in my case, man. And that jail, that goo is gooey. Those plaque, both plaque things you see in the commercial that make it look like they're actually all solid, that's false. That's not true. They're actually gooey on the inside. Whenever it stretches a little bit, those arteries start to open up a little bit more, It'll crack it and that stuff will flow out and it'll cause a blockage.

Got it. Okay. And then the heart attack happens.

Yeah, so. And that's when. Exactly, that's when the heart attack happens right there. So you know, you know, just, just eat, right. Just do whatever you can to lower stress. Top of the list is me time. Meditation. Meditation. Or I call it decompression. So go get some beers with some friends or go have dinner with wife or go do anything other than business. Make sure whatever it is that you. It's something that either forces you or has such a calming effect over you that it physically pulls you out of that anxiety of running a business stuff that we deal with all day long.

Okay, thank you very much for saying all this because I think every single person listening to this show right now, including us Talking can take all this stuff because let's be honest, widowmaker, any kind of heart attack, any kind of health problems, takes you out of the game, takes you out of that flow state that everybody relies on for you.

Yeah, big time. Big time. So, yeah. Anyway, I could ramble on about this forever, but.

No, that's good.

So I'm assuming this was. This was a pretty big catalyst for you to want to systematize and automate and just, you know, work less in your business. Right. Was that kind of the major catalyst behind it all?

Oh, that is the catalyst behind. Well, I mean, there's a lot of it. Whenever you go to sell a business, there's a lot of factors that come into it. When you start a business, there's a lot of factors that come into it, but the biggest catalyst is, is that I don't want other agency owners to experience what I experience.

Amen. Yeah.

There is an easier way to do it. Okay. When I was building my agency, there literally was not a roadmap out there. There just wasn't. It was too damn new. The industry had just literally popped up out of nowhere when Al Gore invented the Internet. Okay? So, I mean, you know, like, literally, it didn't even exist 20 years ago.

That's a weird point, actually. I've never thought about it that way. Agency just popped.

Yeah, it really never exists. Dude. I don't know how long y' all been around, but it was called web marketing at first. Then it was called Internet marketing. Okay? Now it's called digital marketing. That's the evolution of it. Point being is that, you know, there wasn't a roadmap on how to build a successful professional services business in the virtual world.

Okay. Obviously, there are millions of examples of building a professional services business. You know, like a CPA attorney, you name it. Good job. There's freak a billion of them out there, but the difference is they actually physically give you, like a stack of papers or they give you. You know, there's physically something. You get a check in the mail or whatever the hell it is, you get some kind of physical reward on that. You don't get that in our space, and that changes the game. From the psychological ability to see the value proposition in what you deliver.

Meaning the expectation levels are all fucked up. And it's your job to take care of that, to get it fixed.

And expectations can make or break anything you do, anything you put your life.

Basically, it doesn't matter what it is, especially in business, but in relationships and everything, if you get through the expectation levels and communications break down. It's not if it's going to break, it's when it's going to break.

Sure. So is this a reason why a lot of them fail? Agency owners?

I think that that is part of it, yes. I think that that is one part of it.

I personally believe, and I believe very strongly that it boils down to limiting beliefs. And limiting beliefs are going to be things that your parents taught you, things that you learned in college, things that you read in a book because you read too many fucking books, you know, whatever it is. And so let me, you know, explain what I mean by that is like, is, okay, here a good example. Is this, Let me do. I was trying to think of a good example.

Here's.

Here's a great example. Oh my God, when I hear this, this makes my skin crawl, you know? Well, I'm so good at what I do. Whenever I produce, work with other people see it and they like me, they'll find me.

And I'm like, wait for it. Shut the fuck up. Are you kidding me, you fucking moron? Are you seriously. Are you seriously coming at me with that shit? Like, have you ever built a fucking business other than smoking weed in your basement? Because if you have, let me explain something to you. It doesn't work that way, asshole, okay? These people are busy and they don't. You're trying to get money out of them.

Hell yeah.

Are you kidding me? I mean. I mean, I don't even know how to say it. So let me explain how this works. I have a 10 year old daughter. I'm running a business. I've got multiple real estate investments. I got a lot of shit going on, man. I promise you, if there's somebody new coming into my world asking me for money, I'm gonna give them the motherfucking Heisman 332 times.

Because I'm fucking busy. It's not even that I don't. I don't know that I don't want it. In other words, it's not that I don't want the product. I don't know that I don't want it.

That's amazing and so true. And think about the one that's not even running a business, just someone with like kids. Multiple kids. Let's call it day job. Just a business.

By the way, if you've got kids. If you've got kids and you think they're gonna respect you enough to do it, the first time you fucking tell them to do that, then you are. Dude, dude, dude, you are so fucking high. You are so far removed from the way the world works is insane. Because if you have kids, you will learn to repeat yourself 3 billion times. My dog is another good example. I should have named him. His middle name should have been no, because his name's Apollo. I'm like, Apollo. No, Apollo. No. Apollo. No. Apollo. No. It's like every time I say his name, it's like, no, no. The word no comes after it because I'm telling him to stop doing whatever the hell he's doing. Same thing with your kids, man. Are you kidding me? So you have got to get your brand in front of them. You have to show them that you're hungry. You have to show them that you are driven to for their business. And you will. You will. You will keep that hunger in that drive when you're serving them. If you're just complacent and you think they're going to reach out to you and find you because you're awesome, well, then you're going to get your ass kicked by a guy just like me. And it's going to make you so ill to your stomach. I want to ask you, which one do you like? Like, which one do you hate more? A guy like me kicking your fucking ass or picking up the phone and calling your prospects?

Yeah. I just wish you had a little more passion on the topic.

Yeah, right.

I hear you over here.

Oh, my God.

I absolutely love what I do.

I can tell, man. And I love it. And it's passionate. So give me some.

Well, I want to. So, you know, talking about limiting beliefs on agencies. Right. So Joe and I, we used to run an agency for a while and we actually shut it down, basically. I'm really curious to hear your thoughts on this. Basically, we kind of always felt like we went from a place where we had one boss and a day job to a place where we had 20 bosses as an agency. And that was kind of our biggest reason we decided to wind down our agency.

Yep. No doubt about it.

Yeah.

I want to be my own boss. That's probably. If that's not the biggest lie to entrepreneurs there at the top. It's got. I mean, it's got to be right up there. Good, good.

I want to hear it.

I will say that. And don't take this the wrong way, guys, but if the. If the clients are dictating any part of the service process, you are 100% spot on. You definitely have a boss in every single one of your clients. And that is. That's One of the things that I coach in my programs is the fact that you have to control the process.

Yes.

Now, that doesn't mean that they can't have the flexibility to breathe and the flexibility to become creative and the flexibility to do that stuff. It's just the fact that if you. In the void of leadership, humans will create leadership through themselves. They will not blindly be led somewhere. So if you think you're gonna get a website and go away for two months and deliver it and expect them to love it, then again, you're the idiot in the room. Because in the void of leadership, humans organically and naturally will not just go blindly. They will either step up themselves for the leadership that they, that they crave and must have, or they will fire your ass and go find somebody who will give it to them themselves. It's just that simple.

It just goes to over communication. That's a lesson that Matt and I learned years and years ago.

Critical, transparent, and over communicate all day long.

And I imagine, I mean, just based on our notes and what we talked about before the call, I mean, productization of the agency is probably a big deal too, because right when, when something, you know, a lot of people, they treat agencies is like, okay, I'm here. I work for other people. What do you need? I'll go ahead and do that for you. I know we operate as an agency for a long time like that. What do you need? You need a funnel? Sure, we'll build you a funnel. Oh, you need a WordPress blog? Yeah, we'll build your WordPress blog. Oh, you want us to go and run ads for you? Yeah, we can do that for you.

We'll figure it out.

You know, there's a price tag for everything. We'll do whatever the fuck you want. Right? So that was kind of how we were running our agency to a degree. I mean, we kind of got smarter with it over the years. But in the beginning, I think a lot of agencies just trying to treat it like that, they see dollars waved in front of them and they'll go, yeah, I can do that for you.

Oh, no doubt about it. I mean, you know, they become the. They become the expert on whatever the hell somebody's willing to pay them for. All of a sudden, you know, it's kind of funny how that works. But, you know, and that is actually every time I hear that, that is. I just hear rookie. You know, that's like.

And I don't mean that. And people listening out there, I don't mean that. Let me, Let me Frame what I mean by that, meaning that it's scary to go out there and create a product. Okay. Because when you do that, you're putting, you're putting your heart on the, on your sleeve, believe it or not. And I know in a kind of a Weir, and it's so much easier at first in the friends and family network to just sell, sure, I'll do it for you. I can do that. That's, it's easier to get started that way now. Now the same noose that you tied to get started, meaning that you just went out there, wouldn't do anything. A jack of all trade, basically you're a glorified freelancer is what you are doing that. Okay. Now and, and again that's what's called survival mode. And that there's a time and place for all of that. Now if you're ever going to scale your agency, you're going to have to obviously remove yourself from the service process or find somebody to do the leadership coaching, I'm sorry, the CEO sales side of it. And you just remain in the product on the service side, which is typically a bad formula. But it can work. I have seen it work a few times. But as a rule though, every time if you productize, then what you do is you begin with the end in mind. So now everything is standardized behind it. So you have a product, you sell that product and then from that product there is a scope document, there are face sign off documents. Everything begins with the end in mind. So that mindset to get to that is a rite of passage that business owners have to understand. And if you only go through that, either one.

Being a lot smarter than me and finding a coach and helping you to do that. Right. Or two, through sheer pain of trying to do custom work all the time. I have a saying that I say all the time, it's called bespoke equals be broke. Okay. So, and you know, bespoke is a common word over in England where it means custom, means everything's custom like you custom, right? So if you're doing custom work, you're gonna go fucking broke. It's just, it is what it is. And so.

So you have to, you have to adopt a productization type model. It doesn't have to be exactly like that, but something that standardized that doesn't require your attention. The service, on the service side of it.

So someone, if they're listening right now and they're in that survival mode, or maybe they're not in survival mode, that they just don't know how to productize themselves, how do they like, what's a good first step for someone to make that transition?

The best first, the best, very best first thing that you can do is one, is pick a niche, okay. Because whenever you're trying to create products and you don't have a specific target to go after, then it's so much harder. So let me give you an example. Okay? So craftless. One of my students agencies going through my coaching program, they picked what's called the craft brewery to niche out in. And so whenever you try to create a product around a website for a craft brewery, then you can have the untapped API integration, Google all the things, the real bells and whistles that they specifically need for their craft brewery, for the craft brewing industry, right? That's a product that has a lot of value. You can actually tarball. You can back that sucker up and reload it and send it out 5,000 times. Nobody's going to care because it's gonna be awesome.

Yep, yep.

Now you can't do that whenever you're trying to build a product for everybody because the value proposition is not there. Great, I'll install WordPress for you. I mean, I appreciate that. You know what? You and every other swinging Richard in the world. You know what I'm talking about? Are you kidding me? I mean, like, you know, you know, I mean, who cares? I mean, who cares? Go to GoDaddy, click the fucking button. You got WordPress. There it is, right?

You're a commodity.

There's no, there's no, there's no value proposition there. So the very, the best advice I can give you is create like Legos. And I actually got an example here. I can't, can't show you, but it's Legos. And so what is, you got to get them extremely granular, okay? So you'll have like, if you, again, if you've got kids or if you just like play Legos, you got a base, okay? And then you have large Legos, you got smaller Legos, you got Legos with angles and all these different types and shapes and sizes of Legos. But ultimately all Legos can be fit together to build out one custom package or robot or whatever the hell you're trying to build out with, you know, whatever you're trying to build out with the Legos, right? And so whenever you build it out like that, where you get very granular and you, you create these products in a very object oriented type fashion, then it gets really cool because you can totally standardize the service Department behind all of those individual Legos. So sales goes out and says, hey, I'm going to be selling to underwater basket weavers in California. So they take SEO product number one website, product number one citations, whatever the hell they are, whatever it is, and they go out and they build it up into the underwater basket weavers. They think they just got, you know, a custom hybrid supercar Tesla type thing because it's perfect for them. Behind the scenes, the guys actually implementing it, the implementers see it, that It's Lego number four, Lego number eight and Lego number 12 piece together. Yeah. There's a predefined service structure for each one of those. Again, to the, again, if you've ever, if you've ever bought a new car or customize a new car or went to the Tesla website and built one out, you know that there's a, there's a, a glorious feeling that comes along with it. There really is. If you've never done it, I hope one day, I hope you get the chance to do that one day. Yeah. You physically build your perfect. I built mine. I got a truck. I got a big old, big old. It's called a power wagon, like total redneck truck. But it's awesome. So, you know, and, you know, and, and, and I custom built it. I'm telling you, man, when I picked that truck up, I was like, oh my gosh. I mean, I felt like Superman, dude.

Yeah, that's you. Yeah. You applied whatever freaking color.

But the reality is there's probably another thousand fucking trucks out there just like it, dude.

Exactly.

You know what I mean? And so that's the beauty of it is you got to create it in a way that your sales staff can build out custom solutions for people, but it still allows you to standardize everything behind the scenes.

That's freaking awesome. So you mentioned niche. So, you know, figure out whatever that niche is. Niche is whatever the hell you want to call it. Craft brewery is a great one. We actually are in that space. So we took a little note. We're like, we'll have to follow up on this one.

Yeah, we have a few things dabbling in that space. But what's your process in finding a good niche, one that you are there testing behind it? What's the process?

This is something that Chris Martinez said that we had to ask you, by the way. That is true that you are a ninja when it comes to figuring out how to pick the niche.

Oh yeah, no doubt about it. Well, I created.

A 10 step niche process. So it's called the niche down process. As a matter of fact, this is the very first, first webinar we do in the webinar series and. Exactly. Which is pretty, pretty cool. And so in that chat and they're like I said, I can't get into all the details on it, but there are 10 steps, okay. And the first step, okay, it's going to be. Let me pull up a little notes here. Okay. Is it digital, digitally friendly, right? Then you got to do competitive analysis and then target audience. You got to define who you're going to be going after, does your target ad. You got to do a target audience financial analysis. So you got to know, do they have the fucking money? Basically, right?

That is so important that most people don't think about. They're like, oh, there's a lot of people in this niche that are interested. Do they have money?

No.

Oh my God.

And this one right here, you ready? This right here. And I love it when I hear this one, you ready? This one right here. Ready? Okay, here we go.

I'm just passionate about incense.

Or I'm passionate about beads, or I'm passionate about, you know, I love stars or some bullshit like that.

I'm like, dude, dude, dude, that's called a hobby, okay? That's like, that's what you do. That's what you do. That's not a business. I mean, I mean, yeah, I mean, like, you know, come on, man. I mean, you gotta, you know, business is business. Yeah. You're there to do, hopefully. If you're doing it right, you gotta have a higher purpose. You're giving back, you know, to something out of a higher purpose. Right? But you're also there to feed your damn family, you know what I'm saying? So let's, let's call it what it is. So, you know, and then you gotta look. So after you get done with the target audience financial analysis, you got to look at the opportunity in the niche at that time, right? Then you got to look at long term opportunity, okay? And then this one always helps. Call me crazy, but you need to have a little bit of genuine care. You actually need to give a fuck basically about these people. They're about to go try to sell stuff too, okay? Now you don't have to be passionate about some unicorn, fuzzy rainbow incense thing that loves stars or nothing, okay? But you need, you know, you need to be, you need to care about these people, okay? Or whoever it is. And then of course, you need to figure out how do you get in front of your prospects and if you can. And I have a formula. Right. If you cannot answer those questions, then you probably don't need to go down that niche because you can't get in front of them. Okay. And then you really need to understand, I mean intimately understand their pain points. Okay. And again, I have an entire niche down like spreadsheet and all these different things that we go through and all this different stuff that we go through to make sure we get in the right area. And, but, and that's. So that's the ninth step and the tenth step is hire a coach. Because the reality is there is absolutely no substitute for someone who has fucked up as much as I have and knows where not to step.

So that's 100% true. Just in anything walk of life that you want to go down, it's like, why are you going to try to build it yourself or figure it all out? It's like leverage, leverage. Talk to some connections.

Amen. Amen. Amen.

Yeah, man, that's super helpful. And yeah, just that process. So is there a webinar that's live right now that folks can and dive deeper in on?

No. No, actually, I guess I should have been. We're right in the throws right now. We have an annual webinar series that we're launching. The first one is going to be on January 31st, and that one is going to be the ten step niche process. And I've got a ton of referral partners that are basically going to be promoting it all over basically the world. And everybody should be hearing about it hopefully pretty soon.

Cool.

So I want to talk about scaling agencies a little bit. Did you have something else you wanted to say on that before I switch topics?

It's just going to be a monthly webinar last all year long and you can get, you can, you can, you can learn more about that@marketing agencycoach.com or agency successroadmap.com Sweet.

Yeah, we'll definitely link that stuff up in the show notes for anybody listening so you can go check it out and, and get on the mailing list and all that kind of stuff so that you'll know when that's coming out.

Perfect.

Now, as far as scaling, what sort of challenges do you see a lot of businesses have with scaling?

What sort of roadblocks do you see people having?

Man, almost always they can't get out of their own damn way. It's like.

Yeah, there's a lot of things that happen both on the sales, on the sales and marketing side and the service side. So on the sales and marketing side, okay, you know, let me just go ahead and burst your bubble for anybody out there trying to scale if you think that you're going to find some. Remember, if you're in a consultant type sale and you're a jack of all trades, meaning you just go into an office and you sell them based upon your experience on whatever the hell comes out of their mouth, okay? Which is pretty. Which is the most common thing that people do. It's impossible, not impossible, just about impossible to find anyone who's going to be able to sell like that, other than you, that will stick around for any period of time. Because if they can do that, why the fuck do they need you?

It's true.

So with that being said, if you go in there and you're trying to do consultative type sales to where you just look like a freelancer kind of deal, and you'll just sell them whatever the hell they need for whatever price you can get out of them, okay, Then at that point you're never really gonna be able to scale your sales process because you don't want sale. You cannot have other people doing that. Okay, so what you have to do again, back to creating products and systems and processes. So you need to give them very specific products. So let me give you a quick example. You know, to get some. To try to train someone in all the digital marketing aspects, I'm talking about Facebook and Google, and send them through all the digital marketer certificate. Everything is a massive, massive, massive task. As the agency owner, you have probably spent hundreds of hours learning that craft.

To think that you're going to get somebody off the side of the damn street to go in there and have that kind of dedication, be able to sell at that level is ridiculous. Okay, now if you say, hey, Bob or Jane or whoever the hell it is, I've got Lego number one. Here are the five things that it does for the business owner. Here are the business owners that like it. Here's the price point, here's the elevator pitch, and here's the sales deck and the proposal template. Go. Which one do you think is going to generate more sales?

That Legos, my man.

Yeah, so, meaning, so if you can't get out of your own way, if you're trying to do consultative sales and you enjoy that kind of thing, that's called a freelancer. Go after what's called your brand positioning elements, because that's how you're going to be able to raise your prices. But if you have, if you aspire to scale your agency and grow your agency to where everything's not tethered to you. You're going to have to learn to be able to get out of your own way, create products and create systems and processes that allow other people to do it without knowing the whole secret sauce.

So would you go after. So thinking about it that way, Lego pieces, would you go after individuals that maybe can. Do they have a history or are they kind of more or less a blank slate so you can mold them how you want them to think and act?

Yes and no. So different, different levels. So meaning at the business development level. Okay, you're definitely going to want to go after somebody with some experience because they're going to be what's called whale hunting, meaning they're going to go out and they're going to try to find a Matt Wolf or something to put them on their podcast, you know, to get in front of thousands or tens of thousands of people or whatever. Right. Meaning there's going to be a much higher level relationship. If some idiot had gotten on the phone with you guys at the first, I would not be on here with me right now. So you can't have an idiot negotiating these types of deals. And this is just one example. There's millions of, you know, sponsoring and business develops a totally different, different beats now sales, you know, I'm all about getting. I just want somebody who's not gonna lie, not gonna steal and is hungry, I mean really hungry. Because it's my job to give them the leads. If you think that you're going to just hire somebody that's going to go generate leads and then sell it and then hand it over to you again, you know, I got a bridge in Brooklyn. I'm all about selling. To give a damn good price work out really, really well for you. So, you know, but it's not going to happen. It's just not going to happen because again, that's the essence of building a damn business with all the white label partners nowadays especially.

That's true.

Okay, so again, you know, just, just, just get out of your own way and systematize things is about the best answer you can get on that.

Well, speaking about that automation, I'm sure there's a lot of ways to systemize your agency so you don't have to hire a shit ton of people. Because that's the other thing that we didn't want to do back in our agency days, even though we're doing it more now, is have this massive team around us. So how do you use automation in your agency.

Oh man.

I had a paradigm shift after I built. I had 40 something employees at my first agency. And nothing against employees, but you know, I don't want, okay. So with that being said, I automate first. If I cannot automate, then I vendor contract second. And if I cannot do that, then I employ.

And so the same kind of mentality needs to be around for agency. Okay. So for example, last year, the very first year I launched the coaching business, I did two hundred and thousand dollars with zero employee by myself, myself. Everything's, everything's automated. Okay. Now as I'm going down the path and I'm launching different things, I'm going to bring in, you know, I'll probably bring in somebody to help. But you should think automation first. Okay? Always. And the reason being, there's multiple, multiple reasons. Why is that? One, the act of automating something forces you to standardize it. You have the option, if you're gonna automate it, you must standardize it. You have to, okay. Or you'll be automating until the day you die.

True.

So that's one big reason. And so a specific example on the sales and marketing side, which is where how we went down this path is every single time you get a lead, okay, Every single time you talk to someone, if you are not putting that into a CRM and brand penetrating them automatic through automation, one of your competitors is, and your competitor is going to kick your ass because they're getting all that data. That's part of my coaching philosophy. It's called lead harvesting. And so everywhere you go, you know, you take a photo of every business card you get. You, you know, you give a little whatever. I mean, just no matter who you talk to, every single time it needs to go into your database and there needs to be automated email sequences that are following up with them. And when you do that, you're building your database so you can reach out and touch more of your target audience. You can now upload that to Facebook. You can do webinars, special promos, end of the year discounts, all kind of stuff. Now you're in control of your own deal and the automation is actually building brand awareness for you.

So smart. So when you go and work with an agency client, what are the first, like handful of things you tell them that you got to get this automated.

That man, that really depends on the size. That really depends on the agency. So let me get a start, Let me tell you. Startup, okay? Like somebody just getting started, okay? Your sales and your sale, your sales Follow up, you must eliminate follow up failure out of the gate immediately before you ever open the doors. You better have some kind of automated follow up system. So that way every single time you get a lead or a prospect or a contact record of any sort of, you're building upon it, your success is building upon your success, okay? If not, then you're the idiot taking the business cards, putting on your desk, never following up with them. And six months later, when you're sick of looking at them, you throw them away, okay? So don't be that guy or girl, okay? Make the hard work you're about to do count. Make it go somewhere. So put them into a database and follow up with them automatically for damn sure, okay? Immediately after that, okay? And I mean immediately after that. Whenever you're going to be getting into the half a million dollar to the one million dollar round, it's going to be a lot more about standardizing and automating your, your, your, your contractor and employee onboarding and your, your, your new client onboarding. So that's just one example. And the reason that again, reason that's such a big deal is because the more you can standardize it, again, automation forces you to standardize it. So the more you can standardize it, the more streamlined both of those become. So when you, when you go to sell a business, there are two factors among the other thousands that come into play that carry a lot of weight and that is your ability to take some idiot off the side of the road, plop them into a chair and generate profit with them. Hence getting an employee in up to speed and producing profit. Hence the employee training onboarding. Okay? Now another one is what's called time to close, okay? Mean that the amount of time that it takes from a prospect to come into your basket all the way to the point where they purchase and are onboarded like they're a client.

Okay?

So meaning if it takes you on average from point of contact, from initial contact two years to close a $2,000 deal, there is not an investing group in the world that will even look at a damn thing you do. There's not enough return on investment too fast. Now if you can get a prospect from point of contact to close on a 2000-10,000 deal, within a matter, within less than an hour or two of actual communication, a human being physically getting on the phone and working, okay, then there are, Are you kidding me? That people will throw money at you? Okay, I'm talking about, sure, how much do you need? How much do you need how much do you need? Can you get more leads? Can you know, that's all they're match. Okay. Because it's a predictable and reliable outcome in both scenarios and that's what people pay for.

Love it. Now I'm getting the feeling that automation, you say automation first and it forces you to systemize, you know, standardize. It goes back to almost. I would imagine this creates a new mindset for the business owner too. By forcing your. Not forcing, but starting with automation, you're changing your mindset now you're seeing shit happen that wasn't happening before potentially. So you're like, yeah.

And that goes back to that beginning with the end. And okay, we always hear it but how the hell do we do it? Right. And then of course, and again it's a little bit different for startup survival mode. This is why it's so important. You got to know when and how and why. Right. But.

You know, at the end of the day the, when you go into something understanding what the end goal is and you clearly know what the end goal is, not like I want to make more money. That's not a fucking end goal. That's called a dream. That's not a goal, that's a dream. I want to make more money. Great, I hope you do. That's awesome. Goal is today I'm going to get up and I'm going to talk to 50 people to narrow that down to five. And by the end of the day, my goal, goal is to close one sale for $5,000.

Big difference. Okay.

Big dick. If you don't understand the difference, you need to understand the difference. A goal is something, a milestone goal. Okay. Anyway, point being, I beat that horse to death. Point being is this, is that, is that when you begin with the end in mind and you set that goal, everything before it is now centered around that goal, that, that purpose, that higher call, the reason why it's there.

Right.

Therefore all the messaging, everything is in alignment with that goal.

Yep.

And so you know that everything turns out, it's a hell of a lot easier. Well now that also applies now that you've got begin with the end of mind kind of mindset going on, whether it be on sales or service, it applies to everything else too. So you got the product when all your lead magnets, all your follow up, your proposals, your service documents, everything comes out of that, that begin with the end in mind kind of mindset. So it's a game, it's very much a game changing thing. That's that limiting belief. And so by forcing yourself to do things outside of your box, it will help you break those limiting beliefs and help you get you closer to achieving your goals.

Are there any things that you see, like a lot of agencies try to automate that they really shouldn't be automating?

Yeah, everything.

And what I mean by that is this is. I'm all about automating everything except for the human touch. They try to take the human touch out of it too much. Meaning they try to do. Well, let me clarify that. I know what I mean, but nobody else will know what the hell I mean.

Okay, so I'm a big fan of automation and I'm a big fan of standardizing, but I am never, ever, ever going to leave the ultimate relationship up to automation. The ultimate relationship is always going to be between me and that person. It's a human being thing. So leave the fucking phone number on your website. If people's giving you money, if they're giving you money, they've earned the right to talk to you.

True.

Okay. Don't try to live behind a digital wall and build a business again. Some crazy dude like me is gonna kick your fucking ass. Because I'm not afraid to go out there and shake hands and say, hey, your baby looks good today.

Dude, that's crazy. Yeah. There's so many business. And this is. I guess the point I want to make is like this is not just for agency owners. This is for every business online.

Yeah.

A big thing that we put in our business is live chat is to respond to folks and just Facebook Messenger. We put that stuff all over our website so they have the ability to ask a question. And it used to be me in that seat all the time. Now we have a really great customer service rep and I pop in occasionally, but that is completely increased our conversions, customer habits, so many people thanking us. We do custom videos for. For people to just make sure that they fully understand. And that's usually me doing that, taking.

A few minutes and to give it kind of context.

It took me forever. Again, I came from Mississippi, didn't graduate college. How does a guy like that does as brash and as in your face as I am end up having 40 plus highly educated college graduate badasses working for me. So. Well, what the hell? I mean, that is broken. That's not the way it's supposed to work. Okay. So, you know, the reason I bring that up is because I had to figure out a way to get to the truth and figure out what works faster than other people because I just didn't have the upbringing, I didn't have the background. I didn't have the foundation that everybody else had. Right? So under that context, I hyper focused on understanding human psychology. What makes people tick. Right. Why do they do the things they do? Okay. And you know, how do I get. Because, you know, the biggest lies we tell are the ones we tell ourselves. You know, if I sincerely believe, believe that I'm 6 foot 8, blonde hair and blue eyes. If I sincerely believe that and I go out and tell somebody that, then I'm not. I, I perceive myself as. Not too long. I'm not lying. I believe it. Now, obviously it is a lie because I'm not really.

I saw your avatar. I thought it was that. No, I'm just kidding.

Oh, it is. It is. It is. It is it. But, but, you know, but I mean, but, but the biggest lies we tell ourselves is the ones we tell ourselves. And so we get through those and get straight to the truth is a big deal. So let me get back to, to the, to the, to the point. Right? And so what I did is boil things down to the most fundamental rudimentary emotion that's driving the conversation. Okay? So as you all know, all decisions are driven by emotion, okay? Every single one of them. Every single one of them. Now, as soon as you make that decision, the reality is you probably don't even know that you made the decision yet you're going through what's called the validation process. Or what I like to call what's called psychological hurdles. Let me give you a quick example. Why does the old ball fat guy buy the convertible turbo red Porsche?

To feel amazing.

To feel amazing. To look young. Feel young. Or it might be like some kind of 69 fastback Mustang. They want to relive their teenage years, get that hot chick looking at them again, whatever the hell it is. But I promise you, there's not an ounce of fucking logic in that decision.

That's true.

Okay? Now, now, now, why did he pick the Porsche? Why didn't he pick a Lamborghini? Why didn't he pick a Ferrari? Why didn't he pick a Mustang? Why didn't he pick that? So that's, this was, this is when logic comes into play. This is what they call the psychological hurdles. Okay? I picked the Porsche because after all the reviews, okay, it has five star crash test rating, it has best gas mileage. You're reviewing the specs on the whole thing, you're going through all the details and if at any point in time during that the congruency or the alignment with your emotion gets out of alignment, then you remove it, and you go find something that is in alignment with your emotion. Makes sense. All right? So the sooner you can get to the fundamental emotion behind what's going on, the sooner you can actually see the psychological hurdles, the pain points. Okay? And from. And once you understand that, it's like giving candy to a baby. Okay? So where I'm going with all that is is the emotion behind it. As soon as you get to the emotion behind everything in the beginning with the end of mine, everything gets easier. You sell to the emotion, and everything gets a whole lot. A whole lot. Just 10 times easier. So can I answer your question? I got. I got a little sidetracked on that one, dude.

It's psychology. And this is what Matt and I talk about all the time. This goes back to, you know, mindset, you know, just. Just automating your business just so you don't have a freaking heart attack or something like that. I mean, just think about if you understand not only yourself, but then other people. It opens doors for so much shit.

Yeah. I think one of my biggest frustrations with business owners just working with a lot of business owners over the years is that they all see other marketers, other entrepreneurs, and they go, oh, look at what Frank Kern is doing. Look at what Brendan Burchard is doing. Look at what Ryan Deiss is doing over here. And then they just try to model it, but they have no clue the psychology behind what they're doing. They have no clue the actual marketing tactical philosophies that are at play at what those guys are doing. They're just trying to copy it.

Right?

You know what else drives me insane about all that? First and foremost, I want to give a whole lot of accolades to Ryan Dice and all those guys because they're brilliant. They do a great job, right? But they're selling the sizzle, dude. They're not selling the steak. And it drives me insane how people can't see that. Meaning that the picture of which they're painting is part of the marketing strategy to sell you the fucking product. It's not even really what they did to build the damn thing. Okay? So I don't understand people. I don't understand. How can you not see that? I mean, how can you not see that? Okay? But it is what it is, you know? In other words, like, you know, I'm just going to tell you right now, if you're out there and you're listening to this and you actually perceive under any Context of the word. That you're ever going to buy a program for any amount of money, okay, that is going to make building a business easy to. Where you can work four hours of fucking work week. You are hot. You. You. I don't even. How would. I don't even know how to answer that. If you are not ready for blood, sweat and tears, a lot of work and pouring your heart and soul into it, do not start a business. Period.

True.

Period. Period. There is nothing easy about it. It will never be easy. It does not get easy. Well, it can get. I'm sorry. If you get the right system, it does actually get a lot easier.

There's no light at the end of the tunnel. People just give up now, right?

Yeah, but there is no shiny object. There is no squirrel. There is no magic money button, okay? It boils down to proven systems and processes and making good decisions.

Yeah, but that's not sexy. That's not shining bright in this fucking YouTube ad that I just saw online.

That's what's wrong with society and today. That's what's wrong with today's world. In my mind. Here it is. Here's. I'm going to preach one more time. Ready? Here we go. The world is all about style is completely lost. The sex appeal around substance, everybody. Are you kidding me?

I'm gonna burst all the bubble. For all the young men out there who see all these sexy women on Facebook, I'm gonna let you know they don't look like that when you meet them.

What?

In case you didn't know, they don't look like that when you meet them.

You mean they're not all constantly perpetually traveling the world and living on beaches all the time?

And they constantly don't have the duck face going on either.

But I love my duck face.

I promise you. I promise you. Their hair is not always done. They are not always surrounded by friends. They will fart and it will stink. It is what it is.

We're all human.

It is what it is. Okay? The sooner you get down to the human part of it, the better. And wherever you actually physically have a checklist of people you're going to date based upon. Okay, do they work out three days a week? Do they have any hair on their body? In other words, all this stuff you. And you can't. I mean, I don't know how to answer that question. It is what it is. It's all. You know, at the end of the day, style is a facade. Substance is for real.

So I have. I have Two last kind of quick questions and both of these came from Chris Martinez. So if they're just total bullshit questions, then blame him.

He's easy to blame.

So what do you see as the future of agencies?

Oh, beyond a shadow of doubt. The Legos pricing model that we have fine tuned and perfected. Because see, I attempted to get the product stuff with my agency and the reality is that we accomplished it to the best of our ability at where the industry was at that time. And I'll explain what I mean by that here in just a second. But now the industry is to the point to where productization, okay, is the future of the entire industry. You will either niche out and productize or you will get your ass kicked in the next seven to 10 years. Beyond a shadow of a doubt. So let me give you an example and explain that really grandiose comment. Okay, ready? In 1921, 22 and in the early 1920s, Henry Ford was very famous for saying this statement. Please finish it for me if you can. Okay, you can buy any color model T you want, as long as it is, is black. Okay, Right there, right there. Ding, ding, chicken dinner. Okay. All right. So why is that?

Standardization?

Yeah, he wanted to standardize. He didn't want to make a whole bunch of colors product, just make it production line. He wanted to be able to crank them out fast.

Yes and no. First part of your. This is it. That is 90% no and 10% yes. We're onto something.

I'll take it. At least I got a 10% skill.

10% yes. Because he did want to crank them out fast. Because remember the higher calling, the purpose was to give affordable automobiles to the middle class. Okay? All right. Now the reason that you only got black is because he's keeping the cost down. Because he was, you're right, trying to get him out as fast as he could. But he was having to figure out how to do a fucking assembly line. They had never done one before. Nobody knew what the hell I mean. He's physically having to create these machines that he is literally dreaming up as they go. They, they are, they are just trying to figure out how to do it. Okay, now jump ahead 20 to 25 years to post World War II. Dude, you can get a Jeep, you can get a Harley Davidson, you can get a truck and get a 4x4 truck and get a convertible. Jump ahead to the 70s. Now you got economy cars, you got convertibles, you got hot rods, you got dragsters. Jump ahead another 20 plus years, you got electric cars and all these different things. And so they got all these options. Okay, so let's now take that example, once fresh on your brain and apply it to the digital marketing industry. When was this industry started? What, 20, not even 20 years ago?

It's called that.

Okay, so there's, you know, it's called a dust selling. So we literally were figuring out how the fuck to do it. Google wasn't around when we got all AOL, dude, MSN, Firefox, CompuServe.

I said CompuServe.

Exactly. And television. I mean, you name it, man. It's like, it's, it's. They were, you know, I mean, like Facebook, that wasn't even around, dude. Twitter didn't, didn't exist. WordPress didn't exist. But all the dust tests is still settling. The way our industry works, it'll never be completely settled, but the dust has settled to the point to where the platforms and the tools, the assembly line, for lack of a better term, is got stabilization to it. Meaning WordPress is not going to go anywhere. Google's not going to go anywhere. Facebook's not going to go anywhere. We know we can hang our hat on those. So you can now get out there and build much more customized products to serve specific pain points. So now is the time to get out there and do that. And if you look at this throughout history, if you apply this to history, right now is the real gold rush. What a lot of people don't know is that the very first United States Gold Rush was actually in Dahlonega, Georgia. And there's one in North. They debate North Carolina, there's one in North Carolina, there's one to Georgia. Okay, there's one. The big ones. That's not where everybody got rich. They don't, people don't remember them. They don't even know they existed. The biggest one is the 49. The 49er, the boom. Right, okay, and, and, and so the biggest one's coming down the pipe. The first couple were like, okay, that's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. But we haven't hit the main vein yet. And this is not some kind of freemason freak show, okay, people? So don't be thinking like that. Okay? So anyway, point being is, is that we're not, we're. So we're about to hit the main vein of the gold rush of digital marketing. And it's coming down the pipe and productization and niching out is the path. That's the pickaxe and the shovel and all that fun stuff. And if you look at it throughout history, history not only validates what I'm saying, history has proven that what I'm saying is 100% accurate.

I love that. That's such a great metaphor, analogy for what's going on. I love that so much. Now, the last question I have, I'm a little nervous to ask because I don't know if Chris was playing a prank on me or if it's something I really should ask, but if it.

Has anything to do with Chinese food or Hong Kong, don't ask it.

All right. No and no. Perfect.

All right, just checking.

All right, so what's a double digit midget?

Oh my God, my double digit. I'll show you my double digit midget here in a little bit. Who. Hold a second.

I don't want to see. I don't want to see. I don't want to see.

That's a good question. I'm going to show you here in just a minute. Her. Okay, so we're going to get on video here in a little bit and, and I'll show you. But my double digit midget is my daughter. And so her name is Abby. And that is, that's my, that's my delight at the end of my tunnel. Right? So, and, and when she turned 10, as a matter of fact, she was so excited about turning 10 for the sake of months prior. Okay. She was counting down the days until she. And she came up with this name on her own. Daddy, Daddy, Daddy. I'm gonna be your double digit midget. That's awesome. That's one of the funniest things I've ever heard that so long.

That's amazing.

Anyway, it's so cute. Especially coming out of a little nine and a half year little girl that looks just like me and has a massive lisp just like me. It's pretty funny.

That's awesome.

Ddm.

Double digit midget.

Are you training her up? Is she helping you out or is she just. Just being a kid, obviously.

Yeah, she, she is being a kid and.

You know, I mean, she's in the environment and so she, she's being trained by being in the environment.

Yeah.

I grew up, my father was a small business owner and I didn't realize how much I learned just by going and playing up his. Playing up in his damn office. Right. So. So yeah, she's in the environment, she's learning. I don't know, though, I have to admit, you know, she is not an overwhelming dominant entrepreneurial personality yet. Right.

But she loves the lifestyle. She sees how that's going on. So she is currently big time into anything that allows her to dance and musical theater and the arts and science. She's big into science, so that's it.

Good for her. It's just so cool to like just bring the kids into the fold and let them experience a little bit what daddy or mom's talking about, spending their time. Because you create a damn good life.

Yeah.

Or you can if you're not automating, you know, if you're automating and hiring some people around you.

Yeah, and. Yeah, exactly. You know, and again. And look, if you don't want to scale, and I'm gonna tell you right now, that's the first you to ask yourself, because I didn't me is it. There's a preconceived notion out there, no matter what, conquer the fucking world. You know, at least in my world there was anyway, you know, but don't do that, you know, I mean this, there's this, it's overrated. And you know, if you just want to make a good honest living six figures and work it from home.

There'S.

A lot of honor, glory and pride in being a wonderful family man or woman and doing that. There's nothing wrong with that at all. There's nothing wrong with that. And so just know that. As a matter of fact, I got a great blog article on my blog, blog, blog that explains it. So just to scale or not to scale is the name of it.

That'd be cool. We'll link that up in the show notes too.

Yeah, no, I love that. I've got a four year old and a six year old and they get to reap the benefits of the lifestyle that we've created. My, my wife's a stay at home mom and we could travel like once a month. We're kind of doing little mini trips here and there and you know, most families don't get that opportunity. You know, they're working a 9 to 5 and they only have so many vacation days and you know, so the lifestyle that we've managed to create has been amazing and they get that trickle down effect from it.

Yeah, no, my vacation last year was a, I think it was an eight day trip to England. We went and I call them workcations. Okay. And I have those now. I didn't really have those before. This is kind of a newer thing in my life. And so every summer I'm gonna try to have like a big trip, you know, like a seven to ten day trip to where me and my daughter Go somewhere. And this last time I spoke at an event in Manchester, United Kingdom. And that took up like the first three days and then the remaining five days with travel and everything, three and a half days. But we took the speed train, the virgin speed train down to London and hung out in the River Thames and all that stuff and went back country and just, we just had a. We just had a killer freaking vacation. Right? That's awesome. Meanwhile, I closed, I think three or four clients out of that trip. And you know, all that fun stuff. The entire vacation was 100% paid for. Plus, plus, plus. Right. So.

Yep. Can't get better than that, man. You can't go better than that.

It is what it is and I love it, love it, love it. And I hope. Here, I'll tell you what, let me just not get too, too cheesy.

Do it.

Give me two seconds and I will read to you. The.

Book'S coming out, right?

Yeah, I was gonna, I'm gonna say you gotta, you gotta remind us where to go get that, you know.

Yeah. And, and so let me. I'll read you. It's, you know, kind of given the about. About the author kind of page. Right. And this is what it says. And I love, I love the way this turned out. We spent some time on this. So I'm lee off and I'm in business to do one thing, make agency owners lives easier. While building my agency. I would have given almost anything for a book like this one or a program or a webinar series like this one. Literally a roadmap that can provide the exact path and steps that you need to grow your agency faster and do it with less stress. Okay. What I'm doing is I'm working my ass off to help you fulfill your version of the American dream. Love that.

Love it. You're doing it for them. That's the bigger purpose, you know.

Both.

You know, I mean, and it feels good to be doing it, you know, it feels good to be serving a.

Higher place for sure.

Now on that topic of books, are there any books that you find yourself.

Coming back to often or recommending often to other people?

Oh, yeah, definitely. So where to start? Let's see here. I'm sorry, I'm looking at my book chart.

So let me add to that question. Actually, I'm curious because you mentioned that you've really studied human psychology and I'm curious if there's any books in that realm, because that's something that really fascinates me. I loved Cialdini's Influence but that's really kind of my only. Pre. Suasion and influence are kind of my only dive into psychology. So I'm curious if you have any books in that realm actually, you want to.

This is gonna. I don't know how. I don't know how this is gonna sound, but there's one called Lie Spotting by Pamela Meyer. Have you ever heard of that one before?

I have not. Oh, lie Spotting. Lie.

Yes. Huh. Lie Spotting by Pamela meyer. There's a YouTube video about 18 minutes long, and what it does is it. And again, it gets into the psychology of why and how we do things. So, for example, whenever people are talking. Okay. Again, the reality is nobody knows the exact number, but about 70 to 80 of every thing you hear all day long is a lot true. And that's the only true thing you probably heard all day today.

Okay. At least you're honest.

And the reason I say that is not, again, not because of malice or not because anybody's trying to screw you over. It's just because they believe they're on. Bullshit. Yeah, that's it. That's it. And so once you understand that, I'm telling you, that right there really changed a lot for me. But another one is actually that Art of War. And it's not really. It's not really a human psychology book, but it's a human tendency.

Sure.

Yes.

And. And if you understand the different types of spies and how to outflank people and do different things, all those things work and have worked for thousands of years because they understand human tendencies. And tendencies are in a big. And I mean big way, much more predominant in. In our lives than you would ever think.

Okay. And that makes so much sense too, just with the philosophies that you teach as well, because you always start with the end in mind. And a big philosophy from the Art of War is that.

That's it. That's exactly it right there. That's exactly it. You never, ever enter a battlefield without having the outcome.

Predefined and mapped out and strategically mapped out before you go into that battle.

Awesome.

No, I think understanding human psychology tendencies, that. That's everywhere in life, anything you ever do. And the second and just understanding yourself, because Matt and I have been on that path probably the last two years mainly. And you're like, holy crap. You let yourself off the hook of certain things. Or like, hey, okay, this is something I really love. Let's focus here. It just helps everything.

Yeah. The biggest strides we've ever made in our business have come more from personal development than business development.

Oh, always. That's back to that limiting belief things. I mean, I'm telling you right now, as you evolve and you grow as a business owner, every single thing that is broken with your business is your fault.

Yep.

I would completely own that. That is a 100% of the time comment. Okay. Without fail, it is a stupid, preconceived notion you have is a perceived value that you. That you. That you place value in. That you should not place value in it is something your mama said when she was four. When you were four years old that you don't even know she said. But it's so deeply ingrained in you, you don't know why you do it. You just do it. And it really is that simple.

This is a good conversation, my man. All right, so remind us, where can folks just get that book? Find out more about you. Get on this webinar when it's ready.

Yeah, man. AgencySuccessRoadmap.com and that's the name of the book.

I just got the final cover. Remember I showed you the month a while ago. I just got the latest and greatest cover, like two seconds ago, and it looks fabulous. So anyway, but. So excited about that. But agency success roadmap is where it's going to be. And it'll be up there in probably about two weeks. You're ready to go. That'll be the book. And then from that same site, there will be a link to the webinar series, probably.

Perfect. That's right around the time this thing will go live. So be perfect timing.

Good timing.

Right on.

Perfect.

This has been cool, man. It's a great conversation. And right after this, let's do that little quick video. We'll. We'll share that with everybody. Put it probably on the show.

Perfect. Let's do it, man.

Have a good one, dude. All right. Thank you. And I hope you just enjoyed this episode you just listened to. Now, right now, before we sign off, I have a few things I would love for you to do. So the very first thing is to go find our guest on Facebook and tell them that you loved their episode with us. That's going to help them just feel good about themselves, but also it's going to spread the word a little bit more for us. Go find them on Facebook. Everybody's on Facebook. And go say that you love their episode. And maybe one cool thing that you learn there. The second thing is to go to itunes and subscribe to our podcast. Just look up Hustle, influence chart and hit the subscribe button. And the very last thing, the third thing, is to leave us a review on itunes or wherever you're listening to this podcast and help us spread the word more. That's how more people are going to get this awesome knowledge, this, this cool podcast training, and a whole bunch of other cool free training that we give out@evergreen profits.com. so that's about it. Go find them on Facebook, go subscribe on itunes, and leave us a review. You would be amazing if you did that, but you're always amazing. So thanks for listening and we'll catch you in the next episode.

You're awesome.