How You Can Own It, But Not Run It with Jerry Hayes - I Love Marketing Episode #330

Now I will say for me, my record is two years. I have physically gone two years without being in the office. And that included a three month family sabbatical that my wife and I took when our kids were in the eighth grade and we lived in Marbella, Spain. I'm Dean Jackson, he's Joe Polish. And this is the I love marketing pod.

One question changed Jerry's life forever. Plus seven tips for building more freedom into your business. Remember to subscribe to I love marketing so you don't miss a Future episode. Visit ilovemarketing.com subscribe for more.

Jerry Hayes began his career as an optometrist with entrepreneurship in his blood. He has since founded and run four companies, each exceeding 10 million in annual revenues. He's now CEO of his fifth company and still rarely goes to the office. Jerry knows his strengths and he's hired smart people to do the rest. One of Jerry's strengths is creating systems with oversights. His subtitle for you today is how you can manage your successful business and live on a beach 600 miles away. His title is how you can own it but not run it. Give it up for Jerry.

Okay, Thank you, Joe. So first I'll get off my bucket list. Now I've made a talk to the 25k group, so that's one I'm proud of. I'll get that off my bucket list. And the second thing I would say is, what do Socrates and Joe Polish have in common? Well, both of them say that the quality of your life is equal to the quality of your questions. And here's the question that changed my life. When I was early in business, I interviewed a consultant to, you know, to help me as an advisor. And he asked me a question and I want you guys to think about this. He said, do you want to work for your business or do you want your business to work for you? And I have to be honest, I was a young man then and that question really caused me to think because I remember sitting, we were sitting in a restaurant and Holiday Inn in Vicksburg, Mississippi, which is where my business was based and is still based. And I thought, what's my duty as a business owner? And my first thought was, you know, my duty is to work harder and longer than anybody else in this company. I'm going to be there. I'm the first person to come in and I'll be the last person to leave. And I'm always going to be working hard. But I really knew deep down that's not what I wanted to do that just wasn't going to be very satisfying to me. So I made the decision at that point. I really do want my business to work for me. Now, here's a question that I'm going to ask by a show of hands, what's the longest period you've been away from your business in terms of consecutive days? So starting out, just say, who's been away from their company? Let me see hands. Who's been away from their company? No more than a week at a time in terms of consecutive days. So that's two. All right. And when I say away, I mean physically away. So who has been away from their business more than a month at a time? Who's been away from their business more than six months at a time physically? So Chad, who was my seatmate yesterday, he would rival me. Has anyone been away more than a year at a time consecutively from their business? Now, I will say for me, my record is two years. I have physically gone two years without being in the office. And that included a three month family sabbatical that my wife and I took when our kids were in the eighth grade and we lived in Marbella, Spain. So I don't know that being away for two years is something to brag about or to be ashamed of, but I've actually been an absentee owner. As of January 2, 1990, I'll have been an absentee owner for 25 years. So that means in about six weeks, I'll have lived in a different town on a full time basis. I live in Jacksonville, Florida. My company's based in Vicksburg, Mississippi. So, you know, when I started this business, one of the concepts that I had in mind was what. What I would call mailbox money. How can I create this business that's going to generate an income for me, but does not require me to be there all the time? When I tell this story, I really get two reactions, and I bet it would be the same in here. One of those reactions is, you know, Jerry, my business relies on me so much. It wouldn't be possible for me to be gone all the time. Perfectly valid. The second one is, Jerry, I love my work so much. I don't want to be gone that much, so I choose to be there. Now. That was not the original plan for me. Leaving my business full time was not the original plan. I started as an optometrist in 1980. I had a very nice practice with six employees again in Vicksburg, Mississippi. But I was a micromanager. And by a micromanager that means I wanted things done my way all the time. And I found that that was a real frustration in exercise. My problem was I was focused on activities when I should have been focused on results. I had not learned how to do that yet. The wake up call for me was I took my manager, my office manager, to a course on staff management and leadership. And you took this little survey and based on the number, you know, your answer to each question, they gave you a certain number of points. And then you added those scores up and then you would graph yourself and they had a graph that was. It started with 10 as being an extreme micromanager, and it went to one being totally hands off. Well, I literally scored 12 out of 10. In other words, I was an off the chart micromanager. That really had a big impact in me. Had a huge impact on me. Now I left practice and I'm going to skip the startup phase of those intense years of working 12, 15 hours a day to running two practices and starting two businesses and having two little kids at the same time. So let's fast forward now. Now we're going to Fast forward to 1989. I have a business with 100 employees and $40 million in annual revenues. That was 1989. January 2, 1990, my wife and I loaded two children and all our belongings and drove to Jacksonville, Florida and moved there to seek another business opportunity. We're 100% equity owners of that business, and we made a decision that we were not going to run that business anymore. I was successful, but I was not happy. And a big part of the problem was. I say problem. A big part of the issue for me was that once the company hit about 50 people, then I realized, you know, this is not a lot of fun anymore. And once the company hit 100 people in terms of managing, in terms of my skill set, as I'm long on quick start and short on follow through. And that just was. That was not. I mean, I was going home with a headache frequently. You know, I just wasn't enjoying it. And I just knew, hey, it is time for me to move on. You know, it's time for me to let somebody who can actually do a better job of running this business than I can. So how did I learn to let go? As an optometrist, I felt like it was my job to do everything in the office and to know everything in the office so well that I could teach that job to Simon or Jason or anybody. If you came in, I knew how to do that job. And once I started a marketing company, and in a group purchasing organization, there were so many skills I didn't have. I felt overwhelmed. And I asked a consultant, Carl Hicks, another question that changed my life. I said, carl, how in the world can I learn all these skills fast enough to grow this business? And I'm thinking, I've got to know everything about this business. And he said, jerry, he said, you don't. And this is before I met Dan and Babs, by the way, and before I was a client, a strategic coach. He said, what you do is figure out your core competency. Dan would call it your unique ability. He said, then hire other people to do everything you can't do. Well, I'll tell you, that was the most liberating answer to a question I ever got. And I can remember the feeling of saying, wow, I can do this. I can go out and hire people. And I would say today, it's taken me a long time to figure this out, but my unique ability is I am a team builder. I don't really do anything that well, let's be honest. Ask my wife if you want to know. But I am a team builder. Now, here are my seven tips for building freedom in your own business. One is, you have to get your business to profitability. You have to have great people around you. Don't be afraid to hire people smarter than you. We don't give equity, but we do overpay the market. I do not have equity owners in my business. From a purely operational standpoint, I've done a variety of different things, but I basically have weekly calls, and then I have two planning sessions a year with my staff. I do go to the office now. I live in Jacksonville. I go to the office in Vicksburg, Mississippi, twice a year. You're not going to get everything that you want. So focus on results and not on activities. And I'm very big at hiring outside consultants. We have an annual audit. I get people to advise me from the outside, including people that I would meet at meetings like this. So the pros are this. If you're away from your business, you free up 80 to 90% of the nuisance action. You free up your time. It gives you the freedom to start other businesses, which I started two, and I've started several more. And then your company is worth more to a buyer if they don't have to worry about how to replace the unique talents of a CEO. The disadvantages are you're probably going to have less growth. So you have to ask yourself, can you live with that? When is enough enough that you don't have that interaction of people and you have too much time? And I'm going to end with this one. The lesson learned is money is not the end game, nor is it time. It is the four freedoms that Dan preaches all the time of an entrepreneur. It's money, time, people, and purpose. Thank you.

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Sam.