Episode #678 - How To Manage Your Goals & Expectations with Mike Begg, Co-Founder of AMZ Advisors

Welcome to this edition of the million Dollar Mastermind podcast. This is where we pick the brains of high achievers from all walks of life and get their hard earned real world insights on ready. I'm your host, Larry Wydell. You ran lacrosse, you're playing, you had a coach. I'm sure there was a lot of assistant coaches. You know, we have mentors, advisors and this and the other. But the thing that's going to make a difference is what you're talking about, what you were telling yourself you were doing the self coaching. You're saying, I've got to do this, I've got to do that. And that propels you a position yourself to take advantage of what the situation offers. And rather than say, these guys don't motivate me, my coach doesn't motivate me, it's like, no, he's never going to do it. He's got a whole team to motivate, you know, and so some of them have that gift, but usually they never get past the star players in terms of that personal attention because it's just so many hours of the day for us. We got to look out for ourselves. And the first way we look out for ourselves is to make sure mentally we're thinking right and taking responsibility and looking for solutions and answers that will allow us to move up and get us excited. And so as you came out of that educational situation, where did you go and why did you go in that direction?

As I said, I can always sell myself as working in finance, working in that field, private equity, that type of stuff. So going through college, it was the same experience. A lot of the kids I was playing with, their parents were in finance. It's just kind of like a lacrosse thing. It's the community very much comes from that area or that career field. So I was thinking it was the same thing. Luckily, there was some period in between college, like during the summers where I would go work on block island as work at a marina and I was working at a marina tying in million dollar boats, servicing these million dollar boats. And at the same time I was meeting all these other people that own these boats. And more and more of them are realizing were not in finance, they didn't have a corporate career, but they actually had their own businesses. And that is one thing that got me to start looking at how I was doing stuff differently. I was like, well, this guy owns a construction company. Construction was always something that never seemed like glorious or like a glorified job to have. But this Guy has a 64 foot Viking sports Fisher that he's taking out to the island every weekend. And I'm like, well, he's doing something right. So there were more and more of those people that I was meeting, which started to shift the way that I was thinking about things. But at the same time I didn't know what I wanted to do from an entrepreneurial standpoint of how to start a business. So I actually graduated and I went, worked at Deloitte Consulting. And that was kind of the first career step I had after college.

Some of those consulting jobs can be very useful as a prep for the rest of your life because you get exposed to a lot of different businesses, but also problem situation, you get a chance to apply some solutions. And so talk about with what's one of the first lessons that you got your attention, that really got you intrigued in business and how the real world worked from being at Deloitte.

So I think the two main things that I learned from Deloitte were like expectation management, like how do you actually manage people? Or how do you manage the goals that you're trying to achieve? And then how do you approach problems? And within Deloitte, I mean, at a certain level, at an entry level, there's only so much you can do. But it started, it allowed me to think about things different ways. I would love talking with my managers, my senior managers, whoever I could, about different ideas just to pitch some things and be like, hey, I think this could work, I think this could work. And I think those are two very important aspects when you know how to manage expectations. It's obviously incredibly valuable in the business world because it sets the right relationship from the beginning of whether you're working with in a service business or a manufacturer and a product business or whoever the vendor may be in any business, it helps you understand how to set the expectations of when things are going to be done, how to get them done, what's going to happen if they don't get done. And that was one really important aspect of running a business. I mean, I use that almost every single day. And then, yeah, the other one is getting creative and figuring out solutions. And I think that's also extremely important.

Well, and the thing is, without that, you don't even know if there is a problem. Yeah, you know, I see people are just trying to do better and generally this and the other. I heard a phrase that I go back to over and over again, which is, you got early in my career, you got to be specific to be dynamic. You know, if you want to move in a direction, you got to be specific where it is that you want to go when you get in the car. Usually you have some place. You know, this whole idea you see on movies or something, like, where were you on Thursday night? Or whatever. Well, I just went for a drive. That doesn't happen, folks. People don't just get. Get in the car, drive around in circles. You know that he's like, if you ever hear that, they're lying. Okay, you get in the car, you got somebody you want to see, something you want to see someplace you want to. And then it's a matter of how long is it going to take. You got an expectation about how long it should take to get there. And usually you're pretty pissed when it takes longer. You know, like getting through the middle of Aspen when you're in a hurry. There's only six lights on Main street, but I swear, whoever the traffic engineer inside of there, they should take him out and, well, let's just say they should fire him because it seems like it could take 15 minutes to go through six blocks of lights. And when you have expectations, you know how things should go. That. And that's a good thing because when you're in charge, sometimes you need to get angry to make the decisions and changes you need to do. You need to. You can't like, well, let it go. No, you got sometimes difficult decisions, and the more important it is will be how bad you missed your expectations. So you have an example of how that played out early in your career where that kind of stood out for you, not managing expectations and how that made a difference.

I think there's definitely instances. I mean, from the Deloitte side, obviously, I don't have as much exposure. And so what was the client relationships were those handled more by principals and those people. But I think when I moved into my next job, beyond Deloitte, I moved into real estate development. And real estate development is another field that is very much about expectations. You have to work with engineers and civil employees to get the. To make sure the plans are meeting the right expectations, that they're up to standards, they're up to code. Working with lawyers to make sure everything works, the construction, to make sure the quotes line up with what you're actually doing and what the engineers are saying. So that's an area where things can get easily delayed if there's not clear expectations set. And it happened multiple times on projects I was managing. That was kind of the first shot I had managing projects on my own, and I didn't set clear expectations waiting for something from the engineer and it led to other delays. And then when it came to knock down the building, for example, the construction company couldn't get to it for another six weeks because we missed the original deadline. So it's tough. I mean, obviously not everything always lines up perfectly. There's sometimes delays. But it was my fault for not being more specific that I needed this by this date and this is the consequence. And honestly I probably should have found a way to enforce it with a contract to put some of the expense on the engineers for being late. But it's one of the things you learn is that that was probably a mistake I made that cost money. Luckily I was working for someone else and it wasn't my own money. So it was an expensive learning lesson for them, but I got a lot out of it on how to actually clearly set expectations from the start on anything you ow into. So there's no confusion at what the actual result is going to be.

For those of you who are sick and tired of fooling around and are dead serious about wanting to move up fast, I've got something especially for you. I've combined the best insights from over 40 years in business and making $70 million in income and compressed them into a free webinar. That's right, it's a free resource. If you want to find out exactly what the concepts are that I use in coaching million dollar earners, Register now@WlonWinning.com you'll discover the five part framework used by so many to reach their financial, personal and professional goals. You can find that link in this episode's show. Not. That's a great point that we will be doing a good thing to emphasize and that is it's one thing for the expectations to be in your head. It's another thing to be in the head of the people who've got to get it done. I actually started architecture and finished up in building construction in my degree from Georgia Tech, went into building residential development and usually I have about 11 houses under construction in five different subdivisions at any one time and you had to keep up with. But I had my own board at my house. Unfortunately I didn't have a way of getting it into the heads of the subcontractors so they could have the picture. But I did it so I would have the picture and I'd have all the phases they go through, all the jobs divided out by subdivision. And I had pins. I'd have a green pin if they were on track. I'd have a yellow pin if it was starting to get a little problematic. And if there's a crisis mode red pin, you know, it would. I cannot remember right now looking back on it. Whenever you start with a subcontractor, there's always an expectation of how long it's going to take for them to do it because it's what they do. They do, they work on these projects all the time for you. But I don't remember ever getting into the routine of saying, okay, today's the 15th. Ordinarily this is a 10 day project for you. Be great if it was eight, you got done in eight days. Can you do that? I'm going to pencil that in. We're going to see if you can get done by a. That would have made all the difference world. It didn't, you know, I was a rookie. It didn't occur to me.

Exactly. Yeah. And I mean, I agree I made the same mistakes in the projects I was working on. I mean, whether it was construction, whether it was health approvals or, you know, one of the common things I was dealing with was asbestos removals, those types of things. There are always ways to motivate people to do things faster and usually it's monetary. But knowing that there were ways to get clear expectations, try to achieve things ahead of time. Looking back now that I know that I probably would have used that a lot more to incentivize things and keep things moving along.

Yeah. And what it does for us in the supervisory position is when you do that, you're making things easier for yourself in it because you're getting the other party on the same page with you. Not only in terms of what needs to be done, but when needs to be done. And when it would be you get it done with a smile on your face or you get it done and there's not a smile on the face. And you get them to where. Because people, I find that a lot of people, unless they're serial narcissistic line dogs, they like to work with people and do things well. They want a smile at the end of the project, you know, they want a pat on the back and they want. It is just fair to go ahead and let them know this is where, how you're going to get the smile and the pat on the back and maybe a little incentive bonus, you know, of some kind. And those don't have to be much, you know what I'm saying? And I'll tell you one thing, people, this is a totally dead technique used in the world. Today, but very powerful. Send them a note. If you think like people who do things for you, if you send them a note, nobody sends them a note. Nobody writes anything down. And I remember when I was in recruiting training development, I was one of the youngest guys and everybody worked with me was older than me. But what I'd write em a note and I'd feel bad about it because like they're gonna like who's this kid sending me a note that I had a great month. Something like that. What a joke. But that's not how they receive it. They'd be like oh, thank you. You know, it's just like come from the president or something.

Yeah, no, it has a big impact and note writing is not something I do. It's maybe a good idea to try, but the way I do it is one on one calls with employees. That's the way I handle it now at least. I mean it's an opportunity. At first it's usually them like scared, very scared, like oh, what's happening? Why is the executive getting on the phone with me? But once we get on the phone in general, they feel so much better after the call. It's like we're recognizing you for doing a great job. You did exactly what we expected or you did everything up to the standard that we expected and you deserve some recognition and appreciation for that. So for me it's video calls or it's a phone call or even an in person meeting, getting a coffee together if they're here with me in the office. But yeah, it does make a big difference when you recognize people for actually getting to the level of the expectations that you have.

And those could be 30 second calls. I mean you could back a 30 second calls. If you don't get them, leave a message. I've done things where on holiday seasons, you know, you have a little extra time and you get in the reflective mood where I'll get a thing and then you, you know, I wanted to set up like 30, 40, 50 texts messages around the country. And one thing it does is makes us feel better. When you have your mind on appreciating people, you hear these things. I've got a gratitude journal of things like that. I try and be thankful for this and whatever. Well, this is kind of like another way of having a gratitude journal. It's like go out of your way, spend some time, take a phone call and touch base between me and you. I'll get to you something that I've been thinking about a long time. I just started this Weekend. We all have relatives and cousins, uncles, aunts, whatever that year can go by, and you don't talk to them. And so I said, you know what? Some of these have are kids. Their kids like 50 years old or 45 years old, but they're the sons of some of my cousins, you know, like that are gone now, you know, and I'm kind of a father figure in the universe there a little bit, you know, but. And so you can just reaching out and paying it, even with family, phone call to family or friends, like in neighborhoods where you used to live in the back, just touching base with people, those type things have a positive benefit. And what I find is that you wind up being reminded of stuff that makes you better, even in your business, because just that deflection is like recreation in the sense that recreation is getting you out of your standard routine to do something different to allow space to come into your head. And that's a way you can, like take a recreational type break by reaching out to somebody else and having a little conversation and a little appreciation. And then it has positive benefits. But now, let's go. You're in this thing. And how did you get. How did you make that transition from working inside? Now, is this your own business or did you go to work for another. You were working for another company, you took another position?

I was actually working for Sears at the time before, while Sears was still a company. But the first project I came onto, kind of going back to my finance roots before I really found the entrepreneurial urge, was a REIT spinoff of Sears. So we spun off a $2.2 billion REIT. Then from there I stayed on and moved into the development side. So that was who I was working for at the time. That was another unique experience. One of the cool things that I personally took out of it was, you know, Sears was a burning ship. It was going down, everyone knew it was. And people were jumping ship. They were trying to find other jobs, trying to move other things. So it created a lot of opportunities for myself within the company that I took, for example, we had a whole real estate development team. I mean, Sears owned, I think at the time, like 260 different stores. And we were looking at how we could redevelop it, how we could redeposition it. But there's only two people on the team, everybody else had left. And I just pretty much went and I was working directly with the president at the time of the real estate side. And I was like, hey, like, do you need help on the development Side, I want to move into development. And he was like, yeah, sure. So from there I went from being an analyst to being a real estate developer. And literally a simple conversation, just asking, expressing what I want. I was able to probably move my career five, six years beyond where I would have been if I had just gone through the entire process. So I think that's another really important thing to point out is that if there's something you want, you need to ask for it, or you need to show that you want it and let other people know that you want it, or you just can be sitting around on your ass.

Yeah. And that even starts with looking out there and following your natural curiosity and raising your hand. Let people know that. How else are they going to know if you don't let them know?

Exactly.

Yeah.

That's the big thing is like, if you don't ever voice what you want, if you don't make it known to the world, none of the world's never going to give you anything. You're not going to have any new opportunities come to you. And I think that is one thing that a lot of people that don't make the entrepreneurial jump or feel stuck in a lot of situations are struggling with is that they're not actually putting out what they want to other people. So there's no way that any other people are going to come to them looking to give them what they want.

Right now, how did you get to the point where you had the three friends, you know, you and two friends, and how did that relationship develop? Where did that come from?

So these were friends that I'd known since high school. One of them I had known since I was even younger. We met when we were in like first grade or something. So these were people I grew up with pretty much. And as I mentioned, their families were already on the business side. One's parents owned a factory and other parents owned a chain of funeral homes and was a real estate agent. So they had a lot of different stuff going on. They had a lot of different success in their family backgrounds. So after college, while I was working for Sears, myself and one of my partners and another and the cousin of my other partner rented an apartment together. We had a three bedroom apartment that we were all sharing. But the cool thing was that it brought us all together and from there we started talking more and more about different ideas and what we could make happen or what seemed realistic at the time. Real estate was the one thing that was in my mind all the time, because it's hard not to make money in real estate unless you royally mess something up. And I was like this could be something to do, but obviously you have to find the money to start just a whole fundraising is a whole different story. But we slowly started coming across the idea of E commerce. We looked at what was going on on Amazon. Specifically, the E commerce company was growing faster and faster in 2014, 2015. So we started finding out that we could actually sell products on Amazon. And from there the four of us ended up starting a couple product brands. One was an art supply brand, one was an outdoor goods brand. And from there we really started learning everything.

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