Episode #747 - Navigating Challenges And Pivoting Strategies with Kelley Thornton

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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 winning. I'm your host, Larry Wydell.

You have overlying principles, you know, core values or you know, whatever you want to call it. But you have things that you believe in that are going to guiding lights for you. But then you say you have processes, you know, it's, it's one of the things I try and get people to realize. You want to build this, all of this, these things are important to you into your system. So the process will get the important things done. You know, like 30, 60, 90 days. This is, if you're here on the 60 day, you're going to go through this and that's going to. Cause that's going to trigger certain things. I don't have to remember it. The manager doesn't have, if it's a newer manager, if he's inexperienced or experienced, it doesn't matter. You don't have to remember what's on that. You know, the 60 day checklist or whatever, it's built into the process. You know, it automatically happens. And so how much time have you spent on the process? Are you saying you copied a lot of those things? But you're, you know, you're, you're probably constantly adapting those too, you know, as you grow.

Yeah, we're always checking in with those at our quarterly business review meetings and making sure that they're the right. We probably don't change them much. I mean, every couple of years we make a slight change to them. The one I forgot is, and I'm embarrassed by this is teach guys first. So that is, you know, putting our customer first, what that's all about. But we, you know, we talk about them every day. We probably, you know, we probably, we've probably made over the last seven or eight years a few changes to them.

I've got two different questions I want to ask. The first one is what has been the hardest adjustment for you personally to go through in these different roles and at what stage, you know, when, you know, when did you have to go through a personal tough adjustment and how did you come to that realization? Did someone say something to you? Did a situation happen? But like I, you know, because the thing is companies are not going to be better if the leaders are not better and the companies are not going to improve. The leader's not improving and your company will not have those values if you don't have those values. You know what I'm saying? So where did you, you know, none of us come fully formed. You know, we, you know, most of the time you become. Have success because you're willing to adapt and willing to change and humble yourself and say, you know, okay, I gotta get better at this. Where, where. When I put that in front of you, what comes in your mind?

Yeah, I mean, you know, most entrepreneurs at some point kind of get their back up against the wall and, you know, it's. You're either, you're either going left or you're going right. You can't continue to go straight down the path that you're going, you know. And so I just got to the point where with purchase point, I was, you know, eight, nine years in. I should have made dramatic changes to that business early on. Seeing when to quit is a tough thing for a lot of entrepreneurs. And I've, you know, so I think, like, I got to a certain point with that business and financially where I was at with my personal life and my family, that I had to sell my house. I was financially against. Against the wall. And I had taken, you know, not only in. Not only had I burned through most of my cash, but I'd also borrowed some money, and it was at the point where my only move was to sell my house. So that. That was really the breaking point, you know, selling the house, which personally I don't, you know, I was okay with. But I don't think the kids and my wife really understood it that much. They weren't too happy with it. They were like, we don't really understand why this is happening. I'm like, I need some money. So I think, you know, get. When you get to those level of, like, life changes and, you know, and that type of pressure, I think that's when you really, you know, you really realize those are. Those are. Those are some defining moments. And they make you. They make you hungry and humble and also, you know, more passionate about succeeding. You just don't want to get yourself into a situation. You're like that.

Well, that's one reason why I want to talk to people like you on the spot cast. Because skin in the game, you know, people can be an interviewer. I've interviewed all kind of successful people, you know, and I'm a professor, and I've studied this for 30 years. Successful people. And I can tell you what they did. No, you can't, because you, You. You have no way of. It's like someone who feeds the gorillas for 30 years. And you say, I understand gorillas. Yeah, we'll get in the cage with them and see if you understand. You know.

Come out and tell me how that worked out.

Yeah. And so the thing is that until you got skin in the game, you can't really speak to these things or when you say the words, they don't communicate. Like somebody has been there. But now, when you went through that thing, how did that turn out? What was the progression from that? Yeah, I mean, usually they're not a fast turnaround. You know, usually you're like, I.

This really goes back again to this kind of Mark Cuban thing. And something that I've already said to you is just like I had, like. And, and Arnold Schwarzenegger says he's against this. Like, don't ever have a plan B. That's his strategy. Right. You read Total Recall, I think, or seen some of his. I read the book a long time ago. He said, you know, don't have a plan. There's no such thing as a plan B. I had a plan B, and I still have a plan B for today, even though, you know, I've reached a great. You know, I've accomplished a lot of my goals with the company that I have right now. And I, you know, I. You never know what tomorrow brings, but I'm in pretty good shape with this company. But I've always had a plan B and, you know, I pivoted pretty quickly. I said, this just isn't going to work. I've got to, you know, somewhat continue what I'm doing right now and kind of see it to completion and at the same time try to get something else going and see what else I can do. And so I constantly, unfortunately, I, And I say unfortunately because, you know, you really don't ever want to keep the eye. Your eye off the prize of what you're doing. But I've. I always have something in the back of my mind, if this doesn't work out, I'm going to pivot and do this Right. And that's kind of. That goes to your point about looking down ahead of the, down the road to see what's going on.

Yeah. And my point. Would I have a plan B, C, D, E, E, F, G, and.

Yeah, yeah.

And same thing with Arnold, by the way, with all respect, Arnold movies, you know, go. You know, I think you've got other plans, you know, backup plans. Arnold, if we're being, if we're being honest about. About things. But anyway, the thing about you. Now, let's hear about this story of the, you know, you take this thing and you move into. You had a lifetime of being out there in the front lines. Yeah. Meeting people, learning, picking up things, and all of that, you know, would have been useless if you hadn't had. Or had been limited use to you, had you not had the guts and the desire to go out and start this new adventure. And you're probably where people tell you you're. You're not the brightest thing to do. You know, I'm just guessing, right. Of course, not everybody, probably not everybody, was saying, wow, what a smart guy you are.

Yeah. I mean, that just sounds great. And there's, you know, there's. There's just this. There's. There's luck in everything. You know, there's putting yourself in the right position at the right time.

Right. And do.

And. And. But, you know, working really hard, you know, seeing a shot, trying to take it, and then trying to identify whether or not you've got something or not, and you can continue to build on it or whether or not it's. It's. It's a dog and it's time to move on.

Right.

So early on, we started this business, we launched it, and I couldn't get anybody to buy the product. So. And you. You said this. You're very, you know, very wise, Larry. I mean, we didn't have a voice in the market, AKA we didn't have sales. We didn't have a way to attract customers to our product. We had good product and a good idea, but we didn't have any real voice in the market. And that's why we failed that. And one or two other little things we failed early on in our version one of Tiege Hanley, the skin care company that I have now. And we pivoted, we reached out to somebody that had a very strong voice. He was a YouTuber, and he was on the ascent in popularity, and we were able to bring him in as a customer, and he had millions and millions of followers. And we were able to start talking about why it's important for a guy to take care of himself and to have healthy skincare routines. Right. You have many healthy routines. You should have many healthy routines in your life. You should have a healthy skincare routine. Get up, brush your teeth, wash your face, put a moisturizer on. You're ready to kick ass. Yeah. And so that we gained a voice early on, and that really started the trajectory that we've been on for the last seven, eight years.

And so talk about how that developed. You Know how the sales grew and you went to where now, I mean, you've won awards. Clink. You know, which. You know how many products are out there. And then you win the award for the top cleanser product of the year. And, you know, how do you talk about this, talk about the journey of this thing? You know, it's nice to hear about success, by the way, because there comes a time when things actually work and you have to fight your way through it on a daily basis. But you look back and you said, this is a pretty good success story.

Yeah, but, you know, it's, it's not, it's never easy. Even when it's good, it's never easy. We went right away like, like right away we went from zero to, in a few months to, you know, 8, 900,000 in sales and then, you know, right away, like 3 million, 5 million, 7 million, 10 million. You know, we just, we just started really cranking early on, but, you know, but there was a lot of problems underneath of how we were developing our business. I'm the firm believer in developing super strong fundamentals within your business, so having core competencies and the most important things in your business and marketing and product innovation and, you know, channel diversification, etcetera, etc, etcetera. So I really early on started pouring effort and time and energy into those channels. At the same time we were, we were, we were fishing from a very big pond of my, of my partner who I brought in, who has a YouTube channel. His name is Aaron Marino. He's a brilliant man, very successful, lives in Atlanta, very successful male grooming influencer and consultant and successful businessman. But he, he gave us a voice. But eventually his voice, we out, out outgrowing him is not the right terminology, but needed to become bigger than just, than just my customer, partner's voice. And so we, so while we grew really strongly and had very good early years, we got to a point where we kind of started looking around and saying, okay, now what? Now what do we do now? How do we go from this level to this level and this level? And it was really challenging, you know, to, to, to continue to grow the business as Aaron became, you know, less involved in the business over time.

And what were those challenges? Why was that? It's a challenge.

Well, same thing, right? How do you, how do you have a, how do you reach broader and broader and broader audiences? Right. And so again, just equating it to sales, you know, we were really had a great opportunity to speak to all the guys that knew Aaron through his Content.

Right.

But after that, you know, how does the average Joe that's walking down the street learn about our company?

Right.

So really being good at digital marketing and creating content marketing and creating marketing that would be in front of what, where our guys and our guys are from 18 to 70, where they would be consuming content, which is, you know, on YouTube and social channels and etc. Etc.

Now, why is that not simply. Why is not the answer to that? Simply getting in a marketing company that are big experts and they come in and they give you the strategy and put it together for you. Why?

They don't know Jack Shed. I don't know anything. If you don't have an idea of what you're doing, you can't hire someone who's going to do it for you. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's like, you know, I mean, it's just you have to have some core competency in anything that you're hiring. I'm not against. I, I have a meeting I have to go to the, you know, we have a big partner here, agency partner that we work with. But, you know, you have to have a, like a really good understanding of what it is that you're hiring and you're paying for. Otherwise you have no idea whether or not you're getting any value out of it.

Yeah.

Right.

So I kind of got the idea when you were talking about early on in the interview where you were talking about these bigger companies were like they were strong on this and they were this. And I got the idea from that was like they knew they had to do it themselves. There was no outside consultant they could bring, you know, you know, to train the people or do the this that they, they had to do it themselves. And so they must have learned that lesson years ago as on their way to becoming these giant.

Absolutely.

I.

And in all honesty, we got burned a lot. You know, I mean, we brought in people, you know, that we thought could help our business grow and, you know, they, they weren't any more capable than we were.

Yeah.

So we really had to, we had to really get gritty and really try to.

So how did you find your way out of it? You know, because you're a salesperson.

Yeah.

You had lots of experience doing these things. You're a problem solver.

Yep.

And I'm sure there are models out there, like the Harry's things. And you know, there, people are sending boxes out on this, that and the other to the house, you know, food prep and stuff like that. So I'M sure there's ideas out there that other people have done in terms of doing that. But how did you break, how did you break through?

There's only one way and it's a one word answer. Talent. Getting the right talent on board, you know, I mean, and that, by the way, is the most difficult thing. Yeah, right. That is, that is a very, especially if you're a smaller company. Right. I mean if you're, if you're Google, you can, there's no talent you can attract. You know, if you're Unilever and I'm going to tell you that you're going to work in Manhattan and be on photo shoots and shoot the sexiest models and have endless budgets and fly off to London. I mean, there's no, there's no talent that we can't, you couldn't attract. But when you're a certain size company, especially when you're young and you're a startup, I mean it's, it's brutal to try to attract great talent. But when you get the right talent on your team, things just start clicking.

Now how do you go looking for that talent? Because you've done a lot of recruiting around the world, you know, you recruited in foreign countries, you know, things like that. So how do you go looking for that kind of talent?

Constantly. Constantly looking 247 looking for talent. When someone comes into a room, I'm thinking, do I want to hire this person?

Ah.

I have hired people in airports, I've hired people in Starbucks that I've met at Starbucks that I've met at the airport. I'll meet a friend at a party and find out that his spouse is, you know, an expert at something and you know, I mean, just, it's a constant. I'm constantly on the hunt.

Yeah, constantly.

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