Is Your Business An Asset or a Hamster Wheel? How to Create Enterprise Value w/Russ Sorrells

This is Real Estate Team Builders and I'm your host, Lars Hedinborg, the founder of Real Estate B School. The real estate team building world is driven by big egos who boast about how many homes they've sold or how much GCI they've earned. We don't hear much about their low profit margins, the long hours they put in each week, or the unbearable stress they endure. In fact, I've discovered that most real estate teams are losing money when you consider the amount of personal production their owners must do to make ends meet. I believe that if you want to profitably scale your real estate team without working crazy hours, enduring unhealthy levels of stress, or coming up short at home, then thinking like a business owner, building sustainable systems and empowering your team are absolute musts. You won't find any smoke and mirrors or hype here on my podcast, just the real world tools, systems and strategies that work. So if you struggle to balance growing your real estate business with focusing on the areas of life that truly matter, then this show is for you.

Welcome back to Real Estate Team Builders podcast. I've got Russ Sorrells in the house and this is going to be a good one. Here's a guy that we met man on the west coast randomly at a Brendan Burchard event where you live about 10 minutes from me and we're sort of 3,000 miles away from home and we both have a love of personal development and just pushing ourselves and you know, it's got to be like, is it 10 years? Maybe not 10 years, but it's a lot of years that we've sort of kind.

It's probably about a decade. That's when I started that just been.

Getting to know each other and you have just one of the most amazing hearts. Just a good guy that sort of struggles in business and family and marriage and continues to get up and keep fighting. And I had the honor to attend your 50th party in Charleston, South Carolina. And just to see the people line up to tell you how much they love you, just really. I get a little emotional thinking about those conversations. Just shows me the kind of person you are. But for the purposes of today, it's not the Russ love fest.

I appreciate it. It feels good though. It sure feels good. Yeah.

You have like failed and succeeded and failed and succeeded for many, many years. And I heard you on a podcast and I want to get to, you know, you're a top sales guy. I put quotes around sales guy that's built and exited businesses. So on real estate, team builders. You know, you're listening if you want to, you know, scale beyond yourself and, you know, put systems in place. And your latest venture is something we'll touch on at the end as well. But tell us a little bit. With that sort of backdrop, tell us a little bit about your journey in business, and, you know, and I'll kind of key in on the points that I think our listeners can benefit from.

Okay, well, thanks for the intro and always appreciate you, man. Always. If I have an opportunity to spend time with you, I'm taking it every time. So as far as my early journey, I got into sales through engineering. I was an engineer at Cummins Engine company and I did that for about five years, and I got the itch to do something different. And I had a guy that introduced me to a sales agency. That sales agency is a manufacturer's representative. So kind of like real estate bar, you're an independent, you're out there, you're just hustling for other people. So I was a hired sales guy, essentially. And what often happens in those businesses is they are one person show and you earn your money, but when you aren't working, you aren't earning. And so, and then from a selling perspective, if you want to try to transition out of that business, it's a real challenge because you are the business. So it's like the E Myth, you know, we are the technicians in our businesses. So one of the things early on that I wanted to try to figure out is how do I build an asset? After reading the E. Myth, how do I build an asset that I can transition? And the way that I chose to do that, which was based on lessons from other people, is I hired an awesome person. I was fortunate to get connected with Chris. And so Chris came on board, and then he. At some point in time, I transitioned some ownership to him so that he had equity skin in the game, wanted to stick around. He continued to thrive and succeed. And then as a result of his success, and he knew all of the principles. That's another challenge we have in our businesses. These principles that we represent that we go out and sell. Now, these are large capital investments that companies are making. Let's say this company wanted to manufacture this pen. I sold the automation, the robots, the feeder bowls, the assembly equipment that would put this pin together and this, you know, you want to make one of these every 30 seconds. That may be a $6 million assembly line to make one of these every 30 seconds. So these are large, technical solutions. So you couldn't just pop anybody into that business. So found Chris and then, and then and then had, you know, other hires along the way that allowed me to transition to more of a leadership role and helping to maintain the relationships with the principals. And obviously I had great relationships with all the customers and so had that connection as well. But really it's about turned into training my guys so that they had that entrepreneurial mindset of go get it, make it happen, eat what you kill is what we often say. And of course in real estate that's a huge part of success there is just grinding it out too. Let me tell you. When I decided to start this business, I was in Michigan and had a non compete. So I had to get out of a 300 mile radius. And one of the sales managers convinced me to come down to the Carolinas. He said, you want to go to Carolinas? It's growing. This is. Back in 2004, I moved down. I did not know a single human being. My wife and I and we flew down, drove around all around the Carolinas and settle in Charlotte because it was centrally located and I was going to Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina was my territory. Didn't know a single human down here and decided to start the business down here and just put the flag in the ground and started going from there. My goal was to make seven calls a day. So seven visits with clients each day. And that could be down in Charleston, South Carolina, Beaufort, South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina, Greenville, Asheville, North Carolina, you name it. I mean I was, I was everywhere, 40, 50,000 miles a year. But six months into that business, I was cash flow positive because of the commission revenue that we were able to generate. So rambling on about that, but no.

No, no, it's good. I know where I want the conversation to go here in a minute, but I want to key in on one point and I think I've heard Darren Hardy use this analogy, but I think it's from Zig Ziglar where it's the pump, the well pump analogy.

Yeah.

So I'll probably botch it, but essentially I want you to talk about it in the context of business and something that you were really good at in terms of planting seeds and then kind of consistently doing your seven calls, just trusting it's going to turn into something. The analogy is something like you can envision like water 300ft down and you've got this hand pump. Right. Takes a lot of effort to get that water to come up and start coming out the spigot. But once it comes out the spigot. It's like, it's just on maintenance. And then six months in your business is cash flow positive, where most of the reps didn't do one call a day or one meeting a day, and they're out of the business in three to six months.

Right, so that's exactly right. Yeah.

Talk about, like. Because I was wired this way, too, where, you know, when I left the guys of a comfortable corporate existence, you know, I was like, shoot, it's game on. Like, there's no money coming in. Like, what have I done? You know, this is the worst idea ever. So talk about the mindset, maybe the tactics. Tactics, maybe. How do you psych yourself up? Because I know you're in that mode again now, which I want to get into. How do you psych yourself up to do the work that others aren't willing to do for the long term?

Oh, man. So that has been the key to success in my career, period. Was. Or is that picking up the phone and making calls. And I. When I do my training, when I'm working with my clients or when I'm working with one of my. One of my teammates, it's pick up the phone and make a call. We. We adjust things on our desk, whatever we have to do. Okay, I got to get my stapler right in right spot. And. Okay, okay, now I can make a phone call. And then. And then. I don't know what it is that is for salespeople in particular, we just sometimes struggle with that. But picking up the phone and making a call, don't send a text, don't send an email, pick up the phone and make a call. But as far as what I did prior to coming down is what helped accelerate that success for me in this territory. What I did was I had a manufacturer's directory, and I looked through this directory every night during Family Feud and Wheel of Fortune. Brenda and I would sit there and I had this manufacturer directly for North, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia. And I would highlight the companies I would just go through and the ones that were manufacturing companies. And then I took that and I typed it into my outlook. So I had all of those companies in my outlook, and I labeled them A, B, and C, potential clients. And of course, I focused on the A. So if I was going to Asheville and I was going to go to Borg Warner, I would identify the A companies that I wanted to visit while I was there, and then the B companies and then the C companies. And so I would just hammer the phones Calling and working to set up meetings. And it's key to get that story down right when you get a hold of someone, hey, my name is Russ Sorrells, and I work with Cincinnati Test Systems. We have the largest leak test company in the country. Got a lot of clients up in your neck of the woods and, and want to stop in and chat with you about your leak test challenges. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But sometimes I would go and I would. Actually, my biggest account was Borg Warner, and I was up in Asheville, and I was standing outside their facility. I didn't know anybody. And so I was standing outside their facility waiting for somebody to walk out. I was that guy. And so somebody walks out and say, hey, you know, my name's Russ. I sell automation and anything going on? He's like, oh, yeah. He says, as a matter of fact, Brian and Doug have a project going on. He said, let me take your information. Nicest guy in the world. Let me take your information back in the building and put it on their desk. And so he takes it in, sets it on their desk. This is about 5:30 in the afternoon. The next day I get a call from Brian and he says, hey, we got a project going on. And I'm like, really back up there. That account was a $70 million account for me. And all because I was willing to get uncomfortable and stand there and I mean, stock a little bit and do that, a little bit of extra work. So that's really the. I think what separates the good from. From the gray, not to pat myself on the back, but is that willingness to get uncomfortable, to walk into the facility, to walk up to somebody and start a conversation. If you're in real estate and to really put yourself out there in a way that's not annoying, but in a way that's focused on adding value. And that's the beauty, too, from a sales perspective. We keep a mindset of, I'm going to help this person. It's not what we want from it. I don't want to take anything from the people that I have the opportunity to serve. What I want to do is, how can I help them? What's their challenge? Let's start there first and allow me to help you and add some value that way. And then when it comes time, they're going to be right there for you. One of the other things. So I've been through two recessions at this, maybe three recessions at this point during my sales career. And every time.

Are you counting the one we're in right now?

Or, no, not the one right now. So I guess it'll be cool. But. So what I found was that this is the opportunity of a lifetime because everyone else quits. Oh, nobody's going to take my calls. Nobody needs me. Nobody's buying anything. Haven't you seen. Don't see what's going on in the economy. You know, they're not going to buy anything. And I just kept making calls. I kept doing my seven. Hey, connecting, emailing, joking, having some fun, going to lunch, bringing in the donuts, doing the stuff. You know, just kept grinding it out. As soon as the market ticks up, the first person they call me, because I was there, I helped them fix whatever they had and keep going with what they were working on. And then. Then they called me when it came time. So, again, not to pat myself on the back, but that was. That was the lesson. The biggest lesson I learned through the first recession that I went through as a salesperson is that most people quit. And if I keep grinding, then it pays off big time on the other side of it. Yeah.

And there's, you know, I'm even playing this game with myself now with, you know, with the exp business. There's no way, if you have a clear like, okay, I'm going to have, you know, five. Because I think yours is five now. Right? I'm going to have five meaningful conversations with business owners every day, five days a week. You either do it or you don't do it. Like, it's not like. And if you don't do it, like, you can have results or excuses. You can't have both. So.

And I still struggle with it. I still. I mean, I do that. I preach this stuff. I talk about it, but I still struggle sometimes. I'm like, man, I got. I got to call. I respect this guy a lot. And. And, okay, I'm doing it, you know, hit the dial, and sometimes there's that relief. Oh, it went into voicemail. Hey, just checking in with you. How are things going? Right. But ultimately, conversations is all that matter. Voicemails, they don't. They don't pay anything.

Yeah, I want to go a little bit more into, because the first book I read, I think probably in my life, I don't know how I got through high school or college without reading a whole lot, but I don't think I read anything. Was E Myth Revisited. It was the first coaching program I was a part of. It was Craig Proctor, and he was all, e Myth. And so, you know, you can't really. It doesn't give you the actual stuff to do, but the concepts behind the book. Let's unpack that a little bit. You know, when you read that book, what did it trigger in you? Because it's the one thing I talk about when I'm talking about real estate, B school, the difference between, you know, selling 10 homes and selling 100 homes. It's literally just mindset. You're not working any harder to sell 100 than 10. You're, in my opinion. But talk about e myth and how it impacted you. Because for a little bit of context, like, are you, like, twice as good as the normal manufacturer's rep? Are you.

Yeah. When I. So I've sold $250 million worth of automation in my career, and that's. That's a lot. So for a decade, for 10 years, I was the top salesperson for the main company that I worked with, and. And I wasn't even close. So I was selling, you know, 20 to 25 million dollars with equipment, and the next closest person was at 5 to 6 million. So that's how, like, 4 to 5x.

Producing more than the next closest.

Yes. Yes. So, again, not to be bright. I mean, that's just. So that's the territory that I built. Right. So I, you know, get every day engaging the territory, supporting people, helping people, having that mindset. Really?

And why do you. So before we get to the myth. Because I want to hear your thoughts on it. But why do you think it is? Do you think human nature? Like, we're all just. We just want to be lazy. We're afraid. We're comfortable. Like, what do you think it is generally that you see about, you know, folks that aren't achieving at a high level?

Yeah. What's the path of least resistance is the biggest challenge. Right. So we don't. It's a lack of consistency. So we. We inspire ourselves someday. So, okay, this is going to be the week. And so Monday, we hit it. Tuesday, we hit it. Wednesday, we stumble. Something happens, and then we stop, we quit. And we lack that motivation. So really, it is a function of that homeostasis. The path to least resistance. It is difficult and it is scary sometimes to pick up the phone. We don't want to hear the word no. But there's Steve Chandler is one of the guys that I listen to a lot, and he's awesome. He says in between no and yes. Do you know what that's called? Hell. Because when someone is giving you a maybe. Right. That is the worst. Right. So we either want a yes. Or we want a no. Giving people permission to say yes or no is really important from a sales perspective because it's. It's okay. Then we know to move on, right? Not to. Not to move on as far as never talking with that person or trying to add value in the future. But no as in, okay, this deal isn't going to go my way. We got an answer. Now let's rock on, because oftentimes we keep them piled up on the side, and it feels good to have these maybes because that may turn into something, but the reality is it's just a distraction from getting the yeses.

All right, so let's talk a little bit about E Myth. And how did that book. Because you and this. This may be previous to what we're talking about, but. But you were, you know, to varying degrees of success, you know, in and out of different businesses. But what is it about the E. Myth? And really, I think it parlays into what you're doing now. What did you get from, like, what mindset shift did you get from that book that impacted you in business?

That was a real game changer for me. Now I want to back up and say the first book that really helped E Myth be even more powerful for me when I read it was Rich Dad, Poor Dad. And so Rich Dad, Poor dad read it right out of college, and it transformed my thinking as it related to having multiple income streams. So that became my mission. Like, okay, how am I going to have multiple income streams? Then I read the E Myth, which talked about the challenges of being a technician. So you're a plumber, and you decide that you're going to start a plumbing business, and you are the plumbing business. Right. So it says it is an actual business, but ultimately, the business doesn't succeed if you aren't out there doing plumbing work. And so it makes it impossible for us to work on the business when we're working in the business. So that's the E Myth concept. I don't know why, but it really resonated with me, and it really started to get those wheels turning on, okay, how can I make certain to build an asset that I can sell? Because we oftentimes. So I've exited multiple businesses, and we can tend to get attached to them. You know, that's my baby. And it's really. It's an asset that we are building that we want to transition to someone else. Well, at least that's been my philosophies. I want to be able to transition that to someone else. So That I can then focus my skill sets in a different area and try to add value and build on what I've. What I've already been doing.

And I don't know if it's directly from the book, but I've repeated it probably hundreds of times at this point. I call it the E. Myth question. You know, how would you have to think about your business differently if you were to replicate it 10,000 times? And I don't know. I mean, that might be like a direct quote from the book, but I've been saying it on probably webinars and some other crap for, like, for 10 years. And so when you think about that question, you know, whether it's a real estate agent or a manufacturer, sales rep or a plumber. Right. How would a plumber who's got a decent business that supports his family, how would he think about his business if he had to change out 10,000 toilets in a day? Like, you may never expand your business to have 10,000 McDonald franchises. But what Ray Kroc saw in the Speedy System wasn't a single location. It was like, man, I could really take this system. You've seen the movie the Founder, right?

Yes, yes.

Where they're on the tennis courts and they're like, he's got the orchestra, the symphony. And so, I don't know. I think there's something worth saying for folks that are listening. So the thing that Russ and I saw early on is that maybe we didn't want to be in this business forever. You know, my personality is such that I need to move on to other things. And our mindset was one of, like, you know, how could I put systems.

In place where this business, even if.

I need to run pieces of it, it's still set up as an actual business. If you haven't seen the movie the.

Founder, you've certainly mastered that. I'll tell you another story of how important this has been for me personally. Three years ago is when I decided to transition. So I had three brick and mortar businesses three years ago. I had the. The Capex sales business that. Where that's the rep agency. I had Prosthetic and Orthotic Institute, which we have three locations. One's in Lancaster, South Carolina, One's in Rock Hill, South Carolina, and one's up in Pineville, North Carolina. And then I had the car wash and oil change facility up there in Albemarle. So I had these brick and mortar businesses. I was struggling. I was completely mediocre at everything that I was doing because I was Trying to do everything. And it was just not. I was not in a good state. I said, man, I've got to change this, because when I was really good at something is when I was in sales and all I did was sales, and I was growing that business. I was really good at it. So how. What am I going to do to get back to being. Doing one thing and being really good at that one thing? So I decided to transition three years ago out of those businesses and do what I'm doing now, which is leading leadership teams and helping them put in systems into their business. I had an opportunity. My dad had surgery a couple of weeks ago. I don't know if I talked to you about this or not. So my dad had surgery on his back and it didn't go well. So he had what's called Ogilvy syndrome. And his intestines stopped processing food. They essentially were paralyzed. So obviously, your body needs to process food to get the nutrients to pass waste and everything else. Otherwise, you just. You die. Essentially, you poison. You poison yourself. And so things weren't going well after the surgery. And because I had transitioned out of all those businesses, at this point, I was able to buy a plane ticket on Father's Day morning, fly to Tucson, Arizona, and be with my dad and spend a week with him in the hospital right there by his bed, getting him up, walking and doing all the things that he needed to try to do to overcome this challenge that he had. But he is back home now and he is recovering. He is finally eating solid food. But that idea to transition three years ago allowed me an opportunity to get on a plane, go to Arizona and be with my dad without any worry of anything happening. And so that's. When you. When you have those plans, when you. When you want to take action, do it. And that's what I did. It's scary, you know, it was scary. People said, russ, why would you sell perfectly good businesses? I agree. I understand, but. But it's time. It's time for me to build something new. It's time to use my skills in a different way. And people. People certainly thought I was crazy.

And a good. And I want to give you a chance to talk about Pinnacle, but a really good lesson there, and I see this in probably in any field, but for sure in real estate, is that no one is thinking about three years from now, especially like the world is going to end today. Both sides are going to kill each other. You know, both sides of every argument are going to kill each other. Like, we're Literally like is not good. And everyone's so in all of that, plus real estate deals or, you know, their dog is not doing well or they have problems with their spouse, they're not taking care of their physical bodies, so they're tired. Like all of these things compound to the point where nobody has any bandwidth to think about three years from now. So the lesson there is that. And I know you're like the king of this. You showed me on our last run, you know, you pulled out your binder, you know, and it actually I didn't tell you this a bit inspired me. I had done the binder system before, so I resurrected, I took three, four nights, three full days. This last weekend I went up to Black Mountain and I, I resurrected my whole, like all my life plans and my business plans and nice, it's all in this. And that was, that was based on you showing me after our last run that you literally had that in the car with you on a Saturday morning. Like, oh yeah, here's my plan. And it's like bound every quarter. It's just awesome. So my point is, if you're listening to this and you don't take the time on a regular basis, you know, in B school we teach a three year vision, a one year plan. It's a quarter at a time. Then every week you get a little bit of planning session and every day you pick your top three. Like it does not have to be complicated, you know, but very rarely do people even do it. And then you add it to the conversation like every day, at least five days a week. As a salesperson, you have to have one non negotiable, right? In real estate, it's usually 20, 20 meaningful conversations. Anything less than that, you're not going to sell a reasonable amount of real estate. So I just wanted to end with that. But talk a little bit about what attracted you to the operating system that you're teaching right now. Given a guy with your background, multiple businesses, done all the positions in the business, including the one business where I was like, dude, you got to get out of that business.

That was your advice early on for sure. It only took me four years, Lars. It only took me four years. So I want to tell a quick story that was a game changer for me in my life. And how I showed up in life was when I started at Cummins Engine company, they had seven habits of highly effective people, had become very popular and they were actually doing a 12 week course there through Cummins. And so I would go and do this Training. And one of the first exercises that we did was to write our eulogy, begin with the end in mind. And so I had, my first business was a machine shop in my garage. I don't know if you ever told you that, but I had a machine shop in my garage, had a wire, edm, a lathe, Bridgeport mill, because I was a tool maker during college. And that's how I, how I subsidized gas money and food and all that kind of stuff for living in college and really enjoyed it. Love the machine shop. So I started one in my garage. So I'm sitting there at my desk in my garage and I'm doing this eulogy and I'm just, I'm weeping because I realize this is 21 years old. But I realized how inconsistent I'm living with, how I wanted to be remembered and what that legacy was for me. And that was the biggest game changer. One of those pivotal points in my life where I said, I am going to be the best friend a friend could ever have. I am going to be the best son a parent would ever want. I am going to be the best sibling. And just, I want to show up in the best way for the people that are in my, in my life. And that, that was one of those pivotal moments in my life. And so, but as far as that vision, you mentioned vision. And that has played the strongest for me. And when I do goals, training, when I work with people, that is what I have them do. I said, let's write your eulogy. And some people think it's morbid or weird or whatever, but ultimately you're just projecting out to the future. What did you do? What impact did you make on the people that matter Most? For the 50th birthday, I, I created that booklet and wrote something about every person. But in the beginning, on that letter that I wrote for everyone, it said, you will not see any pictures of my cars or my house or any of my stuff, because ultimately that doesn't matter. None of that stuff matters. It doesn't. And when it comes down to life, the people, the pictures, it was all about the people that were in those pictures with me that ultimately make up a life. But as far as the operating system. So I used EOS in all of my businesses. And I love the idea. You know, I'm engineer by training, so I, I love the systems approach to business. And so what we do with Pinnacle, Pinnacle is a. Is agnostic. It's really system agnostic. So it would be your system. It's it's your system. It's not eos. It's not trying to shoehorn you into E math or the great game of business. It takes the good of each of the different business operating systems that are out there. And those are the tools that I go in and I work with leadership teams to implement in their business. And it really, it creates freedom. What I'm working on, my goal is to create personal freedom for the owners of businesses. Because so many of us go into work every day and we play whack a mole. This is it. You know, what, okay, what problems are going to hit us today? And then we solve those problems and we go home exhausted. And we've done nothing to move our business in the right direction other than, you know, fix whatever challenges it had. And that's, you know, we talk about path of least resistance for salespeople. It can also be a path of least resistance for leaders in that we get into firefighting mode. We like to be the hero. It feels good. But the reality is we think about creating enterprise value. We're not going to be able to create enterprise value if we're going to sell it to somebody say, okay, here's how you run this business. Every day you come in with your head on fire and everyone comes in and says, hey, do you have a minute? Do you have a minute? Did you hear what so. And so did? Oh, my gosh, you know, this, this, this, that, and the other thing. We're not getting this. We're, you know, that. And, and then you. And then you go home and you come back and you do it all over again. Like, how excited is someone going to be to buy that business? However, if you know, which I. What I do now is implement the Pinnacle operating system. So now you have a binder like you had, and you say, okay, this is how we run our business. This is how we manage our teams. This is how we set goals. Here are three to five year vision. Here's our pinnacle. Here's where we're going ultimately. And it allows you to keep the main thing. The main thing, which is, you know, the ultimate goal that we all should have in life is to keep that main thing. The main thing is otherwise we get distracted and we look up and like, oh, my gosh, what just happened to the last decade? Oh, I was focused on something other than what really mattered. Maybe it's my family or something like that. So that's the beauty of an operating system is to help us keep focused, keep prioritized, and create that personal freedom. Peace of mind. You want to be able to leave. That's another challenge that we have. One of my neighbors, she's a dentist, and when she's not in her business, she's not earning any money. She can't even have people cleaning teeth because the hygienist can't clean teeth because the dentist needs to be there as oversight. So that's the legal nature of that relationship. So she went away. We went on spring break, we went down to Hilton Head. She went away. One of her hygienists went to work for another dentist because she couldn't take the week off. And that other dentist hired her out from underneath my friend, which, obviously, that's an awful situation. But ultimately, when you have a practice like that, that's the nature of the beast. So it's. I don't know if I'm. I'm rambling on about it, but yeah.

I mean, it's all the same stuff. It's, you know, it's.

It's.

Pick any. Any business where you can sort of. Do you need to do the thing to get paid? You know, as a real estate agent, it's like something like 85% of real estate agents don't have an administrator, and 85% of the work that. The tasks that an agent does are administrative. So 85% don't have an administrator, and 85% are administrative tasks. So you're spending all of your day, almost every day, almost 90% of your time, you're doing activities that in our market, you could hire a competent administrator for $20 an hour, and you're spending 85% of your time doing that work. You're never going to make $500 an hour doing $20 an hour work.

But, Lars, if I'm doing that, that means I don't have to make those calls. And those calls make me really uncomfortable. And so it's like. You ever hear the Sam Adams story? The guy that. I can't remember the guy's name, that started Sam Adams, the brewing brewing company up there. So he's brewing this beer, he's having success. And his uncle, who's helping him finance and do this Sam Adams business, this beer business, he works for Goldman Sachs. And so he's a Goldman Sachs. He calls his nephew up to check in on what he's up to, and he says, what are you up to? And he said, oh, I'm a meeting with. Meeting with the guy, and we're looking at computer systems to inventory the product. They said, why are you meeting with someone to inventory product. Once you go out and sell some product, so you've actually got some product inventory. So that was one of his early lessons. Was that okay? Yep. So he told the guy to leave and from then on, every day all he did was go to local bars and he'd take in samples and he would just work, sit there with the bartender. And that's how they got started in that business. Ultimately, obviously, it's a huge business at this point, but we get blinded. We feel like we're doing something when in reality we are doing something, but we're not doing what we need to do to add value to our business, to grow our business so that we can ultimately again, transition that. Right. So the idea from a scalability perspective is we learn how to do it, we build the system and then we allow someone else to succeed and grow and thrive in that system and then we build another system and then that helps us to eventually scale a business so that ideally we're not working head on fire every day. Awesome.

What's the best way for people to get in touch with you? What's your website?

Yeah, ownyourcategory.com it's russownyourcategory as well. You can also shoot me a text. 803-804-6970. Again, don't be afraid to pick up that phone and make calls every day. And I was just thinking earlier today, Lars, that the saying is we overestimate what we can do in a few days, but we completely underestimate what we can do in a few years. And as I work to to continue to build and grow my current business, own your category and pinnacle implementation, I have to remind myself of that because I want it to happen now. But that's not how it works. You know, we know the system, pick up the phone, make calls, connect, add value, connect people be connectors and it will boom. Your business will explode. So awesome.

Well, appreciate your brother. We got to get on that trail soon.

All right. Absolutely. Appreciate you.

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