0520 | Chad Jenkins

Hi, this is Chad Jenkins with Seed Spark and you're listening to EA Interviews.

EA Interviews, episode 520, inspiration, transformation, success stories and the Imperfect Action Round. Seven days a week. Join Mario Ficcini for today's Expert Authority effect interview Expert Authority World. Let's talk about business today and specifically how to grow it. I have none other than Chad Jenkins, President and CEO of SeedSpark and author of Just Add a Zero. I'm sure you have some product and service and you might be doing well. You're thinking you're doing well, but how would you like to just add a zero? I have heard this concept for many years and I remember the first time I did, it was like, whoa, this is a game changer. And.

That'S not all there is to it. Do you have to have more behind it? And I have no doubt Chad's going to go into detail, what it takes, how easy it is to do, but I assure you it is possible and it's a whole lot of fun going to bring them up right after we thank our sponsor. Every business needs a book, including yours. And that's why I'm launching my new book to help you, regardless of where you think your current writing abilities are. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction, lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Once again, that's eapublishingmethodbook.com Here he is, ladies and gentlemen, Chad Jenkins. Chad, how are you feeling today?

Feeling great, Mario. Thanks for the opportunity to be with you.

Oh, the pleasure is mine. I meant everything I said. There's so many people that have great businesses and I think a lot of them want to make more. They just, I feel it's like some imposter syndrome or self worth or some invisible ceiling. Like they feel like they have to get past when the reality is you just choose. So what are your thoughts on that and how easy is it to just add a zero?

You're asking a guy who is definitely not a me too guy. If anything, I sort of challenge conventions. I definitely am naturally curious. I just always want to understand why when I dig beneath the surface or peel back the onion, as some others would say. A lot of times those conventions are because somebody said something and somebody was listening. Not a lot of motivation for me to follow it or to work inside the confines. So anything that I'm putting effort into, I want to get the maximum amount of return out of it. And that is not really inside of the Rule book. So I would agree with your statement. There are many who are running on a hamster wheel or they feel like they are and they're putting more effort in and sometimes they're getting the same results or they're even getting less results. I would encourage them to some of the methodologies that we talk about today to employ them and see just how easy it could be to put the same or less effort in and create a much more, a much larger outcome than what they're currently experiencing.

How long does it take to highly leverage something if you've been doing it, let's say one to three years versus 10 to 20 plus, at what point do you feel if there is one, someone can be doing this?

So I think to either one of those time frames, there's all a pivot point when you begin to employ methodologies that we'll discuss today. And so much of it roots in mindset and just the way in which you look at the resources that you currently have at your disposal. I will be the first one to say everything that you need to create these outcomes you already have, Everything you need is already inside of you. And most oftentimes, every one of the resources that you need to create a much bigger outcome are resources that you already contain inside of your business. And if we just look at those resources in their authentic expression, not based upon the label that is applied to them, you will find that you have a lot more opportunity to create a lot more value for what I classify as your hero target and create a much bigger outcome not only for them, but also for yourself. Beginning to separate yourself from the competition and release any compression or pressure that you have on your margins.

What would you say the first step is? You're saying that we already have everything we need inside of ourselves in business. What's the first step, step of identifying that?

The absolute first step is to take a one step backwards and say, okay, what really do I have here? And whenever you begin to. Of course, taking a clean sheet of paper is the easiest thing and just write it down. Well, I have a sales team, I have a marketing department. I have a manufacturing facility. That means I have a building. Well, how big is the building? Not that you have a building that produces. A manufacturer produces widgets from a manufacturing facility. That's his current utilization. That doesn't mean that that's the highest return on that asset. So taking a step back and quantifying all the assets, and of course you would give them your default currently, current convention, are currently labeled as they are But I would encourage you to really look at it. And I've said it a time or two in its authentic expression in example, there are times in the past in growing that I have had a very healthy finance team looking at it and also being cognizant of friction that exists in the marketplace. I quickly discovered because it could be partially of my wiring, I said hold up, I have X amount of capacity in 10 very highly trained accounting, bookkeeping, controller level capabilities. Well, if I were to potentially just market that capacity, I could turn something that at face value as a call center into a profit center or at least a revenue generating. So it doesn't have to be that drastic or, or taking one of your existing teams and, and taking it out to the market. But it can be. In that particular example, that organization ran to 5 million in very short time frame. And be honest with you, it's a little bit of a cash machine. I ran into a little bit of scales problems with the person I had at the top. And that person had been with me for a long time, a very long time. And I was very fortunate to be able to give them an opportunity to run their own business. And it's been wildly successful. So those types of capabilities and components, it's a clear example of those are resources I had at my fingertips. And without asking the question of what could be here with what I already have. And one famous quote that I definitely live by, this is a quote by Thomas Widener which was a squire or Teddy Roosevelt or Theodore Roosevelt. And he said, do what you can with what you have where you are. So I took it to heart. I actually took it to heart somewhere around the age of eight when I grew up on a farm, before I even knew about it. But I began to at that time, one could say out of fear or also desperation. I grew up on that farm not knowing how in the heck I get out of here. Because I feel like I should have been born in the middle of Manhattan where things move just a little bit higher clip than 1500 whole people in a small town in South Carolina. But when I took that step back and said okay, what do I have here? I had many resources that when I combined them, understanding what their authentic expression is, I created a lot more value than the way that they were being utilized on that farm. And it started the first landscape business. Oh no, it was wildly successful.

How old were you? Eight when you did that? Or did you realize that eight and this was a few years later.

So this was a few years later applicable to the Landscape company. But just before that, at the age of eight, I discovered rough order magnitude, what my father made annually. And for some reason I have the capability of doing forward and reverse math. I call it simple math, really, really fast. And so I did the reverse math. You mentioned the book title earlier, Just out of zero, which is a catalyst that also makes you think a little bit differently. Well, it did. When I did the reverse math, I broke it down to the minute because I figured that's a number I could digest and it was a little bit of a smaller number. So I added a zero to it. When you extrapolate that back out to the annual, that was a big number. But it lit a fire up under me. And because I had to in my mind figure out how I could take what I had at my immediate disposal to create value for someone else, that would result in them paying me a lot of cash ultimately and adding a zero to what my father's annual salary was. And of course I was eight. That level of thinking or that type of thinking and that fundamental mindset that it began to empower me to look at things just a little different light is the exact same thing that I do today. So it started a very long time ago and it was profitable then and it's continued to be more and more profitable. Just looking at things in that particular light and saying, hey, what, what really could I do? Recombining these, not going out and getting money and hiring this guy, which I have strategies for that. Too many of them. You feel like you're being held back in a small or medium sized business. Uh, that type of mindset is, is very empowering to ones that can feel like they're running a hamster wheel. So it's, it still helped me even today.

I, I appreciate sharing that. And I was saying that you sound similar to me and ju. Just everything. I remember realizing stuff at a young age. Also there was a quote I came up with. I feel like walking up the steps probably to play video games. But it was I do what I can with what I have to be the best I can be. And it's resonating with me what you're saying, because it's like take, invent. What I'm hearing is take inventory of where you're at. It doesn't matter if you have a lot or a little or something in between. Leverage it in your favor. Which just makes so much sense to me. And to the point of I was asking a few years later, or was it when you were 8? Because I started my first business at 12, doing lawn care, power washing, painting, all these different things, and sold that to start this one when I was in high school.

That's awesome.

Happy to say this one's still going well, but it's so shocking to me. I look. Keep looking back at when you were 6, 8, 10, 12, 14. It really is the formative years because by 16, 17, 18, I was pretty dead set on like, I want to do entrepreneurship, like probably 15 or 16, you know, it changes you.

It absolutely changes you. That very first time.

I used to go to horse sales and therefore I was around adults the entire time. I spent my formative years with people that were 20, 25 years my senior, spending an absorbent amount of time with my father. And I was an absolute sponge, driven by natural curiosity. So going to those horse sales is pretty easy for me to actually discover. My first collaboration and was with people who wanted to sell their horses. I had been riding since before I could walk. Me plus their horse. In an audience that wants to buy a horse, they would perceive that anybody could ride this horse. Because I was a peanut until I probably hit middle, middle of the time in high school, I was very small, but I, I could make it look like the horse that you brought, anyone could ride is not 100% true, but it did increase the value that I perceived and it was validated that it increased the value of those horses that were selling well. They were very happy to pay me 10 or $20 just to ride their horse through the sale barn. So I'd say 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. I was making a few hundred bucks a week just going to horse sales and using what I had where I was to the best of my ability. To your point?

Yeah. It's amazing what, you know, we're already blessed with that people overlook. And it's like, I need to get this, I need to do this, I need. There's always this external thing and it's like, no, just button up the thing you've done. You're just doing it 85%. Like, do it a little bit better and you know, like the, the referability habits. It's like, get these right. Well, people aren't sending us enough business. Would you send business to you?

That's right, Yeah.

I mean, you're nice, you're cool, you do enough stuff. You're definitely ambitious. You're always doing something. But is it the highest and best use of your time? Maybe get rid of 90% of it? It's one of the things I was looking at, like.

What'S actually contributing to the growth? And I'm like, it's really nothing over here. This is just personal interest stuff. And yeah, it's helping, but there's a.

Lot of the 8020 principle. You make up such a great point. I do, I run things through a filter and it's a filter I mentioned earlier, hero target. So hero target may be not language that the audience familiar with, but it's pretty easy to understand. Who do you want to be a hero target to? Who do you want your business to be a hero target to? And, and I would say get very intimate with that and root everything back to the value that you're creating. And there's one, one very, very core principle that I've used over and over and over. And some of the outcomes look like rocket science and they're absolutely not because it's the foundation of it is make it easy for people to do business with you. So oftentimes the convention is, oh, we're going to have a retail store and have them come to me. And I'm going to put up multiple retail stores. There's one business, many, many years ago, it was in the wireless industry and there's a particular type telephone that was used and that particular type telephone was, had total density or total penetration in the builder and construction vertical. So pretty quickly I realized that. And when I started that particular business, they thought it was a joke because before that it was an agriculture business. I basically built a tractor supply before the concept actually existed. And I decided, I know that I could sell these phones and understood the impact to someone's business and of course understanding where the market was. I basically set up the entire city of Charlotte like a little ice cream truck routes and had gentlemen ride through production builder neighborhoods where it just so happened that every brick mason, landscaper, drywall guy, grading contractor, mailbox installation crew and paving crew bus, well, those are the exact type of people that were using that particular device. So by making it easy to do business with me versus having to remove yourself from a place that you're making money to go to a retail store made it extremely easy for me to penetrate that market. And people thought, what am I doing? I must be giving it away. I didn't need to give it away, actually. My, my prices were in alignment with the value that I was delivering, which means my margins were actually better than the place. And I didn't have the brick and mortar, the retail store. But so oftentimes people get caught up in the conventions and they just continue doing the Same thing. Potentially complaining and or talking about creating a different outcome. And that's not the way it works. Rooted in value creation. Run it through a filter, focus on that hero target and make it easy for people to do business with you. It's been very rewarding for all these years. And now over 50 different businesses.

Wow, that's fantastic. And I know you're a big proponent for collaboration. Walk us through this. Why you think more people don't do it as effectively as they could?

Yeah, so many are what it appears. They're really wanting to hold their trade secrets inside of their own organization. They're afraid that somebody else is going to take their cheese if they begin to collaborate and partner with other people. And I use partner loose and I use collaboration very specifically. And I'll impact what I mean by that.

Taking in concept that hero target, everyone who you're serving today is walking along their own growth journey. They interact with your organization and you provide them value. Sometimes you really crush the value when you do that. Before that hero target gets engaged with you and after you crush whatever it is the value that you're delivering, they immediately do a very next thing. So how foreign of a concept would it be for you to identify what comes before you and what comes after you deliver your value? And if you further are subscribing to the methodology, it's like, you know, that's not so bad. If you were to engage with the people that come before you and then also come after you and engage with a collaboration methodology, well, that means you guys are both serving the same hero target. You have a similar alignment of values because they have some level of success at doing it. You've received clients after they engage with that business or you've sent clients or you know, clients that you have done your work for and they immediately call the next guy engaging with those two before and after you. In collaborations, you begin to actually create competitive advantages. And when I mentioned earlier that you always want to make it easy for people to do business with you. I've seen this thought of collaboration, fundamentally rooted in what I just shared with you, evolve to a place where the market begins to ask for those three services as a combined delivery. Because why would they want to deal with three different people and have to build what's most important, a trust relationship with a third party vendor to which they don't want to. They have to do it three times. You could show up with your named collaboration and I do say name very for a particular purpose. There's oftentimes people will engage in, let's say, perceived collaborations where yes, if I run across somebody who could use your services, I know you do a good job and I'll pick up the phone and call you. It's a gentleman's agreement. If you had a baby and I had a baby, would we call it the baby? No. Why don't we do that in business? So here in this example, hypothetically, you've created a collaboration with what comes beyond you and what comes before you. You effectively three extra sales team. You've also made it easy for people to do business with you. And if you would consider this baby comment and you actually named it, you're now giving an opportunity to the marketplace to ask for that particular service. Guess who can offer that? Only you. Guess what you're also able to do. If you negate having your client have to set up three trusting relationships to create the same outcome that they can do with just you, you've enabled yourself to have a little better margins. So, yeah, I'm not really sure other than people are afraid that their secret sauce is going to get out and I would strongly encourage them to keep digging to create more secret sauce. I've already said it. Rooted in value creation that never stops. I've two young daughters and I would say on the school, on the way to school in the morning, those poor girls, we have multiple conversations about how to create value. And no matter what level of success that you obtain when you wake up in the mar in the morning, hopefully that is a bonus day every day in front of you. I view as a bonus day when you do that. After you say your gratitude be start thinking only about future thoughts, not about yesterday. If you do guess where you'll live and yesterday, you will not create the future. So begin to think about tomorrow and next week and next month and have it rooted in how you can create more value tomorrow, next day, next month than you did yesterday. And one particular way to do it is sort of the one that I just shared with you. I feel like some of the lowest hanging fruit is through collaboration and combining value propositions that you know your hero target is already engaged with. You just make it easy for him yourself, the client that came or the business that came before you and the business comes after. I've even seen that evolve to shape and change entire industries.

Wow. So powerful. You're sharp. I got to ask more about the secret sauce because I do feel like this is a perpetual problem with certain. I don't want to say everyone because clearly you figured it out. But it just seems like there's number one, Coke, Coke and kfc. Okay. Like a legit secret recipe. They're probably not going to share it, but there's so many people in business that I feel they go, I don't want to give away the secret. I don't want to give away the secret recipe. I don't want to give away the recipe. And for the love of God, if I see the word proprietary one more time.

Yes, indeed.

It's like, okay, so what's your. So what's your proprietary process? You have your staff answer the phone and follow up with them and then you book them on a call and this is what you're afraid of giving away? Yeah, what's the deal?

Yeah. Or the spreadsheet. You know, this is our pricing. Spreadsheet is very confidential.

How is it proprietary? Because you're the only one on the planet who does it this way.

Yeah. I'll tell you, there's one other, and this is a little bit jumping ahead, but it may be maybe complimentary to the evolution that I feel like all business owners have. I definitely get involved in some mergers and acquisitions. We've recently launched an M and a group as well called Evolve. It's named Evolve for very specific purpose. There is. What I've recognized is there is a very subconscious emotional connection to the identity that these existing business owners have with their current business. And it's been a little bit foreign. I mentioned over 50 organizations for the time that I've been on the planet and that just ramping up. So it's a concept that I don't really align with. But I understand.

I have had a saying for a very long time that I've actually enacted and it is, I only ever want to be in an industry long enough to figure out the how. Then I want to turn around and sell the how back to the who's that are in the industry. Primarily because the margins are considerably better and I have no competition. So to your point, they feel like they have something proprietary. And if it is truly proprietary, I'm a huge intellectual property guy. I have a friend that has an organization called EasyIP today. So as I create new concepts, methodologies for growth, I have an internal process that the information gets from my innovation manager over to an operation person. That person goes to this particular platform, EZIP Today, and within 24 hours, my intellectual property is time and date and second stamped on blockchain, backed up by a smart contract. So I am actually a big intellectual property guy. But it's rooted in what I just said. There's an evolution to everything, whether you want to be a part of it or not. The world is spinning and you'll spin out in the ditch. We've seen it happen time and time again with many organizations that just chose not to evolve. They thought the grass is going to continue to grow green and that is not 100% true. The water bill just gets higher. So with that consideration, this proprietary stuff, I would encourage them to take a very proactive and forward thinking approach to their intellectual property if legitimate, with the whole intention of creating those things which I would argue and we classify them as shortcuts. Many of the shortcuts can be combined into programs and the programs can be combined into platforms. And you might consider once you decide and or you have the opportunity to exit your normal core conventional business and evolve to your next the next version of you selling the how to the who's. And if you're owning that intellectual property in a separate entity and you're licensing back to your original entity, then there's already revenue. So when you go to exit that first business one, they can buy the intellectual property or there's a cost of goods sitting on the P and L we've been paying for this for the last five years. They can choose to continue paying it maybe under some agreement for the next three to five years, you can license it back to them or they can be your first client in the evolution of you. So there's a lot of opportunities to existing business owners by deploying collaboration, being a little bit a lot more intentional about intellectual property and seeing beyond their current existence or identity tied up with their conventional business.

Do you have any solutions for the person listening if they. So there's people that are unaware unconscious competence, maybe they don't realize they have this subconscious hold on them. But for the P so what would you say to them as well as the people who are aware and go that's it. That's exact. I knew there was something. That's it. They want to get to the next part, the next level, but they know that's what's holding them back. Do you have anything that you could say, here's how to break through it and just be rid of it?

Yeah, it's a little bit of sort of what we talked about earlier and you can see some similarities of the methodology that disclosed being applied in a different fashion. But taking that big step back and to your point, taking inventory what you have now here's the first thing that I will say Business owners, as a general rule, do not think what they are doing is intellectual property valid. That's not 100% true. This is the way we've always done it, or this is the way we do it. And the way that they're doing is a little bit unique, but when it's combined with the way that they do everything, it produces the result. So it could be that they are operating in a very conventional model. Model. Sorry, model. And if they take the inventory that you mentioned and say, how is it that we do what we do do? And if you apply the baby comment that I made earlier, if you had one and I had one, we called it the baby. I'm not sure which one is yours or mine. It's the baby. What do you. You know, what. What are we supposed to do? But they don't do that in their business. So they have a pricing matrix, but it's not a name. It's just the spreadsheet. They could apply an actual name to it. When you apply a name to it, you begin to give everybody else who interacts with that thing the ability to call it what it is. And guess what? You got to name it. Therefore, it takes on an identity separate than your core organization. If you would potentially consider taking the step back, taking inventory of the way you do the manufacturing process, load the trucks, price the stuff, maybe it's the way that you react to pricing in the markets when interest rates rise. All of those little particular components, as I mentioned, are shortcuts. Applying naming to them and then grouping them together will begin to hopefully empower that business owner to say, you know what? I think I actually do have something here. And I would say that a lion's share of them go to trade organizations. They rub elbows with others that are in the industry. Well, guess what the other people are not doing. We're not naming it. Now fast forward. Think of the big ones in the organization. Do they potentially name their packaging and their services so that it empowers their clients to ask for it by name in the municipal space? And I've done some work there with an organization. Not long ago, we were requested to give a trash can an RFID tag. They basically gave it a birth certificate. We did 211 cities across the country, and I was exposed to municipal bidding. And the thing was, you want to get specked into the bid. So they spend an absorbent amount of time educating and I would argue, nurturing their client so that they've educated them. That would result into their wheel size or whatever specific about their particular container was specked into the bid. You see, larger organizations do it all the time, but if you just take it as the convention, so that's the way they do it. But we're too small, we can't do that. I'm like, that's not 100% true. There's a reason that they're doing it and I want to dig deeper and understand the why behind the reason that they're doing it. When you begin to understand those things, it empowers you to also do it for yourself and starts to create your own competitive advantages. But you're right, a lot of them don't think that particular way.

Yeah, I remember there was a power washer company that we were helping with some marketing because one of our core things, not only with publishing, but is your marketing message. And I love that you're sharing about the naming of it, this and that. And I mean, it's power Wash company. No slight to them. I used to own one. But you're washing stuff. It's pretty straightforward. Yeah, But I was like, tell me about your thing. Oh, well, we always do this, this, this, this, and this. Okay, cool. Now what, what do we do here? And it's similar to what we do with our authors for the chapters. It's like there's all this good stuff we can talk about, but what are the 5 to 10 that are actually gonna make it in there? And can we loop these other ones into a sub chapter of an existing one? Not have 37 chapters? And he's like, oh, well, we did this. And I go, so you have a five step process, which almost everyone does. And.

The company was called Hawk. And I go, what if we come up with the Talon 5 process?

Love that.

It was like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And it was similar to what everyone does because, I mean, I was joking about, okay, so your team picks up the phone, this and that. How he did it was a little bit unique, but just the fact that you verbalize it and then, you know, put graphics to it and put it on here, like home of the exclusive Talon 5 process. No one's doing it, especially those type of industries.

You're exactly right. I'd give you another very similar example. I have a very good friend that owns an organization by the name of ram Pavement and ram. In that world, whenever you repave or restripe a parking lot, inevitably your lovely crews forget a few of those bright orange yellow cones that stick out like a red sore thumb to every building or parking lot owner. So in Working with him, we deemed it the last 5% and the last 5%. Everyone in the organization knows you better get up those calls. Drastic improvement almost to the extent zero. Also, it provided him the ability to basically punch the elephant. And that's, that's a book that a friend of mine, Mike Kenning, wrote, is awesome book actually. But you just take the, the elephant in the room, call it out, because if you don't, it's coming to town. Well, the Cones were a huge deal. Every paving company dealt with it and he just embraced that particular friction that turned it into a positive, gave it a name, separated himself from the competition. He calls up the big pink elephant in the room immediately. And not only do we understand it, we have a solution for it. And it began to separate him from the competition within 30 days. It's awesome. Wonderful impact. That's a great example that you're given. I've seen.

Thank you. I appreciate you elaborate on it because I found like use cases I like talking about when I'm speaking to crowds and different people or even one on one. Because it's like, okay, there's all these great things like you can do this and mark marketing, you can do this with publishing, video, podcast, whatever. But it's like, I think everyone's subconsciously going, how does this apply to me? And it's like, oh, have you considered this, this and this? It's like, no, I never have. Or yes to these two. Tell me more about this third one. And I love the contrarian thinking of how can I take something from one industry and apply it over here? It's like, oh, I've never done public speaking. You know, that's traditionally for these industries and this is just one of dozens. But it's like, so do it. No one else is doing it. Just like naming your process. When you start getting two, three, four, five different things, like, well, you have a specific process. It's proprietary.

Yes.

You know, you just, you're standing out and people see it through the whole thing. Not just, you know, because there's people go, oh, so what, you name something? No, it's the other 37 things that are throughout we're doing at a high level. That when you piece them together, you know, I, I've used the analogy of photographs forever. My background's in video and photography, special effects and stuff like that. And those old fashioned cameras. I don't know, there might be someone younger listening that goes, what's film? But when you used to take pictures and they'd have that blue haze or the orange haze. Oh, yes. It's nothing more than white balance. It was off for that shot and it's like, wow, what happened to the shot here? And it's still very vital. It doesn't matter if it's a digital camera, webcam, film cam, whatever the case is, when you know, the reasoning behind just stands out consistently. You know, cell phones, all these different things. So I'm a firm believer in like, what can you do? Like you're saying what can you do and be excellent at.

Yes.

And when you do it to one thing, it becomes the second one and the third and the fourth and all of a sudden it's like, oh yeah, they're different.

Well, why they're different. Yeah.

You know, you might not know why that picture looks, you know, not ideal.

Yep.

But you know, it's. Something's wrong with it.

Yes, absolutely. You can feel it. Yeah. The perception of intentionality as well from a naming perspective is just one thing that you can use or leverage that costs you not a whole lot of money. But if you need, if you need help naming something, feel free to shoot me a note. For some reason I have a little bit of a knack for it. And.

This low hanging fruit, you begin to create separation from you in the marketplace and you give them something to buy. Everyone else has a special, they call it the special. No, no, no. Give yourself the ability to name it uniquely and do treat it very serious. Go ahead and get your trademark or your copyright where applicable. Or as I mentioned, that blockchain with a smart contract I found is a low hanging fruit. The ability to go ahead and begin to build a moat around your business which is going to increase your enterprise value. Whenever you do actually get ready to exit, you have something no one else offers. So it can pay you at the beginning, the middle and absolutely at the end.

Yeah. And that's important. And I love that you're talking about the different businesses and interests that you have. And you know, M and A has always interested me and you know, with selling my first business and different things. So let's talk about exiting. If what would you say to someone who goes, well, I never want to exit.

Oh goodness, our maker will take care of that one day. One day the business is going to be sold whether you're here, oriented or not. There you go. You can maximize the value while you're here and benefit in the fruits of your labor. So I mean, the average turns on most EBITDA businesses, whether it be professional services, manufacturing, you're going to be Somewhere between independent of the EBITDA, of course, but let's say 4 to 8. So why in the world, after putting all this blood, sweat and tears in this thing for a long time, would you not want to reap the rewards of what you built? I'm not really sure, other than passing it to family members, which I don't 100% agree with. I'm luckily and very fortunate and blessed to have two daughters. I want them to. And unfortunately they've all. They've actually started. One has started two businesses, the other one has started one at 12 and 14. But I want them to do their own. Now do I want to help them? Absolutely. But am I going to give them anything? Absolutely not. The, the lessons that you learn along the way are the ones that really craft who you are and who you end up being. And that I don't think there's a. There's not an easy path there. There are many different paths, but I want them to do their own thing. So I know that's not the convention. There are many that want to pass it from generation to generation. And we all know how that goes. When it gets to the third generation, it's not favorable other than the exception. I'm sorry, Other than the. The rule is not that the exception would be that it survives even beyond the third generation. So there's a way to, I feel like empower the next generation. And there's absolutely. I feel like be more favorable to maximize the value of your asset and strongly consider exiting at the right time for the ones that are in the space. You've heard of the multiple bytes at the Apple, so trying to get aligned with a strategic, rolling some of your equity forward, letting that additional growth be on the backs of other people. And then you, you send. Sometimes you get to exit for equal to or more than your first exit by doing that particular strategy. It seems like there's just a lot of value left on the table. And more oftentimes when you leave that value on the table and just kind of ride this ponytail, it dies. It does. And then that you see the value diminish as you begin to get a little bit older and your interest doesn't align with what I said earlier. Wake up every morning with a strong intent to create more value today than I did yesterday. You just get. Get a little bit older and you get tired and your interest change. So not maximizing the value during the time in which you have and then being able to leverage the fruits of that value on a proper strategic exit, it Makes me sad for many business owners because I know what kind of work it takes to take it from zero and make it into something and cross the 10 million mark and then the 20 million mark. That's a lot of work. So I very much enjoy when I'm working with specific business owners who have gotten to that particular point, but they have no experience. Why would they? They're excellent at what they do. M and A is not it. But they also haven't done anything to understand what their opportunities are. It's rewarding to me to see them successfully exit and be able to move on to the next step in their evolution and growth journey.

Yeah, I think a lot of people overlook the opportunity and I'm not saying they should or shouldn't because I. There's some. There's obviously a sweet spot of when to do it, but there are a lot of businesses, I think it is like, like you said, to pass it down to the family. But at the same time, even if you have no intention of exiting.

What can you do that? This has been my litmus test. One of my mentors told me about a book called Built to Sell years ago.

Yes, yes. What a wonderful little book.

What's that?

What a wonderful little book. I mean, it's just chock full of real world actionable intelligence for an SMB. I love it. I listened to it a couple weeks ago as a Marina del Rey and I haven't listened to it in a while or read it in a while. I've done both. But I listened to it and ran all around Marina del Rey very early in the morning and it's like, wow, this thing's just. There's real world nuggets in here. So I, I actually immediately I do a book report on things that I read and I'd read that so long ago. I didn't. So I immediately went and did my book report on it and then shared it out with certain leaders of different organizations that I own. And I would dare say that within 48 hours they were taking action. So I'm so glad you brought it up. If anybody that's listening has not read that, I would very strongly suggest to listen to it. It's very easy to listen to and. Or read it. Just talk. Full of value.

Yeah, it's. It's been one of my favorites because it got me thinking too. And I'm so happy to hear your leaders within 48 hours. You know, they're implementing it, stuff like that. It just gets you thinking instead of, you know, whether you choose to or not. It's like, what can you be doing now to like what this whole everything we're talking about, how can you highly have it highly leveraged in your favor? It's like this is just another way, you know, is it desirable if you wanted to, you know, because the reality is maybe you don't, maybe you do. But what if you needed to? What if something changed drastically and it's like, here's an asset I do need to offload. Do you have six or 12 months to change it around? It's a lot easier now when you do a little bit each week and you know, a lot lower impact and it's just the philosophy and mindset behind it. So when you were mentioning the M A and the different businesses, I was like, I was actually curious if you were had read it before.

Oh, yes, yeah, absolutely. It's old Ted. It was Ted, correct. That was. That was all of his mentors wrapped into one and Alex is the guy and he made that strong decision to sell logos. I will not forget that. That brings up a great point on the selling logos. All of us have one key item and I call it the unique ability of your business. It is the thing that every time that your business goes to deliver that value, there's not a lot of questions. We're going to crush it where I see so many get into trouble. And it'll speak to collaboration that we touched on a little bit earlier. If you can identify what it is that your business does better than anything else that is currently doing and really hone into that, you may further consider to begin to massage your messaging to deliver that value to that specific hero target and over time stop the rest. And you say stop the rest but it's creating revenue. That's exactly right. It is. You may also consider as an offset top to lose that revenue, you begin to maximize your opportunity of growing your revenue in the thing that it is that you do do that you hardly ever mess up on doing. Your team's just they're scaled for it, they're structured. You've got the processes in place to deliver the value. And one may say, what do you mean? Well, there's a. I created this little tool, it's called bi directional Collaboration Identifier. And we've talked about your hero journey walking down the street and combining your efforts with somebody who comes after you before you. But if you get really dialed in and that that built the soul, built a cell I'm mirroring now helped with this methodology. If you're Dialed in with the value that your business can create. We're going to call it your corporate unique ability. Then you don't want to deal with clients that you kind of could, but they're a little too big, or you kind of could, but they're a little too small. I would behoove you potentially to consider collaborating with folks that do exactly what you do. But it's not the things that are your, your corporate unique ability. And that can help you offset the perceived loss of revenue for doing things that you might not should be involved in in the first place. Because if you make a collaboration with that particular entity and you begin to send them business with a concept of courses, they don't do exactly what you do when you deliver your corporate unique abilities. So whenever clients are looking for that exact thing it is that you do, they send them to you. I've seen that happen out in reality quite a few times in helping organizations around the world. They get really delved into what their corporate unique ability is and we begin to shed off through collaborative relationships the business, the products and services that they were okay at, they might even been excellent at. It was not their corporate unique ability. And what you see and I remember this built to sell. I think he, he had really nothing to sell whenever he began this journey. And I think it's a year and a half later maybe he got an offer for six and a half million. From zero to six and a half million is not too bad a return on a small business for 18 months. I've seen it happen in organizations that I own. When I began to get to a place where I was mature enough to make decisions like that, it became freeing not only to myself, not only to my clients. Having the ability to refer me and my other trade partners, but most importantly to my team. And the impact on my team resulted in a much higher delivery of value to my hero target which in turn made the referral engine kick up into high gear so there was no loss of revenue. I created collaboration partnerships to offset those things that we were good at but we didn't want to do anymore. And the outcome was very similar to what they talk about in the book Built a Sale. So I appreciate you bringing that up. It's very impactful and powerful. And what we just talked about is practical application of the theory which try my very best to. I do a ton of content absorption reading couple books a week, YouTube which I classify as a little bit of the modern day college. And all of these theories are wonderful. But where's the Practical application of the theory that example is just given when Built to sell is super powerful is an example of practical application though hopefully that helps somebody who's listening.

Wow. I appreciate your real world experience with it because it's like, oh, this is a cool concept and I don't want to say too much about it. I want people to read the book. But it' why I've always loved reading books and you know, became a publisher because it's like you can take these ideas whether they're simplistic or more advanced and you're saying you read two to three books a week. I mean, what better, easier, inexpensive way?

Where else are you going to get that? You're not going to get coaching, mentorship or go to your boss or your company leader or who's doing that for basically pennies on the dollar. We can pick up. There's one I'm reading right now. It's literally over 100 years old. The Science of Advertising Claude Hopkins. It's literally over 100 years old and a lot of it still holds. Holds up like majority.

That's wonderful. Thanks for sharing that. I'll catch that after the recording. I want to go consume that one as well. You're writing these books. I didn't began to reread until I was around 35.

Okay.

I thought that you did not being educated, growing up in a small town, all those things are not excuses, they're just realities. And for some reason it just wasn't impressed upon me to read feverishly. I thought for you for picking it up later on then, yeah, it did actually work. But I thought I was supposed to get up earlier, work harder, be smarter and outrun the next guy until 35. That worked very well. And then I began to think, man, there's at that time, I think there's seven and a half billion people on earth is representing four or five generations. There's a lot of other generations that came before us. And I began to think about the creation of the wheel. I said, you know, probably not going to create the wheel and what I'm going to do in my lifetime. I am constantly, because of my natural curiosity, I'll continuously shave little pieces off the wheel to get it turned faster. If I would consider all the ones that came before me, maybe some of them wrote down their strategies or to your point, their. Their secret sauce. And maybe if I go read theirs, I won't make old mistakes, I'll make new mistakes. And instead of massaging the wheel in the wrong place, I can massage it in a new place and make it go faster. And that's when whenever I begin to read. And then I was introduced. Jim Quick has a book called Limitless. I'm not sure if you've ever read it, but in there he gives tons of strategies I also use with my poor daughters on the way to school about retention and remembering. But there's a lot of components in there that help me understand how to speed read. So I'm able to. I took those, those capabilities to heart and man, it's been super powerful in the ability to consume information. I mentioned that I may not have mentioned. I do book reports and all that I read because I'm not as concerned about how much I read, but what I get out of it. Going back to that comment about practical application of the theory, these books are chock full of just what I consider absolute gold. But if you just read the words and you don't really challenge yourself to dig inside of what's the meaning behind the words, you'll actually miss the practical application of the theory, which is the absolute goal that could be benefiting you today and for many years into the future. So there's a couple little things that have paid me huge dividends over the years since I of course turned 35 and decided to be very intentional about how and what I read.

Wow, you're. You're amazing. It's kind of surreal too, because I remember in geez high school I got a course. It was, it was called Reading Genius because it was the exact same principle of like, I want to be able to consume more and retain it better. This and that. I'll have to check out Jim's new one. I think he's phenomenal. But if there's speed reading stuff in there too. But you know, that comprehension. You're making such a good point. I got to ask you about the book reports. Are you following a format? Did you create one? I love the fact that you're doing them. And you're absolutely right. The point of following others, you know, it's that whole experience versus wisdom experiences is learning from your own mistakes. Wisdom is learning from others.

Yes.

Yeah. I would like to reinvent the wheel. I think, I think it's possible. I think you definitely could. But you're right, there's so many things that are so hyper refined already. It's like it's easier to improve. Like are we going to switch to titanium, aluminum, magnesium, carbon fiber? Like how can we shed the weight, have a higher thrust to weight ratio? If we're talking about jet engines. Like yeah, we can improve it. It's nothing new necessarily but we're making it so drastically better. Like 5th to 6th gen fighter jets, which is one of my obsessions, like stealth. It's not like oh we made the wings 10 pounds lighter. It's like no, this whole thing is like leaps and bounds next generation for it to qualify and I love doing the same thing in business. It's like, like I was telling you with the books, like what we did for one of our certified limited editions. It's like books are nothing new. But how can we make it new and exciting? How are we doing it different than anyone else? And it's like what are most people not doing that you can highly leverage? And there's some things that only the people who have gotten them will even experience.

But it's like how can you take no matter what business you're in and leverage it all these ways?

Yes.

The last thing I was going to wanted to address in there was you said I was mature enough to handle this. Could you elaborate on that for us? How did you know you were mature enough and what was the difference from before and after?

Yeah, and some of that. I absolutely am very blessed with long range vision. A lot of times I will project it as three dimensional chess. This move that I'm going to make currently is we know that there's going to be a reaction into that. There's going to be a reaction into that. It's going to be a reaction. So how far in the future can you actually see and how far can you validate the concrete of your perception of that reaction? So when I talked about being mature enough to make the decision to be able to get to shed products and services and to begin to enter collaborative relationships so that I was still able to provide that total amount of value to the hero target. But my organization became, I mean it slowed down to get faster. It slowed down in that it's not horizontally complex which always doing something and one would argue sometimes busy for the sake of busy because you've over committed to delivering something. But when I sat down and said okay, what truly is it that our organization, this collection of folks, these products and services, which one delivers the most value and which one can we almost not mess up? And when I reviewed that and really began to look at it and understand the impact of that over the long term, it really wasn't a hard decision. So some of it is the maturity, maybe the confidence to make big decisions like that. But it's also the mindset and the forward looking vision to validate this particular move I'm about to make. If I want the maximum amount of benefit from it, how far in the future do I know that that's going to be a concrete response? And then bring it all the way back to where you stand today and make the right decision to create the outcome that you seek. Many times folks do not do that. They make the decision most closest that they can see the outcome of. They do not try to look further into the future and track those reactions and then come all the way back to where they stand right now. Make the decision that sometimes can be found quite unfavorable to the conventional mindsets. Please be courageous. Look into the future, understand the real outcome, get as far into the future as you can, come back to where you are, make the decision, own your decision, and then begin to remove the things that are actually obstacles in your way to making that outcome become a reality. But I would strongly consider or encourage to look and be able to remove those things through collaborative relationships. So you maintain the upside or the profitability or the revenue that's still running through your organization. And if not a partner organization, so the things that they don't do well, they send directly to you. It is more than empowering. Wow. Thank you for the question.

You're welcome. That is very powerful because you, you got me thinking. You're absolutely right.

You go with what's familiar and comfortable.

Yes.

And when you said most people make the decision based on what they can see.

Yes.

It could be this perpetual hamster wheel of always being, stopping at the one yard line, if you will.

It really seems like that for quite a few businesses and at their fingertips they have so much more opportunity to create value and to separate themselves from the competition. So I love partnering with the old organization or the stodgy organization. That's very minimal returns. They're doing it project based. They have so many resources invested both in human capital and also hard assets. Those are treasure troves for me just to go in and take a look and say, okay, really what you have here is you could take this and call it that. You could package it this way, create a subscription business, 10, maybe 6x your enterprise value, run it for two years, create some collaborative relationships, double the revenue and here's your enterprise value at the end that you can potentially look to exit for. And they almost fall out of the chair. And you notice I did not say go buy this, go hire this guy, go build this building, go invest millions of dollars for this New equipment, It is already at their fingertips. So they would just take one big step back, take a true inventory. And I mentioned it earlier, the daily natural or the. I'm sorry, the authentic expression of the person, place, or thing that's at your fingertips. You may find that you have way more opportunities at your fingertips than you ever thought imaginable.

I love this. Slow down to speed up. I'm hearing a lot more of like you're saying, just you don't need to do more, do less.

Actually, absolutely.

In higher leverage, we could go for three hours on this. That's exciting. Is there anything I haven't asked? You're just a wealth of wisdom. I feel like there's 35 more things I could ask. But is there anything I haven't asked yet that you just. You're feeling on your heart that you know what with everything we've talked about, this would really help one of the listeners.

Yeah, sure. I'll touch on one other thing, and this is a fundamental concept as well, because as I mentioned, I start out on a farm. I didn't come from a bunch of money. I'm very determined and very curious. How the heck am I going to go create these businesses? So what I began to focus on is all of today's money in your business. And I'm obviously making a projection. I might be wrong, but I don't believe that. I'm too far off. All of that money is already spoken for. Whether it's going for payroll, going for insurance, going for capital X or going to an investment, it's already spoken for. The same thing is true in most businesses. So when you think about exponential growth and you're looking for that, who that is going to help you? I need to hire that new sales guy or that new ops man. And you just don't have it in the budget. One thing I would strongly encourage you to consider, future money is not already spoken for. I'll give you an example. Perhaps, Mario, you and I get engaged, and I really align with your vision. And I'm pretty confident in what I can create. And I said, okay, I get it. I'll commit. I can return to you $1 million 12 months from now. How much would you be okay with me keeping out of that million dollars? And if that works, I'll continue to do it for the foreseeable future. That's future money today from zero, independent of whatever profit that you're already making in your business. Remember, I'm not involved. So it's net new. So this million dollars Hypothetical that I'm going to deliver you over the next 12 months as a rule, what percentage would you be okay with me participating in this million dollars that I create?

If you could add an additional million dollars to exist.

Net profit, of course.

What's that?

Not revenue. Net profit, not revenue.

I would ask how much would you want?

Yeah. So it's interesting when I communicate that particular question to a lot of people they're totally fine with and it's obviously is a little surprising to me up to 50%. I will share with you if I'm looking for that Cracker Jack business development guy who's the best and you might know his name in your industry if he's not participating on future money, he's picking up a salary and bonus and no profit sharing, no phantom equity. And, and you know, because you've seen him act and or be active in the industry for a very long time, you know he crushes it. You might consider having a conversation with him about what percentage of you would be okay for future money that he knows he could create with all of experience and his own personal unique ability in the space. A lot of these guys who are really quote unquote worth their salt are looking for upside opportunity. Yeah, they might need a little cash along the way because they have kids in private school, etc. But this is a concept certainly I see prolific in small businesses. It's not being leveraged. So leveraging future money through collaboration with the proper WHO that has the unique skill set to create the outcome. And I say outcome very specifically so oftentimes we get balled up in what's between here and the outcome and we begin to sell and to even our team all the things along the way and we forego telling them that we're doing all this so that we can create the outcome. The higher that you get up and the folks that have the confidence to actually create those outcomes, you might consider a potential collaboration on the outcome. They're going to make a lot more, you're going to make a lot more. And if you get the right who, and I would dare say a lot of people that are listening have hired that one guy in their past or that gal and whenever you hire them, it wasn't long after that that you pretty much just need to get out of their way. It was very refreshing and surprising. Those are the type team members that I've looked for in growing small to medium sized businesses for years and years. And I did not let my budget or the current cash in my bank account Keep me back from hiring the best talent. But what I am a big proponent of doing is when I win, everybody wins. So that's one little key item that hopefully is also empowering to your listeners that it's just a very simple concept that it can change the, the needle on even the year that you're currently operating. And heck, it could change the quarter if you were to do it now. So good luck.

Thank you for that. And just so I'm clear, and for our listener.

Are you talking, does this have anything to do with equity? Could it or are you just literally saying give him a higher percentage in whatever that agreement is for participating?

Yeah, it's not equity. And I'm a big proponent of phantom equity as well. As you can probably perceive. I'm, I want to. And through my curiosity, I am very intrigued about everyone's opinion. But if I say the ship is about to turn left, the best idea is to grab on, to hold on to something because we are about to turn left. So I'm not a big equity type person, but I absolutely want to empower with the financial benefit being spread to everybody who is part of it. So when I talk about this, this future money is absolutely sharing on the performance outcomes with each and every person and getting the best talent that you possibly can.

And is that what you refer to as phantom equity?

Where phantom equity is also a vehicle that I use in many organizations today to create some of those outcomes. But a lot of times it's. You could perceive it as phantom equity in the outcome of what they're producing, not specifically the overall profits of the organization. But and what that empowers you to do is for the benefit that that particular person is creating the outcome, you can look at the outcome that you both are in alignment that they're going to create, size up that opportunity and be very transparent. Typically they're doing the tracking of creating that outcome. So it's completely independent of the overall profitability of the business. It can be. And it's completely separate than the actual equity of the business. So it's a strategy that don't see widely used, but I've used it a lot, many, many times in the past. And now I help organizations all over the world take advantage of that particular strategy. So that's another very key item to, to create exponential growth and also empower you to get the right who's on your team and hopefully get out of the way if you have the right ones. We, I think we also all know when you hire the guy who promised the world. And he required this salary. It didn't work out. You knew it in a month. You continued to pay at 3. It took you 6 to make the decision. There's a much better way to create a much better outcome, and you can do it together and everybody wins.

Yeah, I know that. Higher, slow, fire, fast.

Yes, sir.

I was just talking with my good friend Scott the other day.

And there's people I'm thinking of, and there's actually someone in my book that when I was writing it, I started crying because I wanted the best for him. But I was literally.

There's a line in chapter two, I think it is, or chapter one or two, and it's about, no matter how much you want for them, you keep giving them extra rope, and all they keep doing is hanging them with it, no matter how much you give them.

Yeah. So a long, long time ago, I figured out that. And this is also a compliment to me, growing up with folks that are way more senior, obviously, being around my father, I would hear stories of this guy got let go, or that guy let go. And I could understand why sometimes just from the mannerisms and behavior. But then those guys were. They were older, and somehow they just hung in there and they finally got to retirement. So I took that to heart and I said, okay, well, that is the reality. And sometimes the guy would get let go, and he became wildly successful at his next endeavor for whatever reason. It just matched his skill set, his own personal unique ability. So when I looked at folks in my organizations that are just not working out for whatever the reason, it's most than likely a lion's share of our fault. But it is misaligned. We're actually holding those people back. It's a very tough decision. I've never. I've had to do it in the past. Luckily, I don't have to do it too much more after I put leadership teams and all my OPCOs. But every once in a while, I do get involved in it, and I always have to remind myself I'm holding this person back from reaching their full potential and the position that exists for them today, that likely somebody's already looking for them. And here I am causing both of us a detriment. So it's hard, but it is a lot of times the right answer. So.

I wish we had, like, five hours. Let me. Let me ask you this. Is this a they are legit overqualified and they don't belong in your organization? Or is part of this a reframe of they're not A good fit for us. I'm going to give them the best possible outcome and optimism. You know what? They were holding them back because they could be thriving somewhere else. Are they really overqualified or is it partially a reframe also go well, yes.

Is the right answer. I would leave and I'll give some context around that. And so I'm a huge who, not how guy. So Dan Sullivan, Ben Hardy, I think you referenced in the intro, wrote the book how. Yeah, that's right. Mr. Ben was on the show.

For mine. I've evolved that into nothing new without a who. But if you go out to the core methodology, who, not how.

Whenever. And I have this other methodology that I wholeheartedly believe in. We were all created as geniuses. There are many, many folks that are never even attempt to find theirs. If I am employing somebody, I take on the responsibility of also helping to find that person's genius. So in. In times in which I look backwards, it is highly possible that we have the right who, but we have them in the wrong seat. We may have projected that we need these capabilities, this experience, and we're looking to create this outcome. And we did a very poor job of, of matching the who to the what. So we just, we missed it on the what. So that doesn't mean that there's something wrong with that person. It means clearly that that person is wrong for that particular role. So in the who, not how concept, you come up with the what that you want and instead of figuring out the how to do it, you find the who to do it. The food, the who that is best in the world at doing it. And then as I projected earlier, get out of their way. But we all have folks that are already employed and some of them are crushing it. And you can name them by names. There's one name that just popped in your head. Some of them are not. I would. And I'm sure most of us in these organizations have done Rent and Kobe and Culture Index and preventative index and SDI 2.0. I mean, all these profile studies that, that are awesome, but it takes a little bit to get your arms around them. I have, I've dedicated myself to understanding them so that I can understand exactly who someone is and what their capabilities are. Work with them to understand their unique ability. And if it is not here, you have put them in a very good place to any role that is aligned with their unique capabilities. Empower them with. And I'll put this in context. If someone showed up and said, this is my unique ability on their resume. On the lead intro, here's the strength finders and here's how I use those strength finders applicable to my unique ability to create the outcome that I feel aligns with the what that you're looking to fulfill. From a position standpoint, how do you think that interview goes? I'm not asking the rudimentary questions that you're trying to get through in a normal interview. They give me real world context around their capabilities. In an example, guess who empowered them to be able to do that if it was their last employer? What do you think that breakup looks like? Is it a little bit different than the last person that you let go? So all of these things we're investing in as an organization is just using a little bit of intentionality to where if they're not working out in the role that you need, maybe they could work somewhere else in your organization. If they cannot empower them to know exactly who they are so that you set them up for success in the next role. To that if you take that a particular approach and sometimes and I have them they're lifelong relationships and some of those folks are not employed with any organization that I own.

Wow.

Just a different way to approach it.

Absolutely. I am so thankful you're sharing this again. Wealth of wisdom. I gotta ask you about the Wheel of whatever. I really wish we could have you ever considered writing in detail.

Even more books on all of this?

Yeah. Yeah. So the the concept of nothing new without a who was actually a governor for myself. I could I promised myself I wouldn't start another company without somebody to run the day to day. And and. And that was true. And it works because it's a little hard to keep me contained because I just see value creation everywhere. Search for friction so the the nothing do without a who is likely the next book and it's going to be primarily around mindset. We talked a lot about some of the core concepts today at 4:00 clock in the morning I literally have to check off in my Apple reminders. Millionaires ask how Billionaires ask who every morning 4am and it is somewhat ingrained in me already. But what I plan to do is to to capture the next grouping of these methodologies I've used to grow companies all over the world and ones that I've own that I do not own. So now I'm I mainly focus on helping others grow their company. And when I talked about future money I cost nothing. If we don't create net new profit and net new enterprise value. I cost nothing. There's no contract. There's just an agreement. You could wake up on a Tuesday and not like my socks and we just decide to not grow together anymore. But we can still be friends because who knows, one day you may want to sell it. And if we leave on good terms. I owned a mergers and acquisition company, so it's important to maximize the relationships that you do have. And I can see packaging this up in the next book likely will be named Nothing New without a who is coming, hopefully in the October to December time frame.

But great question, phenomenal insight, honestly. Wealth of wisdom. And my friend Victoria from tv, she said years ago I never burned any bridges and like what you're saying, hey, we can part as friends, this and that. I mean, life is long. I've been telling people that for years. But.

Wow, relationships.

I don't know what else to say other than wow, you're phenomenal.

I will ask this though. This is the wheel of whatever.

Yes.

You want black or yellow?

We'll go with yellow.

Oh good. That's my other favorite color.

Yellow.

Yes, sir.

Since you love business, what businesses would you like to get into that you haven't yet that you may have not told anyone about?

I would tell you that the legal industry, as it is conventionally known today, not priced on outcomes and literally trading time for money. I don't know very many wealthy people that trade time for money. I've given you concepts in our podcast today that are based upon future money and the art of collaboration to create exponential outcome. I am very and I'm working with a couple legal entities that they're kind of tired of being bloggers. They have so many capabilities to helping business owners. But the convention in their industry, obviously governed by the bar, they've got them hamstrung. And the convention is to trade time for money. So that's particularly one you know. Your listeners may of course already know, but out of one of my clients in Arizona, I say three years ago, he worked very hard on passing legislation that is the only state in the union that you can own a law firm, but you do not have to have a JD or be a lawyer or graduate, of course, with a law degree. So it's Arizona. And it's like that in the world. If you look at places in Australia and the uk, they're very large private organizations that own law firms and they're not lawyers. So that's what I'm exploring. I'm a, I'm a huge proponent. I've been, I've been classified as the king of recurring. I very much like recurring revenue. I've talked a lot about a lot today about waking up every morning with the intent mindset of creating more value today than we created yesterday. I find recurring business models are just a treasure trove to be able to facilitate that and any organization that is conventionally being delivered as a project. Today. I am excited about helping them understand how that could potentially be a recurring service and greatly increasing their enterprise value. But legal is one that's definitely in my sights. Great question.

Wow. Again, more wisdom. Thank you for sharing that and I would love to hear more about it as you journey through it. As it goes on. We're going to thank the sponsor and come back to the Imperfect Action Round. You've heard me say every business needs a book, including yours and it's true. And that's why I'm launching my new book@eapublishingmethodbook.com so you can learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. But you know what, don't take my word for it. Take it from a few of my authors like Lori, I went from having.

An idea and a possibility to actually getting my book published.

Or Catherine, thank you for making my mom number one best selling author. Or Mary Alice what he got done for me in three days regarding my book launch.

Unmanageable John Cody I've worked with Mario.

Over the phone and online and he's.

Been very helpful in getting me where.

I needed to go with promoting my books. Rocio there's no way in the world I would have been able to do this with somebody else again. I've attempted it in the past. It didn't serve me. As a matter of fact, I ended up more frustrated than anything. So this has been a very seamless process.

Adele if you're looking for an amazing.

Business coach, I highly recommend Mario Ficini or Bill Benner. I can't make a higher recommendation than to work with Mario Ficini. He has been great for me and right now I won't work with anybody else except for Mario.

Hey, their words, not mine. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com to get your copy and I look forward to hearing your transformation as our next video success story. Once again, that's eapublishingmethodbook.com and we are back with the Imperfect Action round. Chad, are you ready to take imperfect action?

Absolutely.

I got three questions for you. Rapid fire answers. The first one is what is the.

Fastest path to the cash Curiosity.

Love curiosity.

Number two. What is the biggest problem you see your prospects making and the fastest way.

For them to fix it? Not focus on value creation and working inside the conventions. Take the blinders off, leverage the natural curiosity and focus on value creation 100% 3.

What is the best way to maximize lifetime value of a customer?

It it sort of rooted in the very first thing value creation. You focus on what's in it for them and be intimately aware of the obstacles and most specifically the frictions that they are facing. Make it easy. Fundamentally another fundamental I should say make it easy for them to do business with you and retain that relationship. Always try to be out in front of them, focus on those frictions and just removing the obstacles that are in front of them along their own growth journey. That's going to take you to of wildly different concepts, remove competition and enable you to always be creating more value than you did previously. You will have that client for life.

Excellent. Thank you for sharing that. What you know, I gotta ask you about books. We've mentioned a few but what books have would you recommend to Expert Authority World?

Oh goodness. Currently Clear thinking with Shane Parrish. I think it's ex CIA being present, not responding based upon your defaults. So ego default, inertia default and I could go on through them. Excellent book. Chock full of what I would classify as actionable intelligence and there's practical application of the theory already contained in the book if you just read it with a little bit of intentionality. Another one that is by the Arbinger Institute, it is called the Outward Mindset. So many of you have probably read it. I think it is absolutely a bestseller. They've got a few of them but that one' extremely impactful as well. And then lastly, if you wired up similarly where there is no finish line and you're not really in it for the money, you're just in it for the impact and you're constantly I'm going to classify it as Driven. The book by Douglas Brackman Driven is the name of it and it explains a lot of the things that you're afflicted with the D2 and D4 alleles in your DNA. It's the same thing that every Navy SEAL has. So that book was insightful and anxiety reducing if you're wired up similarly. So hopefully those are three go to's that can can be pretty impactful for folks that are similar to me.

Well thank you for those and I'll make sure they're on eainterviews.com for the show Notes for your episode where would you like people to learn more?

Chad tjenkins.com is a wonderful place. You can go there. Just add a0.com of course there's access to the book and for growth collaboration part partnerships. You're able to visit seedspark.com but man, I've really enjoyed my time. Excellent questions and thanks for the opportunity today.

It was my pleasure. Like like I've been saying, I need to come up with something new than wealth of wisdom, but it's what keeps coming to mind. Thank you for sharing your expertise and experience with us, Expert Authority World. We clearly have another great episode here today. I'll see you on the next one. Have a great day and God bless. You're already the expert, but have you transformed your expertise into a tangible asset that will generate qualified leads while increasing profit for you 247 and if so, how well are you promoting it? With my new book, the Expert Authority Effect Publishing Method, I take you through my process step by step. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction, lead and profit generating business book book in eight weeks. Visit eapublishing method book.com to get started. Now. Once again, that's eapublishing method book.Com thanks for listening to today's episode. I would love to know what you enjoyed most from it if you haven't done so already. I invite you to connect with me on my new LinkedIn. You can go to it directly at eainterviews.com forward/LinkedIn. Once again, that's eainterviews.com forward slash. Lastly, check out the full eainterviews.com site for complete show notes, the full interview video experience, links to the resources we mentioned, and more. Have a blessed day and I'll see you on the next one.