0529 | Preston Brown

Hi, my name is Preston Brown and I'm with automateyou.com I'm a successful entrepreneur with 18 different companies. I specialize in disruptive automation and scaling your company. And you're listening to EA interviews.

EA interviews episode 529 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. I, I have a treat for you today with Preston Brown. If you've ever thought about automating and scaling your company, we've all heard it and I see so many people going I automate my company. And what that means is you bought a couple of softwares that automate a few things to alleviate some time which is all well and good, but I have a hard hitting VIP guest here for you. I was going through his website, the bio and everything and I'm excited to have a mom because your paycheck is.

Your payment for selling out. And if you don't truly automate your business, you created yourself a job. And I'm excited to hear. I actually we were having a great chat. I'm like we got to get rolling because I got stuff I want to ask you and I want to make sure they can hear it too. He is phenomenal. I'm going to bring him up and just think about this truly from the bottom of your heart, what you're really doing and be honest with yourself because whether you want to or not, I have a feeling he's not going to let you off the hook and neither will I. So I'm going to bring him up right after we thank our sponsor, Preston Brown. 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 EA Publishing method book dot com. Here he is, ladies and gentlemen, Preston Brown. Preston, how are you feeling today?

Amazing, Mario. Thanks for having me, brother.

Oh, it's, it's my pleasure. I have like I was telling everyone, you're pretty hard hitting, which I love and it's not even so much hard hitting, it's just honesty. I think the world today is okay. What can I say here? Well, anything, because it's my show and I'm giving you carte blanche to say whatever you want, but you know what I mean, everything seems watered down. And it's like, you know, let's just speak the truth.

You know, it's the most important thing in entrepreneurship. You're almost triggering me right now because it's one of my favorite subjects. I was having a conversation with a real close friend and somebody called the gal dishonest, and she's one of the most honest people you can imagine. And I said, man. She said, yeah. And then they told me not to take it personal. I guess it was a client. And I said, you should take that more personal than maybe anything outside of being called a murderer. Okay, Because. And I'll tell you something that's been on my thoughts massively recently. Mario, do you know the difference between protecting somebody from the truth and protecting the truth from somebody?

No. Please explain.

So there's such a thing as a white lie, right? And this is protecting somebody from the truth. It's fine in your marriage and your relationships, where it's where you can get away with the things because they're not necessarily nuanced. Like, so say my wife, who's a beautiful, wonderful, amazing woman, buys a dress and I hate it. She's like, hey, do you think this looks great? I. I may not tell her my truth, that I think it looks like shit. I may not say, hey, you know, that's a terrible dress and you know, I wish you weren't wearing it. So that is protecting somebody from the truth. But on the other side, protecting the truth from somebody is preventing them from getting the information. Like, I remember a buddy of mine in high school, and he probably shouldn't have done this, but he was dating a girl and she said, oh, do you think the dress makes me look fat? Well, he, of course, being the a hole he was, said, don't blame it on the dress and she was a bigger girl. And so he should not have said that. But you know, whatever. Maybe he should have used the protective for the truth. But protecting the truth from somebody. If she said, do you think I am fat? And in this particular case she was, he should have said, yeah, you know what? Like, maybe there's something we could do. You don't go tell her, oh yeah, there's tons of large people in old folks homes. If you protect somebody from the truth, you are not giving them access to the information they may use to save their own life. Like, say she started getting on the right diet, the right exercise, the right this, the right that didn't become the large person trying to go to the old folks home where there are none. There's a population of 0 and any old folks home if you go look. So protecting somebody from the truth and protecting the truth from somebody are like these nuanced little pieces. There's none of that crap in business. If you get into the business space, the entrepreneur space, you need radical transparency, radical honesty, radical integrity, radical authenticity. Because if people can't handle it, they probably shouldn't be in the blood sport that is business anyway.

Do you think business is more aggressive than sports?

Yeah, sports. You train and then you show up and you play a game, and if you win or you lose, whatever, right? Like, you, you know, it's a business. Your competitors, 365 days a year, seven days a week, are looking to take your market share. They would prefer you not as a competitor than as a competitor, meaning you're eight days a week, Baby, it's a blood sport, okay? It is where the real kings and queens of the day lie. Like, I mean, if you think about it, there are no real kings and countries the way they're used to be in kind of the feudal ages, okay? Really, there's corporations, there's capitalism. What really drives the world is the economies of the world. I mean, you hear more about that on the news than you do even the actual conflicts that are going on, okay? And so business is a blood sport if you don't have the ability to handle honest information coming at you. Like most people in life, the biggest problem they have is they think they shouldn't have any freaking problems, right? And so if you look at that like, I. I see it a little differently. I think the leading cause of death for women over 40,000 years was childbirth. So what? Then maybe we shouldn't have any children. That'd be stupid. Okay? And the best moments in life are overcoming adversity. Well, adversity implies what? Oh, a problem. And we leave this life to go back, hopefully, to our creator, God. And how do we get there? The process is called death. That's a problem, too. Well, what if part of the point of life was problems?

Okay, I gotta ask you, then, how do you. How do you handle them and not let them consume you? Because when you're saying a lot of people have this problem, they don't want problems, I'm like, I don't see the problem with that. I would rather not have any problems. However, you're absolutely right. And I'm glad we have adversity, because in my experience, over the decades of business, it's been every time you do get to that next level, even if it's in your own mind, it's like, you know what? It could be the worst day, the worst, whatever. But I'm like, I'm still here. I'm doing enough, right? That I'm still here. Because I know statistically, most people don't make it the first five years, let alone 10, 15, 20.

So your question, if I heard it right, is why is it a problem that people don't want problems?

How do we get through the problems quicker and sooner with the same end result with all the pain?

Oh, you're asking an efficiency question. So I think it really.

I suppose so. I don't like problems in the sense of dealing with them, but I'm excited after the fact because there's always been a bigger breakthrough on the other side.

Okay? So I just don't want to welcome them. Like, if I can mitigate them, by all means.

So part of life, part of growth in life or business is handling problems and overcoming adversity, right? But you got to know what the real problem is, right?

There's always the problem and the problem that caused the problem. I'll tell you a fun and controversial story where I came up with that. And it was like this revolutionary, simple step that I added to all of my companies. My wife is an amazing chef, and we had our daughter at that point, like, two years old. And we're trying to work on, like, certain types of. She might have been three, two or three, but we're working on certain types of training where, you know, she's not gonna have to wear diapers around the house all the time. Okay? Like, where she knows how to use, at least during the day, the potty. And she's a brilliant girl. She's learning early. She's walking all this stuff.

One day, my wife is cooking a Valentine's Day dinner. We don't go out. We have friends over. She puts on this full spread. It's amazing. The ambiance is there. The wine's flowing, everybody's laughing. The smells are perfect. It's like an Italian night this night. And all of a sudden, it's interrupted because this little person who's walking through the kitchen takes a giant shit in the middle of the kitchen, okay? My cute little baby daughter, who's in this kind of potty training mode, she's wearing a cute little dress, but there's no diaper on right in the middle of the kitchen. It is now everyone's problem. The Italian ambiance of the meal has completely fundamentally changed. It is a shitty situation now. Do you want the cook who's cooking your food to continue cooking while there's shit in the kitchen.

Probably not.

Absolutely not. So you have to deal with the problem that's there, right? So there's an immediate need. I have to take care of the problem that's there to get the night we had back, right? And so, of course, we go, we deal with it, we take care of it, we handle it, we get rid of that. But there's not just the problem that is. There's always the problem that caused the problem that is. And you need to look at that, right? And so the way we looked at that was we talked to our daughter Gemma, and we're like, look, babe, you know, the toilet, he's so hungry. You gotta feed him. Like, we, you know, took this turd that she'd made and equated it to chicken nuggets, which at that point in time was her favorite little, little kid food, and went and fed the toilet, you know, then we gave her a treat. We gave her a little chocolate. We have a little piece of positive reinforcement. Do this, you know, all of a sudden, I think it happened one or two more times that we had little incidents. And after that, the girls trained. You learn a few little fundamentals. There's the problem that is. And the problem that caused the problem that is. The problem that is, for her was just an association. In your business, it could be any number of things too. Like, if you have a problem of, wow, I have so many sales, I don't have enough people, I don't have enough time. I can't keep up with this. Well, there's the problem that is, and the problem that's causing the problem that is, what if you're underpriced? What if you haven't reviewed the market? What if everybody's coming to you? And so you're managing by crisis to handle everybody and serve everybody because you got this big heart. But the real issue is you have no fricking optics to see what's going on in your market and say you're selling a $10,000 product and everybody else in the market's 15. You're probably not keeping up with inflation. You're probably not honoring your family and your kids, all because you missed one step right the moment you went and said, oh, wow, look at that. The problem that caused the problem it is, I'll go ahead and raise the price. I could still be below market, but I don't need to be five grand below. I'll be 500 below. Slow your Throughput down, you have a new margin, you create some bonus programs, hire a manager, create some measurements, replace, you know, some of the tasks used to do. You have more automation problem that is problem that causes problem that is. So you're always looking for two problems. Anytime you have one, there's always two.

I appreciate that and I like that. So let's dive deeper with the automation and scaling because what do you think people I was joking around with the software, but what do you think entrepreneurs biggest problem is? Do they just not hire enough team? The right, the wrong people not qualified enough? Because I feel like I was making light of it. But so many people go, oh, I automated my business and it might be them and someone else and they're just relying on softwares that may or may not be working one day and the second one thing's out of whack. It's like you said, managing by crisis. So what's your take on the automation? Is it just softwares or is it a combination of software's team and a holistic approach to everything, having truly all systematized?

I love this question. I get this question all the time. And this question's oftentimes around the idea of technology, right?

Yeah.

And the word technology is a fun word because right now everybody thinks of AI and quantum computing and this, that.

And the other, or even just computers in general. I remember reading Learning Whatever, like a spearhead back in the day was technology. And I'm like, but there's no electronics. I think techs, we're so inundated with tech, like our version of tech and electronics, that's what most of it is. But I mean, when you invented fire, isn't the definition something like something that makes your life easier or is more efficient or something to that effect? I mean it could literally be rocks.

And I think a lot of people, when they're focused on automation, when they're focused on technology, when they're focused on these big words, they don't have that thing that we started our conversation with, which was truth. Okay, so the truth around technology or innovation, if you want like let's go look at like John D. Rockefeller back in the day when he founded Standard Oil. He saw everybody run off and they're like, oh, let's look at this black gold. Wow, we all need to be in the oil business. Let's go drill all the oil. And he said, wait a second. Wow, there's definitely money there, but there's a whole lot of players in that game right there. There's not Enough people refining the oil, and the people refining the oil, since there's not enough of them because their market is very small, are able to be wildly inefficient and charge way too much. If I could create a technology around systems, processes, people and efficiencies that will make it to where I can open up right next door to them, show them my financials and say, sell me yours or I'm going to put you out of business. Then I can create a scaling model through mergers and acquisitions and grow all around the country and change the world. And the Rockefeller foundation, even though John D. Is gone, is still changing the world to this day. And so that was a technology shift. He was dumping a waste product called gasoline into the rivers, right? And then this other guy, this guy that people thought was an idiot because he was so like, flamboyant Henry Ford invented this horseless carriage. Go figure. A carriage without horses. What if we use that waste product we're throwing in the rivers to fuel this horseless carriage? Wow. Change the world again. Technology. Nowadays, we get so stuck on the idea that we need a CRM or a software or something else to automate our business, we become technology dependent, not realizing what technology is. We think technology is computing power, okay? Or systems and processes built by some software developer that's never worked in our company, that's never operated with our people, that doesn't know our culture, that doesn't know our staff. In fact, everybody that's out there looking at the AI age, and I mean, I'm building a couple AIs, and I have more tech employees than I do in all but my largest company. Okay, but like, we build our own tech. If a home builder builds a home builder's tech, he knows what it's used for, how it's doing, how to innovate. If I hire a tech company to assume they know what it's like to be a home builder.

They'Ve never walked a mile in my shoes, right?

So I did the same thing with a software over a decade ago to build WordPress websites automatically.

Yeah.

Until you know, the whole pipeline and everything, it's like theory and good ideas.

Until you know the whole pipeline and every problem that can present itself. And when a new problem presents itself, which it invariably will in markets, because our businesses, we don't serve customers. Businesses serve markets, markets serve customers. If you're not efficient or you don't deal with the new problem arriving, the market will replace you and some other business will come up and take your place. And then the market will serve customers.

Using them or some other AI nowadays, Right?

Yeah.

So on that note, there's a lot of people going, well, oh, this is so cool and everything. And what's your take on, like, if you're that replaceable, did you ever have anything to begin with?

I think it's probably a fair statement because the. The biggest problem people have is they fail to learn something new. And if you don't have the ability to learn anymore, then you have hit your glass ceiling in life. So you are replaceable. And I do think that the meaning of life is in part problems and in another part love. Right. And so we're supposed to figure out how to love and, you know, enjoy despite adversity and problems and all the stuff that we have to deal with. But if you're not able to learn, as new problems come, and they invariably will, like, I'm 40 now. I have new problems that I didn't have when I was 20. Like, I'm like, what the hell is this gray aircraft? Like, why, why am I losing hair? Or am I gaining face if I want to be an optimist? Like, there's two problems that come with aging, yet we're not allowed to have them in our business. We're not allowed to have them in our marriage. Our wife is supposed to be the same girl that we met when we were 18 or 19 years old, when she's 45, has had and raised three kids. Really, she didn't learn anything new. She didn't adapt. You're expecting her to be the same person? That would be kind of stupid, wouldn't it? So, like, people who have the inability to learn should be replaced, because then they're going to get the pain, the level of pain necessary to teach them to go learn something. The entire point of life is learning, finding a way to be happy and grateful and loving despite the new problems.

That's a great answer.

And I appreciate you for being honest with it, because there's so many, you know, if I were to sum up in a book all the different things I've heard over the years, you're saying CRM and people and how to treat and market and this and that. I have. So, you know, especially with interviewing people all the time, it's like, everyone has a different take on it. And some of them, I'm like, really, really believe that. And other ones, I'm like, I never saw it. I'm totally open. Like, I've never saw it that way. That's an awesome reframe. I wasn't laughing at you as much as the comment you made about, I'm trying to be an optimist. Am I losing hair or gaining face? And you said it so nonchalant and jokingly, but so many people, they're so fixated on the problem. You don't realize you have better not solutions. But there are positive outcomes to it. I mean, how long you been with your wife? Sounds like 20 years or so.

We are actually our 10th anniversary is this September.

I mean, how great is that?

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

So the variables change, but here's a new positive outcome, right?

And she has changed. Like I met her when she was 19. I think I was already 26, 27 years old. So, you know, I, I like to tell people I settled. I was looking for an 18 year old and I settled. But I'll tell you what, she is not the girl she was then. And there's been many points throughout our relationship where she's come to me and she's been like, hey, you know what, I don't like this. Like, there's this certain thing and I really don't like it. And then, you know, if we, if we look at love, like, how do you measure love? You ever, you ever asked this question, you love, you measure love through suffering? Well, how do you measure suffering through problems? The larger the problem, the more the suffering, right?

And then where does compassion fit in?

Right? And if you have unconditional love, then you love them beyond your own conditions, which means if they break your conditions, you're willing to suffer and have problems for them. So when she brings me those problems and she says, man, I can't deal with this. There's this one thing that you've been doing for all these years. And I was fine when I was 19, but you know what? Now I'm 35 and I don't appreciate what you're doing. So, you know, oh, okay, well, do I love you enough to stay or not? And do I love you unconditionally or not? Do I love you enough to change or not? These questions have to go through your head and hopefully the answer is yes. And if the answer is no, you probably don't love yourself enough to love anybody else. Which means you probably need to figure out some mindset stuff.

But let's go. You brought it up. Let's just go there. Because entrepreneurs.

I think I can say this safely in, well, it's not safely, but I can say this confidently in a good amount of situations. What do you think most entrepreneurs are running from?

Fear 100% of the time. It's always fear of.

Well, it changes based on the stage of their business.

Okay?

Fear and failure to learn, like all entrepreneurs. Well, you know what? Let me answer this through story, if I can. Okay, I'll give you my story and publisher.

We love stories.

I'll share what I was running from because everybody hears, oh, this guy's doing hundreds of millions in revenue. He's rich. You know, probably just some other judgmental asshole. Lucky sperm club. No, no, no. I started broke as shit. You want to value a story, hear it from the beginning, not the ending. My story started I was seven years old, maybe eight, and I was in a little trailer park in Canatio. And we were piss poor, but we had tons of loads. Okay? Great family, perfect mother, perfect father, Amazing people. I don't even think I remember them fighting. Until one day it happened, right? My dad, a few months before that fight, had decided to be an entrepreneur. He decided to quit his job, open a business. And he was a genius. Like, the guy was a metallurgical engineer by trade. Okay, not by education, but he could make anything. I mean, he was amazing. He decided, I'm going to be an entrepreneur. I want the life we see on tv. I do not want this life. I'm tired of working for the man. Like, I want to go out and create. And he didn't understand some fundamentals. He didn't go out and get the understanding of how to build, how to collect, how to find their target client, how to, you know, things that might be critical, right? Like, everybody's looking for that one secret to success. It's not one. It's a science. He put great products, he did great work, but he didn't figure out it's an entire group of ingredients, not one that makes the pie. And so, sure enough, for broke families, a few months later, money's running out. He's made a lot of stuff. He's not collecting what he's owed. And the frying pan flies across the room and the fight happens. And you put enough stress on anyone, okay? And my mom's a beautiful, loving lady, but you put enough stress on her. She's worried about her family. She's worried about me, the little kid there, worried about my sister. And she's thinking, man, how am I going to do this? I can't feed them. And so the words. I don't remember all the words she yelled, but she yelled these. A real man can feed his family. Go collect what you're owed.

And the implication Was the presupposition was you don't bring home the bacon. Get out. So I'm hearing this and I don't have to be that smart to know I could be losing dad today. And he's my hero. The guy's frickin six foot four. He's the star football player on his football team in high school, he was the guy that banged the girl at prom. He was the guy that caught the ball in one end zone, ran it to the other. He's a genius. As a member of Mensa. He started a business, Failed. He's only failed one frickin freaking thing. And he's the most loving guy. He's my hero. So I went with him, man. I got in his old Ford truck, we drove up the mountain. I went to a place not far from where I live now. And my dad at 6 foot 4 got in front of this guy all at 5 foot 9 and started it way any man should, demanding his money. Demanding did not work and neither did asking. And the shoulders slumped forward and the head lower. And that went to, hey man, look, I. I won't be able to go home. Like I'm going to lose my family. I've worked my ass off. Like if I can't feed my family and far less than he was owed, a lot of money comes out of this asshole's pocket. My dad takes it and we leave. And we went down to the Smiths. It's an Albertsons now. And I got to ride back with ramen noodles on my lap trying to talk to him the whole way. The most important thing that happened that day wasn't that my dad got cheated. It wasn't that he gave up on his entrepreneurial dreams. It wasn't that he quit the business and went out looking for a job that day. It's that his little boy Lear. That love was not the meaning of life. I had it all wrong. I'd watch that, manipulate him for money. I sat there in that household and I learned a very important emotional word. I learned hatred. I hated him. I watched him destroy my hero. And at 7 years old, when my mom, I might have been 8 or 9, my mom was going to school, I started my first business. Because love was not the meaning of life. Money was. I started stealing lemon juice packets from grandees and selling them at school for 10 cents each. And I got my first mentor. The manager fucking caught me and made me start buying them. When he found out I was doing my first mentor, then I was had my supply chain buying the Lemon juice packets, about 2 cents each, selling the 10 cents each. And every week we'd go and I'd get more. And I had my little business. I was making like 20, 30 bucks a week in grade school, and I was like, oh, this is not bad. And then you go back to the 80s, it really isn't bad, right? Well, I spent many years. We can go through a whole litany of businesses if we had two hours to tell this story.

Knowing that money was the meaning of life, I became a corporate gangster. Now my mom, she was amazing too. She always said, figure out the game and learn how to win. Figure out the game, you learn how to win. So I always built frameworks, I built formulas, and I figured out how to grow, how to scale. A lot of what your entrepreneurs are learning all the time is how do I grow, how do I scale? They listen to Every coach, on YouTube, on the Internet, on LinkedIn, on Facebook about scaling a fucking business, and they don't realize it's just another way to, you know, add more responsibility. If you don't know how to automate, you should not scale. Learn the automation step. Where's your ad before you scale it? But I became good at it. And I scale and scale. And bro, if you thought Donald Trump was rough, I was a way bigger asshole. You'd have thought him gentle. Compared to me, I was a shit father. I was a bad husband. But I was getting rich. And 2019, I got another lesson, another lesson in hate. My dad sat down in his favorite chair. He went to sleep and he went home. He didn't wake up. And I got that phone call that night. My brother in law called. He said, you need to come down here. I said, what's up? He said, your dad's gone. And my whole heart sunk in my chest and it just dropped. And I, I said, what do you mean he's gone? I, I knew what he meant. I didn't have to ask, but I, I just couldn't hear what he said. And so, you know, I cried my way over there, got there, and I felt hate again. And this time I hated God for taking him. I hated him for leaving. I hated myself for not spending time with him. And I looked around at every other person in that room and I said, wow, fuck, I'm gonna die in 2019. I went from like 7 years old to 2019. And that's when I realized I was gonna die. That's when I realized the age difference between my son and my dad, or in my dad and me, is the Same as my son and me. Holy shit. I was like, what? I want to spend my time with the people in this room. I want to be around my wife, I want to be around my kids, I want to be around my mom, I want to be around my sister. What am I doing with this hustle culture? Why am I worried about all this shit? And I was probably worth 5, 10, $15 million, depending on the banker that underwrote me. I had lots of real estate, a couple businesses. And it was funny because I started converting all my formulas. I started shifting them, I started shifting them into how do I automate this so that I can have time with these beautiful people? And go figure, Mario, you know what was amazing? That was the magic question that I'd never asked that I should have. It was gorgeous when I started figuring out, okay, well, where am I at? On the different stages of entrepreneurship in each company? And putting in the automation steps.

The values went up exponentially. My net worth went up exponentially. Scaling became easy. I was able to take my KPIs, these magic fucking initials that people talk about all the time, and literally root them down to the line items on job descriptions. If you have KPIs on your company, you know, monthly review that you're doing and it doesn't directly correlate to the job descriptions of the teams doing the things, how stupid is that? If your job descriptions are 30 pages that nobody's ever gonna read, instead of one with maybe 10 high level bullet points of what they really do for the money, you think you really need to tell them they need to wear pants to work? You think they don't know that? You think they can't figure out the dress code? Put it in the supplemental if you really need it. But their job description should be one page framed above their desk with five to 10 bullet points and it should directly correlate to your KPIs, that's what you pay them for. And so I started adding all these little nuanced steps and I went from 5,10 million in net worth to now far, far more. Now I have single companies that do well over 100 million in revenue and have profit margins of 20 and 30%. And so it's automation was the key. But I needed pain, I needed suffering. I needed those wake up calls. The greatest moments of my life were the day my dad got cheated and the day he left. And the worst moments of my life were the same fucking days. And if you can't correlate that as an entrepreneur, that your problems are your Gifts.

Then you're missing the paradox in life that requires faith.

Wow.

Thank you for that. I know everyone that listens to this or watches it or whatever will get something out of that, but for me, from the bottom of my heart, thank you. Because I have. I don't like, I don't like pain. I don't like dealing with it. Like I said earlier, and I remember when I lost dad in 2017, it was also, you know, you reevaluate, like, what's everything going on? And I've always been very family oriented and protective of my time and stuff and, you know, things like that. But at that moment I was like, what am I doing? This isn't my first year, you know, and just a whole slew of things. And it's like, you know, you can't get that time back. So even saying, you know, you're worth 5, 10, 15 million for a million dollars, could you have bought another day or ten, or, you know, what amount of money gets the time back?

I trade it all, I trade it all for a minute. But you know what? In those moments that are magical, that are gifts from God, but I mean, you got to understand the paradox. To understand God, like, people are always trying to understand God. You want to understand God, you got to understand paradox.

I like that line you said about.

It'S giving you a life of faith, which I believe also, and that's why it's there. So trying to remove it, you're removing the need for faith.

Yeah, well. Or compounding it, which is paradoxical as well. Right? So think about God. Like, can God, if God is God, create a rock so big that God could not lift the rock? No and yes. So the answer is yes and no. Because if God is God, he could make himself so smaller. He could make the rock so big, but he could also make himself bigger. I mean, it's one of those paradoxes, right? And there's always a paradox, right, when you get to that correlation of truth. So and our life. And I got this from the Tony Robbins environment. I'm very grateful. I did. Like, our life is really directly correlated to the meaning we take in the moments that we experience, right? And so I can go in and look at that situation and say, man, I lost dad. That's unfair. Or I can go look at that situation. I could say, wow, what could have I done differently? Maybe I can't change it for me, but if I can show one other guy or one other gal how to automate their company, then I give them the relationship with Their parents that I didn't get with my dad, that I now do have with all my other family members. I give them the opportunity that I squandered. And maybe they'll learn from my story, maybe they'll learn from my pain so they don't have to relive it. And so when I can take that and I can say, wow, okay, well, maybe there's a purpose in this, maybe there's a gift in this. Maybe it doesn't have to be a trade off. Maybe you don't have to go say, well, I'm going to sacrifice my business dreams to get what I want. Maybe there can be a system where I can still have what I want in my business, but I recognize what the business was really for in the first place. I missed that. I didn't have truth. I didn't have what the business was really there for in the first place. It was there to give. A, my customer is an amazing product and service, but B, and most importantly, me the time I wanted with the people I loved.

And if you figure those little pieces out and you figure the formulaic steps which most entrepreneurs, they get in, they find out it's their passion, they love it. They're never working a day in their life until they realize there was something better. If you start working in your passion, it will not feel like way work. And I did that, I did that part right. The problem was I didn't take the time to go and do the other things that were my passion, like hang out with my hero. What if I'd have done more of that? Would I be any less rich today? Probably not. In fact, I probably would have got richer, faster because it would have required the focus on automation to have gotten there.

Because you're not devoting 22 hours a day to it or 20 hours a day to it.

Right?

And you still accomplish all of it. And you can hire and bring in amazing team members with more talent than you in any single subject. Like, I mean, I think leaders have to be good social psychologists. I think leaders have to be dangerous enough to clean their culture and not allow any threats in. So, you know, if you hire somebody, they're wrong. You got to be able to fire them. But, but the main job of a leader is assembling a great team. Your business is not a spectator sport. Like, it's not about you, it's a team sport. Okay? And if you're doing anything, that's not just a business that requires you to hand crank it every day, as Keith Cunningham says, But, but it's actually an automated machine. Like a vehicle. Like I want a business, that's a vehicle. I can walk to the store or I can drive, right? And if I drive to the store, I'm gonna get there in two minutes instead of two hours. And I could take what thousand pounds, 100 bags of groceries back with me if I so choose. If I walk, I can maybe take 10 bags and it's gonna take me two hours there, two hours back and I'm gonna be tired, I'll be exhausted.

Probably, probably a lot of breaks too. 10 bags is a lot, depending what it's in them, right?

Exactly. The business is the vehicle. That's what it's there for. It is an automated machine. You're still driving the business. Like I'm still the economist, providing the foresight for all of my companies and my investments. Only I don't have to do the day to day. I have people that are far better at the skill sets and the KPIs, the little tasks done in their job descriptions, handling the mundane shit. So then I get to go out and live. Which, which for me doesn't always mean like I get to go and party and be on a beach. No, but I do get to go to my kids games or if he does like a play and I get to watch him act or you know, my sister, my, sorry, my daughter's gonna go and sing, I get to go watch her. So that, that part's compelling and I love that. But what happens if there's a new opportunity and there's something that I'm really excited about? Well, I'm not stuck in the management by crisis bullshit over here. So I go pursue that. I can put together another team. Let me, let me. Everybody's mom has said this to them. I think, and I think this is some of the most profound advice I ever got. Okay. If you're not as smart, you think inside the box. If you're smarter, you think outside the box. We've all heard that, right?

I think if you are the most brilliant, if you are designed for what the American economy is supposed to create, then you are the wisest of all and you build boxes for other people to think in. That's the entrepreneur. But you cannot be tied up to a non automated machine where you are stuck in the day to day, every day. All a business is is a problem solving machine. All a sale is, is a solution to a customer's problem. Well, how can you go build another machine to solve more problems and make the world A better place. If you're stuck in the last one.

Where did you want to be stuck? I don't want to be stuck anywhere.

I was just going to say.

What if my answer was blow up the box? Because I've never.

I like your answer too, though. My answer has always been blow up the box. Like, unlimited possibilities. But when you're saying, build boxes for other people to think, and I'm like.

Holy smokes, that's what they want, I mean, you got to look at what is your passion, okay? And I think that God in her infinite wisdom, kind of looked at the world and said, okay, well, I'm going to make you in my image. Which I don't think means we're slaves that are supposed to go out and earn. I think it means that we're creators that are supposed to create. You know, it didn't. The good book didn't say be fruitful and earn. It said, be fruitful and multiply. Multiplication is an entrepreneur, entrepreneurial approach, not an employee approach, okay? Yeah, but you got to realize that at a certain stage in a business, you're the employee in the business. Like, there's only three ways that a business can pay you, right? They can pay you as an employee that's providing a function, okay? They can provide a commission because you're growing or something like that. Like, you're accelerating the brand or the revenue or whatever. And then they can provide you a K1 income, which would be a draw. Okay? Well, the one you really should want is the draws, okay? You don't want the employee income because you're still providing a function. You should replace that. There should be enough margin on top, provide you the K1 income. Like. Like the lowest level income is employee income. I'd rather get commission income than employee income, and I'd rather get K1 income than commission income. Like, if a business is an asset, it should do it without you needing to be there every day, okay? Like, I look at my businesses like I look at family members, okay? And I've got 18 of them, so apparently I'm a loving guy, right? Like. Like when you have a startup, it's like a newborn. Like, you don't tell that newborn, all right, little Billy, you better at 2pm and 4pm because that's when I'm ready to change your diapers. You don't do that. Doesn't happen. He's going to tell you when you need to do that. That's startup business. You're not even able to anticipate when the problems are and how they're coming and all that. You maybe get some if you're seasoned, but most of the time you're like, oh my God, this, you're like, oh my God, what next? Right? But, but then when you, when you get a business optimized and it's at that stage where it's just blowing and going industry leading in its space, that's sort of like a 40 year old, 50 year old got his own life, his own family. You're invited to the wedding, you're invited to this, you're invited to that. You know, if they get sick, you're going to show up and help. But like if they get married, you're going to show up and drink a glass of wine and smoke a cigar. Like you gotta like the goal is how do I get my business to the right stage?

Yeah. I've told people for years, don't get stuck in startup mode because you start doing that startup and priming the pump for so long it becomes a habit. And then, I don't know, 6, 12, 18, 24 months later, you're still going like this when you don't need to and shift in that mindset to go, I should take a step back and put someone in this role. Because it's not a catastrophe every day. We just need someone there.

Anything that has become a habit is something that you've adopted into your identity. Your identity is one who you get to be who you think you are, but it's also the prison of who you have to be. Right. And so until you get what like the yogic cultures call unlimited identity, which really just means the ability to question your own identity and rethink your patterns and remove toxic habits and input. Better habits, like you have to replace one with the one you took out. Right.

Until you get to that unlimited identity, meaning you can continue to grow. You're not an entrepreneur, you're stuck. And we have identities. We have them in four quadrants. We have identities around faith or energy received, we have identities around family or energy expressed. We have them around fitness and we have around finance. These are the four cores. So figure out where your problems are, what part of your identity is limited, where do you need to learn. And then if progress equals happiness, right? Like imagine we had a problem and say call it family and we're trying to progress. They may not be the same thing, but they're absolutely tethered to one another. You solve the real problem, the direct problem, you're going to get progress. And even if you haven't fully accomplished the mission, you're going to be happy at every step towards the goal that you make because you can feel it. Like sometimes you don't even need light at the end of the tunnel. You just need to know there's a tunnel there, you know, then you start moving, you get the light, you're like, oh man, we're almost there, let's go.

Wow.

The way you're reframing everything is so refreshing because.

I mean, you have to, I mean there's, I would say there's less people that have 10 + companies than 5 + and there's less that. You know what I mean? Most people have one or two business even if they are entrepreneurial. So I appreciate your perspective on. And here's what you really should be thinking about if you plan on scaling it because I mean it's just out of. It sounds like out of necessity. You can't be so tied up with one of them. And I think that's the problem for nine out of 10 entrepreneurs at least who I talked to in the past.

And Mario, they just don't know how not to. I mean, I. Look, I actually I created, you know, I did a bunch of coaching for a few years and then I got out of it because I realized A, it took a lot of my time and I wanted to spend my time with kids. But B, the other thing was, I think it was like 97, 98% I've got it somewhere. Like I did an excel sheet with every single coaching call I ever did and 97, 98% were the same 15 different situations.

Okay.

And I realized that every business has one single goal that's efficiency. Right? And to get to efficiency, you need to master alignment, simplicity and foresight. To get to those, you need to measure and metric culture, clarity, capacity and cash. And, and then in business, like there's only six things you can adjust. You can adjust price, product, people, place, promotion and process. So I was like, well, okay, so for efficiency in any market, if I put a problem in this filter and I can align those three and measure those four and adjust those six different things, depending on the situation, I can become successful. And then I was like, okay, well shoot, I'm doing different things in every business. And I was like, oh, wow, all these businesses are different stages. Like I've got, you know, cent a million revenue companies and, and they're not doing the same things as little like pool servicing startup that I made because all the pool servicers in my market sucked and I wanted to have my Pool service better, right?

I can relate to that with like lawns, power washing and about seven other things.

Yeah. And so I started like, oh my gosh, like I need to develop all the stages for the business. That way you know which problems to solve at each stage.

Do you have any of those as a video or a download or like a course or something? Because that sounds fascinating.

So I'm giving it away for free. Like the seven stages and the problem solving formula is all at a landing page called www.automau. you go there. I have, I've started working on the other 15 videos. You don't even need the other 15 videos. They will accelerate you. I am going to sell those and you can buy them all for a thousand bucks or each for 200. Those aren't even published because we're just testing and split testing right now the metrics of how good the master class is. We're giving it away for free. Go to automateyou.com watch the masterclass. You'll figure out, oh, I'm here. Oh, I can use the problem solving formula and I can solve these problems now in the next 30, 60 days we'll put up the other 15 videos and yeah, if you want to support us, go buy them. You can buy them all. Buy one or two, that's fine. But all that is, you don't even really need it. That's an accelerant. That takes the 10 year process of using this to create a, you know, that's fantastic nine figure company and, and you know, cuts it in half, cuts it depending on you and how fast you want to grow. Because different folks, different families, different health situations, different age ranges, like everybody's unique, right? But the formula is right there. Anyone can use it and everyone should. And it's easy. I mean getting rich is just not that hard. I mean the competition level is negligible. Most people want a job. They do not want to be an entrepreneur. They do not want to be free. They do not realize that the economic condition of our world is going to penalize all the employees over the next 10 years. And the entrepreneurs are going to ride that inflation that's going to be coming like a surfboard. Why? Because they'll have to. So.

If you get in now based on just the laws of supply and demand, you're the minority. Everyone over the next 10 years is going to realize as our country and the government, which is bloated and stupid, implodes, everybody's going to realize as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, all that stuff falls apart. That small business is once again the way the same thing that built us the first time will build us the second time when it implodes. That's all going to happen. People are going to go back to common sense. If you get ahead now, you have no competition. You'll be the big business. When everybody's learning how to be the little guy, why not start today and get ahead of the curve? Why not get phenomenally wealthy? Why not give your family the life they watch on TV instead of the one they have? I agree.

I, I wish we had two more hours. Honestly. I do have to ask you, what books would you recommend to Expert Authority World?

Oh man, gosh, so many books, so many books. So right off the bat.

Always. And you probably hear this all the time, but it's just, it's just worth mentioning. Think and Grow Rich. Another one, the Goal by Eli Goldratt. Okay, if you have not read this book, you do not understand capacity, you do not understand throughput, you do not understand the bottlenecks and stop gaps that, that limit you as an entrepreneur. And you know, I'm going to give you maybe a little woo woo one like, you know, you get successful as an entrepreneur, everybody gets successful. They start becoming a little bit of a hippie. There's another book that I thought was just amazing and good vibrational energy. Everybody that's read it has become way more successful. I recommend people to go read Think and Grow Rich and they read it and they know a lot of stuff, they get a lot of stories. I recommend people read this woo woo hippie book. And I've never recommended it on a podcast. It's not normally my brand to recommend the hippie stuff, but I recommended it to three people and I've watched them double their revenue in like a year or two, which is phenomenal. And it's Living in the Heart by Drunvalo Melchizedek. And I mean it's hippie shit, but wow, when people like read it and they start believing it, it's, it's amazing what they start doing when they believe in themselves. And I mean, just think about the word believe. You know what it means, right? Be love. It's a root word. Oh really? Relove or lift up and over. Like the moment somebody starts like believing in themselves, the problems just don't seem so big anymore. And then they all of a sudden start accomplishing them. They get that progress and I, you.

Don'T have that fear in every situation, every hour of the day. It's like it's going to be cool.

Exactly. It doesn't consume you anyway. You may still have a little bit, but it won't consume you. It'll drive you.

Right. Well, thank you for those and just everything. This has been phenomenal. You already mentioned the website. Is there anywhere else you'd like to send people or just want to say it again?

Automateyou.com for the masterclass and then if you like this, you can follow me on any of my social medias. They're all the same. The PrestonBreak Excellent.

Well Preston, it has been a pleasure and I thank you for your time.

Thanks for having me, Mario.

All right, Expert Authority World. We 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 24 7? 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 in eight weeks. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com to get started now. Once again, that's eapublishingmethodbook.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 already. I invite you to connect with me on my new LinkedIn. You can go to it directly at eainterviews.com LinkedIn Once again, that's eainterviews.com LinkedIn 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.