The Blueprint To Scaling A Business In 2024 w/ Jeffery Hayzlett

Today on the Main Street Business Podcast, we welcome primetime TV and podcast host himself, keynote speaker, bestselling author and global business celebrity, Jeffrey hayslett. With over 26 years of experience and 200 businesses bought and sold, his expertise in changing management, leadership, innovation, and driving business growth is unmatched, earning him recognition as one of the most sought after business advisors worldwide. Jeffrey's influence also extends beyond the boardroom. As chairman of the C Suite Network, fostering collaboration and innovation among C Suite leaders globally. You may even recognize him from his appearances on NBC's Celebrity Apprentice. Again, we're honored to have Jeffrey share his wisdom and insight in today's dynamic business landscape. Well, Jeffrey, thank you for being here. This is such an honor. Because I am just wannabe when it comes to broadcasting and hosting shows and being a producer. You've done so much, dude.

What are you talking about? You got hundreds of thousands of followers. You got all these people that you've been doing this. This is not an easy thing to do. A lot of people think they can come up, put a camera up or stick a microphone and carry on a show. It is a tough thing to do. You got to prep, you got to do your homework. You gotta. You gotta practice a little bit. You gotta have the chops to do it, and you've got the chops to do it. So that's. So thank you for having me here.

Well, thank you. It is an honor. And I want to talk a little bit about that today because you've helped so many businesses scale that if there's a theme that we really want to focus on today, it's how you've helped business owners scale large and small over the years. A media being a big part of that help. You can't scale if you don't have eyeballs, you know.

Yeah, you got to have that, especially today. You got to be a media company today. That's the big thing that most people don't realize. This is a new game. Covid didn't cause it, but certainly did accelerate it. You know, days became weeks, weeks became months, months became years. And so you've got to be able to stand out. And you got to play more than the old yellow page days back in my day, and then it became now the Google days. Now we're beyond the Google days. You have to really move beyond just normal search. You have to create content. And creating content's a big thing.

And nine times out of 10, it's going to involve video, which, you know,

I'm very committed to, or in podcasts. Podcast. Podcast is a big part of it. I mean, you can't, we can't walk away and say that's not a big thing. It's still in its infancy and we're big on it. C Suite radio, C Suite tv. Because we just know the power of that local podcast, that regional podcast, even, you know, a national podcast where you can get lucky and you get a lot of followers because the games change. It used to be a game of eyeballs and ears, and now it's about hearts and minds. If you got great content, then you get great followers or community, you get great community, you get great commerce. And that's what, you know, the brands have always been nothing but a promise delivered. And this really helps people deliver on that promise by talking about what they do, how they do it, you know, talking about what they do and the way they do it. Right. That's what your whole show is about.

Yeah.

And by doing that, you're, you're not giving the farm away, you're not giving the meat away. What you're doing is educating people that you know what you're doing. And people want to be with people that know what they're doing.

Creating content just is so, so, so important. Well, on that peeling away the onion a little, do you with content creation, do you see more leaning towards a podcast route, the maybe blogging and writing route or video or a combination thereof?

It used to be blogging, but I say that and if I go to the C Suite network, our most viewed items of content, our blogs, the looking up of articles, it's always amazing to see our domain strength in the C Suite network. And with C Suite is always around those blogs. But the podcast is big because it's easier to do. You know, it doesn't take much. You can do it yourself with the zoom or a lot of the other tools out there. But now you can also add the video with it. But the key, not everybody's made to be on video. We're lucky. We're eye candy, you know, so, you know, we've got people that want to, you know, watch us. Now. I joke. I'm unfortunately on the King's. I always tell everybody I'm eye candy, but the king size version. But anyway, no, but it's easier now to do it with all the tools that we have to be able to create the audio with the digital video.

Do you think podcasters do better with adding video right now?

Some do, some do it. It all depends on the distribution, brother. I mean, that's the key, right? Yeah. If you want to be a headliner and you got to stand out, that's one of the most unique things for everybody. If you're going to be, let's say, a dry cleaner in St. Louis, you got 119 other dry cleaners in the area. How do you stand out? It's not through, you know, Yellow Pages, it's not through Google Ads, it's not through even, you know, some search. It's really truly, you gotta be create the content. You gotta be known as what I call the doctor of spots. And you gotta be showing people how to get blood stains out, how to get grass stains out. And somebody says, well, you're giving away your secrets. No, no, no, you're showing them how to do it. Most people are gonna go, I'm not doing that. But I wanna know that you know what you're doing. So when I bring you my wedding dress with the wine on, but you know I'm going to go to the expert, right? And so it does play itself. And you don't have to be sophisticated. You don't have to be. I mean, look at one of the best shows on TV today, Pawn Stars. There's no eye candy in those guys. I mean, but they're just talking about stuff they pawn. It's educational, it's informative. You get to see it. And there's a line when you go out to Vegas, there's a line out the door of people who want to go inside that shop and buy something because they get to touch a little bit of that. So I do think the video does. You know, you've done well on YouTube, you know, you know, in terms of getting those subscribers on, they want to see it, they want to watch it. We're still used to watching tv. But think about on the podcast side, I can listen to it as I'm driving to work. I can listen to it on the train. By the way, I think somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 or 40% listen to business podcasts on their watch while they're working out. Wow. And we see those kinds of things all the time. So, you know, you got to go to where the people are. And so if they want video, you got to give them video. If they want written, you got give them written.

And I like that you said, don't get hung up with, I'm giving away my secret sauce because I've always believed you're making deposits so that you can make a withdrawal. And if I make enough deposits with you, the heart and mind, the emotional, then When I say, hey, I've got something for you. I need you to buy something. Okay, I trust you.

You got it. Let me give you a good example. I'm. I'm in five business hall of fames, and one of those is the Speaking hall of Fame with Art Linkletter and Norman Vincent Peale and some of the biggest speakers in the world. And a lot of times I'll hear a speaker say, I don't want people to videotape me. And I'm going, are you kidding me? I want them to videotape me all the time. And I want you to put it up wherever you want to put it. I've never had someone call me and said, I saw you on YouTube, I saw you on a video, and I don't want to hire you. I've never had that, ever. You know, they said, I love what you said, and they want to hire you because of what you said or the way in which you gave the story. So I think this medium is just perfect. And again, I don't care who you are, look at the guys. Look at some of the most biggest videos that you can watch on the reels and all the other systems that are out there. It's guys cleaning up, edging, they're mowing grass, they're power washing. And I'll watch those videos for hours. Right? And so, you know, so that tells you that this stuff, it works, and it works well.

It's amazing. And I know this is not what you're all about. I love leading with that because we've got it. We gotta get known and get reach, get reach out there. But you also talk about that scaling on day two. I've got to be able to serve these people. I've got to have systems. The internal leadership training you've done so often, let's say you probably had those clients of yours that have made the phone ring. Their. Their videos blown up, their podcast has blown up. They weren't ready for it. What type of.

Well, I think the first thing you have to do is sit back and my son, who's my cmo, he's probably one of the smartest young men I've ever met. And, you know, and I'm not saying that because he's my son, he's just really smart. I. I was a good chief marketing officer, like, one of the best. And he's better than I am. And he. One of the things he. He's always said to me, he goes, dad, what problem are we solving? Whenever I bring him an Idea or what? You know, we got to do this, we got to do this. What problem? And so what I've learned over the years and all the business I bought and sold over 250 businesses in my career, 25 billion in transactions. And what I've always found that the great businesses that we bought always started with, what problem are we solving? And so the first thing you got to do is before you think about marketing or selling it and what the name's going to be, what's our brand, what's our colors? You know, really spend more time about what problem you're solving. And then based upon that, as you take it and do it, what are the things you're going to have to do in order to do it? Because a great marketer thinks of inception, of the idea all the way through customer satisfaction right now, a good business owner or business leaders, not only just doing that, but you think about the bottom line, the top line, all the different departments, because market is only thinking about these things. But, you know, he's thinking about delivery of the service, the production, you know, that you have to do and everything else. And so it's really important for you to lay out those kind of game plans so that you know what, that's what that's going to be like and practice a little bit. Practice that, right?

Yeah, Yeah. I, I was listening to a speaker last week that said I love making mistakes because that's what I learn.

And it's interesting, you know, I don't know if I love making mistakes. We're going to make them. But no, I don't like hitting my head, head, head with a. I'm sorry, I just. I know it happens occasionally, but I don't care to do it.

No, no. And I think the concept being that we just shouldn't be afraid to make a mistake. Let's learn from them and move forward. Your new book, the Hero Factor, that culture, it's like baking a cake. It's just so fun. We've gone from just in this brief conversation from the marketing and getting reach and getting out there and being known. And then when they come in. Or am I really going to have the customer journey in mind? But then my employees, the culture. Tell me what your thoughts are on that.

Yeah, well, the hero factor is really around values, and it was around a guy who back in 1996, sold his business for $24.6 billion, which is an unbelievable amount. When he sold it, he gave a portion of it to every single employee making the single largest number of Millionaires ever created in one day, never been surpassed, been bigger transactions, like when Microsoft bought LinkedIn for 20. 29 billion. 29 billion, I think 26 billion. But no one has ever made that many millionaires. You know, he didn't have to. He and his wife owned the company. They didn't have to give a piece of it to everybody, but they said it's the right thing to do. And these employees would run up to him and say, Mr. Ryan, you don't know me, but I can buy, you know, my kids through college. You're my hero.

Wow.

And he didn't feel like a hero, but he said, hey, look, I can go teach other people how to do this. And so he started to do that. And that's how we came to know about what I call the hero factor. And it's about people who say, I'm going to put people above profits, that I'm going to run my business based on values, not on the bottom line. There's nothing wrong with running a business on the bottom line, but if you have a choice, you can also run it on values. And by the way, if you run it on values, your bottom line gets taken care of because you're doing the right thing for the right reasons. And so what you find in hero businesses is that you find people who focus in on values. They actually gross more revenue than their competitors in the industry. It's been proven over and more, okay, they have employees who are more engaged, which is really important because Today's employees, only 53% of the employees are engaged in the business. Most of them can't even tell you what the value statements of the business are or what the. Or what the real goal of the business is, right? Then at the same time, they have, you know, vendors who want to do business with them. They have customers who are happier with them, more pleased with them. And then, you know, as they walk through the town, and we all know these. Wherever we go, anywhere in the world, we know these businesses because when they walk through the town, everybody goes there. There's so and so, you know, we all know who they are because they pay for the. They pay for the symphony, they pay for the little League games. They take care. They're at the, you know, the walkathons and the bikeathons. They're doing the right things for the right reasons. Right? The first thing any business, you know, besides knowing what problem we're solving, is what are our values? You know, people talk about culture, and I'm all about culture. I love culture. But culture takes a long time to develop. That's the reason why it's called culture. It's. If I were at Kodak, you know, and you were at Kodak. You're Kodak, I'm Kodak. Together, we would all be Kodak or whatever company we are. Values tell us how we're going to operate and how we're going to stand apart from everybody else. And so we look for value driven. In our C suite network, we have a group called the Hero Club, and we have people sign a pledge that says they're going to do certain things and they're going to operate in certain ways. And I love things like that because it separates us from everybody else.

Yeah, it's so, so important. The way you describe that. It's interesting. Culture is more like a crock pot. Taking time to.

Takes a long time.

Yeah. And the values is their ingredients. I'm going to throw it in the crock pot.

It's the steak you put in the ground. Right. And you just. I'm not going to deviate from that. And even if it cost me money, even if it cost me time, effort, whatever. No, those values are so ingrained, so important to me as the leader and hopefully to everybody else. Because basically you get everybody else to drink the champagne or drink the Kool Aid, get on the wagon, whatever you want to call it. That's important. The other aspect of a company, when you start thinking about culture or you think about values, I think concentrate on mood. I bought and sold a lot of companies, and I spent a lot of time on mood because mood affects things more than anything. Value is important. Culture, eventually, yes, but mood. How many times you've been to a great restaurant? I mean, the restaurant, the food's unbelievable, but the employees are kind of snotty. They got bad mood they don't like. Right. Or an airline. An airline where you're sitting there in first class, but you hear the flight attendants talking about their contract and how they hate the place.

Right.

And that happens. Right. Yeah, but how many times have you been on a. I don't know, a crappy airline or in a crappy restaurant where it's not so great, but it's so much fun. You want to go back? Yeah, right. Yeah.

I don't want to say that airline, but I'm with you.

Yeah.

They're a lot of fun on the mic.

Well, we can. Yeah, exactly. Right. We can think of a couple of airlines probably that has that same problem. But mood is a thing that you can really work on. And I tell, you know, companies, especially if you're buying another company or look around, walk around as a leader, what's the mood? What's your cadence? What's, you know, how's it. How is everybody feeling? Yeah, and you spend some time on that, and it makes a big difference

when it comes to scaling, you're trying to do all the right things. Let's say I'm so lineal. I'm thinking, all right, I've got my marketing going. I've got my systems, I've got the journey.

And that's that attorney CPA thing. So linear.

I'm like, okay, what's next is the scaling. You know, I want to. I want. Now I'm ready to go to the next level, or I think I am. And we have these breakpoints where it takes a different set of skills to almost get to that next level and the next level. What are some of the biggest challenges you've seen the small business owners have in this scaling concept?

That's. That's a great thing. You know, every business and an entrepreneurial journey starts in the same way. We all start off as that one man, one woman band. Then the next stage is adding what we call devout followers. And that's when you grab this person. This person, hey, you know how to balance the check count? You're our cpa, you know, like, you're our cfo, you know, and so that's that next stage. The third stage of that is really adding the skilled technicians, the professionals that you're gonna need. And what we fail to do sometimes is the people that were with us at this stage might not make it to the next stage.

Yeah.

And you really. And that might also be you as a CEO, Right. As a leader, you got to know what. What you're good at and what you can do and where your weaknesses are. And that's not an easy thing as well. I mean, that's one of the tough things about. That's why so many businesses fail, you know, over the years. You know what? 97% of the businesses fail the first five years, and only 10% of those proceed to the next five years. And during that next 5%, only 1% of those make it. And then on top of that, only 1% of those ever make it to an exit. So it's a, you know, once in a blue moon kind of activity. So to be able to move those things is to have the recognition that what are. What are the problems we're solving? What are the things that we have to get to, you know, where do we want to go and spend a great deal of time on that. And entrepreneurs have a tough time with that because they like the doing of what they do, right? And they like some of that chaos is part of what we like, right? As part of that. And you're going to have to add in new people. You know, like I make fun in our operational time. I said I hate corporate. And they go to my, my daughter was working for me at the time, she goes, dad, you are corporate. And I said, yeah, I hate the man. Because you know, we have to learn to put some of the, you have to learn some of those skill sets, right? And you have to learn that you have to have certain kinds of things in the businesses to controls that you have to have. So I call them bumpers. Like bumpers, you know, like you go to a bumper car, you got to have a little bumper so you don't hurt people. And I think in business you gotta, you gotta develop those bumpers too.

Well, and let's, if you wouldn't mind, let's go back to trends and talk about maybe what you're doing in TV and broadcasting. Before the show we were talking about the changes in publishing. It's just an ever moving battlefield in some ways. What are some trends, if you don't mind? And maybe what business owners should be looking for is they're trying to get more reach and get out there and be known.

Well, content. The biggest thing is content's playing such a big part of it. I mean we're doing things like Power pages now where I would want to dominate a category. Let's get a good example of a friend of mine who's a business analysis, analyzes businesses and tells them what they're worth. Okay, so he wants to, he wanted to dominate that category. And I'm going, whoa, whoa, whoa, you know how big, how many people search for that every every month, you know, business valuations, how many? And he goes, I don't know. Well, a million a day, I found out. So to buy a million links a day or a million clicks a day, or to, to just be in the same category with Price Waterhouse and Bain and PW and, or you know, who Ernst and Young and all the other ones, it's going to cost you a fort. Or what you can do is find a high intent to buy. So you go down that list until you find, I don't know, 542 people who want to buy. Business gap analysis. If you're looking for a business gap analysis, you know, you're buying and now go on that one and let's spend less money. But more targeted efforts using content to tell people how to do that, that you become the number one or number two thing in that category. And that's what we're seeing. Content is driving that. So you find what someone's intent is to buy, you find what their problem they're trying to solve, then speak to that specific problem. And more and more, if you're in Phoenix or if you're in, in Dallas, you're in San Antonio. Maybe they're looking for business gap analysis in San Antonio. There's only three people that are looking for that, you know, so therefore it's a much more specific audience. You're not having to waste all your money and time. And that's what we've done for a number of years prior to digital. Now digital even got it more more specific. But now it's even getting, you know, to audiences or segments of 1. We started out broad, now it became irrelevant or relevant. Then it became very specialized and non specialized in terms of the way that we look and think about how we market to people. And now you're going to have to get even more specific. We're now marketing to segments of one. Wow.

And I guess I kind of feel like a little bit of asking about the chicken before the egg. Are we designing our product or service or are we designing our market that we want to go after and let the product develop.

As my friend, there's a lot of people out there that are doing that chicken, the egg before the chicken. And they're making a fortune doing it because they're watching. There are people who watch on Amazon what people are buying and then go out and make a generic version of that with a different name of the exact same product. And sometimes let's take like a dorm room refrigerator, okay, the, let's say that Phillips is making the greatest one or lg. They find out that they're doing this, but they do a better job at marketing and getting keyword. They buy the thing from Philips or lg, put their name on it and sell it greater than these guys will.

And even at a higher price, sometimes

at a higher price, sometimes a lower price. But there, there are, I bet you there are thousands. I'm sure there are. I know a number of them that are doing this and just making a killing on it. And there's other people who are sitting in their dorm room, you know, eating Cocoa Puffs and drinking Diet Mountain Dew and making a million Buc. You know, just running these businesses and never touching a thing. So. Which is fascinating to me. Just fascinating.

I was just. For the client. I love that's doing that in an industry this past weekend. All right, let me ask you, I didn't anticipate asking you this, but we're right on this topic. You talk about the failure rate of businesses.

Yeah.

And sometimes I'm a little critical of that. I'm like, really? Is that many failures? What's our criteria? Or are these businesses pivoting so the business they may have started with to begin with is five years in? They're like, yeah, it's not working. We're going to pivot over here. Did the business fail or is it the owner or is it the business? Are they still going forward but in a different way?

The good ones continue. The good ones pivot. The good ones adapt, change or they die. That's always been my theme in business. If you don't adapt and change, you will die. That's just the nature. Even if you're a great business. I mean, look, I was a chief marketing officer at Kodak. Are you kidding me? You know, there's a business that did not adapt. It believed it was a film business. It was always going to be a film business. And they were anything but that. They were in the emotional technology business. Had they realized that, they would have, they would have grabbed onto that digital with the greatest amount and never let it go. Instead, they pawned it off to Apple, you know, with the grace of an anaconda.

Right by him.

It went right by. And because they were trying to protect the, the hubris of their own success. And so when you do that and you get into a moat mentality, you're, you're, you know, your sphincter tightens up. That's what happens. You know, you're going. Most people are going to fail. Right. People ask me in most of these times in the interview, what's your biggest failure? And I say, I don't know, haven't done it yet. Which means there's always a bigger one coming down the pike. No matter how big this one was, trust me, I'm going to have a bigger one. All right? That's just the nature of the business. Right. And the more you get into billion dollar companies, as I have done, you know, I used to run a marketing budget with $17 billion. I mean, the more you do with that, the more you realize you are going, you are going to screw up. So it's not about that. It's about how to win fast, not lose fast. You're going to lose. All right, so you do want to continue to find out your mistakes, find them as quick as possible, and then adapt and change, pivot constantly so you know what you're doing all the time. That's the nature. But think about how many people out there that you know that are like that, that can take that. They can take the punching that keeps coming because it's coming at you all the time. Boom, boom, boom. And can keep getting back up. Most of those people can't get back up, or they. They can't see or don't have the drive that's inside deep that says, I don'. Care. Right. I don't care. Then that's. And that's. That's a special. That's a special spirit for those people.

I love that, what you're talking about, this pivoting, because that's what a real hero does. They're assessing what's going on. They're worried about the tone, the mood, the culture. They're leading their group. I'd almost prefer that every business fails in the first five years because it's going to look different. Just know it.

Yeah, it's always going to look different.

It's going to look different. Does that mean it's a failure? It doesn't.

It's.

If you give up, but if you can stay true to the goal of entrepreneurship, your dream, it could look very different.

I mean, there's a lot of change. I mean, during COVID there's a lot of things that I learned about, like, let's say the food business. The food business, the way I would have thought was just business is the way it's always been and so forth. We got a good food. You got to do this. But, you know, during COVID they had to change the foods that traveled well.

Oh, yeah, Delivery. Like, who grabbed delivery? And you did it.

Yeah. Correct. Who, by the way, when you get that in delivery and you take it home, does it look good? Does it taste still taste good? And I was talking to the guy that has the meatball shop in New York. It's one of the biggest meatball shops in the country. And he said we had to adapt our menu in order to do that. And I never thought of anything like that. I mean. And now you see during COVID if you remember, they invented the family packs. Oh, that became a big thing. So they were feeding the whole family. And so you got like, you know, 24 pieces of chicken and this and this and this. And this. And I thought that was very unique how fast. And I got to give a lot of the restaurants, they did a very good job during that period of being able to switch that very quickly as the grocery stores did too. I thought the grocery stores did a good job as well. Well.

And the tax benefit of 100% write off on dining for two years. Thank you very much, Mr. Trump, for that little blessing.

There are some things that he's a little batshit crazy, but there are some things he's done well.

Yeah, no, the tax policy was phenomenal. Well, okay, going back to that because you just made so much. The story closed a loop for me. Was in and out before burger. In an out burger. You still cannot doordash. They will not deliver because they won't modify their menu.

I don't think it's so funny. I watched an interview of the CEO today. She's the granddaughter of the founder and she's like, she inherited that company when she was like 27, I think. Oh my gosh, I didn't know that. And she talks about the fact that they won't do certain things because that's the culture of who they are. And by the way, think about this chick. Fil A is a great example. Doesn't open on Sunday. Does not open on Sunday. Well, what the heck, I'd like to have one of those. Chicken sandwich. Well, that's the day of the Sabbath for Truett Cathy. He doesn't believe his employees should have that. So that's his progress. He doesn't believe in same sex marriage. I happen to disagree with him, but I'm okay with that. He still makes a chicken sandwich. I'm still going to go buy from him. You know, so there's a, there's a couple of companies. It's okay to stand in your values, right? And by the way, we need more of that in this country where people are standing in their values for whatever they believe in. Even if I disagree, I should still want to come buy your chicken soup.

Yeah. It's funny, my son, who's just amazing, we got in a lively debate over the weekend regarding Coldplay, their concerts where they wanted people to ride bicycles and run on a treadmill to create enough energy for the concert. And I'm like, what? You know, this very environmental thing. But you know what? I was a little critical of it. But I still love Coldplay. You know, like, I'm gonna listen to Coldplay and I'd still go to the

concert and I'll bring an extra guy

to Just bring someone to ride my bike for me. But, you know, it true in business, we just need to give people a break, stand behind what you want. But if you're providing a good product or service, okay, I have a choice. I have the freedom to either buy or not buy.

But if your audience changes, then you have to adapt with your audience again. Adapt, change or die. So if you're. If your audience is saying, go more green or I'm not buying from you, you got to make that decision. So you might very well start going green pretty quick. But you don't have to. You know, I've had people who follow me. I had one woman who followed a reporter from one of the UK papers, followed Richard Branson I. Around for. For a week. She said, I really didn't like this. I didn't like this. I wrote back, I tweeted back. Well, then don't follow me. I didn't ask me. Yeah, exactly. And that's okay. Or one. I have one woman who complained one time because I'm a hunter and I'm a big two A guy, second amendment. And, And I was shooting prairie dogs out on a ranch. And she said, how dare you do this? I said, what's your address? And she said, why are you asking that? So, because I'm. I'm going to capture a mating pair of these prairie dogs and I'm going to let them loose in your backyard and see if you won't be shooting them in a year from now. So, you know, that's. Those kinds of. We each have our own thing. But I think it's important for, you know, all of us, especially host of shows, especially people who are in business, is to be yourself and to be as authentic as you possibly can and true to yourself. And, And I shouldn't have to apologize for that as long as I'm not abusing somebody else or not offending other people. I do my best to not offend. There are a few people that I do offend occasionally, but. And I'll call them out by name

or intentionally, like we're gonna offend someone, but not necessarily.

Which, like you were talking about a minute ago, you mentioned about hero businesses. No. No business leader get two things. No business leader I know wakes up every day and says, I can't wait to be a hero. I don't know one. At the same time, I don't know too many business leaders who wake up and says, I can't wait to be stupid today. So, you know, it's about really just being yourself. I love it.

Well, one, maybe we'll start heading to close here, but I want to bring up this concept of deconstruction and re evaluation. I love that. That's your book, the Mir test, where business owners have to have thick skin, right? To be able to. To sit back and go, okay, what's not working? How do I pivot? Could you speak to that for a moment?

Well, I was from the public relations business. That's how I got started. I was running political campaigns, doing a lot of stuff, had a PR firm and there used to be an old formula called race research, action communication evaluation. And so I pretty much live by that. So you research what you need to do, how you need to do it. You put together your action plan. You then communicate or do the plan, and then you evaluate. And I think most of us should be doing that every day in our business. When I started out many years ago, I was a printer. Printer. I bought a print. I started off in politics and then running associations, doing a bunch of that stuff. And then I bought this printing company because I was doing so much business with this printer. And I said, I'm doing half your business. I'm buying you. So he gave. I made him an offer he couldn't refuse. Either let me buy your business or I'm taking my business. Yeah. So, so. And, and, but one of the things that, that Michael Connor, the owner of that business, taught me was the Z out. Remember the Z out on an old cash register, the old electronic cash registers. You have to. You turn the key to Z and you hit the button and it Z out and it Z'd out this long receipt. Now all those you watching and listening right now don't have a clue what we're talking about.

We'll come back to records.

Exactly. But it would show me the amount that I did for that day and then by department, what each of the departments did. And so I used to look at that Z out every day and compare it to the day before and put that up on the board for everybody. And then where we at for the week, where we have for the month compared to last year. So we could always do that. We need to do more of those kinds of things in terms of measuring to see how we're doing so that we can continue to adapt and change so that we can get to where we want to go.

It's interesting you said that. I have a meeting after our interview today with my team going over data just like what's our data telling us and how are we reacting to it. What are we doing with that data? Data has been many of. We've heard this is one of the most valuable assets of a business owner.

If you, one, you use it and two, if it's good, if it's bad data, it's just. You'll make decisions on bad data. And I tell people it's only as good as what you can do. I mean, when I was at Kodak, one of the things I had, I once told somebody, we sell these machines that were $4 million a piece and we only had so many customers. But if you put a gun to my head and said, I'm going to kill you if you don't give me a list of your customers, I say, just kill me. Because I can't even come up with a list of them because the data was that bad. Getting data inside the company. I'm on 12 corporate boards today. Four of them are publicly traded companies. And I'm chairman of most of the companies because either I've invested in or played or I'm, you know, I push these, these young men and women who are in these businesses. Not just young, there are some older ones too in that group. But I look at data every day. Every morning my reports come in and I'm looking at that, especially my own business. How much did we do in the sales day before? What did we close? What did we lose? Why did lose it? Who lost the most? Who won the most? And, and those are the things that we measure. And every week I sit down, I still at my company. Today I'm chairman of the company. I'm not the CEO, I'm chairman. I sit in that sales meeting going, who's the winners? Who's the losers? Right? And not that I'm looking to ding somebody, it's just I want to motivate. How do we, how do we help you be a winner? I want everybody to win. And when it comes to sales, I'd like.

It's interesting. I've got a friend of mine that's on a board and they'll go for a whole day into a board meeting, large billion dollar company. And they're looking at these KPIs key performance indicators. And he goes, he said, mark, we'll spend all day on three numbers. He's like, we literally can manage this company based on five data points. If we know we're accurate, it's telling us exactly how healthy we are and how many business owners don't even know sometimes, like are they healthy or in pain or you're Sick. But you don't know why, what hurts, you know? And. But that mirror test, the book.

Yeah, mirror test was the way I did that. I just said you have to look in the mirror and do you fog the mirror? First question. I mean, remember that Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Cub Scouts, they used to teach you if you. If you're alive, you want to see if somebody. If you see somebody laying on the ground and they look like you've passed out, are they alive? Well, take a mirror, take your belt buckle, put it on their face. If it fogs, then you know they're alive. That's the. And mo. First off, that's the first business test we have to do. And then what are the other ones that you have to go and do? And by the way, I love mirrors because it's a. It's the one thing we look in, in the morning, every morning, and we see ourselves with, you know, raw. Yeah. And. And we need to look at our businesses raw. We need to look in our mirror and ask ourselves the tough questions about our business every day. And because no offense to CPAs, no offense to. To attorneys, they're going to give me advice, but they're not always going to tell me the hard, hard stuff. Sometimes unless I really ask. Ask them now. The good ones will. Yeah, the good ones will. The ones that have really developed relationships, they say, jimmy, I want you to tell me what the heck's going on. Tell me where I'm messing up. Those are the kind of things, or they bring that things to me, but not all of them do that.

No, we're our industry. And what, you know, I'm working on is just getting them out of that transactional tunnel where they're just tunnel vision. They got to step back. Business owners need that broad perspective from

that profession, by the way. They expect. They want that. I shouldn't say they expect it. They want that from. And I think that's important to have. And by the way, having trusted advisors for you as a business leader is probably the. I mean, that's the reason I started the C Suite network, because I just wanted a place where everybody could go and everybody had to be this tall to get in. What I mean by that, they had to be a VP or higher said to be a real C suiter. And whether you're on Main street in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, or you're in Wall street in New York City, it doesn't make a difference. The only difference between the two businesses is zeros. The same concepts and roughly the same people. Could be running.

Well, where are you headed? How can we get more of you? These business owners that are just loving your concepts, how can they come see me?

Come see me on C suite tv. Come listen to me on C suite radio, where we're headlining on both of those. By the way, if you're flying United Airlines, you'll see me every week or every day or every week, depending on how long you fly. But our show is there. Our show is in 58 cities and then certainly on C Suite T's, C Suite TV, C Suite Radio. But you can find me at the C Suite network or just look up Hazlet. H A y z l e-t t dot com. I'm everywhere.

I love it.

I love it.

Well, all that information, folks, is of course down in the description. Please get over there. And education we so desperately need is right there in front of us. We just don't know what we don't know. I started this interview before we turn on the camera saying I'm the, the biggest benefactor of this interview because I get to learn from you and I thank you so much for coming.

Well, we learn from everybody. And that's the key thing, that's the most powerful thing as a C suite is to get together with other C suite executive and come to a place where you can take off the armor and just have a good great conversation. That's what it's all about.

Well, thanks for all you're doing.

Thank you.

We truly appreciate it.