Delegation Is Required for Growth | Shawn Torres & Jimmy Burns

You know, the biggest lesson for me that I learned is in the best piece of advice that I can give anyone. Doing this and trying to make this work in a relationship is give it time, be patient, and it's okay to let things go, and it's okay that it's not perfect. And sometimes that's hard for me because of the type of personality that I have. And they don't think like you think. Like you said, I think that's sometimes hard because we've been so close. And I'm like, I know he thinks like I think, but we're different people at the end of the day, and we don't think the same.

Hey, everybody. Today I have Sean Torres and Jimmy Burns from Intelecom. Intellicom has become a full service communications company, attributing their success to providing the highest level of customer service and technical experience to become one solution for their customers. So thanks to you both for your time today, and welcome to the show.

Oh, thank you, Mark. We appreciate it, man. We're looking forward to this. Absolutely.

Thanks, Mark.

It's great to meet both of you, and I'm really interested to hear more about your story. And so let's just kind of hop right in. And I want to go back to the beginning. So from my notes here, sounds like things got serious back in 2007 when you guys were in college together. So tell me, kind of the genesis of this whole business relationship that the two of you have.

So Jimmy and I had actually gone to junior high together here in Slidell, knew each other, weren't really close until probably our senior year in high school. Kind of hung out with some of the same crowds, just had different ventures at the time in life. All my friends were not going to college. None of his friends were kind of going to college. I was chasing a girl to college. Jimmy was actually a smart guy and was really going to college. And we decided that we were just going to. Instead of moving into the dorm, we would get an apartment together and become roommates. So we graduated in 2002 and then moved up to Hammond, Louisiana, where we started at Southeastern and moved into Lion's Way apartments.

Lions Way. Still remember the name. What's a mascot of southeastern Louisiana?

A lion.

A lion. Okay, that explains it.

Yeah. So that's kind of where it started. Our first year of college, we were kind of low key. We worked at a car wash together. Jimmy taught me how to detail cars. And we kind of ran that car wash for Jimmy. What about a year we ran that, huh? Year And a half.

Yeah, year and a half or so. Yeah.

And then we had left there, we actually got let go from having too many drinks one night, not showing up to work too many times.

A college kid doing that, that's practically unheard of.

Yeah, yeah. So from there, then we joined a fraternity this second year in school. So that's kind of where things kind of took off for both of us in college and getting really involved in the university. We got really involved in a fraternity, met some close friends that we still have friends with today, actually opened some businesses with them as well. The fraternity was really the kind of turning point in, I guess, both of our lives.

So how big a school is Southeastern?

At the time, it was 16,000 students.

Okay, so that's a good size school. And how many guys were in the house?

We had 31. I think it was in the house somewhere around that number.

Yeah.

Coming and going.

Yeah, right. Coming and going.

Coming and going.

And they were all buttoned up and highly responsible and no trouble, right?

Yes. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. So you get in there, you know, you start to become more engaged in kind of your university experience, I guess, and doing some things, probably taking on some roles and offices in the fraternity and you meet some new people and all that. So that starts to lead to starting businesses. What was kind of the first thing, I guess, after the car wash?

So Jimmy and I both worked at Verizon. Jimmy had left Verizon Wireless, went to Nuvox, and we were both doing really well in life. And this was literally probably a year after we graduated, we decided that we were going to open up at Anytime Fitness. So we were drinking one night and talking about opening up a gym. And Jimmy was always the guy, if you talked about it, he would go get information and bring it back and kind of like say, hey, man, here's reality. If you want to do this, this is what it takes. And Jimmy and I emptied out our savings accounts and opened up at Anytime Fitness, not really understanding what we were really getting ourselves into.

Wow. So who was really pushing this, Jimmy? Was it Sean pushing it or were you pushing it? Or were you both pushing it?

I think we were both pushing. I mean, I think it started as an idea, right? And we always wanted to get into business, so really? And it sounded like a cool business, Right. We worked out, went to the gym. So we're like, man, we can get paid to work out and hang out with our friends. This is a no brainer, right?

Paid to do what we love.

Exactly. So then I went and got the information. And we both agreed and we said, man, let's do it. We don't know nothing about it, but we'll figure it out. Right. And that's kind of where it started. We picked a town called Pearl River, Louisiana. At the time, they had one red light in the whole town. And Anytime Fitness told us we were pretty much crazy to open a gym in Pearl River, Louisiana. You know, we explained to us, well, man, when we open this gym, they're gonna have two red lights in Pearl River. The second one's gonna be right in front of our gym.

Right.

So kind of despite those odds, you know, some stubbornness.

Well, how did you pick that place? There had to be some reason why go there.

So my brother in law actually lived in Pearl river and I kept driving. We would go by his house on the weekends to watch UFC fights, Jimmy and I. And I'm like, man, like they got all these people that live out here and they don't have a gym, you know, and that was kind of what started it, you know.

So were you right? Was it a good place?

Yeah, it's still open today. We sold it four years ago.

2018.

Yeah, yeah, we sold it four years ago and it's still in business. At the time we sold it, we had about 800 members.

Wow. How many people live in that town?

In the city limits, it's about 1300.

That's gotta be like a. Just a development record in and of itself. You get 800 out of 1300 people. Yeah.

@ one time, that Anytime Fitness was the fastest growing Anytime Fitness in the United States.

That's awesome. So what was the key to making that work? Why were you so successful, you think?

I think that we, you know, obviously from our perspective, we needed it to succeed because we put every single penny we had left to our name in it. Didn't really have no plan B to go ask anybody for help, you know, and we paid attention to it. We came in, we offered a clean environment. We were always extremely nice to our members and treated them like family and made it a really friendly. I still get people today to tell me like, man, I wish you would buy that gym back. Because the people that bought it do not run it like you and Jimmy ran it. So I think it was just, again, it was a side job, but we treated it. We were so into it and it wasn't about the money. It was about. I didn't want to lose the money that I put into it.

Right, because you worked hard to get that.

Yes.

Yeah, I would think if you knew that many people in a town of that size that. Well, that they would be trying to get you to run for mayor or something. Right.

Well, the crazy thing, Mark, we didn't know anybody, and it was always, like, a thing of. People in Slidell don't go to Pearl River. People in Pearl river don't go to Slot L. So, like, when we open this, people thought we had, like, rich dads that gave us money to open this thing. It was not that we don't have rich dads. This was our money that we earned and we put into this. So it was quite interesting.

Wow. Yeah. That's good. All right. So we didn't lose the money. It worked. It, you know, went for. Actually for a good while, sounds like. And then you finally sold it. Hopefully you did well on the exit.

We did.

And then along the path, it sounds like you got into the smoothie business. Tell me about that.

Well, I got let go from Verizon and.

Wait, I thought Jimmy let you go from the Anytime Fitness. No, that wasn't it. That wasn't it.

Meanwhile, after opening the gym, I got fired from Verizon, so I didn't know what I was going to do. Jimmy was saying, why don't we fire Rhonda at the gym and you can just run it? And I'm like, well, man, we just got this lady to quit her job to come work here, and I just got fired. So I said, no, I don't think that's a good idea that we fire this lady. She's got a family, and she needs this job. I'll figure it out. So I started cutting people's grass, making some money that way, trying to figure out Jimmy had got me an interview at New Box, wasn't really interested in going back to work for somebody. So that's when we started Intellicon, actually.

Okay.

And telecom actually came before the smoothie shop.

Yeah.

Yes. Yeah.

There's a little pause there.

Okay, well, let's string this together. Okay, so we start in telecom, and then out of the gate in telecom, you had how many people?

It was just him and I. So our plan was we were going to go out and talk to people about their cell phones and landline bills and take a percentage of the savings. So if you had a $2,000 cell phone bill and I saved you 1,000 bucks a month, you pay me $500 a month for three years. And it was not going well. We were young. We had drummed up a few contracts, probably about 3,000, $3,500 a month, but not a real business. So in the midst of it, my crazy visionary mind told Jimmy I thought it'd be a good idea if we opened up a smoothie shop next to the gym because they had a suite open, and all these people were telling us they wanted healthy food. And we went to Smoothie King and tried to franchise the Smoothie King, and they told us no.

I knew I had because they didn't like the town. It wasn't big enough.

Wasn't big enough. So we went against them and opened up our own smoothie shop called Smoothielicious. And we were going to be the next Smoothie king.

Right.

So we both emptied out our 401s that we had from Verizon and opened up the smoothie shop, which was a complete distraction from Intellicom and what we should have been working on.

So how long. How long did that last?

Six months.

Six months. Oh, my.

We sold the equipment, and meanwhile, one of our clients that was a consulting customer wanted us to get them bids on a phone system.

Okay, hang on. Before you go there, go back to the smoothie shop for a little bit. So you empty all your money in, you do this thing, you're going to start the next Smoothie King. You roll for six months. It's not doing what you thought it would, right. It's being a distraction from this other business you got going. So tell me about the conversation right there at the end where it's like, look, we got to get off this. Okay, let's hear it.

This is how straight the conversation was. One night, like any good restaurant owner, we're controlling labor costs.

Right?

Which in our world meant send everybody home, and Jimmy and Sean sweep, mop, and clean dishes. So one night, we're controlling labor costs, and I think I'm doing dishes. Sean's sweeping and mopping. And I turned around, I said, and I won't use the language I use so you don't have to edit it. Right. But I said, hey, man, I didn't go to college to do this. I'm out. And he said, me, too. We walked to the front door. We locked that front door, and that was the end of Smoothielicious. So we made a quick start decision on that one.

There you go. There you go. You called it and did it. All right. So you liquidated the stuff you had got out of it what you could, right? Lick your wounds and head on down the road.

Yep. We got $5,000 left over from the equipment sold, and we paid out everybody that was owed money. And we had a client at the time that was wanting to get a phone system. We were getting quotes for phone systems. And Jimmy, I'll never forget this. It's like yesterday we were sitting in the gym, and I remember I was standing right by the closet door. I could still remember the conversation. And Jimmy said, sean, what if we sold NREC that phone system? And I was like, man, what the hell do we know about phone systems? We're not techs. How are we?

What?

And he's like, man, I've been doing some research, and I looked online, and.

They want that Avaya system.

There's actually a training school we can go to in Atlanta, Georgia, for five grand, and we can get certified on the Avaya IP office. And I was like, all right. Jimmy said, man, why don't you go talk to Mr. Brian and ask him if they'll buy it from us if we go get certified. So I said, okay. And obviously, business for Intellicon was not going well. We had done about 64,000 in top line revenue in a year and a half. I drove to Houma. I walked in Mr. Brian's office, and I asked him if he would buy the phone system from us if we got certified. Mr. Bryan looked at me and told me to get out of his office.

Oh, boy.

And what the hell do I know about phone systems? And I walked out, and Ms. Donna, his office manager at the time, grabbed me and said, what did he say? And I said, he said, no. She walked me back in his office and looked at him and said, hey, Mr. Brian, you remember that guy that gave you that shot when you built that first engine? And he said, yes. And he said, you got it, Sean. Don't screw this up. And we screwed it up.

Oh, you did? Oh, no.

Oh, yeah, we did.

It was terrible.

They're actually. They're still a customer today.

So you must have fixed it after you screwed it up.

Oh, absolutely. We never gave up, Mark. I mean, that was something that we always had. It was determination we weren't going to not be able to not finish. I could tell you that just looking at that install today, that's something we do in a day. And we were there for six weeks.

Wow.

Wow. The painful front end of learning something new, right?

Yes. Oh, yeah. So that was kind of the turning point, I will tell you, in our life, where we actually recognized that we could do something like, let's ditch the consulting business, let's let the revenue sit, and let's go try to sell phone systems.

So how quick did that take off? So you get this one, you land it. You get in there and go through the trials of having to do it wrong and do it right and all that kind of stuff to figure it out. So how long did it take after that to kind of start to stack the new deals on top and kind of get the revenue flowing?

It was fairly quick after. I wouldn't say it scaled, but it made money. So we were able to go out and generate some revenue that next year. Just to kind of give you hindsight, we did about 274,000 in business.

Okay.

So then we kind of recognized, like, okay, we can make a living on this. But it really wasn't still going well. And I think part of the problem was what Jimmy and I recognize is we were kind of, like, attached at the hip. We would do the sales appointment, we would do the install together. Like, we were kind of together all the time. We were doing one person's job, in a sense, together.

Right.

And a lot of it was fear. Right. And not knowing how it was going to go. And then my wife was on my behind telling me I needed to get a real job. Jimmy's wife was on his behind about getting a real job. And then my wife got pregnant, and then it was real. And I looked at Jimmy and I said, I think we need to split this up. I'm the sales guy. You're obviously the technical guy and understand this stuff way better than I do and have way better patience. So let's split up. And that next year, we did 800,000 in business doing that.

Wow. So you more than tripled it.

Yes.

All right. So at this point, though, are you still just the two of you employees? Any other employees or not?

We had hired one employee to do our billing.

Okay, neither one of you wanted to do that?

No, no, no, no.

But it is good to get paid. You did want to get the payment. You just didn't want to do the billing.

Didn't want to get that. Yes, yes.

All right. So that kind of uncorks something. You start to grow faster. So talk to me about how the team kind of started to grow from there and how you, you know, you kind of started to delegate different responsibilities gradually. So where the two of you aren't doing everything, Everything but the billing.

So we had hired some friends, man, and got people we knew to come work for us and went and drummed up some. Actually, some pretty big cabling projects, cabling up buildings with low voltage, understood how to read plans and bid jobs. Started doing that and then recognized that if we were actually going to do this, in order to get to the next level, we needed to hire a real technician, like somebody that actually had done this before, not learned it off of watching YouTube videos. We put an ad out on Better North Shore jobs. A gentleman by the name of James Estoppenhall walked into our office. We had told him that we had an idea that we wanted to create our own cloud based system. This is when cloud was just coming out like Ringcentral was in its infant stage. And we decided we wanted to own our own cloud business. Only reason why is we lost the deal to a cloud based customer. And a customer told us they wanted to not buy the phone system, but they want a cloud. Told James our idea. We offered James a job. He obviously declined it because we didn't know how to pay people at the time. Right. We were paying people like 15. And he's like, look, man, I make $40 an hour. If I'm going to come be your tech, you're going to have to do something better than $18 an hour. Jimmy and I had always been pretty conservative with saving money in the company and not taking it. And we had literally just bought our first company vehicle, got it wrapped. I still have pictures of my daughter in the car. Right. And James came back and said, I want this much money. I want health insurance and I want a company car. And we did it. And it was one of the best decisions we ever made. James is still with us today. He's our VP of technical services. He runs the biggest department in the company. Great guy.

So that made cloud possible, right, making that investment?

Yes.

So did that change your thinking about how you compensated yourselves?

No, no, because we still did not pay ourselves. We probably didn't start paying ourselves real money, truthfully, about a year and a half ago.

Wow. And so your spouse has loved that? No, they weren't saying, no, don't pay yourself, you just pay everybody else. No. You never heard that?

Oh, no, no. Mark.

I remember the days telling my wife to, like, don't go to the grocery this week. And like, we had half a million dollars in the bank in the company. And I'm like, don't go to the grocery this week. And she's like, well, why do you not have any money in this company? And I'm like, well, I do, but we need it because we need it to grow.

We're using it to grow. Using it to grow. Awesome. All right. You expand into cloud, you start to bring on people that Aren't just your friends. You start to pay them more in line with, I guess, the market and the experience and the capabilities that they're adding to the team. So at some point you bring in somebody to help you in what would probably be called a fractional integrator role. Did I understand that right?

No. We actually brought in a mentor of ours, man. I had a good friend of mine, Dave Bourgeois, that owned a IT company called my IT and was kind of a guy that Jimmy and I looked up to in the industry at a very successful company. He was actually giving us phone system deals and we would give him IT deals. And when we decided that we were going to create our own IT division, I went to Dave to tell him that, hey, man, look, I just want to be transparent. We're going to open up an IT division, so we're going to be competition in the market. And if you could give me any advice, I greatly appreciate it. We sat down, he gave us advice, didn't listen to him, and started our IT division.

What was the advice? Do you remember what the advice was?

Yeah, it was about charging people the right rate per seat. Don't be flexible in the way you do things. Make them do it your way. Don't let them choose what type of equipment they need to use, equipment that your techs understand. And obviously in the early stages of it, we were just trying to create revenue in that department. So we just bent every which way sideways in typical Sean style, said yes to everything.

Makes it easy for Jimmy, right?

Yes, very simple. So we went to Dave, we went and had lunch. Dave came into the office a couple days later and we thought Dave wanted to talk to us about our consulting arrangement of what we were going to set up to fix our IT division after he had sold his company and had been gone from my it. Now we felt that IT was a strategic guy, that we could come in because he ran a successful MSP and he could help us. And Dave then pitched to us, hey, look, man, I don't really need money, but I love what you guys are doing and what you've done in this market. I want to be your chief strategy officer. And here's my job description and here's my job offer. And I'm like, wow. It kind of took me and him both back for a minute. We're like, you want to come work for us? And Dave said yes. And the offer was a no brainer, in my opinion. And we did it and brought him in as a chief strategy officer. And he came into a Cluster of a company that was super unorganized, that it was. I call it a Caterpillar business. It's me and Jimmy, and everybody's in line waiting to talk to me or him on what to do. And we were probably doing about seven and a half million at the time. We were moving, you know, probably what Jimmy? 30, 28 employees.

Yeah, right into 30, 28.

No structure, no org chart, like, no, just. We kind of had an idea what people did, but bunch of moving parts, right. And Dave wanted to bring structure to the business. And Dave asked us about. And I was like, what the heck is eos? Right? I don't know what that means.

Great title for a book, right?

Great book. So he brought in Matt Hahn, our implementer, and Matt did a 90 minute meeting with us. It got me super excited and super intrigued, and it made 100% sense. I'm like, okay, we definitely need to do this. And that's kind of where that began.

Okay, so that's probably two years ago, something like that.

Two years ago?

Yeah. 2020.

All right, so you, starting with Matt, you're doing the implementation, you know, focus day. You're doing the accountability chart. You start talking about this visionary and integrator seat. Tell me how that worked. How in that first time that you did the accountability chart in that focus day, what'd you do with the visionary and the integrator seat?

Well, we knew out the gate that I was a flaming visionary. They knew that. And even going through my Colby and everything, we knew that was a simple, easy task. We didn't really know integrator. And Jimmy and I both looked up to Dave. You know, Dave was the guy that built a successful MSP and sold it. So we felt like he was smarter than us and he's a very intelligent guy. And we felt like it made sense the way Jimmy had all the intellectual knowledge in the ops role and really ran the operation of this company, that it made sense to put Dave in the integrator role. I was concerned with putting Dave in the integrator role because I felt it was weird that the owner was reporting to a employee. Obviously, in hindsight, Dave was really not the integrator. It was really Jimmy.

Yeah. So how long did it take you to figure that out?

Seven months, eight months?

And what was the tell? What was the thing where it's kind of like, okay, I'm seeing this, I'm seeing this, I'm seeing this. I think we maybe missed this one. And this is the right answer?

Well, I think it was the Fact that Jimmy and I were always at the office doing everything and he was leaving at 5 o', clock, so. But look, he was doing the things and putting the structure into play and doing the right things. I think in Jimmy and I's mind, running the day to day meant, hey, we don't have all these seats right now. You're going to be in here grinding some of this stuff out. And when we made the decision that Jimmy and I talked, had an owner's meeting and made a decision that we're going to make a transition and hey, man, you are the integrator. And we need to convey this to Dave so there's not a blurred message here. And we need to convey it to the company. Dave then decided that he wanted to resign.

Okay.

And we were left on.

So talk about that. So you sit down with Dave. Was it both of you? Was it one of you telling him, how'd that go down?

It was both of us.

Both of us, yeah.

And was he surprised?

No, no. And he agreed. But he wanted a job that he was the integrator. He wanted to be the president of the company that ran the day to day and did the deal. And I get that. I could see that, you know, and we weren't ready to let go of the company. He visioned us in the owner's box outside of building the company.

Right. Okay. So he knew what he wanted, y' all knew what you had. And so it just wasn't a fit. And so he goes along and, you know, finds whatever his next thing is. And then Jimmy, you hop in. Right. And so now, visionary integrator, I got you two. Tell me about the rest of the leadership team at this point. How many other folks are on the leadership team at that point?

At that point, there's probably three others on the leadership team.

Yep.

And how many other seats, Jimmy, were you sitting in?

You want me to count by tens or single numbers?

Yeah, yeah. Take your shoes off if you need to.

Yeah, a fair amount. I mean, probably a good dozen or so.

You're in a dozen seats?

Maybe, Maybe. I think.

Are you kidding me?

A lot of it was as we reflect. So everything we do, we always reflect back and figure out what we could have done differently. Right. So one of the things Sean and I both agreed on was that we did a poor job as the company started scaling because we never started training people on how to do the higher level jobs. We had the people that wanted it. We had the people that had the knowledge. We never trained them. So once we started Putting people in their seats. There were bodies in those seats, but the development that needed to happen with those bodies pretty much almost kept you because it was a lateral effect, because as they were getting elevated, other people were getting elevated. So it's like Sean's trainer. I'm training this person's training. So it was literally. It was like tic tac toe all over the place, right? Everybody's training someone to get elevated in the position. So that's why I was in a bunch of different seats. But really, you know, as time went on, every quarter got better and better, Right? Every quarter, we're able to delegate more out. Every quarter, people got more familiar. Every quarter we figured out what we thought we knew, we kind of figured out the right way to do things, you know, so it's an evolving accountability chart, even to this date. I mean, it's evolving. Every month we're changing it. It seems like every L10, we're like, hey, we got to hire 22 more people for the end of the year. Back to the accountability chart.

So, all right, so it's four or five quarters now since you made the change and you stepped into that integrator seat and, you know, you had 12 seats back then that just. That's crazy. But how many do you have now that you're sitting in today?

I'd say I'm in maybe like.

Don't say 10.

No, no, no, no. One and a half.

Oh, hey, I like that.

One and a half.

You know, I like that a lot. Sean, what about you? You sitting in any other seats?

No.

You're locked in?

I'm locked in, man.

You got the seat you want and filling it fully?

Yes.

Okay. All right, so that's great. All right, so we got you there. We got Jimmy almost there. So that's a lot of progress. So now let's kind of talk about this. Now that it' of you in those seats, you've been working together forever. You've been friends forever. You know each other super well. So I'm sure there's this, you know, sort of foundation of trust and familiarity there. You know, that's unusual. You know, takes a long time to build that. So that's a great starting point. So then talk to me about, you know, the structure that we talk about in Rocket Fuel, so, you know, particularly like the same page meeting, discipline. Yeah, tell me about that. I'm interested in how often you do a same page meeting, how long they are, where you do them, and if that's changed at all since you first Started doing it.

We're doing them about every other week. At one point, we were doing a weekly and we felt like it was too much. Our same page meetings. For the longest time, we weren't doing them, but Jimmy and I trained at the gym together. So those gym sessions really turned into same page meetings because we would find ourselves in part time working out, talking the company and what's going on. And people used to always come up to us all the time and say, man, like, I don't understand how y' all work together, y' all work out together, you know? But I was like, man, I don't see him during the day at the company. Like, he's in his world, I'm in my world. Got a lot of moving parts. So this is where we kind of catch up. We have gotten a lot more disciplined with doing them every other week. Sometimes they're very good, and sometimes they're not good.

What does not good look like?

Sometimes it turns into the aggressive Sean coming out and getting all in Jimmy's ass and, you know, putting everything on him, you know.

So, Jimmy, what do you do when that happens?

So I learned a long time ago how to manage Sean's personality. So pinning the situation on where we're at. If I feel like he's in an opportunity where he's going to listen, then I will battle back. If I feel like he's at a point where he's not going to listen, then normally I'll just tell them, hey, man, I got it. I understand. We'll get it resolved, and then we'll normally pick it back up a day or so later. Right. When we have a more collaborative conversation.

We'Ll call it Less Emotions.

Less emotions.

Right, right. So it's really interesting that you bring that up because I actually see some version of that a lot where the integrator has sort of figured out a code for their visionary, and they kind of know when to talk about certain things and when not to talk about certain things. And so they learn. All right, it's going to be way more effective if I serve this up here, you know, before the meal or after the meal or, you know, kind of whatever the pattern may be. So that's very interesting that you. And again, not a surprise because you've known each other for so long, but now the fact that you've known each other for so long and you're such good friends, that's probably got to make some things tough too, right?

Oh, yeah.

So what's the challenge of that? Tell me about that, you know, for.

Me, man, the biggest challenge that I still deal with today is, look, Jimmy's always been a harder worker than me. There's no doubt in my mind that Jimmy puts in more hours than I do. Different hours, I guess you would say, you know, different levels of work of what I do would probably be harder for Jimmy. What Jimmy does would be impossible for me. So I think that the biggest struggle that I've dealt with as business partners. He's my best friend. He's pretty much my brother, is delegating things to him that I feel like, well, man, we're 50, 50 in this deal. And here I am piling my on his back, and it's. I still struggle with it today, Mark. I'm getting better. Some days I don't go to him because I'm like, I know he's overwhelmed, and I'm about to give him some more, and I shouldn't do that. Then I realized with the structure how important it is, right. For that to not have a mixed message.

Right? So Jimmy, should he feel that way?

No. We've had these conversations, right? And when he doesn't do it, I always tell him, you should. Why didn't you? Right. And they'll always say, you know, whether it's, I didn't want to overwhelm you, they want to put more on your plate, but it ends up in the end, you end up having to get involved at some point anyway, right? So it's a struggle all the time. You know, some weeks we do really good with it, and then some weeks we kind of fall off the horse a little bit, you know, but, you know, in the same sense, we're a hyper growth company, right? So not only are we figuring out this visionary integrated relationship and building a company, but, you know, we're growing at 50% year over year. So you add all into the mix. And I think everybody's watching everyone work hard from the top all the way down. So we have hearts for each other. So we want to make sure that we don't overwork or stress out. But we had this conversation this week that, you know, there were some things that Sean was doing and we were catching it secondhand. He's like, man, the problem is it's not filtered through you. That's the problem with it. That's why it's so unorganized. So that's why there's not clarity to it. So it's like any other relationship, right? It's like a marriage, right? You got to continue to date. You Got to continue to work on it. Same thing here. You've got to work on our bi relationship daily, you know, so it's no different.

It's also created other challenges, too, Mark. You know, Jimmy and I are best friends. Our families are close. I mean, we live across the street from each other.

That's pretty close.

We're close, man. And it sometimes creates challenge because the bad days at work can sometimes turn into, you know, I'll be transparent. We had a VI meeting this week and it didn't go well. I got heated, and I probably went a little overboard. And then that day, I had Jimmy's wife. My wife's out of town with the kids, and Jimmy's wife's inviting me over for dinner. And I'm like, I didn't go because I let my. I didn't want my emotions to get the best of me, and I wanted him to have a good night with dinner. And I know I knew I could not control my emotions. And so I said, I'm just going to eat this Tupperware food that my wife put in the refrigerator for me and told Katie, thanks, but no thanks. So it creates. I do think that the strain of the business has definitely put a damper on our relationship at times. We always pick back up where we always. But it still creates challenges, right? There's a level of guilt some days. There's a level of, am I giving them too much? Am I not giving them enough? Am I. You know, again, it is a difficult task. I will say that.

Yeah. It's always been fascinating to me how, you know, people are so different and something that I would hate to do, somebody else actually enjoys doing, you know, and so there's that guilt that's like, I'm asking you to do this thing that would be so painful for me. And it's not obvious to us that sometimes it's just not that painful for them. And they're way better at it. Right. So it's good. So that's a powerful thing to have awareness of and obviously communicate on and make sure that we're. We're seeing that realistically from both sides. Now. I'm curious about your family. So you live right across the street from each other. You know, you're in this dynamic relationship that's, you know, it's got, you know, stuff coming home from work. Sometimes great stuff, sometimes not great stuff. How does that. I mean, do the spouses. Do the wives ever, like, you know, do they get pissed or they ever, like, well, you know, you're not being fair with my husband or whatever. So how do you. Because that seems like that would be a nightmare, man. How do you keep that to a minimum?

You got a number two mark. At one time, they both worked in the company too.

Okay.

Yeah.

Sounds terrifying to me.

Yeah. In 2019, our controller, who did a ton of things for us, very, very embedded in our business, embezzled $400,000 from us. And we obviously fired her that day when we found out. And Jimmy and I had no clue how to do any HR function, accounting function, purchasing function, nothing. So both of our wives were stay at home moms. And we told them, hey, look, we have a booming business. We're moving at a really rapid rate. Y' all gotta come to work and help. And that's kind of how they got embedded into the business.

Right.

They're both out at this point. But when the business started to create strains in my personal relationship with my wife was when I made a decision that, hey, you gotta go like, well, I'm gonna. Her background's hr. She's a great HR director. I said, I'm a. Hiring a full time HR director.

Right. It's kind of like your moment in the smoothie store.

Yeah.

Right. Or it's kind of like, we're not doing this anymore.

No.

Time to time to make that change.

And I think Jimmy and I. And I know Jimmy has. And I have too. I don't really convey to my wife all the time the things that go on between Jimmy and I's relationship. And I learned that's better. And the more that I keep that between. And I'm very transparent with him on how I feel. So I don't need to vent it to anyone else but him. So I don't any longer. I don't go home and get Shannon involved in our bickering this back and forth with each other, because that does create strain between Shannon and Katie. And they are very close.

Right.

So it definitely has created challenges at times.

Yeah. Jimmy, you've experiencing that the same way.

Yeah, yeah. It's the same thing, you know? And what's really hard for not just spousal, but just friends, people we know to understand is a lot of people look at a business and it's like he does 50% of the work, and he does 50% of the work. And that is the way that a lot of small businesses operate that aren't trying to be $100 million companies like we are.

Right.

But we chose to go down a road that has a structure.

Right.

And based on that structure. It's not based on the amount of work you do. It's based on where your unique talents and abilities are at. And that's what we try to stay laser focused on. So, you know, a lot of times, wives, friends, understanding that can be challenged can bring its own challenges, right? Because then you have. You try to explain it and you're like, man, I can't do his job. There's no way. You don't want me out there making friends with a bunch of people, because I'm probably going to come out, talk to some people, and then I'm going to roll out and, you know, Sean's going to be. He's going to leave out there with three new best friends, right? That's not me, you know, so explaining that for me has gotten better with my wife. She understands what I'm good at, what he's good at. Right. And we don't look at things as like, who spends more time.

Right.

So if Sean's at home and I'm not, you know, that's just the demands of my job, but that's what I'm good at, too. So, like, even though I may be here, I'm doing something. I actually like what I'm doing. So, like, it's not a big deal.

Right?

So that's gotten a lot better. But, yeah, it's got its own challenge. And then we have kids together, you know, so our kids think they're brothers and sisters. Shawn's got three girls. I have two boys. You know, they're 11. Nine, eight, seven.

Right.

And five. Right.

Yep.

So they've grown up together like their brother and sister, you know, so. And they bicker, too, right? Because they think they're brother and sister. It's not about the business. Right. They're just family. They're family bickering. So. And arguing.

So that's very cool. That sounds like a really special kind of a situation that you guys have going on. So. All right, so let me ask you something else here. So we got lots of visionaries and integrators that are listening to this. You've had a long journey from kind of where you started and your relationship and all these different business experiences. Just the last little bit has really been when you're getting into eos and really the visionary integrator relationship, where it's the two of you in those roles. So I'd like each of you to think about what's the big lesson that I've learned as it relates to my role here. The visionary or the integrator that somebody out there that's listening. I wish I had known this sooner. It's something you figured out. It's something you discovered. Maybe it's an aha, but it's something that. Boy, I wish somebody had told me that. Or I wish I could have learned that sooner along the way. Either one of you can start.

You know, the biggest lesson for me that I learned is in the best piece of advice that I can give anyone. Doing this and trying to make this work in a relationship is give it time, be patient, and it's okay to let things go, and it's okay that it's not perfect. And sometimes that's hard for me because of the type of personality that I have. And they don't think like you think. Like you said, I think that's sometimes hard because we've been so close. And I'm like, I know he thinks like I think, but we're different people at the end of the day, and we don't think the same. And just like you were saying a second ago, I think that's the best piece of advice you could give is that it's okay to give your integrator those things because that's what they're good at doing. And it's true, because that's always been our relationship. Every time I went out and sold a big job that we didn't have any clue how to do, Jimmy figured out how to make it work. And I think back to the very first beginning of starting this organization when we went and sold a phone system. I didn't figure out how to make it work. I just sold it and made the vision sit there. Jimmy became a reality, right? So it's from day one, that's what we've done. And I think sometimes I forget that. And I think that I need to sit back and always remember that. That that's kind of been the nature of this relationship from infancy stage to where we are today.

Okay, so Jimmy from the integrator seat, what's the big aha for you?

The big aha for me is. I mean, it's really about truly being on the same page, Right? To Sean's point earlier, he thinks differently, he communicates differently, I think differently, I communicate differently, right? But when him and I are truly on the same page and truly understand what's going on, and we're being honest and transparent with each other, and I'm telling Sean sometimes the things he doesn't want to hear, right? But just telling him that, hey, look, this is the. We have fantasy world. We have a reality world. Like, these are the things we can control and these are the things that we can do. And, hey, we can do this, but what are we going to choose not to do? Or this is the result of doing this. Right? So I think being on the same page is a huge thing I've really realized. And I don't know if this is correct or not. And maybe it's just me, you know, but, you know, if you're an integrator out there and every day you're banging your head against the wall because just all the challenges, everything just seems to change daily, and things are just growing and just kind of seeing not out of control, but just seem like, man, I just fixed this, and now here we are with something else similar to it. If you're not banging your head against the wall, then I don't think you're truly in an integrator seat.

Right.

You know, I don't think your visionary is pushing you hard enough, you know, and don't give up. You know, don't. When the times get tough and the pressure's coming once again, as an integrator, that's what we sign up for, right? That's what we thrive on. You know, if I'm in. If I'm in a time where things aren't. There's not pressure or there's not a lot going on or there's not a lot of challenges, then I feel like I'm failing. Right? It's the times that there's so much going on that, like, you can't keep up with it, that I work best, you know, and I work best under pressure. So, you know, if you're in that role and you feel that way, hey, it's normal, right? As long as you're making leaps and bounds, then you're doing what you should do. If you don't feel that way, then tell your integrator to start being more transparent with you, put more on you, and the company will do better in that state. Right? Because the cleaner we can keep the vision for the visionary, the better off the company will be.

I love it. I think that's great perspective. So, hey, I could talk to you guys all day. This has been a lot of fun for me. I hope it's been fun for you, but I just. I'm really grateful you taking a little bit of time to share some of your story and some of your experiences. And I know that our listeners, that'll help them, you know, everybody's in their own place along this journey, either just starting out or thinking about it or, you know, maybe way down the road. But we can all learn from each other and help us get there a little sooner, maybe with a little bit less pain. So that's the idea and I'm really, really appreciate you guys, you know, talking to us today. So for listeners that would want to learn more about your business or get in touch with either one of you, what's the best way for them to do that?

Probably best way for both of us would be via email. I know we both have social media. I'm a little more active on social media than Jimmy is. I'm probably on all the platforms. I think Jimmy's on two of them, Facebook and LinkedIn. So I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. It's a good way to catch me and obviously email@storres telecom.com we love helping people. We love talking to people that are trying to venture out in eos. We have turned over about nine of our friends companies into EOS companies in the last year. So.

Wow.

So Matt's very grateful for that too.

Wow. Multiplying the impact. Yeah, I bet he is. Hey, the world should be grateful for that. Yes. So that's fantastic. We'll try to make sure all that the details there in the show notes so people can get ahold of y'. All. But again, really, really great stuff. And to our listeners, hey, thanks for listening to another episode of the Rocket Fuel podcast. If you've enjoyed what you're hearing and learned some things that are valuable, appreciate if you'd leave a review for us on whatever platform it is that you're listening on that'll help us get this message to more and more folks out there that may benefit from it. So until next time, go rock it. Thanks so much for joining me today. I really hope you were inspired by our guests. If you're interested in discover how your current visionary integrator relationship compares to the relationship you'd like, I invite you to go visit rocketfueluniversity.com and take our free crystallizer assessment. You'll get both your visionary and integrator indicator scores and that's going to help you figure out your next step. Foreign. Frustrated by the complexities of running a business? EOS1 is the simple to use software that brings your foundational business tools together in one place. It helps you run meetings people actually look forward to, creates a space for uniting your team around a shared vision, and gives you what you need to build a more trusting and accountable. Culture, culture. Begin your 30 day free trial today at eos1.com.