Scott Duffy interviews Aaron Young: Harnessing Technology, Business & Burgers: Season 1 Ep.16

I'm Alan Taylor. My buddy Scott Duffy and I are in search of the best burger in America. Each month we visit a new city to try some of the top restaurants, pubs and brewhouses while sitting down for a candid conversation with some of the top entrepreneurs, athletes, entertainers and celebrities. I don't know about you, but I love talking business over a burger. Welcome to business and burgers.

We're back in Los Angeles on the famous Sunset Strip to return to Chef McConney's Pono Burger Outsourced cheap. Chief strategy officer and entrepreneur Aaron Scott Young joins us to talk business. Overcoming life's hurdles and running your business from afar. Aaron's 34 years of experience has given him an ideal vantage point to observe common mistakes and successes in business. His experience founding, acquiring and directing multimillion dollar businesses sets him apart from the crowd as a voice of real world knowledge and authority. Aaron's company, Laughlin Associates, has helped over 100,000 entrepreneurs start, grow and profit from their businesses. And you'll want to hear Aaron's priceless advice that you can put to work and help you grow your business today.

It's so funny because I follow you on we're good friends. I follow you on Facebook and Twitter and like all social media.

Yeah.

And every time I see a new picture go up, you're like, you're driving cattle or you're racing a car or you're like, so where have you been last few weeks?

I was in the Tetons doing a fly fishing thing. I had to give a talk, but it was two days of fly fishing, 90 minutes of speaking and did some things.

And you gave a talk?

I gave a talk in Hawaii, but there was four days of having fun.

So how do you do that and run your companies?

Well, that's an interesting question because, you know, I decided a long time ago that it was way more fun to build up a company to where I could kind of operate and have great people and then I could go start doing something else that I enjoy doing. What I noticed with most people is they're really good at coming up with an idea and starting to make some money and starting to roll. But they never really get out of startup mode and they keep acting like a startup even when they're doing millions and millions in sales. I think I learned, I don't know, through a lot of, lot of scars, a lot of bleeding, how to build a business where you can get systems and reporting in place, get empowered people in place. We can really expand with all of their kind of brilliance.

You know, how do you do that?

I think everybody has their superpower, right? Whatever they're awesome at. And there's a ton of stuff that I'm not good at. But what I've always been pretty good at is figuring out how should this little thing work and putting the right people in place. So I let people who are great at their thing do their thing, and I focus on what I know how to do. And somehow, when you put these ingredients together, it's kind of like on the kitchen counter, if you put all the right stuff together in the right order, you're gonna get the chocolate chip cookies that you wanted to get.

What is the key? Finding great people.

My thought on finding great people is this. First of all, we as the business owners, have to get super clear on what the objective is that we're trying to accomplish. So it's hard to create a culture when there's no end goal. If I can bring somebody on and say, this is the outcome I need from you, and if you hit this outcome, here's the consequence of that, then people. They understand why they're there.

Great way of looking at it.

Yeah, that's really cool.

So then how do you build culture? So number one was people. Number two is culture. How do you build culture?

As an owner, you cannot abdicate or delegate culture. It's got to be based on the values. The reason we started the company in the first place, the vision we had in the first place. People start to know what the ultimate game is. They will start to come and say, hey, you know, what if we did this thing? Or I think it'd be really cool if we did that thing. And then they start to be part of it. And then what happens is, when a new person comes on, I don't have to come in and say, here's how it all works. Reporting.

Because the third thing was reporting.

There's two kinds of reports. One is building scoreboards. We change scoreboards every quarter. So we have three or four items that we are measuring in either this department or for this employee. Some of them are lag measures, like, how much did we sell? How many clients do we talk to? Some of them are lead measures. What can we try different that might get us a new result, a better result? One of my favorite quotes is, when performance is measured, performance improves. When performance is measured and reported back, the rate of improvement accelerates. And those are the things that are most critical.

Oh, I need to see.

Time out. I'd like to see what this is.

We're Trying three burgers today. This is a first for business of burgers. Aaron's Piku Fig burger features an organic beef patty topped with a caramelized fig jam bacon from Neiman Ranch in Northern California. Toasted hazelnuts, arugula and a house made balsamic. Scott went with the Quawa Crunch named from the russet potato chips that sit top the patty along with aged cheddar coleslaw and a spicy guava rum sauce that gives the burger some serious heat. I went with the Paniolo burger, an organic beef patty topped with smoked cheddar, Neiman Ranch bacon, Kona coffee barbecue sauce and a trio of beer battered onion rings.

You teach, you coach and mentor to our folks. Who do you look up to?

First of all, there's a book from like 1910 by a guy named Wallace Wattles called the Science of Getting Rich. That book probably had a greater impact on me than any other business book I've ever read.

It's interesting because when I asked who you look up to and who your mentor was, the way most people answer that question is they go right to somebody that they talk to on a regular basis or they go and maybe see somebody who's alive and present and you went straight to a book and a book from 100 years ago. And I think that's a really important lesson because there are a lot of people that are trying to learn and grow and we talk about the power of our networks and the power of the five people around us. We're nothing more, nothing less than the average of the five people we spend the most time with. So if we want to be, you know, build a million dollar business, we have to be around five people that have built million dollar businesses. And sometimes depending on your circumstance, the best way to be around that person is through a book.

The book is great. I will tell you this. People talk about mastermind, you're talking about the power of our network Masterminds. Yeah, my two most important people in my day to day life, My wife of almost 30 years who's a brilliant woman and my best friend since I was 14 years old. I was the crummy student, you know, went to one year junior college, never went anymore, and then it kind of like scraped through entrepreneurship. He was the guy that graduated top of the high school class, top of the college class, went to Harvard, got his MBA and then has started companies that are name brand companies. He, Bill Kelly is probably the guy that I sit across the table from the most and we bang ideas around and it's fascinating when you can have a friend of. I'm 52, so since 14, and we've been on parallel but different tracks, but our life experience is still relevant. And if you can get really great people and build those kind of deep relationships, you can do anything. You can conquer anything in this world. You can go through any challenge, you know.

And speaking of challenges, you had a very big challenge in your life.

Yeah, I did.

Yet I wouldn't know that by looking at you because your attitude is so good. And I think it's your philosophy from the beginning that, okay, this is just another problem.

Let's deal with it.

In the worst situations you're going to go through in your life, you're going to learn the most important lessons. Right. When everything's calm and placid, everything's working, you're not usually learning very much. But I really thought that one.

You know, going to prison, going to federal prison was not on my. It was not on the path that I'd foreseen when I was being in Eagle and being bucket listed. Yeah. It was not part of the Dream Board experience. And I. I thought it was going to end my career. I thought it would wipe out my business. I didn't know how it would negatively impact my wife and kids. And I was sure the rest of my life because I, at that time, I was speaking all over the world. I was getting quoted in national magazines, and I thought, nobody's ever going to want to talk to me again. Everything's going to have this little asterisk that says felon after it. And I'll always be grateful to Brian Tracy, the first guy that invited me back onto the stage after I came out and who told me, Aaron, he said, you don't know how many things a lot of us have gone through. It may be different, but we've been through real challenges, too. And you came through it. Your company survived it and thrived.

You know, that year that I thought would wipe us out actually turned out to be a pretty good year.

How much did you guys generate that year?

Almost a million dollars home that year.

So you made almost a million dollars the year.

If you build a business that is built on the right ingredients, the right formula, it will work.

So for people that have gone through experience, or they're going through an experience right now, where they're talking to themselves in their head, they're running a dialogue, and they're thinking that nothing could get worse. Yeah, Right. But now, now it's over and they have to. They have to Take that first step forward. What's the one piece of advice you'd give them? What's the first thing they should do to move forward with their life?

At my low spot, this. This attorney that we'd hired, he said.

It feels like you can't breathe. And I said, yes. And he says, it feels like you have an iceberg. It's crushing you. It's on your chest and it's killing you. It's crushing you to death. And he said this was so important. And this is what I tell somebody at their low spot. The iceberg is real. It's not come on, cheer up or anything. The iceberg is real. But every day, the sun's going to come up. Every day you're going to keep breathing, and little by little, the iceberg will melt away.

Then eventually.

That was such a great image for me. It's real, but it will be gone.

All right, so I want to know about this class that you teach called unshackled owner.

Oh, okay. Thanks for asking. It goes back to what we were talking about earlier. The idea is I've built all these businesses over the years, and I was able to be away from them last year. I spent a long time. My wife and I spent almost a couple months at the beach just hanging out, not working, not doing stuff. And at first, people were really excited for us, and then they kind of were like, what's up with you guys? How can you be there for that long? And it got me thinking. I always thought people just knew how to do this stuff, and then it turns out they don't. So I asked some questions and finally just started to lay out that recipe that we've talked about. And I floated it out in front of some people. I said, would you guys like to go through a class? I was overwhelmed. Over a thousand people reached out to me.

Wow.

Oh, blew my mind. Because I thought, I wonder if anybody even cared. But anyway, so we just started teaching it this year called the unshackled owner. How to build a business that works harder for you than you have to work for it. And that doesn't mean like living on the beach with your laptop, being a life coach. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about all of my people that have gone through the class so far. Dozens and dozens of people are people who have multi million dollar companies, managing partners of law firms. I have one client's got 45 real estate offices, 1600 realtors that work for them. I mean, these are real companies.

Let me ask you A question.

You're on the road all the time.

Yeah.

You're totally mobile.

Yeah.

So how do you run your business?

So the great thing is that with technology now and with software, so we're doing everything, you know, basically Windows based stuff. Right. So we're using Excel and Word and all that sort of thing. Now you can see it all on your digital platform from my phone or my tablet as well as my laptop. I can use Windows 365 and I can see everything. And we've got reports that are built out that I can see the critical stuff that I need to see at my company in simple reports. And so no matter what it is, if I've got a phone or a tablet or my laptop, I'm completely connected to what matters.

Yeah.

It's, it's an amazing world that we live in that we can run multi million dollar companies with dozens or hundreds of employees and you can see everything that's critical because the technology has been created.

You know, I used to use, I travel with a big laptop and I ran everything off my laptop.

Yeah.

And about a year ago I got rid of the laptop and I converted to a two in one. So what I do is like Alan knows I really worked hard on this. What I do is I use HP Elite 2's and it's an amazing tablet, runs on windows, on Windows 10. And so because here's why it's important to me, the challenge, like what I'm always most concerned about when I'm traveling with all of my, like my work and my information is number one, what happens if I lose this thing?

Oh yeah, yeah.

What I love about Windows 10 on the HP is that I am, I don't have to lose my data. My data is protected. So I don't worry about that because.

It'S on the cloud.

That's Number one. Number two, I use 365.

Yeah.

Office 365. Just like you do. So everything that I do is in the cloud. Number three, the thing I really get worried about is what happens if I drop it. So I'm one of those guys. I broke a million phones because I've dropped them. Oh yeah, right.

You don't want to see his phone.

He don't see my phone. I drop phones, I've dropped laptops and stuff like that. The number one reason I went to the tablet that I use today, the HP Elite, is that literally they do a drop test on this thing. And so I know that, number one, I'm not gonna lose my stuff. If I lose the computer. Number two, I know it's all in the cloud at 365, so it's easy to access. And number three, I know if I drop it, hit it hard, I'm not gonna break it. That's an old road warrior telling you like, that's the formula that I use.

Aaron.

Yeah.

I want to take your unshackled owner class. I'd love to have you because I'm way too shackled, man.

Come on, man. Come on. We'll break you from those bosses.

I love your story, too. Thanks for.

Thanks for asking. It's a tender story, but I'm glad I. It's nice we can sit down with a couple guys and talk about these important things.

Aaron's seen the highs and lows of life as an entrepreneur, and his experience has left us with some profound food for thought. Everybody has their superpower. Focus on your strengths and let your people focus on their strengths. Know your goals. It's hard to create culture when you have no end goal. When performance is measured and reported back, the rate of improvement accelerates.

Next time on Business and Burgers. We head to Cassell's Hamburgers in Los Angeles to meet with Dan Flashman. Dan became an entrepreneur early in life when at the age of 17, he trademarked the catchphrase, who's ya daddy? At 23, with the launch of his who's your daddy energy drinks, he became the youngest founder of a publicly traded company in history. Today, Dan is a prominent angel investor who supports and advises dozens of companies. And his latest venture, FirstSlice.com is on track to have 1 billion page views by the end of 2016. Join us and learn about this young mogul's rise to the top next time right here on Business and Burgers.

Check out more episodes of Business and Burgers and our B and B blog at our website, businessandburgers.com and don't forget, visit business and burgers on Facebook and give us a big thumbs up. We'll see you next time right here on Business and Burgers.