How to Build a Billion-Dollar Business (Without Losing Yourself in the Process)

Uncertainty brings opportunity. The best entrepreneurs learn to embrace uncertainty is never going away, and the fear and the doubt and everything else, and thrive inside it. Part of what, you know, the book is about is how do you do that at work, but also how do you develop a mindset outside of work that lets you build the life you want?

Guys, help me work with my good friends Mike and Kaz Lazaro. How are you guys doing?

We're doing good. Thanks for having us.

Oh, I. There's. There's no way. I couldn't. You don't normally hear a book, like, shoveling and, like, think you're, like, you're gonna get kind of, like, you know, really kind of dive in the way you guys dive in. You guys have been uber successful entrepreneurs. But what I love most about you guys is how transparent you are about the real entrepreneur journey. So I. If it's all right, I'd like to start out, and you guys can tag team how you see fit. But I'd love to start out understanding more about what Chip Shot taught you guys and that whole experience as we get into the real life of the entrepreneur.

Yeah, that was a tough one. So I had started Golf.com in 1998. It was September, and was trying to ride that whole, you know, dot com boom that was going on. And we decided to create golf content for all the crazy recreational golfers out there and then syndicate that content to all the big sites like USA Today Online and Yahoo and things like that that were just craving golf content. So we did that for about a year and a half, and then we were acquired by chipshot.com, which was a company out in the west coast that was building knockoff custom golf clubs. And they thought this was a great pairing, and so did we. And they were ready to go public. They were ready to file in April of 2000, and we did the deal December 23, 1999. It's kind of burned on my brain. Three months later, the CEO calls and basically says that Sequoia, who was backing them to go public, and you raise money right before you go public. They pulled out, and they were going bankrupt. And the only thing they said is, you can buy yourselves back if you want.

So. So obviously, that's a sinking feeling in the stomach. You got. You got your entire livelihood kind of tied to everything. You put all your heart and soul into it. What are two or three tips that that experience taught you as it relates to, obviously, shoveling poo? Because, you know, it's like, you know, I mean, it's real life. Things happen. And it seems like one month, it literally, at least my entrepreneur journey is like, I'm riding super high and things are great. And the next moment I have a plane, it feels like a plane crash. And then I'm back on a roller coaster, heading back up again. So I'm curious to know what the experience taught you guys. Maybe Mike.

And that's only one day.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, that's one day.

So we learned more from that experience, and I think in general, we all learn more from failures. Once you find product market fit or once you sell a business for a billion dollars, you know, you just assume you're a genius, right? Like, yeah, figured it out, but you don't. Many times, you don't know why you figured it out. You don't know what you did. Well, when you fail, you know exactly why you failed. You ran out of money, you hired the wrong people. The product never found its market. Right. And so we learned a lot about diligence, a lot about things not going up and to the right. We were born at a time that saw the beginning of the commercial Internet and then the dot com craze. And, you know, if you go back to that time, imagine the AI craze right now. Plus Taylor Swift. That was dot com.

Yeah.

Anything you had, companies just put like.com on the back of the name. There's $5 billion of valuation. Right. Pets.com eat toys dot com. Amazon dot com. Right. Salesforce launch at salesforce.com and so chip shot.com golf.com together, we thought would be a multi gazillion dollar business as young 20s entrepreneurs. And we learned that there's adversity and there is kind of markets that don't go up to the right. And what's interesting is we did what we always do with you internalize it, you mourn it. Right. Whether it's a product, whether it's, in this case, a company going bankruptcy, and you just get back on the horse and you start moving forward. And so we went to the West Coast. We went to New York City. We were living in Chicago at the time. We were staying with our co founder in motels and Cass's aunt's apartment. And we got lucky because we actually, even though we were traveling everywhere, we found a venture capitalist named Keith bank in Chicago who was the biggest golf nut we'd ever met. Trying to play all horses. Yeah, yeah. And he's like, I. I love it. Introduce us to a lawyer, Bill Weaver, who happened to be a member of Medina Country Club, which had just hosted the US Open. He got his golf buddies together and, you know, complete stroke of luck. We raised 1.5 million, built that business over five years, and sold it for 25 million to time Warner, you know, a few years later.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's, you know, it's interesting that the resilience piece is so important. You know, you mentioned the. I want to pivot a little bit. I have a belief I'm going to share with you guys. You may or may not have heard this before. One of my core beliefs is that, you know, statistically, like you were saying, entrepreneurs fail. Lack of funding, wrong leadership, wrong product market fit, product market fit, etc. One of my beliefs is I think it's a little bit actually simpler than that. One of the things I've been sharing with folks is I believe it actually comes down to emotions, like emotional control. So. So I, I personally, all my struggles, if I take all the stupid stuff that I did, and I did a lot of it, and, you know, I think, God, I survived most of them, right, to have my own exit kind of thing later on, actually, in 2023. And one of the things I learned was, for me, it was either ignorance, arrogance, impatience, insecurity, or fear. And I feel like as an entrepreneur, we have to battle those continually on a regular basis to have that, to kind of really develop the sense of resilience. And I'm curious to know from your perspective, how you. How you saw that in your own business. And then, you know, do you think my belief is more structurally true and. And that kind of stuff as we're trying to help entrepreneurs who obviously, all of them have great aspirations, you know, and they're willing to take the risk. They're willing to build something for nothing. I'm always telling entrepreneurs all the time is the one thing we all share in common, is we all think we should be further ahead than we actually are. None of us are. We're not able to be present, like, in the moment, like, continually, you know, so I'm curious to hear your thoughts.

So I definitely agree. I think Mike would as well. And I think what you said about the emotions is the big key takeaway here, because as entrepreneurs, you tell yourself a lot of stories, and some of those stories are what you need. You have to sell the vision, right? You have to sell the vision to investors, to customers, to employees. And so you have to sell something that might not even be made right. So. But the problem is, then you also start to tell yourself stories when things aren't going well, or when you're not getting the correct number of customers on board, or when employees, you're having a tough time hiring them, or you're having an even tougher time retaining them. And that's where your emotions definitely come into play. And then let's talk about pivots. That is all fear based. When someone doesn't do a pivot in a company, it's because their own ego gets in the way. Like you talk about it, you just said the five different emotions. It's fear, uncertainty, ego. You name it and you hold on to it. You have arguments with it, but you don't do something because of those emotions. So we couldn't agree more.

Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I was just thinking about it a little bit. The one of my. I think I've shared this publicly before, but one of my biggest aha moments was I was. This is probably seven or eight years ago. @ that time, we had built. I don't know, we were probably a 40 or $50 million company at the time. I remember all my years blur together, as you can imagine. And I was sitting at. I was sitting at the table, and I realized that everybody sitting at the table, you know, had CPA and all these different acronyms behind their name. And here I was, I didn't graduate high school, forced to drop out, build a business from scratch, literally from a trash pile, as began building, building, building. And then I. It dawned on me that I was actually shooting down a lot of times a lot of the insights at the. At the boardroom table as the quote, unquote, founder and CEO. And that's where I learned the insecurity piece. I was like, I'm shooting them down because I'm still feeling like I have to prove my.

Value.

Yeah. And I'm curious from the boardroom perspective, obviously, you guys have. You guys have dealt with large teams and things of that nature. What do you guys do strategically, from a culture perspective, to both continue to grow as people and human beings, as well as develop really solid rockstar teams, because people are people, and we all bring all of us to work every.

Day. Yeah. I always said that.

You know, when employees were having issues, it wasn't about the work, it was about them. They were getting in the way. Wouldn't you agree.

Mike? Yeah. I think we all, inside us are our biggest strengths and our biggest weaknesses. And entrepreneurs love to focus on the strengths. Banks and it's hard for us sometimes to be self aware. It takes a certain level of ego to fail in public. When you're starting a company, you're basically selling tickets to investors to watch you fail. And if you're marketing, if you're getting out there, if the brand is known, then you basically have the potential to fail. And I remember, you know, even we sold Buddy Media to Salesforce for, you know, a lot of money. For us, it was a lot of.

Money. For anybody, it's a lot of money.

Mike. Yeah. And. And even, like a few days before, I'm just convinced we're going out of business. Right. And we'd reach 50 million in annual recurring revenue in three years and hundreds of employees and offices in Singapore and, you know, nine out of the top 10 global marketers using us. And I'm motivated not by making tons of money, but the fear of failure. Right. Because we raised 100 million and I'm like, oh, if this doesn't work out, I am the biggest fraud in New York City, and.

Shame on me. You had 100 million bucks and you couldn't figure it out. Right. And so what you're talking about with the board is a lot of the most important things at a company are uncertain. And, you know, frankly, the entrepreneur, the founder, spends 23 hours a day on their business. A board member spends maybe two a week.

Right?

Yeah. And so a lot of founders are very easily persuaded to do stuff because there's this massive uncertainty that'll never go.

Away.

Yeah. And that uncertainty creates fear and doubt. And when you hear something from someone who seems more successful, it's easy to say, well, I did it, but, you know, it was their idea, but it made sense at the.

Time.

Yeah. And so what we've always done is, you know, act in a way that, like, uncertainty is our friend. It's not something to.

Fear.

Yeah. And uncertainty brings opportunity. And the best entrepreneurs learn to embrace uncertainty because it's never going away. And the fear and the doubt and everything else that you spoke about and thrive inside it, and they end up doing it. And part of what the book is about is how do you do that at work, but also how do you develop a mindset outside of work that lets you build the life you.

Want? Yeah, yeah, No, I think that's so good because I think again.

When I think of shoveling the pooh, so to speak.

I'm thinking I literally. It's funny, as I was going through the chapters and thank you guys for sending your pre release copy. I'm excited. June 3rd's the day. Excited. Super excited for you guys. Our audience Will have to pick it up for sure. One of the things that really struck out was I began reliving some of my own memories of some of my own stuff.

Of building my own businesses and the realness. And, you know, a lot of the struggles that I ran into were either related to my. Myself as a leader. So that's one pillar. The processes and systems not being duplicatable or replicatable or scalable and dysfunctions with teams. And one of the things I've been adamant about recently is you can't scale dysfunction, because if you try to scale dysfunction, it just becomes more dysfunction, becomes harder to manage, more fires to put out, more things to struggle with. And so when I first got a chance to get into the book a little bit, and obviously everybody likes to celebrate the success online, right? That's what everybody likes to celebrate. And one of the things that I thought was so unique that we all. That the three of us share in common, is this humble nature to want to celebrate the sacrifice. And I think that's a very beautiful thing, because I don't feel like a lot of entrepreneurs do that. I know that when I. It's funny, I. They're all been dating now for a little while. She. We were having a conversation. She said, you know, what did you do and how'd you celebrate when you sold your company? And I was like, I didn't. And she's like, that's. Yeah. And she was like, what? That's a major accomplishment. So I'm curious to know, did you guys run into some of those things as.

Well? Yeah, I think that, you know, as an entrepreneur, you're kind of programmed to.

Suffer.

Right. You know, and it's. I find that, you know, I run across a lot of entrepreneurs who are either ex athletes who know how to just train and do the reps, or military or whatever, where you have, like, massive discipline and endurance for.

Suffering.

Yeah. And so when we had that big win of our last company, and, you know, we had this big party and Mike walked out, and everyone in our company was, like, cheering, and it was. It was a celebration. And then we got back into the taxi, and we're like, okay, who's got to take which kid to school and which kid has, like, a checkup? And we just kind of kept going. Right. You know, life. Life moves.

On. Yeah. Well, and I think that's a good. So one of the things I heard you guys say on one of the videos I watched you guys on is the importance of celebrating the wins, the small wins, the big Ones. And that resonate with me because I just had this experience two or three weeks ago where I got asked this question and I was like, I didn't. And I'm curious to know, did you, Are you. Have you guys been able to put together a little bit of a practice internally where you guys can acknowledge and celebrate the wins and look.

Like. Yes. I mean, you know, hindsight is everything, right. So one of the things we did very, very well as leaders is celebrate our employees and all of the different little milestones because that's part of the glue that keeps them together. You can't just keep pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing. And one of the things we didn't do is celebrate our wins. Right? We, we always kind of gave it back to people as opposed to us. And over the last 15 years, we've taken better care at pausing, reflecting, and actually celebrating. Like I've started. I have a list for Mike. I don't know if you know this Mike, but on Saturday we're going to talk about how we're going to celebrate the book being out. And I found dates where we can actually do something right that's non book related. So it's very.

Important. Why do we have to wait? Why can't we just.

Talk?

We use it as a teaching.

Tool. Yeah, I had no idea that's what we're doing.

Saturday. Exactly. But like, those are the kind of things that you have to put into practice just as well as whatever else is a priority for you as an entrepreneur. And that might be a relationship with a significant other, it might be your health, it might be meditating. I don't care what it is. You have to put it on the.

Calendar. Yeah. Yeah. That's so.

Good. If it, if it's not on there, it's not going to.

Happen. Yeah, that's so good. I was, I was curious to know, obviously. So the good news about you guys from what, from outside looking in and everything that I've read and seen is your, is your leadership styles compliment each other. One's, you know, super gifted at operations, another's gifted at supervisionary stuff. How do you find the, the bridge between communication? Because there is a lot of husband and wife couples building, just couples in general building businesses and trying to navigate life and, and like, you know, you know, trying to stay engaged in a marriage at the same time is also building a business. And you bring you got complexities of business that may or may not impact you at home. And I'm, I'm curious to know from each of you how how does each of you see the dance? Because it is a bit of a dance, at least for.

Me. You know, for everyone. And. And frankly, for all co founders, even if you're not married to your co founder, this is a really important thing. It's not that unusual for couples to start businesses. Five million businesses started, you know, last year. Close to 20% are started by families started by couples. Think about your local restaurants and laundromats and the businesses that you know. Typically, you'll know both members. Right. There may be someone working at the front of the restaurant, and the other spouse is the cook. It may be an accounting firm. You know, a lot of law firms. You know, we've met the smaller firms. And so, you know, for us at least, it's all like any relationship. It's all about communication. And so you need to be over communicating, and you need to be doing very different things. Yeah. Where we get in trouble, and it's why the book was so hard to write at first, is when we're doing the exact same.

Thing.

Mm. So if you are starting a business with a spouse, a friend, and you do the same thing, it's really hard if you can cover a lot more ground, if you can over communicate, and if you can build trust over.

Time.

Yeah. Meaning trust that if you say you're gonna do this, you will do.

It.

Yeah. Like, and I will tell you, it's crazy to me how many people say they'll do stuff and it doesn't get done. So just do what you say you're going to do, and you beat 90% of the people. And so for us, we're very different. My leadership style is much more vision based, and here's where we're going and storytelling, and Cass is much more. I got my hand on the steering wheel. No better operator. We're going to run efficiently. If you want to do the best work of your life, I'll make sure you're in the right position at all times. Here's a path for you to grow as a partner of ours, as an employee.

And it works. You need the visionary and the operator. You need the locker room speech and the coach on the sideline who is calling the plays and making sure the right personnel is on the field at the right.

Time. Yeah. Yeah. Cass, I'm curious about your thoughts.

Too.

I mean, I. I think Mike nailed it on that one. You know, when we look at founders and we think about, like, what is the success like? One of the ingredients is definitely having a partnership that can delegate expertise and Move very quickly. And you can't do that if you're micromanaging each other. And that's just been a recipe for disaster. And we've seen it a lot and we just said it before that one of the reasons why companies fail is you either run out of money or you start fighting internally and you disagree and you can't move forward. So it's essential. And Mike and I have figured out, I mean, I said this the other day to him like he's VP of religion. Right. And you know, I'm he. You know, we divide and conquer things and we trust that they're going to get done. And I think when you can have that implicit trust. And we really did that well with our leadership team too. We were very selective about who we brought in to those meetings in that circle and they were all very distinct skill sets. We all listened. I'm not saying we all agreed, but we were able to make decisions and then know each.

Other.

Each. Every other person was going to get it.

Done.

Yeah. And so there was going to be progress each.

Week.

Yeah. And when you have like this like micromanagement of, of skill sets and no, I think it should go this way. Or like two engineers, two product people running a company, you really do just get.

Constipation.

I, I love all the references to.

Poop. That's.

Funny. Yeah. I guess I have two spin off questions and my heart is understanding the difficulty of creating something from nothing and then developing leadership along the way, developing tactical strategy along. There's a lot. It's the highest and probably lowest paid college degree you'll ever get. Right. Honestly curious on the relationship side of things. This could be for co workers as much as it is for a relationship like a marital relationship or co founders. The word relationship.

Repair.

Right. So when things go wrong, the ability to repair or that what I would say when you have the greatest disconnect and miscommunication. It seems like when expectations aren't met on either side or there's some kind of dynamic that's at play that is more, you know, sub. I find it to be more subconscious, like lasered in more than anything else. What are some techniques to do that? Because I've Obviously I've had VPs and, and COOs and stuff that I've conflicted with. You know, we didn't get. We got it on the moment. And I've had some people that are super really mature and that as a result we can repair quickly. I've had other people who are including myself at Times, just to be quite honest, who were less mature and made it more difficult to repair at times. So I want to hit the relationship repair and then maybe come back to some.

Metrics. Yeah. So what we always brought, we, I, I basically came with this thing like there's a kitchen table, right? And if you grew up in your family of origin, you'd sit down and when there was an issue, right? You'd sit down, you'd talk to your parents, you talk to your sibling and you try to repair it. So we did that at all of our companies when there were issues, we made it known there was never going to be a time where I was feeling that two people had like, were passively, aggressively, like saying little snide comments. I would immediately stop the meeting and be like, you're being, you know, you're being unkind here. You're, you know what's really going on. You can't do that. You have to bring it in. And those who actually, like you said, have the maturity to pause, self reflect and then move forward, even if the pace of maturity is slow, those are the ones that actually survive the company. And the scaling, it's the ones that literally get so defensive that you learn a data point as a leader that they are not going to be able to.

Scale. Yeah. Mike, what are you.

Thinking? Yeah, I mean, it's a really good question and frankly I think it's part of like your life's work, like looking at what you've been doing and how you hit rock bottom personally becoming your turning point. I think many times in relationships you have to hit rock bottom in order to have it grow. And it's a question that hits home to me because at our most successful time in a company, Cass brought in a woman named Tammy Jersey to do a 360 review of me. And what came back was, God awful. I wasn't present. The way I was leading wasn't working. I was losing my head during management team meetings. And.

I had to then do what I think everyone should do, which is confront themselves with what are you doing to get in the way of yourself? Right? And I wasn't working out. I wasn't eating great. I was still drinking. I no longer drink. We had offices all over the world. And then it becomes you. Starting as a point of vulnerability.

Taking ownership of the elephant that is now in the room, right? I have been a suboptimal leader. I wouldn't even be suboptimal. I've been an awful leader. I haven't been there for You, I've been communicating, I've been taxing you emotionally. And here's what I'm going to do about it. I want you to be brutally honest. You know, anytime you see this behavior, and it wasn't abusive behavior, it was just not the way leaders should act. Being short, not listening. And I think rebuilding relationships is all about kind of one brick at a time. And the other thing that I think we've gotten really good at is.

Prioritizing relationships that matter. So if you are working with your spouse or not, if that relationship is important, be proactive in how you build it, how you nurture it, how you grow it. Right. So a lot of the we call the cheat codes in the book are actually not about business, it's about your life. Right. Like we schedule date night. We did it way back when every Wednesday and Saturday night. If we didn't, we would have been fully consumed by the business and.

Kids.

Yeah. We needed to step away. We've now recommended that to all of our entrepreneurs. We've invested in about a hundred of them. And we get texts all the time saying, hey, I'm on date night. It's Wednesday night. This is what we're doing. Right? Yeah. And so anything that's important, schedule time for put on your plate. It could be everything from health, working out to cooking. So if you want to eat healthy, you know, a lot of times we'll cook on Sunday. For the first half of the week it could be, I want to see a movie because that clears my head. It could be music. I go to see a lot of music and it starts with you. If your house isn't clear, no one's will be that you interact with. You know, you'll bring your dirt into other people's houses and then it's, how can you nurture these relationships? Not just spouse, but friends and family and other people.

And you know, I've. We're friends a lot of entrepreneurs, some have become billionaires. And there are a lot of entrepreneurs who have made a lot of money, who are living a life they don't think is worth.

Living. Uh huh.

Yeah. And that is sad and something that we never.

Wanted. Yeah, yeah. It's so interesting. I want to dig in here for just a couple more minutes if that's right. So I would tell you publicly and I would probably tell them what the audience publicly either. At my highest level of quote unquote wealth, I could come and do as I wanted, all that kind of stuff. I was at my, my.

Emptiest.

Exactly. I Was. I was empty, you know, so it's. Was now it's been about when I'm communicating to audience. I'm like, this is all the dumb stuff that I did. It's okay that you feel this way in this moment, and you can work your way out of this. And this kind of brings me back to a little bit of.

Kind of what Mike just shared, in that I had this moment where I had an awareness moment, like he was talking about where I went to the team. A good buddy of mine, Chris Licardo, he's obviously good friends with Rory and some other. Some of our mutual friends, said, hey, dude, I dare you to go to your team and say, how am I feeling you as a leader? And sit down with them. And I did. And I didn't like the feedback that came out because at least for me, I was like, I'm trying, and this is my subconscious, right? I'm doing everything. I know what to do. I'm trying as hard as I can try. And now that I hear Mike say that, it brings that back up to, like, maybe bring up a little. A little bit more conversation around it, because that was the catalyst behind eight months. So much so that eight months later, I'm standing up in front of 600 people talking to Dave Ramsey at the time saying, dude, I'm doing everything. I'm done. Like, I've. I'm working on me. I'm reading the books. I'm doing the podcast. Like, I'm. I'm going down the. I'm going down the cheat sheet. Like, I'm doing it all right Kind of thing. And he's. And I'll never forget.

This. He.

Said. He said, stephen, you're. You are doing everything. You subscribed. I can see. I can watch the tears well up in your eyes. I can see you're serious. I know you've got team members in the room, your executive team, because I had brought some of my executive team in the room. He said, and you're standing up in front of them right now about to, you know, you're very emotional. Like, emotional in a. An authentic way. And he said. He said, you got to give yourself some grace. He said, it's going to take time for behavior, Behavior patterns to be seen consistently before trust is built. And based on a story that Mike just shared, I'm curious from both your perspectives, how that changed your business. Cause that allowed my business to scale, right? Me going through that. That process, which is a very not fun process.

Right. I think, you know, one of the things that I always have done in all companies is be my authentic self. And that might mean I'm wearing sweats. I am not dressing up. It might mean that my face, you know, I have no poker face, as Mike knows. So it means that whatever I'm feeling that day, literally, people can see it. And what I realize over time, and I think leaders forget, is how you act, what you say, what your face says impacts other people because they're nervous. Right. Most people are fear based and they're worried about their livelihood and you have to get into their headspace. So what we started to practice, both of us, is let's just say an important meeting was happening. Let's just say it was investors and we had just closed a big deal and now there's more investors that happen to be famous that everyone knows are walking through our office. When people would start to whisper, I'd just turn around and say, hey, guys, I just wanted to let you know so you don't worry about this. Investors are here and we're talking to them and they're like, well, why are you talking to me? Is everything okay? Like, we just closed that deal. Yeah. You always make relationships and you turn those moments of fear into teaching moments where you can relieve some of the pressure and fear inside of other people. And it's hard and it took a lot of practice. And I will say the phrase it took a lot of reps, and I think that's what you were just saying, Stephen, is that it takes multiple times in a row for people to say, oh, wait, I can relax because this person has my back and they're not hiding.

Anything. Hey, guys, I hope you're enjoying the show. Steven Scoggins here. I've got something that I think is I'm going to blow your mind. Imagine taking your life and your business to the whole nother level. I'm talking about eight figure level and beyond. You see, you've been working your butt off to build your business where it is now. But what if you could work smarter, free up more time, make more money and impact along the way? How much would that be worth to you? You see, I can prove that basic steps, basic mindset shifts and subtle changes can make the biggest difference. I want to introduce you to the eight figure mindset Makeover. It's absolutely free and it's here for you. It's a powerful summary of my top strategies that help propel me from the streets, if you will, to upwards of nine figures in quote, unquote, success. As we like to chase it. This is more than just tips, though. It's a complete mindset overhaul with simple hacks that you can apply today to begin working on your unprecedented heights in your own business. I would like the honor to share these types of things with you that turn my dreams into reality so you can experience the same type of joy and freedom that I now get to live out in my own day. In other words, it's time for you to build your own unstoppable enterprise. And if you're really ready to take it to the next level and elevate your life and your business, this is an absolute game changer for you. So if you want to take advantage of this free resource, simply go to the show. Notes can click the link or you can go to steven scoggins.com backslash8figure. That's steven scoggins.com Backslash8figure. Until then, much love. God bless. Let's get back to the show. Take care. I don't know about you guys, but one of the difficulties that I faced about midway through my business journey, which is about the time I had the cat. I call it a catastrophic awakening rather than a catastrophic leadership piece. It was an awakening of sorts because I was, I was doing as much as I could and as best as I could. Right. I was. We had a. At the time, we had a great relationship in the. Our reputation marketplace. We were making money, all things were good, but the team didn't know is I was in my closet praying like, lord, I don't know what I'm doing, please help me, that kind of thing, you know, And I was, I was doing podcasts, reading books, but nowhere near how hungry I was after the fact. And it dawned on me that I don't think entrepreneurs allow themselves the grace to grow, not realizing that it is a bit of a journey because, and this is what I, I think I ran into this one once or twice in with team members in times past where some team members that I ran into didn't seem to want to let go, let go of, you know, past experiences and past things. And even though you're evolving and you're changing and you're growing and all this kind of stuff, there's. It's almost like there's an inner wounding of their own that they're working.

Through.

Correct. I'm curious to know how you guys dealt with.

That. Yeah, we got that a lot. And again, I go back to the employees that were able to scale and really take on even leadership positions. You know, the best leaders out there can grow more quickly from data. Right. And that data tends to be bad most of the time. Right. And so you've gotta be, you know, it's rare that someone's gonna be like, you're the best all the time, so how can they take that? And my theory is most people, like, I always look at when you were, you know, you're in, like, elementary school and you get those report cards that are all narrative, Right. They're all written like, you know, Cass has a tough time not interrupting. Right. So that's going to carry with you your whole life. And you're going to hear people saying the same thing over and over again. And it's your job, whether it's your personal life or your professional life, to try to address it. And we always gave, you know, employees an opportunity to address it at the workplace in hopes that it would spill over into their personal life, because that's where growth happens. And. And in a lot of ways, there was an incentive for it to happen. Like when you think about, like, promotions and incentives such as, you know, financial incentives, it became a safer space to actually break it.

Down.

Yeah. Talk about it. But part of being a leader is therapy to people to try to get them out of their own.

Way. Yeah, Yeah. I mean, it compounds the growth for sure. You know, I was, I was just sitting here also thinking about, you know, it's funny again, when I. When I actually get on interviews and stuff with actual entrepreneurs that have fought the battle and fought the good fight, they. They. There's a. There's an understand. An underlying understand. In fact, I've told my. My community, but many times, I can look an entrepreneur in the eye and know they're an entrepreneur favor. Tell me what they do. They just. There's just a look in their eyes and it's a. It's a battle. It's a grind. It's a fight. Like there's a, you know, there, There does become a tipping point. Like, I share with you guys a little bit off air of, of going from warrior to warrior in the garden someday, but for a long time, you're a. You're a warrior. And, you know, the rebounding that it takes to build team members and cultures and stuff like that, I think is important because I know that was. Business was easy. When I had four people, five people, we were having lunch together every day. Everybody knew the vision. We could, we.

Could. Everyone felt.

Connected.

Right. They knew.

Everything. Exactly. And then the dysfunction started happening. When we got probably over 50 and upwards of 400 team. Like it was a lot. It was a lot of people.

Management.

Right. And you know, I had. I knew one of the. One of the things that I heard all the time is you're. I also heard like Mike did he, like, he mentioned vulnerably, which I'm super grateful for. I was disconnected, but the person I was disconnected from and you know, was. Was in the administration team. And I'm trying to focus with, you know, developing leaders in the leadership team. So. And I was like, I always felt like, am I not doing enough? And I found myself accidentally chasing worth and then I would cave self abandon that would actually intensify the problem and not rectify the problem. So I'm curious, Mike, what you have to say. And then Cass, is you as well on kind of that theology and what your experience has.

Been. Yes. So in order to do these companies, there is a amount of grit, tenacity, toughness, and just emotional fortitude that is necessary. If you don't have it, you will collapse. Like the idea that you're not gonna be able to meet payroll or that you can't get customers to sign up, or you now have 125% tariffs on your kind of incoming products. Whatever it is. Every day there's stuff that happens. And what you, I think, have to do to grow as a leader is basically practice vulnerability, which sounds weird, right? Like, how do you practice it? It's not like a skill that you go to the vulnerability driving range and you just hit like vulnerability balls, right? No, but as. Especially for men, right. Who could think that being vulnerable makes people makes me look either less masculine or less of a leader? What I realize is that when you lead from a vulnerable position, it opens up questions like, I don't have the answer for you. Let's figure it out together, right? I don't know is an answer versus just like talking and making it up. And ultimately the best leaders, which is what you're talking about, don't just lead with grit, they lead with heart. And sometimes that heart is based in faith. I think yours is based in like both faith and redemption. Right. This idea that like you. And it's this, you know, and it's based on this idea of like the beginner's mind, which is pregnant with the growth mindset. Right. Like babies grow. Yeah. So if you come to it and what the biggest issue is that as leaders become more successful as entrepreneurs, you know, make money, the natural reaction is to say, I'm a genius.

Right.

In reality, take the credit away and then take the responsibility on. That's what I.

Yeah. And in reality, I think the way to think about it is that, you know, I hired some good people who made me look good. We built a great team. We got a little lucky in these three areas. Like the market took off or whatever it is, and the hard work paid off after all these.

Years.

Yeah. Right. But it's very easy to think that, like, oh, like, you know, I'm. Because you started it as this like, warrior. Yeah, like I did it. I'm Braveheart. Right. But it's never one person. It's like it's the.

Team. Yeah. You can't, you can't build anything without a, without a scalable team. I have found that it seems like there is, like, if I had like, for example, my specific skill set is I am definitely more of a visionary than not. Which is interesting that you and I had very similar backstories. I'm wondering how much of that's tied to being a visionary. But I'm also curious to know. Kind of like, you know, when you, when you, when you break things down and you're talking about vulnerability. I know one of the things that I struggle with, with was I went, I did a massive pendulum swing. I went from not being vulnerable at all to being super vulnerable and then have taken. It's taken years to kind of get in a bit of a swinging middle. So I can cultivate that team because, you know, I might have five different integrators I could hire or COOs or Director of operations, that kind of thing. But only maybe one or two of them may actually fit with myself and the team culture and things of that nature. So I'm curious to know about the pendulum swing. If you had the same thing happen to you and if so, how do we, how do we help? Especially, I mean, I'm not, I'm a man, so I'm speaking for myself. I have, I had a really hard time being vulnerable because I wasn't sure what vulnerability meant. Do I overshare? Do I under share like that kind of.

Thing? So the reason that you went through that is because you're a dude and all of us start in a position of we're not vulnerable, we're not self aware. And I think it comes from this like, kind of normalization complex of school sports, like how we're grown up. Right. Like.

We don't talk about these traits until you get into the real world. And typically a partner, you know, girlfriend, boyfriend.

Will point out something that you're doing that you're like, oh, yeah, you're right. Like, and Cass and I. The great thing about having a partner like Cass is she is very. Let's just say she's not passive aggressive. I don't think she's aggressive, but I know where I stand. And so if I'm not, if I'm being short with someone, if I'm not being present, if I'm not kind of being the leader that either of us want, she tells me, which has helped me a lot. I find that these skills come easier to great women who are entrepreneurs. Like, they. There's an empathy and vulnerability that I can't explain. That's.

There.

Yeah. Which I appreciate and love.

Yeah. Nine times out of 10, I would. I definitely agree with you. I think there's a level of self awareness. I think, I think self awareness for men is taught. And because I'm not a female cast. So if you need to get on me, get on.

Me. But no, I agree. I agree. I mean, I think, you know, both of you have said some really amazing.

Points and reflected upon, you know, it's definitely societal pressure too. Like, society definitely does not allow for young boys to show emotions still, which is kind of sad. And name it, right? Like, we have so many friends, kids who happen to be male that can't name what a feeling is. Right. And if you're, if you're so far disconnected from that, how would you ever be able to lead with empathy? How would you ever be able to pause and see what someone else is going through? So it is hard. I don't know. You know, maybe it is a nature thing with women, but we're also scrutinized quite a bit. And I think that also makes us very self aware, Right. Because we're constantly scrutinizing ourselves because society does the same to us. Not to be too, too deep into this.

But. No, that's, no, that's a great. I mean, look, we're talking to real entrepreneurs with this, with this video, right? And if we don't, if we're not, if, if none of us bring the real. They're not, they're not getting. So, yeah, I think the days of the, the guru stuff is long waiting. And now I think, yeah, those that hear people that have actually been through the, the muck and shovel the poo, like all the stuff that we've been talking, which is why I wanted to really dig into what it's really like to shovel the poo. I mean, that's, you know, and I don't know. I think We've, we've touched on a lot of really good stuff already, which is awesome. Let me, I'm gonna switch it up a little bit and talk about scalability because a lot of entrepreneurs get stuck below the seven figure ceiling and top line revenue have a really hard time breaking through that or if they get to the seven figure ceiling, they, they stay in the low seven figures and have a hard time going to eight. So that's all to like operations to me. Scalability is kind of built into that. Curious to know what you guys saw as pillar points in the thresholds that allowed you to scale to, you know, high eight figures, then obviously exit and do really well in nine figures. All that stuff. Like what were the different mindset shifts that you guys faced? The structure.

Shifts. So yeah, we've, we didn't know this at the time. We've gone back and we've really thought a lot about this. And you know, I think it comes down to a few things. One is when you start a company, a lot of it is gut feel, you know, is there going to be a market? You know, I know this industry. I think this is the problem. You talk to customers, you know, and this doesn't matter if you're like running a pizza shop or a tech company. Right. Like you don't know how many people are going to come in and like your pizza when you.

Start.

Yeah. And what happens is your job is to go from gut to everything you can measure. And when I say that, it requires, I think, the biggest cheat code that we talk about, which is focus. So how we focus individually, how we focus an organization is a big part of the book because what you focus on is directly related. It's the input to what happens, the outcome of your business. And to start, it's like, I just need a product, I need to make the pizza. Or if you're an accountant, you have to like, you know, say, here's why to work with me. And then you need to sell it. Eventually you have customers and you have to identify what are the top three or four things that I have to do to reach my vision. And if your vision is being eight figures and you're seven figures.

You really need to dive into what's, what's it going to take? How many people do you need? What resources? Do I have enough resources. And typically we like scaling. Only when you're busting at the seams. Right. So a lot of entrepreneurs like, in order to scale, I need to raise money and then hire people. No, in order to scale you need tons of customers, and you literally can't keep up with what customers want.

Right?

Yeah. And if you focus on the right things that you think will help you reach that goal at every stage, your first goal may be, I want to be a $10 million accounting firm. Okay. What do you need to do to get there? You reach that, then it's like, I want to be a.

Hundred.

Yeah. Okay. Well, that's a whole different set of things to focus.

On. Ain't that the.

Truth? And so that's how we think about scale. Scale is the byproduct of what you focus on and how successful you are with your customers. It's not an end in and of itself in terms of, like, we're just going to scale. Like, okay, yeah, great, we all want to.

Scale. And there's a second point there. So, like, Mike's ability to focus is just, like, epic. Right. What are the very specific things that we need to do to actually get what you want done, whatever that big goal is? And the second part is, obviously, your most valuable resource is your.

Team.

Right. So when you start to scale, you're going to find out pretty quickly if you've put people in the wrong.

Position.

Yes. And it's going to hit you in the face. And you're going to really, really hope that there's some savior recruiter out there that can help you find the perfect people, when really the answer's inside. And you got to start shuffling the deck and seeing where people best fit and also really looking at what is a manager. And can you identify people who've done both jobs, they've done their work, and they're the glue and the leadership on the team that's trying to get something done. So we call that Moneyballing. Like, everyone needs to start to Moneyball. When you start to have so many customers and you're bursting at the seams, the answer isn't just, oh, we're going to hire more people. Right. It's actually pause, look at the teams and.

Reshuffle. I couldn't agree with you more. In fact, that's been one of the things I have coached some of my. Some of the executives of a couple of the businesses that I have strategic investments in. Is a lot of times I think entrepreneurs get lost in. We have more problems, we gotta hire more people. And I'm like, no, that's how you balloon. That's how you balloon your overhead really.

Fast.

Right. Let's. Let's to your point. Let. Let's take a step back. Let's see, is every role being done with a hundred percent efficiency or as close to that as possible, or peak efficiency. And if you get to the end of that cycle and you're like, yes, every role is being done with excellence. Okay. And you're busting at the seams. Okay, now let's strategically budget the hiring in a timeframe for you to allow for an extended time to hire people. So I learned the hard way not. Not to just hire because they're breathing. Like, actually, like, have a process. So I hire slow fire, fast mentor often. It's kind of my concept. And I. And that was so real for me because I also. There was a study done. I wish I had it like a quote it real fast. And I know we're getting close on time, but it basically said that from the time you go from zero to $1 million, you'll keep. You can keep about 90% of your team intact. One to ten, you keep about 70% or 80% of your team intact. You get over $10 million, and by the time you get close to the high eight or high eight figures, you might have 2% of your team still there. Which that was really, really hard for me because I had people that I loved on the tech.

Platform. That's the hard.

Part. Love them as humans, but they. It just wasn't getting.

Done. Yeah, you're gonna have to get rid of the people that have been oftentimes the cultural anchor and the glue in the company. That's the hard part when scale comes. And as a leader, you've got to make those hard.

Decisions. Yeah. I was also thinking too, when that same thing. It's like.

One of the greatest. One of the greatest struggles I had in building a scalable team was gossip.

I just really saw the look in your face. Oh, yes, gossip. I mean, because gossip is. It's so corrosive. And I don't know, I think to this day I probably. I let go. I think I let go six people as a result of gossip. In the 25 years I was in business for that company.

I think five of which I actually later became friends with, maybe four of which, like, late after the fact, they went and done some growing and moved on. Yeah. It's funny, when I let somebody go, historically, what would happen is, is we got where we were, could do it in a very kind way, but when they would go, they would go find something better, and the person that came in behind them did.

Better. Right. So gossip is really hard. It. It breaks the foundation of a company and I did the same thing. If I heard people even, like, mean girling. I'm not just saying, like, I'm using that concept. It was like there were guys that were doing this too. I'd fire them on the spot. Like, we don't put up with this. And the gossip, honestly, it can really be tackled head on if you just are transparent and share information. And we're radically transparent. You tell you the good, the bad, and the ugly so that there are no.

Surprises. Yeah, Mike, what. What are your. What's your two cents there? I'm just.

Curious. Yeah, no, listen, I agree with everything and that you say, and the stronger the culture, the more advocates you have. And so Cass always said the first four letters of culture. Culture. And you know, what we saw was that 75% of our hires came from referrals. We paid our employees to refer their best friends. People want to work with people they like and who they think can do the job right. They don't want to work with underperformers. And if you build a culture where they know the values, you're much better off of having people all over the company. We had hundreds of employees, right? We have like 500 employees. You're not gonna be able to touch everyone. But having leaders to say, hey, this is. If you wanna work here, this is what it means. We're not a family, we're a company. But here's how we treat people. If you have a problem, you bring it to the attention of your team, the manager. You speak your truth, but what we don't put up with is not supporting each other. You know, any corrosive gossip, you know, any. We used to call it any cancer within the organization you had to rip out. And so we had a much, you know, harder time with, you know, it was a very tight group. And at a certain point, when new people came in, we call buddies. Yeah, we need to make it sure. We need to make sure that they could find their people right away. Yeah, right. Because if. If you have a friendship or two at the company, you're more likely to stay. Which is why recruiting friends that are employees was also.

Helpful. You know, it's really funny is the company that I built, we did the same thing. We, almost all of our best team members did not come from headhunters or indeed ads. And not saying we didn't use that. We didn't find some success, because we did. But almost every time it was a referral, it was somebody, hey, I know. I know a guy that could fit this role. I know, I know a woman who could, who could do this role and almost every time and they fit culture wise. And it's funny, the culture fit was the most difficult one to find when hiring for, you know, using some of the services. I know we're running short on time, but I just, I can't thank you guys enough for this. I think one of the final questions I have for you guys specifically is obviously your team. Please have your team send us whatever links we need to make sure we can get this out to the biggest.

Audience. Thank.

You. Or pre sell because you guys are amazing. You've done the hard work, you really have shoveled the poo. And the fact that you guys are bringing this to the market means a lot to me as someone who's trying to be authentic and vulnerable with my own journey and like calling my own self out.

Why did you write the book? I mean, obviously you wrote it together, so why did you write it and who is it.

For?

I'll give the first answer. We wrote the book because we spent the last 50 years earning things ourselves. So earning our reputation, earning our rewards, working hard, all of that kind of stuff. And now we want the next 50 years to be about impact. And over the last 15, we, we, we work with so many different entrepreneurs, like a hundred plus we've invested in and literally five to ten calls a week of just trying to help people. So we wanted to write this book to put down all the cheat codes and there's 50 plus in there so that other entrepreneurs can really try not to step in it. Right. They can learn from all of our failures and mistakes. And then, Mike, you answer who it's.

For.

Yeah, so it's for really entrepreneurs and anyone who wants to perform at the highest level. What we've realized is some of the early discussions of people who are just, you know, senior executives who, you know, learned a lot about how to launch products, how to pivot companies. Yeah, you know how to do that stuff. And at the end of the day, we thought that we had all these lessons that we Learned over this 30 years overnight success story. Right. Like you look at Instagram and it looks like it just happened, but this is 30 years and we were saying the same thing over and over again. And so our next 50 years is, how do you help individuals and organizations really reach their full potential by being fearless, operating within this uncertain world. And you know, personally, we will be empty nesters in the fall. And the people we're meeting in this journey, we think are new friends who we will work with for the next 50 years. And so we have a beginner's mind. We love to suffer. And if you love to suffer, write a book and then try to sell it. Full of.

Suffering. Oh my gosh. In some crazy ways, that's actually really true. One final question. Now you guys have to get out of here. And I, again, I thank you guys so much. And guys, I'm telling you right now, I've had a chance to get a pre release copy of the book. It is phenomenal. It's one of the best authentic entrepreneur books I have seen in probably a.

Decade. So for what it's worth, that means a lot from.

You. Thank you very much. I mean, but the, but it's true. Clearly you guys are very, very vulnerable in the manuscript. I, you know, I, the. As soon as I got into even the forward by Gary and then got into the first chapter, I'm like, I'm gonna love this. And I started diving in deeper and I was like, every entrepreneur, every entrepreneur that's actually trying to build a business needs to read the.

Book. Thank.

You. And then also take part in, you know, staying connected with you guys as well, with us as well. But if there's one final question I would ask, I would, I would ask this. How important or how. How do you balance the need to.

Make an impact.

By but also make an income? Because I feel like a lot of entrepreneurs struggle with that. I know I do. It's like, I know I, I know I need to make an income to fund my operations. At the same time, if I could do it, I just give it all.

Away. Right. Right. I'll let Mike take it. I know he's got the.

Answer. Yeah. And are you talking about overall with their business or with kind of making an.

Impact?

Yeah. I think it's a.

Book. It's.

Collective.

Right. Cause some businesses overflow and make an impact in different ways, whereas it might be the team actually makes an.

Impact. Yeah. So we, we fully believe. And it's why we sold the Salesforce versus the other offers. Like we had a hundred million dollars more from Google. I think I'm allowed to share that now. We're a few years later. And the reason is Marc Benioff really invented this integrated philanthropy model where the 1, 11 model, 1% of profits, 1% of people sign, 1% of, you know, the revenue going into this nonprofit to fund all this good stuff and buddy media use cycle for survival to really, which is, you know, we've raised over 400 million to fund cancer research as a way to glue the company. And so we agree, we think that doing well, doing good, getting impact in the business is great. On the other hand, if you have a successful business and you are fortunate enough and lucky enough to see a huge outcome, it is your moral responsibility to make an impact, to give back. And anyone who has read the Bible or the Torah or any. You know that God wants you to be rich. But there's a caveat in order to do the work that makes the world better. And it could be your community, could be the larger world if you have the resources. But I think the best, we live in the best country in the world. Like, hands down, we reward entrepreneurs. You can start companies, go bankrupt, and it's not a scarlet letter for the rest of your life like it is in other.

Countries.

Yeah. If you benefit from this country and create wealth, you have a moral obligation, not just because it's good for business, to give back. And we feel very strongly about.

That. Yeah, man. I could talk to you guys all day and hopefully, at least in my eyes, we become new friends. So, yes.

Definitely. First of.

Many. Anytime you guys ever need anything, I'm here for you guys. Thank you guys so much for joining us on the show. Where can everybody find out more about you.

Guys? And you can go to Amazon.com and order the book and if you want to find out more about us, just go tocast and.

Mike.Com. love it. Awesome, guys. Thank you so much. I know you have busy days. Have to get back to it. You guys are again welcome in my home.

Anytime. Thank you. Appreciate.

It. All right, take care, guys. I hope you liked that video. And if you did, make sure you check out this next video right here. I think we have really good intentions and I think at the at the heart of man is sort of this selfishness and desire to oppose the hard work and oppose the transformation and life change and.