How to Succeed as an Entrepreneur When the Odds Are Against You

I am classically guilty of someone who I come in on Monday because I read a book over the weekend, and I'm super excited to tell everybody about the book that I read. Or I just went to a trade show and I got all these ideas, and now I want to do 10 things that are different. News flash. That doesn't work. And you're driving everybody nuts. You can't just turn on a dime and say, I'm super inspired by this experience, fling the book at someone and be like, you'd be super. You know, that just. It's terrible. Terrible. I did that for years, and it was a disaster. So instead, my solution to this is.

I love your passion for entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs in general. It's funny, you send you. As an entrepreneur myself, one of the things you develop really quickly after you've weathered a bunch of storms and you've been through some stuff is this. This sincere desire to go back and help other entrepreneurs really prepare their mindset, their skill set more than anything else. And one of the things that you and I share is a couple of our business creations were. Were started out of necessity, but having to kind of make things, make something happen with nothing and like, literally start from zero and kind of go from there. I want to start from there with a little bit of the story that you have there, because I want to tap into some of the emotional qualities that entrepreneurs will face at different times. Because it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when from what I've kind of kind of broken down. So maybe share a little bit about that story, if you don't mind. Yeah.

So, you know, I think a lot of entrepreneurs have these tales of, you know, back against the wall, and that's. That's where mine started. So I. I was born and raised in Detroit, went to school on the east coast, and then found myself in Silicon valley in the 90s. And I was there for the wild ride, you know, with the venture capital group and a consulting firm and then a startup.

I.

And then the ride came to an end, you know, abruptly in 2000, about the middle of 2000, or actually early 2001. And. And I just. It was necessity. And. And so I was super excited to start a software company, but there was zero venture capital, There was zero investment. It was referred to later as the dot com nuclear winter. And. And so I even went to friends and family, and they were like, oh, thumbs down, absolutely not. Like, there's no way I'm investing right now. But the prophetic piece of advice I got was my father said, you know, you were a really good consultant. Why don't you go back to doing that? And I said that's a terrible idea. And then the phone rang and it was my first customer.

And I was like, well, I guess I'm in the consulting business again. So that temporary business lasted for 20 years. And so yeah, we've morphed it and changed it and grown it. But yeah, that's where it all began was there I had my first employee the week of 9, 11.

And so yeah, it continued from there to grow. But there is something to be said about starting an adversity and when you do that, I think that it just leaves, you know, focused on, on, on the details. I, I always like Ben Horitz's book the Hard Thing about Hard Things. And what he says is, you know, really great CEO knows when to look at the big picture and to be growth minded and positive. And then they also know when to shrink in and get, you know, completely granular and find those micro details and, and make sure that you get the details right. And, and I think that is the balance because you can't be one and you can't be the other. You have to be both.

Yeah. You know, I think what I also think is interesting and, and on that point too is.

Seasoned entrepreneurs actually understand that things happen in a bit of a season. Right. I say that to say that a lot of times, early stage guys or gals so to speak, or just entrepreneurs in general, let's say they have a run of five or six or seven years of business success. You know, when you start having a run of success for any length of time longer than 12 months, I think you can get a false sense of security. Right. You can, you can kind of like believe it's never that we're always, we're on an upward trajectory. It's always going to be there. And you know, and, and covet is example, the 2008 downturns an example. There's always different environmental.

Economic environments that can, can give us a lot of problems and challenges. And it seems to me that it's actually in those times where you mentioned like shrinking back down or kind of scaling back up a lot of times during those, the, what I call the harvest season, it's easy to get sloppy, it's easy not to watch your cost. It's easy to think the revenue is going to come in this direction. It's not, it's easy not to maybe let go of the team member that honestly probably needs to be let go of and replaced. It's easy. It's easier not to do the things that you need to do. But yet when you have a downturn, when you have a cycle, a down cycle or something like that, it seems like it's, you know, the, to your point, great entrepreneurs will face the emotional turmoil, if you will, of pushing into the adversity to kind of like find those solutions. You know, I'm curious to know from your perspective, what types of emotional hurdles did you face as you were kind of restructuring, rebuilding, kind of regrinding and really kind of like leaning into that. That I would call the rebirth phase.

You know, there's been a couple of times where that's happened to me. And I think the biggest emotional hurdle is, is, is the humility factor. Right? I mean, it's especially hard to go from, oh, wow, you know, we're, we're doing great, we're profitable, everything's going well. I must be good at this because we, let's face it, we all start with a massive insecurity that says, I can't believe I'm really doing this. I can't believe I'm really doing this. Okay, I'm doing this. You know, and then, and then, you know, so you have some success, you get some validation. You're feeling like that doubt is starting to go away, and then you're right, complacency sets in. Because, you know, I mean, as human beings, it's easy to not go to the gym. It's easy to eat pizza instead of celery. It's easy. I mean, there are a bunch of things we know we're supposed to do and we don't do them. And guess what? All of those things get magnified as an entrepreneur. And so it's, you're right. It's easy to avoid the confrontation with the difficult employee or to not do the thing about firing the brilliant jerk who really should go because they're killing the culture, even though they're a great performer. Right. And, and, and on and on and on. And so, yeah, sooner or later you wake up and look in the mirror and, and you know, it's. It's January, people are going through New Year's resolutions and realizing how fat we've all become. And, and, and the same thing happens in business. You know, your business can get fat and, and the market has a really funny way of, of fixing that problem for you or at least alerting you to the problem. Right? So, yeah, and so, yeah, I think the emotions are the determination has to come from the humility of recognizing that, that you, you know, you aren't as good as you think. And to me, in 2008, when, you know, the financial crisis hit, I lost all of my customers in one week. I had been serving all these really cool Silicon Valley startups and helping them with their software agile development processes and implementing these cool software to help them organized requirements. And in one week, it was determined that it was not necessary. And yeah, we rolled a zero for November of 2008, and the one and only time I've ever had to do layoffs. And then the hardest thing I ever did was I had to call business partners and just say, like, I'm going to be going out of business in a month. If I can't find something, is there anything that you could help me find? And that, that was really hard to do, but that saved the company. And, you know, and we, we had some business partners who said, yeah, sure, you know, especially Oracle, who's a big partner of ours at Motive, and they said, yeah, we've got customers for you. We can help you out. Here you go. And I had six new customers by the end of that week and, and we were back in business, you know, so, yeah, it can be tough.

Yeah, no, I, I love that. And a couple things from that, just that one little, that one snippet of story there. But I think it's important. I think.

Again, I think all entrepreneurs at some time, our nature are going to go through a season where there's a difficult challenge of some kind. Right? And I think now's the time to prepare for that season. Maybe you're, maybe you're walking in that season right now. Maybe you're coming out of that season right now. Maybe you, you can't see that season on the horizon. But at the end of the day, you're, you're also really leaning into this concept of kind of hearing these stories from yourself, myself, other entrepreneurs we've had on the channel and then podcast to help them understand that now's the time to prepare for some of that stuff. Right? And in your example, a couple of takeaways that I really like are, first of all, you had to get radically honest with where you're at. Radically honest. Like, okay, guys, this is where we're at. This is what we're going on. And I think there's also an expression of vulnerability of being able to go to your team and be able to say, we're rolling a zero, guys, we're, we're, you Know, we've got to, we got to pivot, we gotta, we gotta move, we gotta, we gotta figure something out. I'm on it. I'm working on it. And I also think there's this element of humility, right? The humility is what saved the company. Not the, not the burying your head in the sand as an ostrich, not the pushing it off till tomorrow. And a lot of the companies that I've seen that go, that go out of business, they don't do those three things or they don't do a handful of those three things. And as a result, you know, they find themselves in a challenging situation where they can't get themselves out of. So was that instinctive for you? Was that, did you have some coaching? How did you kind of find that grounding?

Well, you know, to your point about, you know, now's the time to prepare, while things aren't bad for a time when they could be. You know, I had this really amazing experience happen to me right before that downturn in 2008, and that is I joined the Entrepreneurs organization. And.

One of the things that they do in Entrepreneurs organization is they develop confidentiality and trust really quickly. So you get into a confidential setting. And I had this problem where I had a business partner and I was having a very, very divisive, bitter conflict with that business partner back then. And what was interesting is I sat down with a coach who was just another entrepreneur, not some special guru who from another planet, like just another entrepreneur. And as I started talking to him and about the problem and started to unpack my emotions, my frustration, my anger, what I realized is at the end of the day, he netted out and he's like, so wait a minute. So this whole thing that we've been talking about is really about like, what, six grand? And I was like, yeah. And he's like, that's it. And I, and I felt like kind of an idiot at the end of that, but I also felt liberated because I was like, yeah, at the end of the day we're. I'm really frustrated about something that's probably a $6,000 added expense. And once I was able to shrink that down, what I realized from the story was that this was all about what was in my head. It was all about my obstructions to otherwise a fairly straightforward business problem that that could be solved once you unpacked and got rid of the emotions. And I think that is the key is that, you know, more than getting a big capital reserve or getting those long term contracts with Customers or other things. Getting a peer group that can help you clear your head when you have problems is the most valuable thing I think an entrepreneur can do. So that when the emotions start coming in from the, the frustration, the disappointment, the inferiority complex, whatever the issue is, yeah, there's a trusted group of people that you can talk to and clear that stuff out with and that, that gets people, I think, through the tough times.

Dude, that's, that's such good advice. Because I was just thinking to myself, you know, because again, I'm, I'm a, I've been a, been business, started businesses and all kinds of stuff for, gosh, almost 30 years now. And before I exited, the big one was the one that always had, you know, the most because we had the most people, so we had the most problems, you know, just in general because, you know, people bring their stuff to work with them, including me. Right. So, yeah, you know, one of the things that I, that I did, I'd say probably the, for the first 15 years is if I had an emotional turmoil going on because I didn't, because I didn't have the peer group or someone like a group I could really lean on, I would either do one of two things. Either I would try to bury the emotion and not deal with it, which comes out in a form of all kinds of like weird behaviors and actions and choices and whatever, and impulsivity is basically what it is, or I would let the emotion come up, but the emotion would always come up at the wrong time. Right. And again leads to impulsivity, bad decision making, so on and so forth. You know, one of the things that I've been working on with a new book and stuff that's coming out later in the year is this, this, this, this term called the integrated entrepreneurs, right? How do you actually get to the place where you can make great decisions and do the right thing and do, and, and be data driven, break things down and stuff like that. Until you do what I think is a safe thing to do, which you can't necessarily do it with your leadership team or something like that as the entrepreneur, like there's a certain level of what you can share vulnerability that should be shared. But with a peer group, you can say, hey, I feel like this, you know, I'm, I'm experiencing this. This is what I'm, I guess what I'm saying is it seems like the peer group can help you actually process the emotion so you can get to the intellectual data driven decision making that you need to do. Would you say that's accurate.

You know, I had a really painful discovery that I still, I hate to admit, which is the day someone explained to me that the mind makes decisions based on emotion and not logic. I, I hated that idea. I hate that about my very own brain, right. That, that it's an emotional tool, not an intellectual tool. And I struggled with it for a while and my first, you know, idea when, when bad things would happen is I would, I would try to suppress it. Right, yeah. And that, to your point. Yeah. Turned out to that eye twitching and drinking was, was how that, you know, kind of came back to me. And it turns out that doesn't actually make for better decision making either. So, so what I found is that yes, you have to admit, and actually it's what we do at motive, it has a lot to do with customer experience. And the same fact is people, including ourselves, including me, make decisions based on emotion. And so if you don't have an outlet for those emotions, if you can't admit that, and then process and identify and label and then sort them out and get them under control before you move to decisions, you can get to a place where you can make analytical, data driven decisions that are not just justified by your emotions, but it's not quick. You know, it takes time and, and, and everybody wants to do things quick. And so the quickest way I have found to do that is to have that peer group where I can, I can deal with those emotions and then make my clear decision, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm so glad you spent some time with me sharing some of these insights because again, I'm, you know, when we, when we do the show, we're always trying to help entrepreneurs understand how not to build just more than their business also build themselves. Right. And anytime I have a seasoned entrepreneur on the channel who's, who's, who's done some things, been through some things and stuff like that. I love picking the brain and the experience is kind of see what falls out because that's gold. Right. Most entrepreneurs, in fact, the big. One of the biggest problems I've seen with entrepreneurs is this the sense of isolation. They isolate themselves away from peer groups, away from people that can really help them. And therefore they feel like they're on an island trying to fight battles all, all on their own. So I'm going to move it, move into the kind of like your one additional sphere of genius of yours, which is this concept of customer experience. Right. I'm a big believer. I was, I was coaching a business that not that long ago that's starting a health and wellness company.

Specifically in the, in the biohacking space. And, you know, they were saying, well, you know, we've got competitor A down the street. You know, they're, they're, you know, they're backed by, you know, a large investment firm, and they've got, and they also have a personality that's kind of heading it up. And, you know, so how are we going to combat it? And my take to them was, well, when someone comes through your doors, make sure that you give them experience they don't want to turn away from. Right? So talk to me a little about that motive and how you guys develop the customer experience and kind of what you guys are looking for.

So everybody thinks customer experience is this like squishy thing, right? Like maybe I'm like, the airline can bring you a little bit better cup of coffee, and that's customer experience.

Wrong.

That's not customer experience. Customer experience is revenue optimization. That's what customer experience is. And so let's go back to what we were talking about earlier. The human mind makes decisions based on emotion. But one of the decisions we all want our customers to make is buy from me, Buy from the other guy. Buy from me. Right. And how do we get that to happen? Well, you know, some people call it brand loyalty, but all brand loyalty is, is an emotional bond between a person and a company. Right. And it's a decision that I am going to do business with this group because I like them. And at the end of the day, all the data driven analysis flies out the window. And people ultimately make those decisions, especially when it's easy, especially when you're close. You can still price for more, but you've got to be, of course, in the ballpark before you know, but, but that's what revenue optimization is. And customer experience is the scientific application of emotional bond building so that people buy from you. That's what it is. And when that happens, you get lifetime value to go up. And, you know, I think that's another thing that people feel uncomfortable talking about is what is customer lifetime value? And I'll give you a simple example that gets super complicated, right? Let's say I have a hot dog stand and, and you know, you come by. I know you don't look like a guy who eats hot dogs, but let's say you come by once a week.

I don't mind eating hot dogs occasionally.

All right, all right, cool. So you come by and you eat a hot dog at my stand, right? It's Two bucks. What's the customer lifetime value of Steven at my hot dog stand? Is it two bucks?

Well, it's going to be two bucks if I, if I don't create an experience, it makes me want to buy more.

Right, right. So, but if I can, you know, tell you a joke and you know, we have a little rapport and I'm down the street from your office and you know, maybe I can turn you into someone who comes by for a hot dog once a week.

Yeah.

Well, now it's $2 times 50 weeks. Now you're $100 per year lifetime value. And if you stick around at that job for three years now, you just telling you a joke at the hot dog stand turns you from a $2 customer to a $300 customer. That is the difference. And we are all running businesses that are a little bit more sophisticated than hot dog stand, but the same thing applies. And so one thing that we do at Motive is we really try to break down revenue and look at revenue in three buckets. Right? There is, there is one time revenue, there is transaction recurring revenue. Yeah. And then there's reoccurring revenue. And people get confused about the three of those things. Right. So one time's, you know, probably the easiest to understand. I come in, I buy something, I leave. Right. You know, if I'm hiring someone to paint a, paint a mural in my house, how many murals am I ever going to need one? So like that's it, you know, like one time transaction.

Right.

But, but recurring revenue is subscription stuff. Right. So I know, I think you recently had the CEO of Netflix on Beautiful, you know, recurring revenue business where they just, they subs, everybody subscribes and as long as you're not canceling and they watch that cancellation rate, they can predict that revenue beautifully. And then the third is reoccurring, which is like Uber. Right. So I don't have a subscription to Uber. I, you know, I use an Uber, but I, I'm pretty much, you know, going to use Uber two, three, four times a week, month, depending on if I'm traveling or whatnot. And so understanding your revenue and trying to flip away from one time and more towards recurring and reoccurring is where everybody needs to go because that moves customer lifetime value and you get there if you make that emotional bond and you really bring that experience. So it all ties together. But it's the hardest hitting science in business I think is, is revenue optimization, which is customer experience.

I don't know if the probably a.

Longer question than you want?

No, it's per, no, it's perfect because I don't know if the audiences realize the gold you just dropped. And here's, and here's why I say that.

We work with a lot of entrepreneurs that you know are essentially either getting started or they've get, they've built a five or six figure business. Meaning there's, there's, they're very early stage in the grand scheme of things. Right. And one of the first things we teach them to go from six to seven figures is basically what you just dropped. Because a five figure to six figure entrepreneur, they're just doing transactions. They're not thinking about how to make, how to make John or Sally or Bobby or Beth like become like a partner in like coming back to that business repeatedly.

Right.

They're not thinking in terms of lifetime value. They're not taking, thinking, thinking in terms of reoccurring revenue. You know the only other revenue model that we recommend in conjunction with that is what we call what is what we refer to as the margin maker. Right. So it's the, it's the thing that's a high ticket offer. They might, they may buy it three times a year. Right. So it, but and I guess in the grand scheme of things is like what you just expressed can take a business from five to seven figures very, very quickly if it's done with excellence. So in with that in mind, what are maybe the first three steps? If you're an entrepreneur, you're five or six figures and you want to cross the seven figure threshold and into the eight figure later on. What is the first two or three things you're going to do to increase that lifetime value? I mean how are you, what are you going to do to look at the business?

Well, let's, let's use a hypothetical example that people could then adapt to them themselves. So let's go back to the mural maker. Right?

Y.

So if you're, if you're a person who paints murals in people's homes, you're, you're not running a multi billion dollar business unless your murals are, are, you know, bought by the rich and famous. You know, you're, you're, you know, you're charging for it. So most people look at that and go well that's a terrible business. That's one time revenue. Well, is it because if you went to Walmart and said hey, what if I created a program where I started painting murals on the sides of all of your Walmarts and you know, maybe you could get contracts with Walmart and then Target and Costco and all of a sudden that's a much bigger business. Right. But then there comes. So problem number one is you have to look at a business's quality of revenue and say, is this one time or is it recurring or is it reoccurring and, and turn that, turn that around. The second thing though is that mural maker who's, if, let's say they get the contract with Walmart, right, guess what? They're not painting every mural. And so now the second challenge is identity. Because, you know, I think in the E myth they said, you know, a baker who moves into business no longer is a baker. They are a seller of baked goods.

Yeah.

And a mural maker who gets a contract with Walmart is no longer a mural maker. They are a seller of murals. Right. And so letting go and creating all of the systems that go along with that scalability becomes the new challenge once you do that. And it's amazing how much resistance there is mentally to that. I had that problem. I love customer experience. I love working with clients. I love rolling up my sleeves and getting in there and helping customers out. But you know what, that doesn't make for a very scalable business. If you're in there with every customer doing everything, you have to be a seller of customer experience solutions. And that took me a longer time. In my 30s, I had a hard time letting go, creating the systems, making sure the quality was right and standing back and letting other people do the day to day innovation. I was the classic mural maker. I loved making the murals. And you have to get through that piece of identity. So the second piece is identity and then the third piece that comes along with it is then you got to start looking for the quality systems. Right? Because in a world of customer experience, quality is what drives value. Right. And so quality can be interpreted a lot of different ways. But you know, if you, if you were the mural maker and you're hiring people to go paint murals at Walmart, that you better be able to find good people who can paint, you know, and, and, and simplify that process till it's, it's there. So, so that's the third thing. So it's, people are looking for a 1, 2, 3 formula. To me, it's its quality of revenue, it's identity and then it's systems. And if those three things come together, then you, you've got yourself a start of revenue optimization and customer experience.

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 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 stevenscoggins.com backslash8 figure that's Steven scoggins.com backslash 8 figure. Until then, much love. God bless. Let's get back to the show. Take care. It's funny, most entrepreneurs don't think in terms of duplication, right? So because they don't think in terms of duplication and replication, they can't scale and you just gave them a framework for it. I do, I love it. Thank you so much for that. Sure. You know, at the other end of the day, I think the other thing that make can make or break a scalable enterprise or business is the team that you put together and the culture in which they operate in. You know, as someone who's built a really a great business and obviously has, has, you know, been vulnerable with your team at times when needed, leading your team when needed. I think you're, I think I've heard you say already that you're already at the stage now where a lot of the day to day operations can happen, you know, by the team and, and now you're, now your skill sets used for specific things, which is mine as well. I'm curious to know, how did you build your culture? What, what did you find? What did you found it on or how was it founded? Like how did you basically what do you see that works in a company culture that can drive scalability and profitability?

You know, there are a couple of things that I think are, are at the foundation. And, and if they're, but they're, they're simple. But yet simple doesn't mean easy. And, and one of the, the basic ones. Let's just start with core values, right? Everybody, everybody has core values implicit or explicit. And the problem is, is that it's really hard to get core values right because we can all say like honesty, courage, integrity. Well, guess what, you know, somebody once said in a company where they were rolling out the new core values, he's like, why don't they just pick. We don't all kill puppies with axes because we all believe in that too. Like it's arbitrary, right? So when you pick things as your core values that are just kind of fundamental good quality characteristics, you haven't given anybody any kind of decision making capability. You haven't taken a stand. And so to me, core values become core values when they're controversial and, and, and they don't even, I'm not talking like political controversial, I'm just talking like not everyone's going to agree with this. Like for example, the genius of this was my sister. She's a business owner too. And she, she started a company and her belief was authors deserve a bigger cut of their, of, of what they make on a book. That was her core value. That was one of her core values. And I was like, and she had a much pithier way of saying it, but it was kind of like author revenue optimization or equity or whatever. But that's not. Everybody agrees with that, right? But that was a core value that guides her business and it was part of the guiding belief. And that was the moment where I was like, aha. It's not just about quality statements, it's about taking a stand. And when you do that, your business takes a stand and you attract people that want to make that stand. And now core values mean something and they're a mission. And they're not just like a Franklin Covey poster of people rowing about teamwork, you know, out on. And that's, you know, that I think is one of the things that starts a culture is, is really being able to take a stand.

From there. I think that the, you know, the, the, the next step that I, I found is a good culture comes out of real honesty. And one of the best things that I ever did was I got some coaching that said, hey, before you have negative feedback for one of your employees, you should talk to everyone who reports to you about what your negative feedback process is going to look like. Which in hindsight, I'm like, oh my gosh, that seems so obvious. But I never did it. So every time I get a new direct report, I'm like, hey, it's going to come up sooner or later. I'm going to have some negative feedback for you. Here's how we're going to handle it. I'm going to send you a slack message. It's going to have the negative feedback in it, then we're going to talk about it, and then it's going to, you know, and just like what the process is so everybody knows it made it so that I, as the business leader, as their supervisor, feel more comfortable giving negative feedback. And, you know, one of the things that I think really, really kills a culture is when people don't give negative feedback and they wait for the performance review and then they just unload at the performance review and just dump all that. And then, and what's the reaction of every person who gets that?

Why didn't you feel blitzed? For sure. They're going to feel like, where does this come from? 1, which means now you, now there's a betrayal of trust, it seems.

Yeah, but, but when you, it turns out that actually giving negative feedback can be morale raising if you do it consistently and you do it right and you do it without emotion. And you know, and it's in a way that people expect. And then people are like, hey, thanks for telling me. I'm going to fix it. And then the bond gets stronger. And so I found that between those two things, that, to me, is where the core value of culture starts. And then the last thing that I do is a mantra that we say over and over again. In fact, every time we open up our executive meeting, we start with the mantra and again comes from Ben Horowitz's Hard Things. The Hard Things. And it's take care of your people, your clients, your profits, in that order. And as long as we put those three things together, I found that they all get served. And, and, you know, and then that ultimately turns into something that people trust. Yeah, and, and that's really the underlying thing that you need more than anything in a culture is you need the assumption of your employees to be trust and not they're here to screw me. You know, and if you can do that, then, then, you know, you've, you've got the. The founding. Founding piece. But that's it.

I'm glad you said that because I think those are brilliant. The other thing too is like I. With all the organizations that I've either you know, created and exited from or now created or working through creation, I. I've always used. I. I changed the word employee a long time ago to team. Team member. Right? Because I've. I found that there was a disconnect when I would, When I would tell somebody they were to, you know, when you hire them as an employee, right? So they come in the door, they're an employee. There was a disconnect of how much they bought into the vision, the mission or whatever, versus hey, guys, here's our mission, here's our vision, here's where we're headed. Here's our values. This is what we really stand for. I call it the embodiment of core values, which is what you just brilliantly described is like really being the thing that you say you're being. The way we bring those people in. We say we're a team, we work together, we win together, we lose together, which is taking care of the people. But when I was thinking through that, one of the things that can really make a team become a dysfunctional team or employee base. Becoming a dysfunctional employee base piggybacks on the negative feedback loop a little bit, in that it's conflict resolution. A lot of leaders are scared to have the conversations on the conflict side of things. As a result, I find that a lot of companies get handcuffed by people who are great, have a great skill set, maybe they're leading a department, they're great at the skill, but they haven't really done a lot of leadership development. So because they haven't done a lot of leadership development there, you know, this conflict comes up, this neg. Even if you have a process of negative feedback, which I love by the way, I actually jotted it down, negative feedback loop. So I want to take that and put it my own business. But when that comes up, it's like, who's going to make the. Who's going to have the conversation? How's the conversation going to happen? How are we going to encourage the leaders to have the conversation? You know, because I'm a big believer that when you have those conversations, while they're tough, everybody should leave with a clear sense of what needs to happen and when, and nobody should feel personally attacked. So I'm curious to know maybe just what are some skills that you use in having those difficult conversations?

You know, I have found that there. First, you can overdo it for sure, right? Just because you have a process doesn't mean you now have the ability to just unload on people because you know you can overdo it. But the, the best tool that I have for this is something called Start, Stop, Continue, which is, hey, listen, we. Your performance isn't where it needs to be, right? And so let's, let's see if we can fix it. There's one thing I'd like you to start doing, and if you just doing this one thing, I think it's going to improve. So start doing this and then it's got to be specific. Now there is one thing I've noticed that you're doing that really need to stop. So let's stop doing this other thing. So stop doing one thing. Start doing one thing and you know what you're doing. That's awesome. Keep continuing to do this other thing because that you're doing really well. Start, stop, continue. I will tell you, Start, Stop, Continue is great for marriages. It's great for partner meetings. It's great for feedback. It's also, I've actually asked for feedback from my team for me, and people are very reticent to give a supervisor feedback. Let's just face it. But if you say, hey, let's do Start, Stop, Continue together, why don't you give me a Start, stop, continue. Now people start to realize it's a powerful tool and you can usually uncover something. And so Start, Stop, Continue becomes something that gets used all over the place.

I found that the other thing about Start, Stop, Continue is if you just limit yourself to one of each, you can't really overwhelm somebody with that, you know, and, and so maybe you need to have five Start, stop, continues to get somebody where they need to be. But you know, do them once a week, once a month, once or whatever. And, and you know, you'll, you'll get there. You know, you just gotta be patient, man.

That's so, that is so good. I've never heard that before. So I love that I probably have to rip it and start using our own business as well. I also had me thinking, you know, they have something called a PIP in a lot of organizations, a performance improvement plan or something like that. I think a performance improvement plan. Right. So it's a business loves acronyms. I just had a realization that you could actually do a PIP on a week in and week out basis. But you can, you can sit a team member down and say, hey, there's a few things I wanted, we want to address this week. We're going to focus on this. Start, stop, continue. Next week. We focus. Like if it's a, if it's a big issue, kind of. I was, I don't know, I just, I love, I love that framework. I really do. That's, that's amazing.

For sure. I do too. And, you know, the thing about PIPs that I've always encouraged my executive teams to work on is, you know, don't do a PIP unless you really want to save someone. You know, a PIP should be a gesture of love. It should not be a gesture of like, this is just the formality before we fire you. And I think too many companies do a PIP just so they can say, we tried. And to me, once you start doing things like that, you've broken the sincerity, you've broken the trust. And going back to what we said about culture, your culture's now on its way out. So I have done the harder thing most of the time, which is when it's PIP time for somebody who I know, I'm like, this isn't happening. Just walk them out the door, don't put them through that. But when it's somebody that you really believe in and you think they're trying and they just aren't quite there, but maybe with a little bit of tlc, they could get there. Sure. PIP them. And then now pips are actually seen as a positive. And. But yeah, I think. Yeah, and then you can. Yeah, I think that's a great idea. In fact, I've never done that. So I'm going to take that idea, which is, you know, start a PIP and then put a start, stop, continue each week or, you know, whatever, until you, you've got them, you know, working on all their assets.

This is why a peer group works. Well, Exactly.

Yeah. All right, man. Are we hanging out?

Yeah, I want to pivot a little bit. You know, businesses. And going back to that, the, the earlier part of the show where we're talking about seasons, a lot of times businesses struggle with season. They struggle with the fact that I'm a big believer that a business has to continually be open minded to innovate their marketplace. Right. I don't, you know, I'm a big believer that basically it doesn't matter what business you're in, it's never going to be the same. Right?

They.

While they have not changed the shape of the wheel in thousands of, you know, years, the type of wheel has changed, the type of tire has changed, the types of rims have changed, the type of run flat. Like there's. So there's always an innovation around the corner. And I'm curious to know how you approach innovation and kind of like how that world shapes up to better your business, to always keep you ahead, slightly ahead of your comp or ahead in general of your competition.

So this is something that's come to bite me a bit. Not because I've lacked innovation, but because of over innovating.

I am classically guilty of someone who I come in on Monday because I read a book over the weekend and I'm super excited to tell everybody about the book that I read. Or I just went to a trade show and I got all these ideas and now I want to do 10 things that are different.

And there are a lot of entrepreneurs who fit that bill. I'm sure people who are listening right now are like, yeah, it's me.

Newsflash, that doesn't work. And you're driving everybody nuts. You know, you can't do that. You can't turn. And the bigger the company gets, the more patient you have to be. You can't just turn on a dime and say, I was super inspired by this experience, fling the book at someone and be like, you'd be super. You know, that just. It's terrible. I did that for years and. And it was a disaster. So instead my solution to this is I can come up with, you know, 10 invasions on a dime. In fact, before this call, as I was mentally preparing, I had a moment of stillness and I jotted down like a whole bunch of different ideas, random paper that I had that I'm going to use. But.

For me, it's pairing up with another person who makes the trains run on time in the company who is the opposite of me, not in the sense that they don't have any innovation, but because they're all about when, how, where, what are the details. And. And you know, there's a really good metaphor for this. There's a book called the Traction, the Entrepreneur's Operating System. And they talk about someone who's a visionary versus someone who is a integrator. And that pairing, I think, is the magic pairing for a lot of people. For me, it works because I love to innovate. And then all I do is I bounce my ideas at her and she's, you know, the toughest act in town because she just shoots them all down, right? But that's her job, is to shoot them down and stress test them until we come up with one that's worth doing. And then, you know, what comes out of that funnel at the bottom those we, you know, wind up getting. And if I can convince her, then I can convince everybody. And so she's been my business partner for a long time now and it's, it's been great. And, and that's how we work together.

I love that. And most entrepreneurs don't do that as well. Like the entrepreneurs that really struggle to kind of build a business don't have that. They've, you know, I think a true entrepreneur is, has an idea about every 10 seconds. Right. Early days, you're shooting from the hip, you're just trying to see what sticks and what works. I discovered a. Oh actually I had, I had a, a business coach for a while that turned me on to a guy by the name of Tom Patterson. And Tom Patterson, to give you an idea, he's, he's an older gentleman. I think he may have passed away by now, but he was one of the people that created the ATM machine back in the day. Like he was one of the founders. He's like, he traveled all over the world, did all kinds of cool stuff. Um, he's very gifted in the very faith based young individual and stuff like that. But he created something or I don't know if he claims he created, I just know he used it extensively, which is something called thinking wavelengths. And for those of you who are watching and listening, you can, you can just Google thinking wavelengths. You can take an assessment. We put it in our business and just to discover who are these, who are these people are that essentially have this, this concept of being this integrator role. So the, the concept is this is you go through an analysis of six questions. You rank the six questions, you get a total score, you divide by six and it gives you a score essentially to kind of tell you we're at. And they have this thing called grinders, right? Who are just. All they want to do is the thing. They don't want to do anything but the thing, right? Put a, put a number in Excel spreadsheet, pick up the moan, make a call. They don't want to do anything else. Then they've got minders. Minders can be like, you know, kind of like department heads and stuff like that. Then they have the keepers. And the keepers can do what's called mind the whole store. I mean they, they can lead the departments, they can brainstorm with the visionary, if you will, which are typically finders in the theology and then theorists or conceivers or who are just idea people. Right. If you think about it, there'd be no Apple as amazing as Steve Jobs was known to be and brilliant without a Wozniak. Right. And there'd be no Apple. Apple without a Jobs. Right. So this, and meanwhile they've had, you know, they've had all kinds of, they had. What was the senior designer's name? I forgot his name. But he's not with the company anymore. But the senior designer that designed the original colored imax. Right, right. So he, he would have like all of these different people are super important to a business in doing the thing to get the thing done. I think. To your point though, what I think is important is making sure that that keeper or that integrator, because they're interchangeable in my vernacular, is willing to tell you no. Like they have a, they have a backbone. And, and now the one thing I would say that we, that I try to do in those situations with that integrator and that keeper is I'll say, okay, well here's my idea. Rather than just give me three, three hundred different ways why it won't work once you shoot it all down, please give me six ways to make it work. Because I find that people that can poke the holes and it can also like solve the problems to poke the holes in it to begin with. And then it's just a matter of prioritizing if and when you put that innovation in place.

Yeah, I, you know, I, I think this is a good time to bring up the idea of incentives as well. And to me, a keeper who is incentivized to see the success of the company is always going to be kind of keeping the company's best interests at heart. Right. So if a keeper doesn't have an incentive for the success of the company, then it's just work. Right. And it's like, do you want more work or less work? Well, the incentive is less work. Right. So I think that as much as we all don't want to be coin operated, I think we are to all coin operated. And, and I think that, yeah, that, that, that is a powerful reason because if the keeper says no, it's because ultimately the keeper is convinced that there'll be less incentive to go to say yes, you know, and, and that's really? Where you want the keeper to be.

Yeah.

Then they'll say no at the right time.

Yeah. Before I ask you the last question I wanted for the show, I want to get an idea of where can I find out more about you and Motive and just kind of like, literally kind of like, learn more.

Yeah, I write a lot about customer experience. You can find all of my customer experience articles and subscribe to my newsletter@davidguing.com that's David. And then G, like Gardner, which is my middle name. Davidguing.com Also, motive is@motivecx.com We're a customer experience solution company, does revenue optimization. And. And so either of those places are. Are great ways to find me. You can also find me at LinkedIn. At LinkedIn. Forward slash, in forward slash. Davidguing.

Dude, love it, man. Look here. Here's my question, and this is one of my favorite ones to ask. A lot of times we have guests, they're really well known for doing certain things, and. And they. They can talk all day long about all kinds of cool stuff.

But most times there's something on their heart that they haven't shared. There's some. There's some kind of concept, some kind of something that they're like, man, I want to talk about this, but I have. But typically when I do shows or podcasts or whatever, I talk about this. What is the thing that we haven't talked about today.

That you think entrepreneurs need to be aware of?

You know, the one thing we haven't talked about is something that I am super passionate about. And, you know, at the beginning of the show, we talked about, hey, go find yourself a group of people to get together with. We talked about all these ways to clear your mind. But what we didn't talk about is the entrepreneur's organization. So eo, or the entrepreneur's organization, is for businesses with a million dollars or more in revenue. And it is a place where you can immediately find a peer group that is going to help you get out of your own way and get to success. I have found from that first coaching experience I talked about in 2007, but also through the path of leadership. I remember during the pandemic, I got a call from the president of our Austin chapter, and he said, I want you to join the board. And all of a sudden, my experience became not just about me learning things from eo, but now me providing some of the programming to the EO chapter. And that turned into.

Me meeting all these really amazing people and getting a lot closer to our Guest speakers and all those types of things. I became the president of the chapter. I wound up meeting all the chapter presidents from all over the country. It turns out there's 238 chapters around the world. Heck, I've met the president of South Africa and all sorts of different chapters. And now I have this global network of people that I can talk to. And it's just been an amazing path of leadership. And When I was 18, I went to a talk that Lou Holtz gave. So Lou Holtz, sports commentator now, but he was the coach of Notre Dame's football team at the time. And he came in, he gave this talk and the thing that he said that has stuck with me my whole life is he said, you can never help someone else without helping yourself more. It's impossible. Go ahead, try it. He's like, you won't be able to do it. And that turns out to be absolutely true. And as an entrepreneur who's joined the organization, gotten a tremendous amount of value, gotten out of my own way, cleared, drove my revenue, got my profits up, improved my business, and then started helping other business owners do the same thing. That only made my businesses better. And it was only after I became president of EO that I said, oh, I can do two things at once. Well, once my term ended, I was like, I'm going to start a second company. So now I have another company called Content lion and we're building software and that software is to help everyone share their content with the world. You can find that@contentlion.com and, and that's been amazing. But it's all because of this journey that I've had with entrepreneurs organization and to me, you know, that's the main thing. They have a program for businesses that have as little as $250,000 in revenue so those businesses can join the accelerator. It's a lot less money. You can join, get in and then you know you can grow from there. And yeah, that has been, it's been my life defining, entrepreneurial, game changing thing and it's been awesome for me.

Dude, that's so good and so awesome, man. David, thank you so much for coming on the show, man. I can't wait to do it again. Wish you all kinds of amazing success. I know that the organizations you build are just, are fantastic and just can't thank you enough, brother.

Thanks, Stephen. It's been a pleasure to be here and looking forward to meeting you in a gym in Utah one day.

Let's do it. All right, buddy. Take care.

See you See ya.

I hope you liked that video. And if you did, make sure you check out this next video right here.

The repetitions of affirmations leads to belief. And once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen. Now, I'm not going to tell you who said that.

I'm going to tell you what his affirmation was.

He said this over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. He would say, I am greatest.