How to Close Business Leaks Quickly | The Authors Unite Show - Howard M. Shore

Alright everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Authors Unite show. Today my guest is Howard M. Shore. So welcome to the show, man.

Hey, thank you for having me.

Of course, grateful to have you on. So if you want to start, just, just a little bit about you, a little introduction, and then we'll dive in.

Awesome. So for everyone listening to this right now, I believe that every leader has the ability to achieve more revenue and profits than you ever imagined. And the key is to actually tap into the unlocked potential of the rest of your employees. And I also believe that the key to that is using a proven system. And when you do that, it helps you find more time to do the things that are important to you. It reduces your stress and it accelerates your ability to get those results. And that's essentially what I do.

Okay, so let's, let's go to the back to like all the way to the beginning. So before you, I guess, came across, realized, or learned, or created, whatever words you want to use, these, um, systems to scale and create more profitability, like when you were younger, did you think you would be an entrepreneur? Or like, what, what was in your mind when you were younger?

All right, so first of all, I owned my first business when I was 18. I sold it when I was 21. So early on, I kind of knew I was going to be an entrepreneur. You know, I was one of those guys one of those guys that didn't do very well in school when I was young, had ADD. I had sleep apnea even back then. I used to fall asleep uncontrollably in class. And I just really— to get me to focus and all that wasn't great. So when it was time to go to college, I had grown up in a family of entrepreneurship and my dad was like, listen, we don't go to school. We just go out and build businesses. And so I bought my first business when I was 18. So I knew back then, but if you asked me I'd be doing what I'm doing now, hell no. I would have never thought I was qualified. And then second, it was my experiences along the journey that inspired me to know that there was a better way for business owners. Mm-hmm.

So what was that first business at 18?

So way back when, and this industry doesn't exist anymore, it was typesetting. And then I had a graphic design studio to go along with it. And so that's in the printing industry. And I grew up in the printing industry helping my dad run his business. And so when we moved to Florida, there was an opportunity I grew it 100% every year and then I realized the business was going to die because the industry was disappearing thanks to technology.

Interesting. So, because, you know, as you know, I'm in the publishing industry. So, I think sometimes that word gets interchanged. So, like, we have, like, formatters that on computers they digitally format books so that they're compatible to upload and distribute for ebook and paperback. But I've heard people use the, is it similar typesetting and formatting? Is that a similar thing?

A little bit. So way back when you had stuff scribbled out on pieces of paper, written down, somebody had to type it up, it wasn't even typed. And all of this was to get it ready for the printing press. And the process to go from concept to printing press has changed so dramatically. First of all, all of us have a computer already, so we type our own stuff. Before, you needed somebody to programming it, based on the language. You had different fonts, so you have like thousands of fonts, but you had to know how to program that through a programming language essentially. And then you had digital, and then we eventually had laser. But if you go way, way back when, and I even remember as a kid, we used to have to, we had these racks of all the little letters and all the numbers, and you had to build up the racks, and that's what went into the printing presses. So it's come a long, long way since I was a kid to a point where I could to see, as soon as, by the way, my brother was into computers and he actually used to work for a local rag that used to send out all these coupons and stuff. And also you'd sell your cars on their magazine and stuff. And he would sit in my house when he was 15, 16, I'm the older brother, and he's doing all this stuff for them. And as soon as I saw the personal computer come into our house, I'm like, man, I'm in trouble. No way. If my brother at 16 can do that, then what I do for a living is going to die. So, I better get out and sell while it's growing. And that's what I did. Gotcha.

Okay. So, and then it's probably a lot. So, I don't know, you might not even know the exact number, but from then until now, like how many companies have you ran since then?

Well, so I've owned and founded 6 companies. I've also been in the boardroom of a $20 billion company, $6 billion, actually it was $5 billion at the time I was with them. So, I've been everything from startup all the way up to billions in revenue and help drive those companies. And then, as a coach, I've helped thousands of leaders.

Okay, gotcha. So, what's— each business is obviously different, but like, from like a million-dollar company to a billion-dollar company, what do you see as like— because it's just so different, like what are some of the main differences of how somebody could like, could get all the way to a billion. It just seems like almost not obtainable.

So what happens is, is you're going through, and Vern Harnish uses the term valleys of death as you're going through each stage. So by the way, only 4% of all companies break a million and then only 0.4% of all companies break $10 million. So the odds are really against you to get to the billion dollars of revenue because after that, you know, obviously the numbers shrink. But what happens is you're going, As you're going through the different stages, there's a couple of things that I know to be true. First of all, when you start in the early days, you know, the, and I'll say like $3 million or less, you're basically saying yes to everyone. Anybody who wants to do business with you, yeah, yeah, please, please. Anybody who wants to work with you, you're like, come on, come on, let's go have some fun. It's like yes to everything. And then what you start realizing is yes was killing you. Actually, many of those customers would not make good testimonials when you're at the $10 million and above because they were the wrong customers. They weren't the ones who made the best money. You didn't even know what your true business model and what you were best at. As you figure that out and you start crossing the chasm, you start figuring out that you have to say no probably 10 to 20 times for every yes. And the more often you say no, usually the better you get and the faster you grow and the clearer everything gets. And then with employees, it The employees you have morph over time. Like, one of the things I've seen over time is your starting employees, or, you know, any employee you have at a point in time, can go through two stages. And then usually you outgrow them in the next stage, and either they have a place in your company, but they can't grow in leadership as the company grows because their capacity, skills, experiences don't translate in going from 20 employees to 50 employees to 100 employees to 500 employees to 1,000 employees. Very, very different comp— company. And then the next thing that happens is you also start getting specialists. So when we first start out, as you know, we wear like every freaking hat, and most of those hats God knows we shouldn't be wearing, but we have to. We can't afford the best in the world people like yourself to help us launch our books and stuff like that. So we go on, we dabble, we do it ourselves, we do poorly but good enough to get us to the next stage. But as you start evolving good is not good enough anymore. And to be excellent, you realize we need some functional experts. We need some more leadership team. But the caution I'm going to say, and I think one of the things that hurts most companies is rather than that net profit percentage increasing over time, most companies build way too much bureaucracy. So there's way too many layers between the CEO, the owner, and those frontline people. And when you do that, you start to try destroying profitability. And then what made you great, all of a sudden starts to deteriorate. Hmm.

Okay. So now, cause yeah, from the research that I did, it seems to me a lot of the scaling that you talk about profitability, it comes from like culture and like employee, like employee structure or like the way that you communicate with your employees. So like how, cause that's another thing that's like, not only is the billion dollar number, but like 1,000 employees, like I have trouble like managing like 20 freelancers. So I'm like, and these aren't, you know, they're not employees. They're freelancing, so it's even different. So like 1,000 employees, like, is there a certain way of culturalizing that? That's not a word probably, but like—

Actually, that's pretty good. I like it. I'm gonna coin it. It's actually a great question you're asking. And so one of the things, so there were a few things I learned. So I've been in the Goliaths, like I said, and one of the problems I had in the Goliaths is I noticed that You know, in the smaller companies, man, we use every ounce of a person, every single ounce we can get out of it. No one stays still all day long and everybody has to be in all in all day, right? As you get bigger because of all that bureaucracy, actually, I just heard somebody say something today that I thought was funny is they build these Goliaths so that the people at the top can just play golf all the time. And so they build in all these layers, it destroys all their profit. But what it's done for those senior people is I don't have any work to do. Because I have all these other people to do everything and they build all the layers in. So, so what I found though is the very best companies don't do that. And there's 3 foundations, 3 foundational pieces, I think, to being hyper successful and being able to, to build an extraordinary company. The first part is your cultural system. That is the foundation for everything. And regardless of where you're at, you want to define that, clarify that, and then fertilize that all the way through the growth. And so building culture is real simple when there's just 3 of us and we're all sitting in a room and our desks are all put together. You know, we all know how we're thinking. We all know how to behave. We can all hold each other accountable easily. Gets more complicated when they're independent contractors, but it's still much easier. So what I found is the more people you have, your ability to nurture and develop culture, you really need to systematize that and have process around it so it develops and thrives, right? Otherwise, what will happen and our I remember a number of years ago, I worked with a, you know, they were a billion-dollar company, and it was a client. And I went in there and I saw that their culture happened by accident. You know, when I asked them, I said, "So what are the values of this company? How is it that you would expect everybody to act every day, regardless of who they're touching?" And I got a blank stare. And I very quickly figured out after working with that company, you know, they would not like the flattering definition of how an outsider would define their culture, which was basically mediocrity. You know, good was good enough. And, and all these other things I could say negative things. And in case people go in my background, I don't want to throw them under the bus. But I can tell you, it was pretty negative. They really had not given much thought to it. And then, of course, they were really frustrated in how employees were behaving. But I'm like, you didn't tell anybody, this is how you have to behave. So, so culture systems about how we behave. Culture system's also about why we exist. These things should not change over time, but your products and services will as the world evolves. But your why doesn't. And it's the why and the how that either motivate the best people to want to work with you or they want to stay away from you. And they have so many choices to work, you know, even in your same industry that you got to define and set the stage of why here. So that's what culture does for you. And then the second pillar I would say is team cohesiveness. This. One of my favorite books on the planet is Pad Lencioni's "Five Dysfunctions of a Team." We all have those five dysfunctions to a different degree. And so our job as, as leaders is to make our teams gel, not only the leadership teams, but every team within the organization be able to function at a high, high level. And so that's another pillar. And then the last pillar, and both of these things, by the way, I described to you, are not really done well by many companies. And many companies don't take them seriously. And then the last piece is the area I call human capital management. So people, and I hate the term human resources, because the thing is, is our people are our assets, whether they're third-party vendors, independent contractors, those are still our peeps. And so the thing is, is they're assets, they're not an expense. They're an asset. And this is important because resources we throw away. Assets, we want to find the very, very best ones. We want to grow them. We want to extend their life. And we want to get a return on our assets. And it's a very different way to look at people than the way the traditional company, which just looks at people as these necessary evils. They really don't nurture all of the systems that are required to create excellence in the people area. Those sit around your strategy and your execution. If those are weak, then the center is weak.

Gotcha.

Excuse me.

Yeah, no, that makes sense. So, and, you know, maybe you can't say the name of the company, but I'm curious, like, with all the ones that you've worked with, like, is there a specific one that maybe was your favorite or the most, like, transformational that, like, you know, whether it was doing well from a revenue standpoint that you went in and then, you know, from your consulting, it, like, there was a transformation that, that obviously I'm sure that happens with all of your clients, but is there one that's really like sticking in your mind?

So, so first, if I told you it happened in every client, I'd be so full of crap, everyone should stop listening to me, right? You don't always get, you don't always get awesome results with every single company you work with. And a lot of that, by the way, the foundation is the CEO. So if the CEO doesn't embrace what we talk about or the CEO isn't isn't the right person for the job, you can put whatever systems you want in place, it's going to fail. So, I need to be transparent with the audience. Not everybody gets awesome results. However, a large majority of our clients usually want to double every 3 years. And some of my best case studies have tripled in 3 years when they had stalled right before they hired us. And we found in every one of them, and one I do talk about in the book and he's given me permission, was Titan Restoration. And when we worked worked with them, they had done really well. They were well regarded in their industry. He was your typical CEO. It took him 20 years to get to $7 million of revenue and 3 years later we did $22 million. And by the way, something for everybody in the audience you need to realize is if you look at Apple, if you look at Starbucks, most of these great companies, they were 25-year startups and then they took off. You know, everybody thinks success happens overnight and that's their dream. The traditional most companies, the large, large majority that got large, it took them 25 years before they saw liftoff. So now going back to the key study though, and what I thought was really cool that proves out what I was saying earlier. So when I got into Russ's company, as well as a lot of other companies that we've worked with, we saw that the CEO and a few leaders were working and doing about, causing about 80% of the results. And they were carrying all the stuff on their backs, so they're tugging everybody along, they're pushing them, but they're carrying all the weight. And so Russ knew there was a better way, and that's what inspired me, by the way. The only reason I had been successful, you know, all the way through doing this was I worked 3 times harder than everybody else, and that is not the right way to do it. And I noticed there were other people that worked far less than I did, and they were ascending. In their careers, their companies were ascending. And I'm like, how do we solve this? And so the first wing was culture. The second one was team cohesiveness. And the third was human capital management. So we installed this into Russ's company. And I'll tell you, not only did his revenue triple, his profits were 5 times the industry average. But there's no secret that, and it's no surprise, that their employee engagement score, how engaged people were 100% in, tripled. So there's a direct correlation between tripling how engaged everybody else was, and that's where, you know, when I started all this, we have to unlock the potential of everyone else, right? It's not that we also need to unlock our potential, but you're going to get a lot more done through everyone else. So how do we do that? You do that with cultural team cohesiveness, getting the right people in the right seats doing the right things.

So, okay, so, so let's go to the opposite side. So for the ones that, like, of your clients that did not go as well, like, let's just say a few didn't, then like, what, what, what were they missing? One of those three pillars? Were they just not listening to your advice?

Or like, obviously, I'm sure this one you wouldn't want to name the company, but like, you know, and I just fired one, uh, last month after two months because I'm just like, we're not gonna get anywhere. So let's save ourselves the trouble. I'm going to say the number one problem for all of us is humility. We all have different degrees of humility, and the ones that have the most trouble can't get out of their own way. Their egos are so big that, you know, they know more than everybody else on the planet. And so the guy that I fired was pretty simple. It's like, listen, every time we talk, you know, it's a negotiation of why everything you've been doing in the past was the right way to do it, even though you've You've lost money almost every year. You're in debt up to your eyeballs. Everybody hates working here because we had the data. They did. And their turnover is super high. So, let's keep doing that. And he's like, but every single conversation was like his way was the right way and he just wasn't open. And it's because, and he would make comments, by the way, listen, there's nothing you can teach me that I don't already know. I'm just not doing it. And that should have been a red flag right there, right? Saying that enough times, I'm like, so I'm going to say humility is the number one problem. So we already know what we think we know. What we have to find out is what we don't know that we don't know. And I'll use an analogy. So I happen to be a CPA. You'd never want me to keep your books if it's directionally correct. I'm happy. Not a good accountant. But the reality that I learned is, so you take the CPA exam, to get certified. And when I took it way back in the Stone Age, there were 4 parts, and only 10% of all the people in the US that took it at the same time would pass 1 part. And then to pass all 4, now your odds are pretty low, right? And so now you're talking to the guy, not the best student on the planet. I didn't even think I was going to pass it the first time, and I did. But I actually went back and I had enough presence of mind to say, listen, I was lucky. They can ask this much information. I mean tons of information, and I— they just happen to ask me the questions that I happened to know. I was lucky enough to know what they had on the test at that time, but there was so much more they could have asked me that I probably didn't know the answer to. So thank God I took the test at the right time. It's kind of how I look at it, and that's how we have to look at business. Our success Many times it's not even because of what we think it is, and there's some luck in it. So at the end of the day, our job is to go out and find out what everybody else knows. And then the other key, and this is where I think the, the ones that fail versus the ones that are successful, is they know their job is to find the right questions. I bring tools to find those questions. Once we have the right question, thanks to Google and everything else that's out there, right, there is an answer. But if you work off of the wrong question, solve the wrong problem, everything else out there is crap. And most of our jobs as CEOs has to be market-facing, not internally facing. Sam Walton spent 4 out of 5 days a week shopping stores, talking to employees, shopping his customers. That was 80% of his time. Only 1 day a week did he spend actually running his business. He knew everything he needed to know was out out there. And by gathering that in, the right questions came about, they solved the right problems, and that's how Walmart became a great company.

That's awesome. So I wonder, like, psychologically, I'm sure there is a way, like, to break down somebody like that, because I think it is like we get in our own way. Like, with that one client that you fired, like, it's like, I don't know, I'm just saying, for future, I wonder if there's a way to, like, besides, I guess, you know, smacking them around, like, yo, listen, Because I think a lot of people do that.

Like, well, let's be honest here. There's a lot of highly successful people with huge egos that are doing fine.

Yep, true.

You're not going to change them because there's no— so first of all, we only change when we see a reason to change. We only grow when we see there's a reason to grow. If we don't, we're like, screw that, that's extra effort. And if you're happy with the way you are, there is no way for somebody to help you transform yourself, become a better version yourself. Psychologists will tell you that. Forget about business, you know, to get somebody to change, they have to be in a mindset, in a place to change. And you can use all kinds of tricks you want, but I've met a lot of people, you know, you know, they have no desire at all to be anything different than who they are at that moment. So don't waste your time. What we want to do is find the people that are recognizing that even if they're doing great today, they're still not the best version of themselves. There's so much more out there. If you're a $30 million company, you're still not a $100 million company. If you're a $100 million company, you've still never had a billion. And then look at the Googles of the world and all of that, that grow 20% every year. They're still evolving. And those companies are so different. Those leaders are so different. The ones that didn't have to sell out early because they couldn't take it to the next level, realize, and many of them have a coach.

So, let's talk a little bit of rituals. I'm taking a guess here. I feel like you have like some good morning rituals, nightly. Tell me if I'm wrong. I might be, but like, what's your typical like morning look like?

All right. So, I'm going to be transparent to everybody and I do have rituals. I'm as effed up as everybody else. All right? And I go on my rituals and I fall off my rituals. When I fall off my rituals, I'm miserable. I'm difficult to be with. I'm not as clear-headed. So I found rituals help me. So one thing is I have exercised and I've actually been weight training since I was 13. So I even have a gym here in the house. I actually work out with a trainer pre-COVID and, and I believe in regular exercise is very important for everybody. I, I've learned and I'm still trying to get better. So this is something I want to involve to you know, the next level Howard is more meditation. You know, I don't know about the rest of the people listening to this, but you know, I'm invested in 4 companies. I've got Activate Group. I'm trying to grow it nationally. My mind is always going like this. And what meditation forces you to do is stop all the noise for, you know, 15 minutes, half an hour, an hour if you really want to get evolved. Quietness in your head actually allows you to be 10 times more creative, actually allows you to settle down, allows you to get rid of and release a lot of that stress. So I'm going to say that I've played on and off with journaling, and I'm going to tell you, when I did it, it gave me a lot of peace of mind. So I do that. I do a weekly email with everybody on my team to make sure— and by the way, I include my vendors. So you know one of my vendors and she'll tell you every week she gets an email. It tells you where our numbers are at, what was great last week, what wasn't great last week. And by the way, when I write all that down for everybody and I make it clear and I have to simplify, I'm always amazed how much we got done in one week. I'm astounded by how much happens in one week. And so used to being in the middle of it, I don't— I take it for granted. So writing all that down Number 1, helps everybody else have a broader picture. And it allows everybody else also to say, you know, maybe we didn't achieve exactly what we wanted last week. Maybe it was a tough week. But you know what? Look at the good things that happened every week. So that's another ritual that I have as well. I also believe in time off. You know, this COVID thing was a disaster. I used to like to take anywhere between 4 and 6 weeks spread out throughout the year. Because you can run sprints, but it's like exercise, right? You know, in the sports, if you don't get any sit-down time, you don't get any rest time, you'll never be at peak performance. And actually, you'll start hating what you do because all of a sudden it'll become drudgery. So, getting that time away, just completely away from work, I think is essential.

Yeah, that's all. I want to talk about the meditation quick too because I can tell we're talking, you seem very present and clear-minded and you flow good too. Like this is, I mean, obviously, you know this stuff, but it's all very off the cuff. So either way, I guess that's a compliment for you.

Thank you, sir. Thank you. I still have another level. I'm certain of it.

So with the meditation, do you do it in complete silence or do you do— have you tried like a guided meditation?

So it's interesting. So Deepak Chopra has a whole bunch of guided meditations. Some of them are for free. And I like to start off the meditation with some sort of a message or a thought, or, you know, what's my purpose, whatever it is. And he's got these things that he sets it up for. But then after he does that, the next 10 to 15 minutes is silence. You're saying mantras in your head, you're getting control over your mind, you're centered on one thing all the way through the meditation. I do like that. And, but regardless of whether you, you have somebody getting you set up, you need, at least for me, I need quiet. I don't want, like for example, I have a Peloton. I love that thing, but sometimes, you know, those people don't shut up. Yeah. And I'm just like, please just shut up so I can enjoy the ride, right? Well, meditation's a lot like that or a lot more towards the other side where we just need, this is our time. Time to get the mind to stop. And that's when you've really, I think, mastered it. Now you got people like me. I mean, I have severe ADHD. I mean severe. And I've learned how to control it through ritual. But honestly, man, I can be all over the place. So my biggest part in the beginning is stop thinking about this and in using a centering thought every time something happens. How do I get back to quiet? How do I get back to the centering thought so that I can bring everything Gotcha.

Yeah, so we should, we should swap some. Have you heard of Alan Watts before?

No, no. Can I— I want to write that down. Alan Watts.

He has a 15-minute guided— I'll send, I'll send you the YouTube.

Send it to me. I'll send you Chopra.

But yeah, yeah, I want to check those out because one of the things that really helped me, and I think a lot of people when they start meditating where they get kind of slipped up, is they try to basically like minimum, like take their thoughts away. And at least this is the way Alan Watts says it. He's like, look at your thoughts as just kind of like things that are like fleeting by instead of trying to control them because that's the kind of paradox of it is that the more you try to control it, the more it's controlling you because you're thinking about controlling the thought. It's a rabbit hole, but you know what I'm saying?

No, no, no, it's good. And by the way, anybody who owns Peloton, which seems to be like a third of the planet right now, right? Based on their valuation at least, they actually have meditation built to that. And so a lot of times I'll listen to those people for 15 minutes as I'm going to sleep so I sleep better. And what's interesting is they don't shut up, but at some point I don't even hear them anymore. And then I'm out.

Yeah, this Alan Watts one will put you to sleep.

But it's important. It's great sometimes to do right before bed. And when I have had the ritual, and like I said, I go on and off, and I do that right before I go to sleep, I sleep much better.

Yeah, definitely. Me too. So, I want to— a lot of our listeners are authors and aspiring authors, so I want to— I do want to talk about your kind of the back end of your book. So, how— like, what was your ritual with writing the book? Was there anything you did before to like be able to just sit down and get into that like writer's flow? Or like, how did you finish your book? What did that look like?

So, I'm— that's where I have discipline. So, that's part of my, you know, I had a plan. I want to launch a book by a certain date, and then I work backwards, and I'm like, so what needs to happen so that I can do that? My second book was very different than my first book. I actually ran into trouble on the second book because I went down a rabbit hole where I'm like, I'm gonna self-publish. I hated my last publisher. I'm not gonna do it with a publisher. And then I get like way into it, I'm ready to go, and then I have the wrong advertising agency, so they're just mucking everything up. We're not ready to go to market. And then I ran into the current different person that really helped me launch all of this. And they helped me realize that, listen, if you want to get on the Wall Street Journal bestseller list, USA Today, you know, all these lists that I wound up getting on, most of them, if you self-publish, you can't even get on these lists. So the first question everybody has to ask themselves, do you want to get on these lists? Do you want to be a New York Times bestseller? If so, now you know you need a publisher. Right? So I had to go through all those questions. Now the ritual of writing the book, I already had in both books, I already had an idea of what I wanted to write. So the first thing I did was I sat down and I said, all right, how many chapters is this sucker going to be? And the current one turned out to be 22 chapters, if I remember correctly. And so then I worked backwards. I'm like, all right, so can I finish a chapter a week? Because there's a gyration that goes through. You do a first draft, you run it past people, they give you feedback, you change it. You got to run the whole thing through. So I kind of had this, I want to write a chapter a week. Now my chapters are not long. I talked to entrepreneurs and I needed to make sure that, you know, you could just do one chapter and if you didn't read the rest of the book, you could still make $1 million off of that one chapter. It was kind of my mindset. So how do I make each chapter so they can stand alone or they go together? And then I chopped it up that way and then I built it out. So Basically, I'd work backwards. And by the way, give yourself a deadline. I've seen people working on their books for years. And the problem is, is they never drew the line in the sand. I must have this finished by such and such a date. See, once you have a deadline, now your action plan has to work up to that deadline. And then you start figuring out what needs to happen. Well, after I write it, oh, I'm going to need somebody to edit it. In my case, I had two different people edit it. I'm going to have to do a marketing program if I really want to get it out. So something I learned that I didn't realize was there's like 45,000 books published every day worldwide. Oh my God, it's daunting. Yes. And so, and then the average business book only sells 1,000 copies over its lifetime. So that includes all of the books that have lasted forever, that have sold millions of copies. So I'm going to bet the median book probably sells like 200 or 300 copies. So if that's good enough for you, then don't complicate this thing. But if you're like me, that wasn't going to be good enough. Like, I think to make Wall Street Journal, we needed like 7,000 or more, you know, books sold in that first several weeks. You know, that's what I wanted. So if you want to do that, now you've got to start setting up your partners. You got to start planning that out. You got to decide what's the right date to launch and so forth.

And did you write like in the mornings or night or what works for you?

So for me, it had to be Saturday. Saturday is when I do all of my creative work because during the week you don't have enough long enough windows. You know, if you're the traditional entrepreneur, if you've got a lot of window time, then it's different for you. But for most of us, this was like an added thing for us to do. So every Saturday I locked up a certain amount of hours and I had a lot of support in the house that, you know, they knew this was going to be important to the long term. So Saturday was it, and I would just spend time. I'd sit down and I'd keep going until the chapter was done.

Gotcha. Okay, so I want to— the last question I want to ask you, it's kind of a cliché question, but I heard it recently. I feel like you'd be a good guy to ask. So like, if you were— if you only had $500 in your pocket and a laptop, how would you basically Like, what would you do to start over, essentially? And the reason I ask is because there's a lot of, like, there's a lot of young entrepreneurs that are, they're maybe considering dropping out of school, um, they want to start their own business, but you know, they're balling on a budget, as they say. So if you were to start all over again, what would you do?

Well, so you have to tell me what industry we're in, right? So it's a whole different— like, I own a, you know, I had ownership in a technology company. I just exited it, and you know, the first, uh 3 years, which is burning cash. Right. So and we're talking, you know, 7, 8 figures. Right. So, you know, it depends on what you're trying to build. So there's a lot of businesses that can start profitable day one. And first of all, the reason it's profitable day one is you don't have to take a salary, right? If you're— there's a number of people, me included, that have either had to depend on a spouse's income or sleep on somebody's couch, your parents' couch or whatever to get the thing going. So then with $500, you can do a lot, right? You know, the first thing is, you know, how do you build or prototype something and not use any money to create that? And then you're not going to have any marketing. It's just going to be you picking up phones, dialing for dollars, and it's just going to be hard knocks. Now, most people, I think, you know, I was one of those that I should have been— I should have narrowed my budget of starting, you know, my company. Because I was just like, there's no way I'm ever going to fail. And, you know, the only way that I'm going to quit is if I'm in a box. So, I had that mindset. But at the end of the day, I didn't always have the mindset of how do I spend the least amount of money. And I've noticed as I've watched now over the years, a lot of other entrepreneurs that were much wiser with their pennies when all they had was pennies. I was always, you know, I want to invest to win and I don't mind if I lose money today because I'm always going to make money. That's just always been my philosophy. And so far I've been lucky enough where that's happened. But, you know, I'm going to probably have that moment where I was wrong. So I like the idea of $500 and a laptop. So the first thing I would do is I would figure out and I look at the market and I'd figure out what can I offer that everybody else is missing? So one thing I think everybody here needs to listen is there's more supply than there is demand in 99.9% of businesses. So that means that there is more product, more service offerers than there are people that want to consume it. So that means a number— that's why so many businesses fail. So when you enter the market, First of all, you need to have some, something. So if you're only gonna have $500, you better have a skill. If you don't have a skill, don't even start, right? Because it's all you, baby.

Um, go out to a nice dinner with the $500.

Yes, you know, just don't, don't even fool yourself. But I'm assuming now you have a skill and you— now I would, first thing I do is I figure out what, how is the market shaped, and I look for some sort of a, a prototype of what I think a good customer looks like. And then I'd ask myself What does that prototype look like that everyone else in the market is missing because they want to serve everybody? They're saying yes too much. So I just wanted to serve that person the best I can. What would I need to give them to give me an edge? So they're now going to shift because I don't like to play on price. I want to be the most expensive or, you know, at least on the high side of the market. And I want to give enough value. So everybody's got to remember that operational effectiveness is not strategy. Strategy is finding a space in the market where you're going to add either more value than everybody else for the same price, or you're going to create the same value at a lower price, or both. And so in order to do that, you've really got to have some sort of an idea in the market of how you're going to do that. I think if you did that, then when your $500, you spend it to create, you know, that positioning And then don't build it and then hope they come. Go out and test the market. You know, Jim Collins said in one of his books, I think it was "Great by Choice," you know, shoot muskets and then cannonballs. Because if you use up all your powder and your cannonballs, your whole $500 in one shot, you're screwed. But muskets were much cheaper. So we can aim, aim, aim, aim, aim, and then boom, we found We found the target. We found where the aim is. Now, I'm ready to shoot a cannonball. And I think if I had $500, I'd think about what does muskets look like? How do I shoot a bunch of muskets until they start landing right? And then, I'm ready to invest cannonballs.

Yeah. I love that, man. That's literally like, that's how I see it too and it could work with any industry because really, I think in the beginning and actually in the long term too, it's really dependent on people. So, and I'll just speak to what we do is like, what I realized in the market, you've experienced this from being in the publishing and being an author multiple times, like pretty much no publishers do marketing for their authors, you know. So that hit me in the beginning when I got in the industry and I was like, I don't want to compete on the publishing side, I just want to master the book marketing side. And then I dropped out of school, didn't have, you know, I had less than $500,000, I was $80,000 in debt. So like I didn't even have any gunpowder. So, but what I did is I then what I did is I built relationships with publishers for free through LinkedIn, and then over the years built up like literally thousands of relationships, and then they refer to me for the, you know, so you don't even need $500. I mean, you need the laptop. Luckily I had good parents for that, but you know, it depends.

And then so you hit the nail on the head, relationships. So what a lot of us do in the early days is we barter a lot We leverage other people, and if you're abundant, you can make it a win-win for other people. So, they want you as part of their center of the universe. And when you do that, you'll find a lot of people help you up, help you up, connect you with the other people you need to meet. You'll find other people are doing certain things you can plug into. And I would say if I only had $500 in the beginning, I was just thinking about this, as I would plug into a bunch of other people in the beginning. And I figure out how to leverage them until I prove my concept. Then eventually, as I'm generating cash flow, I bring it all in-house.

Yep. Love it. All right, man. Well, look, floor is yours. I really appreciate you coming on. If there's anything else you want to share, you can. And then also just book, website, social medias, anywhere people can connect with you.

Perfect. So two things I want everybody to think about. I have never been a business that that we can add $1 million to their bottom line. It's already existed, you already got the waste, and what I like to do is I like to show people how to grow and make more money without adding any more people, and figuring that out first before you start going. So that's what my book is about, and so I would be happy and feel fortunate to have an opportunity to talk to anybody listening to this if they just want to pick my brain or pick one of our coaches' brains to try to figure out how to add that million dollars without adding employees and see where it's going. And so there you would call us at 305-722-7213 is our main number. And then we'll get you in touch with a coach. And, you know, honestly, we're abundant. My BHAG, by the way, what I want to accomplish on the earth is I want to change at least 500,000 lives. So I'm well on the way, but I need to, we need to to talk to a lot of people to be able to change those lives. So, you know, if you give me that opportunity to change your life, I'd love it. The second thing is read my book. I guarantee if you read the book and even apply some of the chapters and you just find the chapters that apply to you, you'll find $1 million right there. It'll be the best, you know, imagine you can spend $27, make $1 million. Buy my book, read my book, you change your life. So that's a leader launchpad And you can get that on any one of the book sites, Barnes Noble, Amazon, BAM, you know, all of them, they're out there. And I just love to change everyone's lives.

Thank you again, man, for coming on the show. Well, I'm sure we'll talk again soon.

No, that's awesome. And thank you for having me.