Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: I think that working for an organization is the smartest move for so many people, and I think you can get so much out of it and not enough people are talking about it, even though we are entrepreneurs. I'm sick of hearing everyone talk about entrepreneurship only and that everybody should own their own thing and do their own thing. Not true.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: Welcome to Ace, broadly talks for the Superstars tonight.
[00:00:28] Speaker A: Tonight, welcome to the Liver. Welcome to Love and Business podcast. I am Brit Arnold, president of Tagler Construction and supply.
[00:00:36] Speaker B: And I'm Mick Arnold, president of Arnold Packaging and Arnold Automation. And welcome to love and business.
[00:00:41] Speaker A: Today we are going to talk about the typical nine to five job, because I feel like recently the idea of a nine to five has been really demonized. And I think that most people in the world are working for someone and working for in a corporation or company of some kind. And I think there are so many advantages being an entrepreneur and business owner. I also know the many, many advantages there are to working for another company, and I think we should talk about that.
[00:01:14] Speaker B: Agree, but can you back up for a second? So you use the word demonized as it rates to the nine to five. Where did you hear that? Or cause?
And I just want to preface this. We have different inputs and news sources, which I love because I bring what I bring, which is generally real time.
You on your podcast and whatever tend to pick up, I would say. Are these trends, right? Or if you listen to real time. Yeah, sure, sure. But I mean, it seems like people or different podcasts will hit on or a certain idea or premise will hang in an ecosphere for a while. So when you say demonize, where'd that come from? Or what was the context?
[00:01:50] Speaker A: So I have two thoughts about this, and some of this is my assumptions.
I think we are in an age, probably because of technology, where it's thought that everybody should be starting something new on their own, because everyone, there's a lower barrier to entry, and everyone has the ability to do it. So it's this thought, like, okay, just like, go and do it on your own. In fact, I had a meeting today with a young lady who just put in her resignation for a job because she has several young kids. And she said, so many people are pressuring her, like, well, why don't you next job, you just start something new. And she said to me, like, that's not landing for me. I have no desire to start something new. I think that's one. And then I think two.
I believe COVID had something to do with this, because all of a sudden hybrid work was founded. And then the idea of nine to five, and when I say nine to five, let's be clear, that could be seven to varying hours. But the idea of 09:00 to 05:00 and typically being in a building most of the time, I think that idea got crushed a little bit in the pandemic, and everybody was working hyruid in these flexible schedules. And then I was like, well, could I be an entrepreneur? So I think that idea started to spread like wildfire to the point where it's making the nine to five have, I believe, a stigma or a negative stereotype connotation.
[00:03:19] Speaker B: So I understand now. I completely understand why you're saying what you're saying. And the other thing I'll just add on to that is that because of YouTube and some of the people that have made it, large influencers being a certain type, I think some of the safety net aspect has been lost. I just want to make sure that people don't think that it's as easy as just getting on YouTube or being an influencer, that you're exposed to the top again, fraction of a fraction of a percent. And for each one of those, there's thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that aren't able to pay bills with it. Very similar to entrepreneurship. And so it's interesting, and I think that because that there's so many mister beasts around, but gosh, it's such a small percentage.
[00:04:12] Speaker A: There aren't so many Mister beasts.
[00:04:13] Speaker B: No, no. Yeah, right. I mean, we only talk about the same ten all the time, Joe Rogan and whatever. And the influencers, the Kardashians. Just thinking of some names that I know, but that does not make it easy.
[00:04:23] Speaker A: But that's in the influencer world. Like, let's talk about what you and I do. Boots on the ground, real. Not that influencers aren't real, but real tangible things.
[00:04:31] Speaker B: I think my point was, is that it would be easy to get sucked into this idea that you just jump onto YouTube and all of your bills get paid magically.
[00:04:39] Speaker A: Yeah, and that's what I wanna dig into here. And the amount of people I know that started to try something that have gone back to work for a company is really high, and that happens a lot more than people talk about.
So what are your.
My thought, let's start here, if you would. So, my thought is that not everyone is made to be an entrepreneur. Not only that, additionally, not everybody wants to be an entrepreneur. However, I think many people find it challenging to admit to themselves that they don't want to be an entrepreneur. Cause it does feel like the societal pressure that everybody should work for themselves, own something, be an entrepreneur, when that's just not the reality and not what people really want. However, I think we put pressure on ourselves to want to want that.
But I have, and I've told this story before, but I'm going to tell it again here. One of my most successful friends, and arguably one of my smartest friends, she works for a company, as does her husband, who is also brilliant. And it was so fast. She was the first person that I heard ever say, I have no desire to be an entrepreneur.
I don't want to take that risk on. I am so happy to be working for another company. And her and her husband are absolutely crushing it. Not all about the money, but let's just put it out there, making millions. And they are so much more successful than I think 99% of entrepreneurs will be. And they're working for an organization. I think the reason they've been able to find that success is because they've been so honest with themselves and they haven't straight. They've leaned into what they're good at, what they like, and they've built this incredible life and business inside of someone else's business. So I think that my point here being the introspection and honesty about who you are and what you really want is so important, but really hard.
[00:06:46] Speaker B: Yeah. And I completely agree. And I think pulling the lens back a little bit, there's this thing. I can certainly speak for the United States because I live here, but this idea of ownership, right, whether it's home ownership or whatever, but this idea of ownership has, this is such an overarching idea or philosophy or thought that is just so ingrained certainly in us. Right. The american dream and whatever you want to call it, I think sometimes that spills over into certain pieces, and I think it spilled over here a little bit. And I would say that, you know, and I know, I know exactly who you're talking about. And I will tell you, what they have in their jobs is they have a tremendous amount of autonomy. And I think that's something that you can parse out here, the difference between ownership and having a job where you have tremendous autonomy, where you could, or you do feel like an independent business person inside of an organization. Like I know they do.
[00:07:45] Speaker A: And to be fair, I'm not sure. So they're in real estate, so they have portfolios. To be fair, I'm not sure if they now do have any equity in their portfolios or not? I don't believe so. But I could be wrong.
[00:07:58] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:07:59] Speaker A: Regardless. I know before they did, if they do now, they were crushing.
[00:08:03] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:08:04] Speaker A: So, and I think that's a really good point that you bring up about ownership. And I'd like to dig a little bit deeper into that because I was listening to. So Cody Sanchez, I've had you listen to her before. She's really smart. I like her a lot. And she talks about the importance of ownership. And what she does is, in a nutshell for anybody that's not familiar with her. She buys what she calls boring businesses. So low. Ha. Like laundromats, mostly blue collar boring businesses. And it's a lot of people that their financials just look bad, so people don't want to buy them or they just want out. And so she's buying these businesses up. And basically she's created like a glorified home office now and owns bunch of these companies. And most of which she buys that she has owners still run the companies, and she just supports in different ways, mostly financially, but she might do some financial work, whatever.
So interesting business model. But she was talking about the importance of ownership and how it is so important. So you were saying, do you think it's not, I mean. Or do you think it's overemphasized?
[00:09:12] Speaker B: No.
So a couple words, right? We talked about autonomy and then ownership. I guess, you know, if I look at our organization and the people that I work with directly, our executive team, who we talk about a lot here on our podcast, as do you, your executive team and your team, you know, I think like leadership. Picking another word, right. The definition of leader is you have followers. And when I look around the organization, even though there are people here that may not have a title that has VP or an executive sounding title, it's important to me, and I want them to be leaders, meaning they have followers. I would love if our, our best receiving guy, fork truck driver, was trusted and had followers, which means he's a leader. And I think ownership can have some different meanings if you are someone that's inside of a larger organization and let's say you have a big job at Under Armour, pick a job around the corner, and you may or may not have stock where you have a very important job and a very important role. But just based on the chart, you don't necessarily qualify for stock or true ownership, which would be ownership. You can still, I believe, have an owner type mentality and you can approach in an ownership type way while not being exposed to some of the risk or some of the things we talk about a lot on our podcast that are the not so desirable parts of ownership. Right. True ownership, where you've signed the I dot, the indemnified deed of trust, which is code for if somehow you get it wrong, the bank takes your house as collateral for the mistakes that you've made. So that ownership mentality, I think inside of an organization, regardless of how big you are, I mean, your team is on the smaller side currently, but I pass them in the hall. I know they have an ownership mentality despite not having shares of Tigler construction stock. So I think, and I know if we were to talk to our duo that we're speaking of now, they would have an incredible sense of ownership inside of their organization. Maybe they have equity in portfolios or not. Regardless, I promise you, if you talk to them or you watch the level of dedication or commitment with which they show up, you will know that they have an ownership mentality. So I think there's just an idea here as relates to true shareholdership versus showing up as an owner, which is certainly something. As I look at our exec team and the divisions that they're responsible for, their individual disciplines, I sure expect them to show up as an owner of that discipline.
So I think that's it. If I just think about leadership and ownership and some of the things that we're talking about, I don't know. I'd like to think that despite not having shares or your name on the wall, if you will, that you could still have create a fantastic career and have the ownership and or autonomy, especially if you were someone that looked at it like the lady you met with today and said, man, that just doesn't resonate with me. I love getting other organizations where they want to go, and I'm not sure that I want to be on the risk side of that. And I think, I believe that you can have it all in that regard.
[00:12:30] Speaker A: Well, her exact comments were that I love bringing other people's visions to life. I like to be the second in charge, so to speak. And I was like, wow, that's so incredibly valued. That's a really great skill set to.
[00:12:46] Speaker B: Have and a high level of self awareness, which is so valuable, right?
[00:12:50] Speaker A: Yes. But as we spoke about, I believe the differentiator is working for a great company. You cannot realize the achievements and goals that you have for yourself working for another company if it's not a great organization.
And what does that look like? Would be the next question, which we're thinking about all the time as we're building our companies, how do we create companies where people do want to come in and be a part of that story and build the brand and feel like owners, and then in return, they are getting everything that they want out of it.
And so I think we could go back and forth and bat some ideas around of what that looks like for ourselves and for the business ownership side, and then also for people that are working for organizations. Don't get me wrong. I mean, it might be hard to have it all. Maybe you can, maybe you can't. But this is what I would say, theoretically, or ideally, would be great to have all of this encompass into a company. And the one word I go back to is unlimited upside.
So what that means to me, simply put, is just the ability for unlimited growth, not having necessarily a ceiling. And ultimately, that is what really frustrated me about former companies I work for. And one of the biggest reasons, I felt like I needed to go out on my own, because I didn't want to feel like I had this continual ceiling that I was always bumping my head against.
So how do you create that?
I have my thoughts. How would you say, how do you create unlimited upside for your employees?
[00:14:37] Speaker B: Well, I would say a couple words that come to mind. One is freedom. You know, is creating a certain amount of freedom.
Everybody has rules, right? I mean, and regardless if your title is owner or president or whatever it is, everybody answers to somebody. Like, we answer to the customer, we answer to the bank at times, right? I mean, we all. We all serve a higher power of some kind. It doesn't matter who you are, the most powerful business people in the world, if you want to say that's Elon Musk at the moment or Jeff Bezos at the moment, they too have masters to serve as part of the process, whether it's shareholders. So you don't get away from that. It doesn't matter how far up the mountain you are. I think I heard today that Bezos took over Elon Musk at 200 billion. But even that guy with those types of financial resources, he can shoot his ass to the moon if he wants, literally. But still, everybody has some type of, you know, someone that they're serving. It doesn't matter how far up you are, whether it's a board of directors or someone.
[00:15:33] Speaker A: If you're religious, yeah, of course.
[00:15:35] Speaker B: Absolutely. Whatever. God, whatever. Yeah, whatever you would identify as that higher power. But I can tell you that legitimately for Mc Arnold, I answer to a bank, and I answer to customers and creditors. Of different types. But back to your question. It would be creating an environment where you would build as much freedom for the people in your organization. I mean, certainly my point of that is that there are rules and guidelines, and it can't be. Yeah, go give it a shot. Let me know how it goes. And something short of the Silicon Valley mantra of go fast and break things. You can do that if you have unlimited resources and people are just willing to throw endless money at you, as happens in Silicon Valley and spots. And the old saying of, I don't want to talk to you until you've lost all of somebody else's money. That doesn't fly in smaller businesses. You end up with legitimate consequences, homelessness, all of your money gone while still in debt, bankruptcy, whatever those repercussions could be. But I think part of that goes to one clearly defining the mission of the organization. And if you're doing that, then you're heading in a better direction of attracting the type of people that want to be there. But it doesn't start if you don't clearly articulate to the individuals what the mission is. Who wants to sign on for something when they don't know what the ultimate goal is, is what the hell are we trying to accomplish here? And I've come into any number of situations in my travels. As someone who's been in sales my whole life and has with 800 purchasing customers, I've been very fortunate to meet a lot of different types of people. And I have met any number along the way where you meet them. And, you know, and I. And I know the organization because I've been calling there for a decade, but they're new. And I just look, or I listen or I have a conversation, I think, huh, one of these things is not like the other. I don't understand the alignment. And a lot of times I learn it's because it's mission alignment issues. So that's the first step of the process, right? Is to make sure that you clearly define and therefore have the opportunity to align around the mission, because if you don't, you're destined for failure right out of the gate. But second to that would be then to create an environment of as much freedom as you could. Back to that word autonomy, where you'd be like, well, yeah, I mean, my check doesn't say. My check doesn't say John Smith incorporated. It says Arnold packaging. Pick one. But I feel like I have autonomy. I am allowed to experiment. I am allowed to be. Not only am I allowed, I am encouraged to experiment. Certainly rules and guidelines. You can't give you a dynamite, you can't take out the building. But somewhere between no trust or no ability to experiment and a powder keg is this Runway that you can try things and experiment just like you would if your name was on the building or you were the entrepreneur, but maybe not to that level of risk that would be not comfortable for you.
[00:18:33] Speaker A: So I think that's one that goes back to that word that we talked about called intrapreneurship, which is exploring entrepreneurship inside of a company. So you're using the resources and the foundation of a company.
Don't have the risk that you would have if you were out on your own and you're able to be an entrepreneur. I think if you can create an environment like that for your employees as a business owner, that's really attractive. When we talk. For me, when unlimited upside means unlimited ability to grow, grow has all depending on what company you're in, that could mean a whole lot of things, but I'm going to keep it vague.
And for me, I've talked about my company had a revenue cap and there's been all different kinds of things, all different sorts of ceilings.
Making sure that we're doing enough things so no one's running up against that ceiling is really important for me. Or doesn't have the opportunity to have a upward trajectory at all times. Because if you don't, if you find you're in a place where you're stagnant and you don't feel like you have anything more to learn or to do or to experience, that's really, what's the word? Unmotivating.
I mean, it would be at that point, what do you do?
Content with no longer growing or having the ability to grow? I don't think most people would say yes. So at that point, you're at risk of losing people because they're going to look elsewhere. So giving your employees those opportunities to grow and whether that be into a new role, into developing a role, into different things, into trying new things, into getting creative, into making more money, earning more money, that's very important. Here's the next step, though.
I have to put owners back on the employee in that you can't just expect to get these things. You have to own it and figure out, because most of the time, the business owner, us, we're doing a ton of things, and we may not always be totally in tune with what every single employee is experiencing. So I would say very important for employees to take that accountability, take that responsibility, and look at yourself and say, listen, what am I, brit, what is my, we talk about value proposition all the time. What is my personal value proposition to the company? What kind of value do I bring? How do I generate revenue for the company? Right? Because business, it's a math problem.
So figuring how do I generate revenue, everyone, doesn't matter what position you're in, there are ways you can bring and increase revenue. Period.
[00:21:24] Speaker B: Yeah, can I interrupt for just a second? Because there's, it's, you know, we are. I say back to the last few years from a growth perspective have been interesting. A lot of the growth has come from tailwinds of inflation, right. Versus unit growth. Two ways you grow your business, unit growth or prices, which could be inflation based.
So that type of growth for our company has shifted a little bit, right. And we're back to, in the pandemic when supply chain became very hard, there were times where you couldn't get enough product to sell to new customers to grow the business. But prices were escalating at such a feverish rate that you were able to grow based on units not changing. That has certainly shifted. So what we track now is rolling twelve purchasing customers. And where I'm going with this is when I sit in a room with our directors, which is everybody. There are touch points of everybody in the organization. Tommy from marketing and our producer is in that room as the art director, as is ops, as is purchasing. So that whole room is there and we start talking about things like rolling twelve purchasing customers.
And the net change is what we get into. How many did we gain and how many did we lose? So when you get into that lose process, it's a very interesting conversation because Ops would say, well, what do you mean? Mean what can I possibly do to affect sales? Well, what you can do is that you can create a customer experience that is, that is so undeniable that it would be almost impervious to attrition. Nobody would ever leave us. So what you can do, while you'd say sales organization, are you adding new customers, new logos, whatever that is. The other part of that is making sure that we don't lose them at a comparable rate. So our net new customers end up being zero or negative something. So you're right. I'm just adding onto that idea. That part of growing is not just adding customers, it's making sure that you don't lose customers in the process. And whatever your goal, regardless of your role. And some of them are obvious, right? Sales, marketing, marketing. Here we task for leads, but even the parts of the organization that might not be exactly customer facing, they still have a huge effect on net new customers because they have such high ownership of the attrition in the business through delivery or lack of delivery.
[00:23:42] Speaker A: So a lot of employees in that position are referred to as non revenue generating employees or positions. And you would look at potentially accounting like that, right?
[00:23:53] Speaker B: You could, but right up until the point that you think if somebody blows a massive delivery to a massive customer and they choose to go away, sounds like a revenue affecting opportunity to me.
[00:24:02] Speaker A: Well, that's my point.
Accounting would be considered a non revenue generating position, but I don't see it like that. And also, how many people in accounting or finance or that side of the business can say, can pick up on costs you're spending that you shouldn't be spending all kinds of things. I look at project managers, project managers, they're managing business that typically someone from sales or BD is going to bring in. But again, you go back to, well, what is the experience they're giving the customer? How many customers are going to come back to us? What's that retention word of mouth that we're generating jobs from because our PM's are doing such a fantastic job. Now, that's not totally applicable to my company because my PM's are doing some of the selling and marketing too. But generally speaking.
[00:24:49] Speaker B: But how about the cost control side? Right? So let's talk about the profitability piece, right? Sales being one thing. Profitability being what businesses really get out of bed for every day. The cost control piece. Yeah. And I think part of that is what we're talking about is how you build the organization. You know, it's about how you lead it. If the people in accounting think they're of no value, it's because the guy or the girl in the corner office is telling accounting that they're of no value, instead of saying, well, wait a minute, you guys are about asset deployment. What are we doing with our excess cash? Right?
Are we taking discounts? Are we enacting a sweep like we've talked about? Right. So it would only happen that way if whoever was setting the pace of the organization somehow was foolish enough to let accounting think, and I'm picking on them because you brought them up. Well, let accounting think that they are, they have no, you know, they're not a value. Or just because they're not out in front of Joe customer that their contribution is any less. Our accounting department, by the way, is also our credit organization. So if you want to talk about something incredibly important to the sales part of the business, talk to the credit organization, who has the ability to support. They could create a sales prevention environment if they're not careful while still managing risk for the company. I think that goes back to that leadership piece where if an organization that would be the pure myopics of leadership, to let any individual organization feel that way or not understand the value that they're capable of creating, and then align the mission for them, because there's the overall mission. But then I promise you, each one of my directs has their own individual mission inside of the business. Right? I mean, Melissa, who runs our finance group, equally incredible contributor as our vp of packaging. But their internal missions are very different. They don't look the same day in and day out. And it would be foolish of me if at any point they didn't know exactly what their value was and what levers to pull to leverage it.
[00:26:50] Speaker A: Yeah. Another thing I thought of on the accounting side, since we're going there, is, you know, once a month we have, we have, we have project meetings every Monday, but once a month we go over AR and AP aging. And since bringing on a new hire and expanding our accounting team, our AR report and AP reports look ten times better because they're doing all the little things now, making sure monthly statements go out, making sure they're staying on top of customers, just all the little things. So I'm quick to tell them, like, look at these aging reports. But that, I mean, so having. Not waiting on cash, not waiting to get paid, like, what is the value there? There are so many. Point being there, no matter what position you're in, there are so many things you can do to bring value. And, and a lot of that value does come in the way of revenue to the company. But you have to identify and know that yourself as well. I think as a leader, we need to be clear on what everybody's role is. But as an employee, you need to figure out what is my value and what can I do to earn more, to grow more. Once you identify that, I think it would behoove you to go have a conversation with your boss, whoever that may be, whether it is the owner or president of the company or somebody else, it doesn't matter. And negotiate.
Let's negotiate. Because one thing I want to get across as a business owner, if somebody comes to me and wants to negotiate, and a lot of times we are talking about a salary or that is a topic, but it could be many different things.
[00:28:30] Speaker B: Sure. It could be quality of life, right?
[00:28:32] Speaker A: It could be a different role. It could be quality of life, could be PTo, could be a million things.
[00:28:38] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:28:38] Speaker A: But I would always, I'm always going to want to push back or know that that person really thought it through.
Because if you have identified in this, in the circumstance I'm talking about, if you've identified what the value is and how you can bring more, understand that that is a win win. That is a win for you. If I can help you earn more, grow more, but if you're bringing more value to the company, it's a win for the company. So there's never going to be a situation where I'm saying no to a win win. But you've got to put the time and energy into identifying what that looks like. Because if it's, how could you say no if you're never going to lose? It's like it's good for you and it's good for me.
[00:29:21] Speaker B: Sure. Yeah. No, it seems simple. And I think the idea too that having the courage, if that's the right word, to, you know, and talking to your direct report and lifting yourself up, that you have to be very cognizant of the fact that a lot of people are doing a lot of things. It's interesting how business in general, we do tend to talk about our organizations, but I think it's reasonable to apply this to other organizations, larger organizations. The one that you are working in, I'm pointing to you audience, the one that you're working for is to lift yourself up too.
I think at times if you feel like you go unnoticed, it's not that. It's that the person that you're working with or for whomever is just busting their butt too their head down. Unless you're delusional and taking care of.
[00:30:12] Speaker A: Yeah, that's possible.
[00:30:13] Speaker B: That's true. That's true. Yeah. No, and look, there are times when I had been approached by people that are tempting to articulate the value prop, and I feel completely different.
I've even, and you have to watch yourself or catch yourself in those moments because you're like, well, you sure have some nerve because I'm over here wondering why you're with the organization.
[00:30:37] Speaker A: Saw you lose.
[00:30:39] Speaker B: Yeah, it doesn't happen often, but I've certainly been in that position. My first thought is, all right, well, good, you know, good for you for walking through that door. You definitely get credit for walking through that door.
[00:30:48] Speaker A: Secondly, do you think so? Cause I don't. I think if somebody walks through the door, that's totally dozen deserve what they're asking for. It's gonna piss me off. Well, look, I think if I don't say that to keep anybody from doing that, certainly. But I mean, I'm just being honest.
[00:31:04] Speaker B: I didn't say it was gonna go well. But I mean, I think there's a.
I think in retrospect, when you have those conversations there. Arrogance, right? Could be one. I mean, there are people that come through the door and they're just. There's an arrogance about them where they're so far off that they are. They are certain in their own, you know, head little world that they are crushing it and wildly valuable, and you're having a completely different experience. So my approach has been, sit down. Let's talk this through. You know, I could be holding back tears, laughing at the idea of what's about to come out, but it's, you know, let's. I'm gonna try. You came in the door, so let's be. Be really creative or constructive with this time. Since you came through, let me use this as an opportunity to tell you the number of things that I'm not sure that you're gelling with the organization on. And then we can agree that you might come back at another time after working on these things. But when you leave, it'll be certain that we're not exactly aligned with what you think is value proposition. So that's some things that I have done, and it's not many. Right. I mean, even. I don't know.
[00:32:15] Speaker A: But that's fair. It's just called fair.
[00:32:17] Speaker B: But I have to even have. I mean, I'm thinking. Cause we know when we have these conversations. I'm actually thinking of a moment. I have this visualization of Sally Smith standing in the door and me going, hmm, wonder what? Sally's gone. And, you know, she or he comes in and attempts with the value prop thing. And I'm going, ooh, boy, I think you are. You're definitely reading from a different song sheet.
But I've had that experience. But I also, too, I want to make sure we don't get off the nine to five importance, too. And the demonization piece, I think.
[00:32:47] Speaker A: But this is working for a company.
[00:32:48] Speaker B: There's a how to. Yep, absolutely. There's some how to stuff here.
[00:32:51] Speaker A: Like the whole. The whole point is working for somebody else and how to make it exactly what you want it to be. And I think another part of that.
[00:32:59] Speaker B: Negotiation piece and for ownership. Right?
[00:33:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:33:02] Speaker B: And what ownership needs to be aware of because, I mean, there's a great saying that you know, the view never changes unless you're the lead dog. And smaller companies, it can be challenging to create that width so that you have x number of lead dogs. You know, we in season one did a podcast. It was why do it? Why grow? You know, and our whole onus behind it was because a rising tide raises all boats. And part of that growth is to create some of that width and those new opportunities so that you have the ability to promote people from within and create opportunities for them to take control and ownership. Bigger, more ownership. I don't mean name on the wall ownership, but I mean owning a division. Automation was one of those moments for us. DC, as you just touched on, is one of those moments for you. That's the reason to grow for us. I know you are completely aligned is so that you can, all the individuals that you have, you can start to. To spread that out and say, you know, Tommy, I'm tapping you to take this new division or whatever that conversation would sound like.
[00:34:11] Speaker A: Actually, that is. I wouldn't say the only because I have a lot of intrinsic motivation to grow myself and want to do the help start a DC business. But most of that is for my team to give them additional opportunity. 90% to 95% is for them.
I just want to finish off on the negotiation piece. I think an important part of having a successful negotiation conversation with your boss is bringing something to the table that is measurable and tangible. And the issue with that, if you're in sales or marketing, that's super easy to do. If you're not, how do you come up with a metric that can be measured so you can together measure whether you're hitting and bringing that value that you say you're going to. You're going to bring.
[00:34:58] Speaker B: Yeah, tough.
[00:34:59] Speaker A: That's tough.
[00:34:59] Speaker B: Can be. Yeah. So one thing, just to take that one step further, the word preparation, I mean, some of the greatest meetings I've had like that, and some of them are scheduled and some of them are impromptu and. But I. But I know that I have an incredibly high level of respect for preparation. Right. Where it looks like you've put the effort forth and at least with every, every ounce of your being, you have attempted to create, you know, merits. Right. You'd be coming in to espouse the merit that you bring to the organization and that you would have done a very thoughtful, a very high. Yeah. Thoughtful. Great word. Thank you. A thoughtful analysis of what your role is and then. And then also weaving into that, whatever the vibe of the company is. Like, I wife say I promise you, I would be shocked, I think is the right word. If I were to grab a teammate and say, what do you do here? What's the mission? How do you create value for the organization in your individual role? If they didn't have a really strong answer and that would be on me, that would be my fault. If they didn't know that. Or I could even be like, I'm a little worried about John. I feel like John should know that. But I think part of that is a credible level of preparation. And you would have also then take in all of the cues from the organization and or leadership, whether it's, you know, depending on who you work for. And you would. You would create. You would build a case, right. And would almost have, like you were building a case to say, here's what we agreed the mission was, and here's what I've done in that regard, and I just wanted to share some data points with you. It would have a sound like that to me, because there's data in every part of the business. There. There's nothing.
And I'm trying to think, I don't know, maybe there are businesses where certain roles are completely absent data. We don't have any. And I know that because every 20 days, I sit in a meeting, and there are data points for every single director that participates in this business, and they know exactly what they're rated on. They know exactly what Wright looks like. So there would be some type. That's what that conversation would look like and sound like, and I've exceeded. We agreed that I was going to do an eight point, and I've calculated the data. I'm actually doing a 9.2, making stuff up. But something along those lines is how that would sound.
[00:37:20] Speaker A: Yeah.
And again, I think it's challenging, based on what position you're in and the role you're in, to figure out what those metrics look like.
[00:37:28] Speaker B: Let me give you an easy one. Right? You brought up. You brought up the great accounting work that your team is now doing. A simple one would be, did you know that when I got here, our average days to collect were 42, and I have driven that down to 38? Those four days, based on our receivables, create an extra amount of cash. And if you were to just take the value of money right now at 8%, it would be worth this to the organization. There's one just in an accounting part where you can get incredibly quantifiable, but part of that is understanding, and I think it's back to leadership. To set that right, to set what those metrics are and identify what right looks like. And then a great teammate that went after right where we were trying to collect in 40 days and they somehow got it to 37 and knew what those three days were worth, that would be an incredible conversation.
[00:38:17] Speaker A: Well, I think this is actually going to put me into motion to be proactive about having a conversation with everyone, or at least groups of people and asking them, what is your value proposition? What do you see as or perceive as your value proposition? Having that defined on paper and then as a leader leaning into that and empowering them to own that even more. Because I think one, somebody says, accounting, look, we are collecting cash faster than we ever did and we are paying vendors earlier and getting more discounts than we ever have. And here's what it looks like. And here's where I think we can get. Once you empower people to, they're saying you're doing a great job here, they can lean into it even more and then they can say, well, no, here are the metrics. Now that competitive spirit comes out, how can we do better? So I think what I'm going to do is proactively have that conversation with everybody in my team, identify what their, what they think and what I think together collectively, their value prop is. And how can we even strengthen that and grow that so that I think that would be a great, great thing to do.
[00:39:20] Speaker B: Yeah, truly, if you. Truly, if you don't, what you don't. I mean, if you don't measure it, it really doesn't matter. I mean, so that's a great idea. And you hit on something is collaborating and, or working together with the teammates to agree on what right looks like. And that happens in our sales organization a lot. You know, as far as establishing or setting realistic goals and agreeing on what right looks like across a number of different metrics, how many new logos are going to be on. Obviously, it's all driving towards profitable sales. That's the ultimate endgame. But there's activity that you wrap around that.
So much of this business, our business, the business is about the activity, right. I mean, I know ultimately we're looking for profitable sales. I get it. But, you know, sometimes it takes a while for that to materialize. And what you have to do is you have to be able to create and measure the activity that's ultimately going to get you there because sometimes it can take a very long time, especially on the sales side. Right. You're trying to grow sales. You've got to penetrate all the stuff in the sales process, you have to understand and identify what write looks like from an activity perspective, because you might take a very long time to get the results. I mean, imagine you task. Let's stay on the accounting lane. You task someone to get two days out of your receivables, your day's sales outstanding. That could take a lot of collection calls. Depending on the dollars that you have, that could be a Hercule Lee, an effort to cut to a half a day, to a day, to two days. Then the real challenge becomes what activities. So you'd set up something like, we're going to make 25 collection calls a day. Right. So you'd actually drill down into the activities that are ultimately going to support that. And it would be, man, I still don't. I haven't gotten 0.1 out of it. Have you been making your calls? I have. It'll turn. Keep doing it. Right. And that's, those activities become, I believe, even more important at times than what that ultimate end goal is.
[00:41:21] Speaker A: And you have to. Right. Or you'd get. I think in a lot of cases, you'd get discouraged.
[00:41:25] Speaker B: I would. Because it becomes an elephant. Right. I mean, cutting two days out of receivables could have an elephant feel to it. So the first question is, how do we eat this elephant? One bite at a time. We start by making 25 collection calls a day. Something silly, but, yeah, it could be like that.
[00:41:39] Speaker A: So I'm gonna transition off of this negotiation piece and talking about another way to identify is the company I'm working for a great company, or is a company I want to work for a great company.
This idea of having a company that does believe in tailoring to their employees, which can be hard, especially if you have a bigger company. I was talking to somebody, and I cannot for the life of me remember who it is, but I knew it was somebody that did this for a living. I want to say they were in HR, and I was asking them about the keys to attracting great talent, but also retaining and what they thought the number one thing is. And their simple answer was a la carte. And I thought to myself, I mean, I know what Ala carte means, but, like, expand. And it's everything from bringing a first hire on, tailoring their entire package to them. Now, let's be very clear. For a business owner, even for an executive team, that is a lot more work. And that presents a lot more challenges, because if Sally's getting XYZ and Bob did not get that, all of a sudden there's some more conflicts. So I think that does present additional challenges. Not, I think it does for employers, but that is becoming one of the differentiators of great companies.
[00:42:59] Speaker B: Yeah. And yes, that one size fits all. There's so many slippery slopes inside of that. And depending on the state in which you operate, Maryland is a very tough place to be an employer. It's very difficult.
So it becomes a little bit of a slippery slope where what looks like a la carte to one could look like discrimination to another. And that becomes such a slippery slope where you'd love to be able to create, because you'd have a knowledge of your teammate that you knew exactly what got them up in the morning and drove them, and you'd create, you'd mold their package such that you touched all of the buttons that matter to them but someone else's. And then I go over to the VP, and this is me talking specifically about building my team, but then I go over to the VP of Y, right? VP of X. I have nailed it. I go over to the VP of Y and let's just say hypothetically, one's a male and one's a female, and I build exactly what y wants. That a la carte could have a discrimination look to it in a very, very short order. So I think there's some magic that goes into being able to do that. But the beauty of being a small business is that agility, right? I mean, if you're going to be able to do it, you're going to be able to do it in organization like ours because you have the ability to be agile. And, you know, that doesn't have this broad brush thing where, you know, where you're managing down. And I don't mean down in a bad way. I just mean you're managing to a level that can be tolerated or acceptable by a really large number of people. And that's hard. I mean, how do you create an a la carte experience?
Joe and Mary must look exactly the same, because a la carte and discrimination can look very similar depending on how you want to tweak them.
[00:44:55] Speaker A: I couldn't agree more.
[00:44:55] Speaker B: And lawyers are fantastic at tweaking them.
[00:44:58] Speaker A: I couldn't agree more. But I also think if you're giving everyone an Ala carte experience, then at that point, everyone's happy, and you're not gonna be comparing because you tailor to what that person wants. And if we're being very realistic, there are certain things you cannot do. Alucard. You just. If you've got a 401K plan for a company. It is what it is like. There's no but there are so many things that you can do for different people. And one of the things, I don't know if I'm great at it, but I try to be great and I hope that my team realizes this. And again, I think the reason I'm so good at being able to do it is because our team is generally small. So I have a finger on the pulse of. Of what everyone is up to, what everybody likes and needs. So I try to be proactive. I always try to. Doesn't always happen. I get approached all the time with needs and wants, but I try to be proactive in saying this person's going through this. What can I do to help? Whether it's. I know somebody is buying a new house and needs cash up front to purchase the house or whether someone got a surgery and there's a deductible and it's, you know, like those kind of things or whether someone is really into working out like a gym membership as of the highest value or, you know, I have people on my team that really love training. So it's like, what resources can I put in front of them? Hey, you want to take this training course? It's me being proactive. I'm not always waiting for them to come to me. And I really try to do that for everyone on my team. Again, not perfect. There's so many things that I don't know that's going in their to lives, nor should I know, but be when I can, I try to do something about it.
[00:46:34] Speaker B: And it does come back to that part too that we were just talking about. Not that, you know, in the negotiation segment that we just talked about, but part of that too is raising your hand if there's something that's a value. I know with with our emerging thought leaders that we talk about a lot and Tommy leads, it's continuing education.
We know just because we have that level of communication is important. That's something that is a attractive and our teammates there. And I think in general too, part of our value system is that life learner curious part. So if you're here, you probably have a life learner curiosity component to you anyway.
So part of that too is being able to raise your hand as an individual and say, I'd like you had someone come and take the PMP, right? Take the project management, Connor, and you were aware, but they, they were the ones that had to take the responsibility and the ownership of it. You're like, yes, I'm willing to invest, but you own this. And the first part of ownership was just raising their hand and saying, I want to do it. And you're like, I can get behind that. I want you to have those skills. You're of more value if you have those skills.
[00:47:38] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure.
So I think that's, you know, the ala carte piece is interesting and tailoring, and it's going to become more and more. More because the differentiators between companies and who employees want to work for, it's getting smaller, it's getting more competitive. I think maybe it's just. I mean, I believe it is. So, like, those little, those little things are getting more important.
[00:48:02] Speaker B: Yeah. Look, if you're going to recruit and hire away from larger companies, you know, if you're looking, because as a small business, you don't. You just don't have the resources that large companies do. I mean, by that, I just mean sheer cash money. But the flip side of that is you do have the agility where, you know, they might struggle with the a la carte because they're regulated, or that a la carte could, at a moment, look like discrimination. And I'm using the legal term, right. I mean, like you talked about, 401K, there are rules, and if you didn't follow those rules, the terminal that they use is called discrimination. There's discrimination testing against something in the land of 401 could be a very fine line such that a big company would say, oh, hell, no, I'm not going near that. And therefore, instead of that a la carte, you have employees that do get that more broad brush look. And we, as smaller organizations, have the agility to see that and understand that that's something that's of interest and could be the difference between hiring someone away from a big company or not hiring someone away from a big company. Back to that agility and that autonomy piece.
[00:49:11] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:49:11] Speaker B: I mean, the people that I've hired away from larger companies will say it's. I didn't know how cool it would be to not be a cog in a massive wheel and just didn't know if they didn't know. Yeah, just a number didn't know what they didn't know. And that's a huge benefit for a small organization. So people like us, you know, if we know that's a very attractive point or that autonomy is attractive, then those roles have to look like that.
[00:49:37] Speaker A: Another point, another advantage, I think, to working for a company is just the ability to learn.
Yes, you have YouTube and you have everything at your fingertips. If you're a solo entrepreneur or just starting a company, but working inside an organization, that is where you can learn. Whether you're a lifelong learner, it's learning from the company, learning from all the people around you, learning from the diverse customers you work with, or whether it's short term, you're building all these skills and all this knowledge that you can eventually use as a stepping stone to create your own thing down the line. But that learning period is so important, I would say required, necessarily. There's people that have started something from their own without working for an organization, probably, but I think that's rare. And I think you can get so much knowledge and skills from working for a corporation. So like that education piece.
[00:50:34] Speaker B: Yeah. And we talked about this on the last episode. It was just the idea that you launched Tagler while working for someone else or that, you know, the ideas came because you were watching the organization that you were working for say no to certain things that you wanted to say yes to and you had had the ability.
[00:50:52] Speaker A: Just to be clear, I didn't start, I didn't start it while I was working for somebody else.
[00:50:55] Speaker B: I get. Yeah, I didn't, I was not suggesting moonlighting. Yeah, for sure. But it was, you know, let's say it this way. The, the demand identification happened while you were there. Do you have this accreditation? What about this MBE thing or whatever those were? No, I don't. No, I don't. No, I don't. To the point you're like, whoa, look, look at this. I need to start saying yes to this. And how do I do it? Well, unfortunately, it's not going to be under this roof. I'm going to have to go create my own roof.
[00:51:21] Speaker A: Yes. And then the other thing that I think is interesting, and again, Cody Sanchez was talking about this, and I couldn't agree more, is I do think if, let's just say a million dollars, because I think that's if you want to become a millionaire or let's see, a really great number between, I don't know, what, a very good salary, you know, up to, I would say about to a million dollars. I think you could do that working for a great company with unlimited upside. I know you can do it a lot faster and with a hell of a lot more risk than you can when you go out on your own. I think I should mention if you go out on your own and you're successful, eventually you are going to out earn probably the ability that somebody has, ability to earn inside a company. However, I think that first call, a million dollars, you can do inside of a corporation much easier than you can do on your own faster.
[00:52:24] Speaker B: Well, it comes to floors and ceilings. And I think in that example, if you're doing it under someone else's roof, your floor is a little higher, but therefore your ceiling is a little lower. Normally when you pull one up, you also pull one down. And the idea of millionaire, if you will, is the idea that your net assets, which is your assets minus your liabilities, are greater than a million dollars. Pick that number. Yes, right. And part of that liability piece is that there's freedom from the liability part in building that underneath someone else's company and working for someone else. If you're taking the entrepreneurial route, I mean, you were very successful in bootstrapping your business, but the other direction is to load up a bunch of debt on the front side because you want a warehouse, you want whatever you think the assets you need to deliver are. And to do that, you take on debt and or liability. You have to uncoil that debt before you ever get to that net asset number that we're talking about. So completely agree with that.
[00:53:23] Speaker A: Well, let's even go. So, for the DC company that we're building, we have not taken on any debt, but we're still operating way in the red. If you're looking at expenses versus what we're making, you know, our, what we're spending to initially get started. Now, I'll say this is in the first three, four months, but I don't know how long we'll be operating in the red because you look at, okay, you're spending on rent, and this is all before you start making money or making real money. So you're paying for rent. I'm paying a significant amount of money in legal fees to get the business up and running, to get certain certifications we want to get. I'm paying a significant amount of money to our CPA to get all of our tax accounts in line, everything else, I'm paying a significant amount of money to get insurance because to get a lease agreement, you have to have insurance. So you have to get insurance before you really have anything to insure. I mean, you know, in theory, anything to insure. So it's just like all these upfront expenses. And I say upfront, I mean, most of these are ongoing monthly expenses.
[00:54:30] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:54:30] Speaker A: That you have to, I'll call it for a very long period of time before you can out earn them.
[00:54:38] Speaker B: Let's call upfront pre revenue, one of the most hated words on shark Tank. Pre revenue. Let's call those pre revenue. But at the same time, while you didn't take on debt, you did fund it out of cash. But at the same time, what are you not doing with that cash? You're not earning interest on it, you're not deploying it somewhere else, you're not buying additional inventory. So yeah, why you didn't necessarily have to take on on debt. It still had, you know, we're talking. Remember we started this conversation on that, that net asset piece. You are reducing your net assets by paying all that cash to all of those people to get the business off the ground.
[00:55:10] Speaker A: So if you look at our p and l right now, it ain't pretty.
[00:55:13] Speaker B: Yeah, no, absolutely. And listen. And funding an automation business where you have to bring on a tremendous amount of engineers and you have to buy a lot of equipment because you don't know what the hell it does. And like hey, what's that robot thing do? I don't know. We should buy one and figure out how much they cost. 100 g's. Great, let's get one of those hundred g things and then figure out what the hell it does and figure out how we're going to sell it to the market. Oh wait a minute, we have a mechanical engineer, but we also need a controls engineer. Oh hell. So let's go get one of them. So now we've got a hundred thousand dollar robot and two engineers. What do we have in sales, guys? Oh, that's right. We haven't sold anything yet, but we will, I promise. So that's what that conversation sounds like. And let's just say that I wanted to just whip up an automation group. If I had to find that money, I would have gone to a bank or I would have gone and borrowed it. And that's back to that conversation about taking in that leverage or taking on that debt, which slows your ability to become that net asset millionaire or whatever that piece is we're talking about.
[00:56:09] Speaker A: Yes. And while this is business 101, let's not get revenue and profit twisted.
[00:56:17] Speaker B: No, no, no.
[00:56:17] Speaker A: So when you hear a company is making is a million dollars, $5 million, $10 million. Mc Arnold, I can assure you, is not making a $10 million.
[00:56:29] Speaker B: Yeah. Sales minus expenses equals profit. And sometimes if expenses are bigger than sales, then you actually are losing money.
[00:56:38] Speaker A: You could have a multi multi million dollar company and be losing money.
[00:56:42] Speaker B: Oh yeah, there's tons of big companies that go out of business selling a lot of stuff. Right, right. I mean Kodak.
[00:56:48] Speaker A: So that distinction, all basic important.
[00:56:50] Speaker B: Kodak went out of business.
[00:56:51] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:56:53] Speaker B: So just pick a name. A lot of our. I know most of our listeners know who Kodak is, so I can say that, yes, mom, Kodak got it. Photo man.
[00:57:01] Speaker A: And then this one is obvious. But we have to touch on it. I mean, we toss. You have less risk, obviously, if you're not running your own business, the company takes on the risk. You can work under it or within it. And then let's talk about that word that we don't love, work life balance.
[00:57:21] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, sure, sure. Yeah.
[00:57:22] Speaker A: But it is important. It's important to talk about, because you do have the ability, not all, not all employees, but a lot of employees have the ability to leave work at work. If you have your own company, you never get to do that. Ever, ever, always on. And there is a real peace of mind that comes with being able to leave work at work and having your work life and your personal life separate. That's not what I want. That doesn't work for me. But that works for a lot of people, and it's very, very important to a lot of people.
[00:57:58] Speaker B: Sure. Yeah. And look, but let's not mistake, too. You can also work for a company, and you can still have nothing that looks like work life balance. Right? I mean, if you become as you. As you work your way to the upper echelons, and we both have friends that have done it while they don't. And that can be part of it, right. That while they don't, you know, their name's not on the door or they don't have stock papers. They're working those hours, too, though. You know, they're. They're at it around the clock. And I would argue, they might say, gosh, I don't know. I mean, I get paid. Awesome. And my computer, my comp structure is fantastic. And for that, I have sacrificed what one would call work life balance. You know, whether it's flying or, you know, you're traveling or you have to be in different countries and, you know, even there are many situations or many people that, you know, work inside of organizations large and small and still have to give up some of that quality of life if, you know, if that's what you're calling shutting it down or being home every Saturday or Saturday or every evening.
[00:59:02] Speaker A: I wasn't gonna call you.
[00:59:03] Speaker B: Yeah, you know what? I saw you. I saw you drooling down yourself, so I thought I better call myself out.
Being home on Saturdays or whatever those things are, that can happen, too. As you climb the ladder, I imagine if you looked at the executive team at Nike, pick a name, I imagine they sacrificed some quality of life at that level inside the organization. Organization too.
[00:59:25] Speaker A: I'm not underestimating that. I think that happens a lot in a lot of organizations. But I would argue and push back a little bit in that a owner operator who is involved, operator involved in the business can never shut it down. You shut it down. If I shut it down, my business is not that I don't have great people, but there's just certain executive things I take care of. If I don't take care of it, business shuts down, everybody loses their job. It's a nightmare. I would say that most people that don't own the business and don't, you know, aren't owner operators can shut it down or take a little bit of a break without anything, a catastrophe occurring. That's the difference in that extra pressure, you know, like having to be the one to pay the payroll, having to be the one make sure that you are doing these things for everyone else's livelihood. Maybe I should say that additional pressure is there that if you work for a company you don't have. Not saying you don't have pressure, I'm not undermining that or underestimating that or what's the word? Under valuing what you do. But there is some, there's a different type of pressure that you cannot get away from.
[01:00:40] Speaker B: Right. Well, you know, depending on where you are, I mean, younger businesses, a lot of times personally, you are signing on the line for the creditors, the people that are helping back you, whether that's the people that sell you things. I mean, you know, as a young business, when you are, can I say.
[01:00:59] Speaker A: One of my lines is if you are not willing to sign your life away on the dotted line, you cannot own a company.
[01:01:08] Speaker B: Oh, that's right. Sure, sure. Yeah. Because, yeah, I mean, you won't be able to get the funding short of signing an idoT, an indemnified deed of trust. Right. Which says, here's my house, I signed.
[01:01:17] Speaker A: My life away and yours away.
[01:01:19] Speaker B: You did sign my way too.
[01:01:20] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:01:20] Speaker B: I trust you. But yeah, I mean, we'll chuckle and say, unless you've made payroll and signed an idot, you really don't know what it's all about. Those are two big milestones in starting a business.
Paying payroll, making payroll and having to pay payroll. But then when you also go through towards your biggest funding. We bought some business. We bought a business in 2011 and that's when we started to get into a growth trajectory where we started to borrow money. My father was incredibly conservative and if there wasn't cash in the bank to do it, he was very uncomfortable with going to a bank or taking on that type of debt or liability. So it just didn't happen.
Where when those opportunities presented, it was, we like what you're doing here, but your balance sheet is only so solid despite being an older company because those investments weren't made and we didn't own our real estate. Something a lot of times which is collateralized against long term debt. I was only able to collateralize with my house, which was equivalent or had enough equity in it to be able to take on long term debt. So those are definitely some different moments. And I will say in my travels, our customer base is fantastic and loaded with blue chip, big publicly traded companies and working with the individuals there and even the executive leadership teams, there's just a different. When you have this magical thing called shareholders, and shareholders are great because you can. It's something that I've watched our bigger customers defer to our shareholders.
What does that even mean? Like, we're on the plant floor right now and we got to figure out how to make that work. What does this have to do with shareholders? So there's that deferred to a higher power thing or those larger companies a lot of times are able to afford layers. I mean, that's something that we talk about and struggle with. We have some roles around here that are one person roles, and if something happens to that individual, we feel the pain. And not that we can't, you know, slide it or shoulder in other spots, but, you know, it doesn't just disappear into like it does in a massive company where you spread that over ten bodies in the department or 40 bodies in the department or whatever it is, we get away with it in our ops groups where we have 40 hourly people, but other parts of the organization, when, you know, it got even an extended sickness or we have one of our guys is going out on leave for a week while his wife has a baby. And man, we'll feel that we will get it done, we will work around it, but we sure as heck miss those individuals even for a week for something like that that's planned, you know, throw in an unintended sickness or whatever else it could be. We've had situations where a husband got transferred, transferred. And it's, gosh, I love it here dearly, but my husband got the opportunity of a lifetime, my wife got the opportunity of a lifetime, and we're going to Atlanta. That was one specifically. But those are just some things I recognize the difference of in those different companies or the types and sizes of the companies.
[01:04:26] Speaker A: And last thing, I'll add to the added pressure, too. While we want everybody, we've talked about wanting everybody to be visionaries inside a company. At the end of the day, you, me, we are the visionary. So we also have that added pressure. Like, we have to set the vision for the company and identify the next thing and always be on top of it. So on top of doing our jobs, being in the trenches, getting done the everyday things, we also have to be thinking on a macro level of, like, what's our next move? Making sure we're in touch and our fingers on the pulse of everything. And that is a lot of pressure because you're like, is this big decision the right move and always having to think four steps, or at least we should be three steps ahead? That piece of it, I think, is not that you don't have execs that you want doing that, but at the end of the day, who does it come down to? It comes down to the business owner to set that direction.
[01:05:19] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think the danger there is because I don't want to get, you know, I don't want to wrap this back around to, you know, an entrepreneurial conversation, but the danger becomes, you know, what we just talked about is what allowed you to start Tegler was the identification of an opportunity based on demand. You know, the real danger there can be is that you get sucked into lots of. Of different things and you're not there listening to those cues personally. And you're right. I mean, I think the other challenge becomes in being diluted. So we've talked about it on here a lot, and I have put it at the feet of my directs and their directs. So our executives and our directors and saying, I want you to join me as chief visionary officer because my bandwidth is such that I'm not in front of the market all the time or as much as I once was. Some of those ideas that I had in the past came from me directly listening to the customer and filling a need that I heard. So I now really have to rely on those people to help with those cues. The danger in that is getting diluted right where certain people are going. Puro, piro, piro. I saw this. I saw that. It's like, great, let's talk about it. Let's figure. So that's been interesting, and I've had some engagement in that regard in trying to create that environment that we're talking about with the people that we work with to say, yeah, absolutely. I mean, tell me what that customer said. Tell me how you think our assets or our resources plug in nicely to solve that problem, because that's how we got where we are and how you got where you are.
[01:06:46] Speaker A: But I think bringing it, yes, and I think bringing it back to the point of this discussion is to say that the benefit of working for a great company is you are given the ability to be, be a visionary, and the leader encourages that. The other benefit is if it doesn't work out, it doesn't ultimately fall on you. It falls on me, on you. So it's like having the ability to experiment, having the ability to be a visionary, but at the end of the day, not being fully responsible if it doesn't come to.
So those are all the things that I felt were important to touch on, because I think that working for an organization is the smartest move for so many people. And I think you can get so much out of it and not enough people are talking about it, even though we are entrepreneurs. I'm sick of hearing everyone talk about entrepreneurship only and that everybody should own their own thing and do their own thing. Not true, right?
[01:07:48] Speaker B: Right.
[01:07:48] Speaker A: Not true at all.
[01:07:49] Speaker B: And almost. And anything that would suggest like auto success is ridiculous and even disingenuous, too.
It's not that easy. And here's another thing, too. There's a lot of great organizations that do have everything. We're talking about the autonomy, the freedom.
In the next month or two, we've got people flying to any number of locations to learn things, shows, whether it's modex or automate.
Those are things that inside of a great organization with autonomy and freedom, it's someone like me. And he would say, absolutely. Not only am I happy that you brought it up, you have to go. Where else would you go learn all of that in an eleven hour walk and a couple of plane flights? I can't think of a better way to invest than you going to that show or whatever that is.
[01:08:33] Speaker A: So as we always do, we take, I take, at least I take takeaways from every podcast we do personally, just talking through things. And my takeaway is build a business, build a brand that new people want to be a part of that story, that are happy and encouraged and inspired and motivated to be a part of that brand and a part of that story. And it's my job to build that company and brand.
[01:08:56] Speaker B: Yep. And then on top of that, what we talked about very early is. And then foster that leadership and ownership mentality regardless of whose name is on the building or any of that. Right. And empowerment the individuals to be owners of whatever their domain is. Right. However many directs they have and even they have no directs, empower them to be the owner of their domain and clearly define what it is and what right looks like.
And you're going to find. You're going to. It's like planting seeds, right? They're just going to be out there sprouting on their own and such great contributors to the organization.
[01:09:33] Speaker A: Yeah. I think if you're an employee for a good company, you can be really proud of that and you have so much value to bring and you need to take, but you do need to take responsibility and accountability and fight for what you want. And I think you can build exactly the life you want without taking that risk that you don't want to take. And you just have to work hard, identify your value, negotiate, bring forth your value prop. And, you know, all these things we talked about and it's so possible.
[01:10:00] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Love it. Good talk, as always.
[01:10:03] Speaker A: All right, so now for what the people came for. It's the whole reason everyone's listening. Everyone would like a caffeine update. So a 90 days caffeine free experiment. I just surpassed the 60 days. You want to know all the benefits I'm feeling?
[01:10:17] Speaker B: I would please zero.
[01:10:18] Speaker A: Oh, what? Seriously, would that build up?
[01:10:21] Speaker B: You got a big fat zero for me.
[01:10:22] Speaker A: My sleep is not improved. I heard all of these stories about how my sleep like a baby, no anxiety, heart stops racing, all these magical things that happen when you give up caffeine. I've experienced none of it. Just being honest. I wish I could tell you otherwise. The only reason I'm continuing on to 90 days is because I said I would. Even though Nick continues to try to sabotage me in the experiment, I've been holding strong in 90 days. I'll give you another update just to tell you that I feel no benefits of caffeine.
[01:10:51] Speaker B: All right.
[01:10:51] Speaker A: But I would enjoy congratulatory celebration for.
[01:10:58] Speaker B: I'll give you a congratulatory now for the two thirds mark. And I'll give you a full congratulatory because your discipline is admirable.
[01:11:06] Speaker A: And with that, give me a caffeinated drink on our 90 day mark. During this episode.
[01:11:11] Speaker B: It's gonna be team Celsius. Celsius for everybody.
[01:11:13] Speaker A: I like jack of fuel, too.
[01:11:15] Speaker B: Yeah. Perfect.
[01:11:15] Speaker A: Well, I don't discriminate.
[01:11:17] Speaker B: As always, thank you so much for. For listening today. We greatly appreciate it.
[01:11:21] Speaker A: We absolutely do. And if you found inspiration or you got some kind of knowledge from this business content, please subscribe so you get notified when we drop more content, which is going to be every other week without fail.
[01:11:39] Speaker B: We got some great stuff coming. We've got some guests, which you'll see, and we're going to continue to do that. And we're doing some research around what you want to hear and what matters in today's world of business, and you can rely on us to bring it to you. So thank you. Hit that subscribe button.
[01:11:52] Speaker A: Thank you so much.
[01:11:58] Speaker B: Welcome to Ace Rodney. Rodney talks for the children stars tonight. Tonight's guest, incredible, credible.
