Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to the Independence by Design podcast, where we discuss what it means to be a business owner and ways to get unstuck from the day to day so we can design a business that gives us a life of independence.
Morning, Joel. I'm so excited to get you back on the show.
[00:00:16] Speaker B: Glad to be here.
[00:00:18] Speaker A: As we were just talking before I hit the record button is the topic that you spend your life talking about with the CEO role is like this mystical unicorn for. For all the people listening in. And my clients and I really do believe that you're the CEO operating system. That, that episode that we did, Joel, is like one of the top episodes that people love. And as I've been doing this, my new business with Independence by Design, the owner's framework is becoming more and more clear to me why it was so important. Because it's like, okay, if we put all these mechanics in place and controls in place, what have I been doing as an actual owner operator? And then how do I actually clarify that and then actually manage someone else that's doing it? So there's this huge, huge amount of anxiety or ambiguity around it, which is, I think, what your book provides clarity on the CEO type rope. So how did you just teed up again? Like the couple different.
[00:01:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:01:20] Speaker A: Milestones. Right.
[00:01:21] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:01:22] Speaker A: To be conscious of.
[00:01:23] Speaker B: Yeah, Yeah. I mean, what a lot of people don't think about is, you know, how does the CEO role vary as you grow a business? And most people probably think, well, If I've got 10 employees, that's one level. If I have 100 employees, that's a different level. If I have a thousand employees, that's 10 times more complicated than 100. Right. And very linear. That's the way we tend to think. And I found that's not accurate at all. It's a very step function kind of thing, from one to about 25 employees.
Most intelligent people can kind of run that out of their head. And yeah, they're the CEO, but they're really typically providing all of the executive roles. And by that I mean they're making all the key decisions for all the different functional aspects of the business. They're approving all the sales deals, they're approving all the marketing expenses. They're defining what the product is. They're visiting with the shareholders if they have them, or having that conversation with their spouse in the evenings.
They're managing the employees, they're managing the key customers. And so then at 150, though, you can no longer be in that role.
And so there's this kind of chasm of death that a lot of operators go through between 25 and 150 is how do you make the transition from doing everything at the executive level to doing nothing at the executive level? And this, what is this full time CEO role that then is replaced at 100 or 150 employees that you should be doing? And you know, I label that, that full time CEO role as managing the future is what I call it.
Good CEOs spend about 80% of their time thinking about future activities, trying to avoid potholes coming down the road, and only about 10 or 20% of their time engaged in tactical issues of what's going on in the business on a given day.
But that transitions where a lot of people fail because you know, they're, they're running great at 20 employees, everything's blowing and going. Suddenly they wake up one day and they have 40 or 50 and they think they're going to do it by working two and a half times as fast or hard. And that's just, or yeah, that's just not possible.
[00:03:34] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
So many good, I mean so many good gold nuggets there too. And for the listeners in too and for you, Joel, like we don't have to repeat everything that we had in the last two. I'll make sure that the last two interviews that we've had are on the show note and links in the show notes because I want to continue lifting off of a lot of the groundwork that you've done in your books and in the conversations that we've had. But it's a great intro of this and so couple like you have in the previous interviews that we've done. There's a couple of things that literally you've said that I can't forget and that I've been working on with my clients too. And so and this could help maybe with the foundation of where we're going with this is one is that you said CEOs shouldn't have any tasks.
They're moving the company through people unbelievably like duh. And so, and like what's so fascinating, Joe, is like, yeah, you know, it's not all about finance, but the finance becomes the controls, like judging whether it's working or not. But I think it's so fascinating because you have like sales and marketing and the revenue you have cost of goods, which is, you know, production or service or whatever it is. And then you have, you know, SGA, OpEx, which is the CFO and like those three functions.
The CEOs on top and is responsible for the entire output of the financials and making sure it works. And just, like, how you worded it and how, like, all that fit together just made so much sense for me. And then the second thing that you said on our first call, first interview was like. Because I had asked you, because a lot of these people listening in, you know, they grew it. Like you said, not a cio, not a VP of Sales, not a cfo. But I had asked you, like, how do you know how to hire the good people if you don't know that technical set of skills? And you said they should tell you what they're gonna do and then predict the level of accuracy to the future. And I'm just like, oh, my God. So anyways, I'm just giving you, like, so helpful for me and the clients that I've been working with. So where do you see, like, you know, I. I teed up in the intro before we hit the recording of, like, extracting themselves out of this thing. This role that they're doing is just proven to be really difficult because I had a client this week, Joel, super talented guy, bought a business. He's bought a couple other businesses. He's doing almost a couple million dollars in normalized ebitda. And I had another guy on my podcast that owns six companies around my age, and Michael was like, how in the hell does he do that?
And I said, well, the owner knows what levers to pull. And how do you. Like, the owner knows how to interact with the CEO. So, like, what are your thoughts on, like, some of the biggest challenges you've seen about this dynamic between ownership, CEOs, and the operations? Because what you're tackling is, like, the linchpin behind, like, all of the stuff connecting in a way that it should.
[00:06:24] Speaker B: So the way I think about the paradigm shift that changes in those, you know, from. From kind of operator to CEO, is when you're the operator, your. Your job is to know everything that everybody's doing in the business, to gather data from all of those people.
You're the expert. Okay, so you know, every deal we're working, you know, everything that's going on, you get all that data passed up to you, and then you make all the critical decisions. Okay, now that works at 20.
[00:06:56] Speaker A: People say, I'm already exhausted from you even explaining.
[00:07:00] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that's what they do, though. That's. And that's fine. And if you know in the early stages, that's what you have to do, because you can't Hire any people who are dedicated to the business as you are, who know as much as you do.
[00:07:11] Speaker A: You're the expensive and like, and honestly, like where it's so fascinating, Joe, is like that, that has to happen. Because the only way for you to avoid that is either bring in partners so you don't have to pay them 300 grand, or raise equity, or keep the equity and do it yourself. I mean, you have to do it.
[00:07:27] Speaker B: Yeah, you have to do it. And you're learning, you're learning. You don't know what works exactly right. And so only one person can learn at a time. If you have five people doing different tasks, it's really hard to assemble all that learning. And so in that one to 20 stage, what you're really learning is, you know, what the market is, what your product is, who your competitors are, how to sell it, all these critical learnings. But then when you get all that in place and you're trying to scale it now, your paradigm has to shift. From all the data comes up to me and I make the decision to all the decision criteria gets pushed down by me to everybody in the organization so that each manager makes the exact same decision I would make if I was able to look at their data and stand over their shoulder and watch what's going on.
And so that's a fundamental paradigm shift that a lot of people don't understand. They continue at 100 or 150 to try to build some dashboard that has all this day to day data and they're tracking weekly sales and weekly and this. And I'm like, what, what the heck you can't do? I mean, there's no one person that can manage all that. You have to put management in place that can do that. And so then your job is to educate those people on the mission, the vision, the values, the strategic objectives, how to make decisions, what makes our organization unique. All these things you learned going through that one to 20 stage. You've got to educate people on that so that that first level manager, when confronted with a situation, makes the same decision you would make if you were standing there looking over their shoulder.
[00:09:08] Speaker A: It's, I 100% agree with you. And I think like, this is why I was so excited to get you back on it for another conversation. Because that paradigm shift right there, it is the chasm of death. And it's like this, it's like this, you know, the whole cocoon, the, the caterpillar cocoon, butterfly. I mean, like, I mean it might sound ridiculous, but like it, I've watched it and like, so because like back to my client who said, how does someone have five, you know, six companies? I'm like, well, they did exactly what you're doing. I'm like, and it's so interesting, Joel, because it, it doesn't, it doesn't take as much time as long as you know how the machine is built. Like, you could be sitting at a gym and like, you know, the CEO calls you up and says, here's what's going on with this and that and the other thing. And you just, you're, you're like, as the owner, you're moving the CEO and the, in the operations, you're pointing him nudging them to use the resources effectively. But I think you hit on that was so important for all of my clients is that it's that value driven system of like when you make that decision, care about people, customer first, I mean, it's not fluffy. It's like, no, no. Like this is how we make decisions. But it has to be tied to a goal.
[00:10:17] Speaker B: Whatever makes you unique. You know, you've had success.
Any business that's had success there. You know, people always talk about finding an easy business. There are no easy businesses, right.
In the United States. There's competition in everything you do. And so if you've been successful to get from, you know, 1 to 20 to 40 or whatever, you've figured out something about the world that other people don't know to be true.
[00:10:42] Speaker A: Okay, totally.
My buddy Brandon Henry, I don't know if you've ever met him, he's down and he's owns Mosaic Advisors down in Texas. And so he's in Houston. And he said, experience is what you get when you don't get what you want. And then you expect, I was like, that's great. And then you, and then you expect other people who haven't gone through what you've gone through to just randomly know it. Right?
[00:11:04] Speaker B: That's right. And that, that's just not the case. But you figured out unique things about the market, the way the customer wants to be serviced about product, whatever it is. And you've got to communicate that to everybody and drive that through the organization so you can spend your time looking further down the road, three months, six months a year down the road, anticipating problems and avoiding. And yeah, it is easier in some sense in that you don't, you know, the great CEO doesn't walk into the office every day with a list of 100 things they have to do, but they do have to figure out where the market's going, how to compete with this competitor that's getting, gaining traction, whatever.
So it's deep mind work, but it's
[00:11:47] Speaker A: not deep tactical work, which that's even on the CEO level. But I got like half of my clients who are trying to hire that person. So like what happens is like a lot of the people I interact with, they're kind of doing that already.
They're working harder than they should. And that's where like, so just for some context, Joe, like with the owners, the ownership framework that I put together, like, hey, understand your ownership goals of desired distributions and desired equity valuation. Because you know, if you're not backed by PE or an esop, the ownership goals are still important, but like they're not as clear as they might be in an ESOP or a PE firm. So like they have to take the ownership to come clarify those goals, build out the financial metrics, understand like what is the strategies and all the kind of the intangible DNA stuff that you were talking about. But then they want to hire the CEO that then can look into the future like you're talking about, maybe help the audience better understand the dynamic and inter relationship with the CEO and the ownership, whether whatever ownership structure, this board or the board with the, you know, vc, private equity, ESAP and what that relationship should look like.
[00:12:57] Speaker B: Well, that gets to kind of what's your fundamental model for a business and what my experience tells me. You know, there have been arguments, the economists argue, about what's the purpose of a company, what's the purpose of a corporation. Some people say to make a profit, some people shareholder value. But what I found practically from the CEO chair is the only way to build a sustainable and thriving organization is to consistently provide value to customers, consistently provide value to employees and, and consistently provide value to shareholders or an owner, whoever it is. Okay. And that's a balancing act. And you need to know what each wants. And what I often find again is it's very unclear to the CEO or to the management team what each of those groups really wants. Yeah, if you have a PE group, you know, they want to sell in whatever years, that makes it a lot easier. Right, but what are you trying to build here? Because every decision relates to, you know, if I want to, I want to drive cash. You know, owners may want to drive cash, they may want to drive growth, they may want to drive valuation, they may want to get out of the business in two years. All those things change the decision making process. And then every time you're making A decision. You've got a trade off of resources between those three groups. Right? Because anything I give customers is probably a resource that could have gone to employees or shareholders. And. And anything I give employees is a resource that could have gone to customers or employees, whatever. And so it's very difficult. It's not a single variable optimization problem. Like sales is a single variable optimization. More revenue is good, less revenue is bad.
[00:14:36] Speaker A: Okay?
[00:14:36] Speaker B: Now, that doesn't make the job easy. I'm not saying the job's easy. I'm just saying you're only optimizing.
[00:14:41] Speaker A: It's a bottle rocket, right? And it goes.
[00:14:44] Speaker B: That's right. That's right. But CEO job, the problem is you've got these three groups that you've got a constant tension between, and you're trying to make the right decision that balances those three interests consistently. And again, you got to know something about. I mean, I was just with a group this week, and they came to the conclusion we really don't know that much about what our customers want, you know, and it was kind of an aha moment for.
[00:15:09] Speaker A: Yep, yep.
Well, and Joel, it's so awesome because I'm sure you. With how many people you interact with.
What I'm hearing here is just first principle thinking, right? And like, it's. So let me layer this on top of this, what you just said, because where I landed, Joel, when I. Part of the ownership framework is there are only three constraints. And this, like, I don't want to tell people what to do, Joel. Like, I just, like, I just want to help people think better. And it's like, well, there are three constraints. Time, cash flow, and equity. So you can optimize for, like. But there's a trade off. Every single decision will ripple through time. Cash flow, equity. But then if you layered that, like my. That what I just said on top of customers, employees, and shareholders.
The thing that I've realized, Joel, like, 99% of the conflict, tension, bull is related to a lack of clarity on the couple of things we just talked about. Because what we just said was, it's not your opinion or my opinion. It's just how it works. Right?
[00:16:13] Speaker B: How it works.
You know, you see all kinds of examples. I mean, we got Boeing right now going through. They hired a bunch of CEOs who were bean counters, and that's all they worried about was, you know, profit, dollars per share profit. And, you know, the customer. They've ruined Southwest Airlines because they couldn't deliver 737s to Southwest, which has caused a Huge problem in their business. And then the employee unions on strike because they didn't understand how to deliver value to employees. And I'm not saying this is easy, but they weren't even thinking about it is the problem.
[00:16:47] Speaker A: Right.
[00:16:47] Speaker B: They were balancing, they were just totally focused on optimizing that shareholder value, shareholder profit.
[00:16:53] Speaker A: And to Your point, the CEO's relationship with the ownership group has to be abundantly clear on this. Because in correct me if I'm wrong, but one of our last conversations, you just talked about greasing the wheels on decision making. Right. Isn't that kind of one of your books?
But by the clarity that we just talked about on those components, should they be able to roll that clarity of decision making throughout the organization because people know what they're doing and why they're doing it?
[00:17:26] Speaker B: Absolutely. So, you know, most companies, I go in, I say, show me your plan, your three year, five year plan. They'll have some three year plan that has a bunch of financials, right? And I say, yeah, but where's your three year plan for providing value to the customer?
And they look at me like I'm kind of crazy.
And then I say, where's your three year plan for providing value to employees?
And then they go, oh, we don't have that. So, you know, most companies manage the financials very strategically. They're looking at, you know, two years out, three years out, growth rates, profit, all these metrics.
But they only manage the customers and employees very tactically. Customer quits, customer causes a problem. We fire drill, employee quits that we thought was a good employee fire drill. But there's no strategic approach to either one of those groups. And they typically don't even have a lot of data about either one of those groups.
[00:18:22] Speaker A: Interesting. Yeah.
What's fascinating is I, if I were to, I mean, this is all anecdotal, but like, if I were to go back and assess my customers or my audience, I bet you they do the opposite of what you just said.
Because they're owner operators who care a lot about their customers and their employees. And then they're the ones who are last in line.
And then it's like, it's like. But what's very fascinating, Joel, as you talk about the first principles of this, well, then they get tired because they don't have enough cash flow or equity to make it worth it. Like, I mean, I asked this question in my workshops, do you know if what you're doing is worth it? And everybody's like, I have no, no idea. Well, it's like, well, you're slogging through and eating glass.
And so it's. I like it a lot.
What is that? So that this as people that are trying to extract themselves from the operations like that and they're having a CEO in place, you know, or articulating what they're doing and then preparing for that replacement. What is a good relationship with a CEO and a ownership board look like? Like what? What are some of those dynamics?
[00:19:23] Speaker B: Yeah, well, clear agreement on mission, clear agreement on values. What makes us different? These are differentiating values. These aren't things like honesty. I mean, no company would say we want people who are dishonest. So honesty didn't tell me anything. You know, I use the Southwest Airlines example all the time. Southwest Airlines, when they started set up one of our values is going to be make flying fun, right? Well, that was a differentiating value. The other airlines weren't maybe against fun, but they never thought about fun. Right. And it changed the way they built Southwest Airlines. So you got to figure out what makes you different and how you're going to look at the world different. Agree on that. And then we do a set of strategic objectives out three years that cover all parts of the business. So what are we going to do for customers by the end of 2027, as we sit here in 2024, what are we going to do for employees? What are we going to do for shareholders? What are we going to do in sales, what are we going to do in marketing? What are we going to do in product?
And so that's something the board can opine on what's reasonable, what's know possible in that time to provide value to all those groups.
[00:20:23] Speaker A: And then the CEO is the one building that out.
[00:20:26] Speaker B: Right, Building that out and conversation with the board, with the ownership, whoever.
Do we have agreement on this? I mean, if you tried to hire me to be a CEO of your company, that's before we, I take the job. I'm going to say, do we have agreement on what those strategic objectives are going to be out three years? Because if you think I'm going to 10 times the business and I only think 3x is possible. We've. We've got a problem starting day one, right? Yeah.
[00:20:51] Speaker A: Right. Can I, can I double click on that for a second? Because it's not all about the financials. And I think you and I have made that abundantly clear right now. And I had like, what ends up happening is I end up focusing probably too much on those jewels because it's such a weak point in a lot of my clients because I inherently believe that they care about their customers and they care about their employees. And there's just this, you know, the squeaky wheel gets the attention. But. But when they move into the ownership role, really the ownership of an asset really cares about reinvestment versus distributions and the equity goal. The intangible stuff that they have in the benefit and perk that they have of being a private owner operator is they can then instill their mission, vision and values into the CEO. But like they have to be abundantly clear in the financials going back to then like what you're talking about your three year objective plan.
A lot of my clients get hung up on do I need to have a perfect clear vision of the future or is the CEO going to do it or do we do it together?
So let's assume that they kind of had the big picture of like the financials in order. But like how did, like what's that relationship with the CEO and the ownership group on that plan?
[00:21:59] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a constant conversation. We're going to do it, but then six months from now we're going to stare at it again and then six months from then we're going to push it out. So these are objectives that we're never really going to reach because at the end of 2025 we're going to move them out to 2028. Right. But these give us the guidance. Okay, are we headed in the right direction? If we were to achieve these, would everyone be happy? And then I go straight from those three year strategic objectives to then I can set quarterly goals for the organization.
Obviously the ownership should have a say and if they agree on those are the proper goals for the organization on a quarterly basis. But if we've got that agreement out three years, it's usually pretty obvious, you know, if we're going to do 100 million in 2027, we got to do 50 million this year or whatever. Right.
And so I go straight from that three year plan to a set of quarterly goals. And then that's how you manage the organization from the board perspective is the only question you care about is of those corporate quarterly objectives we've said, of which there are four or five typically, are we going to get there or not? Just tell me, you know, every month or every week, however much you want to do. And of course I have software that does it for you. So you can be sitting on the beach in Tahiti and see exactly, to talk about that, See exactly the same data the CEOs looking at, which is not financial data, not a bunch of numbers, but actual predictions of whether we're going to achieve the goals or not based on everybody's ownership of those goals and objectives and their best information. Now, that may be fueled by a lot of data that they're analyzing, but I don't want to. Don't show me the data.
Then I just got to reinterpret the data. And I'm not involved in the business day to day, so I can't make any judgment on the data.
Tell me, are we going to hit the sales number? Are we going to hit the marketing number?
[00:23:55] Speaker A: Are we going to track. Right.
[00:23:58] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I can't, you know, and if we're not, what are you doing to fix it? Right. Obviously the next question.
[00:24:05] Speaker A: Oh, I'm like salivating at the mouth right now, trying to, trying to figure out. Because, like, what you just tackled right there, Joel, is the biggest concern that most of my clients have. Because so here's honestly what, like, I mean, out of my 15 clients right now, I mean, like, half of them, they, they want to, they have a good investment, right? Like, they're kicking out money, the thing's got a good value.
Why freaking sell it? Because they're tired and they're tired of like, being the CEO. But then there's this huge amount of anxiety of, like, what about my culture? I'm the one that made it unique. Like, I don't want to, like, have to, like, swoop back in because, you know, the CEO effed it all up. And so, like, there's just all of this.
I think it's what the, the, the picture that you painted. I've experienced it in my past from current clients in my old. And, and a business where, like, if this hard work is done that you're talking about, it's about the knowledge and the alignment. Because if someone calls you, regardless of whether you're on the beach or wherever, it should be an on track, off track, what are you doing about it? But then, like, people don't believe that that's possible or the people are possible, the systems. Like, I don't know, I just find it so fascinating because I inherently do believe it's possible if the systems are put in place and the people are there.
So interesting. Tell me about the software. That's very fascinating.
[00:25:30] Speaker B: Yeah. So, you know, over the years, as I begin to develop this methodology of, you know, setting clear goals and communicating with the board in this, this way, I wanted a way to, to monitor and I had sat through, you know, 100 operations reviews meeting where everybody on my team came in and, and showed me five pages of data and told me how brilliant they and their teams were.
And then it was funny because we would always focus, spend most of our time talking about the sales forecast.
And I, and I remember leaving one meeting and it was, I was like, wait a minute, why did we just spend 90% of our time talking about sales forecast? Because I'm not a person. Once you get to sc, sales is important, but sales isn't the only thing. Everything's important.
Why did we do that? And it hit me. The aha moment was sales is the only group that by process gives me information about the future.
They give me a forecast. Every other group in the company was giving me data about the past. Well, if I'm trying to manage the future, I need information about the future.
So basically what I said is, how do you genericize the sales forecasting process to every group?
Well, you got to define where you're going because that's what sales does. They define a quota. Right. And then you got to ask people every week, are you going to get there, not show me a bunch of data? Because I don't know, you could be 20% to the goal and know exactly how you're going to knock out the last 80%. You could be 80% there, but have a blocker and know you, you don't know how to finish the last 20%.
So showing me all this data, because again, I'm not the expert in all these areas at 100 people like I am at 10 or 20, I'm not making all the decisions. I don't have time to get detailed into all the information in a given group.
[00:27:21] Speaker A: And well, Joel Salesforce is working like this. And then we sent this many proposals. I don't care.
[00:27:26] Speaker B: I don't care.
I really don't care.
And you know, but this is hard. And you know, that's the CEO role though. If you want to be the VP of sales, you know, hire a CEO and go be the VP of sales. If you want to know where every deal is and what everything's working great. But, but that's not the right role for the CEO at scale. And so this we, we ask people every week on each of their goals, how likely are you to achieve the goal? And it's a simple red, yellow, green scale.
And then at the end of the quarter we hold them accountable. If you tell me all quarter, hey, I'm going to get it done. I'm Going to get it done. I'm going to get it done. You don't get it done. That's not me saying you didn't do the job. That's you saying you didn't do the job. Right, and then why. Yeah, and then.
[00:28:11] Speaker A: Yeah, because, you know, it's fascinating, Joel, is you're like, do you see this as a, as a byproduct of what you're talking about? Where.
Because I believe that if all of the mechanics are done, then we don't have to focus on the mechanics. I can focus on the person going, are they bull me or not?
Right? Because like, what happens is we get, you know, acronyms and data confused, but it's like, wait a second. No, no, no, no. You just didn't do your job.
[00:28:38] Speaker B: Right.
[00:28:38] Speaker A: Like, isn't that like. Like that that's what we really need to get to. But if we're not like, clear on the, on the outcome of the job and the expectations, then we're going to be.
[00:28:46] Speaker B: If you don't do the planning to set the goals and clear expectations, then what am I holding you accountable to? You know, I thought you were going to do X. You thought you were going to do. Yeah, that, that doesn't work. So you've got to put in the work ahead of time, getting every quarter and define what success is for every employee.
And it, you know, the first time you do it, it may be hard, but second, third, fourth time, it gets a lot easier. And then it just becomes the way you run an organization. And I just can't even imagine running an organization in any other way.
Once you've seen it work, you're like, how do. I don't even understand how a CEO that doesn't understand these concepts about predictions and getting forecasts, how they even run their organization. I mean, it just looks to me like utter chaos and incompetence from the outside.
[00:29:36] Speaker A: Most likely because it is.
[00:29:38] Speaker B: I mean, well, you know, I don't want to judge. I'm not inside. I don't know. But right, right, right, right, right.
[00:29:43] Speaker A: But, you know, to give a parallel analogy, Joel, is like, so I've had the same workout routine for damn near 20 years.
And I, I've been working on at home for the last four years, but like, for the prior years to that, I go to the gym, Lifetime Fitness. People walk in and I'm like, look at that person. Just like completely. No freaking clue what they're doing. Going up to random machines, doing random things. I'm like, it just looks it. First of all it looks stressful. Second of all, it's chaotic as all and they're hurting themselves and they're not getting the results that they want. And it's the exact same way with a business. To your point. It's just like the dysfunction, the conflict, the confusion, the lack of productivity is just so obvious when you've experienced the opposite. Back to my, my client and friend who's like, how do people run six companies? I'm like, it's, and it's actually like I had someone come up to me at the gym going, you look so peaceful while you're working out. I'm like, yeah, I'm like reading a book because I know exactly what I'm doing when I'm going to do it. But like, I think about the environment that you just talked about.
What like with your CEOs that you're working with, how many are owner operators? How many are actually employees with maybe, you know, phantom stock or short term bonus plans? And, and that Brandon Henry, I was actually mentioning to you, who is the family office near you guys is, he said that like good CEOs don't even like, because they see this, they don't even want anything to do with a lack of clarity because they know the storm they're getting into. So like kind of maybe give us some into the mindset of these people that understand this.
[00:31:19] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean we work with a wide range. Of course we work with some, you know, owner operators have grown into big businesses. We work with a lot of hired CEOs in PE firms.
You know, generally the challenge is the reason somebody gets hired into the CEO role is they were very good at one of the executive roles below the CEO.
People don't understand that the difference between being a great VP of sales and a good CEO is the difference between playing basketball and baseball. Yeah, they both have balls and sort of athletic ability matters, but you know, these are not the same sports and rarely, rarely ever. And I could, you know, do you see someone who's really good at both? Right.
And, but you know, a lot of people don't understand that this CEO role is, is a totally different type of role than the executive role. So they think any good executive that's a talented, smart, you know, hard charging executive will be good in the CEO role. And they would be good in the CEO role if they knew what the CEO role was, but they don't. I mean, it's, it's like, you know, just because you've flown a lot on an airplane doesn't mean you know how to fly the airplane. I mean, those are different jobs, right?
[00:32:35] Speaker A: Thank God, right?
[00:32:36] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, flying flight attendant may have put in 2 million miles in their career, but I don't know that that really qualifies them for being a pilot.
But that's what we think. And so a lot of people get hired and typically you don't get hired into a significant CEO role unless you've been incredibly successful at every other role that you've had. And then those people fail at a rate of about 50 to 70% depending on how you run the numbers. And think about it, they certainly don't achieve the objectives that they stated when they were were hired.
[00:33:07] Speaker A: And then they go hop around to PE firm to PE firm making 400
[00:33:10] Speaker B: grand, trying to make well, and, and a lot of them end up being consultants. Right? And, and coaches because they can't get another CEO gig. Because once you, you know, it's just,
[00:33:19] Speaker A: here's what I've done. By the way, you should. Yeah, yeah.
[00:33:23] Speaker B: I was CEO of this company for three years, but I'm not going to tell you what the valuation did during that period.
[00:33:28] Speaker A: $300 million, I employed four of them.
[00:33:33] Speaker B: And so then you end up with a bunch of CEO coaches and consultants who still don't. Haven't figured it out. And they're probably really good salespeople or really good CFOs or whatever, but you know, they don't want to go back to that. I mean, it's, you know, the football analogy I use all the time. You know, you fail, you go 1 in 13 as a head coach, you got to go be an offensive coordinator again. Right.
But it's not as easy in the, in the real world. Once you've been a CEO and people don't want to hire you to go be that VP of sales again. Typically we.
[00:34:02] Speaker A: So then it's abundantly clear what the issue is then. And so like out of the 50 to 70% failure, you have a training program, right, for the these CEOs. So like, like, so are we taking people that are executives, how do you assess? Like where do these people come from? Right? Are they. Because like owner operators generally want to get themselves out of that spot at some point. So they first of all need to articulate what they are now doing, apply a lot of the principles you're talking about so they could then replace themselves. But you know that Mike from Melt that I interviewed that does CEO executive search, he's like, these people are trained and most of these owner rappers don't realize that there are people out there that, like, they were taught how to be this future thinking CEO. So, like, where do they come from? How do you actually make sure that they're doing what they're doing? And then how does your training program fit into the marketplace?
[00:34:59] Speaker B: Yeah.
You know, you use the workout example.
And, you know, having been an engineer and you know, I taught at Naval Nuclear Power School and there were people there who were a lot smarter than I and understood nuclear physics and all these complex concepts.
And you don't. You don't have to be a nuclear physicist to be a CEO. None of the concepts that I'm going to teach you in the class are things you're going to go, oh, my gosh, I just can't wrap my mind around that concept. Okay, but they are very different concepts than the way you were probably successful as a CFO or a VP of sales or whatever. I mean, just one simple example. You know, if you're the EVP of worldwide sales at a company, that probably means you have 20 years sales experience, you've worked your way up the ladder, and now you're sitting in your office one day, one of your employees knocks on the door, they got a problem.
Okay? That problem is by definition a sales problem, or they wouldn't be coming to you.
It. While you may not have heard the exact same problem before, you are the expert in the organization to solve it. So what do you do? You say, give me all the data about the problem. Let me use the pattern matching capabilities of my brain. Okay? This is sort of like this thing. We need to twist it here. You make a decision, you give them an answer, you move on down the road. Okay? Your skill, how bunch expertise you have determines how successful you are as the VP of Sales.
Now, I take that same person and move them into the CEO job. Knock, knock on the door, hey, boss, we got a problem with a lease in Poughkeepsie.
I don't know anything about leasing. I've never had to lease anything as the VP of. I don't even know anything about Poughkeepsie. I can't even find it on a map. Or spell it. Yeah, or spell it.
What do I do? Well, the natural tendency is to go, well, give me the contract, give me the details, let me learn it all. Okay? But 30 minutes later, somebody's going to come in about a lawsuit we got in California, you know, with HR problem. Yeah, okay. And then somebody's gonna bring in a product prop. Whatever. And if you approach it like an expert and think that's the job. Well, the CEO's the expert at everything. No, the CEO's the expert at nothing. The CEO's the generalist. I got to know just enough about each area to be able to evaluate and hold accountable the executives in that area.
But I don't need to be an expert on anything. I tell people I think I'm a pretty good CEO, but I would be unqualified to be VP of sales, cfo, cio, any of the executive level positions in any significant company because I'm not an expert at any of those things.
And so the nature of the job is just so different that you really need to go through some sort of training, some sort of systematic thought process to learn how to do it. Just like, you know, when you were in college, you learned how to be an accountant or you learned how to do marketing or whatever. There requires some training for that. It's not something that people are born with how to be CEO of a. Especially not of a multi organization with a lot of people.
[00:38:12] Speaker A: It's, it's such a fascinating.
It's so fascinating to me because I think that like most of my clients and the people I interact with, Joel, want to be in that situation. But like, I think there's so much psychology going on and brain chemistry because it's like I'm like, you know, whatever people's childhood experience of like I need affirmation or whatever it is. So I need to be the person solving the sales. And like, no matter what, we're like. So like there's this like whatever, like psychological dopamine addiction. They've got to being like the fixer. We're like. Then you extract yourself out up on top.
You're not supposed to do any of that stuff. You're supposed to think about the future and you're supposed to be on track, off track, and have other people doing it. And I just find it so fascinating because it's, it, it's understanding the game is like really what I've, that's how I've articulated Joel is like, you have to understand the game of business, which is, you know, the financials are the scorecard, what's the ownership goals, how do you predict the future? And then you're moving other people. And like the reason that I have always gravitated towards this, Joel, is because when I got into the family business, we had that whole dumpster fire going on. I had no luxury to be like the smart guy that like fixed everything. It was like I had like the bank. The bank had the gun to our head, and. And I was like, I. I. I can't do any of this stuff. I just have to make sure everything's moving in the right direction. So I accidentally got that experience, and then, like, part of my inherent DNA is I just don't want anybody to need me.
So, like, I'm always, like, re. Like, pushing it back to other people.
And, like, how do you. How do you handle the psychology of this?
[00:39:49] Speaker B: Yeah, I. I don't know. I mean, it was probably natural for me. Delegating never was a big problem. I guess I'm just lazy. I didn't want to do all the work, so if I can find somebody else to do it, I'm, you know, happy with that.
[00:40:02] Speaker A: I'm gonna stop you. Because we joke around that, but it's actually part of the recipe, I think. And I think that there's a lot of people that will feel guilty for being that. Mm.
[00:40:15] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:40:16] Speaker A: That's why I say it's psychology, right? Where it's like, okay, well, I. Because being lazy means you have to be old system because you don't want to do it. But, like, then they feel guilty. And so how do you. How do you.
[00:40:25] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm not a psychologist, so, you know, I don't know. And again, a lot of times, the first conversation I have with these people is, let me tell you what the CEO job looks like. Now, is that what you want to wake up and do every day?
Because, I mean, you know, we're getting into basic human emotions and behaviors. And if you're somebody who likes, gets, you know, that dopamine hit from making a task list of 20 items and checking off each item on the task list. CEO may not be the right job for you. You know, I mean, you may need to run a manufacturing system or, you know, but. But CEO is not the right job.
And so often with. Especially with owners, that's the question I have first, is do you really want to be CEO? Let me tell you what that job looks like. You know, you're dealing with a lot of different people, a lot of different personalities. It's not about whether, you know, I don't care that you're in the plumbing business. It's not about plumbing. It's about people. It's about coordinating activities. It's about being a generalist across a wide range of activities, and it's about the future. And so, you know, sometimes they look at me and go, oh, that. No, I want to go do plumbing. Okay, great.
[00:41:37] Speaker A: There's nothing wrong with that, right?
[00:41:39] Speaker B: Go do plumbing. But I'll tell you how to hire a CEO and tell you the system to set up so that you can do your plumbing and still, you know, generate cash flow or whatever you're trying to do in your business. And so that's the piece. Because most people know that the whole hiring process for CEOs is, is totally screwed up. Because what generally happens is, you know, and then this is big companies as well, and maybe even worse in big companies. But. But, you know, they go out and they say, oh, we want somebody who's done it before.
Of course, nobody who's done it before wants to do it again. Right. Once you've won the championship, you want to move to the next league or whatever.
[00:42:14] Speaker A: And so the owner who's moving money be on the board or what.
[00:42:17] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Right. And so then they go back and they, okay, well, we'll find somebody who's, who's run a big division or something, but really all they are is a salesperson. And we'll find somebody that, you know, we got a hundred million dollar company, we want to hire a CEO. We'll find somebody that had sales responsibility for a billion dollars.
[00:42:35] Speaker A: Oh, my God. Yeah. That sounds like a disaster.
[00:42:37] Speaker B: Yeah. And it just. Those are two totally different jobs. It's not. One's easier or harder than the other. There just is 180° opposite. But because that sales guy comes in, he's slick and he sounds like he knows what he's talking about. He's got confidence we're gonna hire him, and then we're shocked when the company goes to hell in a hand basket, you know, really fast too, by the way. Really fast. Yes,
[00:42:59] Speaker A: I have.
[00:43:01] Speaker B: I know.
[00:43:02] Speaker A: Oh, my God. I. I gotta start keeping inventory of the amount of dumpster fire PE sales I have come across. I mean, I mean, it's unbelievable. And it's like these owners call me. I gotta. In the last couple months, Joel. I mean, people I've worked with in the past, I mean, where these people have netted 15, 30 million dollars. So like they had a CR. Like they crushed the financial exit. And then they. This guy called me yesterday, literally, he's like, ryan, what's up, man? He's like, I quit. I effing quit. And I'm like, what happened? And like, how fast you can erode value is unbelievable because like, you know, these people that have like inherently been doing a lot of this stuff, I mean, this was. This is a over a $50 million sale. So the sales revenue was probably like $80 million or something like that anyways. Like, it's just crazy how fast that CEO can take the. I mean, back to your pilot analogy. I mean, y. Drag it right into the ground, Crash
[00:43:57] Speaker B: it right into the ground. I. I can't tell my stories. I know. Because we would identify the guilty. But yes, it happens all the time.
[00:44:09] Speaker A: Where, like, okay, so let's talk about like maybe this mystical unicorn CEO who, like, where are they coming from? Like, where do. And then we can, if you're comfortable getting into generalizations, like where are they coming from to go to your training, who ends up succeeding, who ends up like, doing it for a long period of time. So we can like more clarify that. This. Who this kind of profile is.
[00:44:30] Speaker B: Yeah, so the profile, first of all, you know, we do disc. Behavioral profiles and everything. And you see a commonality.
You got to have somebody who's decisive, somebody who makes decisions. Is it comfortable making decisions? Doesn't, you know, that's not a stress for them. That's a key part. Obviously, the CEO role, again, you're looking for people that are generalists, so that are curious about all parts of the business. Don't think of, well, sales is the important thing. Everything else doesn't matter. Or products the important thing, everything else doesn't matter.
[00:45:04] Speaker A: So can I interrupt you there? So when you say, I've been tracking you, as you say generalists. But, but like people don't get born a CEO as a generalist. So how do you take someone that had to naturally do specific things and identify that they're a generalist?
[00:45:22] Speaker B: Well, do they have curiosity?
[00:45:24] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:45:25] Speaker B: You know, if somebody's worked, I mean, somebody. There could be somebody who's been a sales VP of sales for 20 years. But when you talk to them, they know about the rest of the business. They understand you know the rest of the business. Then you talk to another VP of Sales for 20 years, all he knows about sales, he doesn't care about anything else. Nothing else matters.
[00:45:42] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:45:43] Speaker B: He might be a great VB of sales, but he's probably not going to make a good CEO.
[00:45:48] Speaker A: Got it.
[00:45:49] Speaker B: And so, you know, and I don't think there's not necessarily one area of the business that's better than others.
People ask me that all the time.
I think more CEOs come from sales and finance. Those are the two areas that, you know, people tend to come from. But I don't necessarily think that's good because, you know, finance is great to have that background. But then if you think everything's just a budget item that you can cut to make money, that's not going to work either. No. And so this generalist attitude, this curiosity.
[00:46:19] Speaker A: General attitude I like.
[00:46:20] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Is a curiosity about all parts of the business and the two characteristics. I say, you know, if somebody were to approach me about being CEO of their company, the two things that boxes I have to check is I have to deeply understand how the product is made or delivered, whatever, and I have to understand how the product is bought, how you know what the customer. So me personally, B2B is where I've spent my career. I feel pretty comfortable. If you've got a product that sells to businesses, I understand that customer. And then I've been a software guy and an IT guy and I'm an electrical engineer. So if it's tech based, great. I understand how you build software, I understand how you build hardware.
Those are the checkbox. You come to me and say, I've got a jewelry company, I want you to be CEO. I say, I don't understand how that product's bought.
My wife has no jewelry in her possession and I don't buy jewelry.
You know, I don't understand the construction. I don't even value it. So.
[00:47:21] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly.
[00:47:22] Speaker B: I can't lead that. I need, I need to understand that. And I don't even, you know, I don't care about how it's made. It's not interesting to me. I'm not interested in that, you know, and so anyway, that's the way I think about CEO job.
[00:47:35] Speaker A: Oh, so fascinating.
Yeah, it's. You know what it is, Joel? It's like I've always said, like the. If you have someone's intrinsic motivation and curiosity and a lack of ego. Holy. Can you do a lot with that?
I mean, it. Just because you're in the.
You're able to point that momentum in the right direction. So walk us through the CEO boot camp that you got in the training material, because I know you got a couple books that, like, I think there's a lot of opportunity for people.
I mean, you've just. I don't. Yeah, sorry, go ahead.
[00:48:11] Speaker B: Sure.
So, you know, the, the book that, you know, most parallels the training is called Chief Executive Operating System.
It. That's what it is. It's basically, hey, if I became CEO of your company tomorrow, what would I do? And you can kind of walk through the process, walk through the exercises. That's what the boot camp does. We start by learning about people and a lot of it is getting the right mental model.
And that may sound esoteric to some people, but a lot of people's mental model, they've just never had, needed to have it hadn't been developed the right mental model. So, for example, people.
Most people's mental model for people was formed as kids. You know, we were curious about who was going to be a friend. So our mental model is based on people who like things that we like, or when we got to be a teenager who was a potential mate.
And those kind of things, whether they're part of our tribe or somebody else's tribe, whether they're tall or short. All these things that were mental models that get us through the world aren't good mental models for people in the business environment.
I don't care. I care about what their natural behaviors are so that I can find the right role in the organization where they can utilize those strengths and natural behaviors and be better than most people at that job.
Right. And so I gotta think, I gotta kind of reposition my thinking. And as CEO, I've got to deal with the whole spectrum of human behavior. That's the other thing is, as a, you know, finance guy, I deal with finance people mostly. Well, those tend to have a certain sort of behavioral pattern. Right, okay. Or sales people. Or sales people, whatever. But. But I don't have to learn how to communicate to that wider audience very much. Right. But it, see, it's not good or
[00:50:05] Speaker A: bad, it's just different and a different part of the puzzle.
[00:50:09] Speaker B: It's just the way people are. People are different, you know, And. But as CEO, you're now communicating to everybody, all the different personality types, all the different. So you got to think about that.
And, you know, so we start there. So we do a three day class.
We call it a masterclass. We do one about each quarter and we'll bring 10, 12 CEOs. We don't, we don't like getting bigger than 12 because that's about the right size to get in interaction, but not have too many people where you don't get to participate. We bring them in for three days. I have a ranch about 30 minutes east of the Austin airport, so people stay in nice suites and we bring in a chef and cook dinner and sit by the fire every night and share stories. And it's always an entertaining group. And we'll have everybody from some executive who's thinking about maybe taking a CEO role to a CEO running a $200 million business, you know, that wants to get educated. So it's a wide Range. But they're always very interesting people and they have very, very interesting stories.
[00:51:15] Speaker A: Well, I can only imagine. I, I want to hang with that.
[00:51:19] Speaker B: Right.
[00:51:19] Speaker A: Well, which, I mean, how fun for you, by the way. Like, you just meet an awesome people and help with them. And like, so like, for a lot of the listeners or my clients, it.
Because there's always this like kind of fork in the road. Joel, of like, okay, do I take Brad or Bob or Ann who's been working for me for 20 years? I think that a lot of, a lot of these people have like, they spot the intrinsic stuff that you're talking about, which is like, okay, here's like, you know, they have the good, maybe the intrinsic curiosity. They understand the business fully.
There's probably this process of like, hey, by the way, here's what the job looks like. And that's where I think there's this big gap in communications. And like, all right, Sally, like, here's exactly what you would have to do to allow that person to opt in or not. Because like, I think that your program is unbelievable for the people that have like, had that filter of like, here's exactly what you're going to get in. Because like, if you don't want to do that, why would you go spend the three days if it's been clear? But there's the, the fork in the road is the internal person or go hire the person. And this is why I want you to meet Mike from elt because like, I mean he, he's going around finding these people that are 250 to 350 and like he's finding, finding them who are already at companies. But that doesn't mean that they've done what you've done. Right. Whether they have gone through the training program, they've already got the goods. And, and you know what I think is really interesting about him, Joel is like his EQ and his 30 years doing this.
[00:52:51] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:52:52] Speaker A: I mean like, he's really good at it. But it's like you can tell by talking to him it's because of him and his, you know, a couple people around him in the process. But it's like inserting in an objective training program like yours, I think could increase the odds that it's successful.
[00:53:09] Speaker B: Absolutely. And the, the other piece of this too is as you get bigger, a lot of CEOs, I strongly encourage CEOs to hire Chief of staff's positions that kind of run the day to day mechanics of making all this work.
[00:53:25] Speaker A: Can you explain a little bit more about that? Role because I think there's probably a lot of confusion around what that means.
[00:53:30] Speaker B: Right. So to, you know, there is a system here. We're going to, you know, set mission, vision values, we're going to set these strategic objectives. We're going to have everybody set goals each quarter. There is logistical stuff around that. Right.
Making sure it happens, setting up the meetings, all those things that a chief of staff can help drive. And then there are often just actions that come from that. Right. Hey, so and so says they're not going to meet their goal. Let's put together a meeting with the right people to discuss that problem. But if the CEOs got to do all that, it often doesn't happen. Right. It gets lost, whatever. And so somebody that the CEO can turn over projects that's a little, you know, more a project management type than a typical EA type person, has that project management kind of background. So you can say, hey, you know, watch this bigger project, coordinate these people, make sure the meetings are happening, whatever.
And so they also sometimes come to the program. So sometimes we have the CEO and their chief of staff both come through the program at the same time because it's good idea, systematic approach of. Of how you want to run the business. And the CEO doesn't have to fool with those logistical details.
[00:54:43] Speaker A: Well, and. Or communicate to the chief of staff what their expectations are. You're just gluing together the expectations.
[00:54:47] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
[00:54:48] Speaker A: Super fascinating. With these group of people that are.
I'm just picture. I'm literally picturing this bonfire with Stone sitting out.
[00:54:56] Speaker B: Yeah, that's it.
You got it.
[00:54:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
By the way, it's negative five right now. I'm in Minnesota.
[00:55:02] Speaker B: Yeah. So, like.
[00:55:03] Speaker A: Yeah. Anyways, so like, these people that are.
That you're these personalities and these people that you're interacting with that are in this role or want to be in this role. Joel, like, what are their future ambitions? Back to your point of like, hey, you won the Super Bowl. Do they, like, like, what's the tenure of where they're at?
What do they usually want? Like, is there a goal to be an owner or continue being the CEO? Like what?
[00:55:31] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, the thing about the CEO role, it's, you know, it's like the head coach role. You, you, you either, you know, if you win enough, I guess. I mean, even Bill Belichick, right. He got fired.
Okay. You know, 90% of CEOs get fired. It's at some point unless you complete a transaction, you know, and so, you know, it's the number one goal is not to get fired or, or, or get fired because the company fails. Right. If you own the company, you know, if the company craters, you get fired. Right. And, and these are very public firings. Right? I mean, you can be the CFO somewhere and you decide to quit one day because you think you're going to get fired. Even. Or even you get fired. Nobody really knows what happened. You say, oh, well, you know, I had a difference with the CEO and I thought this was a better opportunity. So I wanted. Nobody knows what happened, happen.
[00:56:19] Speaker A: Right, right, right.
[00:56:20] Speaker B: But when a CEO leaves, you know, nobody believes the, you know, I wanted to spend more time with my family line or whatever, as they say that,
[00:56:28] Speaker A: and then put their resume out. Right?
[00:56:30] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. You know, begging for a job the next week.
And so, yeah, there people don't understand that their reputation is really tied to the job. Right.
[00:56:46] Speaker A: The risk is really high if you don't.
[00:56:48] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whereas most other jobs, you know, you can just go get another job and nobody, you know, doesn't really matter. Right. People know when you leave a CEO job, unless there was a transaction or something that, you know, you failed, you were, you didn't accomplish the mission.
[00:57:06] Speaker A: So don't get fired.
[00:57:07] Speaker B: Yeah, so. So, yeah, I mean, it's just a wait. Right. And they know, they don't know what they're doing.
But who can they talk to about it? Well, they can't talk to anybody in the company about it. They can't talk to their board. They can't share. Hey, I don't really know what I'm doing here.
[00:57:21] Speaker A: Oh, well. And that's where it's like, so do you have CEO peer groups, too, that you, that you do or.
[00:57:26] Speaker B: We do.
[00:57:26] Speaker A: We do do.
[00:57:27] Speaker B: Some peer group. We just launched a female, A female all female CEO peer group.
And we do. We, we have started doing that because we find. Yes. That that's what they want is often after the class kind of to move into a peer group structure.
[00:57:42] Speaker A: Well, because to your point, it's the same reason all my clients feel alone. It's like, all right, well, I got payroll, I got the bank. I mean, like, you're not, you can't confine in anybody because the moment that you say, by the way, I'm not sure if this is working or not, you have like, the ripple effect is everywhere.
What's your, what, what's your goal with this? Like, what's your setup? Because you have, you have some investments too, right? Like, of other companies. You got the magazine, like, what, give the audience, the kind of the, the Joel setup.
[00:58:11] Speaker B: Well, you know, I was fortunate enough to build two companies from zero to nine figure exits.
And so that made me rich. At least rich enough that I don't have to worry about putting food on the table and to get a ranch. And I have a ranch. Yes, 150 acre ranch and a few other toys and all the toys I really want. I'm not a big.
[00:58:31] Speaker A: What's your favorite toy.
[00:58:33] Speaker B: Toy guy.
Well, always the, you know, being able to fly privates. Always the ultimate toy.
[00:58:39] Speaker A: Because you got time.
[00:58:40] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:58:40] Speaker A: Time back.
[00:58:41] Speaker B: Yeah. Because it saves so much time. But I don't, my wife and I don't like to even travel that much, so we don't do it that much.
[00:58:47] Speaker A: You hunter have side by sides on the ranch or anything.
[00:58:51] Speaker B: She, she's more a walk around and take the dogs. I'm more a ATV guy. Yeah. That's awesome.
And so, you know, this is what I want to be doing.
You know, I don't want to be irrelevant. I don't want to just go fishing every day. I. What really drives me crazy is seeing a business that is having good success and then turns what should have been a home run for not only the CEO, but all the employees into a single or a strikeout just because they don't, you know, know what they're doing. And again, this material is not hard.
It's just not well understood and there's not a lot of people out there talking about it and guiding people through. So, you know, I tell people I hope to, you know, be 85 years old sitting on my stool and just cock over teaching a CEO class.
[00:59:40] Speaker A: But it's, it's, it, it's so, I mean, it's so awesome in so many different ways, Joel, because the, the people that I told you about, like, that have called me like at some point. It's just not about the money. I mean, I've done 400 and whatever interviews and like there's no Charles Schwab account with nine figures. You're going to make you happy. You know what I mean? Like, it's like, but the relationships, the purpose and all that stuff. And like, it's like one of my, I mean, my mission is like to help people truly understand value.
Because like what happens is, Joel, that I've seen is like these privately held business owners, they don't understand value. And what I mean, value is like, okay, like this iPhone right here is worth about 1100 bucks. You and I both know that. And like, how do you trade Something that you don't haven't agreed upon, understanding of value.
But once we understand that stuff, then we can actually focus on the, the, the, the future and the goals and the decision making. And that's what you're doing too, is you're, you're helping with that decision making. Because like if we clarify what we're doing here, we can have.
[01:00:40] Speaker B: I don't know.
[01:00:40] Speaker A: There was, I can't remember who told me this, Joe, but like if there's a gap right here, like this is reality and these are expectations. That gap is where unhappy unhappiness and resentment, a lie and then just. It just doesn't need to be that way. It's just ridiculous.
Well, what's the you got. We'll put your website in the show notes and then what. So what are the places people go for the, you know, we'll put the books in there, the, the boot camp, the software. What's the best place for way people start?
[01:01:10] Speaker B: Best place to engage is managing the future code.
Okay. Is has all our content stuff there and I'm constantly introducing new content. We have a, a new AI powered Ask Joel.
So you can ask me, ask me any question you want and theoretically get the answer I would give you. And if it doesn't, you can email me and tell me I don't think that's a good answer, and then I'll either say, yeah, yeah, that was a good answer, you just don't like it. Or yeah, maybe the AI hallucinated that way. 1. Let's talk about it.
[01:01:45] Speaker A: Did you feel that with like transcripts from coaching or videos or like, well,
[01:01:50] Speaker B: you know, when you got three books and, and a thousand blog posts and you know, 100 courses you've given, you got a lot of content that you can feed into those, those engines, right? The more content you have, the better.
[01:02:03] Speaker A: Yeah. Fascinating.
Joel, thank you so much. This has been an absolute blast and I know the people are going to absolutely love it, so I appreciate your time. I know it's very valuable.
[01:02:13] Speaker B: Always great talking to you, Ron.
