Biz Bites for Thought Leaders

Trust is your leadership superpower. Dr. Darryl Stickel reveals the three core pillars that build unbreakable teams. Welcome to another powerful episode of Biz Bites for Thought Leaders. Today we are diving deep into the currency that makes or breaks every business relationship trust. Joining us is Dr.

Darryl Stickel, who is the founder of Trust Unlimited, the author of the groundbreaking book. Building trust, exceptional leadership in an uncertain world. And he’s also the host of the Imperfect Cafe podcast. He spent decades helping leaders from Fortune 500 companies right through to smaller businesses, build unshakeable trust in the most hostile business environments.

In the next 50 minutes, you are going to discover why 95% of leaders overestimate their trustworthiness, how vulnerability actually strengthens your authority, and the three core pillars that underpin trust in any relationship. Plus, we’ll explore practical levers you can pull to close the gap between how trusted you think you are.

And how trusted you actually are. This is an amazing episode play. Please pay special attention to the way Darrell introduces himself as well. We’ll reveal more as the episode goes on. A lot of value from this one for every single person in business.

Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Biz Bites for Thought Leaders, and today we are going to have, I know a very interesting discussion about trust. How do we build it? Where does it come from? What are the implications of it? So many things to unpack in this short word. That people hear all the time in business, but what does it really mean?

We have I would say one of the foremost experts in the world on this topic. Darryl Stickel joining us. Darryl, welcome to the program.

Thank you so much for having me. It’s a pleasure to be with you and with our listeners.

And I know you’re a podcaster as well, but I’m gonna get you to introduce yourself to the audience so everyone understands a little bit more about who you are and what you’re about.

Sure. So I grew up in Northern Canada. In a small community, and it was isolated, harsh. Winters minus 40 was not unusual. And so people had to rely on each other. And so I got a sense that if I could be helpful, I should, and growing up there you developed a strong sense of community. When I was 17, I was playing hockey and I got attacked by a fan with a club shattered my helmet, knocked me unconscious.

I apparently stopped breathing three times on the way to the hospital. Wow. And when I was growing up I had a. Retinal disorder, hereditary retinal disorder. I knew I was gonna eventually lose my sight, that I’d become legally blind. My intent had been to think for a living, and now all of a sudden, here I am, I can’t think I’ve got the attention span of a fruit fly.

And so there was this long stretch of helplessness and hopelessness, and what it provoked in me was a really strong sense of empathy. And it took me a couple of years to really recover. But what I did. Strange things started happening. So I would be sitting on a bus and a complete stranger would come up and sit next to me and say, I’m really having a hard time.

And people would open up to me quickly. And I wanted to understand why that was happening and it felt like maybe I was destined for a life working as a clinical counselor. So I started working with street kids and families in crisis and troubled teens and working on crisis lines. To further hone those skills and gain a better understanding of what was going on for me.

And I, I came this close to becoming a clinical psychologist and I realized that, it would, it had taken these people a long time to get where they were. It was gonna take a long time for them to find their way out of it, and then it would drive me crazy. And so I transitioned. It ended up in public administration doing a master’s degree in public admin, working in native land claims in British Columbia.

And they would ask me these deep philosophical questions like, what is self-government? Or What will the province look like 50 years after claims are settled? The last question they asked me was, how do we convince a group of people we’ve shafted for over a hundred years? They should trust us. And man, that just seemed like such a good question.

And it gets to the heart of these long-term disputes, why they’re so resilient, even when they’re not doing anyone any good anymore. So I went to Duke and wrote my doctoral thesis on building trust in hostile environments. And I had two incredible academics on my committee who were both experts on trust.

And they sat me down after I finished and they said, when you first came to us. We had a conversation with each other. We said, it’s too big, too complicated. He’s never gonna solve it. We’ll give him six months and then he’ll come crawling back and that’ll be his thesis. We’ll let him just shave off a little piece of this.

They said six months in, you’re so far beyond us. We couldn’t help anymore. All we could do is sit and watch. Said here we’re a few years later, we think you’ve solved it.

So I left academia, went into consulting. I got hired by McKinsey Company, a big management consulting firm. Now all of a sudden, I’m getting a chance to apply these concepts that I’ve theorized about and they recognized, they said, wow, you got great client hands. Let’s send you to the worst places possible.

So places where there had been strikes or hostile takeovers, they would send me in to work with clients. And I’m getting a chance to apply these concepts and having success doing it, and then I get injured on the way to a client site. The car on me rear ends another vehicle. I end up with a really bad concussion again, and I can’t work 80 hours a week anymore.

And so I start my own little company called Trust Unlimited, and I start helping people better understand what trust is, how it works, and how to build it. And over the next 20 years, my learning curve is almost vertical. As I’m applying these concepts, formulating better ideas, learning how to help people understand the concepts better and how to prob problem solve with them.

So that’s brings us up to today.

That is quite a journey. Yeah. I love, I love that. You know what’s fascinating to me as I was sitting there listening to you and I asked the same question of everyone coming on the show to introduce themselves, and we get a variation of people that give me the 15 second version to what you did, to the more elaborate one and the interesting thing about what you’ve just.

Given us is a story, a journey of your life and where you’ve got to, and you can feel already, and I, it’s not a matter of what you feel because there’s a mixture of different things in there. There’s admiration, there’s empathy, there’s lots of different things that are going on. But immediately with that, what’s interesting to me is I feel like I wanna trust you already.

How much. Of building trust is emotional.

It’s a really big part. And man, that’s good insight because that was the core of my thesis. One of the things that really differentiated most of the 99% of the trust research treats people like they’re rational actors. And you’ve met people before, right? We’re not always rational and the more emotional we become, the less rational we are.

And so for me I developed a full fledge model for how the trust decision works and how we can actually take practical applied steps to build it. But in the heart of this whole thing is our emotional states, whether we like or dislike somebody else. ’cause if we like people, we have this positive story about them.

We want to find reasons to trust them. We’re more likely to trust them, we’re more likely to evaluate the outcomes we have with them positively, and that makes us like them even more. It creates these virtuous cycles.

It’s really fascinating to me that. The, we live in these two sides of our brain.

In fact, we probably live most of our time in our very rational side of the brain. Yet from a marketing perspective, we always say that 90% of decision making is is, is the emotional side and 10% is justifying the emotion. With that in mind is that. The key to the formula for trust is it really building that emotional connection first before you can start to rationalize it in some way?

For me it’s about resetting those emotional states if they’re negative, right? And we can start a positive cycle fairly easily by finding things that we like about the other person, having a positive narrative about them, a positive story. When it comes to my sons, I have a relentlessly positive story about them, which means that new information that comes to me, I interpret it through that lens, right?

And so when they were younger and they were in school and their teachers would say, yeah, he’s misbehaving. I would start to get curious, what’s provoking that? Because I’m not prepared to just blame him and say he’s dysfunctional. I’m more curious about what are the settings, what are the triggering events?

What’s the environment that you’ve created that’s bringing that out in him? Because I don’t see it. But I think for me, we just need to be aware that these negative emotions, if they’re really strong, are gonna trump any kind rational approach that we take to try to build trust with somebody else.

We need to at least be aware of them and try to reset those emotional states. First, if they exist.

It’s really intriguing when you talk about some of these areas, because we do have a lens that is. What our life is, right? The, our experiences and things that we’ve been through, right? It is going to impact our ability to trust someone we’ve just met, for example, right?

Because I’m gonna give you an example. I was brought up in a time when very few people had tattoos, okay? And so you were brought up with a lens that if they had tattoos, they were probably from the wrong side of the street. Now fast forward to Australia. Now I watch a lot of football. There’s barely a player that doesn’t have tattoos.

The whole it used to be that you couldn’t get a job if you had them. You had to cover them up all those sorts of things. And that’s completely changed. So it’s very interesting how things change, but it’s interesting. But I was very aware when that transition started happening in society, that became more common, became very aware that I had this lens.

That said, don’t trust these people. It wasn’t a rational one. It was just brought up on, people don’t have tattoos and therefore if they do, they must be this kind of person. And it’s interesting how those things not only, I became very self-aware of it, but also how it can change when you are aware how it can change the way you think and how indeed.

Those things change. I suppose one other obvious example is, it wasn’t that long ago that people would say, don’t trust anything where you have to buy it online. We, don’t trust putting your credit card down online. Now you would argue that it’s probably more trustworthy to do it in some online secure environments than it might be to do it in person.

So again. Things change. So how do you accommodate that and how important is being self-aware and noticing those changes that happen?

Wow. So you’re opening up all kinds of things for me here. And it’s gotta be because you’re from down under, because you’re taking me in reverse order. Through what I normally talk about context is I hope that’s a good

thing.

Make it more fun.

Yeah, absolutely. So you’re talking about context in some respects, which is the formal and informal rules of the game. And context is one of the other pieces that I added in my doctoral thesis because I needed a way to explain why we trust or mistrust some people without knowing anything about them.

And overwhelmingly the literature talks about trust from an individual perspective, but it ignores the elements of context. And a lot of times what I would do is, I would say to people, if you could be anywhere with anyone doing anything right now, how many of you would be sitting here listening to me speak?

And I had to stop doing that ’cause it wasn’t good for my self-esteem. But, because the question becomes, then why are you here? And they’re there because it’s their job or they’ve got something else on the go, or they’re traveling somewhere and they’re listening to the podcast context explains why we go into a doctor’s office and the doctor says, take off your clothes.

And we do. I’ve tried that. In other places it doesn’t work. And if we change the context, we could have the same two people with the exact same dialogue, but move them from a doctor’s office to a gas station restroom. And it goes from credible to creepy in a heartbeat.

Yep.

And so what you’re referring to is the fact that perceptions and values have changed over time.

Norms and expectations have changed over time. And you’re right, a lot of times we’re not even aware of our own context until we start to become thoughtful about it. And one of the exercises I got a of senior executives to do was. I sit down and I want you to think about how the CEO is constrained and each of the VPs is gonna write down how they think.

The CEO is constrained by the context. And then I want the CEO to do the same for the for, for themselves. And at the end, we started going through and having a conversation. What have you written down? What did, what were the takeaways for you? And. It provoked this really interesting conversation because they had different perspectives than the CEO did.

I’ve done the same thing with a captain on a naval vessel when I was doing some training with the military. We have very different understanding is how of how each of us is constrained and making that surfacing, that making people more aware of it is a great way to help reduce uncertainty because.

For me, trust is the willingness to make yourself vulnerable when you can’t completely predict how someone else is gonna behave. And that definition includes elements of vulnerability and uncertainty. And so in my model, it’s uncertainty times, vulnerability gives us a level of perceived risk, and we each have a threshold of risk that we can tolerate.

If we go beyond that threshold, we don’t trust. If we’re beneath it, then we do. So what that means is that if uncertainty is really high, then vulnerability has to be low to still fit beneath that threshold. And as our relationships get deeper, the uncertainty goes down and the range of vulnerability we can tolerate cts to grow.

And so if we want to build trust, it’s actually fairly simple. It’s where does uncertainty come from and how do we take steps to reduce it? And where does vulnerability come from and how do we take steps to help the other person manage it? And so uncertainty comes from us as individuals, and it comes from the context we’re embedded in, and the better able we are to describe or outline our context, the less uncertainty there is for somebody else, the easier it is for them to trust us.

Interesting. I, so with all of that in mind and I’m interested as to whether the introduction that you gave. Is part partly because of the formula that you have in mind, because you were quite vulnerable in what you gave over about the journey that you’ve had in your life Because it wasn’t a, it wasn’t a, you didn’t gimme a resume.

Put it that way. You gave me a story in which you were quite vulnerable about, having been on death door at one point. And other things that have happened to you throughout your life. Is that a deliberate strategy to build trust or is that just something that’s become a reaction that you know to everything that you’ve done?

So partly I try to live the model. I use it when I raise my sons. I use it when I teach. And I, until you just asked me that question, I hadn’t thought about the reason I tell the story, but part of, you’re right, part of what I do is I make myself vulnerable and that initiates a norm of reciprocity in others.

They feel like if Darryl’s willing to be vulnerable with me, that it’s okay for me to be vulnerable back. And partly I get a lot of practice. I’m legally blind and my guide dog, Drake, and I wander the world trying to make it a better place. I need help often. And I have realized that it doesn’t make me less than that.

That there is the potential for people to take advantage of me. Of my vision and the challenges I have, but I’ve been overwhelmed at how wonderful people are and how willing to help they are. And I’ve had really positive experiences with being vulnerable and it may be part of what makes people comfortable being vulnerable back to me.

It is interesting, isn’t it? Because you are, as you say, you are being forced to, particularly if you are, in a situation outside where you’ve got your D guide dog with you, it’s very obvious what your vulnerability is, right? And wearing that on your sleeve is a difficult thing, but you don’t have a choice and.

It’s interesting though that today people are generally speaking more and more guarded, aren’t they? Yeah. And I find this an interesting dilemma in business and I remember back even to the, I think to the very first episode of this podcast for those that wanna go back, we had a discussion with with Karen at the time and talking about this idea that.

Is outdated notion that it used to be when you rocked up to business that you had to leave your personal life outside the door, and that it was all focused on business until you walk back in. Nowadays that attitude seems to be that you, the recognition that you carry it with you. And particularly if people work from home, but yet the guards are very much up.

There’s, AI I think is making things more and more. Polished and putting more and more barriers up and trying to separate that. And so that, allowing that vulnerability, it’s becoming challenging. It is.

Yeah. And you’re bang on. So you, your instincts are so good around this stuff. You’re doing a magnificent job, by the way.

Thank you. When I think about, trust is at some of the lowest levels we’ve ever measured. If we think about it using the model I described before, our vulnerability certainly hasn’t gone down. We feel just as vulnerable as we used to, or maybe a little more but our uncertainty is bouncing all over the place, right?

We’ve seen pandemics, we’ve seen. Changes in norms and values. We see technological changes at an increasing pace. We see political instability and conflict around the world. These massive fluctuations and uncertainty make us incredibly uncomfortable, and so the ask, asking you to be just a little more vulnerable to me by trusting me is harder than it’s ever been.

And this is part of the, I’ve started working on a project called the Aspiring Men’s Program because the statistics for young men right now are horrific. They make up 80% of the suicide rate. They’re trending down in terms of educational outcomes, mental health outcomes, addiction. They’re really in a time of crisis and they are struggling to be vulnerable in a profound way.

They are the hardest group to reach because they don’t ask for help and they don’t send signals. They are reluctant to accept help. They isolate. And so you’re right, it’s becoming harder and harder for us to be. Vulnerable with one another because it feels like we’re raw and already over overexposed.

And it’s, we live in a society where there’s an expectation of performance and I know it’s actually interesting that around me in the last year 2, 3, 4, even. Reasonably close friends that have. Found themselves lost out of work. That they’ve lost their, they’ve lost their position and mostly it’s been through no fault of their own.

It’s a, restructuring situation, whatever’s happening in different businesses and things. And I was actually thinking about this the other day, that’s, that is so vulnerable to tell people about that because there’s an expectation that you’ll always be employed and you’ll always be aspiring at a high level and you’ll keep going up and up.

And that’s not always the case. And but even that for, I think particularly for men, is actually a it’s very, it’s very vulnerable because there’s an expectation, particularly not just around performance, but around, financial side of things,

right? Yeah. It’s a real challenge for men.

And when I was teaching in Luxembourg and one of my students, I think he was from Russia, he was definitely from Eastern Europe. He said, any man who makes himself vulnerable isn’t a real man. And so there’s this very strong mindset around you gotta be perfect. You can’t make mistakes. And you don’t ever admit that you’re struggling or need help.

And I challenged that idea, right? I said, look I’m teaching here. I’m making myself vulnerable all the time. I’m sharing stories about myself, imperfections about myself. Are you suggesting I’m not a real man? And he went, I said, ’cause we could go outside and have a f. Fairly serious discussion about that.

He was like no. I said, okay. Because I think it’s actually a sign of strength to be able to be vulnerable, to ask for help. And I was working with a group of senior executives and we were talking about benevolence, which is one of the levers we can pull, right? So from the individual perspective, we’ve talked about context, but from the individual perspective, there’s three levers.

I can pull to make you think I’m trustworthy. One is benevolence, which is the belief you have got your best interest at heart. Two is integrity. Do I follow through on my commitments and do my actions line up with my values? And three is ability. Do I have the confidence to do what I say I’m gonna do?

And so I’m getting them to tell stories about times when they’ve helped someone when they’ve been benevolent. And there’s six of them in the room. And they go around and they tell these powerful stories and they’re all smiling, and the mood is just buzzing, right? You can just feel the intensity. And I said, this is fantastic.

Now if you could just explain to me why you’re so effing selfish. And they go, what? What are you talking about? I said, even years later, you describe how powerful a moment it was for you to help somebody. To show up when they needed you. And you feel the positive energy that in this exact moment, but you never let anyone have that experience with you.

You never ask for help. You never admit you don’t know something. You never reach out.

Interesting. It’s I can immediately thinking of many situations where I think I’ve seen that. I think we all can. Yeah. And what fascinates me about vulnerability is that saying before that the walls are up so often, and I mentioned to you before we came on air and those listening to the program are very aware that my primary business is podcast done for you.

Great. And so podcasting is very much about, building trust with your audience and vulnerability is a key part of that. And it comes into telling stories because it’s a learning curve. It’s showing that you’ve learned. I think it’s one of the differences between a podcast and a webinar. Webinar is very much a, these are my learnings.

This is what you’ve gotta do come by from me. Whereas a podcast is. Get to know me, let me share some things, let me share some how I’ve gone on this journey and these different things along the way. And I think that’s what makes a truly great podcast is when that is open and you hear that all the time.

Whether it’s a celebrity based podcast where you’ve got actors telling about auditions and things that happen early on in their career, et cetera to. A business. I’ve a podcast I’ve got with a particular client that I’m thinking of and was talking about, his early days of teaching and how things went wrong, in a particular episode that he talked about.

And I think that sort of vulnerability is rarer than what you, than what people think that these barriers are up. And yet we want people to do business with us. We want them to trust us. How do you actually get that message through that vulnerability is so important. Yeah. And this is

part of the challenge.

My podcast is called The Imperfect Cafe. And it’s around leadership. And I agree with you. We’re trying to build trust with our audience so that we can engage with them so that we hopefully have impact. We have a positive impact on their lives. And. When I talk to people about pulling these levers, the ability lever tends to be our favorite lever.

And so we’ll say, I have these much, this much experience, these credentials, this position in the world. But if I really wanted to know what good look I’d actually include you in the conversation. And

yeah,

something I normally do is I’ll say, I wanna be the best guest you’ve ever had, or one of the best guests you’ve ever had.

How do I do that? And so if I asked you that you’d say you’d help my listeners be better off than they are today before they’ve listened to the podcast. You’d be. Engaging and genuine. And you think about my audience, not just yourself.

Absolutely. And so I’m trying to be the best I can be for your audience. And one of the interesting challenges that you face is you’re helping people with vastly different audiences. And so you should be having conversations. ’cause in a perfect world, you and I would actually talk to some of your listeners and say, what’s compelling for you?

How do I speak in a way that helps make your life better, that makes you want to listen to this podcast that makes it change your life in a positive way.

It’s, and it’s really interesting you say that and you. May not be able to see what is behind me. And there’s a sign that says and for those that are listening and not watching as well, it’s worthwhile pointing out. There’s a sign behind me that says, being the voice of brilliance. Brilliance is something that I talk very much about in, in podcast Done for You.

That’s what we are seeking to do, is to allow other people’s brilliance to be heard. It’s part of what we’re doing on this program is allowing our guest brilliance to be heard and brilliance can be mistaken for perfection. But it’s not right. Brilliance comes from stories and vulnerability as much as anything else.

And I think, if I certainly, in, in ticking the boxes for what makes a great guest for this program, there’s two probably critical elements and the one we most commonly talk about is giving those little one percenters that will make a difference to people listening that can act on things and improve their life, their business as a result of some ideas that have come across on the program.

But just giving those ideas on their own without context and story is useless because why would you trust that person? Why would you believe them? When you hear the story around it and you understand the thought and the processes that have gone into it, and the insights that have happened along the way, then the trust factor increases and the desire.

Therefore to enact on some of those things and potentially also then to want to engage directly with the guest increases.

Yeah,

I’m definitely hoping that people are going to tune in and listen to your podcast as well, and we’ll make sure we include some links to that in the in the show notes.

Yeah, that’d be brilliant. Part of my mission is to get the signal through the noise. Because, ’cause when I talk to real people and I show them the model, they go, this just feels obvious. It feels like common sense. Like how is, how’d you get a PhD? And when I talk to trust experts, they go, nobody else on the planet is talking about it this way.

This is so practical and applied. You’re talking about, I have 10 levers in my model. We all have the ability to build trust. Some are just better than others. Those who aren’t very good have a lever that they pull. Usually it’s the ability lever. Those who are better have multiple levers, and those who are really good have multiple levers and they know when to pull which one.

So you and I just role modeled the ability lever. Trying to pull that and having a discussion about what good looks like for you, what good looks like for your audience so they can have a conversation. Because a lot of times leaders, I’ll tell them benevolence, integrity and ability, and they’ll go, I do those things.

Yep.

And I’ll say, says who? Because if it’s me telling you I’ve got your best interest at heart, it doesn’t land nearly as well as you believing it.

Yep.

And for you to believe it, I have to include you in the conversation

And it’s so interesting with all of that because one of the things that I talk about. And again, this is not what this conversation tool will be about podcasting, but I think it’s an important thing point to make here is that the best podcasts are a conversation where the people that are listening feel like you are talking to them,

right?

And that is what the key is. Is that, I’ve worked in radio for a long time. I’ve built large audiences in radio and the key thing that I learned very early on in the piece was you don’t think about the thousands and hundreds of thousands of people that might be listening. It just has to be one person that is sitting there going, they’re talking to me.

And if that’s the case, then you are building, as you said, you’re building trust.

Yeah, and I try to role model the model, so I try to show benevolence, right? There’s nothing I’m holding back. There’s no, buy this for 10 easy lessons or here’s the secret. I’m telling you everything that comes to mind.

When I wrote the book, I wrote it so that if I go away, what I know doesn’t, and I. I’m trying to help your audience be better prepared to have conversations about trust than they were before they listened.

I find it fascinating when you read a lot of content that’s posted online, and particularly now with the advent of ai.

It’s tries to talk in some respects, to an emotion. You need this very rarely. Are there stories that are built into the component and very rarely are there vulnerable stories that are built into it.

And that’s where I think the difference is. It’s fascinating. Even when you look at some of the well-known entrepreneurs the.

The big people over the years that and pick any number of different ones from a, Richard Branson onwards. There is a degree of vulnerability with what they give over as well. And I think that we lose that because everyone’s striving for the perfection and forget that a perfection’s not achievable.

But b, that it’s. It’s the journey which entices people along the way. That’s what’s fascinating about speaking to those people.

Yeah, and every leader I talked to, I ask them, are you the same leader now? You were five years ago? And they all say, no. I’ve learned and grown and developed. And I’ll say, are you gonna be the same leader five years from now?

No I hope not. So that means you’re gonna let go of some of the things that got you here, some of the things you’re good at, and step into the things that would make you great as you evolve. And anytime you try something new, you make mistakes. And so how do we prepare the people around us for the fact that we’re gonna stumble?

And I tell ’em they should be thinking about having a conversation with those they lead and saying we’re all gonna be learning and adapting and evolving because the world’s moving too fast for us to stand still. And on that journey, we’re all gonna make mistakes, including me. I will stumble and I may fall.

When I do that, my expectation is that you’re gonna be standing beside me, helping me back up, helping me learn from that experience. ’cause that’s exactly what I’m gonna be doing for you. Sure.

It’s, that idea is so simple, but yet. It seems like a, there’s a, there are many brick walls in between it for the majority of people. Yeah. And I imagine that when you’ve gone into businesses small to large, that it’s those walls being up, which is usually the cause of the problem.

Yeah. It’s often the inability to accept responsibility for our own mistakes.

Or to tolerate the mistakes of others. I’ve heard so many senior leaders say, if I make one mistake, I’m done. And that can’t be true because we all make mistakes on a regular basis. And so what I try to convince leaders to do is to actually talk about the fact that. They haven’t been perfect the whole time they’ve been around, but they’ve made mistakes and when they were in other roles that there was a learning curve that was involved.

It helps humanize them because if we wander around with this mindset that I have to be perfect, it means we need everyone else to be perfect too. And that leads to micromanaging and squelching of innovation and adaptation. It means that people become incredibly cautious. And one of my favorite papers is by one of my advisors, SIM Kin, and it, the concept is the gains of small losses.

And in that paper he says that if your people are pushing to the limit of their abilities, they should be making mistakes. And if they aren’t, it’s a sign that they’re being cautious, too conservative.

It’s there are, when you talk about businesses at that level, it’s amazing to me how many times you have A-A-C-E-O that commissions some research and when the research comes back that says. They might be the problem, how quickly they quash that and move to other areas because they can’t possibly be the problem and they’re not allowed to be the problem because they’re the CEO or the business owner.

And it just, that’s not what, it’s just not what they’re looking for as the answer, right?

Yeah. Or resistance to getting that kind of information in the first place. Because I’ve been involved in situations where we’ve said we could measure trust levels. And senior executives are quick to say, you could do that for middle management, but not for us.

And this gets us to one of the challenges that we face. Trust has incredible value. We’ve seen that it leads to world breaking performance leads to incredible outcomes if it’s high enough. Within teams and organizations, it leads to higher returns to shareholders, higher retention rates, all these things.

Yet it’s at some of the lowest levels we’ve ever measured. The biggest gap we tend to find is between how much CEOs believe they’re trusted senior executives, and how much they actually are. And so there’s this delusion, 95% of us believe we’re more trustworthy than average, and that’s not just statistically impossible.

It’s problematic. Yeah. Because it means that if something came up between you and I, we would both think be thinking it’s the other person’s fault. Yep. It means we’re not able to resolve those conversations or challenges that we run into. And I talk to people about the locus of control challenge, an internal versus an external locus of control.

And for your listeners, an internal looks of control means you’re master of your own destiny. You make things happen in the world you’re an actor. External looks of control means you’re buffeted by the winds of fate. Things happen to you. Yep. And so when I used to teach undergrads, I’d say to them, I’d explain that and I’d say, who here has an internal of control?

And all the hands would go up stirring site, and I’d say, this is awesome. This means that if you fail the class or do poorly, it’s not because I didn’t teach it properly. The test was too hard. It’s all you baby. And they’d all go, oh, wait a minute. I said, that’s right. We tend to have an internal lo of control and we’re successful and an external locus of control when we fail.

And my sons were heavily involved in sports. They never lost a game where the ref didn’t suck. And this is one of the challenges we have with learning, right? Because what we should be doing is looking at those situations when we’re successful and saying, what role did the environment play? So that I can look for environments like that in the future to improve my chances of being successful.

And when we fail, we should be looking at our own behavior and saying, what are some of the things I could have done differently? How could I learn?

I, it’s a fascinating analogy. I think for what you’ve just described is actually sport and football in particular, and it doesn’t matter which kind of football code you follow, we’ve all heard this.

The team has lost, they blame the, there’s a, particularly the fans, I wouldn’t say necessarily the coaches, but the fans often blame the referee. Sometimes the coaches do as well. Yep. If this had have been ruled this way, then we would’ve won the game and. But I think actually the truly great coaches might question some decisions, but still say that there’s so much that we can take out of the game.

It wasn’t that one, two second moment where the ref blew the whistle. That actually changed the fate of the game because there were, there were x number of minutes of other times that things happened that the game could have been won. And that’s the difference isn’t it as well in business It is that you can focus on those little things, but it is actually going back to being more vulnerable and looking at what were the other things that went wrong.

It wasn’t just that moment.

And we can also see the forwards blame the defense for not getting the ball to them or everyone blaming the goalie. ’cause he only stopped 30 of the 35 shots that came at him. And we could see that happen within organizations, right? Where we blame it on sales or marketing or operations or distribution.

We create these us and them scenarios when it should be we, and we should be creating an environment where if there are problems we need to solve them.

I think it’s. So important to not only be vulnerable as we’ve talked about here, but also to be willing to give in a way that makes an impact.

Yeah.

I think that’s such an important thing that often businesses hold back say we’re the leader. I hate that. Determined because so many businesses say that we are the leader.

I don’t know how you justify that. Who’s actually given that particular honor ’cause I’ve never seen it in a particular space. Therefore, you must trust us and we will do stuff for you without actually giving anything over, right? Because if you can’t be a little bit impactful with what you deliver, and you’ve given plenty of insights today in this in this conversation of what things people can do and the impact that they can make, then you can’t possibly expect to build.

Trust as well. And it’s one of the things I like doing and I often do this in business as well, and we’ve had a person behind this on the program in the past. It’s a terrific organization called B one G one, and it’s very easy to show when you have. Interactions with people, how you can make an impact somewhere else in the world as well as a result of simply having a conversation.

And I and that’s a positive impact through a charity. And it can happen from a few cents to hundreds of dollars, whatever it, whatever you choose to do. And I think impact for business. Doesn’t have to be necessarily just about what you do. ’cause that can sometimes be difficult to pull off, right?

But you can make an impact in some way, shape, or form to build that level of trust.

And as a leader, I tend to think that one of the strongest levers we can pull is the benevolence lever, right? So benevolence integrity and ability are the three sort of individual levers, and that’s where most of the trust literature sits.

A ability is a moving target. What made a great leader 10 years ago is probably not the same thing that makes them great today. And integrity is getting harder and harder to maintain because norms and values are shifting and the world is moving so fast, it’s hard to make long-term commitments, but we can always have each other’s best interests at heart.

We can always try to look out for each other. And, there’s a number of ways we can do that. Again, I was teaching in Luxembourg. I was sitting with a group of students. I said to them, I said to one of them, tell me a relationship that matters to you. One, that’s important. He said, one girlfriend.

I said, great, and what matters to her? And he said, her family. I think her family’s the most important thing. I said, tonight, you’re gonna go home. You’re gonna have a conversation with your girlfriend. You’re gonna say in class today, the professor was asking us about a relationship that really mattered, and I thought about you.

That’s step one. You’re showing her that you’re thinking about her and that she matters to you. I said, and then you’re gonna say to her, he asked me what was most important to you? And I said, family. Is that right? Step two, you’re thinking about what matters to her, but you’re open to her input. You are open to being wrong if you didn’t get it right.

Said when she says, yes, my family’s really important to me, then you engage in step three, which is saying, because your family matters so much to you, I’m gonna assume that it matters to you that I get along well with them too. And so I’m gonna start spending more time trying to build a stronger relationship with your family.

I’m gonna have dinners with them. I’m gonna have conversations with them. I’m gonna share more parts of my life with them because it matters to you. And that’s showing her benevolence and being transparent about it. He showed up the next day in class with a huge grin on his face. He said, I’m allowed to talk to you whenever I want.

And it’s about being transparent when we’re trying to show benevolence to one another. And I’d like to give your audience a brief framework that they can use to try this out

place.

Say that you were listening to the Biz Bytes podcast. ’cause that’s good for all of us. And that you heard somebody talking about trust and they said benevolence was really important.

And really, that’s just a fancy word. That means having someone’s back or having their best interest at heart. And then you’re gonna say, I think I do that, but it doesn’t always seem to land that way. Have you ever experienced that? 99% of people are gonna say, oh God, yes. You’re gonna get curious about that.

What did they do? What did they try? How did it not work out the way they intended? Then you’re gonna narrow the funnel and you’re gonna say, have you ever had a time when somebody really had your back really looked out for you? What did they do? What did it feel like? And they’re gonna get a smile on their face as they’re thinking about a moment when someone really looked out for them.

You’re priming them for the next stage of the conversation. You’re getting hints about what benevolence actually looks like to them. What, what matters to them. Then you’re gonna narrow the funnel further and you’re gonna say, what is success for you? How do I help you get there? What would it look like if I had your best interest at heart?

Now you’ve created an opportunity for transparency because later on when you follow up and try to act in their best interest, you can say to them, you remember when you told me that this is what good looked like for you? What success was for you? This is me trying to help you get there.

I love that. Thank you so much for that. And everything else in the discussion, I feel as though we could talk for hours and hours on this topic. Just want to wrap things up with one final question that I like to ask all of my guests who come on the program. What’s the aha moment that people have when they come to work with you that you wish they were, they knew in advance they were going to have?

So when people hear that we’re gonna do trust training, they often think about hot calls and blindfolds and falling off of things. Trust building is a skill that we can all get better at and. I wish I didn’t have to take quite as long explaining that to them, making it clear to them, because we need to be more intentional about building trust now than we’ve ever had to be in the past.

Our relationships tend to be a mile wide and an inch deep, and we’re losing the ability to build deeper, more resilient relationships. So I wish that people could realize right from the start that this is a skill that they can invest time and energy and to get better at.

I love that. And I will go on the back of that and say, I think that extends as well to when people are starting or building personal relationships in terms of just interactions on a direct messaging service, on a LinkedIn for example. Don’t go straight out and start selling your stuff. Build a relationship.

Find something that makes you vulnerable or an interest with people so that. When it gets to the point of curiosity about what you do, there’s already a trust factor that’s built in there. You really have to know that every time someone sends a message that says, oh, thank you for connecting, here’s all the stuff I do buy from me, right?

It just doesn’t work.

It doesn’t, and I tend to respond by saying, you could really use some trust training. Buy from me.

Yeah, I love it. And just in and I do wanna mention as well for everyone listening in that there’s a couple of things that you can get in touch with Daryl on. Firstly, as we mentioned, is the Imperfect Cafe, the podcast, and also there’s the book Building Trust, exceptional Leadership In an Uncertain World.

You can learn lots more from there. Darryl, I thank you for being so vulnerable, so generous, and for. Showing us all how trust can be built, and I look forward to having future discussions with you.

I’d love to stay connected and thank you for having me.

To everyone listening in, thank you so much for being a part of the program this time, and we look forward to your company next time on Biz Bites for Thought Leaders.

Don’t forget to subscribe, so you never miss an episode. Hey, thanks for listening to Biz Bytes. We hope you enjoyed the program. Don’t forget to hit subscribe so you never miss an episode. Biz Bytes is proudly brought to you by podcast done for you, the service where we will deliver a podcast for you and expose your brilliance.

To the world. Contact us today for more information, details in the show notes. We look forward to your company next time on biz.

Business systems for growth. How to build a high performance business that runs without you. Welcome to Biz Bites for Thought Leaders, the podcast where we deliver actionable insights to help you grow your business. We discover little bits of brilliance from guests, including today’s Barry Kre, who specializes in helping business owners implement systems that create high performance businesses.

Now lots of questions that you’ve got to answer. Lots of questions that you wanna ask that I’m going to get answered. I can guarantee for you. ’cause we are gonna learn all about businesses that struggle and how to make them perform at a high performance level. We are going to match that up with ideas around athlete.

Some things that you can understand, and the fact of the matter is there are some really great insights coming out of this episode that are going to make you understand how you can perform at a high level more consistently, and how you can implement systems that can ensure that you do that and find that work life balance.

Yes, that controversial subject work-life balance. We’re gonna discuss all that whole more. Let’s get into this episode of Biz Bites for Thought Leaders.

Welcome everyone to another episode of Biz Bites for Thought Leaders and we’re traveling all around the world. This time round we’re going across to Ireland and welcome Barry crying to the program. Thank you so much for being a part of it.

Thanks a million. I just need GR here.

Now we are gonna cover a lot of territory today because I’ve got some insights into what sort of things you do and what you cover, and there’s a lot for people to listen into.

But let’s just start off by allowing you to introduce yourself to everybody.

Yeah. So look at Anthony. I’m gonna high performance positivity coach for small business owners. Generally what I’m doing is put systems and structures in place for them so they can get the bulk outta themselves and therefore get the most outta their

business.

And there’s a lot to unpack when it comes to that sort of area. And I’m gonna start at the very beginning of that ’cause you talk about high performance. And we mostly refer to high performance, in terms of athletes or machinery is high performance achievable in business in the first place and what actually defines high performance?

Yeah. Look, ab absolutely. First of all, absolutely it is. It’s we can operate at different levels. It could be in sport, it could be, in a personal life, it could be in business as well. And high performance really is, it’s maximum life and what you can do with your potential, so some people are operating at a 2.0, some days they might be operating at a 8.0.

Other days high performance really is getting as close to that bar as, as close to that 10.0 version of yourself. As you can, and that, that’s where my goal is. Again, I talked about systems there and structures of without those you can never really consistently achieve your maximum.

And that’s the same in our personal lives or the athlete that’s trainer for the Olympics. They have to follow a process. They have to follow a system because when you do, you get predictable outcomes. And that’s literally what we’re, what we talk about is if you’re predictable, possible, predictable systems, you wanna get predictable outcomes.

And ultimately, if you can get the most out of yourself, then you’re gonna get the most out of whatever it is you’re doing, be it, sport or be it business as well. Co it’s absolutely 100% achievable without systems and structures. It’s up to the lap of the guards really, whether you get there or whether you, how much you get out of yourself.

When your system is in place. Correct those predictable outcomes and ultimately get as close to that 10.0 version of yourself as possible.

Before we delve into systems and perhaps some of your background to getting there, let me just ask you this question because you’ve, drawn the parallel to athletes, for example, training for the Olympics, if you are running the a hundred meters or a marathon or whatever sport it is that you are doing.

If you are not hitting that ideal, you know your best of time every single time you go out there, that just isn’t really possible. And that, in football teams as well. Commonly you’re building up to the end of season to a grand final series. That’s, it’s a matter of building up to that point.

So when you talk about high performance and the expectations of business, you can’t be going in, I imagine and expecting that you’re gonna be able to perform at that 10, 10 out of 10 level on an everyday basis because you’re going to have some buildup and some fluctuations. Yes. So

it’s like the way you look at it is it’s number one what’s, what are you going after?

So if there’s Olympics, it’s a certain time or maybe a certain place in life or in business, it’s certain goals. So what we do is we start with the end of mind and look, okay what is your goal here? What are we aiming for? And then it’s reversal engineer, it’s reversal engineering back from that point then to say, okay, what is that I need to do on a daily, weekly, monthly basis to get there?

And then it’s, yes, it is, it’s that 10.0 of where you’re at. So where you’re at now versus where you’re gonna be at six months or six years is gonna be completely different. So operating at that optimal level of where you’re at right now, so you can ultimately get there for a quicker. And you’re building in that consistency because if you have, again, if you think about it you head out the road and you don’t have an end destination in mind.

You’re gonna end up anywhere. So it’s half that end point and reverse engineering back from that to say okay, what do you think need to look like on a daily, weekly, monthly basis in order for me to achieve that end outcome? And it’s then it’s built on structures around yourself in order for you to be at that.

Best version of yourself as consistently as possible. And yes, that’s gonna change over time. That, that, that think he always listening to him and he was talking about, somebody asked him, who’s your hero in in 10 years time? And he said look at, I’ll come back to you on, I said, he met the guy a couple of months later anyways.

And he said, look at who’s your hero on 10 years time? He said, my hero on 10 years time, but it’s me. And he said I am my hero. On 10 years I’ve that future word for me. Okay. And that’s what it is. It’s like the person that you meet in five or 10 years time, that version of you is gonna be different because you’re gonna evolve.

But it’s been, that best version of ourselves from now means we’re gonna be a far better version of ourselves in 10 years time. So we’re being the 10.0 version of where we are now, and again, that’s gonna change in a year, five years. 10, 10 years. But it’s consistently being that version of our status.

Of what we’re possible, of what’s possible and what’s what we’re capable of. Right now.

Now just, I’m just gonna break for just a second there. We’re getting a little, I’m getting a little bit of dropouts there, but I’ll keep pushing on, just so you know that if I pause for a moment or two, it’s just, there seems to be a little bit of, I have to press that internet lag, but we’ll be good to press that.

Why don’t you talk to me a little bit about your background as well, because I think before we can understand how you can add the value here in this is, let’s understand where you’ve come from to get you to that point where you can actually give people this advice. So tell me where it all began for you, what was the career journey that you’ve been on?

So basically my own background basically I was a safety engineer. I worked across the pharmaceutical industry here in Ireland as a safety engineer at, that’s literally. My own background and never, like always just focused and blinkered on my own career and what I was doing. And things changed for me.

I remember I just woke up one morning. I felt like almost absolutely like symptoms, aches and pains spiraled into worsening type symptoms. Brain fog, short term memory loss, real chronic fatigue. Over a period of weeks and months, it just started getting worse and worse.

And I couldn’t really find any answers what was happening. To me I couldn’t find, any solutions because doctors couldn’t find out what was wrong with me. And I was not performing out at all. I was struggling to get ideas work done. I used to have to, lock myself in a room for maybe.

15, 20 minutes trying to rest my eyes so I could recharge myself to go again for the next maybe 90 minutes or two hours. That’s the only way I could actually get through my day as I go home that evening, fall into bed, rinse and repeat. The next day I was probably getting about one day’s work done really in every five.

So I was, really not performing for them. I was like I like number one, I can’t, I’m not doing my job effectively. Number two, I, going to struggle, struggling to find answers and solutions here to what’s actually wrong with me. And actually went on for over two and a half years, and I was like, I have to find a better way to get more outta myself, with my reduced capacity.

So I was looking out and I was like, okay, who out there is doing, what I want to do with, at a much higher level? And it was like, I looked out in industry and looked at the likes that Richard Brads and the likes of these guys, the house, Branson is over 500 companies and.

Like how does he operate in aesthetic that allows them to do that and get so much more outta the time that he’s putting in? So that’s where I went, start going down the whole rabbit hole of performs productivity. And to get an understanding of I don’t have to reinvent the wheel. What are people doing?

That, that may help me. So I started belt battle test on some of their strategy, going down the whole Robin Hole at workshops from book and seminars and YouTube and literally taking strategies, testing it, implemented it, scared what didn’t work, take what did work. And eventually I started to see some commonalities between how the best in business do live.

I started applying then to my days and eventually I got to a point where I was getting so much more outta the time that I was putting in. I was actually getting about five days work done in every one at the end and not while I was still as, while I was still sick and looking for answers and solutions.

So I was at a completely different level of performance first with where I was and I didn’t think anything I was, I just. Went about my own work. I was still knocking on doors looking for ads for solutions. Anyways, two and a half years went by and eventually I got to the point where I was like, really, I was seriously worried because it was getting worse and worse.

So I had no short term memory whatsoever. I came across a local newspaper here and there was a woman on the paper talking about how she had never touched symptoms to myself. Just through a kind of series of coincidences, I got in contact with her. She was actually getting treated for this autoimmune condition that she had at the time.

She got me in there with her consultant. I got tested and sure enough I turned out that I had the same autoimmune condition as her. So I ended up, because the, that there isn’t much specialist knowledge in Ireland. All it, I ended up at the Czech Republic for a month, basically in a room by myself, and it gave me a lot of time to pause and think about my life, and I was at that point then where I was like I have tools and systems here and I looked around thinking about the office back at home and I was like this person is operating off sticky notes and this person, has a bit of a list and this person has no system whatsoever.

And I was like, but there is a better way. Maybe people don’t realize there’s a better way. I didn’t until I had to no choice but to count that go down this rabbit hole. So I started documenting things a bit more formally over there. Started helping out a few people when I came back, just rined, stuff like that.

And then that kind evolve then over COVID, whereas I started like seeing them get results and I was like, okay, maybe I should get this stuff out to a wider audience. Start putting out free stuff on online, doing free master classes. And that evolved over time then into the business coaching program.

That I have now. So it was just never started out at all, was created for my own need. I just evolved from that end into something that now I know how to people and that’s what I do.

It’s a fascinating journey and it’s one that I think that’s the interesting thing about someone such as yourself is that when you’ve experienced it. And you’ve ridden through that and delivering that. It’s so different to what is traditionally the method of coaches, which is, look, I’ve learned how to be a coach and I’m going to tell you stuff.

And there’s a lot of coaches out there that perhaps fall into that category. And so when I think when you’ve lived and breathed it, it’s a different beast.

Or not 100%. Yeah, 100%. I’ve, like if one person that came to before and they were like, yo, show me your, your coaching certificate and all this sort of stuff.

And like you can have certificate coming out the, co coming out the door work, but it’s really, it’s what you do, does it work? And there are people getting results from it. That’s the core thing. And often case with it’s created from your own need. That you’re damn sure that works because you have that, that practical hands-on experience of it.

Actually you need this. You implement it yourself and seeing it work as opposed to here’s theory, go now and try it for yourself.

Tell me how much is adapting and changing? ’cause there’s one thing when you build something around what suits you and everyone is, has their own individual quirks and backgrounds and feelings and all the rest of it That makes us human. And so with all the best of intentions, what works for you may not work for me.

So how do you find that balance and how much do you have? You had to tweak things over a period of time.

So I suppose first of all it’s like where I started and evolved and came from. I had really great opportunities to actually learn what helped other people. Then because of the free stuff I was putting out.

I would be able to adapt and change and tweak things. It’s based on feedback, based on how I see people implemented, based on see where I could actually improve on this and make things better. But at the it’s all based around one core framework. I call it my FEST productivity format and the framework, it’s the same framework for everybody, but it’s the inputs into that framework that gets the framework to work.

Okay. The first thing we do is, okay, it’s what I call our time officially accelerator, which is where we have to see, okay, exactly where you’re at. Okay. What’s baseline looking and what? What’s happening in the business right now? What’s happening in your days? What’s the ROI from the time that you’re putting in?

Where is your energy going? Where’s your time going? What are the outputs? As in where do you ultimately want to be? What’s the vision for the business? What’s the vision for your life? What are your goals? What are the kind of things that. You want to achieve? What are the milestones? And basically reverse the engineer all that back.

Okay. And we build it into a complete performance blueprint that we can actually build that framework around that system around. So the framework is the same for everybody else because you have to have a framework in order for you to get predictable results. But if the inputs into that framework that gets it to work, the inputs, which are different for all of us that gets it to work and then it’s after that, it’s I often think of us like that.

The toddler is trying to get the square peg in the square hole. It will go in there, but it’s dexterity isn’t informed and it’s like we have to tweak and adjust until look at that square peg goes in there and then that’s where people start to really see the benefits. For them it will fit, but as we’re all human.

We need to tweak and adapt it slightly to the individual. Then, ah, even after that point,

I wanna get into the whole idea of creating those. Systems and the tweaking of things as they do it. But I think there’s a, there’s an important aspect to talk about as well as you building towards this, and it’s something that I know you, you have front and center even on your website, which is the reference to work-life balance.

And this is, this has been a bit of a hot topic that I’ve had over the years with people because it’s a terminology within itself that is sometimes controversial, let’s just say. Yeah. I’ve posted in the past and said, work life balance and I’ve been, wrapped over the knuckles saying there’s no such thing.

What’s your take on that whole idea of work-life balance? Is it just an easy term that really means some, doesn’t really mean balance. Or what, how do you see it? So

In terms of work life balance I think there, there are seasons in our life as well. So you have this big thing that you want to achieve in the next week or the next month.

You sometimes it is, it’s working harder. It’s working longer. It, as long as it’s a season, as long as it feeds into the bigger picture, doesn’t mean you have to pin it at, 5:00 PM every single day. There’s days where social can go off track. There’s where you need to pivot or adjust. So it’s looking at the bigger picture of your life vision and ultimately what do you want to achieve and what do you want things to look like?

And it’s really building in place processes that, that allows you to achieve those outcomes where it’s not gonna impact on your health or your energy or your family or any of those other things in your life. So it’s about taking holistic look at everything and then designing that future vision of what that would look like.

Reverse engineering back from that point then. And then that’s it’s are you working? How are you working? Smart. Okay. It’s if you’re, if you have to put in, seven to 80 hours a week every week, and you’ve been doing that for, the last six months or the last five years, or the last 10 years, there there’s something wrong somewhere.

There’s something missing somewhere. So definitely it’s it has to be a, a holistic look at everything. In order for you to achieve, what you want to achieve without burning the candle or, sacrificing your personal time or your family time. And then I was saying maybe a time there is a fees in the way you need to put the extra hours or extra time that has to feed into the bigger picture.

So it’s it’s all about the bigger picture and where that actually fits into it.

Yeah, that’s it. It is true what you say in terms of seasonal, different stages of life, right? It’s can make a big difference when you’re on your own. It’s much easier to put more time into work potentially. When you’ve, as you maybe get married or certainly have children, once children come into the picture, it completely changes your perspective on things because you do want to spend more time with with your child, which means, invariably when they’re particularly young, it means you actually have to be home or available at least at certain times of the day.

’cause there’s no good coming home at eight o’clock at night and the child’s in bed at seven o’clock. It’s, there are lots of those things that come into the picture. So part of it is adapting. I imagine as well to, to where you’re at in your life and where your business wants and needs to be.

Yeah, it is, of course. It’s, yeah, there, there’s like that, for example, if you’re a startup business, then absolutely it’s gonna take more time. It’s gonna take more energy versus the business that’s established. So it just depends where you’re at. But the core part of it is it has to be. You have to be working as smartly as possible within the relevance of, what you want to achieve.

I’ve had people come to me and they could absolutely kill it for, a solid 12 hour day and focus Absolutely maximize their output, and then they’re flat as a pancake for five days after. It has to be sustainable as well. What you’re doing, you have to be smarter. And it’s a bit like we talked about athletes earlier.

Yes, we need to sprint, but we need that recovery time as well. So there has to be a delta into the picture. If we’re not getting recovery time, guess what? We’re not gonna be as effective tomorrow. And then we try to outwork that by working landlord tomorrow, and then we, therefore we get less recovery time and then we get into this vicious loop.

So that’s what that has to be considered as that.

I, I hear what you’re saying and I think that the trick, which is the next part of the conversation is getting your systems in place, right? It’s actually how do you actually make this possible so your business can function? Because the ultimate dream, of course, for most solo business O operators is how do you get it to a point where the business can operate without you, so that you can take that, holiday or.

Or it might just be taking some time off during the week so you don’t have to work five days a week, whatever it looks like for you. That’s the dream certainly at an initial point. So how important is it to find those systems? How easy is it to find those systems so they, is that something you can coach at a high level or is that getting into the nitty gritty?

Yeah look, it’s like a game. That’s what is it you want to achieve in your life? And everything revolves around systems, like everything, because systems must be reduced. The amount of micro decisions we’re making, systems take away a reliance of willpower or discipline or motivation or all these things that are really fleet things that come and go over time at the ent, they explode.

So what is it you want to achieve? For me, say in my personal life, I try to avoid sweets and sugar. Stuff like that, Monday to Friday. And if I didn’t have a system in place for that, I’d always be making my decisions. Will I have it now? Will I have it later? Will I, how much of it will I have? And then I’ll clear it in because sheer decision fatigue.

So instead, my system is, I don’t have it in the house Monday to Friday. My only decision is when I buy, when I go to the shop, the weekend. So that’s reduced hundreds of micro decisions across my week, down to one decision. Okay? That’s a system. So it really is what are you looking to achieve? Again, start with the interwind and reverse engineer back from that, okay?

To see, okay, in order for me to achieve this, what systems do I need to actually build around me to it to enable, let me to do the thing that I need to do. Yes, thought it could be personal review systems, it could be, systems for business. But everything comes down to systems. If you want to achieve a predictable outcome, then you have to create a system around you that enables you to do that.

Yeah, I, it’s. It’s easy to talk about. It’s difficult to implement, isn’t it? Those little things that can make a difference, like you said trying to identify those things that derail you. I know I’ve just been doing that myself in the last couple of days and came to this, realization I knew was always there that I was being dictated to by my phone and that I needed to turn the notifications off on my phone like permanently.

And it’s actually takes a little bit of getting used to when you’re making some of those sorts of changes because I had this feeling when I did go and check my messages and go, oh my goodness, I had all these text messages and this message on what’s happened. I didn’t respond to it straight away.

And then I realized if. No, I actually had some quiet time during the day to get a few things done because I wasn’t doing that, and it’s very, so those little things, like you say, knowing that you get a sugar rush and you shouldn’t have the sugar during the week, so you wait till the weekend like.

There’s two components to this. Really. There’s the recognizing it in the first place, or probably three, recognizing it, wanting to do something about it, and then doing something that is actually gonna meaningfully make those changes to improve those systems, because that third part is hard.

Yeah, of course.

And I it’s we have to almost. The ourselves from ourselves, we have to almost eliminate the profitability for not doing the thing. It’s in manufacture plants, they have called the cheeks or the fixtures to create, a duplicate inter interchangeable parts that you know at scale.

So they don’t have to cut up or cut or cast a new parts every single time. So that massively reduces the amount of areas where things could go wrong here. And it’s the same with herself. Like I had a woman recently and she was a devil. Her. Hopping on Instagram in bed at 11 o’clock at night, and she, they’ll scroll it through videos at two, three o’clock in the morning.

So instead of trying to motivate her or tell her to have more discipline around that, like we set, we just set up a system that would eliminate the possibility for that. So does set the phone, that would time her out basically, after 15 minutes she could do it. She could do it for 15 minutes. That’s her little reward at the end of the day.

Then she got timed out and then she can’t go back on it again till the next day. So again, it’s eliminating the possibility for it not happening, if there’s little friction points to it. It’s reducing those friction points to make it easier for it to happen. And it’s it’s, again, having a process that means either completely unlikely or to for not to happen or it’s, you’ve eliminated the possibility for that happening.

How easy is it for people to recognize. What it is that they need to be tweaking, if that’s the right terminology, to be able to improve their performance. How? How easy. It’s like I had the realization, but probably prompted by someone else. Yeah. With regards to the phone. How do you identify what other things, the phone is an obvious starting point ’cause it does, I’m sure it does impact a lot of people, but there are less obvious things and so how do you find that within people and help them recognize it, as that first step?

Yeah, that’s a great question that it really comes down to, measuring and managing you can’t manage what you can’t measure. So what we do is we literally look at everything that’s happening in their daily weeks, okay? I have an AI tool that I built to actually track what they do, where the time goes, where their energy goes, where their focus goes.

That actually is able to measure that. So we can actually see what is happening in their days? Where is their time going? What’s the ROI from the kind of things they’re working on? What are the kind of things that pulling ’em off track or distracting them or interrupting them, could, we can build out a full picture at the very start and when we use that picture in front of them and we sit down without me even there anything.

They can up with pinpoint and get that aha moment to say, actually, I didn’t even realize I was doing as much of that, or didn’t even realize I wasn’t doing enough of that. It’s really getting the data at the very start to the, okay, this is actually what’s happening in real terms. It’s not based on what I think it’s in or looking back at the weekend and kind of wonder, Jesus, what did I do?

Or where did I go off track? It’s in real time actually, man, measuring this stuff so that over a period of time we can build up a full picture. And then when we have that level of data then it’s clear then this is, these are the systems we need to build around you and nobody in order to enable you to achieve the end outcome you’re after.

Yeah. Those systems are so important. Does that scare people? Being able to systemize it. How easy is it? There’s so many tools out there now in terms of automations and various things like that can help with systems. What is the right place to start when building it?

And what does systems in real terms look like?

Like I person come to me recently and she was like, I’ve, I have this, I’m going to do the AI tour, and I was going to train me how to do all the. I used the utilize these 30 AI tools, it’s gonna be great. You know what you think should I do it?

And I was like what’s the outcome you’re after? And she was like I’ll get to use all these 30 AI tools, but I know what’s the outcome you’re after ultimately when you use these tools? And she didn’t know. So it was like you start with the end of the mind and you reverse back from that point to say, actually what do I need?

Okay, do I need all these 30 AI tools or do I need just one or two tools? To make my life easier. Okay, do I need all these things or do I need just a couple of things? So it’s like, what’s the outcome you’re after? And reverse the engineer backing that. Okay. For example, if you want to, cook back on working hours and your are just, from an efficiency point of view, then it’s okay, that’s one of the, that’s the end point.

You’re working at this level baseline, okay, this is what you want to get down to. Then we reverse engineer back from that point. For example, somebody wants to increase turnover in their business by agile. Let’s say, 20%, okay, we start with the end of mind. We’re first engineer back from that.

What do we need to do? We have to bring in new client, 12 new clients. Okay. Step back again. What do we need to do? We probably need to bring in a one new client, say every month. Okay, back again. Step back. What do we need to do? We need to probably bring in about four new leads a week.

Okay. In order for you to bring in four new leads a week, what do you need to do that? I have to spend about two hours on market then. Okay. In order for you to spend two hours on marketing on what you need to do you know what’s the best thing to do here? That’s where the fifth clubs come in.

Then do we need a VA that we can delegate that will actually do our LinkedIn outreach or social media post? Do we need to carve out in your schedule a two hour block for you? Go through a certain criteria to actually, to bring in those four new leads so it all gets. Which starts with the end in mind, we reverse back from that, and then from that then it’s very, becomes a lot clearer what you need to build around you system wise, in order to enable you to achieve the pain.

Then at the end of the day.

Yeah, that’s a it’s a great advice, great piece of advice to start at where, what you want to achieve because you can get trapped in systems and building systems for systems sake. And then micro managing those systems. I know I even experienced it recently where I had someone who had tried to build a system for part of the business and.

There was actually I realized that after it was implemented going, there’s more effort in trying to. Fill in the steps of the system, then there is in actually doing it. And so the system got too, we just went too minute in detail. And so you ended up going I have to tick this, and this. And I thought I, no, I don’t like, just lump some things together and do that.

And I think that’s an important part of this in getting the system right as you say, it’s focused on the end outcome. So the best way to achieve that without necessarily always having to go into the minutia of detail.

Yeah,

it

is. It is a course and it doesn’t have to be complicated.

Ful is better. Like the example I gave you with sweet and straw wasn’t this big complicated thing. It’s just they’re not in the house. Okay. I don’t have them in the house. That’s the rule. And then it’s much easier to get one division right, and have one rule that have, get a hundred decisions.

Simple. Simple is much better, comes off a hundred percent.

Let me put you on the spot a little bit. Give me a couple of, you, you pick the number. Give us a few tips for people who are looking to build systems for themselves in the business. What are some things that they need to how to identify what systems they should be putting in place and what they need to do?

Look at it’s the, again, going back to it, okay, what is it you want to, what is it you want to achieve? How would you like your days to run? How, ’cause I get people out there yeah, but this is the way it is right now. What about if, if I do, if this happens or that happens, or what about if I don’t hit this target and I don’t worry about the way it is right now?

Yep. I just lost you there for a minute. Yeah, I just lost you there for a minute with your internet picture is now saying it’s good. So do you mind just taking that back and answering that question again about just from the top about some of those tips. Yeah, a hundred percent. So a again,

it’s what, how would you like things to be?

How would you like things to run in your day? Like at a person that was talking to me recently and we were talking about this, her certain goals and targets and obvious saying, look it, they’re not specific enough. You don’t have figures, you don’t have dates, you don’t have any of that kinda stuff.

And if you just want to make more money, that’s. What does that mean? That could mean an extra five bucks in your pocket could mean an extra million at end of the year. What is it you actually want? And she would say, yeah, but what if I lose a client and I’m not hitting it and that you won’t motivate me?

I’m like, don’t worry about all the things that could go wrong. Think about the way you want it to be. Okay. Think what you want to achieve. Okay. And then it’s what do I need to do in order for me to get there? Okay I can see this is the ideal outcome. This is what’s happening right now on my days.

How do I get there faster? Okay, so I’m working on hours, I’m spending too long doing okay. We use the marketing example there. I’m spending three hours per week doing marketing and okay, it’s fine. Let’s, one system we could do is, one thing I do is. Is build playbook. So very simply, you have a loop video.

You take the lymph video from you doing the task, it’s not actually taking you extra time. And then you upload that loop video to chat GPT. You ask chat GPT to act. Yeah, as a, as an ai delegation expert. And you get chat gt to actually build you out on step by step playbook. Based on this video, based on success criteria, how success looks like economistic to avoid and a full step by step.

Then we take these playbooks, we hand them over to vas@maxfiver.com or Upwork, and then we can delegate the thing that you need to do in order for you to achieve the outcome. So you can spend even worth time per in something that has a bigger ROI for you to actually achieve the end outcome you’re after.

It’s all about getting people down into their zone of genius, because if they get the people down into that zone of genius things only they can do as leaders, as business people, then ultimately that they’re going to achieve those goals much faster. Okay, so what else could, like either another guy that kept using the business owner just left as an engineer company in Dublin and he had this big triage process for QA and documents.

Okay. So his team would have to QA the document to make sure there’s no, and everything is just right. And then it would come to him for a second triage. Why he would spend them like probably the guts of a day every week, just triage documents as a business, order, an admin type task. So what we’ve done is we’ve built out a custom cheap pt.

Okay? So we built a custom AI tool that will actually do the triaging for him. Okay. That enabled him to get the guts of a did per week back to get on the business. Now again, in his sort of genius progression towards the goals. So it’s like, what is it you want? How would you like things to run? Okay.

How would you like things to be? And then it’s what are the things we need to do in order for me to get there? Okay. And it’s thinking really outside the box as well. Okay. It’s if you had to. Okay take this task off your plate. How could you do it? Sometimes we think we have to do X and we have to do Y, but there’s often a much better way for it.

Another guy I was working with there later, he’s a four hour invoice process to do every single week, and I was like okay. That’s again, not value add for him, as in this is somebody else could do. Or what we done was we completely automated the task in about 15 minutes. So we’ve mapped out of current workflow, we’ve mapped out the future ideal workflow.

Usually ai, build a playbook, hand that over again to somebody on five.com or rock worker or one of these outsource websites. And then when in three days yet that process completely or when I say completely, was about 95% to the automated. So again, we’re getting him further down to that zone agen so he can spend his time on things only he needs to do as part of the best.

The challenge with all of that for small business particularly, is spending money. That’s the hard part, isn’t it? It’s like it’s easy to say, great, we should have a VA that comes in and do X, Y, Z or we should have another person that does this. Yeah. And sometimes that money is easy and makes sense and I’ve often used this example and say, look, the first hire I had in business was a bookkeeper.

I loathe doing invoicing. I loathe doing the books. I take too long to do it and dreaded it every month when I was doing it. The best money I ever spend and, every month with my bookkeeper and shout out to Anna who I know listens regularly lifesaver. But the but it is a lot harder when you are, you’ve got someone who wants to begin regularly to do those things because it is about how do you equate.

Spending the money versus saving time versus being able to bring in more clients, do more work, so that you can pay those bills.

Yeah.

It has to

be ROI led. So again if it’s ROI led, it’s you go to a bank machine and yes, you have to put, a dollar into the bank machine.

But if your back machine is gonna give you back $2, $5 or $10 back, then you put that dollar in. I’ll do that, wouldn’t you? But unless you stay way in business, it has to be ROI led and when you can get down to the initial grad say, is this actually ROI led? Is there an ROI here? Then it, then it makes in to do the things.

So again, it’s not. A lot of people trouble mud against the wall and hope something sticks. It’s specific and pinpoint it. All of our oil lead, and by the way, hiring is not the first step. I always make AI express higher. Okay. Can we automate it? Can we delegate it? Can we can we divide that for that?

Again it’s one and done so you don’t have to hire somebody and now they’re doing the repeatable thing. That potentially could have been automation in the first place. Can we actually automate this process or. Must be reduced, the friction in the process. Okay. So we can streamline it. So we make AI our first hire.

Then we think, do we need somebody? And again, I wouldn’t typically recommend hiring somebody straight off the back. It’s okay, let’s bring somebody in. As and outsource this task to I’d say yeah, where it’s like maybe hourly, paid hourly or based on a block of time as opposed to now we, someone working full time on us with pressure on us to, to pay them.

Don’t know. Keep working in front though. What you can do is incrementally increase that. Then over time it’s like, what I always do is generate wins. Generate wins. You can see okay, the light bulbs go off and say, okay, if they can do this, Wallace, it’s could they do, that’s a thing with ai. Generate wins around all that so you can see the return on your investment of time.

’cause that gets people to buy in. And it’s if you could deal that, what else could be If we if our VA can do that now and it’s just working really well for us, what else could they do? And then the light bulb start goes off and then they don’t mind, but it’s r why lead? And it’s getting those quick wins at the start so that people really buy in to do the next thing or the next thing or the next thing.

There’s so many things that we could talk about here and there’s just not much time left, and I just wanted to get in a couple of things before we finish up. It’d be remiss me not to mention the book you participated as part of rise Above. Tell me a little bit about that and what people can expect from it.

And of course, preface it by saying we will make sure we include some details in the show notes so people will be able to access it. Tell us a little bit about Rise Above.

Yeah,

it’s,

so look I was lucky enough to, to quarter with Les Brown, myself and Nine Underwriters. We all have own individual chapter in the book and it’s really a series of inspiring stories of people’s journeys.

The, like myself had faced, really challenging and difficult situations. And how we overcame it in order to achieve the kind of things that we went on to do in our lives and our journey almost to, to this point. So it’s really, I often describe it, it’s a bit like, it’s basically the concept of if you ever read him stick for the Soul.

It’s basically not concept where our whole goal was just to inspire people that maybe come through a tough time, a difficult time, and knowing that, look at there is a light movement forward. And the times where I felt like, look, this isn’t working out. I didn’t know where to turn or where to go because I couldn’t find answers and solutions, but.

I I always seen then and liked that if you just stay consistent long enough, you’ll get there. And that’s was my message in the book. I know the other quarters were the same. If you just stay consistent long enough you’ll get there. Okay? Yeah. Les Brown has done great catch first, have done it.

He is the first chapter in the book and he says, look if you can look up, you can get up. And it seems difficult, but you can’t get up and you can move path, whatever those challenges are now. And when you do that, you just keep taking the steps forward. No matter how small those get, you’re going to get there.

You’re going get whatever it is that you want to achieve. There’ll be humps and there’ll be bump and be ups and downs. And especially in business, there’s that’s prior to the course, but if you stay consistent, whatever it is you want, you will get there. That’s really what the book is about.

Fantastic. Said we will make details of it available in the show notes so people can get a hold of that. And just before we wrap up, the question I always like to ask my guests is, what’s the aha moment that people have when they come to work with you that you wish more people knew they were going to have?

Yeah, I think it’s, yeah, I got it. We can normalize the way things are right now and we can think that this is almost just the way it is like this. It’s like I often think, the weather in Ireland, like when it’s day after day after rain, we almost feel like, geez, there’s never gonna be a sunny day.

And then when the good weather come, then it’s day after. So you feel this is going to go on forever and it can be the theme in our life and our business as well. But the big thing is to get people at quick wins at a nearly stage that they can say actually. It doesn’t have to be like this. I don’t have to put in 80 hours a week.

I don’t have to, I don’t have to feel stressed all the time during my days is to get people a quick win so they can almost say actually, there, there is a better way. For example, there was one woman who worked out recently and just one very simple thing. We bookended our day.

We either like a little 15 minute shutdown routine at the end of our day where it was like, this is your finished time. This is the time you, ’cause in business, obviously we’re not on a nine to five. It’s like you can work all the hours, you can work none of the hours. That one thing pulled her easement and her weekends back for her because work expects to fill the time available.

Okay? And when she seen that, it was like light bulb moment. Okay, what else can I do? Then she was all in. Okay. So it’s like, what is the one thing you can do that can make the biggest difference? Getting people, that one went straight away. They can say, actually, you know what, there is a better way.

And it doesn’t have to be like that because I can say it and you can hear other stage. But when you get those wins at an early stage, then that’s the moment where they’re all in.

Fantastic. I love so much of the information that you’ve given today. It’s such a not only a unique perspective in so many great stories, and I think there’s so much for people to learn from it. So I really thank you for being a part of the program and it’s lovely to speak to someone on the other side of the world.

Fantastic accent. We love it over here. Thank you so much for being part of the of the Biz Buys for Thought Leaders podcast. It was a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

And to everyone listen in. Don’t forget, of course, to hit the subscribe button so you never miss an episode. We look forward to your company next time on Biz Bites for Thought Leaders.

Hey, thanks for listening to Biz Bites. We hope you enjoyed the program. Don’t forget to hit subscribe so you never miss an episode. Biz Bites is proudly brought to you by podcast done for you, the service where we will deliver a podcast for you and expose your brilliance. To the world. Contact us today for more information, details in the show notes.

We look forward to your company next time on biz.

Business Growth Secrets, how to scale your business with Proven Sale Systems. Welcome to Biz Bites for Thought Leaders, the podcast where we deliver actionable insights to help you grow your business. I’m your host, Anthony Perl, from Podcasts Done for You. In today’s episode, I’m joined by Doug C Brown, who is the host of the CEO Sales Strategies Podcast, and he’s a business growth expert who specializes in helping business owners.

Implement proven sales systems that drive exceptional growth. In this episode, you are going to discover the crucial mistakes that prevent business growth, how to build scalable sales systems that work practical strategies to increase your revenue without. Burning out an important thing there. There’s a lot we’re gonna unpack and some great stories with Doug who has bought and sold, I believe 37 businesses in his time.

He’s clicked over a billion dollars in sales. He’s someone you want to listen to. So let’s get into this episode of Biz Bites for Thought Leaders.

Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Biz Bites for Thought Leaders and continuing our tradition of going all over the world. We’re hitting over to New Hampshire and I welcome Doug C Brown to the program. Welcome, Doug.

Hey, Anthony, thanks so much for having me here. I’m very grateful to be here.

Ah, it’s an absolute pleasure to have you here and I’m gonna get you to introduce yourself and we are just having a little bit of a laugh off air, weren’t we, about the fact that Doug Brown is is not an uncommon name. So we’ve got you as Doug c so that way we make sure you stand out. Tell us a little bit about you and your story.

I I started actually working at the age of three from my dad. In his business. Wow. Yeah. All my brothers did the same thing. We all slept not slept. We swept floors and didn’t sleep

on them, just swept them.

I’m sure maybe when I got tired I probably did. I did. I don’t remember. But.

Yeah, I was sweeping floors at age three. By the time we were six, they actually started helping us learn how to sell. They were putting us in front of clients and people were helping us out, with the orders and things like that. I can only imagine, back then I wish I had an in a sample of what my order sheets looked like back then, but.

We were and we worked with my dad for the most part. I worked with him until I was about 19 years old until I went into the military. And then I always had side businesses all the way through his businesses and through the military and through college or university, as some people call it, in the different parts of the world.

Over my life, I’ve actually built we’re on our 37th business at this point. Wow. So not all have succeeded. Some have some have broken even some have made some money and some have made a lot of money and we’ve lost a lot of money at times at, too. Got a fair amount of experience in doing that type of process.

But that’s my, kinda my business life. And, married, I have two kids and and it was interesting, lots of Doug Browns. We talk about Doug Brown, who’s a famous hockey player. I love hockey and music and a few other things. Funny today, ha, I thought I was talking to a, he was a drummer in a band.

And a kind of a. Famous band here in the United States and we were talking about me and he goes, are you Doug Brown that lives in Gloucester? And I’m like, no, that’s the other Doug Brown musician. So that’s why I have the C in there. It differentiates me.

Does the C actually stand for something or you just liked it?

Oh, I always say it’s charming, ’cause people get a little laugh out of it. But actually it’s Charles, it’s my middle industry, Charles. My mother was gonna name me Charlie Brown, not my father wanted to name me Charles Douglas Brown ’cause he thought it was distinguished. But my mother said, I’m not having a son named Charlie Brown.

There’s enough, challenges in the world. And I thank her for the best. Yes.

That would’ve been a hard one to have lived up to. Yeah. It’s interesting isn’t it, because there are of course, plenty of actors who famously put an initial there for similar reasons to you have that there’s already someone with a similar name and they put it in there, and that doesn’t actually stand for something.

I, I, if I’m not mistaken, Michael J. Fox, I don’t believe the J actually stands for anything. Oh, really? Yeah. I didn’t know that. The sound of it. Yeah. So there you go. A little bit of trivia to start us off.

Hey you know what? We might go on jeopardy someday and the show here and make some money.

Let’s hope so. Let’s hope so. Make some money is good. Speaking of making some money and as you said you’ve had a lot of businesses, which in of itself is interesting. We might come back to that, but tell me about the current business, because your focus is really, and the reason we are talking today is largely around giving CEO strategies to succeed and to grow.

Yeah. Yeah. So I mean in that, so I have over a, I think we’re over a billion dollars now in, in sales. We just added our next four, 4 million, I think that kicked us over the billion, which is nice. Yeah. Congratulations. That’s huge. Oh yeah, thanks. Yeah, it’s and I haven’t, I have another company that we started just recently.

It’s actually the insurance business. Life insurance and health insurance, which is. Super crazy here in the United States. And I love it. It’s I feel like I’ve come home ’cause of the, all the accumulation of everything I’ve done over the years. I still have the software business that’s called The Bit No, which is a automated, proactive follow-up system and and I still occasionally am helping mostly.

Consultants and some companies in the revenue growth aspect of it too. But I use a lot of that now going into the new business. Because we’re building agents and agencies and things like that within the company.

It’s, it’s a huge thing these days to, you talk about, automations, you talk about getting in and out of businesses, like that sort of stuff.

It’s almost taken for granted that people are gonna do that, but it’s not so easy to do that. And you’ve clearly had lots of experience in doing that, that in of itself is a huge thing.

Yeah. And it, the, you can get experience from reading and listening to others and, listening to podcasts like we’re doing and those type of things.

And I still do a lot of that and I know, I have people that I hang out with that are. They literally have billions of dollars, in the bank type people, they’re constantly learning. But I think the, nothing really, it, I shouldn’t say it this way, learning a hard lesson and learning it from YouTube versus learning it from your own bank account, being drained out.

It’s a lot, it’s a nicer play, sometimes those hard lessons that we learn are really not. They’re not failures, they’re just hard lessons. And that’s where we as human beings, we go, oh no. Anytime I have a GI get into one of those places. Andrew, I always remember Ted Turner, I had a a network over here called TNT Turner network television.

Yes. And at one time, he was losing $20 million a day. Wow. And I was like, first time I heard that I was like, all right, I don’t have problems. We just lost a, half million or whatever. And I’m like crying over it. He’s losing $20 million a day. And the thing about business is very fair, but it’s also very very clear about its rules.

It’s money out. Money in equals loss, break even profit. Really that’s business when it comes down to it.

It, yeah it’s simple, but it’s complicated of course, isn’t it? That’s the thing is that and I’m fascinated by the fact that you’ve had so many different businesses because the one thing that it does teach you is you have to be attuned to what the audience wants.

Yeah. I think that’s where a lot of businesses fall over because they go in with an idea and they go. I’m going to do this, but they haven’t actually engaged with an audience to find out if that’s what they want and they’re not adapting necessarily as they go along the way to what changes may happen and if that’s gonna be a lesson that you would’ve learn many times over.

Yeah, that was a hard, that is the number one thing really, when it comes down to when we’re starting a new business. Anybody listening, if you have not engaged your audience to find out, not if they like the idea, but actually if they’ll pay you ahead of time. For rolling out your idea. I think about four times more about actually rolling that business out until you can get them to pay for the actual idea.

And ’cause a lot of people will tell people, oh, that’s a great idea. And Andrew, Bob, Mary, Josh, whoever. Diane? That’s an amazing idea. I love that idea. And then we as entrepreneurs think, oh people are saying yes, but you and I both know Anthony, that if they don’t pay for it, it doesn’t mean that the business is gonna survive.

So that’s, it’s, I have made this mistake more times than I care to count, quite frankly, because we as entrepreneurs always go, oh, my idea is amazing. And. And I disagree with Steve Jobs. Just tell him what you’re gonna give him and the market we’ll buy. I think he got lucky, quite frankly, and had good timing.

You all you jobs people out there, please don’t send hate mail to myself or Anthony. But the, my experience in business is exactly what you’re saying. You wanna figure out whether you have an audience first and. ’cause there’s a lot of amazing products and services in the entrepreneurial graveyard because they just can’t sell ’em.

I had a a gentleman I talked to he was, came to me and his business was almost on the verge of going outta business. And Anthony, he invented a suit that if a paraplegic put it on, somebody who couldn’t walk hands, legs, didn’t move. They literally got up and could walk across the room and I was like, whoa, this is an amazing product.

But couldn’t sell it. He just was way ahead of his time. He just could not sell this product. I actually know there’s a company here in the United States. It’s worldwide now. It’s Starbucks. I actually know somebody who tried to do the exact model of Starbucks 11 years prior to Starbucks being founded and complete.

It was like, if you looked at the business, they were identical, but one of them tried to start it in the east coast of the United States, which failed and one of ’em started it in the west coast of the United States, which is today’s Starbucks. That’s a great point you bring up.

The second great point is. You gotta roll with the changes because if you don’t, your audience sometimes changes, the needs change, technology changes, inflation, recession, great economies, real estate up, down, all kinds of things happen. And if we don’t roll with that and understand and AI is a good example of that today.

And if you, if we’re not rolling with AI today. We are gonna have some challenges in, in almost every industry. I don’t know about ’em all, but certainly the many businesses are gonna be affected by ai. If you’re a, a solo entrepreneur and you’re a freelancer today, and you and AI can do what you’re doing, if you’re a graphics designer, you might survive it, but your clientele’s gonna change.

Yeah. And the way you operate is definitely going to change. You just, you were just talking about the innovation there and it made me recall a, an old gag from a comedian, Victor Borger, who you might have remembered from. Yeah. Long time back. And he has this little sketch where he talks about, my uncle invented the soft drink.

He tried something and he called it one up, didn’t work, tried two up, didn’t work. 3, 4, 5, 6, tried six up. Didn’t work, gave up. Little did he know how close he came

and someone else invented seven up and here we are. So it’s ex

Exactly. And I think, but that’s the truth is that you have to keep innovating in business.

And just because there are so many stories out there of businesses who had an idea and who. Failed or didn’t get the support. Famously that’s the Walt Disney story is that I think it was something like 34 banks or something of that nature that rejected rejected him before one said Yes.

And so there’s a, there is that’s the hard thing we, we talked about before, is that you have to be in touch with your audience and be, and, be as assured that’s, that what you’re gonna provide is something that they will want and need. Yeah. And then you have to be stubborn enough to keep pushing and going forward if you truly believe in it, because sometimes you’re going to get knocked back and it might happen several times.

You mentioned Walt Disney the ATM that we all, we don’t even think about. We put our card in the machine to get our money if we want to today, that took about, I think, 13 or 14 years for it to actually take hold because people thought it was gonna steal their money and eat it.

And there’s a lot. I remember I was born in 1962, feeling a little old when I say that, but I was born in 1962 and I remember when I was a kid, a child they were talking about electric cars, but people were. Vehemently opposed to even talking about it. So they used to say things like, I’m not driving a golf cart around.

I’m not doing that. Here we are in, 2025 and, government subsidies are being handed out for people who are buying, and driving. You got, Tesla is a pretty good sized company. You got others out there. The electric car is, becoming more of the mainstay at this point.

So certainly hybrid cars are so everything changes and you don’t wanna be caught, saying I learned how to repair that steam engine and I’ve got a job for life, because that doesn’t always happen and neither does your business. There are all kinds of just the nature of the a, the, the atom, is constantly changing.

And so we must, as you were saying, we’ve gotta be able to change with it. If we don’t, there, there are plenty of things. Some of you are probably old enough to remember the fax machine. I can tell you I have two daughters and they were like the heck is a fax machine, right? When there are kids who don’t remember a time without a cell phone tethered to their body.

And or learning. And if you look at today, you gotta use apps. You can, you can’t even do business some with some companies unless you have an app on your phone. And when I was growing up, the phone had a cord and.

Yeah. And it’s amazing how much it’s changed, just as you were speaking there, I was just thinking about, the fax machine. I remember when it came and I remember when it left, yeah. CDs were the same. There. There’s technology like that, and you’re right, the phone has changed so much. I, I used to not leave the house without a wallet.

I can’t remember the last time I had a wallet in my pocket.

Yes.

Why do I need it? I’ve got a phone. Yes. It’s things change and the, there is a generations that don’t remember what it was like before.

That’s one of the reasons that we started the insurance business, because insurance is not gonna go away.

It’s, it’s it might change form, but, we’ll roll with that and, it’s a great long-term business and. We all, we’ve all fall pre. There was a, when the automobile came in, they didn’t think it was gonna make it. People didn’t think, they didn’t think the horse was ever gonna get replaced.

When television came in, they didn’t think it was ever going to outdo. Radio television, I think got caught. They didn’t think that streaming was actually going to take over. The movie theaters or the, the TV itself to pay for television, my goodness. Like people now are paying for television.

We never paid for television. It was free. So it, it’s unless you’re

in the uk the UK by the way have been paying for television forever. There’s always been a tax to, or a levy that they have to pay every year for for licensing, for television, for free to Airtel free to air television.

Really? I, that’s super. So they’re the ones who started this paid television. Absolutely. They’re responsible

for it all.

Yeah. You, if people don’t, no matter what businesses they’re in right now, if you’re in the roofing business, I can tell you right now that environmentally friendly shingles are coming forth.

I have clients that, that, talk to me about this all the time. And they’re using it as a differentiation factor to come in because the old shingles, the asphalt shingles they can’t dispose of them like they used to. So there’s environmental factors. They don’t, they just don’t decay.

So there’s different types of room. Who heard of a metal roof years ago? Unless it was on an industrial building, yeah. Solar panels, they were a thought. But now they’re mainstay, right? There’s all of these things that, not just innovations of new products and services, but within our business.

My, my original college focus was on the medical field. My goodness, is that changed? It’s now like crazy changed, with not just the technology, but in the United States, it’s become way more of a business versus even healthcare. And if you were banking that it was always gonna be what it was 30 years ago, 40 years ago, and you had planned on being in that business, your business is very different or you’re no longer in business.

And to your point, Anthony, if they don’t roll with it, and that includes selling, if people, you know are still trying to sell like they were back in the. The eighties and the nineties, or the older sales methodology, the internet completely changed how we sell. Not because you could just buy things online, but because you could find information.

The sales channel used to be the expertise for people making decisions. And no longer is that the case because now. Pretty easily the potential buyer can have as much or more information than the sales channel even has themselves.

Yeah, it’s it is, it’s the truth, isn’t it? You walk into, particularly if you’re buying something of reasonable value, although it still happens, actually, I had this experience with my kids recently and they wanted to buy a book and they’re standing in the.

In the shopping center looking online at how much it is and they’re going into one shop and then another going we can get it cheaper over here so we can save $5 by going to this shop. And you don’t, I mean we, we went to a shop the other day and we were not buying, I think we bought a kettle.

That’s right. And it was advertised at a price that already said discounted. We actually didn’t even look it up. We went to the counter and said, is there anything better you can do? And they knocked $20 off it. Wow. They didn’t have to, but that’s the but they also know, the reality is that.

Majority of people would have looked it up and said this same kettle is $20 cheaper or $15 cheaper over here. So they not going to get the sale unless they do that. So that whole idea that people are very much armed before they walk into a store. You can’t have a sale no longer. Is there the opportunity for a salespeople to twist your arm with a few words because you know they know more than what you know because.

That is not likely.

No. And it’s it happens as you said, in the retail aspect or in the stores. It also happens in the manufacturing world. It happens in the software. I actually happened today. I a friend of mine introduced me to a new software company and they’re out of they’re in Pakistan.

And I’m like, okay, I’ll talk with ’em. And it turns out that they’re 20% more than my current development team, which is in a much higher cost area. And I asked them, I said, you’re in Pakistan. Correct. ’cause I know what the wages are in Pakistan. And they said, yes, absolutely. I’m like you’re five times what you’re supposed to be price wise from Pakistan.

Because, I’ve worked I’ve, I had a company in India, I know the region. So it’s, but it’s very easy to look things up online and know what a senior developer, for example, makes in Pakistan and Pakistani money. Which isn’t even close to what they were telling me.

They wanted to charge us for the price. So it’s that won’t happen business wise. I can also find out cultural differences. I can find out, if anybody, I had a company in India, so I can say this. They take a ton of vacation days. It’s in, compared to the United States, it’s very culturally different on the time off.

We can factor all these type of things in. If we’re looking to buy a laser guided whatever, machine for our inspecting the bottles and cans for our manufacturing plant, we can look up this stuff and there are people who are proud to put that stuff, that information out.

And we can find out all kinds of things before that sales person comes through the door, or before we even invite a sales channel. In. A lot of times there are meetings now that happen within companies. So that whole dynamic shift, will continue. Ever changing shift will always continue.

With AI today, it’s taking another shift. You can have conversations with it to elicit responses that you might have had with meetings with sales teams. And so you can have all the, those conversations ahead of time, so you can just zero in on these things.

So there, there’s, innovation is always a thing that’s going to happen. Adaptation is the thing that sort of lags. I think Anthony, that’s been my experience,

So talk to me, let’s get into this whole sales thing a little bit more because I know one of the things that you like to talk about is the the problems that people have with unpredictable revenue.

Pretty common problem in majority of businesses, and you’ve been through plenty of businesses back as a child, and the businesses that you’ve owned as, as well over the years with innovation, constantly changing. How do you actually teach? Sales techniques that are going to continue to work and adapt, be because of exactly that problem, unpredictable revenue and change that is happening in the areas that, that we’ve just been talking about.

It’s a great, that’s a great question, a great point. So firstly, math never changes. The outcomes might change based on the formula change, but the reality is that selling is really foundationally grounded in metrics in math. Revenue growth is f is grounded in metrics in math. So the first thing that we wanna do is always figure out what our true will goal is.

That’s step number one. And that’s the part that people miss. They like, I’ll talk to companies and I just talked to one, he wants to. He’s 7 million today and he wants to be 12 million within a year, which is not doubling the business, but it’s good growth for that type of business. And we got talking and I, it’s long story short, after we got talking, I’m like, what’s the real number?

He’s nine, right? So it’s if we design a plan and mathematically build a plan till 12 and you don’t. Wanna do that type of work or put the budget in to get that and all that other stuff, it falls apart. Frankly, it never gets off the ground. Most of that. I had a gentleman one time tell me he wanted to go from 3 million to 51 million in his first year, and he had no marketing budget whatsoever.

No sales budget whatsoever. It’s not gonna happen, right? Yeah he would’ve needed, at least in his industry, 5 million. Just for the marketing budget alone. So once we understand what the truth truthful goal is, then we can really start objectively looking at, ’cause we can put math to that process and then, so no matter what the economy’s doing or what the markets are doing, that never changes.

It’s a standard concept of and condition. So now, yes, if the, if the industry is, wreaking havoc. On on the business owner, conditions might change, but the math will never change. It’s always gonna be the same thing. We have this to sell at x with this is our cost of selling it.

These are, soft cost, hard cost, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. We wanna net this type of profit. We just figure out the mathematics at that point. We’ve gotta sell this many things at this and that at this. Going back to your original point, one of the, one of the foundational things that we do is who’s the ideal right fit buyer for those?

Because, most companies, frankly, are selling a lot of things that if they just focused on other things that are already selling, they would sell more and grow more than, the old Pareto principle, right? The 80 20 rule of 2080, 80% of your revenue comes from 20% of the clients, and 20% of the revenue comes from 80% of the clients.

I’ve never found that to be exact, to be honest, but it, the proportions aren’t really the key. What is proportion. What is important is that there is a percentage of clients who buy quicker, pay more, are a lot more fun to work with. And if we could identify those and double down on those with, and here’s the key, don’t give up the others because you don’t wanna knock off 20% of your revenue just to gain back if the other thing doesn’t work as well as you want it to.

But when you find out who that ideal right fit buyer is, your messaging gets clearer, your targeting is clearer, everything just falls into a lot more, of an aligned process. And from there, once you understand that, it’s okay, now how do we massively prospect to get these people? And then once we massively start to prospect to get these people, I always like to induce at least six new ways into a company that are working.

Within a year to grow a company. And then how do we automate those six ways, right? So we can free up our time and our monies. And it’s just constant influx of business coming in at that point. And so then how do we up our sales conversations and how do we anchor all the math to each one of these stages?

And I think one of the more important ones that people miss are there, there are two, and this is one of the reasons I developed the. Personalized follow-up system because I literally lost $125,000 sale by going on vacation. Yeah. The vacation cost me $4,000, so now you can figure out what my vacation really cost me.

And I was like,

I hope you got a couple of decent margaritas out of it.

Yeah. I actually thought I needed at least a dozen more margaritas after I lost that video.

Wow, that is a huge, yeah,

so follow up is super important. So we follow ups, the glue that holds everything together.

It’s the glue that holds the relationships together. And so we built that system. But I think one of the things that most people miss out of the whole thing, an Anthony and growing revenue is we can’t if we just grow the company revenue, but we as individuals don’t grow our mind. Like shape our mind to accept the new growth, accept the new challenges, accept the new responsibilities, accept the new fact that we are now doing way better than we were.

If we see ourselves at a, say a seven, but we grow to a nine, I see this time and time again, the entrepreneur will actually start coming back to who they believe their identity is and they’ll start sabotaging the growth. And so a big component is also conditioning that part of us because we all have desires, fears, wants, doubts, confidence levels at certain levels.

But we’ve gotta, we’ve gotta constantly keep growing that otherwise we and I’ve done this to my own businesses, I’ve done this, where I’m like, why am I doing this? I don’t know why I was doing it right. And then I figured it out and you gotta keep going in that process and keep growing.

If you want to continue to grow, going back to your innovation and things that are happening, the world will do this for us. It’ll kick us over and over until we understand that we’re not the center of the universe. We’re just part of it.

Yes. It’s a and that’s. And that’s an important lesson. It’s simple, but it’s the, but it is the truth that we often forget that there are other people around that matter. And it goes back to what we were saying in the beginning, really, that businesses need to understand fundamentally there audience.

And in order to be able to respond and to grow, and innovation is a part of it, because that’s part of the process as well, is that now there are expectations. We talked about it before, that the expectations of what people have are very different to what they were 20 years ago. And they’re going to be different again in 20 years time from now.

They’re probably gonna be different in a year’s time, the way change is happening. And, AI’s a good example. AI has come into sales. I know of a. Company that replaced 80% of their sales team with AI and they’ve had a 60% growth. And as a result of doing it, now, it depends what you’re selling.

That’s a low ticket, a hundred dollars a month kind of subscription idea where it’s fairly straightforward for people to understand and AI can sell that. Yeah,

And so to that point, Anthony, I think you’re bringing up a very smart cautionary phrase, which is, it isn’t for everyone.

Folks, you’re not gonna, probably in high probability, redu, take out a. Complex sales situation with AI today. It’s li unlikely to ha not happen, I should say. It’s unlikely to happen. Very likely not to happen. So before you run out and start deploying AI and kicking your sales team off, let’s do a thorough study on that one.

Yeah, it’s it is one of those things, isn’t it? And it’s cautionary with all of this sort of stuff, AI is a good example where some of these things are worth trying. There are some things that will take you to a certain point, but it does depend on the nature of the industry.

It does depend on the nature of what you’re selling. And in, in that particular case, it’s a product that. Doesn’t need isn’t going to, it’s not gonna be service driven, put it that way, that it’s, you’re not going to actually need to engage with a human. It’s a, it’s basically a software product that they’re selling a subscription to.

So it can make some sense in that market. But, I’m in a, in the business of podcasting, that’s not something that is going to be able to be replaced by ai. I know there are ais that can do certain amounts of things, but. We traded, we’ve traded a number of stories here today, and you can’t do that with an ai.

They’re not going be able to do that in the same way. And that human element and how we respond, particularly in a sales process is also important because often it is that rapport that you develop with someone, which has a big emotional stake in your ability to be able to connect and sell.

Yeah, I don’t know what the future.

Brings in that regard. Maybe in time podcasting does change, maybe in time, hugs change, maybe AI can create a hug feeling. I don’t really know, a rapport building. I don’t, we have a need as a human being to have other human beings in our lives. And if we, and I, this is the whole I would say pet peeve of mine, right? Where I think people are so far moved on the technology side that they’re actually getting away from the human to human side. And I see it in restaurants. I watch people in restaurants and they’re on their, they’re looking at their cell phones, like through, three quarters of the meal and barely talking to one another.

And I, I think, AI can do that. But I don’t think it will ever get to that. I shouldn’t say ever. I don’t see it getting to that place where it replaces what we’re talking about, what you’re talking about right now, Anthony? I think it’ll give it a shot for sure, because, the video cloning is so good now.

I can’t only imagine where it’s gonna be in another year where, you just feed it a script and. To ai, video clones or having a conversation back and forth, and it’ll be a little more hard difficult to discern, is it accurately. AI or not I don’t think like you, I, we just heard a dog in the background, right?

I’m assuming it’s your place because we don’t have a dog. Yes. I think

that I think someone’s decided that there’s something at the front door or a package is arriving, something like that. So there’s a. There’s a dog that’s going a little bit nuts in the background, so apologies for that.

No that’s the greatest part of AI can’t do that, right?

We can’t respond. The AI on this side would not go, oh, it’s a dog. At this point maybe down the line it could. But that’s how people, you and I are both human beings having a conversation and that’s, I don’t think selling ever will get that far away. That won’t happen.

But I do agree that if you’re selling a moderately low end or commoditized type process in most cases, AI will do an amazing job on something like that. If you’re buying a I don’t know, just pick anything a a. A piano for your kids, and you’re like, what? Piano sounds great.

And the AI can work out these things and tell you differences in these type of things. And you could probably make a decision to buy a piano, right? But if you are a concert pianist who is, playing at a high level, high end, you’re probably not ever gonna get AI to be able to get you to buy a piano.

You’re gonna want to go into a piano. Store or shop that’s been established for a long time was, has Steinway or Yamaha or a whatever brand you’re looking for, and you’re gonna wanna talk to people. So I think that, I don’t think that’s ever gonna go away. Personally.

Yeah, and it’s fascinating you say that because when my daughter was 12 and she had an opportunity, she got given some money and collected some over a period of time and wanted to buy a piano.

She only had a certain budget to it, but she was very strict. She had to play those pianos and wasn’t what anyone was selling her. It was sitting down and actually. Enjoying it and appreciating the sound and going through her own process. And it wasn’t something that you could have done online.

No. And it does make it, it does make a difference. And sometimes that, touching and feeling the product or service is an important aspect of of how we go about all of this.

Yeah. And I think there’s a place for AI to do that. And I think there’s a place for AI not to be able to do that.

And, I use AI every day of my life and it’s great for the things that I use it for. I just, again, those complex or those it’s really hard to f. I don’t even know if it’s impossible, but it’s certainly hard, I think, to emulate or replace what you’re talking about with your daughter.

And if you’re sitting into a piano and you’re feeling the weight of the keys and the touch and the feel and all of that, when she’s pressing down the notes, she’s gonna feel a little better playing a certain type of keyboard than another one. And they’re all different. And so I, I know this ’cause I’m a musician and I play piano and those type of things.

It’s the same thing for, a vocalist in a microphone. I don’t think, I think AI can make recommendations, but I don’t believe it’s gonna be able to pick the microphone for you until

you hear it. Exactly. There’s so many more things that we could have touched on and talked about and we do have to wrap things up, but I do want to ask you two final things.

One thing I wanted to ask about and we are only just going to touch on it, you talked at the beginning about an incredible background. I wouldn’t say slave labor at three years old, but starting work at three years old with your dad and I understand that, and that would’ve been an amazing experience.

And watching those businesses that he was involved with, going through the military, having many of your own businesses, what are the big lessons that you’ve learned from all of that, that you impart then in as part of the strategies that you give the people you work with?

So I had A mentor’s name was Richard Menino.

Richard has passed on. I have no idea why he even mentored me. He was very wealthy guy. I think I reminded him of a young hymn, when he was going through and he said something to me one day. And I think this encompasses what I learned in the military and throughout life. And as I get a little more seasoned in my years, I still.

I learned, I come back to this lesson, he said to me, son, ’cause I asked him, I said why do people not get what they want in life? Why do people like just not get it? Anything is pretty much achievable. I can’t imagine a male would have a, a baby unless it was a seahorse or something.

But, for most normal things, you can get what you want in life and if you’re willing to, and he said to me, he said, son, here’s the thing.

When you’re going for a goal, the only thing you can do is point your nose in that direction and take one step a day. He said, you just keep pointing your nose in the direction you know you want to go. And I promise you two things, one. It will take you two to three times longer than you figured. And two, it’ll cost you two to three times more than you figured.

But if you keep going, you will get your goal. And he said, oh, I didn’t answer your question. The number one reason people don’t get what they want is they quit. Yep. And I learned in the military you can sustain, all kinds of things for a period of time. I’m freezing cold and, combat, all kinds of things like that.

I learned from my dad’s business, you’re always gonna have ups and downs. When he was I was 16 and he had a heart attack, and my dad was the center of the business, and all of a sudden, I’m 16, I gotta run the business. So created a lot of confusion in my life at that moment.

But, I made it through, I just kept going. And then my dad, when he got better, he came back and the business grew again. And we did that as you’re always gonna run up against things that are always gonna challenge us. And the question is, how clear, and this is the reason I start people with a truthful goal and why they want it.

Because how clear are we? On that truthful goal and what we want, and if we are committed to it, we will get there. In most cases, I’m sure there are people who have not, but I know even in my life that’s been a very helpful thing. It’s not fun when you know there’s an old song, frank Sinatra made it famous. It was called, that’s life, you’re riding high in April and shot down in May. That was one of the lines I found that to be the way it is in business. It’s the way it is in selling. You have a great day and you’re like, oh my gosh, I just sold five outta six, and then all of a sudden, like four days in a row, no one’s buying.

And it can beat up on your mental and emotional. Desire to say, you know what, I’m going to the beach, or I’m gonna go, I’m gonna go to the pub, or I’m gonna, whatever. I’m gonna watch te tell you, but the reality is you just gotta keep focused. And this is the second thing I learned, Chet Holmes, when I was the president sales for Tony Robbins and Chet Holmes.

Chet used to talk about pigheaded discipline and determination, which means you just keep going like Dick. Menino said, and Tony always talked about can I constant and ever, never ending improvement. If we take those two concepts with what Dick Mino said, that’s how you get your goal. And that goes back to what we were talking about, where you gotta innovate and you gotta be fluid and you gotta be able to move through the process because it is not always a linear line.

So much great advice in that there. And it’d be remiss of me not to point out to everyone listening in and we’ll include some details in the show notes. There is a regular newsletter that you produce that people can sign up for and get lots of information on a regular basis about that. So we’ll include the details of.

In the show notes for everyone. Just a final question for this time, because I think there, there has to be more in the future. As I’ve enjoyed this conversation, I hope everyone listening in has as well. What is the big aha moment that people have when they come to work with you that you wish more people knew they would have in advance?

Wow, that’s an awesome question. I’ve never been asked that question. I’ve done hundreds of these and never been asked that question. The big aha moment that I see is, there’s two things. Number one, there’s rapid growth that can happen, and rapid growth, everybody has it on their own level. Anthony, right?

So I. I love working with solo consultants. I, it was one of those things that it was originally it was like they don’t pay enough. But, I’m at a place now where it’s I take clients when I wanna work with them. ’cause I got the other businesses, supporting everything else.

I’ll give you a couple of examples and then, a larger company, I had a gentleman, his that I worked with, his name’s Jonathan. And Jonathan was an interesting man. He’s super smart. He’s a consultant. He was doing 700,000 a year and he went from 700,000 to $945,000 in six weeks in revenue.

But we attacked. Not just the business side of it. And I don’t, when I say attack, I don’t mean blitz Creek. We attacked the things that needed to happen. But what he did was a great job was also attacking the mental side of the business because that’s what was holding him up. So when we can free that up, the metrics and the math and the application of that.

It can work very rapidly. I just was working, this just happened literally last week. Sam, he’s a, also a consultant and Sam we got a 20 x increase in product in production of outbound activity happening for two weeks in his business, and he’s already set. From the previous numbers, $450,000 in new business that’s expected to come through the door from this activity based on our close rate, right?

So you can have massive growth quickly. I have done this with large companies. Intuit, for example, which many people know the QuickBooks company, they do Rocket mortgage and a bunch of other stuff. They went from a $10 million loss to a $7 million gain in under a year, so in, in one division.

So these things can happen quickly. So I think that’s probably, maybe the shock and awe of it, Anthony. But what I really see happen with people is when these things happened. Is there, not only does their business life get better, but their personal life gets really better too because they, the skill sets they’re learning to grow that business and get that rapid growth directly impacts their personal life where they have better family relationships, better friendships more life satisfaction, all kinds of things.

So that’s what I would say.

Fantastic. So much great wisdom and I really appreciate everything that you’ve given us, and I think we’ve just touched the tip of the iceberg as it were in, in what we could discuss and go into. Doug c Brown, thank you so much for being an incredible guest on the Biz Bites for Thought Leaders Program.

Oh, Anthony, thanks for having me. Again, I’m very grateful to be here.

And to everyone listening in, of course, don’t forget that all the details how to get in touch with Doug are going to be included in the show notes. We look forward to your company next time. On the next episode of Biz Bys, four Ford leaders.

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