Success Formula Podcast
By showcasing the journeys and strategies of accomplished professionals, we aim to foster learning, motivation, and empowerment.
Success Formula Podcast
Robots Will Replace 70% of Jobs in 5 Years — How to Prepare Your Kids NOW
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What happens when a computer science guy turns a drunken family painting night into a 150-location franchise empire? Craig Ceccanti joins the Success Formula Podcast to break down exactly how he scaled Pino's Palette from a $1,000 rent storefront in Montrose to a nationwide franchise powerhouse averaging $350,000 in revenue per location.
But the real conversation goes way deeper than business. Craig and Shawn unpack why the traditional education system is failing an entire generation, with 55% of Texas college graduates returning home without jobs. They dive into the terrifying reality that AI and robotics are about to compress a decade of career disruption into just a few years, leaving parents and institutions scrambling to catch up.
Craig reveals the Entrepreneurial Operating System that transformed his chaotic leadership style into a scalable machine, shares why your best salesperson might be destroying your company culture, and explains the concept of entrepreneurship through acquisition that is creating millionaires out of corporate employees who never thought they could own a business.
Whether you are a parent trying to figure out how to prepare your child for a world that does not exist yet, an entrepreneur drowning in tasks you should have delegated years ago, or someone stuck in corporate wondering if there is another path, this episode is your blueprint.
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The difference between people who own their life and the people that rent their life comes down to one thing. And he told me exactly what that was.
SPEAKER_01They'll teach your kid literally how to put a condom on a banana, but they will not tell them that object. My guest today left a stable corporate job. We decided to leave our jobs and focused on this full time.
SPEAKER_00My guest today founded and built a franchise. And then he walked away. And what he did next is unexpected. We discussed how to handle it and $100,000 in debt before they've ever made a single dollar.
SPEAKER_01To come with a warning label you're signing up for this degree will cost you just over four years that will be loans you can't get rid of even if you paralyze it.
SPEAKER_00The traditional system tells you to borrow first and figure it out later. And he said, That's not education, that's a trap. Imagine going to school and your professor has actually built something in the real world. All the businesses I've started run and sold. Crazy concept, right? The dirty secret of higher education is that most people teaching business have never run one.
SPEAKER_01Business tool doesn't teach you this.
SPEAKER_00He walked into that classroom with something that most academics will never have a track record. Thank you for coming on, first of all. And for people that don't know you, just introduce yourself and then maybe tell them where you are today and then a little bit of backstory on how you got there.
SPEAKER_01Okay. So I'm Craig Sakanti. Thanks for having me on. Uh, so what am I doing today? I'm coaching and teaching entrepreneurs of the future. So I'm an adjunct professor of entrepreneurship at Rice University in the business school now. I also coach on my EOS implementer, coaching on an operating system, on getting businesses really from good to great in many ways. So how I got here, you know, I came from Louisiana, computer science background, moved over for work as a technology consultant, and then wanted to get more into business. Went back to business school. Uh Katrina drove me back here again and found Rice University and changed my life, fell in love with Houston, um, did strategy consulting for a little bit, uh, and then started my first business, which was called Pinot's Palette. It's a painting class, and you drank wine there. Pretty simple concept.
SPEAKER_00I remember those when they were getting real hot and taking off. I remember that. Yeah. So this was over.
SPEAKER_01What year was that? Okay. Oh, nine.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's probably about right.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Coming from Louisiana, uh, you kind of mix alcohol with everything. That's how entrepreneurship starts. It's like, hey, how can we have a good time with this? And that's where the idea happened. My brother and I got, um, my mom was like, hey, we're gonna go do a holiday event. And as a family, we're gonna go painting. We're like, oh, we don't want to do this. We're like 24, 25 at the time. And uh, we brought beer with us and got drunk. We're like, we're gonna show mom. And the idea stuck with me. And when I moved here after Katrina in 05, um, I was looking for it. I was thinking of it as a date night. And my roommate met his wife, and she said, This is a girls' night out. So we opened location number one in Montrose in 09, and then just continue to grow and scale it, and then begin to franchise the locations. We grew to it to about 150 locations all over the US.
SPEAKER_00What gave you the idea to franchise it and not just go and try to scale it and open all the locations yourself?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so location number one, I'm a very cautious entrepreneur. Like I'm very calculated, and it's something that uh kind of held me back from getting in it to an earlier to be honest.
SPEAKER_00I'm the opposite.
SPEAKER_01You're the opposite. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I lose a lot of money doing that, but probably wouldn't have done a lot of the things I've done if I would have just like, well, we gotta wait and figure it out.
SPEAKER_01Have you ever taken the BOSE quiz? No. I'll send you the link. It's called the BOSSY DNA. It's a free quiz, it takes five minutes. And it's what kind of entrepreneur are you? We use it at the university, um, and it's a great way to kind of know. And BOSY stands for builder, opportunist, specialist, or inventor. So you're probably more on the opportunist, not knowing more, but take the quiz.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_01I'm on the builder side, which is more of I want to build something slow and steady and be very calculated.
SPEAKER_00I guess I wouldn't have imagined the builder part to be the calculated part. I mean I don't know. I I I think so. Opportunist and um I'm not risky in other areas of my life. I'm only risky in like entrepreneurship and like trying to figure things out. I know that's how I learn. So I waste a lot of money kind of trying to do it on my own a little bit and being hard-headed, and then um I usually end up in the place I was trying to go, but right, it's like a that's entrepreneurship though.
SPEAKER_01I don't know that's a bossy thing. Anyway, we'll we'll send you the link.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no, I'd love to see that.
SPEAKER_01So why do we franchise? As we we grew number one and we got it cash flowing, right? Montrose is just an incredible area to try new things. Yeah, you know, you don't have to sign a tenure lease on retail. You can go so we we were learning retail, we're learning e-commerce.
SPEAKER_00How big was the first spot?
SPEAKER_01Uh 1200 square feet. Okay. It was right uh right near Max's window. Bohem. It's the bar right across the street. So just a room. Um, classic tables you get from Sam's, a teacher in the front. And yeah, buy it, buy a seat, two to three-hour painting class, get you know, the easel, the paint, the canvas were fairly cheap, four to five dollars a piece.
SPEAKER_00Is it only is it only a once a day thing? Or like since it is alcohol, like how do you how do you do the is it like a restaurant where you have seatings and then not when we started.
SPEAKER_01I mean, it grew to something much bigger, but location number one was just because we were of the three of us, Charles Willis and Beth Willis, my co-founders, um, we were all working other jobs. So we just did Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday night.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_01And so we would we would go and be there and help the artist. We put a a list, uh listing out on Craig's list, found some artists, kind of told them what we want it to look like or feel like they probably almost did it for nothing.
SPEAKER_00Oh, they loved it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I get to teach people art. It took them a while though to really understand what we were selling, and it took us a while to understand it too, which was we're not selling them an art class, we're selling them a fun night out. So they're like, man, I'm so frustrated with this class, they're not listening. It's like, yeah, but they're having fun. They're slinging plaint. Like, who cares if they leave with your exact painting? Your job is to have them have fun. Don't worry about if their painting's exactly like yours.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And then they're not doing it to try to get their art be a famous painter one day. They're just coming to have fun. It's fun with their friends.
SPEAKER_01So that's so that continue to grow and and do really well. I mean, we're slow at the beginning. We didn't know how to do marketing, and business school doesn't teach you this in small business. And uh, rice, I've seen rice really evolve tremendously from when I graduated in 08 to where it is now to really fill in some of these gaps because you don't know how to do small business marketing. Zero. You understand the concepts, you understand why why was Apple's earbud white. They we go over that in a case study on that stuff. But you know, how do I get a website set up and what is SEO and pay-per-click? I mean, that stuff's really more tactical and typical. Zero operations, yeah.
SPEAKER_00It's more like what is marketing, the definition of this, the definition of this. And then when you're le seeing it in a textbook, it's still hard to do.
SPEAKER_01But not for small business. So tons of lessons learned on how to sell, how to market. We were we were learning retail and e-commerce, which was two really tough things to learn. So we it finally took off. We were we were put in the listing, it was like tidbits, it was underground, kind of female focused newsletter, and then we were just sold out for weeks in advance. We knew we had something really special. And so, about it about nine months in, Charles and I, who were doing most of the day-to-day, we decided to to leave our jobs and focus on this full time. So we opened a second location in the galleria.
SPEAKER_00Where were you working at at the time?
SPEAKER_01I was doing strategy consulting. So I was uh with a boutique firm that helped um large companies, mostly medical device companies. So I was flying to Jacksonville with Medtronic and Alcon and Fort Worth and Bear Medical. I mean, I was all over the country Monday through Friday night on an airplane, which is which is a blast. I learned so much, um, but I'm glad it was only two years of my life um to do that. So so yeah, we were we were ready to to focus on this full time.
SPEAKER_00How much were you charging when you like the first location trying to figure it out? What did it cost somebody to come for a night? Like 35 bucks.
SPEAKER_0135 for the two hour, 45 for the three hour.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And then in Houston, in Texas.
SPEAKER_00And how many people fit in one class, I guess?
SPEAKER_01In that Montrose location, it was we fit eight to a table, three table, four tables, right? So about thirty, thirty-five people. And we had a little corner table we pull over if someone else's dedicated.
SPEAKER_00Uh a head, maybe.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So for us it was fun. It was fun. We had a thousand dollars rent. It was some side thing. And you know, after four or five weeks, I remember we were we were out at dinner, we're like, hey, we're here making money right now. Uh, which was which was really the goal of like entrepreneurship and all this. We never really knew where it would go, but opening a second location was definitely much bigger, bigger commitments, bigger investment, line of credit. Um, but we were able to open that location. We had a um another kind of viral moment. Uh TLC Little Couple. You ever see that show? I kind of remember like two doctors in town that had a reality show on TLC. Yeah. And they came out and filmed. The original name was Pinot and Picasso. And we got interest all over the country for franchising. Hey, I want to franchise this concept. We told them all no because we weren't ready to do that. But it really put the the idea in our head that this could be a good way to grow. And of course, I did the spreadsheets and discounting cash flows, everything I learned in business school. How do I make this decision financially?
SPEAKER_00On the business model, what was a startup cost? So, I mean, you have tables in a in a box. Like what what was your like for the second location since you're on up here?
SPEAKER_01Seven, we put in seven grand a piece.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01It was all sweat equity. I mean, we painted the walls. Yeah, yeah. I took my stereo system from my house.
SPEAKER_00Which makes it the most enticing, I guess, for a franchise because you know, you know, as I know, when you're looking at other franchise models, I mean, you're talking minimum commitments like 500 to over a million, right? Like for this franchise.
SPEAKER_01We grew into that, right? Because what we did and what what Montrose allows you to do is not what you can do everywhere in the US. Not every city has a Montrose where you can go and talk to the landlord who's, you know, this old lady that's been inherited the house, and we'll be like, Yeah, we'll do no guarantee, a one-year lease with a thousand dollars, and there's old electrical. I mean, that does it's just not scalable. Yeah. I mean, we definitely grew. The other thing that happened when we franchised, I'll give you one reason why we franchised. I was out at a dinner with a friend, and I got a call. One of our artists was locked in the bathroom, and I had to leave dinner, go and kick down the bathroom door to get her out. I was like, I'm not doing this all over the country. And having general managers. And so I was like, from a scaling perspective, having that local person to drive marketing, because we don't have a big marketing budget either, um, was really important. So franchising made a lot of sense because you got that owner uh there at the location.
SPEAKER_00What were the numbers on their, I guess, maybe a second location since you start we're starting to figure it out, and that was probably a more traditional lease and everything else. Like what's the numbers? Like your revenue? Yeah, revenue, and then you know, what was like the average profit, I guess, in the early days per store.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Um, so let me recall franchising high heavily regulated, right? It is. So you have disclosure documents that because I'm gonna try to remember back in the day. I'd say our average unit revenue was about 350,000, 350,000 in revenue.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_01Um, with some of the top end being like a million in revenue. So there it was pretty big, wide range. And well, also what happened was once we left Texas, I think our fourth location was a franchise in Tulsa. And and we were doing BYO in Texas because Texas has very flexible laws there. And when we went out of state, a lot of states don't allow BYO. So we had to open that location with a wine license or a wine license.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So that was our first wine bar location. So we really had to figure out the business model all over again. Obviously, that's a different category of revenue that comes with that. And then we had locations as big as like 3,000 square feet next to a casino in Henderson, Las Vegas, um, that we're doing, you know, it was a much bigger show there. Yeah, so you had margins and the build-outs of that grow. I mean, you can really get into spending three, four, or five hundred thousand dollars, just depending on how big you want to go. Do you want a private party room? Our second location, we did the main room and then uh another private party room. Main room could hold like 40 to 50. The private party room could hold another 30.
SPEAKER_00Bringing rent it out for 15 to 20 women or something like that. Private. Yeah, private parties. Do you remember the average profit, I guess, in the beginning per store whenever you started franchising or there are your stores?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we're probably running. I mean, this this is around a few hundred thousand bucks a store per year. Per year. Yeah. Yeah. And profit. The the real knack and challenge with it was that we learned was one, it's e-commerce. So people shop and buy online before they even know where the place is. And that made it kind of interesting. So we could get rent and put places off the beaten path, but close to the entertainment district without paying really premium rent for that night out type of thing. Um, and then the variable cost was extremely low. On $45, our supplies for paint and canvas is like four bucks.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01The bigger cost was rent and artist. And so that was like filling up classes almost like an airline, was really important. So making sure we created that urgency and focused on how many classes, because you could put 30 classes on the on the calendar and you're paying artists, which we paid them really well to do that stuff. You can spread out your money quick real quick. So being being and training our franchisees and ourselves and giving them all the software to understand their numbers on the gross margin level and then operating pro cost uh was very important to do.
SPEAKER_00What did you do when you opened a location? So, you know, for advertising for the you know, day one when you open, what did all the franchisees do, or what did y'all teach them to do? Was it cost per click, or how how did you first get people to hear about local PR?
SPEAKER_01You know, I'd say the biggest piece of ingredient was picking the franchisee, which is a whole art and science in itself. Personality tests, interview questions, their background, they're going to be the driver of most of it. I mean, almost like every we all know that person in town that plans all the parties. They just they're involved in junior league. And so their word of mouth of what they're doing was the key driver. Yes, we we had market, our own internal marketing teams. We encouraged them to hire local experts of what works in their market. Is it newsletter? Is it radio? Is it pay-per-click or some um combination of that creates a really powerful integrated marketing, like go-to-market launch campaign. And then what do you do residually after that? We had a lot of seasonality to it. Like Mother's Day is huge. I'm sure for us. Valentine's like those are our Super Bowls. And then end-of-year holiday parties was was massive. So helping them make sure they opened at the right time. Like you don't want to open the beginning of the summer. That's people are outside doing doing other stuff. That's low season. So getting open at the right time. There was just there was so much skill. You'd think it's like just put put some paint on the walls, um, paint, you know, get hire a few artists. But there was there was really a lot to it that we became experts on over the time. And that's that's what we were offering was training them on all that stuff.
SPEAKER_00And then finding an artist that probably has a personality because it's uh slash entertainment slash art a little bit, right? Like so they want to go in and wow, I really love that lady, like her man or whoever it was, because they probably engaged with everybody. Sure, that was tough too. I mean, there's a ton of artists, but you know, to have somebody that can like interact and customer service with all the you know, this is important for any business.
SPEAKER_01All the businesses I've started run and sold, and the businesses I coach to, you have to be really intentional about framing up who is the right person for this seat. What does it entail and coming up with a recipe? Hey, yeah, for artists, let's take this example. Um, they have to be decent at art themselves. I mean, they have to shade and blend and they got to do it themselves. Their paintings got to look good. A lot of times they're coming in and they're asked to paint a painting that's not theirs. So they have to be able to look at any kind of rookie level painting because we're not doing advanced level stuff and figure out how to paint it in their head and teach it. We eventually put in instructions. So they got to be an okay painter, they got to be an okay instructor, giving people step-by-step things and breaking down simple to a room that's not only never painted before, but they're drinking alcohol with their friends. So and then lastly, they got to be a good, I mean, they have to be charismatic, they gotta be a tour guide.
SPEAKER_00So I'm saying that feels almost like the hardest part. It's hard. Plenty of artists, but to have somebody again, slash entertainer, slash customer service, slash everything is is that's that's the hard part. Oh, yeah. With any business, right? Like trying to keep your staff that gives the same level of service that you would have originally given at your location or you know, a good location would have given.
SPEAKER_01We put a lot into and any business should. Every role in every company has that formula. Figure it out, you know, at least write down what you think it is and evolve it over time, and then recruit to that and be maniacal about no, that's you're outside this box, you're a yes, you're a no, and then putting them into trial so that you can test them and continue to evaluate are you this person? When we had the galleria location, we had I think it was like 12 artists, and we're like, okay, we got to really get this great. Um, there's six of them are a no-brainer awesome. There's six of them on the bubble. Let's give them a way to figure this out and then let's get everybody to match our sixth crate. And I think you got to do that in every business.
SPEAKER_00You know what has been super interesting? I teach I start because I'm teaching my kid all this stuff about business and money and and life skills and all those things, but it's it's just like he can memorize all the stuff he wants. So I I started taking him into different businesses and we ask questions. Number one for his communication, just so he can be a little bit confident and speak up. So we'll like walk in. The employees don't know, the manager doesn't know. And you know, we filmed a lot of them, but we we walk in and Liam will say, you know, I've I've taught him, but it's like, hey, you know, how much how many people work here? Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, how many wherever we're at, how many hamburgers you sell per day, or whatever it is. Some of them will give us a revenue because they know. And then, you know, some of them won't. But it, you know, it's teaching them along the way. But what I've noticed that is the high performing stores, like the ones that give us the numbers, and they're like, Oh, we do 14,000 a day here. I can go to another location, similar business, or even a similar franchise, but a different location. The employee quality is so much different. And it's not a part of town, it's not a part of, but if the business is doing way higher numbers, I could see the same business and the employees are terrible. Like, don't every possible thing that you can think of about employee, like that's what you have. And then when they give us the numbers, it's the lowest numbers. Yeah, it's like hands down, like night and day, every place we go into. And I even tell Brian's with me too. I'm like, man, like it I I used to have retail stores, so I know what it's like. It's very tough. So I'm not, you know, it's it's hard to scale, like you said, across the nation and keep that same level of service. Um, but but night and day, the employee and the the the front-facing people, um, the numbers are so much better on the places with even good customer service, even like you can tell the managers that like know every piece of the business, and she's like, Oh, it takes me 37 seconds to make a pizza. And it takes me that and and you're like, oh, this this pizza place does 8,000 a day, and this other one does 2,000 a day. Yeah, they know everything. They and you could tell that they're always trying to improve, and like you can tell they take a little bit of pride in it, and they're just really friendly. I mean, night and day difference. And I've just like, I see it now, and let thank God I don't know any retail anymore. Um, you know, easier said than done. Uh, you know, so it it's a hard culture to build.
SPEAKER_01Do you ever met? I want to dig into that. Okay. Because this is one of the biggest patterns I see is organizations are a mirror of their leadership. So I I bet if you saw the people were like, oh, these people are on top of their game, and you talk to the owner, the leader, you would be like, I know why these people are this way. And we eventually at Pinot's Palette we went through this big growth curve. I mean, we we we were opening 30 something locations a year for several years. Like we were growing so fast and we made a mess of it because we had so many, so much tailwinds in general. And people is always the biggest problem. And what where we installed the entrepreneur operating system and read the book Traction, it's a great system, and I think it does a great job of putting together how do I get to write people right seats? We we hear about it, we know it needs to happen. Uh, good to great talks about it. We got to get the right people on the bus. We got to get them in the right seats, but how do you do it in a really formulaic way every time is key. And so how I do it and what we break this down is to write people, which means they live our values, and that's a non-negotiable. We hire, fire, reward, and recognize on values. We determine what they are and we talk about them a lot. That is the core. That's bedrock.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you can teach people to do a lot of things. Um, and if they if they have the right values, right?
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, the actual thing that you're trying to teach them, most of most people can learn and learn pretty quick.
SPEAKER_01Right. So, right people is a must. We're grading on it every quarter. We're having discussions. Hey, here's the bar. If You're below that bar, then we're going to talk about how we get you improved and on board, or we're going to have to figure out how to get you out of the organization. I don't care if you're our rainmaker, you're going to chew away at our values, and that's going to be a big problem. Big deal.
SPEAKER_00That's a lot of people's problem is they may have their number one salesperson. Yes. Is like producing most of revenue, but it's like chaos with all the other salespeople because of this one person. And it's so hard mentally to, or even just from a revenue same, like I'm going to lose all this revenue and like, you know, I'm I'm I'm going to mess up my business. Yeah, it's hard. It's it's it's easier said than done. Way easier. Uh but and it's hard to correct after you like get into a situation like that. But if you're do it like you said, definitely a lot easier. Um, because the all the people around them, when you hire somebody bad, you're gonna already kind of know um or you're gonna know quick, quicker than you would. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And that's that's an issue, right? What you tolerate, you endorse as the organization. And and um, yeah, it feels bad, right? I gotta fire this sale guy. So we call that wrong person, right seat. They're doing a great job. They're killing it on their job. That's right seat. They're in the right seat, but they're the wrong person. So having open and honest conversations, I'd say 60% of the time, my clients and I, we've had that sit-down discussion. Hey, we love you, you're killing your job. Um, but you're not meeting our values. And let me show you where. Here's some examples of where I'm giving you a minus on a three-point scale, like plus, you're doing it most of the time, plus minus, sometimes yes, sometimes no. Minus is most of the time not. I'm giving you a minus in extraordinary customer service. And here's some examples. And when you just have that discussion open and honestly, they go and they show up different.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that is really good. I mean, again, easier said than done. That was probably the biggest mistake in my business career is keeping people too long. And it was probably partly my fault too, maybe not working with them enough or whatever it was. I was trying to do too much myself, but I would always think I could fix somebody. I was like, oh no, I just gotta work with them a little bit more. I always think they would improve and it it never happened. And I tell my wife that I'm like, I never looked back and said, Man, I shouldn't have got rid of that person. Not one time in 26 years. Yeah. And so usually you're like, you feel disrelief, and you're like, and then everything starts working better, and you're like, God, I should have did that like two years ago. That's so bad. And the short-term pain's not as bad as what you thought it was gonna be. It actually starts probably getting better, and you're like, People already step up. No matter how many times I did that, yeah, I just kept making that mistake.
SPEAKER_01That was probably the biggest mistake that we develop we develop these like absolutes. I'm on an EO round table with nine other business owners. So we and we've been together for 14 years. So we you know, we developed these absolutes like hire, hire slow, fire fast. And then we developed, you know, just like what you're saying, when do you know when it's time to fire someone? The first time you think about it. And it's basically just a reminder to we're human, we don't want to do these things. And even just having a coaching conversation is uncomfortable. But you know, having a system in place that really forces you to do that, right people, and then evaluating their seat.
SPEAKER_00Um I didn't have what you had, I didn't have that would have made it a lot simpler. It also makes it simpler for your manager, whoever you're trying to teach. It's like, hey, these five things, if you just go over this, like instead of just saying, hey, you know, um, work with your people, it's like, well, they don't know what to do. I didn't know what to do, even as a business owner. And so having a system like that, I probably would have been much better off. Uh it allows you to have the conversation with everybody. It's like, oh, I'm just gonna go through these four things, minus and plus. I kind of like that because it's it's it's not really like, hey, you suck. You're you're really good at this. And they you're trying to get them as least defensive as possible. So they'll take some criticism, I think. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Well, good people will. And the ones that can't handle it, they need to be probably probably gone anyway. Gone, it's somewhere else. It's where they're happy. And I I know for me at at Pinot's Palette, uh, we got coined mom and dad. Charles was dad, and I was mom because I was the more emotional, soft, soft one. And I really had to learn to be comfortable in that conflict. And what really flipped the switch to me is when I don't do it, I am hurting the organization, which is a lot of people, right? We had 1200 artists at our at our peak, not including everybody else that supported everything. Also, it's holding them back because a lot of times what's happening when people are not showing up with the values or attitude or they're not getting their job done, something's going on in their life. A lot of times, just opening up the conversation, it's like, oh man, I I just had a miscarriage.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Right? Like, okay, thank you for sharing that with me. How can I support you? I'm not worried about firing you over extraordinary customer service because you had a bad quarter because something big's going on in your life. I want to be able to support you through that. So you get in the the point is the conversation to have that exchange and then get realigned. And that's where the magic really, really happens, I think, in a lot of places. So, right people, right seats is, you know, if I clearly define the role, do you and I understand what my expectations is and what I'm gonna hold you accountable to? And do you get it? Do you understand what it is? Does your DNA, your God-given ability, do it? Do you want it? Do you get out of bed excited to do it? And you have the capabilities for it. Like do you have the experience and education? And that helps answer right seats. So that's the formula we use to figure out right people, right seats. You get a whole organization, RPRS, right people, right seats. It's Kumbaya. It's really quite awesome, but it's hard, easier said than none.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, of course. My wife's really good at it. She's really good at expectations and holding people accountable and amazing. And I'm the opposite. You're the opposite. Yeah. She's more of the operator. 100%. She's a master at coming up with systems and operations and whether she knows it or not, like absolute master. But she will also never take too many like steps forward because she's like, Well, I don't really know. It doesn't make any sense. The numbers don't work on that. I was like, But yeah, but you gotta try a little bit. And she's like, No, that doesn't work. That's the math doesn't work. I'm like, okay, but so that's what holds her back. But as far as like her business, man, it is like couldn't be better operated. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, she's amazing.
SPEAKER_01Those dynamics are important. And in my world, that's called visionary, which is I'm more of that, yeah. And an integrator, which is her. I have to have an operator or integrator.
SPEAKER_00I have to in in anything that I'm doing.
SPEAKER_01I I can't but that's it, it needs for businesses to be great, they have to have the gas pedal and the brake. Yeah. Right? Someone that is thinking long-term, big picture, they tend to visionaries tend to not like conflict and not get below 30,000 square feet. That was definitely me. Visionary and integrator spot can get can work, but can be a lot of chaos. So, you know, having an integrator and a visionary paired up where integrators worried about trains on time, visionary is worried about big picture, and they become kind of dynamic duo, like that's that's where it gets awesome. It's just rocket fuel.
SPEAKER_00I tell my wife that all the time.
SPEAKER_01They wrote a book on it. It's called Rocket Fuel.
SPEAKER_00She uh, I'm gonna tell her that. She um she hates how I operate. She's like thinks she's like, I don't even know how you get anything done. This is like this is crazy. I don't even know how you do anything. I'm like, it all works out in the end. Yeah, like it always does. Like I can like struggle my way through it. She's yeah, I in a business I could see that too. But I know now I've been really successful in the last five, seven years because of that. Like I finally didn't try to do everything myself. I finally we have great executives, we have good people, but I know now, like, if I'm gonna start something, like I have to have an incredibly good operations person, and then I can drive everything else.
SPEAKER_01What was the tipping point? Like, what made you be I gotta change the way that this is happening?
SPEAKER_00We sold one of our companies, and it for the longest time. My one of my first business partners when I that I grew up doing, he's a very hands-on type of person. He wouldn't let me hire anybody, so it kind of came like he's oh no, this you know, we can do everything ourselves. They don't, they're stupid, they can't figure it out. So it's very it kind of came from that a little bit of me operating that way for so long that I continue to do it. I know it was a wrong thing to do, but even after you know, me and him end up parting ways, I still kind of operated that way for a while. And when we sold that business and I bought into another business that was bigger, was probably the biggest tipping point. And then, you know, uh it again when we've me and my partner were running that business. At first we didn't have good people, and we're it was just chaos because it was so big, it was so how big?
SPEAKER_01How many like employee count?
SPEAKER_00Uh at the time it was about 250. Oh, yeah, okay. And but we were still in the weeds big time. Okay. And it was hard because it we had a lot of field operations and oil and gas. Yeah. And but man, when we found the right key people in in certain areas, man, it really changed. And I'm like, oh my god, there's a better way. I was like, oh my like 20 years of doing it the wrong way, there's a better way. And then when we started doing that, now the stuff I invest in, or I don't invest in stuff that I'm not a part of in some way, shape, or form, board advisor, you know, some type of advisor connected to it, know the person. And if I hire, if somebody's running that and I feel confident in them, and I'm just advising along the way, or you know, money, um, you know, uh help, everything has worked out really well. And me trying to do everything, those days are gone a hundred percent. Uh, but I think the b bigger business made me realize how much more important it was. Mine was never that big. I probably had at my max like 25 people, you know, maybe it was because it was a big internet company. I mean, it there might have been a little bit more, maybe it was around 40, but um, a lot of it was warehouse, so it wasn't it, it it technically wasn't like you know, you had one warehouse manager. I just didn't have a lot of people over a bunch of different operations. So I was still able to kind of keep my finger, I thought, keep my finger on everything.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you can get away with a lot, you know, in that growth of small, like, hey, we're still at 25 people, you can get away with a lot and still be pretty darn effective, especially in in, you know, America has fair for some in some industries a fairly low bar bear bar standard of operations. But as you get bigger and you're trying to scale, you you can't get away with that anymore. Like you have to professionalize and mature. You got to pay down cultural debt and business and management debt to be able to scale. You just hit a ceiling somewhere.
SPEAKER_00Revenue will slow down or it was the revenue, it was my life. It was stress. Like, I'm like doing everything. And then, of course, doing that. I'm never hiring like amazing people at that, you know, one role that can take me to the next level that knows 10 times more than I do. And so that's another thing we do. Not only do we have a master operator, we're like pulling somebody, whether it's a different industry or something that has like huge experience, can teach me, you know, 90% more than I could just.
SPEAKER_01Why didn't you?
SPEAKER_00Because the the cost, the investment. At the time it was a a combination of a couple things. Yeah. It was cost. We did have a low margin business, probably like leaned on it a little bit more. It was high volume and low margin. So, you know, again, cost uh was part of it. Um, but we could have gained I mean I could have gotten that back by hiring the right people and then getting more revenue. So I think a bunch of different reasons like kept me held back. That was the biggest mistake I made. People ask me that every once and I was like, probably not hiring the right people, trying to do too much myself for way too long. Yeah. So definitely like hands down held me back the longest. Yeah. And the most stress in life, I guess. I didn't realize, I thought it was just all normal, but after you get out of it, you're like, oh my god. Every entrepreneur makes that mistake.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So hard. You become a bottleneck. You don't even realize it. And you don't realize I this happened to us at Pinot's Pilot. I was everywhere, man. I was in my softback, we were building our own technology. I was the market, I was teaching marketing for small businesses at Rice. Um so I'm running marketing, I'm trying to be the visionary, I'm trying to do the I'm the head of the CFO. And I'm like, we got to that tipping point. And then we had the twins around this time. I luckily I didn't have kids, so I you know, I mean it was like just too much and really forced me to step back and say, how do we do this differently? And as I stepped out and we put in the entrepreneur operating system, then it was like it really forced us to have clear boxes. So I'm not running around creating chaos with everybody and dropping new projects on their desk every third day. It's what we do as visionaries in that in that sense. And um, it really just and then I then I saw my team step up because that created this vacuum. Yep. And then they stepped up, and all of a sudden I'm watching them present to prospective franchisees on our technology or our innovation program. And I'm like, they did a better job than I did. And I'm like, okay, I gotta just let go. We call it letting go of the vine. There there's a point where it has to happen.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that is the toughest part, especially when you start something. A little bit easier when you buy into something. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01It's like letting your baby go off to go off to anywhere, summer camp or school, whatever that is. It's it's hard to let go.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, man, that was uh, you know, I I do know. I mean, my wife still does it. I'm like, hey, you gotta step back. And she's still really in the weeds. Um but she's getting better for sure. Hey everyone, real quick, I just want to let you know this podcast is 100% independent. No ads, no sponsors, just real. If you're finding value in whatever we're doing here, the biggest help that you can give us is hitting subscribe and sharing this with someone who you think needs to hear it or someone that it will provide value to. That's how we continue to grow. And if you did that, I would really appreciate it. Back to the franchise thing. What do you think uh matters the most when somebody's, I guess, evaluating a franchise? Because I I get DMs sometimes too. Hey, you know, you think I should start my own business or buy into a franchise? Yeah. What should somebody look for? Like, what's what's the I guess green flags and and red flags when somebody's like evaluating a different opportunity to you know have a franchise where they don't have to worry about it. It's just a system. Yeah, it's probably a whole masterclass.
SPEAKER_01I'll try to think of some few pieces. High level, high level, like um talk to franchisees that they don't introduce you to. Every disclosure document on the back, we're hacking are forced to list every franchise and their contact info. You want to be because this is a relationship and partnership. If it's not feeling like one through the vetting process, then that's probably a big red flag. If it's not feeling like a partnership, then that's a that's an issue. At some point, they are going to introduce you to franchisees, and you want to respect that. You don't want to just start calling their franchisees because they're gonna hear about it and they're gonna say, oh, this person doesn't know how to follow process. So they're evaluating fit. When they do open that door, um talk to some other franchisees, ask them questions. These are the people that are allowed to, because we're restricted in the franchise at HQ. We can only talk about the things in the FDD. It's all that we can talk about by law. We can't say what else people earn or the profits and that only things we disclose we can talk about. So asking other franchisees, not the ones that they introduce you to, would you do it again? What are your profits? Could you share? I'm thinking about making this investment.
SPEAKER_00Obviously, yeah, or how fast did you get your money back after, you know, if whatever the money you invested was.
SPEAKER_01Now, some will share, some won't, but that's gonna be one way to find the source of truth to really vet out. I like questions, you know. I I preach we have a program at university too called The Life of Meeting. Ask them, what is your day like? What is your week like? Because it's not just will I make money? Yeah, we got to check that box too, but am I gonna enjoy doing this for 10 years? A lot of these contracts are 10-year contracts. What do you do every day? A lot of times you won't find that in the fine print of the contract of what is your role? Is it fairly hands-off? How many vacations did you take last year? These are important questions to ask on what your life is about to be like. You should definitely think about if I start this my own, which is easy to fall into that trap, and not really understand the cost of setting a website and the power of a brand that you can get from franchising, but it's something you have to consider as well. Am I going to be paying royalties and not really get the support? So, understanding the support system, of course, looking and understanding that. I would anybody that's not really good at legal, have an attorney look through this. Uh, attorneys kill a lot of franchise deals. Get someone that understands FDDs, uh franchise disclosure documents. And because they'll they'll come and redline a thousand things in it. And it's like, okay, that's just not, it's they're not gonna change it. But understanding what you're agreeing to is very important.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I I I've kind of given that advice to people that because that was again, I've I've never owned a franchise, but when I do get those DMs and stuff, or people reach out to me, I'm like, just go talk to the other people that are operating. Like, that's it. And as an entrepreneur, if it went okay or if it went amazing or if it went bad, you're gonna tell that person that's about to do what you did, probably like really close to the truth. It's like, you know what, it took me a lot longer to get my money back than I thought. Like, they're gonna give you like I think almost everything that you need just by doing that. No, they want to help the person that's coming in, or they've like, you know what, I got my money back faster than I thought I was going to. I, you know, I thought I was gonna have to work more. We found a good manager. Like, I they'll give you their honest feedback. And so that's that's kind of the first thing I tell them because again, I've I've never bought a franchise, but me, that's what I would do, I think, if I went to go evaluate one. Again, numbers are are are great, but me owning businesses everywhere in retail and some stores perform, some stores don't. Like it it like could be location, could be your employees, it could be a lot of things. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um just know that like everything's a data point. Cause in any group, you get a thousand people together, right? Some percent are gonna be killers, of course. And some percent are gonna be in the middle, and some percent are gonna just they're gonna suck at anything they do. Yes. And you might end up talking to that person that's like, it's been a terrible experience. And just know that they might be in that quadrant. And so that's why asking those questions, like, oh yeah, revenue is terrible. It's not what they said. Okay, what are you doing for marketing? You gotta ask the follow-up questions. What are you doing to revenue? Are you following their standard plan? And you're gonna dig deeper and find out if they're really executing. Are they are they failing because this concept doesn't work? Are they failing because they put it in a market that shouldn't have gone in? Are they failing because they're not following the program? So asking and really thinking about the questions to get to the bottom of that is what's most important. Yeah, that's good advice. And the other part is, you know, whether you're doing a franchise or any concept, you really need to dig in and understand who you are. Am I good for this? Do I have the background and the DNA to do this thing? If I'm starting a at-home services company, like Dwyer Group has a million brands, like uh your windshield to your carpet to everything. Um, you know, am I gonna be good at that? What's in my day-to-day? Am I gonna be door knocking? Do I love to do it? Am I good at doing it? Or am I gonna be excited about it for three months and then I'm never gonna leave my couch because that's not who I am as a person? You cannot fool yourself. You can learn some things. And if it's important enough and everything's riding on the line, maybe you can do it, but you're gonna eventually get back to your natural state. So, what's my plan to work around that? My weaknesses is really important. Um, do I have the capital? People get into businesses in general, franchising too, and they don't go in with enough capital. And that's one of your one jobs, not run out of money before you get up the cliff. And so, really taking a hard look at do I have the team in place? Do I have the capabilities and experience to do this well? Do I have the money to get up the hill and not get two years in and have to close? I'm like, I could be four weeks away from this huge breakthrough on my market and profitability and break-even, and now I got to close it. Um, so yeah, I think taking a really hard look, tons of material outlined, like, how do I assess whether I'm ready to make this and is this the right thing for me?
SPEAKER_00We were at a kind of this entrepreneur meetup that um my car club has. It's it's all business owners and stuff, but one guy there wasn't. He'd came, he had come with somebody else, and the owner there, the the guy that runs the car club is like, hey Sean, this guy has some questions about entrepreneurship and and he wanted he worked in cybersecurity and wanted to leave, so really bad. He didn't, you know, but still love the field. He just like, man, I I know I've been wanting to do something on my own forever. And so I'm after talking to him a little bit, and he's like, Well, yeah, I just don't really know how to sell a job. And but I could tell he was like just didn't want to do the sales side, but he knew everything else about operations, and I was like, I said, I'll tell you the truth, like what'll get you there the fastest, and probably like right now you haven't pulled the trigger because you're nervous and you're scared, and you're I was like, if you partner with a sales guy from that industry, I was like, you'll probably kill it. I was like, you just need to find somebody else that is kind of sick of the corporate world, there's a ton of them, probably not happy. It could just be that organization, but like, oh, I'd love to leave and go do something on my own. And y'all kind of do it on the side for a bit. But I was like, if you have that guy, like it, I promise you you're gonna be way more successful and you'll get there a lot faster. And you haven't started because this is the part that scares you the most. And I was like, you might never start just because of this one thing. I was like, so just go start talking to people in your industry. You know, everyone, like, do you're gonna find a guy that can go sell? And that's what that was my thing. Like, stick to your strengths, especially when you're starting. I mean, again, you can get good at stuff if you do it for a long period of time. But if he's at his job trying to sell on the side, like he he's just he's not gonna get enough reps in. And that that was kind of my advice like to go partner with somebody that like is your opposite, or kind of like we talked. Talked about earlier the visionary and the uh what was it? What was it called? Dark at the end of the year integrator.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah, we gotta know our strengths and weaknesses. I mean, that's like half of it. And and whether it's people growing in corporate, um, which is a great path too, man. You can make a lot of money and stack a stash away a lot of money, you can invest in real estate and have a job and medical and all that stuff. I see a big barrier of just intellectual um understanding. Like what's their what's their IQ and then what's their EQ? How emotionally self-aware are they? That's the big barrier to people getting higher in anything, including business. I coach a lot of executives. It's what I do now full-time. And immediately when I'm seeing them, I'm I'm understanding why their business is stuck and where it is. And half the time it's because we just have to unlock and be self-aware of where we are, where our strengths are, where our weaknesses, to be able to step out of our body and kind of look at the whole picture of everything with us being one asset in this organization to figure out what to do with it. And you got to understand where you're strong and weak. And yes, you can force through it, especially in the beginning, to get something going. Charles and I did that. We're not salespeople, but we did things that fit for us and we were hungry and we burned the boats at one at some point, which is really important to do as well. But understanding how you surround yourself and compliment yourself to to grow the team is is critical.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think so. And it goes back to the part where I got stuck for so long was part of that. It's like, oh, I can do everything. Like, no, I wasn't really good at a lot of the things. And nor did I want to do them and enjoy to do them. I think when business owners get when they're like, Oh, I'm just so burned out, I think you're what I've found just by again talking to entrepreneurs and other people and my wife, and you it when you end up doing a lot of stuff that you don't like to do, like you love. I'll use my wife as an example. I she loves the makeup side, she loves you know, some of the operation side, but when she's like managing people on a day-to-day basis, like it's it, she she hates it. And that's when she gets burned out. She'll come home and she's like, I'm selling this thing, uh like I can't deal. I was like, nothing's changed, like it's always gonna be like this. Everything else is perfect, right? But that's what burns her out. And so, you know, of course, easier said than done, but she needs somebody that really like takes ownership of that, that she feels confident in. And she loves her job again. And I mean, she still loves it, but you know what I'm saying. Like when you start just burning out, it's because you're doing a lot of things that you do not like to do, whether it's like, hey, I love the visionary stuff, but I don't like the operations. I I like and then you end up hating your business, which it's not the business, because you started and you probably loved a bunch of stuff about it, but you don't love accounting and you don't love doing the books and you don't do this. So I think the burnout comes from not playing off your strengths and not uh knowing what you actually like to do on a day-to-day basis because it's both some stuff you're good at, but you actually like to do it too. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01You're hitting on a I have a tool I use called delegate and elevate. Okay. And there's four quadrants to it. And the top part is stuff you love to do and you're great at, stuff you like to do and you're good at. That's the top two quadrants. The bottom are stuff you hate to do and are not good at, stuff you're good at and don't like to do. So the exercise is to sit down in a week, take the whole week, even the embarrassing stuff, like running the check to the bank account. Write down everything you're doing, every major activity you're writing it and putting it in the quadrants. And then, you know, a lot of times I'm also writing, like, hey, write down the dollars per hour it would take to pay someone to do it. If it's $20 an hour below for an executive, they should be outsourcing that immediately. So the idea is to put it all down and see it on paper. And then elevate to the top part. So you're working on the stuff that your unique abilities are. Like, what do you love to do and are great at? And that's where your time, especially as a founder, needs to be. And everything else, you need to start to think about the structure of the organization so you get this into other people's quadrants that they love to do. Someone loves to do accounting. Oh, I know. Right? And so get that stuff out of your quadrant and into theirs. That way everybody's working in the area that is awesome, right? It's like stuff they love to do and are great at.
SPEAKER_00Which also makes the work environment a lot better if you actually have people in the right role. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yes. So it's a simple exercise, man. Just go take stock of what you're doing every day because you don't realize it until it's like just this tipping points hit. You're like, man, I hate what I'm doing. It's like, okay.
SPEAKER_00Do you or do you hate some of the stuff that you're doing all day? Yeah. So you just get rid of it. Yeah, that's a good, that's a good way to look at it. I never like tried to actually put it on paper that way. It was just 20 years of learning.
SPEAKER_01We did it. My wife and I did it at home recently, just for like home stuff. Oh, yeah, okay. You know, or like, and hey, what what can we outsource here? There's a lot of stuff we can outsource. Let's start outsourcing. I did that for everything in my life.
SPEAKER_00I like I'm really good at that now. I'm like, you know what? Okay, I don't like doing it. If we have a person that can do it, I'm gonna do that. And then I I can go make more money doing something else. So it's like you're like you said, you put it in this box, you're like, well, I did the math. It's only like $300 a month to do that. And it's like, I can go make $300 a month. Right. And so I did that with everything. And so everything is like super efficient. And then now too, because I also wanted to spend more time with our kids, but actually teaching them and not doing a bunch of errands and like busy stuff. And so it allows me to like, okay, number one, I can either work and make more money or I can spend more like real time, like, you know, trying to teach them, trying to guide them, uh, or just enjoying the time with them. And so I've like tried to I've tried to done that with everything, or done that with everything in my home life, or you know, outside of I guess work, I've done it. I've I've done it with everything at this point. I've got work to do there.
SPEAKER_01I'll probably be calling you for some vendors.
SPEAKER_00I'm good. I can help you out. I got everybody. All right. I'm gonna hit you up for that for sure. Uh, but it's it's just like you think it would at work. It's the same way you're like, man, I I like I was spending all this time doing this stuff. Mine also came out of like it's hard, you know, doing all this stuff at work all day and then coming home, and you're like, it's a whole nother work. If if you're doing like another job when you come home, and again, that goes to the burnout stuff. I was like, I want to enjoy my time with the kids, not not like it. It's out of control. I know.
SPEAKER_01This is this was my um my big goal, one of my big goals for the year, because I do it great at work, especially the new business I've started.
SPEAKER_00But yeah, you got all the systems, man. You need to put that in control.
SPEAKER_01I know. I'm like, we're starting to do at-home systems, right? Because it's like, man, at home, I'm cleaning the pool. This is a pain in the butt. Kids want to go swimming, but I haven't cleaned it in three weeks. It's like, why am I doing this? This this is this is silly.
SPEAKER_00Luckily, I think it happened a lot faster for me at home because my wife's also entrepreneur. So it like, she's like, Oh yeah, this is great. Instead of, you know, pushback or or or something, maybe her not seeing like the big picture. I have a story that one of our we we sold a company, but um we you know founded and scaled a company really quickly, and we brought on a guy that we gave he earned 10% over, you know, he came from a corporate world, amazing guy, uh, really good at sales, also engineer, which is even crazier combination. But he was like he was a guy that did everything himself, right? And so when the business started doing really good and he's making, you know, a lot of money each year, like way more than enough. Um, he's like he would tell me every once in a while, and I'm like, hey, what are you doing? He called me, Oh yeah, I'm digging this ditch in my yard. The the drain guy tried to charge me $2,700, but he has like an acre. I'm like, hold on, hold on. He's like, How I don't I don't think you understand what or like you're putting into perspective. He was he was like, Yeah, but it's he's trying to overcharge me. I was like, How like they gotta have like five guys out there for like three days, it's gonna take you like a week. Yeah, but I just I want it right. And I was like, it doesn't make any mathematical sense because uh like we do the math, and he's like, Oh yeah, I guess I see what you're saying. I was like, even if you didn't want to use the time to go make more money and do a couple sales calls and just like sell a unit, and you want to just spend it with your family, it's it's that's worth it. That like that alone is worth it. And so he was still doing a lot of stuff like that. And again, it goes back to me. I was making the same, I did it for 20 years, coming home, trying to do everything. And once you put it, like you said, on on paper. Um, and I had gotten to the point where I had already made all those mistakes. I'm like, don't do that, man. I was like, number one, yeah, you may like doing it for a little while, but you're gonna burn yourself out, and then you're not spending time with your family, or you're not making sales or whatever it is that could be benefiting your life as opposed to like digging ditches and stuff that is like I mean, might have saved a thousand dollars. I I I don't even know. Uh he might have saved a thousand bucks.
SPEAKER_01We we make this, I mean, we're constantly making it and reminding ourselves is we're an asset to the business, but we don't think of ourselves as that way, right? We really don't step outside of our body and say, okay, Sean is our head of sales or whoever this guy is. Should we have Sean digging ditches or making three more phone calls? We really don't step outside of our own body and think of ourselves as an asset. How do we maximize the return and investment and also the care to make sure because this is a marathon, like make sure they're not burning out, they're getting time for these other things, they're having time to exercise, which I'm terrible at. But all these things have to happen to be a high performing leader of any organization. So, but we just don't care for ourselves. In many cases, we we make silly mistakes by overworking ourselves, and we don't have time for the kids, and we don't have time for all these things, but we don't see ourselves that way is a one of the most important assets of the of the business.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you end up running checks to the bank all the time. Like right, we're running checks to the bank. Yeah, it's it's it's like you're like, what am I doing? If you really step back and think about it, it's like I could be doing so much more for the company. And the the reason, like you said, it's like the the asset part of it's like, what are the five things that I can do for the company that are gonna actually make a difference, right?
SPEAKER_01So probably not running checks to the bank, or taking care of yourself, or just spending time to think. We call it a clarity break, but you know, to be strategic in an organization, we get so into the weeds all the time that we don't take time to just take a walk and leave the phone at home, take a walk, think what's going on in this business. What are the big pieces I'm missing?
SPEAKER_00That's the exercise time for me. So, like in the mornings before, because that's why I started waking up.
SPEAKER_01What time do you start?
SPEAKER_00I wake up early. How many get on the Sean program? I start at six. Okay. And I end at seven for my workout. It is pretty much an hour every day. But um, some stuff I'm not, I'm not like working out heavy every single day a week. Like some of the recovery and stretching and other stuff. But I have all my good ideas before 11 a.m. every single day. There's like there, I think almost every like major decision, everything that I've can think of, it's like that's where all my ideas come. And then before the chaos starts, if you are still running a business, before like 8 a.m. or 7 30, nobody really calls. Before like the fires start happening, and you're like you don't even think about stuff. Like that's where I kind of have my own, my alone time. I'm not the kids aren't there. Uh you know, I hired a trainer just because I don't, if I'm by myself, I'll like something will happen. I'll pick up my phone. I'm like, oh, this I'll think of something. Oh, this guy didn't I forgot to text him this. Did it come to you or do you go to a a gym? I go to I well sh technically she comes to us, but it's my business partner's house. Got it. Okay. So we're building a uh like a a personal gym just for us and our employees. Yeah. So across from our corporate office. So but again, like if I didn't have her, if I didn't do that, if you're an entrepreneur, that account something happened, you'll pick well. No, you'll pick up the phone, you'll see it over there. Like, I do it on Saturday sometimes because I'll just kind of do whatever on Saturdays. I'll go to the gym, but I'm like, oh yeah, I forgot to do this with this person. Oh, I forgot to do this with this person. And um, you'll just like again, that time then goes away because I'm like halfway doing it, halfway on my phone, calling somebody in the middle or like answering my phone because somebody called me. And so that was my thinking time. It has been for the last like 10 years for sure. But before I wasn't as like I guess regimented or or strict, but that that's like a huge like especially with the kids. Like I'm I'm leaving right, I'm leaving before they get up. Um, I probably leave at 5 30 most of the time, and then I'm coming back and I get this as soon as I get home, you know, you're interacting with them, they're eating breakfast or whatever. And again, you're not like thinking about the business when you're hanging out with them most of the time. So that that's my that's my time. And then when they and then when I'm I'm I'm even all anything before 11 or 12, that's like usually like I I feel like at my at my best, my best ideas. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I'm a morning creative. Yeah, me too. Like I wake up and it just comes to me, you gotta write it down quick or forget it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And then I guess the loan being the loan with the exercise and not having my phone along with already being like thinking about everything in the morning, then it all starts like coming together. I thought a bunch of stuff this morning. I really did. I was on the way home. I was like, oh I got like perfect idea, perfect vision for this. Um, so it's helped me a lot for sure. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I would say hire a trainer, number one, for accountability. Number two, you won't have your phone in your hand going through it. That that's the biggest thing for, especially for entrepreneur. I just know how it goes, or family or whatever. It's like it'd be the hour or so, or that you don't like you're not engaged really. You're not like, yeah, have your phone and something happens and you need to attend to it right away.
SPEAKER_01Accountability. It's so important. We always know what to do. We just need sometimes it's just anybody, you know, especially as solo entrepreneurs, right? With bigger teams, it's easier. You got a cadence. A lot of times you got a meeting cadence. There's someone there, you know, there's reports or a dashboard to say whether something's happening or going wrong. When you're getting off the blocks, whether it's a co-founder or not, being really diligent about having a good cadence and a way to hold each other accountable to, hey, I'm gonna get this stuff done over the next 90 days and have someone check in. The the most recent business I'm starting now, I I literally meet with my wife, my wife, and I'm like, I'm she doesn't know what the scorecard numbers are a lot of times. They're just, hey, what do what do I need to get done? I need to have 15 trust building conversations a week. That's my scorecard, one of my items. And so I write it in and I have to tell it to her. So just having someone to listen. So I mean Man, you're a lot more I'm an integrator.
SPEAKER_00Man, you have all these systems, like you're good.
SPEAKER_01This is the this is entrepreneurial operating. So this is all from the system that's like, you know, how do you run a business?
SPEAKER_00I've heard I've I've heard a lot of people. I have some a couple friends that are like that use that for I mean, a friend that's really into it, it was a large staffing company. Like um, a handful of people I know use that. I I never I never really took the time to research it, like really dive in and figure it out. But I have a bunch of people that that are friends of mine that actually use it. I've heard them say it before. I've seen a lot of people with a ton of success.
SPEAKER_01Obviously, I'm an evangelist for it so much. I've become a franchisee, right? I'm on the other side. I've I put it into five businesses with a bunch of exits, and also I've seen my friends use it with a lot of success.
SPEAKER_00So, you know, that's when you implement it, how does that work? Is it just licensing like the program?
SPEAKER_01It's not a software tool.
SPEAKER_00I think it sounds like I know I know that, but like licensing, I guess, like the concept and the system and yeah.
SPEAKER_01So here's how much it costs $16 on Amazon. Okay. You can get the book traction, you can read it and you can implement it. It tells you every step of the way on the code.
SPEAKER_00But when you say franchisee, like how how are they just charging for you teaching the system kind of thing?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So a lot of people, I mean, just like you want to get better at your golf game, like I'll go read a book and get better. It's not gonna sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I about half my clients are people that have tried to self-implement. It's a simple system, but not easy to do in a lot of ways. I talked you through right people right seats. Yeah. So having a coach and someone accountable to help hold you accountable to the system is what an EOS implementer is, right? We help coach, we help facilitate um and we help hold them accountable and teach them the system. So if you, you know, some people enter engage with an implementer like I did. I hired the person that should give me the book. She, you know, a good um Rice MBA friend of mine gave me the book and I showed it to my co-founder. I was like, we have to have this. We hired her as an implementer. Our job is to work with them over two years, typically 10 full-day sessions is what it takes. Okay. And to get them to master the system and then work ourselves out of a job, have them graduate. They've mastered the system and they they you know reap all the rewards from putting the system in place.
SPEAKER_00Hey everyone, real quick, I just want to let you know this podcast is 100% independent. No ads, no sponsors, just real. If you're finding value in whatever we're doing here, the biggest help that you can give us is hitting subscribe and sharing this with someone who you think needs to hear it or someone that it will provide value to. That's how we continue to grow. And if you did that, I would really appreciate it. Why do you think I know we were talking about earlier, why do you think that colleges don't teach you more operations about anything? It's more of the it like you said, you said y'all made a lot of progress since you know you went to school and you know, now what y'all teach, like there's a big difference. But they still don't teach like all the like that. Like something like that. It's like you would you would think the top if you're gonna go into business, like you would have all these like frameworks and all this stuff that you could implement and like actually like hands-on stuff that you can do instead of like theory stuff.
SPEAKER_01So I can speak to my experience, you know, we're talking about graduate school, yeah. Like we can get into a big debate on like the value of undergraduate school. A lot of, you know, there's loans for it out the wazoo, which makes it corrupt and kind of weird. And people, I have a lot of strong feelings that it's become fairly predatory on these young kids, you know, because it should come with a warning label. I'm just gonna talk about undergrad. It should come with a warning label. You're signing up for this degree, it will cost you this over four years. That will be loans you can't get rid of, even if you're paralyzed.
SPEAKER_00Good point.
SPEAKER_01And here's the average salary coming out. Here's the computation of how long you will have to work in this thing to pay this off, not do anything else, even buy a car. It should come with that warning label. They should give you that math and say, Are you sure you want to do this? Data. They're not doing it. And they know it. They know the data of what it means to graduate in history from a four-year degree. Yeah, they know this. That should they should give that to you.
SPEAKER_00And like you said, it was um, what was the return home without a job rate? Like 55%. In Texas is one of the better states. Yeah, so we're on the good end of it, and it's still 55% of people going, well, you know, I got a degree, I don't know what to do.
SPEAKER_01She give the kid. I mean, a lot of these 17-year-olds, especially if there's a loan involved. Now, if the parents are paying for it, my parents paid for my school, I had some scholarships. Parents are paid for it, maybe that can be a different decision. But if someone's taking out loans, hundred plus thousand dollars of loans for undergraduate, and they know that that will never be, you can never work that out. And they're like, okay, just give them the data so they can make an educated decision and they'll make their decision.
SPEAKER_00I think a lot of people think that they're told that call, you know, college is gonna kind of where they're gonna figure it out and it's gonna solve all their problems. I think the problem too is the education before they get to college. And this, this is why I'm working on this stuff with my son, is like if they had more leading up to it, they would probably have a better idea of what they wanted to do in life and have done more things. And so I think that's a little bit that's part of the problem for sure, too, is like the education leading up when they're 18. And then when you're 18, you're going, okay, I I don't know anything. You're like starting over from zero, right? And so I think that's part of it. I do uh a hundred percent on the yeah, on the data. Hey, here's the data, almost like a franchise disclosure. Yeah, it's like, by the way, here's the people that graduate. Yeah, make the schools required to close the schools. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But I agree with you that it should start sooner. Um, one of my uh mentors, Dr. Napier from Rice Business School, uh, he always told this story and he passed away from dementia. Um, just changed my life in massive ways. I mean, I I got so lucky, right? Katrina Happen came to Rice, um, met this gentleman. I'm I'm an IT guy. I'm like, I'm gonna be an IT director. I would have been there forever, like hating my life, live working in that quadrant of stuff I don't like to do, but I'm good at. That's where most people's careers go to die. And, you know, he told this story in the fable about the kid on the beach. Uh, you know, a storm came in and all the starfish. Have you heard the starfish story? Um storm comes in, all the starfish are up on the beach. So a kid's walking along, throwing the starfish back in the ocean to save them. And an old guy is like, What are you doing? That there's thousands of starfish on this beach. He's like, This is not gonna matter. And he throws another one and it says, matter to that one. So he would tell this story, and I think he was at the university to help save people from working in that quadrant of stuff I I'm good at, but you know, I don't love to do it. And so he really turned me on to to entrepreneurship in a really big way. One of the things he made us do, which should be happening in high school, not in graduate school, is called he called it the life of meaning. And he forced us, as part of the project, go pick three tracks you think you're interested in, interview three people in each track, three years out, five years out, ten years out, and you're gonna ask them this series of questions. And it was, you know, a document, things you want to know. What's your day to day like? This is a lot of the questions I said, like you should ask a franchisee. Would you do it again if you had to? What advice would you give me? And you get a real good taste of what it is in these tracks. That should be happening in high school.
SPEAKER_00That's a good idea.
SPEAKER_01You should not be getting into college to say, Yeah, I want to go into business, but I'm not sure what. And I've signed. Up for $100,000 of loans, but I don't even know what I like to do yet, or what it I want to be an attorney, but I've never sat down with an attorney and asked them what they do every day. What do they hate about their job? What do they love about their job? So that should be happening in high school. What do you think? 100%. I actually Or even going to do some of it.
SPEAKER_00Like that's that that that so that was my advice. So now that I'm on social media, I get all these questions. Parents, young kids. And that's you know, I like the idea of just going to talk to somebody because I I I the advice I would give is like, hey, if you ever if you're really interested in real estate or attorney or whatever it is, like make sure to just go work for somebody for a little while. I was like, it's gonna do two things. One, it might teach you that like I really don't like doing any of this. Or number two, you're gonna see a lot of opportunity, but like, you know what? I see all the things they're doing wrong with their customers, and I could do it better. It's like you, it might give you an opportunity to like you could open up your own thing.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I also mentioned, hey, don't go work for you know some huge corporation. Try to get into it where you're close to the top people, close to the owner, just something that you can like where you're really involved and you can learn more of the day-to-day instead of just like this low, low level job. It's more like you're gonna you're gonna pick up on all this stuff. And so I I try to tell people that I'm like, hey, if you really want to do something, you know, you think you want to do it for like your sort of life and you're 18, go work for somebody, but uh, but a small somebody, right? Like somebody that's a little bit smaller in that industry.
SPEAKER_01That way you're not sent to go file go file papers all summer. Like I said, I did that.
SPEAKER_00I I worked I worked for um at a co-op program in high school, and I worked, I think my mom got me the job. She worked in American national insurance. I was like, again, I'm like looking at underwriting papers. Of course, I didn't want to do that. But if it was like a small insurance firm, I might have saw how much money was in it. I might have saw how much like I mean, it could have been anything. Could have been these old people don't know how to do it anymore. And man, I could like this is they're making money doing this. I could have done this. So I do when I say that to people, I'm like, hey, try to get a small business, not you know, some huge corporation where you're the male in the mail room or something. Like that's not going to benefit you.
SPEAKER_01I was fortunate at an early age to kind of know what I love to do. I love computers and technology, and I fell in love with them, and that's what I was focused on. So I was very lucky. Not everybody finds their way like that. And I was also really good somehow into getting into internships. I mean, I I worked at an internship in Mississippi for the Navy as a 19-year-old programming software for them on a top secret project. I was just very fortunate to get in and have some great mentors and interns. And college was great for me. I think, especially for undergrad, it's a lot of times it's what you put into it. I mean, I I didn't spend my nights out drinking and LSU is a party school. Like there was a lot of fun I missed out on. Um, because I was taking it very seriously, what I wanted to do. I'm here to learn a skill. And so I spent extra time with the professors. I, you know, I put a lot in so I got a lot out. And that has to be, I think people need to take that seriously if they're going to go that route, which is not for everyone. They got to go in thinking, I'm learning a skill to go out and have a certain type of job, and that's why I'm here. The partying and the leisure should take a second or third seat, not the other way around. Yeah, I went down that road.
SPEAKER_00But for a little while, you know, um, that was tough.
SPEAKER_01My experience with graduate school is that you're on a different level. Typically, parents are not paying for that. It's a real ROI calculation by the individual. Okay. There's not loans everywhere that'll cover it either, right? You can't go to the business school. And I mean, some people will throw out some loans, but it's not like undergraduate school. You know, I didn't know that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_01And so you're really making a, hey, I'm a technology uh project. I was a project manager of software teams. So I had several teams. I was a project manager of these teams at that time. And hey, by getting this degree, will this help me get from here to there? And what is this their salary? And what is this salary? And it was, you know, I'm a very calculated person. Um, so I went into it with that regard. In general, the MBA is really set up to help technical people get business acumen so that they can get into a director level position because you need to know how to le read a PL and develop a budget and communicate and organizational behavior. And that's all the things they do teach you, and I think they do real well. Now, as schools get more and more into entrepreneurship, and I think this is where Rice has really stood out, ranked number one in entrepreneurship for the last seven years. Okay. In the country. Really? Yeah. The business school. Right? So the business school. And so how they've done that is one, they just finished the rice business plan competition, which is the largest in the world.
SPEAKER_00That's what I was about to say. How do they, how do they, how are they grading the number one kind of thing?
SPEAKER_01That has a big influence. The rice business plan competition. People coming out, starting businesses and raising money is a pretty easy thing to metric off of. Like how much money has been raised for ventures, for um alumni, right? As well as the curriculum, the school, and everything going on in the ecosystem, I think, is looked at. There's definitely some subjectivity to it. But since I graduated, and really the forefathers of entrepreneurship at Rice, Al Napier, uh, my mentor, was one of them, Ed Williams was the other. And they taught you how do you start a business and how do you buy a business, which are two pieces that are good. And since then, a lot of successful entrepreneurs, um, Frank Lou, real estate big estate guy, he made an investment. And that investment really changed the ecosystem because we could have an entrepreneurship center called the Lily, the Lou Ide Idea Lab and Innovation Entrepreneurship. And so we were able to have the funds. Everything was volunteer. Like I was putting together pitch competitions, we were putting together our own EO roundtables for alumni. It's just changed so much. The curriculum is now really driving towards this. Um, I'm just right now, so you ask like, why aren't they teaching this? The other thing I I've really loved about Rice is you go to them with a good idea, they're gonna listen, they're probably gonna be careful because they're probably gonna be like, go do it. So that's a good culture. We have and they they're also not stuck on only academics. So the people that teach entrepreneurship at Rice are mostly adjuncts, meaning, like me, I'm not an academic. I I've been an entrepreneur for 15 years.
SPEAKER_00That was what I was gonna touch on before like right before you finished. I was like thinking, well, yeah, you're a person that grew a business, huge business, franchise, bought, sold, went through every issue, and then now you're teaching it. That makes sense. And I know that's not the case in most places, but you're saying even other teachers there or post-entrepreneurial.
SPEAKER_01All of them. I mean, you got Al Don Al um Al Danto, uh, he scaled a huge printing company uh and sold it many multiple time founder and and sales exits. You got JR, who's the recent um uh he's taken over the Rice Alliance and the Ion downtown from Brad Burke. He teaches, he's gonna be an investor and founder. Brair Blair Garou from Vert Venture uh Mercury Fund, the largest and oldest venture capital in Texas, they co-teach venture capital. So you got the best entrepreneurship.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, that makes a lot of sense, right? You're learning from somebody that actually knows it. Oh, yeah, huge value.
SPEAKER_01They know it, but they also know, hey, you're you're you want to start a ramen noodle stand. Uh, hey, you probably need to go talk to Craig about retail, and you need to go talk to these alumni that started this thing. So we have all the connections to also put them in touch with the people they need to talk to, whether it's for money or experience, because that network really matters a lot.
SPEAKER_00But this isn't in the undergrad part.
SPEAKER_01I don't know. Is they no rice is and I I'm I'm gonna mess some of this up. Rice just started a business undergrad.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_01In its foundation, as I understand, it was really just focused on arts and sciences. And the business school developed much later in the history, if you compare it to like Stanford and Harvard. The business school came on much later, like late 90s time frame. So a very young business school. And they just like over the last three or four years started the undergrad business program. I I've seen them be very innovative in crossing those lines of like you've got a lot of incredible engineering innovation and intellectual property founded, and then coupling that with people that know how to grow and scale business and communicate on the business level, so they get those co-founders that are like the Wozniak and the Steve Jobs together that can go out and do really cool things. So the school is kind of like really shine, and that's why they're number one in entrepreneurship on thinking things a little differently and iterating the school concept. So it's not just, hey, let's do this how we've done it a hundred years. Let's think about how we do these things better for our different audiences.
SPEAKER_00Well, it's the definition of entrepreneurship, right? Like everything's always changing. The stuff that worked five years ago doesn't work anymore. So you, you know, or 10 years ago, like you can't do the same thing forever. Every business is like goes through market conditions, uh, you know, different economies, everything. And you always have to change um technology is a is a big one. And so go figure the number one entrepreneur is taught by business people. Yes. I mean, right? Like it's it's common sense, it's logic.
SPEAKER_01And there's a balance. I mean, the what you don't want, and this is what I've learned, even my first class, is you don't want a lot of practitioners and entrepreneurs to go in because what you run the risk of is it just being a ton of stories, okay, which are helpful. Yeah, yeah. But you also need frameworks.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Like you're an operations guy, like you're a framework guy. Like, yeah, like I wouldn't be as valuable teaching that class, probably. Um, I would be good if I worked with other people uh to do it.
SPEAKER_01I'd be really but if they sat down with you and said, okay, what's your ideas for the class, Sean? Yeah, and then said, Okay, here's how we put some structure behind it. These stories and these lessons you learned are so valuable, but let's put them in a way that's like, how can we read a case and understand this and get to the root cause, like the first principle of it? Right people, right seats. Like, how do we get there? How do we make this from just you telling stories and being like super impactful and charismatic to something that is very valuable, but they can take with them and go and reference back to when they encounter that problem. Hey, what's the one, two, three of doing this when I when I run into it? So finding that balance and Rice works with us as adjuncts to help make sure that we're putting structure in place. So they've asked me, because the curriculum right now, there's a gap in it, in that we teach people how to get from idea to MVP really well. Lean canvas, uh in in in many pathways.
SPEAKER_00But not post-MVP.
SPEAKER_01And that we teach people how to raise money, we teach people how to buy businesses, but going from 10 employees to a thousand on a small business and the tactics of it is is still it's not in the business school, and it's not in any business school. This is not a sight on rice. Um, so I'm working on that curriculum now. I went to them and Al Danto went to them. Hey, we think we got this gap we can help fill. We went to them and talked to them about it. All right, Craig, work on the syllabus. So that's really that course might be starting in the spring.
SPEAKER_00That's really cool. So that is like the basis of my idea for my tell me about it. Tell me about it. Yeah, so I if you can. No, no, no, I can't. So I definitely wanted to start my own program for I did I did teens and young adults because I feel like if you start a little bit earlier, I feel like you would have like we talked about by the time you're 18, but you're just gonna have a much better idea of what you want to do. But I also didn't want to exclude somebody that maybe graduated high school and they're trying to figure it out and maybe they still need help, right? So it was kind of both. So it was like I'm still like trying to like hone in on numbers and I'm or age group, I'm like thinking 14 to like 21, because I also don't want it to be too wide where things don't work, and I might have to do two different groups, but idea was to create you know a program that just taught, you know, life skills and and business and communication and entrepreneurship. Um again, in addition to school, because I know the majority of people aren't gonna be like, oh, my kids homeschool. Like that that's not the majority. The majority is like, hey, we both work, my kid goes to school. This was supposed to be like in addition to school. That's what that's where my mind was. Like, I don't want to compete with traditional education, and I'm also not the best at reading, writing math, like not the greatest, and but everything else I'm uh fairly okay at. And so that's what I wanted to base the program around, which we're hopefully launching this week.
SPEAKER_02Nice.
SPEAKER_00And okay, um really excited. I don't know what direction it will go in. My all my idea too was I was gonna bring in these other people. Like it's not gonna be a hundred percent me. Right. I'm gonna, I I mean, I'm friends with a ton of entrepreneurs. And in my last live event that I did for for kids, again, I did it 14 to 21 there. I think the average age was probably 17, if you average everything together. More 16 to 21 than there was 14. But I taught for I tried to make it not feel like a classroom. That was part of it. And I taught for about two hours. And throughout when I hit got to certain points, I brought in two young entrepreneurs. One uh is a 24-year-old millionaire in real estate and works with some business partners of mine. He's amazing. And then one was a 29-year-old home service, you know, bought, I mean, started from zero scaled home service company, sold it for multi-millions, teaches people how to do home service. And they kind of like were reinforcing some of the ideas that I talked about, but in their own way. And I think it it really related to them because they're like, Man, that kid's not much older than me. Instead of me 45-year-old, you need to do this, and it may seem far off, right? If you're you're like, Yeah, I could never do that. Yeah, so that's why I what wanted to bring in younger people, and that was my idea for the whole program too. Is like smart, it's not just me. It's not like I don't know everything. Um, I I think I can give them a really good base and like keep them on on track a little bit, but I do I would bring in these other people that are amazing at communication, are amazing at the things that I'm not amazing at, which again I've learned in the 25 years of making mistakes. Um, bring in the right people. So that was my whole idea for the program. And you know, a concept that came up last week, too. I'm like, what would even be cooler is now with AI, I have I have a full-time AI guy, which is so amazing. And he's a good sales guy, which is weird, but he's good at both. And we're gonna be teaching about AI. Again, he'll he'll be a little bit part of it. Again, because I don't know, I'm a traditional business guy, but he definitely knows enough. And he's a good speaker, a good sales guy, so like he can do it in a quick way. He could do it in a simple way, right? Right, right. They don't have to do it, but what if we taught them and then we all also gave them a contract to be like a sales consultant for our AI automation company, or like just give them a job. Yeah. So number one, then it would be hands-on. So like we're teaching stuff, teaching stuff, teaching stuff, and it's like, by the way, like here's how you implement it, and we're gonna work with you along the way, and almost make it like they're a you know, a contractor. And you know, I don't have that business. We've already built all the tools he did to where we can basically go into a business. I wanted to make it as easy as possible. So if you had one of my buddies owns a bunch of car washes in town, and I talk to him all the time, I'm like, hey, um, are you using AI for just to automate calls or anything? It's like, man, I've been listening to podcasts. He's like, I don't know. I uh he's 55. He's like, I don't get it. He's like, I there everybody's everybody's talking about it, but he's like, I still don't know how to implement this stuff. So I was like, went to my AI guy. I was like, we need to make it super easy. I was like, what if uh 17-year-old was a sales consultant, he walked into a business or DM'd a business, and he's like, hey, we can install this in your business, you don't have to change any of your software, and we can do it in 60 seconds. Nothing that's put in your phone number. So that's what we build. So but and I haven't like thought all the way through this part of it yet, but everything's ready. But I thought it would be cool to give them an opportunity. Again, they don't have to. The program would still be exactly the same. But it's like, hey, if you want to, we're gonna like kind of do some hands-on stuff. You can be a sales consultant. I was gonna split everything that we made with them because again, it's automation and if it's reoccurring through a business, like if it's $200 a month, $500 a month, whatever the tools are.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And we started with five. And I don't know what easier sell it could be for a person to say, hey, you don't have to change anything. This is we'll be done in 60 seconds. Like that's it. Right. And so the tools we started with can be installed in 60 seconds. Um, and they don't need a bunch of information and uh like bunch of stuff. Like we built the platform. He built the platform. Um, so I thought it would be cool to like give them an opportunity to make money and also learn along the way. Yeah. So I don't know. We're like, that's that's that's like a that's like plan B. Plan A is a program for sure, 100%. I'm like, but how can I like get them hands-on like immediately and and be able to help them along the way and like still ask questions and do the online coaching stuff? I mean, we'll have a local version that I'll probably do for free, and then the online stuff will sell like the will scale. Um that's like the I that's the idea. The program, I got it mapped out. We're launching that for sure. The business stuff started coming of me talking to my AI guy for a long time. I'm like, man, that'd be really awesome because to put him in AI is like, hey, now you at least know how to use it, you understand it. Um, you it's gonna be a part of the future. I don't know how you'll be able to work with it, but at least you'll understand it. And that was kind of my thinking on like being able to share revenue with them or or whatever.
SPEAKER_01I love it. It's like an AI lemonade stand. I mean the better you can get kids like with their hands on, even whether it's a lemonade stand or like even better, uh I'm gonna get them some experience with AI so they're not afraid with afraid of it when someone brings it up or hopefully. Yeah, they'll know enough to be schools will never introduce it until like 10 years from now, which is bananas, but you know, that's there's no world without it.
SPEAKER_00No, in some way, shape, or form. Yeah, if you're getting comfortable with it. Yeah, if you're an engineer, you're using it to help you be a better engineer. You're using it to the stuff you used to take you eight hours or 24 hours is now going to take you like five minutes, and then you're gonna be an architect, I guess, of of AIs is kind of like your position. It's like learning a PC early.
SPEAKER_01No, I I I like it, man. Any way I can help, please let me know.
SPEAKER_00But I actually after talking to you on some of the like frameworks and systems, again, I'm like, I know enough to where I know they'll be successful. Uh, and I can I can help them along the way, but having more systems like that, I think will be key to helping them understand it a little bit.
SPEAKER_01You know, right now, you know, in the early stages of any idea, right? The systems we teach is the lean canvas. Have you heard or used the lean canvas?
SPEAKER_00No.
SPEAKER_01Okay, I'll send you another link for that. It's a one-page and it has qu boxes in it. We encourage students because when I went through business school, it was like, write a 90-page business plan. It takes six months to do it, which is like stupid now. We don't teach that anymore. It's very iterative. So get this down on one piece of paper. Banks take it now for SBA loans on the lean canvas. And you're just iterating, what problem am I solving? How am I doing it? What's my beachhead market? Which is like, what do you are you do are you familiar with that term? We talked about the beachhead as like what's the easiest and most adoptable group of people for this new idea? Okay. Think about like storming the beach. That's the most easy easy entry point. What's the beachhead identifying those people? So we're using that and we should be iterating through it almost weekly, like you are. Like you could put your school point down on here, and how do we iterate and then make this valuable? And eventually you graduate into a larger system like EOS, where you're using what we call the vision traction organizer, which is a two-page um thing that has a system and structure behind it as well. But that allows you to just innovate quickly.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I I kind of that in my mind that's kind of the system. It was already like kind of the system that I was gonna use, but uh you saying it in those different, not it wasn't those specific buckets, but I mean solving a problem. It's one of the things I taught in the live event, right? Like, hey, yeah, the biggest the how you start a business is just being able to solve a problem, right? And I just broke it down like ultra simple.
SPEAKER_01It's all in your head. Probably take you three minutes to put it in. It's not there's a framework a lot of entrepreneurs are familiar with that way when you're like, hey, I want to explain my vision to you, you can slide it to them. And it's like, oh, okay, I get what you're doing. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Here it also helps you simplify things in your head. If like you have all these ideas like I do, it's like, okay, well, no, like we need to very focus on these four things, and then we'll be good, right?
SPEAKER_01And it changes changes over time. It's it's funny as you recruit, I mean, think of it much like our artist, right? Like, what are the things I want my people to do? Well, they got to tell a story, they they gotta have experience. You know, entrepreneurs going on stage teaching entrepreneurships. There are a lot of people that can do that and are not good at teaching it. Yeah. Just because you can do it. It's it's very similar.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's cool. I'm I'm excited. I feel excited for you.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I can't wait for my kids at what's the age range.
SPEAKER_00I was thinking, well, I have a really cool product I'll I'll kind of tell you about um after this that is under 14 that we're working on actively. It's why I hired the AI guy. Okay. But um, I thought to pay attention and them get enough out of it in an online setting with weekly like live coaching and stuff, and and a lot of other stuff along the way that they can watch. I thought 14, and again, I'm I'm guessing, like, how can you hold their attention? How can they apply it to their own life? Like, I thought my I and I'm just basing it off of my son. Six and a half and right could not learn in that format, I don't think, is is how I was thinking about it. So it was 14 to 21, 20, 22 was like what I was kind of thinking about in the beginning.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Uh for the for starting out. But I do have a product for under 14 for parents. Oh, cool. That um I think will be super helpful. Yeah. You want to know?
SPEAKER_01You get out and test? Test and iterate. Like that's all you gotta do. That's what schools haven't done forever is like they haven't really changed a whole lot. But everything else in the world has.
SPEAKER_00And so that's my when I like speak about it, it's like, hey, what else in the world has still been done the same for the last hundred years? Like there's nothing, there's no business, there's no anything in life. Like it's all changes around you, and then schools like still like you have to do this certain thing.
SPEAKER_01Right. Yeah, there's things, these things have to evolve. It's it's why I really like business people in leadership positions, especially political, because you know, how insane is it that we would launch a healthcare program and not change it? Like, no business would launch a new product and not change. This is how we've done it for 50 years. This is how we've done it. We're not changing it. We're gonna launch healthcare, we're gonna launch Obamacare, and we're all gonna point out and be like, the thing doesn't work. Well, you haven't changed it. You've got to iterate and change it. I mean, that's a massive system that needs to solve a problem in school too. Education hasn't evolved and changed now. I don't think it would have changed without the AI. I think it's gonna make them. AI is gonna make make it happen. Well, there are a lot of um CEOs, business leaders, entrepreneurs that are doing what you're doing. The school, the private school I moved my kids to because I saw in then there in lower school, yeah. I saw a lot of really strange things. Um, I moved them to a school that Steve Keane, uh the former CEO of Kinder Morgan, started uh called St. Constantine. And it is just an incredible school. And it was designed and thought through from a practicality perspective. Like, what do we need to get these kids? And how do we want to get it with a certain set of values? And so it's not just, hey, let's use the same mold, let's think of it from scratch. And I I think that's gonna happen more and more.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I was done, I was doing my own school for my kid too. Yeah. So, and it'll probably have a handful of people in there that would just want to put their kids in there because I'm I'm gonna be involved. But I would hire a full-time teacher, but I would help out with the curriculum. And again, we would bring in different people, you know, you know, at different stages, you're like, you're gonna bring in different people to help them with stuff. And I've been working on that too. So once my new building's done, I think it'll be like I'll make the switch for my kid. But I do it outside of school right now. Like, um, the hands-on thing we do every day, that's why we started going into the businesses. That's why nice. We're also right now, once he learned all the business terms, once he started understanding what everything was and how like we need to learn how to make money. So we bought an old golf cart off Facebook Marketplace, we're fixing it up together. But just the concept of like really like buying low, buying each material and fixing it up and then do the doing the listing and trying to sell it and present it well. Right. Um, kind of going through that process right now. We uh we hung we got hung up a little bit. We're gonna make a little less profit than we thought because we tried to I tried to buy a wrap in like a little heat gun thing, and we tried to wrap it, and it was hard as it was very hard. I'm like, we're gonna pay somebody to do this. I found somebody on Facebook Marketplace the other day. Like, he's like, you know what? I'll do it for like 250. I was like, sold. So we're gonna drop it off and go get a rest. Yeah, but everything else we can do.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, where do you learn this stuff? Like, hey, what's the cost of goods sold? What do we think it's gonna be if we can do some of the rest?
SPEAKER_00You run into always something, right? And that's our that's our something. Um, bought a little bit of extra paint and some other stuff, but ultimately he'll understand of like just really the cost of like buying something uh and then marketing it. Technically nowadays it's like a listing, making sure everything's right. But um I don't think he's old enough to take the phone calls and stuff yet, but uh hopefully he can sit in there and listen. Six and a half. He's he'll be he'll be seven in June. Yeah, that's so he's he's close, he's closer to seven.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. What a good lesson is learned. I mean, yeah, getting your hands on stuff is the way we where we learn. Sitting in the classroom is can be a part of it, but getting out and doing it is Yeah, that's the third phase of my life.
SPEAKER_00Like I mean, I love still business in general, but I think this education thing is like the So did you go to college? No at all. I I went to community college for like three or four months, and I was sitting in the class and I was like, Man, I could be making money right now. I'm I was just antsy and anxiety, and like I'm like, I don't You're visionary, yeah. Yeah, and again, I was going because I I was of course partying and doing stupid things, and my mom's like, you need to go to college, and just kind of trying to do it to again. I went for business. It was like there was a there was a business like um operations back then. It was business operations and it was a certificate kind of thing, and so I went because I was like, At least I can get some classes that are business related, and I think it would help. And when I went through, I'm like, man, this is not gonna help me at all. So I just quit and started trying to start stuff on my own. Um but the the more the older I got, I was a really good student up until the eighth grade, and the older I got, just less interested in school, less interested, less interested. And the high school I went to was like at the bottom of all of Texas high schools. I went to private school all the way to eighth grade, convinced my mom to go to the public high school because I played sports with my friends that were going there. And she's like, I don't know. And I'm like, I want to go here, mom. Like, every all my friends are here. And so I went there and it was so bad they didn't care if you went to school or not. And but you really didn't have to go. Oh wow. Yeah, so for four years I just woke up at like 11 and went and maybe went to a class and then went to co-op and walked in with McDonald's. They did my class. Like it was really bad. It was like a movie, it was like the bold movies you see in like the 80s and 90s, potential. Yeah. So me also going through that, I'm like, school's not for me, this is crazy. I did all this stuff in the seventh grade, right? Right. Um, so that coupled with um, you know, just becoming less interested over time. And I knew I always wanted to work for myself, just had no idea what I wanted to do. Yeah. It's like I applaud you for working to change this system. It's definitely what I'm most passionate about now. And then now that I have kids, I'm like, uh, this isn't the right thing. There's a better way. There is a better way. And I want to try to hopefully change that in some way, shape, or form. Whole reason I got on social media.
SPEAKER_01Save save those starfish, right? So what we got to do. One of my favorite things I'm seeing, and and um Rice is leaning in this heavy, is entrepreneurship ETA, entrepreneurship through acquisition.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_01And I think for people that have maybe they're in their 30s or 40s, they got family, the costs are loaded. It's hard to start something from nothing. Very hard, very hard, right? Because you got you got this opportunity cost, your salary's pretty decent. To walk away from that from years hard to do.
SPEAKER_00First off, house note, car note, insurance, kids, school.
SPEAKER_01How do you think about starting from from scratch, whatever it is, and take no salary and risk, and you got to put money in. So for a lot of people, this pathway of buying a business that is substantial, you know, especially for people that are subject matter experts. They're our age, they're in their early or late or early 40s, late 30s.
SPEAKER_00Or maybe they work in that industry. Yeah, it's like, man, just go buy you know everything about it. That I'll tell that people all the time.
SPEAKER_01They work at they've been at Slumberger, whatever it is. There are so many baby booners that are timing out, and their kids don't want to do it. And so they they've they're they have good businesses, they haven't put a lot of love into them because look, they've they've been pulling home 500,000 to a million dollars a year for the last 20 years. They're not interested in creating a website for the business, like they haven't even done that. They are cool with it, and now they want to sell it because hey, I I I don't need to do this anymore.
SPEAKER_00And it's also not a you're not gonna get top dollar multiple because there's not a bunch of like it, they don't have the EBITDA and all the systems that you're talking about in place. It's probably a good business. It's a wonderful business, but you're not gonna go to market and get like some crazy multiple. So it's not people the price, yeah. The price range is gonna be affordable more affordable than people think. Oh, yeah. And then probably some seller financing involved as long as they get a little bit of, you know, a little bit.
SPEAKER_01They prefer it for taxes. Yeah. So you got seller financing, a lot of them are lendable, right? You can get SBA or a loan to cover a lot of the purchase. Um, you can get search funds and investors to help put the rest of the pieces together. It's very doable. And by the by the time you've worked in the business, you have expertise in that area, you know people to sell to. It's a running business that's been growing at like one and a quarter percent for the last 20 years, just religiously. Stable, yeah. And as long as that there's not a huge owner reliance in there, you can go in and operate it and then you can improve it and you've got time and you can pull a salary right away. So it's one of the most exciting things I've seen for people that have been stuck. They didn't get saved earlier earlier on in their career, but and they don't want to start from scratch and they got family. That is something you can go do. You can search for businesses with your expertise, you can do it on the sideline while you work your job. You can go buy it. I've seen several Rice alumni do it. Now there's a whole conference at the school called ETA conference where they're doing it on repeat because there's so many good businesses out there, and then you just put a little extra energy and systems and structure into it and maybe uh tweak a few of the right people in there, and it just they starts growing 10%. Um, and it's just incredibly valuable.
SPEAKER_00Well, I think I could probably talk to you all day, but probably should wrap it up. I appreciate you coming on. Um gave me a lot of already good ideas.
SPEAKER_01Oh, good. Well, thank you for having me on. I'm excited to keep in touch and hear how the school goes, and I'd love to help any way I can. Yeah, perfect. Thank you. Thanks, man.