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Turning Struggles into Success: Jason Roberts on Building a Business Empire and Mastering Entrepreneurial Resilience
7 Plays3 months ago
What does it truly take to turn your life around and build a successful business against all odds? Get ready to uncover the inspiring story of Jason Roberts, who transitioned from a tough upbringing in Troy, Missouri, to becoming a thriving entrepreneur. Jason opens up about his early days working at a collection agency and the crucial decision to leave behind security to launch his own mortgage company at just 21. His narrative is packed with insights on balancing business success with personal freedom and the relentless perseverance required to get there.
Learn the essential lessons Jason picked up along his journey, from mastering debt management to the art of providing immense value in business relationships. With a no-holds-barred approach, Jason discusses living frugally to save for his startup, the strategic decisions that spurred his business growth, and innovative networking techniques that build lasting and dignified partnerships. His story offers a treasure trove of actionable wisdom, especially for those navigating the complex waters of entrepreneurship.
As we walk through the rapid scaling of Jason's venture, you'll hear about his unique hiring and firing philosophies, optimizing staff management, and the importance of mentorship. Jason's personal anecdotes, including his fearless approach to learning new skills like helicopter flying, illustrate the powerful lesson that real growth often lies just beyond our comfort zones. Tune in for an episode rich in practical advice, motivational stories, and invaluable takeaways designed to inspire and empower aspiring entrepreneurs.
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Transcript
Introduction and early influences
00:00:00
Speaker
All right. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the show. This is James Paris. And today we have a very special guest, Jason Roberts. Jason, how are you doing today? I'm doing well. Thanks for having me. And you know, Jason, to just start this show off, can you kind of tell me who you are, what you're about, and what's your messages overall? Yeah, that's a big question. But I'll kind of rewind it back a little bit.
00:00:29
Speaker
Grew up in a small farm town in Troy, Missouri, about an hour outside of St. Louis. Didn't have much growing up, man. We didn't have a lot of money. My mom and me and my two brothers, when I was probably 12, and so I kind of grew up without. I mean, my mom is a beautiful woman and she sacrificed and gave everything that she could so that my brothers and I could have a good life.
00:00:52
Speaker
But I think in that, it's kind of what shaped me and gave me a lot of the drive that I have to push. I hated seeing my mom sacrifice. And so even from a young age, I'd try to find jobs and try to find things to bring in money. So I think that's kind of what gave me, I don't know, maybe gave me my work ethic or gave me my entrepreneurial drive. And it also kind of empowered me to want to help others. And we saw a lot of pain, we saw a lot of sacrifice.
00:01:22
Speaker
I think it's really what led to a lot of my different business success, but it's also what empowered me to help others and just give in any way that I can. How did you begin to grow into this capable man that was able to look after his family and at the same time also pursue your own goals in order to change and make your own impact in the world?
College and early business ventures
00:01:52
Speaker
Sure. Well, I think, I think part of it was luck and part of it was, was a lot of hard work. And I guess in that too was, was a lot of mistakes. You know, my mom told me when I was 18, you either got to get a full time job or you got to go to college, one of the two, but, but I can't support you, you know, as an adult. And so I enrolled in college and I,
00:02:11
Speaker
The first job I got was at a collection agency. I don't know how many of your listeners have done that job before, but I spent, you know, eight to 10 hours a day calling on people that hadn't paid their Discover Card bill in six months to a year or their Citibank card or whatever it was. And I remember even then, you know, I was going to college full time, going to school, going to work full time.
00:02:31
Speaker
It wasn't a pleasant job, but I made like $70,000 my very first year there at 18 years old. And so I'm kind of looking at it like, I didn't have any role models. I didn't have anybody that I really like looked up to. I didn't have entrepreneurs in my world where I grew up. But at the time I was thinking,
00:02:49
Speaker
I'm already making 70,000 bucks a year. All my buddies are at Mizzou. They're getting a four year degree and they're hoping that when they graduate, they can make, you know, that they can land a job that's paying half of what I was already making. And so I dropped out of college and I kept it a job, but I remember walking in there. It was an ocean of cubicles. You know, if you've ever seen a call center, I mean that that's essentially what it was. And I remember walking in there every day and seeing people that were 30 years old and 40 years old and 50 years old and 60 years old. And I remember thinking to myself,
00:03:14
Speaker
I don't know why God put me on this earth, but it wasn't for this. You know what I mean? It wasn't to live in this ocean of cubicles for the rest of my life. There's got to be something more. And I think that's kind of what motivated me to start my own business and start down that path. So when it comes to your business as a whole, would you say that you were naturally
00:03:37
Speaker
entrepreneur or were these skills that you sort of had to gradually develop over time over the course of your years?
00:03:47
Speaker
I think I'm naturally a risk taker. I think I have some of the tendencies that you could call entrepreneur. For anybody that's read the book, The E-Myth, it talks about everybody has an art type, and that art type is either entrepreneur, manager, technician. We call ourselves entrepreneurs if we open a business, but that art type exists, and we're all predominantly one of those things. I would say if you were to look at it, I would
00:04:12
Speaker
I would bounce between artist and entrepreneur and I think I grew more as an entrepreneur. When I think of entrepreneur, I think
00:04:21
Speaker
somebody that's capable of creating a business that runs whether you're there or not. And for my first 10 years of business, we had 100 employees. I grew a big company, but I don't know that I would say that I was my own definition of entrepreneur. I was absolute slave to that business. I was at the office at 5.30 in the morning. I left at midnight most nights. I sacrificed all the reasons why we open a business so that we can have freedom. I sacrificed every freedom that
00:04:49
Speaker
that exists. I mean, I sacrificed my own health. I didn't eat good. I didn't go to the gym. I worked 80 hours a week. I missed birthdays. I missed family events. I messed up relationships, all trying to do the right thing. Or I would have said at the time I was doing the right thing, but I think I was on that path of if I work really, really hard right now, then someday I can have this great life. And there's nothing wrong with working hard, but
00:05:15
Speaker
tomorrow isn't always guaranteed. And so when you have 12 hours a day to do something, you tend to take 12 hours a day to do something. And so that was kind of my life and my world. And so it wasn't until that, you know, 07 came, you know, we had, like I said, we had close to a hundred employees. We were doing around $20 million a year in annual revenue. And I'm not saying, hey, look at me. I'm saying that that's what life was.
00:05:40
Speaker
And then 07 came and it wiped me out. It wiped everybody out. From 2007 to 2010, I went from being a multimillionaire to virtually homeless. I mean, really homeless. And it was kind of amidst that that a mentor of mine came and said, you know, Jason, you're
00:05:59
Speaker
You think you're really special because you're good at business and you're able to do these things that make money. But I know all kinds of guys like you that sacrifice everything that really matters so that they can have a business that functions. He said, what would be really impressive is if you could change more lives, if you could help more people, if you could build your businesses even bigger in three or four hours a day as opposed to 12 hours a day now, that would be impressive. And that was really kind of what
00:06:26
Speaker
shifted me into really becoming an entrepreneur, even though I had created businesses up into that point.
Launching a mortgage company
00:06:32
Speaker
What do you think is the difference between a good sacrifice and a bad sacrifice? That's a good question. I would answer that by saying like, what are your
00:06:43
Speaker
What is your mission? What is the vision for your life? What do you really want life to look like? If you could wake up in the morning and have life however you wanted it, what would that look like? And then I would say, make your decisions based on what your vision for your life is. And so if you're making decisions, you're either making decisions that are moving you closer to that objective or you're making decisions that are moving you farther away. And so when you say sacrifice, I would say, if you're doing something that's moving you closer to the life that you desire,
00:07:13
Speaker
then that could potentially be a good sacrifice. There's caveats to that too, but if you're taking time away from what matters and it's not moving you closer to that life that you want or that vision for your life that you want, I would say that could be a bad sacrifice. So that was sort of the next step. How did you begin to now start your journey as an auction? What was sort of the first thing you did
00:07:38
Speaker
when you began your goal as an entrepreneur? Was there a planning stage? Was there a business plan? Were there mentors that sort of guided you along? Were there friends or family that supported you? Those types of things.
00:07:52
Speaker
There are now, James. There wasn't then. I mean, my decision-making process at that time, you know, I was 21 when I opened that first company and I was at the collection agency. And one of the guys that I worked with at the collection agency, he left and he got in the mortgage business. He made really good money, made well into the six figures his first year and he was telling us about it. And I mean, as a 20-year-old kid at the time, 19-year-old kid at the time, I remember, I mean, my decision-making process to become an entrepreneur was
00:08:20
Speaker
$200,000 a year is better than the 70 grand that I'm making right now and helping somebody buy their first house sounds like more fun than calling somebody on their delinquent discover card. And so I called down to the state of Missouri and I said, Hey, what does it take to open a mortgage company in Missouri? And they said, we'll send you the packet. And they sent me this big thick packet in the mail.
00:08:39
Speaker
And I, you know, I spent a couple of weeks going through it and there were two things that I didn't have out of everything that it required. You gotta remember this was year 2000. So the rules and regulations around mortgage companies and banks were drastically different than they were now. But the two things that I didn't have was 50 grand in cash. They were only required $50,000 in liquid cash reserves and a million dollar surety bond.
00:09:00
Speaker
But I didn't know at the time is the surety bonds pretty easy to get if you have decent credit. So it was really the 50 grand in cash. So I spent that next year from age 20 to 21 saving up 55. I mean, I live like a hermit. All my friends are going out and partying and having a good time. And I'm just staying home trying to save every dime that I can. And on April 15th, 2001, that was that was my last day ever working, you know, working for someone else.
00:09:22
Speaker
But to say, to say I had a plan, man, I mean, I woke up that first day and the spare bedroom, my condo, we didn't have an office, didn't have anything. It was just me. Excuse me. And I had this like weight on my shoulders of, Oh my God, what did I just do? You know, I spent that whole year trying to figure out how to open this business. And I spent very little time. I didn't know how to run a business. I didn't even know how to take a loan application. And here I have already quit my job and I have bills and I have all these things. Um, but you know,
Debt management and financial strategies
00:09:50
Speaker
I,
00:09:51
Speaker
I think we as human beings, we tend to take action. They say when someone is either faced with dying or succeeding, they tend to succeed. And that's where the burn the boats comes from. And so I didn't have a choice. I had to figure it out. Some of the hardest people that I coach or consult are people that have golden handcuff jobs, six-figure corporate America jobs.
00:10:18
Speaker
That check comes every other Friday, whether they exert a ton of energy or not. And so sometimes that transition, it's more difficult for the person who's in a good place than it is for the person who's in a tough place. Because when we're in a tough place, we tend to show up for ourselves. So that was kind of the beginning of that journey. So when you were sort of living like a permit, as you would say,
00:10:40
Speaker
What important lessons did you sort of learn when you were cutting back on costs? Were there any certain types of financial skills you learned? Any types of new perspectives you gained when looking at the outside world? Did this experience sort of help you to be better with finances?
00:11:00
Speaker
in the future, or was it more of a psychological change that occurred after this experience? You know, I learned this lesson twice, James, but one of the biggest lessons that I got is debt is the devil. I mean, debt is bad. And we can have the whole good debt, bad debt argument. I'm not meaning that
00:11:21
Speaker
per se although even that there's there's arguments to be made to be made there too but you know when I when I got my first condo and I was 18 18 19 years old I did probably what a lot of young kids you know I I got credit cards and I bought you know big screen TV and stare
00:11:36
Speaker
and I ran up 10,000 bucks on credit cards and I realized real quick, man, it's hard to save up money when you've got too much expenses going out. And so part of that, that beginning part of that hermit was just taking all my bonus checks and paying my debt down to zero. Once I didn't have any debt, it became pretty easy to save up money. I learned that lesson again in 2007 when the market collapsed and I lost everything. And I didn't have credit card debt, I didn't have,
00:12:04
Speaker
I didn't have a ton of debt, but when, when there's more money going out than there is coming in, it doesn't really matter how much you have in savings. If you've got debt, you know, it can, it can put you in a, can put you in a rough place. Excellent. And you know, I might be moving a bit off topic here, but I'm just really interested to ask, but are you one of those people that this life using credit cards and you might just totally just avoid using them altogether or
00:12:36
Speaker
I'm not a fan of it. I mean, I have an American express card that's paying full. And so I use that for points. I use that to live, but you got to pay the balance in full every month. And so it kind of keeps you disciplined and not overspending. When I got wiped out, I did not use any form of credit for 10 years. Nothing, not any credit at all. And I like nice things. But what it taught me was, if I won a $100,000 truck,
00:12:54
Speaker
What type of person are you when it comes to the usage of credit cards?
00:13:05
Speaker
it's not the $2,000 a month payment that I need to figure out how to come up with. If I want a $100,000 truck, I need to figure out how to come up with a lump sum of a hundred grand so that I can write a check for the truck. And if I can't write a check for it, I can't afford it. And that was a shift for my old life. You know, my, my old life prior to that was if I want a million dollar house, I just need to be able to pay the $6,000 payment. If I want a truck, I need to be able to pay the pay. You know what I mean? And I think that's how the majority of America lives. I mean, 78% of America lives paycheck to paycheck. And
00:13:35
Speaker
that's that's eight almost eight out of ten people that we get financial advice from or live in check to check you know they couldn't replace a transmission in their carpet went out without using credit and i'm not making those people wrong um i'm just saying that that's what keeps you in on the hamster wheel you know i've helped a lot of i've helped a lot of
00:13:56
Speaker
people transition from corporate America into entrepreneurship. And one of the very first things that I do with them is we create a debt elimination plan. And what I mean is if you didn't owe your mortgage and you didn't know car payments and you didn't have credit, if you didn't have all these bills, it would be really easy to quit your corporate job. The reason why most people can't quit their corporate job is because they're afraid of how they're going to pay for the credit that they've accumulated up until this point in life.
00:14:24
Speaker
So to just pop back to where we had this conversation before, and again, that all is some really good advice that I think a lot of people can take away from what you said there. But go back to you. When you first started to run your business, what was the market demand? What was sort of your big target audience? And how did you know that you had a desire or
Mortgage business strategies
00:14:49
Speaker
a need in the market?
00:14:50
Speaker
Yeah. So when I, when I opened that first company, which is a mortgage company, um, it was 2001, which if you remember or not, um, that was, that was kind of the beginning of when interest rates really started to drop. And, and really honestly for the last, since 2001 until now, interest rates have been low, really. I mean, that, that was kind of the beginning of when you saw interest rates go from eight to seven to six. You know what I mean? Like that was the beginning of it. So,
00:15:19
Speaker
If you just showed up to work and worked kind of hard, you could make good money because interest rates were dropping and the whole United States was refinancing as a whole. But I remember even being 21, I remember thinking at the time, what if interest rates go up? Okay, great, interest rates are low right now, but are we going to base our whole business model off of a shift in the market? That seems kind of crazy to me.
00:15:42
Speaker
My focus became purchase money, doing loans for people that were buying houses. Because people buy houses whether interest rates are 12% or whether they're 2%, people buy houses. That's just part of our economy.
00:15:57
Speaker
And this was, this is also a really good lesson in business because one of the guys, like, I don't know if he was a mentor or not, but an associate that worked at a different company. I said, well, well, how do you, how do you get realtors? How do you get realtors to send you business? And he said, well, you take rate sheets and you get a box of donuts. And every Friday you go around to all the different real estate brokerages, all the different realtor offices, and you bring them the donuts and you give them your rate sheets. And eventually after you do that for a while, they'll throw you a bone, you know, they'll, they'll give you a try. And I remember thinking to myself, like,
00:16:26
Speaker
That seems horrible. I feel like a beggar. I feel like I'm running around begging people to give me a check. And that just seems crazy to me. And that was really what taught me that if you want to ask somebody for something, that's OK. But make sure you're giving them something of value first. If you're giving somebody something of value, you have the right to ask for something in return. But if you're not giving anything, then you're a beggar. And so I actually hired Tom Ferry.
00:16:54
Speaker
who is now probably one of the biggest realtor coaches in the country but I hired him as a loan officer to coach me on how to be a top producing realtor and he taught me all this really cool stuff and then I would hold this meeting once a month and I'd invite all the realtors in the community they could come for free and I would teach them what Tom Ferry just taught me and so I helped
00:17:15
Speaker
this whole community of real estate agents grow their business exponentially. And by doing that, I was giving them something of value. It became a more even relationship. I was helping them grow their business. They were referring me their buyers that need to get pre-qualified. And I've really operated every business that I've created and the ones that I consult for off of that model ever since. Find a way to bring more value to your client than anyone else.
00:17:44
Speaker
and they'll be loyal to you forever. If you're just only providing a service that anyone else can provide, then there's no real difference. You're only as good as your last transaction, you know? Where did you get this idea from? Was this an original idea from you or did you adopt this from your mentor or someone else?
00:18:04
Speaker
You know, I don't know the clear answer to that. What I can tell you is that even from the time I was a young kid, my mom used to give me trouble because she would always say, why are you always paying for your friend's food? Why are you always paying for your friend's gas? Why are you always, you know, why are you always letting all these people take advantage of you? And I didn't see it as them taking advantage of me. I saw it as like, it was something that made me feel good to do.
00:18:28
Speaker
And so I think it was probably that plus mentorship, plus just seeing how the world works and understanding that when you do more for others, people will tend to return that favor and do for you. And I just saw this whole culture, at least in the loan officer business, they were just trained to go run and beg realtors for loans. And so it just made sense to me of just
00:18:53
Speaker
in life in general right like if somebody does something for you try to try to find a way to pay him back try to find a way to do for them and so it just kind of made sense from a business standpoint of like i don't really have the right to ask these real estate agents to just refer me all their buyers like what what
00:19:10
Speaker
You know what I mean? Like, why do I even have the right to do that? But if I'm actively helping them grow their business, if I'm taking an agent from 2 million a year in revenue to 10 million, I don't even have to ask them to send me their business. They're going to want to send me their business because I'm actively participating in theirs. And that to me felt more like a partnership. That to me felt more like a relationship as opposed to a one side
00:19:36
Speaker
this person is the holder of all the value and this person, you know, I guess I adopted it. I learned at an early age, we get paid in life by the value that we bring. And if you want to get a raise at your corporate America job, if you want to earn more money in your business, if you want, whatever, find a way to bring more value, find a way to bring more value to your client, find a way to bring more value to the world and your income will increase.
00:20:02
Speaker
people talk about living wage jobs and you know all the stuff that's going on with McDonald's and this and that and I understand like we all got to start somewhere. But I don't know that the person that's doing the French fries at McDonald's, I don't know that that was meant to be a job that should support a family and that you know like and I'm not I'm also not discrediting that because I had that job when I was when I was in high school too. I'm just saying that
00:20:28
Speaker
If we want to get out of that, if we want to find a way to increase from that, we've got to find a way to increase more value. You know what I mean? We've got to find a way to bring more value to whatever it is that we're doing. So what would you essentially teach the people you were working with? Would you teach them how to also bring value when running their real estate businesses? What exactly were you offering to these people to make it maybe less traditionally, as you would put it?
00:20:58
Speaker
In that first business, I mean, what I was really doing is I was learning, you know, the coach that I worked with taught me how to, taught me as a realtor, which I was not a realtor, but they taught me as a realtor how to generate more business, how to generate more leads, how to make the phone ring, how to market correctly, how to increase inbound response. And so I would then in turn,
00:21:23
Speaker
teach that to the whole community. We had this meeting once a month that started out with 20 or 30 agents. And within a couple of months, there was over a hundred people that would come every month in my office. I just held this free meeting and I, I coached them for free. You know, I taught them how to, how to prospect better. I taught them how to have sales conversations better. I taught them how to lead gen better. I taught them, you know, everything that I could possibly teach them to grow their, their realtor business. That's essentially what I taught them. Excellent. And
00:21:53
Speaker
As you continued running this business, how were the growth stages? How did this business begin to scale over time? And as this business started to scale and grow more, what types of adjustments did you make? What did you do specifically to deal with that change?
00:22:11
Speaker
It grew fast, James. I mean, it was every day that we came to the office, there was more demand than there was the day before. So, you know, we went from the spare bedroom, my condo, to an office with 20 or 30 people. And then we had to get a, we had to knock out the wall and get the space next to us. And then we expanded into there and it grew. I was
00:22:32
Speaker
It was in my early 20s. I had no professional business training. And so to say that I grew it eloquently would probably not be honest. I mean, we just worked hard and grew. And then I kind of got into my first experience ever, like going to an event or learning from somebody else. And I learned real quick.
00:22:53
Speaker
I don't really know what I'm doing. I cannot work most people, but I really don't know what I'm doing. I've never run a mortgage company before. I've never run a bank. I've never run a business. The majority of my employees are old enough to be my parents, and I need to figure out how to
Growth through courses and mentorship
00:23:08
Speaker
lead them better. I need to figure out how to grow better. I went to this event in Las Vegas.
00:23:12
Speaker
It was a mortgage event, but Tony Robbins was there. Steven Covey was there. A lot of really cool, influential people. That had a really big impact on my growth and my life, but one of the guys that was there was Greg Frost. Greg was the big deal in the mortgage banking world. He was the first guy to ever do a billion dollars in home loans. He had this
00:23:32
Speaker
this whole course, this whole system that he sold us a couple thousand bucks. And it was how he ran every different department in his business from loan origination to marketing to underwriting to processing. He had this whole like, like a course, you know what I mean? Like a training for each different department of his business. And I remember I, I
00:23:51
Speaker
It was a lot of money for me early on. Like I had never been to an event. I had never bought a course. I didn't know that that stuff even existed, but I remember coming back to St. Louis to my office and I made like 30 copies of each one of those modules. And every morning, so I made it mandatory. Every morning my team had to get there 30 minutes early. So if we started to work at nine, everybody had to be there at eight 30 and we would go through another chapter, another part of that training. And we just started to implement the systems and the processes that somebody who is already, you know,
00:24:21
Speaker
Somebody who was already achieving the result that we were trying to achieve, I guess part of not having a formal education probably benefited me because I didn't have any preconceived ideas or way things should be. So in my mind as a young kid, I just thought,
00:24:40
Speaker
Why would I run around out here in circles by myself and try to figure this out when I could just find somebody that's already achieved success the way that I'm trying to achieve it and just model what they're doing? And I'm glad you brought that up because that's really been every business that I've created since then. I've built 10 multi-million dollar companies in the last 20 years.
00:25:00
Speaker
every single time the first thing that i do is i go and i find somebody that's already succeeding at a high level in the area that i'm trying to succeed at and i hire them i i meant i mentor under them i do i do something to become in their sphere so that i can
00:25:16
Speaker
I can draw from their knowledge, from their experience. 90% of new businesses fail within the first five years and 10% succeed. Well, there's a predictable model for the ones that succeed and there's a predictable model for the ones that fail. I just want to figure out what the ones that are succeeding are doing and do that. If you want to be a national championship bodybuilder,
00:25:40
Speaker
Find somebody that won the national championship in bodybuilding and eat what they eat. Work out when they work out, you know, do exactly what they do. And chances are you're going to get really similar results. If you just go to the gym and try to figure it out on your own and screw around with the weights, I mean, you might get stronger. You might get more fit. Sure. Um, you also might not, you might give up and quit who knows, but you're probably not going to achieve that level that you're trying to obtain.
00:26:04
Speaker
just winging it on your own or you may, but it might take you 10 or 15 years to figure it out where you could figure it out instantly from somebody that's been there before. And, you know, this is kind of going into the next question, but what was the easiest type of business that you've grown and what was the hardest type of business that you've grown?
00:26:26
Speaker
question. Two and a half years ago we bought a 94 bed assisted living facility and I will tell you that has probably been the hardest business that I've ever been involved in. I don't know if it's that business specifically or if it's a combination of that and the world that we live in right now. I've never
00:26:51
Speaker
I've never found it hard to find good people. Not that good people just fall from the sky, but I've never found it super hard to find good people. And I don't want to stereotype, but people don't want to work anymore like they used to want to work. There's just a different mentality around working. And I don't know if COVID caused it. I think we conditioned a lot of people
00:27:17
Speaker
When COVID hit, most states had unemployment and then they had this unemployment supplement that added to it. People that weren't working were making $1,000 a week net from sitting at home. I don't know if it was that. I don't know if it's just different age groups. We have different values, but people as a whole don't want to work. Our biggest struggle, we were up to $15,000 a week.
00:27:43
Speaker
and staffing agency bills, 15 grand a week in staffing agency bills, because we couldn't hire and keep enough people to do the job that we need to do. So we actually had to hire a full-time person.
00:27:58
Speaker
And we only have like 45 employees at that company. So it's, I mean, I say only that that's a lot, but it's also not a lot in the scheme of like people that have thousands of employees, but we had to hire somebody full time. And their only job is just to run employment ads, interview people and bring them in. I mean, we interview 10 to 15 people a week, every, every single week. And if we don't.
00:28:20
Speaker
We'll go, we'll get wonky real fast. I've never, I've never had to do anything like that, man. You know, I never had to, um, we've always had to hire, you always have to upgrade your team. We've always had to replace people that weren't doing a great job, but.
00:28:34
Speaker
It was never in a capacity where, I don't know, it's just a weird climate right now. So I would by far say that that was the most difficult. So I think we also talked a lot about that too, but when we talk about letting people go firing them, you know, that always is a difficult thing. And you know, there's this old saying, what was it? Higher, very slow fire effect.
00:29:01
Speaker
Do you subscribe to that really? Or how do you deal with that type of thing? So I say this in a lot of different trainings that we do. I don't disagree with that. But my motto is quick to hire, quick to fire. And the old mantra is slow to hire, quick to fire. I'm quick to hire, quick to fire. And here's why. Every single person that applies for a job
00:29:24
Speaker
applies with what? They give a resume and what is the resume? The resume is their sterling account of what they do and what they don't do. And essentially it's a fictional story. I mean, some of the parts might be true, but it's a fictional story. It's their fictional story of what they're good at, what they're not, what value that they're going to bring. And I would hope that they
00:29:49
Speaker
that that would be the case, but it's not. And so why I say quick to hire, quick to fire is because you never, you never really, and don't get me wrong. There's a lot of different things. We use personality profile testing, you know, Myers-Briggs, strength finders, Colby indexers, all kinds of cool things that you can use to give you a better idea of who might be a good fit.
00:30:07
Speaker
But at the end of the day, there's just so many variables. And until you put that person in that spot and see how they do, you never really know. So that's why I'm saying quick to hire. If they, if they look good, if they sound good, if they feel good, get them in the spot and see how they do. Oh, you'll know real quick. You'll know real fast. If, if, if they're the right, if they're in the right seat on the bus, if they're the right person for the position and if they're not.
00:30:27
Speaker
quickly make that. I mean, one of the biggest things I work on with any business consulting that I do is people take infinitely longer to get rid of somebody who isn't good than they should. And it's hard. You know, I say like firing somebody is never easy, but it gets easier. It's never easy, but it gets easier and it's never fun. I can't, still to this day, it's my least favorite thing to do. But
00:30:52
Speaker
I've changed my mindset around it. And now I think about it like the quicker we get rid of a problem person, the faster we're able to upgrade our team with somebody awesome. You know what I mean? It would be like, you know, if you had a professional basketball team and you had a high school kid as your, as your.
00:31:09
Speaker
your center or whatever and you were able to get a Michael Jordan and as soon as you got rid of the high school kid then then MJ can come in but until you get rid of the high school kid you gotta you gotta try to win a championship with with a deficient team and so I've just conditioned myself to kind of be not to be excited to fire somebody but to be excited around being able to upgrade like
00:31:30
Speaker
Oh my gosh, could you imagine like we're doing this good with this C player in the spot? How awesome would our company be if we could have a rock star in this place? And then I get excited about bringing the rock star in and that makes it easier to get the other person out of the way. One of my mentors that, that, that coached me, he really struggled with terminating people. And so I had a, he rented office space for me, but I had to fire one of his employees one time. And it was, it was that kind of whole lesson of.
00:32:00
Speaker
he'd come over and he'd say, man, I just, I just don't think this Melissa girl's working out. I don't, I don't think she's, she's going to be able to make it. And I said, Sean, then you need to get rid of her. And he's like, yeah, but I've been out of town. I haven't been really been here to train her. You know, she's only been here two weeks. I'm going to spend some more time with her. I'm like, if you already feel this way,
00:32:17
Speaker
Here's what I tell anybody that if you're questioning whether or not you hide the right person, if you bring this person on and you and I have a conversation two weeks later and your response isn't, Oh my God, I can't believe I ever had this business without this person. They're, they're amazing. All this good thing. You know, if you're not like, if you can't believe how amazing this decision was, then it's probably the wrong person. And people have all kinds of conflict with that. Well, like, yeah, but what if you didn't train them?
00:32:42
Speaker
Training's important, but like the right person figures it out. The right person figures it out. And I've just, I've, I've literally had thousands of employees, thousands. Um, and, and so I'm not saying, Hey, look at me. I'm just saying that I've screwed this up enough to know that when you put the right person in the right place, a week or two after making that decision, you're going to come to me and say, I can't believe we didn't do this five years ago. Anything other than that response, it's probably the wrong person. Excellent. And.
00:33:12
Speaker
You know, I definitely like that more optimistic experience or that more optimistic outlook. Basically how I could see it, you see it as the sooner you get rid of someone bad is the sooner you can get someone good. So it's almost as if every single time you encounter someone who isn't really a good fit for the company,
00:33:34
Speaker
you think of it as, okay, the sooner we get them out of here, the sooner someone else could can come in or even better or even more amazing. You know, I think that's a very unique perspective because I'll be honest with you. I've struggled with that as an entrepreneur. I think a lot of people do, you know, I've always been very bad at, you know, letting people go. And I think another reason why is that, you know, I think there's this whole mindset of, you know, a business as a family perspective. I think it's really toxic because
00:34:03
Speaker
with a family, you know, we have issues, but you don't really get rid of the family member, you know, if you were to have a brother, right? And he's acting like, you know, an idiot, you know, you'll deal with, you know, it's an interesting thing that you were saying there. And how do you feel about that whole kind of family thing? And I think, you know, there's this whole idea of how running a business is a very emotional thing.
00:34:28
Speaker
You know, and it's like a family and it tends to make these philosophies that you push out, which are true to be a bit more difficult for the average person to adopt. It's funny that you say that because I have, I've notoriously hired friends and family over the years. And my, my business partner, Rachel is, uh, it's much more like cut and dry than me. Um, just, just as far as like no nonsense and I'm like a giver and I got, and she is too, don't get me wrong, but like, she's just more no nonsense. And so.
00:34:57
Speaker
I've again, I've screwed this up, hired family members and then they're hard to fire and you can't get rid of them. And then it caused family turmoil, you know, all this kind of stuff. We get conditioned, like I believe 80% of success in anything is psychological and 20% is mechanics and people forget that sometimes. And what I mean by that, it's like, we just get conditioned that
00:35:19
Speaker
Firing people is a negative experience. Interviewing people is a negative experience. That whole hiring process is an unfun negative experience. I mean, I even have people that say, you know what, I hired the person and they weren't the right now. I'm just going to do it myself. Um, like I should have just done it myself to begin with. Like that's such a.
00:35:36
Speaker
That's such a bad mindset. But we all have it. Somehow it's ingrained in us because we naturally avoid pain. As human beings, one of the number one things our subconscious mind is constantly trying to do is move away from pain and towards pleasure.
00:35:53
Speaker
So anything that we deem is a painful experience, we try to stay far away from it as we can. Well, I don't think anybody thinks that firing people is a joyful experience. It always kind of sucks. Like it sucks. It's never a fun thing. I have worked really hard to reprogram my mind around exactly what you said in that
00:36:17
Speaker
I love when we when we don't find you but i love when i love when i have the opportunity to replace somebody who's not great in the spot with somebody who's awesome because it not only makes my life better my business but it makes every everybody that works there better makes the team better makes everyone else more like it the overall effect is just so good it's so positive and so like.
00:36:37
Speaker
Even my girlfriend has a whole horse business with a bunch of employees and trail guides and all this kind of stuff. And she really struggled with this. I mean, she would hold on to people that absolutely had no business being there. And I just worked really hard on her like Lucy.
00:36:51
Speaker
The second you get rid of that guy that never shows up on time and doesn't carry all your, all your other guides are complaining about him, that he does the work of, you know, they do four horses and he does one. And like the second, the faster you can put somebody in that spot, your whole world's going to get infinitely better. And then she saw it and then she did it. And then it clicked. And then from that point forward, now she's starting to identify things like the first time she meets somebody that normally would have taken a year to figure out. And I just think that there's.
00:37:21
Speaker
There's beauty in that. And I do see it kind of as a family, James. But at the same time, I see it from a family in that I love people. I love...
00:37:34
Speaker
I love trying to leave somebody better than I found them. I love the experience of making things better. But, but what I learned is that like, that's a two way street and all I can control is what I bring to the table. I can't control what they bring. And so like, I've tried to do a very, a much better job in the beginning of saying, so, you know, when we bring somebody on, it's like, here's what our expectations are. And if, if
00:37:57
Speaker
If these things aren't done, then you're not going to be a good fit. And I, it's like, I don't want it to be this uncomfortable thing. Let's just both agree. Like these, this is what, this is what this job entails. This is what the requirements are. And if at any point you're not hitting those things, I'll try to help you, but it's, it's a short leash. And if you don't do those things, then, then, you know, what one thing that's helped me get rid of, you know, help me in the actual firing process is the first time that first time the mistake happens, it's.
00:38:24
Speaker
Okay, you understand that this, what should I do if this happens again? What should I do if this happens again? And they almost always will say, you know, what would you do if you're me? What would you do if you're me? What would you do if this happens again? And they would almost always say, well, you know, if I keep messing up and don't do the job right, then you should get rid of me. And I say, okay, then like, I just, I want you to understand that you're suggesting if this behavior continues that you should find a different job. And they say yes. And so when it does come time again,
00:38:53
Speaker
It's not as uncomfortable because it's a conversation that we already had. It's a deal we already made and it's agreement that already took place. And again, it doesn't make it easy. It just makes it a little easier. Okay. Okay. So what you're doing is, you know, it's, it's almost like, you know, you're giving a warning ahead of time. And then after that warning is done, you're like, okay, we get, so it doesn't make it a lot.
00:39:18
Speaker
easier. This is definitely a very, very good discussion. It's definitely very informative. And this kind of jumping back to what you said even more before how this idea of hiring people, yeah, their resume might look good. They might have the right experience. I've met a lot of the people that work if you have degrees, those types of things, too.
00:39:43
Speaker
the way they may act within the business itself and in the field itself is a very different mentality. It's like a sports team, like that guy that you might want to draft onto the team. He might look good on paper, but the way he synergizes with the whole team and the way the team works, it might not actually lead to the best results. And that's another perspective I've never even thought about too. That's a very interesting
00:40:11
Speaker
Hey, you're exactly, you're exactly right, man. I mean, the energy of the team, like you said, you can have, you can have all eight players, but if, if all they do is fight and argue and there's the synergy, isn't there, then your team's going to fail anyway. You know what I mean? So that there are, uh, there are other components in that too. I'm glad you brought that up. And, you know, to continue on with this, you know, as you started to further grow your business and do all these things, you know, what is sort of kind of the future of you?
00:40:41
Speaker
your brand, the businesses you've owned so much, and what you want to do now.
00:40:48
Speaker
Yeah, that's good. One of my biggest focuses, so a couple things. One is I really enjoy the transformation of solopreneur to entrepreneur, probably because that was my journey. And when I had that kind of aha moment when it clicked, I mean, it was 10 years of me owning businesses and some pretty decent sized companies. One day, it snapped and I got it. It wasn't a time thing. It was just an understanding and acceptance thing that I understood it.
00:41:18
Speaker
I love teaching other entrepreneurs that I love sharing because it's a gift. It's what buys your life back. I work three to four days a week from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. That's it. And I'm not saying that I also want to be clear on this too because I think people can say, well, yeah,
00:41:34
Speaker
you can do that now because you've had success. You've had this thing. No, no, no. I made that decision when I was chapter seven bankrupt and homeless, and I made a decision to structure my businesses in a better way. You know, I watched this interview with, with Bill Gates and like him or not, but the comment, the interviewer said, you know, you're busier now that you've retired from Microsoft. You're on the board of like a hundred different nonprofits and charities, and you got all these different interests. And like, how do you balance all that? How do you have a life and relationships and see your kids and do all that kind of stuff? And he said,
00:42:04
Speaker
that I don't cut the grass.
00:42:08
Speaker
And I just thought like figuratively and literally, right? Like he doesn't cut the grass. And another exercise that I help entrepreneurs do is this dollar per hour exercise to say, how many hours per week do you want to work? What do you want this business to pay you in the next 12 months? Take your hours a week times it by 52 and then divide that amount. It gives you your dollar per hour. And the numbers I get are anywhere from $200 an hour to $2,000 an hour. And when I break somebody's business down and I really look at,
00:42:38
Speaker
how much time they're spending working in it versus how much time they're spending working on it. Almost everybody, even businesses that are doing a million, $5 million, $7 million a year, even them, the biggest bottleneck in all of our company's growth and scaling is us. We're always the bottleneck. And so we've got to figure out a way to shift that in a way where we're propelling the company forward instead of holding it back. And we hold it back because we're doing things that we're not
00:43:08
Speaker
Necessarily exceptionally good and we all do this but but but to get better we have to put ourselves out and realize like my unique genius zone is probably in one area it's not in seven different areas but yet when we open a company we we we wear all these different hats when the best things that you can do is put the right people in the right place and get yourself out of the way.
00:43:28
Speaker
You know, if you read Henry Ford's autobiography, he wasn't like, he wasn't brilliant in any one thing. What he was brilliant at is understanding what he was good at and what he wasn't good at. And, you know, I mean, there was a there's a interview of him testifying before Congress and they were trying to make him out to be.
00:43:46
Speaker
uneducated that he didn't understand these things. He said, no, you don't understand. On my desk, I have like all these different buttons. If I need an engineer to tell me how combustion engine works, I push this button. If I need this, I push this button. And so he became really good at just understanding skills. I know I kind of went sideways on that, but I think it kind of plays into like
Entrepreneurial advocacy and providing freedom
00:44:08
Speaker
Where I go from here is very much like, if we're not growing, we're dying. If we're not improving things, I think if we're not growing, we're dying. And so I enjoy building our own stuff, moving our own things forward, but I also enjoy being able to help other people figure the things out that took me 20 years to figure out and doing it in a way where
00:44:29
Speaker
My business is serving me, I'm not serving it. I'm doing it in a way where my business should give me freedom to live the type of life that I want to live. And if it's not, something needs, something's broken, something needs to be fixed. So what are some of the key products or services or things that you might want to let people know about on here on this platform that you might be advertising, whether it be B2B, B2C, anything that you would personally like to offer?
00:44:58
Speaker
Yeah. One thing that I will tell you is that people, people come to me because they want to, they want to level up their business. Right. And, and like I kind of mentioned it earlier, but when you.
00:45:11
Speaker
When you've been around success and failure for 24 years, you start to see patterns. You start to see patterns of success and what I would call patterns of failure. And it becomes almost like a doctor, you know, when you go into your doctor's office and you say, I'm sneezing, I got a headache and my throat hurts.
00:45:31
Speaker
They've seen so many patients that they most, not always, but a lot of times they can diagnose based off symptoms, right? And they know pretty quickly, oh, you've got a cold or oh, you've got a sinus infection or because of your symptoms. Being around business as long as I have, I don't want to say it's easy, but it's fairly easy for me to see when a business is struggling or it's not going where it's going. I can pretty quickly dissect what the problem is. And
00:45:58
Speaker
Often one of the biggest things that I work on with entrepreneurs and it's not what they think I should be working on. You know, they, they come because they want to fix the business, but it's almost always has to do with the psychology of the business owner. And here's what I mean by like, there's a reason that 90% of new businesses fail within the first five years. And there's a reason why 90% of new year's resolutions are dead by the end of January. And it's because the entrepreneur, we have an identity.
00:46:26
Speaker
around, none of us experience the world as it is. We experience it through our own map of the world, right? And our map is comprised of, since we were five years old and how we saw things, like that's why two different people can witness the exact same event and have a drastically different accounting of what happened is because they're seeing it through their own map. So we all do this, right?
00:46:46
Speaker
The reason why people struggle to lose 20 pounds isn't because they don't know how to lose 20 pounds. There's no shortage of information on how to lose weight, right? I mean, you can Google it. There's no shortage of it. The reason why people struggle to lose that 20 pounds is because
00:47:02
Speaker
They identify what the person they are right now, which is 20 pounds overweight. And the only way you're going to lose the 20 pounds is if you subconsciously become the person who's 20 pounds skinnier. And I know that that sounds woo woo, but I'm, I'm, I'm telling you, I'm telling you that it's not. And what I'm saying is like.
00:47:20
Speaker
The number one, like we have 60 to 70,000 subconscious thoughts a day and 90% of them are the same thoughts that we had yesterday. And those are for the most part, negative thoughts that they're not empowering thoughts. They're not growth related thoughts.
00:47:34
Speaker
My point is this thing is a computer and the number one thing that it tries to do, and this is what I want everybody to understand, the number one thing that your mind tries to do is keep you within your current zone of what it deems safe. My business partner, Rachel, always says, get comfortable being uncomfortable. Do something every day, every week that makes you uncomfortable because you're expanding that comfort zone you're growing.
00:48:00
Speaker
Until you can identify as that person, I've got a client right now that owns a construction company in Texas, and he does phenomenal work, but he's trying to get to a place where he's not wearing all the different hats. The problem isn't marketing. We've done a lot with his marketing. We've done a lot with his systems. We've done a lot with his processes, but the main thing that we did
00:48:20
Speaker
is reprogram his identity because he believes the reason why he's a two-man shop is because he believes that that's what he's supposed to be even at a subconscious level he believes that that's all he's capable of or that that that's all he's worth and that that's all he knows how to do or that if he does this other thing he's going to feel pain
00:48:39
Speaker
I help him reprogram his mind into believing that he runs a multi-million dollar construction company. He's a phenomenal delegator. All the things that he's, I'm just not good at hiring. I'm not good at this. Like all the stories that we tell ourselves.
00:48:53
Speaker
They're not really true. They're just what we've conditioned ourselves to believe. And so I created this whole training. I went that where I was going is I wanted to give this away to your guests.
Free course on subconscious mind reprogramming
00:49:02
Speaker
It's how to reprogram your subconscious mind for entrepreneurs and for, for anybody really. Uh, it's a 16 week training that we consolidated down into about three hours. It sells for a thousand bucks on my website. I want to give it to your audience for completely free. Um, it's my gift to you guys because I think whether you want to improve your marriage, whether you want to lose 20 pounds or whether you want to scale your business at all, it all starts here.
00:49:23
Speaker
You can go to www.ultimatesuccessblueprint.com. If you put in the coupon code JamesParis, it's free. You don't have to pay for it. It discounts it to zero. All right. Thank you for that plug-in. I think a lot of people will be going for that and then you're offering an amazing opportunity here. Just to close this off, this is just a closing question I have, but if you can go in time,
00:49:52
Speaker
Speak to your younger self again.
00:49:54
Speaker
What would you say to? I mean, I think I'd have a lot to say, but I think one of the biggest life changing things for me is when that mentor said, if you could figure out how to change more lives and grow your business in three hours a day instead of 12 hours a day. Now that would be impressive because it was, that was the first time I ever thought about it. And when you, you know, like how you get 10 times more done the day before you go on vacation than you do every any other day of the week. It's that same mind. So like,
00:50:23
Speaker
Your drive doesn't go away because you only have three hours to work. But what happens is your mind makes different decisions. If you've got three hours a day to move the needle forward, you have to think differently. You have to ask different questions. You have to build in a different way. You have to rely on people in a different way. You have to make just overall completely different decisions. And I spent 10 years of my life neglecting what matters most. And we're not always promised tomorrow. And so I would tell you that
00:50:52
Speaker
You know, freedom isn't the destination that you arrive at someday when you've made it. Freedom is a decision that you make today. It's not a, it's not a, it's not a goal. It's not a destination. It's a decision you make today. And when I made that decision, I was chapter seven bankrupt. I was wiped out. I was broke.
00:51:10
Speaker
but I decided to build my new business in a different way where I wasn't a slave to it, where I ran it the right way. And that's made, now that's what I help people do, you know what I mean? It's made all the difference in the world. I would buy those 10 years back in my life. And yeah, again, thank you again for being on the show. This really has been a privilege, very educational experience for both myself and the audience here.
00:51:37
Speaker
Do you have any closing words to give to the audience before I let you off here? I guess I'll say one thing that one of my favorite mentors, that's something that I just kept with me forever and that is if I can't, I must.
00:51:53
Speaker
If I can't, I must start looking at life, anything that you feel resistance towards, anything that you feel fearful around or scared of. Turn straight into it in that moment and start to condition yourself that there isn't anything that you can't do. There isn't anything that you can't accomplish. It's a bullshit story that we've, that we've conditioned into ourselves over time. And it's, it's holding us back. It's holding you back from being who God wants you meant for you to be. And so like that, if I can't, I must just condition yourself.
00:52:23
Speaker
to turn into those things that seem scary. Everything seems scary or painful in the beginning. Riding a bike did. I learned how to fly a helicopter. I was scared to death and I tried to give up a whole bunch of times, but I just kept saying, if I can't, I must. And then I learned, you know, the life kind of begins on the other side of your comfort zone. All right. Well, thank you again for being on the show.
00:52:44
Speaker
And, you know, I also like to thank everyone else here for watching the show and, you know, being viewers here. And I will see you all next time.