25% Of Your Budget Is Wasted The Other Problem Is Even Worse

Speaker 0: That's how most people think about core values. It's like, it's just words on a wall. Core values are the rules of engagement. Step outside of them, we can't play the game anymore.

Speaker 1: Right.

Speaker: So these are the rules. This is where we're going. These are the rules to get there. If you walk into any mastermind group and say, I'm getting $25 leads, that means absolutely nothing. It's a complete garbage number.

If they're closing one out of three, they're over qualifying. If they're closing one out of four, that's about right. If they're closing one out of five, I can stomach it. If you're closing one out of six, the math just broke and we can't afford this. This.

Forget cost per lead. Forget cost per scheduled appointment. How much does it cost to get in the living room? Everybody will tell you their number and none of them are honest about it. Yeah.

But I'm in their books. Like, I can see it. So what's the true cost? And it was somewhere between

Speaker: Welcome and thank you for joining us for today's episode of Disruptors where millionaires are made. Today, we have Brandon McCurdy with Sharper Solutions. And, Brandon flew in from Brazil to talk about how 25% of your budget is being wasted and the other problem is even worse. Guys, I wanna mention create millionaires. Information on the show alone is enough to help you become a millionaire in the next five to seven years.

If you'll take consistent action, you will become one. And before we jump in, if you're here to learn how real entrepreneurs are building real empires, make sure you hit that subscribe button because every week you can be learning lessons that'll help you create your first or your next million. And right now, you got a 100,000, 250,000, or even more just sitting inside your CRM, resurrect all your old and dead leads with objection proof at a calling agent, text cash to the phone number 33777 to unlock the money that's just hanging out inside your CRM. You ready?

Speaker: Let's do it.

Speaker: Alright. So thank you for coming out here. Yeah. You're here really to just really help me. Right?

Tomorrow we're gonna be getting our butts kicked. But before we do that, last year, you set a company record Yeah. For days on the road. What's what's the message? Yeah.

Speaker: It's actual consulting days. So it's not even including the travel. That's literally So

Speaker: not even the night before or the day after. It's just a hundred and seventy seven days inside someone's office.

Speaker: A hundred and seventy seven eight hour sessions. Yeah.

Speaker: Wow. So let's see here. Is that exactly half?

Speaker: It's pretty close. Yeah. Something like that. In that neighborhood. But it just, it was a it was a busy year for Sharper and a busy year for for me.

So we, we we got out there and got it done.

Speaker: So do you get to, like, rub this in the other coaches' faces? It's like, I'm the most demanded. What is this?

Speaker: Something like that. Something like that. Or I'm the craziest one of us. I don't I don't know what it means.

Speaker: But Could be that too.

Speaker: Could be that.

Speaker: So between 177 site visits or days consulting, I mean, about how many clients is that?

Speaker: It's about a well, it it varies. It's about a 110 probably if I had to put together. Because, like, we do an implementation, it's two days. And so I'm there for two days doing an implementation. Yeah.

A lot of teams, I'll do all their quarterly meetings. So I might see a team four times in a year and things like that. But, yeah, 177 times, we got good news and started a meeting and went through the whole structure and did a 100 and whatever 20, business assessments and ran teams through it. So coast to coast, and I think I did I think I did two, two foreign countries last year.

Speaker: Which countries?

Speaker: Ireland and Canada. And then I did Brazil this year. And then I think I'll be in Egypt end of this year.

Speaker: So So Canada is not like ultra ultra impressive?

Speaker: I know. I know.

Speaker: Ireland. But Ireland is? Yeah. Yeah. So is it real estate or something else in Ireland?

Speaker: Real estate. Very interesting real estate in Ireland. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah. Are they doing business here?

Speaker: No. They're doing business in Ireland. They're buying

Speaker: That's cool.

Speaker: Buying multifamily, like, hot huge value add. The in Ireland, the, the laws are really weird. So they have a rent cap. And because of the rent cap, it creates some really cool opportunities if you are willing to hold and do some some interesting stuff. So, yeah, it was that's a lot of fun.

Speaker: So what are you noticing or learning? Because you get to see behind the scenes. Yeah. Right? You don't see, like, the Facebook post, the Instagram post, or whatever.

You're actually seeing behind the scenes. Yeah. What are you finding out is actually happening in people's businesses?

Speaker: It's a it's a real push right now towards obviously, everybody's trying to get as optimized as they can possibly get. AI is is hot hot, and so everybody wants to try to find the little cheat codes in AI and all these different things. And either one, it's creating, a lot of squirrel chasing Mhmm. Where they're getting distracted, trying to go do the new thing because somebody told them they need to go do the new thing Yeah. Versus other groups where, they're a little bit more resistant.

And those are usually your larger companies where, the team's a little more fragmented or it's not as founder led and doesn't have so much energy. They'll be a little bit more resistant to those changes. And so, if not careful, either one of those are creating a ton of inefficiencies. So we're seeing where expenses are kinda going up either because they're buying a bunch of fun new tools or their team is getting a little more defensive, and so their their expenses are going up on the staffing side trying to make up for inefficiencies.

Speaker: Got it. So are you implying that founder led companies are more subjectible, or I'm not sure that's the right word, to, distractions?

Speaker: Yes. Yes, Anne. But see so yes. Because they have the freedom to do it. They're not under the the distinction.

They're not under, like, the control of a board or there's not investors leaning on them and breathing on them.

Speaker: Yeah. I was

Speaker: with a company a while back, and they're, they they took venture capital money. Mhmm. And, I mean, like, you wanna talk about just a stressed out business owner and, like, everything was like, okay, we can do this. We got to go back to the board and then see what the board has to say about that versus if I'm sitting in your company, you know, tomorrow or if I'm sitting in a company where it's, you know, they own the whole thing. It's a little bit more like, oh, you know, like, let's give it a try.

Let's just let's just see what happens. Like, what's the worst that could happen? And so they have a lot more freedom

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: To do crazy things than the person who's got a lot more controls around them.

Speaker: So So I am looking at maybe going the VC route.

Speaker: There you go.

Speaker: So are you suggesting then that once that happens, I am gonna be a little more stressed?

Speaker: You you will have to make you'll have to make your your decision making process will be very, very different in my experience. You will not make decisions like you make decisions now. You can make a decision now and say, hey. Look. I'm willing to take a hit this quarter knowing that it's gonna happen next quarter for me.

Yeah. In the future, you would have to have a line of reasoning that makes sense to whoever your investors

Speaker: are. Got it. So Alright. So maybe that's a a a cautionary.

Speaker: It just means you have to be on you. You have to be on your game, you know. In in in in entrepreneurship and I mean, you know this is like it could be an idea that could just, you know, hit gold. Mhmm. And the ability to go after that idea is where the magic is.

Speaker: Where the fun is.

Speaker: It is. And I'm always very careful because, obviously, Sharper, we do systems and processes, and everything's gotta be measurable. And, you know, it's my favorite, like, UPS quote, which is like, in God, we trust everything else we measure. Mhmm. But when you're talking to a business owner or like an entrepreneur or a founder, that that's not necessarily the the case.

I mean, even as somebody who coaches businesses every day, when I go work in my marketing company, I'm like, well, shoot. Let's just go try it and see what happens. You know, I don't have any data for it. Let's just give it a shot. And you see that change when there's other parties involved who are interested in, did we hit our profit margin goals?

Did we hit our metrics? If you go to a board and you say, look, we're gonna get these four things done this quarter, you better have gotten the four things done versus if you own the company, you can kinda be at the meeting and be like, something else.

Speaker: Yeah. Something happened. Yeah. It's actually funny. We, we did our pre quarterly this morning.

Nice. And that was something we said this morning. I was like, look. The last couple times, Amanda's came out here, and we modified our quarterly commitments. Yeah.

And we got a stern talking to both those times.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And so this time, whatever we set in quarterly, like, if you have any unease, any, like, doubts about it, like, we gotta hammer that out right then and there because we can't have this thing where we're like

Speaker: That's it.

Speaker: We change it because that goes back to, like, if you got a board Right. They're gonna hold your feet to the fire. Correct. Right? But A

Speaker: lot more disciplined.

Speaker: We don't have to be as accountable, but really, we want to be.

Speaker: Yeah. I was talking to somebody recently about this and they said they were having a hard time, you know, holding their team accountable and things like that. And, I encourage them was to actually go get a board of directors. I was listening actually to a podcast, and the guy was talking about building a board for his company for privately owned businesses. And he'll get a board of directors, and he'll give them just the same exact authority as a public company's shareholders would have.

Yeah. And he'll have five or six people. He'll give them a little bit of profit share to just come to four meetings a year and Oh, really? Guide the company. Because he said, I need that accountability.

Mhmm. And so I was talking to a a business owner recently, and I told him, I said, if I was in your case because it's it's kind of like an owner not in the business, and he was kind of trying to deal with some things. And I said, look, I would get together five people that you trust. Mhmm. Pay them some money, fly them somewhere, and say, give them authority because it'll it'll it'll keep you honest.

Speaker: Right. Which is, you know, like, one of the big benefits with our AI tool. The reason why it works is that it's literally auditing

Speaker: That's right.

Speaker: Every single call. Yes. It gives everybody honest.

Speaker: Absolutely.

Speaker: So your background's in marketing. Mhmm. As a as a matter of fact, you have your own marketing company.

Speaker: I do. Yeah.

Speaker: What's the so what's that company?

Speaker: Yeah. I own brand design. So we do some for companies that spend 100 to, you know, 250,000 a month in their marketing spends. I kept coming across this trend where they're spending a large amount of money, but they don't have a marketing director. So it's just kinda like the person, the owners kind of trying to manage the spend, and he's never done it before.

And so we're getting into dangerous territory.

Speaker: A lot of opportunity for waste there.

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and and you're you're completely at the and not that this is a bad thing, but you're completely at the mercy of your vendors at that point.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: If they go off, you don't even know what to tell them to fix it.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: So I had a lot of them saying, hey, look, I would love to hire a marketing person. I just don't even know how to start that, and I don't really know that I'm gonna get somebody who's able to set strategy.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: So I've helped, I don't know, probably about 10 teams now hire a marketing director. I'll go in either for a short period of time or for an extended period of time and serve as their fractional CMO, get them on track, get them rolling, and either say, great, we got this person onboarded or they'll keep me on for a longer period of time to do some additional stuff.

Speaker: Got it. So So in that, you've also seen, some our ad conversations recently about, like, what people should be measuring.

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. The the point I've been really, really pounding on teams lately in in both the Sharper side and on the marketing side is the the key metric is actually cost per appointment. Forget cost per lead. Forget cost per scheduled appointment.

How much does it cost to get in the living room? I did a deep study of about 30 different teams where we had very clear data as to what the true cost was. Because everybody will tell you their number and none of them are honest about it. Yeah. But I'm in their books.

Like, I can see it. So what's the true cost? And it was somewhere between 1,200 and $1,600 Mhmm. To put somebody in a living room. And what that does to your salesperson is, hey, man, it cost me $1,200 to get you there.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: You better be ready to roll when you get there because if you're not, you owe me 1,200 on they don't pay $1,200. But you get the point which is like the cost all of a sudden gets real. And it helps an owner understand, I can go in any marketing channel, but I gotta get in that living room for a blended aggregate average of about 12 to $1,600. And

Speaker: So there's lots of different places we can measure it. Right? Yeah. There's cost per call, cost per lead Mhmm. And then cost per appointment, and then cost per contract, right, and then cost per closed

Speaker: Right. Right. Right.

Speaker: Contract. Like, there's all these different places you can measure. And you're finding that cost per appointment that cost per lead is just a

Speaker: It's a it's a garbage number. It's a

Speaker: vanity metric. Yeah. 100%. Mean anything.

Speaker: And everybody's got different definitions for what a lead actually is. Right. There's a thousand definitions. So if you walk into any mastermind group and say, I'm getting $25 leads, that means absolutely nothing. Right.

It's it's a complete garbage number.

Speaker: On the other side of that is cost per contract.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: And you feel that cost per contract is too far?

Speaker: Where I feel it is is because, usually, I'm dealing with their marketing budget. Mhmm. And I feel like marketing's job ends when the appointment is scheduled. And so I wanna know that either I'm I'm gonna measure an attended appointment because I wanna see if there's a huge fallout rate between what's getting scheduled and what's getting attended. But my job as a marketer ends the moment you show up in that living room.

Mhmm. Then it matters how good Steve Trang taught you how to close a sale or not. At that point, I'm I'm done. Mhmm.

Speaker: I fulfilled my obligations.

Speaker: Exactly. And secondly, especially if you have more than one salesperson, if they're not closing somewhere between one out of four and one out of six appointments, the math stops working for them to make any money and for you to make any money. So it it it it almost self polices a little bit. Yeah. So taking it all the way to contract is great, but it's not necessary.

I I might in every every client I've seen, if they're if they're closing one out of three, they're over qualifying. If they're closing one out of four, that's about right. If they're closing one out of five, I can stomach it. If you're closing one out of six, the math just broke and we can't we can't afford we can't afford this. Yeah.

So that's where I'm I'm finding that that I don't need that number as much as maybe I would have. Marketing, there's so many variables before we get to the appointment.

Speaker: Right. But you have a good sales team. Like, we're good. Cost per contract, cost per appointment should tie together either way.

Speaker: You should be able to take your cost per appointment times four, and there's your cost per contract anyway. And if you can't close one out of four, one out of five, especially if I'm providing you 12 to $1,600 appointments, which should be high quality leads, high quality appointments Yeah. Somebody reached out as a distressed person, and now you're there. If you can't close at those ratios, except it it kinda self polices a little bit. Yeah.

That makes sense. Not making any money.

Speaker: So what percentage of your clients are measuring cost per appointment?

Speaker: The ones I'm working with, all of them. All of them. It it's the only number I really because because it it it just keeps everybody honest.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: It keeps the lead manager on us because they're not gonna go over booking appointments because I don't I don't want them to get the cheapest appointment possible. Yeah. I want them to get the one that we have a really good chance of going there and getting a deal. It keeps the marketer honest because, great, how many appointments do you need this quarter? You just give me a number.

Mhmm. It's 20? Okay. Cool. Times 12 to $1,600 depending on what market you're in, what your what your marketing blend is.

There's my marketing budget. I know what I'm spending. It all it all works off of that number for me.

Speaker: And it's all obvious. Maybe not obvious, but you figure this out after you do enough business.

Speaker: Sure.

Speaker: Yeah. Because, like, when you're newer, I wanna do I wanna do a 100 deals. Yeah. You don't go in there and say, alright. What's the cost per appointment?

Alright. We multiply by four. But once you're seasoned and you've done this for a couple years Here's what nobody's telling you. If you're a wholesaler trying to scale, the reason you're stuck usually is not your marketing. It's that you're spending your whole week managing human lead managers, and training a sales team is slow, expensive, and falls apart the second someone quits.

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Speaker: Yeah. The the I mean, the the test for me if you're ready for it is is if you're in your marketing, you have what I like to call a three legged stool. Mhmm. If you have three marketing channels that are performing channels that you can you can trust in and you can rely on, you can believe in. Usually, it's, you know, you're spending enough money, you can get to PPC, you're doing mail, and then it's either TV or or something in that neighborhood that's not necessarily as specifically trackable, but I wanna see at least those three.

Now, if you're brand new and you don't have any money, you're cold calling.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: You're gonna you're gonna be cold calling, and then it's all this math changes because it's all outbound marketing at that point. It's all different. Yeah. But if you're a true operator running a 30,000 plus dollars a month marketing budget, you should be able to start to pick up a pretty quick trend that it cost us this much to do on an appointment. It cost us this much to get a contract.

It cost us this much to close them. And if you're not looking at those numbers, you'll start making really bad decisions on lead sources because you're not tracking actual outcomes. Yeah. The other one's like really really valuable that I've been tracking a lot lately, which is by lead source, what's the profit per deal by lead source? I mean, I've found just wide range difference on mail two different mail campaigns Really?

Where it'll be a 5 to $10,000 difference in the assignment fee based on two different mail campaigns that are being ran. So it's like, this is a great campaign. It's working really well, but it makes $5,000 less than this one. I'm probably gonna need to run a little more than this one. It just changes how you think about the math.

Speaker: Yeah. And that when you're measuring it, it you avoided the why don't I get more phone calls Right. On this one? Because, like, what what do we have for a while? Like, the check mailers.

Yeah. Yeah. Like, we get a lot of phone calls. Right? So our cost per lead is really low on the check mailers.

Speaker: Yeah. That was the test we found it on was it was a check letter versus an offer range. Mhmm. And we found that the offer range was getting a much higher profit per deal because it was basically opening the door to negotiation Mhmm. Before the salesperson ever talked to them.

Right. Versus a check letter, which I'm a big fan of. I don't have any problem with the check letter. I think they were great. But it's kinda like, here's your number.

Mhmm. And we've already started the the conversation. It's a little bit of a different different animal altogether.

Speaker: But I mean, just for everyone who's listening, though, like, you gotta not just per channel, but per campaign.

Speaker: Per campaign, what's actually happening. Because PPC is a great example. I could run certain PPC campaigns that, the messaging and the verbiage leans towards more towards a retail seller.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: Versus something that is highly highly distressed. Those are gonna be two completely different things with two completely different sets of outcomes. And so it it's it's just getting really good about understanding. I put this dollar in, not just everybody's, what's my ROAS? What's my ROI?

Speaker: And all these

Speaker: all these, you know, like, just use simple terms. How much did it cost to get in the living room? How much did it cost you to get the contract? Alright.

Speaker: If you

Speaker: got that many contracts, how many have been ended up at a closing table? And if you don't know those numbers and you're spending more than a few thousand dollars a month on on serious marketing channels, you're you're just making whatever decision the vendor is pointing you down. Just not a bad place to start, but it's definitely a bad place to end.

Speaker: Yeah. And then other trends. What are you seeing right now with assignment fees?

Speaker: They feel down. I and I and I and I I I attribute that or I see that in the fact that more people are flipping now Mhmm. Than have been before. And more people who used to have a blend of wholesaling and flipping are just deciding not to wholesale at all. They're just gonna flip everything.

I find that in the fact that there's a lot more capital available to encourage people to just go ahead and flip the property. Mhmm. So you go to the same masterminds I'm at. When you go there, there's there's way more capital in the room. There's

Speaker: a lot of capital available.

Speaker: There's a lot of capital in the room. And I'm seeing where the investor, it's it's not making as much sense as it used to to just wholesale it out. Yeah.

Speaker: I mean, we can wholesale it for retail. Right? Or the guy's gonna pay some crazy number.

Speaker: Right. I mean, if unless there's that. I mean, I had one recently where they were just they were doing really, really well with doing just a whole tail clean outs and that did really well for them. And so they just did all of them that way. Right.

I was with a guy recently on the in the Northeast. He's like, I'm never gonna wholesale another house again. He's like, I I get way more money on the flips and he has pretty good construction. Yeah. The thing you have to be careful for is, obviously, your cash conversion cycle just went way up when you're flipping these things.

Your exposure's a lot higher. If the market shift, you're in a lot different position. But the profit per deal is there and you've got the deal, you should probably take a longer look at it versus just ripping out an assignment because the assignment fees are are trending trending down from the ones I've seen recently.

Speaker: Why do you think that is?

Speaker: It's It's a good question. I I don't think there's, I think your buyers are not as hungry as they once were, and they're definitely much more selective than they used to be. Used to be if you had the deal, you could get a buyer and spin it out to somebody, and it'd be some guy who's gonna flip a couple houses a year. Yeah. He'd take your crappy deal and do something with it and you'd make some money on it.

I'm not seeing that as much as I used to. It seems like the buyers are much more of the people buying five or six a year, and they're actually running a little bit more of an operation than before where it was, like, you have 5,000 buyers, and they're all gonna buy one. It's a little bit more like I got my guy.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: And because of that, I think it's twofold. Number one, because he's gonna buy more from you, you'll take a little bit more of a haircut on the five. And secondly, there's a lot more of the guy buying five. Mhmm. And then I won't say people are getting lazy in Dispo, but they're they're certainly not as, in most cases, they're not as aggressive as they used to be.

I mean, like, we I just recently we have a client who's in, in the Northeast. And I mean, like, he is a savage on on his dispo.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: I mean, he kills. And he makes a a handsome thing. But if you talk to most people and you, like, unpack his strategy with them, they'd be like, there's no way I could ever do that. Like, my guys would be so offended if I did that. And the fact that they have their guys Mhmm.

Is probably why they're losing a few a few thousand.

Speaker: Oh, I see. So, like, because they have their network or repeat buyers.

Speaker: That's right. They're willing to take a little bit of a haircut on some of that stuff. So it you just have to be careful that it doesn't lead you to make bad decisions that, like, well, I should just flip them because I'm only gonna make x. Mhmm.

Speaker: The

Speaker: real answer is you probably should go fix your dispo to optimize for profit, not ease.

Speaker: Right. Well, this it's, It's

Speaker: a two edged sword.

Speaker: Yeah. I mean, like, there's a very, very big guy in town. Right? Doug. Yeah.

Doug Hopkins. And he's got, like, the same five guys. Yeah. Right? But he doesn't need a dispo department.

No. He just calls him as he's leaving the house. So he gets in the car. He calls he has five people, and he calls each one. Like, here's the price.

You want it? Yes or no. And with that, he doesn't need a disbowed department. He doesn't need overhead. He doesn't Yeah.

Speaker: And and I would I would have clients who would argue with Doug that he's probably leaving money on the table by not having a list of 500 and shopping it.

Speaker: You could definitely optimize the revenue.

Speaker: For sure.

Speaker: It's just at what cost?

Speaker: And that's and that's the argument, which is, hey. Let's just leave it alone and take a little bit of a haircut and just not have the the headaches or no. No. No. No.

We're gonna optimize this and basically put salespeople in dispo. Yeah. And pit buyers against each other and do the whole thing to get the deal that way. So it's just it's different choices right now than than in the past. It was kinda like you had to have a a really solid dispo department that really went after these deals.

And you know, we were in a I was at an event once and the guy was like, you know, you need to go be finding all the people who are gonna buy one this year Mhmm. You know, and just squeeze it and get every dollar you can out of it. Yeah. It doesn't seem like that's the if you're gonna do that, they just build a construction department and flip houses.

Speaker: That's there's a good argument for that as well. So Yeah. Okay. So decompression. How are you seeing everyone right now?

Because again, you I'm asking you this question because you get the inside look. Yeah. Right? So, like, regulations has been a conversation is a theme that keeps coming up over and over and over again. Yeah.

How are you seeing people companies prepare for potential regulation?

Speaker: It kind of dovetails with what we talked about a second ago. I think more people are either open to the idea of adding construction than they have been in the past. Mhmm. Guys who would have never thought about swinging hammers are now looking around thinking, okay, if I could get a project manager or I had this one guy do this one thing and he's got crews and he he could do this many for me a year if we ever needed to. I'm seeing a lot of that.

It goes to what I said a minute ago. There's a lot more capital at the events Right. That I think your your people who are able to help you double close and do things like that that are getting ready for it. I would say that the it's like the it's like the bell curve where it's like, you know, you got the early adopters and then you got the late adopters. I would say the early adopters at the front of the funnel who are the the new people coming into the space probably aren't getting ready for it.

Yeah. And that's gonna be, you know, that'll that'll wipe that part out. And I think the people at the very end who are kind of a one trick pony, who don't know how to do a couple different things are gonna have a problem. But the adopters adopt. They figure it out.

Speaker: Why do you think there's so much money available?

Speaker: It's a good question. I mean, I I think it's because, like, a a rising tide lifts all ships. Right? So I think what you're having is the your large funds are having a harder time getting the returns that they wanted they wanna get. And so they're putting money in places they weren't moving it.

So that means the capital's just moving down the stack. Mhmm. And I think it's it's hitting real estate in real estate.

Speaker: So it's finding us.

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, it's I mean, you can Or like

Speaker: or or like the fourth prom date request.

Speaker: Right. But I mean before it was almost kind of like, you know, you had to go like you almost had to be a mob boss to get money borrowed in in real estate investing, you know. So I just feel like it's moved down the stack where, you know, your people who aren't investing in the stock markets, aren't investing in VC, aren't investing in like those things at the top. That capital has worked its way down where I mean, I was so much talked to him recently and he was like, yeah, we're actually getting money from like an insurance fund. Mhmm.

That you would have that would have never you would have never thought would I be anywhere near real estate, but they can't get the returns, the trusted returns they need. And the problem is, like, everything else is expensive for them. So they need to they they have to take higher risks than they were taking before. Insurance is gonna be

Speaker: the safest money.

Speaker: So Yeah. I guess. But I mean, they they their the problem is their premiums are all going up or their their, you know, their their their payouts for for buyers and all this stuff is going up. So they have to be more aggressive

Speaker: Oh, yeah. With how

Speaker: they invest because they gotta make more money than they were making before.

Speaker: Right. That's true.

Speaker: It all it all trickles down.

Speaker: Yeah. It all goes together. Okay. And then oh, here. I was gonna ask this other question.

Dang it. So you're here obviously for, our quarterly strategic meeting. Right? So I guess Ryze is you, Gary, Susan, Amanda, Austin. Mhmm.

Speaker: So we got, Noah Parks is is coaching with us now. Billy Ross, does some coaching with us. I'm sure I'm missing somebody in there as well, but I'm AJ Kristen does does some CSO calls for us, what we call that. And what is RISE? RISE is a business operating system.

So it stands for resources, inspiration, systems, engagement. It's the components we think every business should know inside and out Mhmm. To be able to operate properly. Just the same as you're either running Mac or PC, you're running on a business operating system of some kind. Most of the time, it's very disjointed.

We've we obviously we've implemented other business operating systems in the past. Yeah. But we just kept finding that they were they were limited Mhmm. In specifically in people development. So they would talk a lot about meetings and stoplight reports, which are valuable, and we teach those too.

But they would kinda leave you hanging on the people side. Mhmm. And all of them were developed before COVID. So the workforce has changed so much It's

Speaker: a little different.

Speaker: Since COVID that the way that you hire, inspire, manage people is very different than it was even six, seven years ago. So that's one big component. The other thing we found a lot of operating systems don't talk about finance at all. It's almost kinda like, we don't talk about what religion, politics, and money, you know.

Speaker: We're not supposed to.

Speaker: Yeah. And I mean, it was almost like the some of those operating systems kinda took that to heart and like they would never talk about finances. And we found that was a huge gap. So we we we added that component in where, depending on how how much, disclosure the owner wants to give to his employees

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: We we we bring up more of a financial component into it.

Speaker: Yeah. I remember when Gary I mean, Gary I've been coaching with you guys since December 2020. Yeah. And I remember the very first time I was coaching when you and I were talking about, you know, EOS Yeah. And then, Get It Wanted, capacity.

That was just fun stuff, but also other stuff. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Right? And, because he wasn't he wasn't my EOS implementer. He was my coach.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: Yeah. He was just my coach. Right. And then he's like, yeah. I can't teach that stuff anymore.

I was like, why not?

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. So Yeah. And it just it it fits our clients a lot better the way that we do it now versus, some of the stuff in different operating systems can be just very rigid. I was talking to somebody recently and they were it was actually somebody in my hometown.

Mhmm. And they were considering hiring me to come in and do their quarterly and start to do do their coaching for their business. And so I went out, I had breakfast with this guy, and we're sitting there. And he's like, I'm really scared because he's like, I was in EOS. And he's like, I literally I quit that job because of the way that they explained rocks.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: And I

Speaker: was like Quit working for

Speaker: quit working for a no. A large company.

Speaker: Oh, okay.

Speaker: I think it was John Deere. He quit working for them because of of the way that they treated rocks. So I said, well, explain to me what you think a rock is.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: And he explained it to me, and it's what he also teach a rock. I'm like, no. That that's what those are. We don't teach them that way. We teach them where it's actually actions that you have control over where a lot of times people will teach a rock, and it'll be like, I don't have any control over this thing happening, but I'm responsible for it taking place in ninety days.

Really? Yeah. Yeah. I remember that part. He was like, hey.

I was told I have to get this company to be our client, and that's my rock for the quarter. I'm like, you have no control over that. You can't make that your goal.

Speaker: So you have the he didn't have the he had the authority to go after it and the responsibility, but not the controllability.

Speaker: You can't make it the you can't make it The Rock. They can't I mean, because, I mean, it what are you gonna do? You know? Yeah. Kidnap somebody and make them be your client?

I mean, you could set all the activity to make them your client would have been The Rock. But

Speaker: Yeah. I mean, you can use the Andy Elliot School of Motivation.

Speaker: Yeah. There you go. Alright. Yes. Yes.

Speaker: And then, you'll he'll he'll make them.

Speaker: He'll make them do it. Yeah. Yeah. Shame them into it.

Speaker: Yeah. Or was it one of my, back when I used to watch a lot of TV, I was always signing in Philadelphia. Right? I don't know if you ever watched that show. I haven't.

I haven't. There's enough to catch up on it. But basically, like, you know, they're they're realtors doing open houses.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: And they're wearing the Century twenty one gold jackets, and they're just bullying this person to sign a purchase contract before they left.

Speaker: That's awesome.

Speaker: Alright. So I heard you say hiring and inspiring. So typically we talk about hiring.

Speaker: Yeah. What do

Speaker: we talk about inspiring?

Speaker: Yeah. I mean Those are two

Speaker: I mean, they're very similar.

Speaker: Do you know it's funny because I was just talking to somebody about this especially when you go to the math like like the mastermind groups because you see it all in one place so you can kind of see the stuff together. Mhmm. If you're in a room full of people who are new to the space, all they ever wanna talk about is how am I gonna get more leads, how am I gonna get more business. You go to the next level up and it's like, okay, great. All I'm worried about is my metrics and my measurables and my tracking.

You go to the next level up and they're all of a sudden it's like, okay, great. How do I like, hire and, like, hack hiring to get these people? And if you go a level up from there, usually they're talking about their life purpose

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: Their core values Yeah. Their vision for the future and where they're going. Mhmm. And most of the time, it's they've gotten to that stage of business, and they're just now getting around to those things.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And I find that if you get to that at the beginning, it's so much better. It's it's almost the problem is in most smaller businesses or smaller teams, it happens kind of organically.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: Like, I'll give an example. I told him to give him a shout out, so I'm doing it right. I was in Atlanta, Georgia area with, Tim Stout.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: Tim is, like, a former MMA fighter, and, like, I stayed at Tim's house before the quarterly, and he's, like, we're getting up at 7AM, and we're gonna work out, you know, together. And so I'm, like, down in the gym at 7AM doing kettlebells with, you know, with Tim, you know, screaming at me that I'm, you know, that I'm a wuss, and I need to learn how to

Speaker: You're inadequate.

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I felt very inadequate because Tim's over there just, you know, destroying the gym. So you see that Tim doesn't have like a massive massive team.

He they're very efficient and they're very successful with a smaller team. But organically, those people buy into Tim.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: He doesn't need to sit there and say, here's our core values and here's our purpose and here's our mission, here's our vision. Now, he's growing pretty quick, and the next hire he has will not be somebody who was there for five or six years. Mhmm. He will have to figure out how to get them to understand what the purpose and the mission and the vision of this business is immediately. Because he's not gonna be able and he won't have the time.

I mean, your guys that are work here, they've been with you a long, long time.

Speaker: Long time.

Speaker: You don't need to explain to them what the core values and the purpose of Steve Trang is. They get it organically. Yeah. If I brought somebody brand new in today, they would have no idea, and you would have to get them up to speed very quick. And your life and business has grown to a place where you don't have the time Mhmm.

To spend hours and hours and hours with them. So when we talk in Rise, a lot of times it'll feel premature with teams where they'll be like, why are we doing core values and long term vision? And as soon as you start doing it and you start seeing their team help contribute to what our core values are and help contribute to what the long term vision of this company is and you see the buy in happens, all of a sudden, I can usually see in the owner's eyes and they'll, like, start lighting up and they're, like, okay, this all makes sense now. Yeah. I got it.

Yeah. Right? Because I'll do five year vision and immediately we pivot into, okay, cool. Here's our three year. Here's our one year.

Here's our ninety day. Mhmm. Everybody see how we got here? And it all it all works together. Yeah.

But it really does, like this we we used to do these workshop exercises. I love doing this. Where we build a business simulator. And I would put different people in different seats. So we had

Speaker: a Business simulator.

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. I would get like 50 business owners or business leaders. We did this in Orlando a few years ago.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: And I said, okay. What we're gonna do is we're gonna take all the people who are usually the visionaries and they're in finance now. And all the finance people are now the visionaries. Yeah. And we moved everybody around.

And then I said, okay, guys. You got four hours. And I gave each group like, five different things they had to deliver. So one of them obviously was long term vision. All all the stuff that's in RISE.

So they each had to deliver all these components. They had to give me a p and l. They had to give me Different department.

Speaker: What's that? From a different department.

Speaker: Yeah. You so this is our company. And then I put them aside. I put actually, I put the visionary people upstairs in a in a beautiful conference room and everybody else was downstairs all broken out. And usually, I've done this exercise about 10 times.

Every time I have to stop at about an hour in and say, okay, stop. I'll go to the people who are finance people who are now our visionaries, and I'll say, guys, you have to start with long term vision first because I've literally had people starting other companies, like little mutinies happening in the business Because they're not used to thinking long term backwards. Mhmm. They'll think short term and try to go forwards. And the team that doesn't work, they need to know like why are we going here and what's the purpose of it before we're gonna start building from the bottom up.

Yeah. Every time I run that simulator the other one that was really cool about it was all the they were all upstairs and we got to the end of the exercise and they were like, well, one thing I would have changed about the exercise is, you know, having everybody separated like that. And I said, guys, I didn't tell you had to stay up there.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: I'm like, what kind of brand new business are we starting that you guys are sitting up in a conference room while the rest of the team's down here working? You should have came downstairs.

Speaker: Right. And

Speaker: they're like, well, you're running up and down the stairs. I was like, I didn't say you had to stay there. You should have been down with your team building this business together.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: And that's there's there's a mix there which is we wanna grow and we wanna get ourselves out of the business. But a lot of times we gotta we gotta stay in it a little bit longer. So

Speaker: Definitely need to stay in it a little

Speaker: bit longer. It's a lot of fun.

Speaker: So I mean, it's funny talking about, like, you know, the part about, like, okay. Now I want to have purpose. This and that. How do I hire the right people? Yeah.

And it's like, you started there, like you were saying. Everything else is easier. And I can say for sure, like, the people the few people that made it through all the battle scars, right, match mission, match values, match core purpose, and all that fun stuff. Yeah. But it's only through, like, the shotgun approach

Speaker: Correct.

Speaker: Or some of them like, the people that lined up Mhmm. Stuck around and those that didn't did not stick around. Yeah. Now we know how to find them. Correct.

Before, we're like, let's just Yeah. Send them a beacon.

Speaker: Yeah. We teach a thing in in Rise, which is a a nine box

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: And we use trust and alignment. So trust is your core values, alignment is your long term vision.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: And if I clearly define what my core values are and where I'm going, now I know who I'm going after. Like for especially right now, like because everybody is so enamored with getting all this new technology in their business, Mhmm. So trust is like, you gotta have integrity, you gotta have you gotta follow the rules, you gotta solve that stuff. That that's valuable. And I need to know that this person aligns with those things.

Almost as importantly, if not more importantly anymore is, hey, look, we're gonna be a very tech forward business. We're gonna be very efficient. We're gonna be a small team. We're not gonna bloat the business. We're gonna do all this.

Is that something you're in line with or are you looking for a lot? I mean, Sharpe is a great example. We if we've had people leave us is because we we have a core value which is

Speaker: hard work. Mhmm.

Speaker: You know, Gary says all the time, I think somebody should work half a day. And there's twenty four hours in a day, and there's twelve hours. That's half a day. There's a lot of people who can't handle that. I mean, I I travel two hundred and twenty days a year.

There's not a lot of wives who can handle that. Like there's not a lot of families that can handle that. And so but that's the purpose of Sharper is that we are gonna make a huge impact. Mhmm. We are gonna go sit across the table from people.

I'm not gonna give you advice. And then from Zoom, I'm gonna do it sitting right in front of you. Like, I'm gonna tell you what I think you ought to do. So that comes at a cost. There are people who will get on board with us that aren't they think they're in line with that purpose, but but we find out quickly if they are or they aren't.

Yeah. And that's this kind of stuff, the conversations that need to start happening a lot earlier. And I think the reason is small team specifically, I think the owner sometimes or the person hiring is scared that I'm not gonna get this person to come work for me if I if I if I honestly tell them what I'm trying to do and how I'm trying to accomplish it. Yeah. And my thing is just get over the imposter syndrome.

Like, people are I'm finding a lot more people leaving large companies to go work at smaller ones because they wanna know the owner. They wanna know what they're doing. They wanna know what's going on. They want the flexibility of a smaller team. They wanna have a bigger impact on what they're doing.

Speaker: Is that a trend?

Speaker: 100%. I've worked with a large roofing company right now. I'm sorry. I use I work with a midsize roofing company. They have had more people from large, large roofing companies come apply to work with them than than every like, people who know business applying with us.

I was in somebody's office a while back. They had just hired a sales guy who was had worked for, like, a Fortune 500 company, and he was just, like, I'm tired of all that. I want something more hands on.

Speaker: Interesting.

Speaker: So get over the imposter syndrome. Mhmm. Tell people what you're trying to accomplish. Go after the absolute best person possible. And if most people don't have any problem casting a vision, sometimes they're just scared to say it because they don't wanna scare their team.

If it would scare your team, they're probably not the right team.

Speaker: Well, that's what I was gonna say. Like, if you're sharing the alignment, here's the vision, and they're like, well, that's scary. You want to repel that person.

Speaker: That's exactly right.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah. I mean, there's a thing in design like, I I started off as a graphic designer. So in design, they used to have this, it used to be the psychedelic era. It would only be attractive to people if they were literally tripping on acid.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: So you look at the poster, and the would look terrible unless you were on acid, then the poster looked great. It was a whole phase. I I the the analogy is the business is the same. Somebody should be able to walk in the room and be like, yeah, not me. Mhmm.

Not I mean, I go into enough offices. I can walk in a place where I love working with them, but I'm like, I would not work here.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: This isn't my vibe. I'll walk into other places and I'll be like, I mean, I could work here tomorrow. Like, I'm bought in. And that has nothing that says absolutely nothing about them and everything about me.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: And that's what you have to be okay with is in the absence of having a culture and a purpose and where we're going, you end up with very vanilla people and then you wonder why a year in, they're frustrated, they wanna go do something else, they're hard to work with, they're not tracking their metrics, they don't wanna they don't wanna grow with you. You didn't clearly define where we're going. Right. And so there was nothing for them to buy into.

Speaker: So r is resources. Yeah. And then it's people. What are all Yeah.

Speaker: Resources, time, money, people. So we say is is that's that's the hiring and the managing of people. That's the the the timetable that we're gonna set around the business. So for example, if you're in, like, multifamily, we're gonna set the timetable different than we would if you're in wholesaling because it's real short term.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: So that's the time component. And then the money Can I

Speaker: expand on that?

Speaker: Yeah. So for example, if I'm in, if I'm in wholesaling single family houses, really short cash conversion cycles, I can do a twelve month projection pretty clean because the deals are gonna close in a shorter period of time. If I'm in a multifamily I see. Syndication, I have to do a three year almost

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: Month to month pro form a because maybe we're breaking even and maybe we're losing a little bit of money. Yeah. But the payoff's coming down here. Right. So the time the time table is so different.

This is where guys miss on this too is like, they'll think they're just absolutely crushing it. And they're, boy, I'm bringing in, you know, $25,000 assignment fees and look at me go, but you gotta go get another and another and another and another because it's that short machine that's running. Yeah. I mean, I look at cash conversion cycle kinda like a restaurant. If I go to McDonald's, it ought to be pretty cheap because I got the food in thirty seconds.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: If I go to a steak house, it's gonna be expensive. Long cash conversion cycle.

Speaker: If I get a steak back in thirty seconds at a nice restaurant

Speaker: I'm not eating that steak. It's probably a McRib.

Speaker: That's why Well, someone just sent that one back. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So that's r.

Speaker: Yes. What's I? I is inspiration. So that's core values, company culture, vision for the future, where we're going and what are the guardrails and what are the rules of engagement. Core values are the rules of engagement.

You step outside of when you can't play the game anymore.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: So these are the rules. This is where we're going. These are the rules to get there.

Speaker: Talk to me about the rules of engagement.

Speaker: Yeah. So this is it's it's really valuable. I was in I was in Texas. This was years ago, and I walked in, and they had a wall about the size of yours like here. And it says core values on the top.

It had all their core values lined up on it. So I went into the implementation. I was like, guys, this is gonna be great. Like, we're gonna save so much time today.

Speaker: Because they're already there.

Speaker: They're already there. And he goes, well he said what do you mean? And I was like, he goes core values on the wall. And he goes, oh no no. We just had a blank wall and I just had a printer come put them on the wall.

Like nobody knew what they're like. It is beautiful mural. And I was like, I said so if we change them, he's like, oh yeah yeah we'll have them tear it down and put a new one up. That's how most people think about core values. It's like it's just words on a wall.

For me, it's completely different.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: If you're truly using core values like Sharp, we have a core value which is belief. Mhmm. You don't believe in what we do and you don't believe that we're actually helping people, you cannot work there. And that has been tested and proven true in in several different situations. We have a core value which is integrity.

We're gonna do what we say we're gonna do. And you think your quarterlies are rough, come to one of ours where, you know, it's an open game where you can call anybody out you'd like in the meeting if you feel like they told somebody they were gonna do something and they didn't do it. We have a core value which is hard work, you know. If you come to Sharper, you better expect that you're not getting home at 05:00.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: You know, you better expect that there's gonna be times you're gonna be flying home on a Saturday. You better expect the fact that if you're not a hard worker, you're gonna feel out of place.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: And that's how core values should work is they should flush out who's really here for this and who's really not here for this. And therefore, kinda like the other thing, it kinda self polices itself where we all know what they are, and when they're not happening, you can see it.

Speaker: I did volunteer to run one of your guys' quarterlies. Let's

Speaker: go. Right. I don't

Speaker: know how many people are in that quarterly. Oh,

Speaker: it's coming up. It's coming up in a couple of weeks. I need it,

Speaker: I guess. I mean, like, who is it self brand?

Speaker: So usually what we do is we choose somebody to run it who we feel like is gonna be the most, who who can who can control the the environment. Mhmm. So I did our last one. Mhmm. I was a I have I have a I have a ministry background, so they felt like I was the that was the best qualified to Yeah.

Keep the rig on the road. So Yeah.

Speaker: I'm just gonna put it out there. Give it I can I can

Speaker: pick you up on that? If I take you up on that

Speaker: I can give it right back to Gary and Amanda after all these Oh, that's it. That's it. That's it. Do you remember when we said that? How does that feel?

Speaker: It would be great. Hey, I might I pay for that. I'd pay I'd pay for you to come do it.

Speaker: Okay. So belief. So this is an interesting core value to me. Yeah. So what was an example of someone violating the core value of belief?

Speaker: That's a great question. So on the client side, it's very was very it's very simple. I mean, we've we've had meetings before where we'll be with a client and we'll be doing something and the owner who hired us to come in will be kinda like, well, I don't think we ought to do that. I don't think we ought to do this. I don't think I ought to do that.

And I mean So it's

Speaker: like undercutting you in in real time.

Speaker: Just just, hey, we hired you to come in and implement this operating system and but we're not gonna do that. We're not gonna do this. We're not gonna do that. And you'll kinda, you know, I usually will pull them aside like, hey, look. Usually, I'll put them aside like, hey, look.

Are are we on the same page here? Are we trying to do the same thing or you have some other idea of it, and that usually doesn't. I know Gary's gotten up and walked out of out of

Speaker: Has it?

Speaker: Consults and has refunded their money and said, hey, look. This is not gonna work.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I I know we've had people in Sharper where employees where it's like, hey, look. You know, if you feel like if you feel like what we're doing is just kind of a game and it's not we're not actually helping people, probably better for you to find something that's a little more

Speaker: So you've had so haven't you haven't had a coach that violated the core value belief?

Speaker: Not one I can think of. Not one I can think of. It's probably more at the at the at the operations level. Yeah. And again, it it it's not like we're it's not like we're going to them being like, hey, you broke our core value belief, you're out.

It's, hey, look. This is our client. We believe in them, or we wouldn't have them as a client. We think they should succeed. We think we should help them get to where they they wanna go, and we think we can help them get.

If you don't believe that, then either one, let's go find you a client that you can believe in, or two, it's just not gonna work.

Speaker: Because and it also brings up because, like, I've dealt with this. It's not a core value of ours. Mhmm. But there are times when we're talking to a sales team member. Right?

And it's like, do you believe this stuff is helping them? Because, like, if you don't, we we need to have a conversation about this because now you're selling out of integrity. Exactly. Exactly. Or you're lacking the conviction required

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: That you because you need to transfer this conviction over. You're asking them for a lot of money. Right. Right?

Speaker: But if you I mean, here's a great example. If I remove all the rules from a real estate transaction Mhmm. I mean, as much as we hate regulation and all of the blah if I removed all of the rules, anarchy. Yeah. Absolute anarchy.

And it's the same thing in a business. If I don't have some guardrails that that protect us from people who would otherwise take us in a bad direction. Mhmm. In in in the absence of rules, there's anarchy. So we would have to have something that is a rule.

Now where they go off the rails is when you don't keep the core values. And it's the owner not following the core values of the person who who created them. I've had teams where we sat and decided, you know what? We're not keeping this core value. Let's get rid of it.

Mhmm. You know, we're gonna we're gonna go down to three from four because we're not keeping this one ourselves until such a time we can. Let's just take it out, you know. Yeah.

Speaker: And then the other thing too with the the conviction is that I feel like sometimes we need to resell our teams. Yeah. Right? Like, hey, here is an example, like this product helping this client.

Speaker: Yeah. That's my my favorite thing right now with Teams is we'll go over the core values every quarter. We'll do it tomorrow. I'll make you go through core values. And then I'll say something like, do we feel like there's any areas of the business we are not keeping these core values?

Or is there anybody on the team that we feel like is a core values issue that we need to address? Yeah. And when I do that most of the time, they can identify something. They can see where there's a problem. They can see where something is off the rails.

And it's really a point of decision at that time of the owner as to how far he wants to go with this.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: How far do you wanna make sure that the team knows these things to be true? And I find the owners that are willing to go far enough that, hey, look, this will this will be on track or or we will have a problem. People respect it. They get online with it. They get on board with it.

Or they say, you know what? It's not the place for me and I'm gonna go somewhere else. And that's the best thing that can happen. Either get in or get out. Any organization that you would admire and run, you can ask you I talked to Navy SEALs.

They know what the rules of engagement are for Navy SEALs. You talk to a Marine. They know they can they can tell you what the creed is. They know it like the back of their hand. Every organization you admire, every business you admire, you probably could figure out what their core values are.

Yeah. And so it's just odd when you come to a company that's trying to scale and grow that you'd ever get any resistance about it. Because it's like, why is it that all of these people think it's so valuable, but you're not seeing value in it. And most of the time it's because there are things that maybe they're struggling with themselves or things that they don't necessarily they've never had to hold somebody accountable, and so having to do it is a little different.

Speaker: Holding people accountable is no fun.

Speaker: It's no fun at all.

Speaker: Alright. So that's r and I. What's s?

Speaker: S is systems. So processes, procedures, policies. It's it's kind of the it's the boring magic.

Speaker: The red headed stepchild.

Speaker: It's the boring magic is to track your numbers. It's what we're talking about earlier. It's the we created a calculator, the the GNAK calculator Mhmm. Where you can go in and enter all of your your funnel for all of your lead sources one by one every single month. Mhmm.

It's a total pain in the neck to put together. When it's done, you get this beautiful set of data that tells you what's going on in your business. Yeah. It's I'm finding, you know, I mean, you're you guys are you guys are on the cutting edge of this stuff. I'm finding a lot of teams trying to put AI into their business, but they never documented the process.

So now they're trying to plug in something into an completely unprocessed business, and then they're blaming it on objective proof AI that is not working. Right? Yeah. Well, probably the problem was is you're trying to just throw it in to the stew that you're making

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: Versus a systematic process that, okay, great. We're gonna replace this section. Yeah. So I'm finding right now that the old process maps have a lot of value when I'm trying to integrate AI into a business. Mhmm.

So it's that, it's meeting structure. We believe in very structured meetings that have purposes to them. More people more people get frustrated in businesses because the meeting structure is not not properly structured and set up. Yeah. So it's meeting structure, it's KPIs, it's it's understanding a process ownership chart of who's in what seats and why they're there.

So it's all it's all the stuff.

Speaker: And with AI though, like, the systems part is so much Oh my goodness. We had a situation. We had a new team member who I actively recruited, and his first day, like, turns out we didn't have an SOP, right, for, like, how to onboard new clients.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: But we've been onboarding new clients, and we recorded every single conversation Yeah. Onboarding new clients. Right. And so he figured out on his own, on his first day of the job, take all the transcripts from all his onboarding Yeah. Get it all in the cloud Yeah.

Create an SOP, First day of the job. Sends it to the customer success manager. Right? The guy that's running fulfillment.

Speaker: Amazing.

Speaker: Like, hey. Here's the SOP I was able to compile from Paul's conversations. This is accurate. He's like, yeah. It's accurate.

I was like, cool. First day in the job, he's got he created his own

Speaker: It's so it's so great.

Speaker: SOP.

Speaker: Yeah. It's so much easier than it was before. You can you can take I mean, I'll I'll take you'll just aggregate all of the data from whatever it is you're working on. Ask it any question. We have one with RISE.

We have a RISE AI where I can go in there. I can say, here's a process map. Where's the problems?

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: It'll go dissect it down, figure out where the issues are, tell me what to look at and where to

Speaker: look Yeah.

Speaker: More. I can take all of our client data from all of the clients we've ever worked with, aggregate it altogether now in real time,

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: See some really cool trends. I was telling you guys before we got in here, I got it booking on my travel now. It goes into my calendar. It books the flights. It books the cars.

It books the hotels, and then just puts them all in my calendar. So Yeah. Any any like dumb process is completely replaceable at this point. Yeah. So that's great.

So what's e? E is engagement. So that's branding, marketing, advertising, sales.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: So it's the end of the funnel, which are it's it's the it's the it's the end of the road, which is now this becomes a marketing exercise. I find most businesses is like they start with resources, they get the people, inspiration, they get them to buy in systems. Now the tools start working, now we have to go get more customers.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: And then the whole thing kind of becomes a virtuous cycle, which is now we gotta go get more people, we gotta get them to buy in, rebuild our systems, and then go get more leads. What I find that a lot of teams do is they'll they'll start with the e and they'll go spend a bunch of money on marketing Mhmm. Without having actually figured out if they've got anybody who can actually close a sale.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: I was working with somebody a while ago and I mean, amazing operator, incredible, but just the wrong people in sales. Just just altogether the wrong people and was spending a substantial amount of money in a very good market. It should have all worked, but you didn't get the r right.

Speaker: In what ways were they the wrong people?

Speaker: They couldn't close a sale, if if if their life depended on it.

Speaker: So not bad people.

Speaker: Not bad people. Just the

Speaker: wrong people.

Speaker: But but it goes back to, which is is if if you just start with marketing, it doesn't you could give me your marketing budget. You give me a $100,000 a month. I could run everything perfectly Mhmm. Seamlessly. If if it gets to the lead manager and they don't know how to book an appointment, or they're not motivated to book an appointment, or the salesperson can't book I mean, I do the same exercise every quarterly.

I won't do it to you because it won't make sense. But if it's a real estate investor, I'll take out my phone or I'll go on their website, I'll fill out their form and I'll say how long. And they'll be like, oh, five minutes. Start the timer, see how long it takes. Nobody has ever liked the results yet.

Not one time have I done that exercise where like, oh, that was perfect. You name the person who's like the best of the best, even still there's problems in the process. And this is because you're working with people. They're gonna change every time. Objection proof AI.

Right? Right. But but the but the point of it is is which is like, I doesn't matter how good I do on the engagement side if the resources aren't right. Yeah. And that cycle is so important to understand is, like, most people see you or they see, you know, prominent social media people, and they'll just think, well, shoot.

I just need to get a platform like Steve, and then I can build my business, and I can make all sorts of money. But they don't see is a very technical guy is moving around in the background to make all this work.

Speaker: Other guys on the other side of this wall.

Speaker: They don't they don't see, like, you know, people bought into you and what you're trying to accomplish. They don't see quarterly meetings where you're getting your your butt kicked. Right? They don't see all that.

Speaker: Exhausting quarterly meetings. They see

Speaker: they see the e, which is like, well, look at the brand. Isn't that cool? And they're right. I'm as the marketing guy, I am brand first. It's the best thing ever.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: But it really doesn't matter if the other stuff's not there.

Speaker: So is it a situation where, like, kinda like spinning plates the way you're describing it. Right? Mhmm. So r I s and e is like, okay. We got the r right.

Now we can get the I right. Now that we got the I right, we gotta get the s right. Yeah. Now we got the s right, we gotta get e right. It's like, now that the e is right, well, the r is no longer good enough.

Speaker: That's right. That's right. Now we need more people.

Speaker: Now we gotta spin it again.

Speaker: That's right. I business for me is, somebody explained described, flying a helicopter, like, taking up taking a plate and flipping it upside down and then putting a marble on it, and then you have to constantly keep it to try to keep the marble in the middle. Right? That's business to me, which is, like, it's a constant adjustment. I was on a call with a a very successful investor before right before I came here.

Yeah. I mean, we're just toggling the plate, trying to find exactly what the right mix of this is, and what the right mix of that is, and right the mix of this other thing. And Yeah. We found some people areas where we can make some adjustments. We found a bunch of marketing stuff where you can make adjustments.

So it's never ending if you're doing it right. Yeah. If you're doing it wrong, what I'll find a lot of times is they'll have incredible people, everybody's bought in, great systems, and they can't get a lead to save their life.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: Right? So you gotta you gotta push in areas where there's growth needed.

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. I was thinking, I can't I can't remember who was speaking. I was watching a presentation, and the image that came to my mind is, like, you know, like, somewhat like the weakest chain in the link. Mhmm.

But, like, you got so in this instance, right, you got r I s and e. It's like, okay. Like, if your resources, your people are your lowest is where you're low, then that's just as far as you can go. Doesn't matter how good IS and E is. Doesn't matter.

Right? But if you got great people and great systems, but horrific engagement

Speaker: That's right.

Speaker: As much as you get. Like, it's really the lowest of your four Mhmm. Is really what it comes down to.

Speaker: It's even worse than that because if you look at the long term plan, if you actually have a five year plan

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: You could hire somebody in that resource quadrant who's great and is great at their job right now. They're not great at their job if you grew 20% year over year for the next five years. They're not that person. So if you actually have a plan and you're executing on it, I don't need to hire the person I need today. I need to hire the person I need twelve months from now.

Yeah. And it's constantly looking ahead and saying, okay. Great. I was with a very, very, very successful investor in Georgia. And we were we were talking about this.

He called me. He's like, I'm thinking about hiring this person. It's a little bit of a reach for me on the salary, blah blah blah blah. And I said, great. What's the three year plan?

And they're like, man, we're gonna grow 20 very aggressive. 25% year over year, we're gonna grow and it's gonna be this. I was like, how much do you believe in that? And they're like, it's going to happen. I said, great.

Then what are we talking about? Like Yeah. We need this person three years from now. Yeah. So why would we not just and it wasn't that big of a deal, but like why would not just make the investment today versus rolling the dice and seeing if somebody can get us there who's never gotten anybody there before.

Yeah. That doesn't make any sense.

Speaker: Now when you put it that way.

Speaker: No. But but I mean, there there's a there's it's a two edged sword. Don't over hire. Yeah. Right now, I mean, if you're not gonna grow at that clip, but it's like right now in the AI races.

Like, they're paying these, you know, research AI researchers making billions of dollars in some cases because they know where they're going. Right. They know what's gonna happen when they when they IPO.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: And I have to have this guy. When I when I go IPO, I'll make a 100 times on what I'm gonna pay him.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: It makes sense. You gotta bring that down to your level and say, okay, great. If I truly believe I've got a 25% year over year growth, 20% year over year growth

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: I'm gonna need this person. What what are we waiting for? Let's get him here now. It's gonna take them three months to settle in. It's gonna take them another three months to get to even.

It's gonna three months after that, they'll start producing pretty well for me. And three months after that, I'll probably get full potential out of them.

Speaker: Yeah. I remember I was at Collected Genius. I can't remember which of this was. It was not the last one, maybe the one before. Basically, it was, like, Jeff Niedigger.

He was talking about, like, I don't hire someone. I was like, I could see that person here five years from now.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yes. Right? Not now. Not next year. Like, five years from now, we're, like, we're Mhmm.

You know, for where we're gonna be, that's who we're hiring for.

Speaker: It makes for some difficult conversations sometimes when the person's already on the team.

Speaker: Yeah. So why don't we

Speaker: do that? Do you see them here in five years? Do you see them here in three years? Do you see them here in twelve months? Because a lot of times, they'll hold somebody will I'll be kind to you you visionaries and you you founders.

You, you have a little bit of a a hero complex sometime where it's I I can I can get it right? I can fix them. Mhmm. I can make them get to where they need to go. And a lot of times, you'll want it more than they do.

Mhmm. And you're not doing them any favors, and you're not doing yourself any favors. Sometimes you have to look and say, hey. Look. Here's where we're going, and just have candid conversations with people.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I'm not gonna be expecting less from you six months from now. I'm gonna be expecting more from you. Is that something you're into or is that something that you're you're you're gonna hate? And I'm happy to help you find your next thing, and I'm happy to help you transition and find a great career for yourself. Mhmm.

But I'm not gonna do you any favors because we know the one thing is you're not gonna change. You're gonna run through the brick wall. And if you have to drag somebody kicking and screaming, that's not good for them and it's not good for you either.

Speaker: Yeah. How often should someone be having this conversation?

Speaker: It just depends. I mean, sometimes people go through seasons in life where they just have a a rough season, and they just need a little bit of time, and that that that's a different thing. I don't think there's a stock answer. I don't think you can just call it one thing. I think it's if an owner's doing their job, they're in tune with what's going on with the people in their company Mhmm.

And they know when to say, hey, look, you're doing the best you can, and and that's not enough right now, and that's okay, and I'm okay with that, or you're not doing the best you can. You're not putting in the effort necessary.

Speaker: That's the thing that's easy. Yeah. Right? The guy that's not doing his He does it right. Right?

If he's if he's if he's not trying

Speaker: It's so much like parenting though. I mean, like, for example like, I mean, like, I know you I know you you you you you guys are into volleyball. We probably do a lot of volleyball. I can tell if we lost and they put it all out there, I'm not I'm not mad. Mhmm.

I'm not frustrated. Everything's out there. Now, if you were out there, my my one daughter loved to just chat with all the other girls while she was out there playing, like, not about volleyball, just about other stuff. And I would be like I'd give her that look like, no. No.

No. We're here to play.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Get serious. Put your head down. Play. You know?

Speaker: But you could you can't upgrade your daughter.

Speaker: That's right. Well, yeah. That's the beauty of parenting is you get to you get to grow with them and teach them.

Speaker: Well, if you have a team member, like, you could look at them right now. Like, let's say you're on my team. Yeah. Whereas, like, hey, Brandon, like, you have maxed out your potential

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: Which is no longer good enough for us.

Speaker: Again, that's why we to to bring it full circle. That's why that trust and alignment conversation is so important. Yeah. Because if Steve tells them guys, we are going to this place. We are going to do this thing, and it is going to happen like that.

I'm not and and little PI for you, little predictive index for you, and you're a high a person who's dominant exerting influence, and you don't necessarily care about the beat, you will not let those people hold you back. Mhmm. So either you'll drag them kicking and screaming and they'll hate every second of it Mhmm. Or you will you will sever at some point.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Because you're not you're not gonna not go there.

Speaker: Right. Yeah. This is the plan.

Speaker: This is where we're going here. Now the problem is if you don't clearly articulate the plan and then you look at somebody and say you're not up to the standard. Mhmm. Okay. You never said what the standard was.

So how am I supposed to live up to a standard that you never said it was? Right. And that's not fair. And I think that's where a lot of times in your mind or in a lot of owners minds most of the time, they know where they're going. They just haven't clearly articulated it to their team.

And so now there's there's friction.

Speaker: But so the the conversation I wanna have. Right? Like, this is the whole GWC thing. Right? Brandon gets division.

Yeah. Brandon wants division. Yeah. Steve does not have confidence. This that Brandon has the capacity for

Speaker: the vision. Yeah. The vision.

Speaker: Yep. But you want it. You desire it. Like, we all want the same thing. Sure.

But the data shows

Speaker: Sure. There there I've done this a lot, which is here is here is the marketing director. Here is the acquisitions agent.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: Here is the sales manager that this company is gonna have in three years.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And if you want that and you truly desire it, here's the roadmap.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: And the roadmap might look like you're gonna have to go get some education. You're gonna have to communicate with me. If you're not able to bring me bad news, you're not able to talk and you don't communicate with me, this is not gonna work.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: You have to be able to manage other people. My I say this, I feel like a thousand times a day, is you I don't need you to be the best player on the team anymore. I need you to be the best coach on the team. I need you to stop trying to play hero ball, and I need you to be able to get other people to do their job. That's a completely different skill set than you have today.

Yeah. Are you willing to go get that skill set? And if they say they are, great. Here's the list of books you're reading. Here's the podcast you're listening to.

Here's the course you're gonna go take. Here's the licensing you're gonna go get. And this is gonna need to be all in your free time.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Because I could go get somebody else who has those things. They're gonna cost me a lot more money. I'm I'm gonna have to get them to buy in. I'm gonna have to get core values and all that, but they're there. They exist.

Yeah. And if you're not willing to to become that person I mean, I thinking of a great client we have right now. He hired somebody as a assistant transaction coordinator, and she's the COO of that company right now. Yeah. But the amount of work and time and self development she did to get there, unbelievable.

Speaker: Well, I have two people right now that have been exactly that. Like, one who's office manager, who's now operations manager. You're gonna meet her tomorrow if you haven't met her yet. Yeah. Right?

Another one who she was by texter. My VA text her. Right? And now she runs the entire VA department. Yeah.

Right? So we have those instances of people that are, like, who we hire and who they are today. Drastic information.

Speaker: Know it when you see it. I mean, I know you had Sean Graybelle in here. I mean, Sean and Zane Zane's a great example. Sean Zane was a a lead manager, and now he's business partners.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: But what you find is like I mean, I've I've talked to Zane. I've talked to Zane when it's midnight in Egypt. Mhmm. And he's still working, and he's still getting it done. And again, there I I always wanna be very clear about this.

It's okay if you don't wanna do that. There is nothing wrong with that. Mhmm. But if as long as the vision's been clearly articulated to you, if you don't wanna go to it, good friend of mine used this this quote. He he wrote a book and he used this quote all the time.

If somebody wants to go somewhere and I believe they can go there and I believe in them and their ability to do it, it's unkind of me not to hold them accountable. Mhmm. I'm I'm passively telling them I don't believe in them when I don't hold them accountable. Yeah. So therefore, as long as it's clearly stated where we're going and you said you wanna go there, I'm gonna hold you accountable.

And when I do, I don't want resistance. I don't want pushback because this is where we said we're going.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: What the the challenge that comes with that is is that you as the owner, you as the CEO, you as the founder also have to self develop to keep up with the bay with the pace of the business. Mhmm. And that's the challenge, which is are you becoming the leader for this

Speaker: person? Right.

Speaker: Because you're they can never develop above you. I get worried when Gary is not developing because you just put a cap on what I can do. Yeah. Right? If you're not getting better at what you're doing, then I can't get better at what I'm doing.

Because at some point, if I surpass you, why do I work for you?

Speaker: Well, that's the fear I always operate with. Sure. It's that, I don't think it's paranoia, but it's that if I'm not getting better

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Why are they here?

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You gotta you gotta have that that posture about it, which is if if if if there's no way for them to grow if I'm not gonna grow. Yeah.

You know?

Speaker: And you have a calculator. Yeah. Gknack.io or gknack.io, which is like a weird It's a weird it's a weird weird word. What are

Speaker: we talking about? Yeah. So g knack stands for gross net appointment contract close. It's just literally the pipeline of of where your leads come down the funnel and how they travel. What we try what we're trying to do is avoid the what's a lead conversation.

Mhmm. What's a this? So we've we've created very clear objective terminology for each of them. So that way if Steve's wholesaling in Phoenix and somebody else is wholesaling in Knoxville, Tennessee, you're both calling a lead the same thing. You're both calling your gross lead the same thing.

You're both calling your net lead the same thing. You're both calling appointment or contract to close the same thing. So that way when I compare them against each other, they look similar.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: And I can make decisions on it. So if you go in there, you can take you can do it by the month or by the quarter and say, here's how many leads we had and here's how they travel down the funnel and it'll give you a score that's an aggregate of all the data we have from Sharper of different clients and what is a good score and what's a bad score.

Speaker: You basically create a benchmark or baseline.

Speaker: That's right. That's like a batting average. We create a batting average. So you can go in there, fill your stuff out, and see how you stack up against the rest of the industry and around where you should be at. The biggest way I've been using it lately is forecasting.

Mhmm. You should go in there at the beginning of the month and say, okay, great. Here is how many leads we're expecting from each channel. Therefore, if we're off track for the month, we know we got some catching up to do. Yeah.

It's a great tool for holding your vendors accountable. Mhmm. Because you can start the month and say, okay, look, EPC, I'm counting on you for 15 gross leads this quarter that lead to this many net leads and this many appointments, this many contracts, this many closes. What would what would need to be true for that to happen? How much do I need to spend?

Okay. Great. Let me put that in the calculator because the calculator will also let you put in what your spend for each each channel is. And you can see if it actually models or not. Mhmm.

And then it's really valuable especially for salespeople because I can say to them, guys, I'm gonna get you 20 appointments this this month, this quarter, whatever the case might be. Here's how I'm gonna do it. It's been very valuable for people who are maybe their current comp structure for their salespeople is out of whack.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: If they can show them that they're gonna spend better on marketing and send more qualified leads down and they're gonna get more appointments and more contracts, they're willing to have a different conversation around top structure.

Speaker: Right. So gnacc.io.dotio. And from there, they can track gross net appointments, contrast closings. And then for me, where I'd be most excited as a as a, user is comparing how we stack up. I guess, with the rest of the market.

Because this is, like you said, like, the challenge you you go to masterminds. And, like, this is my CPL. This is my cost per lead. This is my, like, I I close, I close 90% of my contracts. Right.

Right. This and that. And, like, but here you can actually see

Speaker: You can see the whole thing. I mean, it's the the ultimate the easiest way to, like, see people the need for the tool is, Steve, what's a qualified lead?

Speaker: Mhmm. Yeah. You have

Speaker: a definition. I have a definition. We sat and argued this in the Sharper before we we rolled this thing out. Because, you know, a couple of the coaches wanted me to put qualified lead in there. And I'm like, I'm not gonna do it.

And they tried we had a an hour long argument that it needed to be in there. And I was like, if you can tell me what a qualified lead is, I will put it in there for you.

Speaker: So I guess so. This is a dumb question then. So a net lead and qualified lead are two different things.

Speaker: Yes. Yeah. A net lead is they have a again, everything has to be objective. They have a house. They have the ability to sell it.

It's a house we would buy. That's it. It's not motivation. It's not equity. It's not anything else.

It's just they have a house.

Speaker: This is purely objective.

Speaker: They could sell it, and we would buy it in that in that area. It's the type. So for example, if we don't buy multifamily, it's multifamily. Not a net lead. If we don't buy, condos and it's a condo, it's not a net lead.

Mhmm. But everything else so gross is everything that comes in. And that is they have a house. We we we it's they're selling it. We would buy it.

Appointment is an attended appointment, not a scheduled appointment. Mhmm. Usually, that delta between attended and scheduled, if you're doing mostly in person, it's like 90%. So it's it's usually about the same for everybody. So that's why we didn't put the both of them in there.

Contract is assigned contract, ready executed contract. The closing is we put money in the bank. As my definition on a closing is, we put money in the bank. If you didn't put money in the bank, it's not a closing.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: The other thing I've I've been been mindful to is it's not I'm not trying to like track a property all the way through the funnel. I'm not trying to take 123 Main Street and see it down the funnel. I'm trying to see what's the cyclical nature of our business.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: How many leads are we bringing in? How many closings are we having? I don't wanna try to say, here's one two three main street came in six months ago, and so now we get the count of as a lead because it that only get into that. Keep it clean and simple.

Speaker: So the title was 25% of your budget is wasted.

Speaker: Yeah. Are you finding people who

Speaker: are just throwing their money away? What's what what are we talking about here?

Speaker: Yeah. I mean, by the time you die dive into most people's what we do at Sharper, when we we do their implementation, we'll do a pro form a. And we'll literally just say, okay, here's our projected revenue all twelve months. Here's our projected expenses all twelve months. Most of the time, there's at least 15% of bloat that you can just hack straight out of that thing.

Just gone in a second. Really? Bad subscriptions, overpaying for stuff that obviously like, you know, we because we work with so many different people. We know what that should cost. Some I was with somebody and they were like, yeah, we're paying like $8 for search engine optimization.

I'm like, that's insanity. Like, that that's way too much. You know, find them a vendor with the exact same program, exact same everything for like $2. Yeah. So just dumb stuff like that or not optimizing their teams.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: They did a study on this recently and they found that there's like, there's more I don't remember the exact amount of money. There's more waste in inefficient employees than there is efficiencies we're gonna pick up with AI so far. In other words, you're gonna waste more money on people just not doing the work that they're supposed to be doing. Where if you put in good tracking and good KPIs and good processes that you can see what somebody's doing, you pick up a lot of efficiency.

Speaker: I was at a mastermind, recently, and they put on the board how many people they had on their team. And that all I I just had so much anxiety. Because right? I mean, I started in o seven. So, like, I missed the previous bad stuff.

Right? Sure. I got to experience

Speaker: it Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker: But not to the degree That some did. Some did. I've gone through I mean, 15, there was kind of a rough patch. 18, there was a bit of rough patch. 22, there was a rough patch.

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker: Right? But, like, every time there's a rough patch

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Right? Like, all that waste, good times cover it up. But, man, like, a bad month Yes. Is just extremely painful. Yes.

And so, yeah, like, this this paying people that aren't doing anything.

Speaker: It it it's, it was one of those things where it's like, again, revenue covers a multitude of sins.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: You can have all the bells and whistles. I was with somebody, we were doing their quarterly. And the night before we were sitting around, we had dinner, we had just they had this big Airbnb, we're sitting there. And the owner the team was all pretty young. The owner was more seasoned investor.

And he's sitting there just telling stories about he and his wife nailing up bandit signs at midnight at night. And, like, they didn't have money for software, so everything is, you know, on a piece of paper. And and they're all they have no idea about any of that. Like, they've got the latest CRM. They got the latest training.

They got the latest everything.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And, you know, I I was I I called it out the next day. I'm like, you need to understand this is why he's so frustrated when you're wasting.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: This is why he's so frustrated when he calls his own business and nobody answers the phone. Mhmm. Like, this is this is this is what's happening here. It's not it's not just get off my lawn. It's what it took to get here, you're wasting a bunch of it.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: The the bigger side of it. So again, usually it's like at least 15% if not more of just bloat and waste. The remainder is made up usually from very inefficient spend that should be generating more business.

Speaker: Well, hang on. Before we get there, what are the top three? What was I mean, we talked talked about employees. Sure. So what's

Speaker: the top three, bloated waste? Employees is one every time. You're gonna find plenty of stuff there. Two is usually so stupid and so dumb. Subscriptions and just stuff that you don't need.

For example, somebody will sign up for like four different education things. It's like you don't need four.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: Pick the one that you're gonna follow. Yeah. Get your system. Pick your system and run it. Mean, like, I can't tell you the times I've shown up and they were like, well, I signed up for these four other things.

And it's like, I understand you wanna grow, but, like, just simplify in that department. The third one is usually, this is more on the brokerage side, I find it, than the investor side, but it can go both ways. It just, this is it goes both ways. Either unnecessary space or no space. It goes both ways.

In other words, either they will build these incredible, like, edifices of offices that are just absolutely gorgeous and not have the deals to support it. Mhmm. Or they give their team way too much leash and let them work virtually, and then they lose it in efficiencies. Mhmm. There's a sweet spot there.

Yeah. Where you're able to have everybody and hold them accountable to do their thing while also not spending, you know, building the Taj Mahal for everybody to sit and play in.

Speaker: How do you find the leaks in employee spend?

Speaker: You're not gonna like the answer because it's just painful and tedious to do. We we use process indicators. And so we'll go through a process map and we'll say, here's five to seven processes this person should be doing every day. And then I will put them under a process audit. So for thirty days, everybody needs to fill out this form.

Mhmm. That the process took place.

Speaker: And we went through that exercise. Yeah. I don't I mean It's not fun.

Speaker: Did the process take place? Usually, that's where you find it. Yeah. Usually, all of a sudden either it if they're if they're being honest, it turns red because they're not doing it and they're showing it. Or number two, people respect what you inspect.

Mhmm. And efficiency goes up because they know somebody's looking now. Mhmm. I can usually in a in a first implementation, in a first day, I can usually tell who's gonna be here when I come back ninety days later because you can find the people who like the fact that we're going to actually measure and

Speaker: hold accountable.

Speaker: Yeah. They love it. Like, they're like, this is the best thing ever. We'll actually see growth. And you'll have the other people who will, like, fight with me.

Mhmm. And I'm not trying to, like, I don't wanna flex on them, but, like, I've been doing this for a long time now. I I've I've this works. Like, I'm I'm not I'm not I'm not arguing with you whether it works or not. Like, this works, but they'll push back on you.

And you're like, okay. You I know what's going on here. Yeah. You don't want us to turn the lights on.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: You know

Speaker: what it looks like. Yeah. One of the I had a tremendous turnover, right, when we hired one particular coach. And I asked him, like, what happened? Like, I hire you.

And, like, I wasn't complaining, but, like, what happened?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: He's, like, well, there was nowhere safe to hide anymore. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that makes sense.

Speaker: That's usually, it's you turn the lights on. It's amazing how how much and, again, there are some times where I can tell somebody is just they've been there a long time. They're very set in their role. They're very good at what they do. They're very good and they'll be a little more resistant, but it's just it's got a different flavor to it than somebody who doesn't wanna be measured and doesn't wanna be and they have their way of doing things and, you know, they've got it figured out.

But and I always tell them the same thing. It's like, look, as long as the performance is there, I don't care how you got there. I mean, shoot. If you're getting me three contracts a week, I don't I don't care where you got them from. You could have stole them for all I can.

I'm just kidding. Not that. But, you know, I don't care where you got them from. Mhmm. When the performance lacks, then we need to figure out what's going on in this process.

Right. Right? I mean, if you have an acquisitions guy who can work ten hours a week and get three contracts, let him go. But but if he's not getting performance

Speaker: Let him go and get it.

Speaker: Let him go get it. Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah. I mean, if if you're not if you're not getting the performance, then we need to figure out what's going on.

Speaker: How many coaching? Yeah. And then the other part, the other problem is worse.

Speaker: Yeah. The worst problem is not we could cut the subscription, we could cut this thing, we cut that thing. The worst problem is not taking the spend that you have and executing it properly. Mhmm. And usually, more specifically to the top of the funnel in the marketing side.

I've had more teams where we'll sit and say, okay, great. The budget's $75 this month for marketing. It's $50. We'll get to the end of the month, and they'll have only spent 35. Okay.

So if we're making

Speaker: For some people, that sounds good.

Speaker: That's Why

Speaker: is that a mistake?

Speaker: Because if you ran it, if you would actually use that money, that 15,000 should have been 45,000 in profits. Mhmm. And you do that a couple of quarters in a row and all of a sudden, we get to the end of the year and we say, we didn't make any money when we were jumping for joy that we didn't overspend our marketing. Mhmm. You have to put gas in the car.

Yeah. If you don't put the gas in the car, you're not gonna get there. And so I'm just and whatever it is, but once you project the number and you say, look, we're gonna spend 50,000. You just need to be very careful that it actually gets spent.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: This is my challenge a lot. I love PPL. I there's some great PPL providers. They do great work. It is my challenge with PPL is I can't guarantee that they're gonna spend that money.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: Therefore, it's very difficult for me to forecast. Especially sales people who want those appointments. I want my appointments. I have to be able to forecast that I can get this guy those appointments. Yeah.

So I just gotta be I don't wanna I don't wanna be a PPL only company because I can't control my spend. Yeah. I gotta have enough things that I have control over. I've encouraged larger teams recently to even look into building out their own PPC.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: Because they can have more control over their spend sometimes. If you're new, don't do that. Get somebody to do it for you. Yeah. But if you could hire and afford a digital ad buyer to do it for you and you have more control over your spend, it's definitely worth looking at.

Yeah. Because if I get to the end of that month and we didn't spend that money, I mean, I again, I just I had this conversation recently with somebody. It was like they were about 10,000 short on their marketing spend. And wouldn't you know it, they were about 40,000 short on their revenue goal.

Speaker: Demon Lions is on this show. Okay. Kind of a big deal.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Right? It's 31 mil Yeah. Yeah. This year. And, yeah, they're like, we will spend and spend.

Like, that's, like, their core thing. And they only require a two x. Mhmm. Right? For every dollar I spend, they only need $2 to come back.

Sure. But and, like, for a lot of people, two to one sounds atrocious.

Speaker: If you get into the if you get into the SaaS space or anything with a reoccurring revenue model, point eight on your first on your first month is perfect. I was with somebody that two weeks ago. They're running a point a ROAS. But the lifetime value of the customer is twelve months or twenty four months, whatever the case might be. It all works out in the end, but you're gonna take a loss

Speaker: Oh, yeah.

Speaker: On them in the first month.

Speaker: But what what whereas going with that is, like, you have a fixed spend. Right. Your expenses are your expenses. Doesn't matter what's going on. Good month, bad month, your expenses are your expenses.

But if you're not spending the money to get the ROI required

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: Then you're not gonna cover Yes. Your expenses. Right.

Speaker: That's why I prefer percentage based budgeting when it comes to marketing. I want you to tell me how much revenue you need. Mhmm. And then depending on what my marketing mix is, about 15 to 20% of that number is the marketing budget. So if you say you wanna make a million dollars, okay, great.

I'm gonna need $200,000 to make that happen for

Speaker: you. Mhmm.

Speaker: So therefore, it's not how much does Steve have in his pocket today for marketing and where should we you know, how much do you that that I went to a a mastermind, and that seemed like a cool idea. We should do that. Mhmm. You know, it's budgeted. It's set aside.

This belongs to marketing, and they're gonna spend every dime of it. And if they don't spend every dime of it efficiently and effectively measuring it off of a G Net calculator or something effective, then we're not gonna hit our revenue goals. Our sales guys are gonna be unhappy because they're not getting good appointments. They're They're gonna leave, so now we gotta go find more salespeople. And it just it just destroys everything all the way down the funnel.

Speaker: So I need you to repeat, like, these last eight minutes tomorrow in our in our quarterly strategy meeting.

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. You're on it. I got it.

Speaker: Right. Because we have marketing who wants to spend. Yes. And operations that doesn't. Sure.

So we need to

Speaker: I mean, there's there's a rough rule in in marketing, which is 30% customer acquisition cost. Yeah. It costs 30% to acquire a customer based on the lifetime value of that customer. Right. So in in wholesaling, it's so easy because if you're doing a $30,000 assignment fee, 9,000 of that should be customer acquisition cost.

Right. Usually, it splits up like either 15%, marketing, 15% acquisitions agent Mhmm. Or some blend of that. Yeah. If they want great leads, awesome.

But you're getting 10%.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: If you're willing to just work with, you know, the garbage I can generate and you only want to spend 10%, that's fine. I can pay you a higher commission, but you're gonna be running a lot of garbage. Right. And and that's the part in wholesale in real estate, it's real simple. Like in this space, it's like 30% customer acquisition, 30% operations, 30% profit, 10% kind of fills in the gaps wherever you're weak at.

Yeah. And that's basically the business. And everybody's like, no, no, I have some special problem. If you actually broke it down, that's probably what you're spending.

Speaker: Yeah. Well, Dan Martel says that your business tastes like chicken. Yeah. Meaning, every business is is is the same. Like, I don't care how special you think your business is.

They all taste the same.

Speaker: If you're pulling a bigger than a 30% profit margin, either, a, you're not paying yourself, or b, you're extracting so much value from your customer before they ever get to the sale Mhmm. By not giving them good marketing and good sale and a good sales experience on the front end. You're extracting so much there that they hate you by the time they buy something, And there goes all your reviews and there goes your long term.

Speaker: That's terrifying. Yeah. If someone wanted to connect with you, what's the best way for them to connect with you?

Speaker: Yeah. In I'm on Instagram. Brand at brand mccurdy on Instagram. Sharper's sharperbusiness.com. There's a ton of free stuff there.

Risebusinessframework.com has tons of free research. We I think we just give it all away there. Yeah. There's a whole free course. There's books.

There's everything. You can have it all there. So we like to

Speaker: risebusinessframework.com. Framework.com. Gotcha. And there's the book too. Yeah.

Okay. Anything that we didn't touch on that we should touch on?

Speaker: No. I just encourage people. Gary just wrote a new book, and I think it would be super it's been super valuable. It's called, it's called the Mind to Rise. So it goes with the Rise business framework.

We create all these great systems and these things like that. And then we find people where it's the the limiting belief Yeah. Of a business owner. And so Gary wrote a book which is a parable. So it's kind of like a like a Patrick Lencioni kind of fable.

But it's really just kind of a an outpouring of his own heart Mhmm. Of kinda like the things he went through of sitting there thinking, like, how we gonna make payroll today and how we gonna do this. And he he wrote it into a story because it's probably too personal.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And so, I just encourage people, man, if you're struggling with, like, the mindset of being a business owner, it's a easy read. It's like a 150 pages. It's on Amazon. It's just a mind to rise. I would strongly encourage people to give it a read.

Speaker: Yeah. And it's just I've seen it over and over again. Like, the the thing that limits most people is not knowing. Yeah. It's the belief

Speaker: Yeah. On it. Absolutely.

Speaker: Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you so much Absolutely. Right now.

Speaker: Thanks, Steve.

Speaker: Thank you guys for watching. See you guys next time. I'll see you tomorrow. Alright. Shout out to Steve train.

Jump on the Steve train. Disrupt us.