Steve Richards: My why is to advance humanity, which I know sounds kinda crazy to some people. That matters a lot to me, but my what is to help business owners find their way to their to their best self. Because I know together will change a world, which advances humanity. So my level of alignment is to understand even at the very bottom of this lat ladder, I help you make your first good hire that works, frees you up just a little bit. And the next one and the next one, after two or three good hires, you start to have some free time and some free money.
And I know you'll go explore yourself like I did. When you find out who you are, you're gonna be an Avenger with me. Wanna go change the world. And so, you know, what I understand all of this is, yes, there's a cool platform, industry leading assessment, and all these other things that you can buy your time at. Yeah.
And we're creating freedom is what team architects does.
Steve Trang: Hey, everybody. Thank you for joining us for today's episode of disruptors. Today, we have Steve Richards with the team architects and Steve Flynn from Fishers, Indiana talk about how after processing 50,000 job applicants, you'd be surprised at what most business owners get wrong when it comes to hiring. Now, guys, I'm on a mission to create a 100 millionaires. The 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'll become one. And so, guys, if you're getting value, please hit that subscribe button. Share this episode. That way we can all grow together. You ready?
Yeah. Alright. So what was your life like right before you got into real estate?
Steve: Wow. Just send me the questions ahead of time.
Steve: Should've listened to all the episodes probably.
Steve: I was in I was in corporate America. I have, actually. It's been a while.
Steve: You know,
Steve: I was in corporate America Mhmm. And I was in tech. So I got out of college in the late nineties and was fortunate enough to be in the .com craze and the y two k stuff.
Steve: Fortunate, you say. Yeah. Okay. Pretty cool. Alright.
Steve: And I don't think you know, some people talk about getting bit by the entrepreneurial bug. I think we're just that way, and we uncover it based on we get exposed to it. And we're like, oh, that resonates with me. And other people are like, man, that's terrible. I I would never that's you're crazy.
Steve: Yeah. So
Steve: I was around all these dot coms and startups and just it was really cool to be on the tech side of that, but also just around venture capital and all those things. So I went through that. I didn't even know there was a recession because I was just young and
Steve: Mhmm.
Steve: Dumb coming out of school and and got And
Steve: you had no experience to compare it against?
Steve: Yeah. I had no idea. I'd I'm you know, now I look back on it. I'm like, that was a crazy the .com bust, and all these things were going on. But I was just growing through the tech curve.
Mhmm. And that was cool. And I had a startup that I was involved in. It was actually the first one. It was really cool.
It was called Momentum.
Steve: Okay.
Steve: Like, k n o w.
Steve: Okay.
Steve: And our tagline was, it's not what you know. Mhmm. And you could see two or three levels deep of your friends as friends. There was no Facebook then. There was no LinkedIn.
This was kinda LinkedIn before LinkedIn. And funny story, Friendster was the main app back then. They were getting, like, a million people a month. Long. Yeah.
And we were getting about 500 people, not 500,000. But we, you know, we got up close to 10,000 members, and classmates.com was our actual business model, was to have three percent pain and everybody else free. Yeah. And it was crazy because we were just in Boston together.
Steve: Mhmm.
Steve: While I was there, the last time I was in Boston, I spent time there. I was trying to raise money for that twenty four years ago. And I was reminded about sitting at the fleet center and having them look at us and say, hey. First of all, who's the 50 year old, 60 year old person that knows what they're doing with you dumb kids? Like, who's done this before?
Second of all, you're in Indiana, and you can't run a tech company there. If you're not here, you better be in Austin or really should be in San Francisco. Yeah. And the big kicker was that, literally, at this time, 2001, they were like, if you did and this was right after the World Train Center stuff too. It was crazy to fly into Boston, like, a month later.
But what's interesting, the guy looked at me and he said, literally, if you didn't know, ecommerce didn't work. Because the the .com busted just happened. He's like, the web is for sharing information, not for ecommerce. Mhmm. Didn't work.
Yeah. And he's like, this isn't gonna work. You're not gonna make money. We can't make a $100,000,000 company out of this. It's, I remember walking out of it and, like, man, he's right.
But, but yeah. So I was
Steve: for that time.
Steve: I was on the back end of that. So I was still in the tech business and consulting, but I was really frustrated. I thought, man, I gotta do something. And then just a friend of a friend I played basketball with at the gym was like, hey. My friend my, friend and my dad and I have spent $30 going to seminars to learn about real estate.
I was like, man, I'm looking for something to do because I just got out of this tech startup that's not gonna work. Mhmm. And, yeah, that was that was where it started.
Steve: It's, funny you mentioned that it's it's not that we get a bug. It's that we uncover it. So I remember before I went to graduate school, I was still trying to get a job, with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, which is really a good idea. Like, if you get the reason why I talk to all my brothers out of electrical engineering is because you need a master's degree to do anything, like, important with, with that degree. And so I remember looking at options.
Like, if I wanna build a startup, I can sell as an engineer. I need to get a PhD. And so that was the reason one of the main reasons why I went to go get a PhD. I didn't finish it. But I was looking as, like, if I wanna build a business I can sell, this is back early two thousands.
Yeah. Well, I need to get a PhD. Like, when you're when you said that, like, brought back that thought because I haven't had that thought twenty years.
Steve: I know. Crazy, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. It's, I I have a business degree.
Steve: Mhmm.
Steve: And, literally, the only couple classes that I I had all the test files because I was in a fraternity that had, like, all the test files. Of course. So the easiest classes to to cheat on were accounting and business law. Some of the standard business those are the only ones I needed.
Steve: Yeah. Those are the
Steve: ones I didn't learn anything, and everything else I learned didn't matter. All the management philosophy and all that stuff when they did have a good entrepreneurial program at the school I went to, but I didn't do that. But, yeah, you know, even being in corporate America, the only thing that I can say that I've learned was a lot of this what not to do. Right? But I will say this about business because I think today as we kinda slide and I'm sure I'll get more into my story about how I became a business owner rather than a hustler, which is a lot of people are trying to do.
But what's really interesting is so many people that become an entrepreneur are pushing to say, hey. I don't want corporate. I don't wanna be corporate. I don't wanna be but the reality is corporate America, there's stuff like bureaucracy and all these things we don't like, but 75% of it is actually really good.
Steve: Right?
Steve: Like, the structure, the meetings, the goals, like, APIs, or, you know, performance, p and l's. That's why you get a check mailed due every two or EFT due every two weeks.
Steve: Mhmm.
Steve: Like that. Alright. And then you you start your company, and then you're like, man, I hope you have a bunch of money, and I'm gonna buy another house or whatever, and you keep throwing money around. And, yeah, it's really interesting those things.
Steve: Those things are all important. But when you work at a corporation, they're not treated as important. I mean, I've sat in multiple meetings. It's like, why the hell am I here? Like, I'm just a grunt at this company.
My input is not valuable here. I'm just here to listen to you guys, like, your own honor. I remember I would get in trouble. Trouble is not the right word, but, you know, you get to look, where, like, they have these pep rallies. Right?
Like, work in an engineering company. I don't need a quarterly pep rally. Yeah. And they're like, alright. We're having a pep rally, and and I'm like, I don't wanna go.
My boss tells me, he goes, like, I don't wanna go. So he just, like, he just gives up. And then, like, the department manager, like, hey. Like, we're all having a party. Like, why, like, why not go?
I was like, I don't wanna go. And then the guy that runs the site is there. He's like, Steve, you're going. He's like, damn. Go.
But, like, that was a regular occurrence, and that was such a waste of resources. I can't imagine myself in the company I run today. Once a quarter, alright. We're gonna come in, and we're just gonna cheer and make everyone feel good regardless of how everything's been.
Steve: Yeah.
Steve: So yeah. So then what was the switch for you then that brought you onto the real estate site? So you you play basketball. Right? Right?
And then these guys said, hey. We invested 30 k in a course. What happened after that?
Steve: Yeah. So it's interesting, not knowing anything about real estate investing, and they're like, oh, literally, people will give you their house. I'm like, no. And they're like, no. They'll give you the deed.
And they're like, well, you have to have any money? And they're like, sometimes a little bit. And I'm like, so how much money do we need? And they're like, oh, you don't need your money. We We just run an ad in the newspaper.
This dates me. Mhmm.
Steve: You just
Steve: put an ad and saying you're willing to pay 15% for people that wanna, like, lend money, and people will call you.
Steve: Mhmm.
Steve: And then you put ads in the paper in the landlord section saying, hey. If you have a rental that you can't get rented and you want someone to buy it, like, we'll buy it. Mhmm. Literally, Ron LeGrand was teaching that kind of stuff, who we just saw, by the way. And the reason that resonated with me because I was reading Rich Dad Poor Dad in cash flow quadrant.
We just saw Kim Kiyosaki. We were just with her too. Right. And, these things were clicking, and I was like, alright. Let's let's try this.
And I got all these, three ring binders that had CDs to listen to and just pages, like, printed out and just he's like, here, and he brought all the stuff over to my house. And, it's really interesting, but, you know, I had already like I said and I really do believe you know, we come here with a mission, and we are somebody, and people say, I wanna try to figure out what my purpose is. It's a it's a remembering, You know, I think. You spend your life trying to remember things. And sometimes when things come to you, you're like, oh.
Steve: Mhmm. Yeah.
Steve: And it just make like, an epiphany. Right?
Steve: Right. Because you didn't learn it.
Steve: It's like it was already in there somewhere. Mhmm. It just uncovered, and you're like, oh, yeah. That's who I am. Right.
I already knew I was an entrepreneur, and I was gonna do my own thing. And I had this deep path I was gonna be on. And everything about structure in corporate America just felt wrong to me. Mhmm. So I don't know that it was real estate that was so sexy for me to dive into it, but it was an opportunity because I just stepped away from the by the way, that had been horrible.
Steve: What's that?
Steve: The startup I had in getting VC, selling my soul to a venture capital firm. You know what I mean? And, like, going down that path, I probably would have moved to San Francisco, and who knows what would have happened. Right? So I'm so glad that didn't work out.
You would
Steve: have been a hippie. Yeah. You would have turned into a hippie.
Steve: I am a hippie. Just I put a collared shirt on for your for your people today. You already know this.
Steve: That's So 15%, will pay 15%. Right? So now you're attracting people with money who wanna lend Yeah. And you're targeting landlords who wanna get rid of their properties. So right off the bat, there's three other people.
You start off as a four person partnership. Well,
Steve: actually, the reason that friend that I knew from the gym asked me because the other two guys weren't carrying their weight. So the two of us just started it, and all that stuff was cool. He already
Steve: he already shredded that weight.
Steve: All that stuff was cool, but, just like a good person who gets good information at these masterminds we go to all time, I went and did something different. So we just borrowed hard money, got realtors, hired outside contractors. We start flipping houses.
Steve: So their instructions are pretty clear.
Steve: Oh, yeah. You don't need any money. You can make a bunch of money wholesaling, and you can acquire a lot of wealth. And I'm like, why don't we just borrow money from hard money lenders and buy houses and use realtors?
Steve: Let's just do it our way.
Steve: Yeah. But, you know, on flipped this house on A and E made it look so easy at the time. So, yeah, we started doing that. And I would say, within the first for the first several months, we didn't we'd go out on Saturdays and look at 20 houses and make offers and not get any of them. Then I met some guys that did wholesaling, and that kinda opened up the door.
I was like, where do you get all these deals? And they're like, oh, we do marketing. You know, these aren't these aren't on the market. And my mind got blown open. And so within six months, we had five renovation projects going at a time, and we just never looked back.
And within within nine to twelve months, we had 12 rentals and some were duplexes, and, you know, we'd flip several houses going, and I quit my day job.
Steve: Where was this?
Steve: Where was this? Mhmm. In Indy. Central Indiana. All the all I've done 1,500 deals and involvement in Central Indiana.
Steve: Gotcha. Okay. So smooth sailing right off the bat.
Steve: Yeah. Yeah. You know, I didn't know any better. I felt like things were well, but you just don't know because I didn't understand the idea of KPIs back then. And so it's like you just roll with the punches.
Mhmm. You just roll with it. You have you're literally flying with no instruments.
Steve: Mhmm.
Steve: And it seems okay, but it's like when you get down with the flip, if I would have had all the receipts because I didn't have all of them. But if I would have added it up, I would have found out how little I actually made, but I'm like, alright. Go on to the next one. Onto the next one. And, honestly, you know, it was more of an education time for me, and money was fine.
But we we would make 10 to 20,000 every time we bought a rental because we would just finance it. You know? Because back then, this time was in 2004. Yeah. Going in 2005, that first year where I was fully in, I could borrow 10 to 20 percent more than I was buying the house for.
Mhmm. Not not a 120%, but we could go buy at 70¢ on the dollar and get a 90% loan and take the different cash out on purchase. And so I'm like, hey. We make let's call it $15 every time we buy a house. I'm not really that worried about the contractor running over on the rehabs.
Right? It was just really loose. And we learned a lot back then, but, yeah, it was definitely not it was definitely not till later when I started really tracking everything that I learned how bad it was.
Steve: So a little bit of bank balance management. Is there money in the bank account? Yes or no? Right? But you also it sounds like you figured out that if we just buy these properties, we're actually a very profitable company.
We just buy the properties and
Steve: just refi out of them. Yeah. For sure. And then we You were doing
Steve: the birthing way, way back. Yeah.
Steve: And then we learned the lesson of property management.
Steve: Mhmm.
Steve: Because you do wealth wise, you get that, but cash flow wise, you can get chewed up, right, if you don't have good management.
Steve: Yeah. What was that lesson? Or how did you learn that lesson?
Steve: Yeah. Not to manage properties yourself, which, again, was an interesting thing. And and, you know, and and you and I have been around so many masterminds and coaching, and I and I coach a lot of people now. And and I ran a RIA in our city for quite a while for seven years. I've been around so many people that fall into this happenstance.
They become a turnkey person or or they just manage their own rentals because they say things like, I don't trust anyone else to take care of it the way that I would. No. You're being cheap. You don't wanna pay the 10%. But Yeah.
If you have the right property manager, they will always have a return on that 10%. It will always be there. Yeah. Especially if you're new to the business, for you to think that you can manage your property, maybe one or two. Right.
Speaker 2: And
Steve: if it's not in the hood. But as soon as you have, you know, fifteen, twenty properties and you think you have enough going on that it's, like, seems like real money you're spending, that was a big lesson. And I don't regret and I never regret anything because everything's a lesson to me.
Steve: But I
Steve: can remember a very pivotal point where I made the decision to pull back from all the people helping us in management because we had 40 rentals. And I'm like, we have enough now to do this ourselves. And I brought it in house, which quickly within a year or two, we were wholesaling and doing other things. This was around 2,008. And, it was interesting because as soon as people heard that, they're like, oh, will you manage mine too?
And I'm like, that's perfect.
Steve: Mhmm.
Steve: Economy of scale. Alright. And what's even worse is that you don't know how bad you are at management, but you don't beat yourself up for not getting your reports done on time. And you don't ever ask yourself, where is that deposit being held? Do you really have a trust account with a brokerage, and are you licensed?
And, like, all these things don't happen until you start managing at a high level, and we eventually start managing hundreds of properties for other people. And then it became really real. And, yeah, that was a that was a several year lesson for us in how important it is.
Steve: For that? No.
Steve: That's good. I mean, trouble not legal trouble.
Steve: Well, I asked that because there are a lot, way more property managers than really should ever happen in the Phoenix market where, oh, a 100,000 disappeared. Oh, $300,000 missing. Right? Yeah. The commingling of funds, like because, like, commingling in the Arizona apartment real estate is the one thing they don't mess around with.
That's prison pretty quick. Wow. Right? So that's why I asked
Steve: if you get any kind
Steve: of trouble because, like, when you're managing on your own, I don't think that people are nefarious. I think they're just lousy in management. And very quickly, you don't know. It's like, oh, crap. I'm gonna have a few 100,000 a hole.
Because, like, I remember the guys that got, busted. They were in the suite above us, I believe, in. And never see the guy driving a nice car. Never see he was never flashy. It was just one day.
Oh, well, I guess he's going to prison Wow. For. And he was like it was like I can't remember if it was a 150 or 300,000, but you lost it. Yeah. Right?
So and those are people's security deposits Mhmm. And and and so on.
Steve: Yeah. At at scale, I mean, when a just even having the wrong insurance and some kind of big storm comes through
Steve: Mhmm.
Steve: And then you go out to do 50 roofs, or when in Indiana where bad weather hits, there would be time in the winter where we would have, you know, HVAC calls for heat. We might have 80 calls Right. In one night. Yeah. And we're buying 50 furnaces, and we're scrambling.
And everybody bills you thirty days later. You know? It's like, yeah. Just get it done, and you and then all of a sudden, you're trying to reconcile. Like, it you are actually, nailing it that it's almost never nefarious.
Mhmm. In this business, at least. In the wholesaling, and there's a lot turnkey, like, I've seen a lot of bad stuff, and I've seen people knowingly taking money from people. Right. But on the property management side, it's usually a realtor or a contractor or a wholesaler who was trying to do their thing who was like, oh, I can do more of my thing if I help with other parts of the business.
Right. So it's almost like a facilitator to like, for me, I wanted to wholesale. Ironically, I didn't know how to create a sales team or hire the right people. Right. So people are like, no one's buying the properties as quickly as I wanted, and they're like, hey.
What you you do a lot of rehabs for yourself. Can you just rehab them? I'm like, yeah. And then they're like, you manage for yourself. Can you also fix them up?
And then it became so much easier to sell if I just said, okay. It's renovated, rented, and I'm managing it. Buy mailbox money.
Steve: Right.
Steve: Right? And all of that happened for me because I did not understand how to build a sales team. All I ever wanna do back then was wholesale. I wanna buy build my own portfolio and generate a nice income off for flipping wholesale properties. Right.
And one thing led to another, and it's a slippery slope. And one day you wake up, and we're managing 350 homes, not units, like actual different houses all over the city. Yeah. We have a 100 clients around the world, many in Israel, California, and Hawaii where a lot of our business came from. We had 13 different property management agreements, and we had two different softwares we were running because one of the REITs we work for made us use a different software.
Oh. The complexity of trying to keep all that straight was just Yeah. But we never knowingly made a decision to allow that stuff. It's like you're just you're just you're just grabbing as you run, and you think you think you'll figure it out later, but you're just literally sealing yourself.
Steve: There's a a term in software. They call it technical debt. Mhmm. Just basically like, yeah. It's okay for now.
Okay. This is okay for now. Okay. We can do this for now. And it is a day of reckoning.
Because every time you do it, it's like, yes. It's okay for now. But that's just more you gotta tear down and unwind to do it right. And so it sounds like you kinda went into this thing. It's like, okay.
Alright. Now we need to do this. Right? Did you have that?
Steve: I did. And, actually, before I I'm gonna put a pin in that real quick and come back to it because I think this would be interesting for for everybody listening. It's something that I've become more aware of in my I'll be I'll be 50 in a couple months in my old age, my boomer age, you know, twenty whatever years later. The problem with what you just said is have you ever heard the concept of a complicated system versus a complex system? You
Steve: have explained it to me before, but I cannot do it justice.
Steve: Yeah. So just quickly, I can't remember I didn't remember if we talked about that, but a complicated system is like an airplane or a computer. Like, a part breaks, you just change the part. You you can just change the the RAM in your computer. Everything else works fine.
Steve: As long as it's not a Mac.
Steve: Exactly. I should've said PC. Yeah. Good point, though. Or a plane.
A sensor goes bad, and they just they're like, hey. We're waiting because we gotta change a sensor, and they check all that stuff. And you just change it in and out, and it can be It's plug and play. Yeah. Largely can just be fixed, and it doesn't affect anything else.
The problem with business and humans and many people will say the problem with business is that humans are involved, but it's both complicated systems. Each part affects the other part. So, like, you could have a mood issue because your gut biome was off because you took a, you had a, like, a infection you couldn't get rid of. Right? And you took an antibiotic three months ago, and you don't know why you're feeling, like, sluggish right now.
Steve: Right.
Steve: Has nothing to do with your mood. Right? And you're feeling that, but it's because of your gut biome, which was actually because you had a ear infection, you know, three months ago. And and to your point, every time in business when you say something like, I'll fix this later or I turn or worse yet, you just are negligent and don't get KPIs in place, so you just don't even
Steve: Mhmm.
Steve: Most people don't have KPIs because they don't want to see how bad it is. Right? But until you can lock in on it, you can't understand it. But every time you don't know what's going on over here, but you know there's a problem, it's actually affecting everything else. Yeah.
Just like your marriage would affect your business or your health affects your marriage or whatever. But I wanted to add that part because it's it it was a huge lesson for me whether I'm in business or I'm a real estate investor no matter what I'm doing, but to start to understand how the whole picture matters.
Steve: Mhmm.
Steve: Right? And like you said in that software example of, like, it's okay for now. So if I gain a little weight or what, it's okay for now, but now I'm not sleeping right. My my blood work is off. You know what I mean?
And then I'm sluggish at work, and I'm in a bad mood, and then I'm treating people bad and somebody quits. And then money gets tied at work. And now my wife's freaked out because she doesn't feel safe because I told her, hey. We're gonna be tied to money for a minute because I gotta get somebody higher. You know?
Mhmm. That stuff is so so interconnected. But,
Steve: alright. Well And then just to finalize the part about complicated versus complex. Can you explain what complicated is?
Steve: Oh, sorry. I didn't so complicated is the plane in the computer where the parts don't affect each other. Right. You're Interchangeable. Yeah.
Complex is what I just got done explaining where humans are complex, business is complex, and and and the keyword, if you guys are trying to remember this, is unintended consequences. Yeah. Yeah. So you don't you don't understand that. Like, hey.
I'm gonna swap something out over here Mhmm. And how it affects something over here. Unless you have KPIs, so you can say, hey. Wow. That's weird.
I changed this, and this changed
Steve: Right.
Steve: Because I'm tracking all of it.
Steve: Yeah. So you couldn't for example, if your wife is upset because your money is tight because you treat somebody bad, you couldn't just magically just replace that employee, and then everything is fine. Yeah. No. It's all interconnected.
So your day the did you have a day of reckoning?
Steve: Yeah. So, kind of. I was at Infusionsoft conference, InfusionCon, in 2013. Yeah. And I met a gal there who was talking to me about business.
She's like, what are you doing? I'm like, in real estate. She says, I'm in real estate, the retail side. And she's like, my mom and I, they own, like, 25 Keller Williams franchises around the country, and they have a 100 agents minimum because they don't go live until they have a 100 agents committed because that's where they start to make money. I was like, wait.
You have I'm trying to figure out how to run property management broke you know, I have, like, four part business that's not set up correctly. But I'm in one city with just four different businesses, but they're all related and connected. Mhmm. And she's like, yeah. We have 25 completely separate offices in different cities all over the country, and she lived in a city where there wasn't even one of the offices.
She lived in Denver.
Steve: Mhmm.
Steve: Their stuff is in Washington and California and Texas, and I'm like, how do you do she's like, I get reports every day. Mhmm. I look at the activity reports, and I look at the p and l. Mhmm. And I can just see things.
And I was like, man, that's crazy. She said, you know, there's a book that just came out. I've been really interested because it's, like, the first time I've heard anyone else who wrote a book the way that I think. She handed me actually, she showed me something with it was traction that she had from it, and then she got my address before we went home. And by the time I got home, she had shipped me a book, a copy of it.
So this was in March, 2013, I believe. And I read Traction. I read it all. I listened to it. Read it.
Went all the way through, like, two or three times. And I'm like, alright. My management team has to get on this. And the the reckoning was this wasn't a day, but what was interesting is we started meeting weekly to self implement. I I wouldn't even have known what a integrate like a implement a certified implementer was back then eleven years ago.
We literally couldn't get out of chapter one core values because they kept wanting to have these core values for all of our turnkey clients and all these different business divisions. And I'm like, those are dumb. I don't like any of them. I'm like they're like, what do you want? And I'm like, I believe in this, and I stand for this, and I'm against this.
And they're like, no one's gonna care
Steve: about that.
Steve: And I I remember flippantly saying one day, well, it just seems like I shouldn't be in any of these businesses because we can't agree. We can't even get past chapter one. Yeah. Yeah. And then within a few months, that's what happened.
I went and took stock. And you know what's interesting? I'll say this too. This is why masterminds and coaching is so powerful because you don't know what you don't know. So while my mind is getting blown with this book of, like, what it what I need to do to make this all work right
Steve: Yeah.
Steve: We took on a big REIT client because that was when REITs were really, you know, prevalent. Mhmm. And we helped, Progress Residential, if you know them from Phoenix, come into our market. We are very involved. We built we built their pricing model and their renovation.
We did a lot of their agency work. I was heavily involved, and they flew me out here to Scottsdale to meet with them. And so I got very on the inside of a $1,200,000,000 fund that had bought 14,000 houses in nine states in four years.
Steve: And
Steve: I would go to their office. They had, like, 30 people working there. They were all MBAs, and they all had people working for them. And they had property managers that worked for that reported to MBAs who all managed the property managers. I was like, wait.
You hired a property manager, but you have a manager to manage the manager? And everybody's got an MBA here. And I just was like, man. And the way they ran their meetings, we would go into meetings and sit for two hours and hope to get something done. Is an hour meeting lasted two hours and might it might like, sounds like your corporate experience.
Yes. I ran my business like what I saw from biz from the business world. Yeah. We had meetings with them. They were using Smartsheets, you know, like a online everything.
If we had a two if we had a 12:00 meeting on Tuesday, by twelve on Monday, you're required to update everything ahead of time. And when we got on, everyone was supposed to have already looked at it. Mhmm. Our meetings were twenty minutes. Yeah.
And it was only for exceptions. If it's on track, you don't talk about it.
Steve: Mhmm. And
Steve: if it's off track, you already have the solution based on the guidelines you agreed to to work with them.
Steve: Mhmm.
Steve: And you just get down. Okay. On track. On track. On off track.
What are we doing? Let's talk about what are we doing. Plan one and two is this. Okay. Do plan two.
Make plan one to back up and do this for two weeks and then prepare that if this doesn't work and make a little tweak. Okay. Next. We could talk about 60 vacancies in, like, eleven minutes. Mhmm.
Steve: And it
Steve: was crazy. And so that was the other part of the reckoning that you asked about was I got to see how a world class organization ran.
Steve: Mhmm.
Steve: And I'm looking at how I'm running this company. And when I took a step back, this is where a lot of things start happening for me. You know, we have a lot of deep conversations that we may not get into today about all the Ayahuasca and all the cool stuff. But I personally took stock, and I'm like, wait. I build a business that all my clients wanted and that I thought was cool because of, like, all these guys I follow and work with.
It's not what I want. Six month reckoning was me realizing I was way out of alignment with, like, who I am and what I wanted to do. And so, yeah, that was the biggest yeah. That was the yeah. I decided to start blowing that up, and, that was in 2014.
Steve: So so did you give it back to your partner?
Steve: You Yeah. We closed certain parts, closed the brokerage, and I just referred people out for property management. And I I had a six month beautiful exit planned, And it turned into, like, six days. As soon as our clients were like, what? We thought you're gonna manage our assets for you know, we invested in you, not the property, and it it got ugly for a while.
But, just because of the because of the dysfunction that we had. So, like, 50 of the properties out of the three fifty we're managing were joint ventures, and so, like, we had equitable interest in them. We had agreements where we would get we would guarantee a certain amount of rent. Say the rent was 800, but we would guarantee, like, $3.50 because we had a buffer for management, for reserve. Like, you know, we would meet with these clients and be like, yeah.
At a minimum, we can average this. We blend it in vacancy, but they're like, we need more we don't wanna get paid on this one, not on this one. We wanna hold you accountable, and I understand why they did it now because they protected themselves. But then you know? So we had so many agreements to unwind that it was really hard because it wasn't just like, oh, we're not gonna manage your property anymore.
I mean, it was almost like we were basically joint venture partners with half of our clients. You know? And, our businesses weren't running on separate employees and separate books. And it was really hard to say, hey. We're getting out of this, but not out of this because it was so intertwined that
Steve: The whole complex part.
Steve: Yeah. And, yeah, it was just it took me ten year it took me nine years to hit a 7 figure business the first time. And in year 10, I tried to I had I had to unwind that in, like, six months. But it took me ten years to, like, intricately make everything the wrong way. Right.
So then it was like, you know, just trying to, like, untie a huge knot. Mhmm.
Steve: And it
Steve: was like trying to pull pieces out. You know? And that's why it was so hard.
Steve: So what'd you do after that?
Steve: So I spent it was like a early midlife crisis, and I spent, I spent money with anyone that would help me figure out who I
Steve: am. Mhmm.
Steve: I literally had a nutritionist, a physical therapist. I had a counselor. I had a life coach. I had a Enneagram coach. I was going to guitar lessons with my daughter, and I'm going taking my son to golf lessons.
I'm doing it with him, you know, trying and I had a trainer in the gym, and I had gotten to you know, I stay around two hundred pounds, and I'm the strongest I've ever been. I'm in the best shape I've ever been. But I I got up to two forty five, and I was, like, 35% body fat. You know? And I just I was asleep at the wheel.
And, I just I got on peptides, and I got in the gym, and I, you know, I'm going to therapy. I'm learning about wounding and, like, you know, childhood wounds and Yeah. And triggering and all these things. And I just I dug in, and I saw most of that year, I made money by just selling off some houses I own free and clear. You know?
Like, nicer houses, and I finished some projects. But largely from the 2014 into '20, the end to the fourth quarter or through the third quarter twenty fifteen. I was just trying to find myself.
Steve: Yeah. So you're but you were able to, like you're saying, with the assets, you go on this journey, figure yourself. Not like people
Steve: have It was hard.
Steve: It was hard. Opportunity. Like, alright. I'm gonna take some time to really learn about myself. Mhmm.
Because we always have to, like, either pay some bills or deal with other fires or whatever.
Steve: I had all that too, though. Yeah. But, you know, I don't know I don't on the audience, I don't know how well everybody relates to this. But when you're entrepreneurial and you uncover that and you get the right, like I say, coaching, but you get the right tutelage, which I had from being in some different groups and being around some really great people, you are an ATM. You can go punch your code.
It's an unlimited ATM. And, I mean, I faced some pretty crazy things at that time, but I also had a lead that I wasn't gonna touch with a 10 foot pole. That was a hard money lender out of North Carolina that had loan money to a guy I know. And they had 50 houses in Indiana, and they were like, it's a one off deal. We should have never done it.
Please. I'm like, package deals are such a colossal waste of time usually. And it's 50 houses. We don't have keys to any of them. I think 13 are rented.
We don't know. We just need any. Will you please help? They were asking me. I'm like I'm like, no.
Just stay away for and then at at one of the toughest points, during that year when we were financially hit hard and, blowing money, just 6 figures going out at a time to, like, clean things up and do things, I literally spent four months. I went to 50 houses by myself. I created 50 renovation budgets. I met with 13 tenants. I signed 13 leases.
I got 50 comps. I got 50 assessed values. I created tax records for I put a whole matrix together. I I put the whole portfolio together. I would not have done that if I didn't have the skills I had.
And, of course, I had and they were a 18 they were a call on our 800 number off of our website. And I blew it off for, like, a few months, and then I called them back. I'm like, you still got those properties? They're like, yes, please. And it was with the when I needed it the most, my back was against the wall.
I was able to sell those, and I sold, four or 37 of them for roughly what I was paying for all 50. K. $20 more. Mhmm.
Steve: So
Steve: there's only $20 to make selling 37 properties.
Steve: Mhmm.
Steve: But I did two things.
Steve: I
Steve: mean, obviously, I kept 13 properties. Right. So I was eight people kept looking at the whole portfolio, offering me what I had it for, a contract, which happens all the time. Right?
Steve: Right.
Steve: It's very it's weird because the seller knows what it's worth, the buyer knows, and they're both offering the same. Mhmm. Happens all the time. You get squeezed out as a wholesaler. Yeah.
And I was like, well, tell me the problem, and I really got deep with everybody. And I knew construction better than anyone I was trying to buy this package out because I'd I'd renovated at that time. I'd already done 800 or 700 of the fifteen hour deals I had done. And so I I would sit down with everybody, and I realized, like, nine of the 13 properties are a pain. And four of them are in regentrifying areas, and they don't know what they are because they're valuing them so low.
Mhmm. And they were small pockets where, fed money was going into. So they were income restricted sales.
Steve: Mhmm.
Steve: So there was brand new homes selling for really, really cheap. And I knew that if you came in with a market rate house because those were income restricted buyers, so they couldn't sell it, but they were brand new homes that probably cost 200 to build, and they were selling for $100.
Steve: Right.
Steve: So the comps didn't look that great. But I knew if I came in with a renovated home, I could sell for $1.75, not 200. So I was able to find four that I knew had a lot of value that were just under the radar, and the other nine, they were just throw ins. They were screwing the deal up. Yeah.
They were worth $5. That's under $45,000, which is a good amount of money to just for nine turds.
Steve: Yeah.
Steve: So, you know, it's funny. I know we're gonna talk about team architects today, but, like and hiring and all these things. But but this was an interesting time for me to really start to understand the business and the roles we all play and how you know what I mean? And I I actually put my hat on, and I did the project management role. I did the salesman role.
I did the dispo role, and I went and I and it and I had to do all of it for the first time in many years because every my team was gone. Right? But, anyway, to finish that, I was able to do a couple of things, which I think are just cool. One is sell that portfolio so there was a chunk of money at the end, small chunk, then have these other four houses I was able to, like, renovate a couple and wholesale a couple, then have these nine houses that we dumped. But the other thing was I got prorated taxes on 50 properties from the seller, and I did not pass that through to the buyer.
I signed a deal for no prorated taxes. And so that was an extra, like, almost $20,000 at closing. We just kept the kept the prorated prorations. But you're right. But I don't want anyone to think that I was like, my business sucked, but I just went in I just dipped into my portfolio of a $100,000,000 of assets and
Steve: sold a
Steve: couple things off. I had my back was against the wall, and that's when we do some of our best work.
Steve: Absolutely. I heard recently, we don't learn from successes. We only learn from failures.
Steve: Heard that too.
Steve: Yeah. From adversity. So then when did team architects come around?
Steve: Yeah. So 2015, I really came back with and then this time, I was like, I'm look. I'm gonna wholesale. Mhmm. And I'm not gonna fall into this.
I'm just really in wholesale. And so
Steve: I'm gonna focus this time.
Steve: Yeah. Well, I'm gonna yeah. When things don't work, I'm gonna use it as a learning lesson instead of a sign to move on to something else, which is what you just said. And I learned from all those different things in the past. And so I I decided then I needed to build a better team because that's what was, like when I was looking at Progress Residential over here, my old business, when I got to see how a world class organization ran, that was the big difference is they had very legitimate people who could really handle what they were supposed to handle, but they all knew exactly what they were supposed to do.
Right? And they all had their own jobs. They stayed in their lanes. So I set that out in 2015. And so, within within a year and a half, I largely removed myself out of the day to day.
Within a couple years, I'd basically been out of the day to day. By 2017, going into 2018, I was more in the management of it. And by 2018, three years in, took me nine years at seven figures the first time. And then at that point in time, we were well into the seven figures and, deals we'd done, and I was largely not having to be at the office. So that was cool, and I started, you know, coaching more.
And I'd I'd been in consulting when I got out of college back in '98, ninety nine, two thousand. So it's funny how I look through these threads. We can connect these dots like Steve Jobs' style looking backwards. I ran for seven years in between there, and I'm coaching everyone. I just wasn't charging for it.
You know? A lot of people in in in the know me. And, I spent a lot of time doing that. And I just, that really played into, you know, understanding people too. Right?
And so, like, a lot of people hire people and look at them as, like, almost a necessary evil to have employees, but learning how to coach Mhmm. Is important for your team even if you're not a outside paid coach, but, like, you need to coach your team. And so when we got into, you know, by twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, I I learned one one of the biggest moves was we started using we went from disk for a really hot minute to predictive index
Steve: Yeah.
Steve: Which I know you like. Yep. It was game changing for us. But I had to cobble together the Cognition. It's a little more integrated with PI now.
And I also didn't have a good avatar, so I would look at it, and I'd be like, oh, this is so helpful, but it's a backwards z. Mhmm. Well, I need a skinny z, not a y this guy's a wide z. And, like, interpretation was still a bit but it changed the game for us. Like, literally changed the game to not just use personality, but also cognition traits.
Steve: Mhmm.
Steve: And then we started learning other lessons about managing and KPIs, and I became like like, like, it's my love language. I know it's kinda weird, but I see zeros and ones everywhere.
Steve: It's fascinating once once you understand this stuff because, like, I'm more, like, at my first brokerage, there was this guy who seemed pretty smart.
Steve: Alright?
Steve: Seemed pretty smart. Mhmm. And he's very philosophical, studies studies philosophy for fun. But, like, he seemed really intelligent, but he would just lose his shit at, like, the most random thing. And I couldn't understand it.
It's like, doesn't he understand that every time he flies off the handle, he's losing business? Right? Like, he can't lead an organization if you're unstable. Letting your team know that you're smarter than them definitely isn't inspiring. And then, like, I get it.
I have a different relationship with realtors. You know, I look at us, We're all God's special children. Right? Yeah. And so, like, the way he would treat these realtors, like like, he he's literally capping his income potential because of how he treats other people.
And I was like, this guy's so smart. Like, why doesn't he get it? And now I know. Alright. You understand the personalities, how we're wired, how we show up.
Like, some people are just quicker to anger. So some people just snap. So, empathy or or or EQ isn't for everybody.
Steve: 100%. And it's interesting because when if you're put into the wrong put the wrong butt in the wrong seat, it'll magnify any personality conflicts that you already have Yeah. Because you're also and then there's all these other things that come into play. Like, do you are you a core values match or culture match in the office? So you could be a good fit personality wise, but if you're not a culture match, there's abrasive, like, friction there.
Right? And so it almost eliminates the personality traits you have in your favor
Steve: Mhmm.
Steve: Because you're rubbing everybody the wrong way on the intangibles. Or the tangibles might be, yeah, you got a great personality set of traits, but you've never done this before. You're in a new job. You don't know what you're doing versus somebody who's not really their brain isn't really lined up to be good at it. Mhmm.
Steve: But
Steve: they've been doing it for fifteen years.
Steve: Yeah.
Steve: If I need production tomorrow, I'm hiring the person that's fifteen years of doing it. Mhmm. Even though their ceiling is much lower. Right. They don't have as much potential, but their basement is a lot higher just because they know the vernacular, and they they've they've seen the ball go through the hoop, and they're willing to show up and do it.
So we learned some interesting stuff because we overcorrected. When I learned about personality tests, we went to, like, cool. Ram everybody that applies through this and whoever scores will hire the first one. And we would get terrible culture matches. Like, oh, we gotta put culture in.
And then later, we're like, okay. They're a perfect culture fit, and they're a perfect personality fit, and cognition became so important. We can talk about that in a minute. But then we learned about skills and experience. You just can't you don't you can go with just this piece of culture fit and personality and cognition, but you have to be willing to train them.
And if you're not good at training, managing class training. Yeah. It's not gonna work. And so if you're not good at managing and training, you need to hire someone that's already gone through that at another job. So much to take into consideration, but this is what's at stake is that do you remember I don't remember the guy's name.
I was I was just using this analogy at one of the events you and I were together. Remember the guy on Andy Griffith? He's like the town drunk.
Steve: I don't remember the guy's name, but yes.
Steve: You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. He lets himself into the jail. Mhmm. Yeah.
He just comes in. Mhmm. He pulls it shut. He reaches out, grabs a key, he locks it, he hangs the key up, and then he lays Yeah. Goes to bed.
That jail is the business that most people create. Literally locked themselves into that. Right? And we all set out to be free, and it's almost anything but that is what happens. But we feel better because we're we're imprisoned in our own terms.
Feels better. But the reality is
Steve: Yeah. Like, we are our own worst boss, but at least we're the boss.
Steve: Yeah. 100%. So I'm not saying one's better than the other, but the reality is the the very freedom we want in a business requires scale, not growth. Mhmm. Scale well, they they go to they're they're related to each other, but they're different.
So many people who are, like, in their first couple years are like, I'm scaling my business, and I'm like, no. You you're scaling a pile of crap. Like, literally, if you scale what you have that's not fixed, not optimized, and innovated, and you're you're gonna this little nick that's bothering you right now is gonna turn into a gaping gash bleeding you out later. And so you can scale without being organized, but you just scale all your problems. Right?
And you don't know how big your problems are when you're doing a small volume of of business. And so we just learned that the only way to become free is to have a team, is for leverage. And the only way to have a team that you can trust and get away from is to hire the right people. And and I know we're gonna get more into this, but I'll just add I feel it's a good time to add this is that most entrepreneurs are really bad at managing and training. But think about this.
If you hire someone who's already got the skill set and their brainpower is already designed to be good at this job and they're a culture fit and you kinda halfway train them,
Steve: they're
Steve: gonna be like, yeah. That makes sense. That's what I did in my last job. And then when you send them out to do it, your management is, like, high fiving them for doing a good because they're kinda good at it. Right.
So it's like all these things cascade like dominoes. Like, if we start with the wrong hire, everything else is harder.
Steve: Yeah. So let's, let's dive a little bit deeper into that. Yep. So but before we continue, so you mentioned, you know, like, the baseline experience. Right?
So I was, consulting. So I have, at one person, I do one on one coaching. Like, I'm I I I've never known one on one coaching. This guy's like the man's. It was like, okay.
Like, we'll work this out. So, his team has, they're interviewing somebody, and this person's door to door sales, pest control for the last four years, success successful doing pest control and pest control sales. Right? And they're like, we're not his his his profile doesn't look good. Yeah.
It doesn't look good, but his results have been there. Mhmm. So then I asked him, like, well, how's the culture fit? How's the core values? Like, he's a good fit.
So then what do we know here? You've got a solid baseline. I wouldn't he's not going to the all star game.
Steve: Yep.
Steve: But he's gonna be steady Eddie. So all we're looking for here, if the guys did door to door sales successfully for four years, let's just look for red flags for reasons not to hire him. Yep. And that's it. Let's not, like, disqualify it because he doesn't have great potential because the guy is gonna perform.
He doesn't get you results month in, month out. He just may never be an all star.
Speaker: I'm filming this video for the man himself, mister Ian Ross. The guy crush is the guy's the best person in sales I've ever seen. I've invested elsewhere and haven't got the same results. I've gone from being a seller making 5 k a month to being a hybrid role making 11 k a month to now be four months down the line from 5 k to on a closing opportunity, inbound, full calendar with the best opportunity, the best offer in my space. OTE is around 20 k a month from month two.
So I've gone from 5 k to 20 k. If that's not a return on your investment,
Steve: I don't know what it is, man.
Steve: If you're
Speaker: a salesperson and you don't invest in sales training, you're gonna get left behind because your job is to be better at sales, and sales training directly makes you more money. My name is Lance Buchanan. I've recently switched in session to gain a loss. Those conversations with me has made me $50,000 in the past two deals that I've had. I was able to renegotiate, go back and renegotiate the original purchase price on one deal, and I say $40,000 and I got another $10,000 off my other deals.
Call me in, give me a chance,
Steve: you won't be ready. If you like what
Speaker 3: you just heard and you'd like to have similar types of results, similar success, text close, 0, to 33777, and we'll see if you qualify to join Advanced Sales Mastery. We are taking people from good. This may never be an
Steve: all star. 100%. I completely agree. So it's like what you just said kind of summed up is in the middle, we're looking at personality and cognition traits and things like that that don't largely change
Steve: Mhmm. Who you are unless you unless there's a traumatic effect. Like Yep. Who you are.
Steve: Or and or slowly shifts over time.
Steve: Yeah.
Steve: All the way over here, we have these tangible things, which are the skills and experiences. It's your resume. These are tangible assets that you have. Track record. Yep.
And over here on the other end, we have intangibles, which are your work ethic, your desire, how interested you are in the in in the industry, core values. So, largely, a really good leader can affect this. You can motivate someone.
Steve: Everyone's listening. The intangibles.
Steve: The intangibles can be effect yes. Sorry. I kept thinking of YouTube. The intangibles can be affected by great leadership, and the tangibles can be affected by good management and training. This can't be changed.
And this sets in the middle, the the my the the personality and cognition, it sets the bar for how high or how low things can be. Right? So this gauges the potential of where we're gonna be. And then these two, largely on the tangibles and intangibles are gonna is how it plays out is gonna be based on these, but I can't go to battle without two of the three. Yeah.
I would like to have all three.
Steve: Perfect. Ideal. All three.
Steve: But if I don't have two of the three, I stack the deck against myself
Steve: Mhmm.
Steve: And it's likely not to work.
Steve: Right. So intangibles, which is culture or values, tangibles, which can be learned or is a skill that can be developed, and then who you are. And you are who you are. Yep. Which it could drift over time.
But for the most part, if they took the test today, they're gonna show up the same way in about a year approximately.
Steve: Yep. And that stuff, I like to say it's just how your brain works.
Steve: Mhmm.
Steve: How you're wired. The way you're wired is in the is kind of the thing we talked about being in the middle. And I would add to the intangibles that it's not just core values. It's also your work ethic and your motivation, which Wayne's more core values tend to stay for periods of time because they're more instilled in you. But your motivation, inspiration, right, and your work ethic can actually fluctuate a lot more just based on how your how your personal life's going.
Steve: Yeah.
Steve: Right? You can have really good core value matches. If you're just super tired because you're, like, have a new baby at home and your employees, like, tired when they come in, their work ethic might slack. Right? And so that's all in the intangible bucket.
Gotcha.
Steve: And then, I took this test, or, I think executive assist. How do I do what I would you hire me for executive assistant?
Steve: You failed. We don't say pass fail, but you can take the assess our our team architects, we call it the TA 12 because it's 12 trades. But you take it once, and then we apply those to any role. We happen to do a few for you. Some scored really well, by the way.
Well, if we need Steve's ego to get boosted, we can show you how well he scored for sales manager, CEO, all those kinds of things. But, yeah, for administrative assistant, I think he you remember, is it 11 or 13?
Steve: Was like a four or a seven.
Steve: It was bad Yeah. On a on a 100 system. So anything under 80, you know, 70 is, like, where we're looking to baseline or above. And, yeah, and you were, like, around single digits.
Steve: Yeah.
Steve: So you should not be in a minute anything administrative should not be in your lap. Yeah.
Steve: And we want we want something we want the the i's dotted and the t's crossed. I can do it, like, until lunch on my first day. I think that's about as far as I can go.
Steve: Well, that's a good point. I'll make a quick note on that. Because some people will use our assessment, and they'll literally say, hey. I've got this guy that's been doing this job really well for five years, and he take he takes our assessment and says he's a 10. And they're like, I don't trust the assessment anymore.
The reality is we just talked about how complex, complicated this system is. Right? The intangibles, tangibles. And one thing that we look at is, we've done a lot of research around this. There is no no one has taken the t a 12 and gave it and given it to everyone in America, so I don't have the actual results for this.
But I I largely believe if every working adult in the country took this, at least fifty percent of them would score well below the mark where we wouldn't even interview them for the job they're in. Yeah. Not only because they just randomly got into a job, but even if they started in a job or career where they were a good fit, if you understand the Peter principle where people get promoted until at some point they're no longer good at what they do, they don't get demoted back to where they were good. They change jobs, and now their resume says they're at this level, so they stay at this level. And so the reality is, I would say that most people this is two interesting things if anybody take because I anybody takes this assessment because I think we're gonna give them a way to to to do that here today.
But if if you don't score well, you're normal. Right? Because it's normal for people to have a job they don't like or not good at naturally.
Steve: And ask corporate America.
Steve: But they can still get work done. Right. But they're going against the grain, and it wears you out when you go home.
Steve: It pays the bills. Those are the things you say. Right? You were working a job that you don't love. Right?
You do it. You're competent. You're not rewarded. You're not waking up jumping out of bed to go do this work. It pays the bills.
And there's nothing wrong with that. Yep. Right? There's a lot of honor. Like, you gotta take care of your family.
You gotta take care of your kids. You gotta do what you gotta do. Right? But, like, there's nothing wrong with that. We're just merely suggesting that a likelihood that you're sitting in a job that you absolutely love
Steve: And you're good at.
Steve: That you're excellent at, not above It
Steve: yeah. It's probably way lower than that. And I would suggest if you guys are trying to understand what we're talking about here, like, in the hot seat rooms at the master one of the master rooms we were just at Mhmm. I can go all day.
Steve: I
Steve: don't need a pee break.
Steve: The boardroom. Yeah.
Steve: The boardroom. I don't need a pee break. I don't need water. I'm in a room with 7 and 8 figure earners who have real problems, and we're and I'm coaching them. Yeah.
Like, I'm getting energy from that because that's exactly who I am, and it's in perfect alignment with me. And when you're out of alignment, which is what we're talking about, where your traits aren't a great match, which is most of America and the job they're in, It's when it drains you and you you limp into Friday and you barely recharge on the weekend, and then you have a black cloud on Monday where it saps the life out of you because you're going against your natural tendency.
Steve: Look in the clock. Network. See, it's tick Yeah. Tick. Going to happy hour.
Steve: But,
Steve: yeah, like, for me, I can sit in a hot seat room all day every day. I love it because it fulfills for me two desires. A, help somebody. I took working genius recently. Right?
There's two things that I'm good at according to working genius. Patrick Lenciono is not my words. Right? Invention. You give me some crazy situation here, I can tell you exactly how to solve it.
Right? Yeah. That is just pulled out of thin air. Another one's the sermon. I could tell you what you why what you just said is a stupid idea very quickly.
Those are the two things. The reason why I've been asked to leave masterminds. Right? And so when I sit in
Steve: Sounds like a sore subject there.
Steve: It's a it's a funny subject. But when I I can sit in a hossie all day because I get to do these two things I love the most. Right? Two of the a few things. Right?
I get to learn. I get to help somebody, and I get to coach them out of a bad situation before they get into that situation. This fills my cup all day every day. But if I had to organize the event, if I had to call people, it's like, hey. Did you get checked in?
Did you get your badges? Yep. Right? Hey. We noticed you haven't filled out the form.
What's going on? My god. I would lose my mind.
Steve: Yeah. 100%. Now think take so take that and apply it to your business and say, hey. If I have to hire an acquisition agent who dreads
Steve: calling people Mhmm. Because look at the phone before the call button.
Steve: And, yeah, and they don't wanna do it, and you're asking them to call people all day long.
Steve: 80, a 100 dials a day.
Steve: Yeah. Versus you're talking to someone who can't wait to talk to the next person because optimistically and people orientatedly
Steve: The next sale's on the phone.
Steve: They're they're just so happy, not only to maybe get the next sale, but also just to see how cool this person is.
Steve: Mhmm.
Steve: Like, how different is that Right. When you're hiring? Just what you talked about with the mastermind example, but but if you could apply that same thing to the people that so you don't hire your cousin's boyfriend's sister. Right? Because that comes in, and they probably don't match any of the three buckets.
Right. The only bucket they matched was the availability. And so
Steve: That's the Mona and Lucas, Monica Lewinsky model.
Steve: Exactly.
Steve: Who is available? So, you mentioned a Peter Principle. Yep. I heard this recently, and there this is the idea. I got a sales team.
I need a sales manager. The guy's like, oh, no problem. Take one of your best sales guys, give them an override. Rather, woah. Woah.
Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah.
Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Hang on.
Hang on. Hang on. How about discernment? Like, hey. Let me tell you why this is a bad idea.
Peter principle, what you just said. And what you alluded to, which I hadn't heard before is, like, once you promoted them as sales manager, they're gonna be sales manager everywhere they go, and now they're doomed for failure for the rest of their career. But the way I was able to illustrate and, like, talk them off as a legislator, like, alright. Let me ask you this. Would you, Tom Brady, think of his career?
Will you take Tom Brady and it's like, hey. You're an excellent quarterback. Let's put you in the quarterbacks coach seat, and you're just gonna coach the backups. Would you ever do that? Yeah.
Steve: No way.
Steve: Why do we do this to salespeople? It's mind blowing. So, anyway, so I got a chance. So I was in Boston for, two, three days. I had to hang out with you, and I got to hang out with you a couple more days on a family mastermind in Tampa before the hurricane.
Steve: We both barely got out of lunch. Yeah.
Steve: So one thing that I was thoroughly impressed with was anytime someone says, I need help with hiring, they're like, oh, team architects. I need help with hiring. Oh, team architects. It came up over and over and over again. What's Team Architect?
Steve: Yeah. So it's a company that we've started to solve the problem we were just talking about. So in my own when I talked about what what I went through in the first ten years of business, I was an entrepreneur who was self employed, who hired a lot of people. Right? And that pivot that I learned about bringing the right people in at the right time with the right training became so important that when I saw the second business take off with just within the first year or two, I realized that was the difference.
And team architects was really born at that point in time in concept, not as a business, but as a theory that we used to escape scale a business and escape the day to day. And so, actually, in '20 it was it was 2020 in February. So just a little about four and a half years ago, I was sitting at a boardroom event, and, I was talking to the COO, Eddie, who helps Kent Clotheer run all those companies. And Eddie and I were talking about, like, the the other the pandemic was just like we were in Nashville together. Terrible tornado hit.
It was really sad. And we were like, this is terrible, but I think I heard about this little flu bug that might might hit America. Yeah. And they're like, they said by April, like, a lot of people might get sick. You know, we had no idea it was about to happen.
But it was funny. We're, talking about the real we're like, well, is this really gonna hit? That was the talk in February. And we were like, the real pandemic or the real epidemic is entrepreneurs hiring their, again, random people off the street and not knowing how to we were talking about you know how those room awards work at Boardroom.
Steve: I
Steve: just won a room award, and we were talking about why. And part of it was because how quickly I'd this new business took off. Mhmm. And it was the people. People passed me, what is it?
I got the right butts in the right seats. Right. Right? And so that it was born at that point in time. And, interestingly enough, I was a PI guy back then too.
And I don't I don't have problems with it, but it but it is a six minute test where you just check box and boxes. Right? And so we set out to try to find a deeper solution, and we realized that PI, DISC, Colby I mean, name all of Myers Briggs. Name all of them. They're usually four personality traits.
Yeah. There's a lot more nuance and detail and personality than that, but they aggregate things.
Steve: Mhmm.
Steve: And so we set out to create a better mousetrap. That's when the t a 12 was born is we have eight personality traits, but we incorporated the four cognition traits, which for those of you guys listening that don't know what that is, it's really more how you perceive your environment. It's problem solving. It's how well you communicate. It's how creative you are.
It's how quickly you learn. None of that has anything to do with personality.
Steve: Alright.
Steve: So I could be an extroverted, assertive person, and the disc tells me I should be good at sales. But if I'm lousy at pro solving problems, I don't communicate at a high level, I don't learn quickly, and I'm not creative, I can't use any I can't use those skills. Mhmm. I go out in a in a in a seller in a house can beat me quickly with an objection.
Steve: Yeah.
Steve: And so we set out to create this better mousetrap, and that's what we that's what we did for the next year and a half was really roll that out. It was revolutionary for I know when you saw it, there's nothing else like that, what we have. Sure. And the way that we can get so in-depth and take one time take this test, it is forty five minutes. So that's but it's very in-depth, but then we can compare it against any job.
So we can compare you against any role. And the bigger part was that we have a behavioral sciences company that's that we have a relationship with who tells us, hey. Give us a job description, and we'll create the ideal trades. Mhmm. So we create the unicorn avatar of the best transaction coordinator, of the best acquisition, or the best COO.
A candidate gets their 12 traits assessed, and then we overlay them to see how well they fit. Yeah. And it was very powerful, but I'll tell you, the the back half of where we're at now was after the first year and a half, we saw people still losing It would make a a hire that's, like, a 99% fit. You know? And we're like, three months later, the person's gone, and we're like, what happened?
You know, we started we did we hired a lot of people in that first year and a half. We started exit interviewing everyone that was trying to rehire a position in under six months. And we found there was candidate selection, which is what we are really good at helping them do. There was only one of five total things. And there was four other main issues that were killing them that had nothing to do with placing in fact, when you place a really good person in, the stakes are really high.
Steve: Yeah.
Steve: You expect a lot. So it makes everything else harder and just quickly without, you know, going into a master class on this. But it the the very number one thing, and these all compound on each other, was not having the right job description built. AKA and I know half of you guys listening to this have done this. I hired a closer, and I didn't have my mark my direct mail wasn't going out yet, so I put them on the dialer to to have them prospect.
That is two different jobs. Yeah. Or my transaction coordinator is already looking at all the contracts, so I just had them doing dispo. And we were, like, listening to what these people were saying because we're like, walk us through what happened. That was the first biggest issue is that there was a fuzzy or moving target on what we're looking for.
And when it came into focus for a second, we nailed it. They made a great hire, and then the target is moving. So they no longer fit well. So they don't stay. The other couple things, in short, are after you'd you know, you get the right target, which is job descriptions, having that nailed down, then candidate selection is important.
Interestingly enough, in the beginning, we thought our test was a silver bullet. I didn't know the three categories. It's one of three categories. So just because they score 99, if they're a nine yeah. They're a nine 19 year old kid who's never had a job in the corporate world
Steve: Mhmm.
Steve: And their bad work ethic, terrible core value match, do not hire that person just because our assessment score them
Steve: well. Right.
Steve: Then the next three things, the third thing that was the the next cascading issue was onboarding and training, which is obviously with you. You understand that with the sales training you do. Like, people that are good at hustling and doing something themself, the better they are at doing it, usually, the worse they are at teaching someone else how to do it.
Steve: It's
Steve: like why Michael Jordan, as a player, was one of the best players, if not the best player. And as an owner and a GM, he had the worst franchise or forced team, you know, in the league for twenty years. Yeah. The last two pieces were interesting too because then we saw a big another big drop off with management. So, largely, when results weren't there, people didn't know how to correct that behavior.
And then lastly, this was the least of the issues, but it's leadership. Ironically, a lot of entrepreneurs that are visionary can inspire and motivate people. So this actually propped up some of those other issues where we would help them make a great hire, and they're not a bad leader because they're pretty inspiring because they're excited about what they do. It almost blinded the rest of it, but so we set out over the last, few years now. We have a platform.
So team architects now has assessments for any position that you could ever think of. And if we don't have it, we can make it within two days. It's a subscription based service where you have unlimited use of all assessments, but, also, we have training videos. We have document templates like job descriptions or job ads or or ninety day evaluation templates. So we have these HR templates that you need.
We have training videos to explain how those work, and we have bimonthly executive coaching, which is kinda like having an, you know, COO on staff. Twice a month, you can check-in and get the strategic advice. And there's a customer success team that is, you know, almost like a fractional HR support to say, oh, here's the training you need. Here's the document you would here's a thirty, sixty, ninety day plan for an employee. Go download that, watch the training, and modify it.
And so now that we've created this ecosystem of a platform and we have a lot more assessments built out, we've seen such a such a higher level of success, and all of that is the platform of team architects.
Steve: Talk to me about the sourcing talent.
Steve: Yeah.
Steve: Because we just talked about, like, what team architects system is. But when everyone's like, you gotta use Steve. You gotta use Steve Richards. Right? You gotta use Steve.
It's because he can get you great talent. Yep. What is because I think the greatest challenge consistently is how do I get good talent. Right? Like, thing that drives most business owners crazy, people.
Yeah. And that was what I heard over and over. They didn't say, like, the the t a twelve was the best. T a twelve was good. But what's more important is the outcome.
Yeah. How do I source and keep great talent? Yep. What do you do there?
Steve: Yeah. So what's interesting, you know, preshow we were talking about this, how funny it is. I don't think I've talked about this on a podcast before. So this is like a disruptors exclusive here. Yeah.
Steve: We're gonna spill all the tea.
Steve: We're gonna let the cat out of the bag Yeah. At these crazy things. And it's really funny because so largely in the beginning, we have the better mouse trap.
Steve: Mhmm.
Steve: And we realize, oh, it's really cool, but it's only relative to all the other ways you can screw them. Now we built this whole platform out. All shot all these videos, create all these templates, hire a success team, view all this stuff. We still have people having problems with it. Mhmm.
And and that whole platform is, like, a few $100 a month. Like, you can literally change your it's everything that will change your business overnight, and people still weren't getting the and we're like, what's going on? And we would find, like, a client who would have access to everything. They'd be like, I don't know how to log in to the platform. I lost my login.
Or or I download the assessment. I got everything, but I didn't know how to put the ad on Indeed. Or or I put my ad on Indeed. I I did everything the training told me exactly step by step how to place an ad, and then Indeed sent me a thing saying my account was on hold until I verified my employment status. And I didn't have my tax ID, so I called my accountant.
And he was on vacation, and we're just like, our minds are melting melting while
Steve: we're listening to
Steve: these excuses. Mhmm. Or I ran an ad and a 100 people applied. I didn't know what to do. And I'm like, wait.
Steve: So so
Steve: then now the rub is I I I can't put an ad on Indeed or I can't I I I don't wanna read a 100 resumes. Like and so, you know, we just So
Steve: you solved all the problems, then you found new problems.
Steve: Yeah. We we I think, actually, yes. And we're digging to the more root problem.
Steve: Yeah. We found the root cause.
Steve: The root cause is people just want to they don't wanna use they don't wanna do they don't wanna take the time to learn it, and they don't wanna do it, and they wanna buy their time back. Yeah. And so we have a re we have what's called TA recruit now. And more than likely, 99% of the clients we come in contact with, we are better at recruiting than them. But, largely, it doesn't matter because this is only cost you a few grand a month to have us find a a to hire for you, and it's an absolute no brainer because how we will typically go through 200 applicants to find several dozen candidates and then run them through a seven step process to find three of the most qualified candidates, and we'll just book them onto your calendar.
And the amount of time you save right there, even if we were even if we weren't as good at you at recruiting, which I know we are Mhmm. Better than everybody else that's hiring us, just that time savings alone is worth what it costs to do it. Mhmm. And so we realized this is really where it's at is us being able to give them their time back. Yeah.
And, ultimately, you know, for me, like, my personal I've told you this. My purpose in life is to help. Really, it's my why is to advance humanity, which I know sounds kinda crazy to some people. Some people put a PowerPoint up, and they're like, my why is my family. And I'm like, you're black your heart's kinda black if you don't love your kids.
But that matters a lot to me, but my my why is so big. But my what, because I resonate with business owners, is to help business owners find their way to their to their best self. Because I know together will change the world, which advances humanity. So my level of alignment is to understand, even at the very bottom of this la ladder, if I help you make your first good hire that works, it frees you up just a little bit. Mhmm.
And then the next one and the next one. After two or three good hires, you start to have some free times and free money, and I know you'll go explore yourself like I did. And when you find out who you are, you're gonna you'll finally circle back to come change be an Avenger with me, and you wanna go change the world. And so, you know, that's the kind of thing I think you're doing with this podcast to bring so much information to so many people that would change their life. Yeah.
Because business owners change their employees' lives, their clients' lives, their vendors, their bankers. Right? They they have a major influence in the world. And so, you know, what I understand all of this is, yes, there's a cool platform and and a industry leading assessment and all these other things that you can buy your time back. Yeah.
And we're creating freedom, which is what team architects does.
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Steve: Yeah. And we're creating freedom, which is what team architects does.
Steve: Yeah. So it's a option. The TA recruiting is what it's called?
Steve: TA recruit.
Steve: TA recruit. And with that option well, a, that's your purpose. Clearly is your purpose Yeah. Which is awesome. So with that, then they can go off and not have to deal with writing the ads, dealing with LinkedIn, creating a LinkedIn profile, reviewing a 100 resume.
Because, I can say for sure, because I've been in this journey for a long time, it was a part of my journey where I was going blind on resumes, and a lot of my colleagues were too. We got a couple 100 resumes. What do I do? I still remember, like, looking through, like, their Facebook profiles. Right?
Their LinkedIn, and then at this time, man, this is a long time ago. I think, like, find them on Myspace, whatever. Different time in my career. Right? But, like, it's a lot to go through all that.
So to be able to outsource that, I think, is huge. And then on top of that, you have a different discernment because you have 50,000 applicants that have come through. You can see fairly quickly, is this person worth even an interview or not? And I could say also, like, I used to do a lot of in person interviews. I don't know.
I just had a hard time. Someone comes in to the crappy interview. I was like, it's gonna be. Like, do I just, like, pick them out after three minutes? Right?
I was like, how I drove all the way here. Let's just, like, phone in this interview. And, like, after thirty minutes, they know they didn't get the job, but you didn't want them to feel bad. Yeah. So Yeah.
It's What a waste of time. And so I think for what you're doing is a steal. I'm definitely gonna be, using you guys for that. I'm looking forward Yeah. To using you guys for that.
And I just wanna real quick. I wrote this down. Jordan, not a great coach. Right? Best player, I argue, in the history of the game.
Not a great coach not a great manager.
Steve: Mhmm.
Steve: Have you heard some of the nightmare stories from him? Yeah. Right? That just goes to show you Peter principle. Just because you're good at it doesn't mean you're great at magic.
I mean, like, he destroyed Kwame Brown's, like, mindset. And then what was it?
Steve: Randy Brown too.
Steve: Randy Brown?
Steve: There was a yeah. There was a couple guards that got drafted that were supposed to be really good that no one ever heard of because he they never out of rookie camp, they never even saw the floor because they were their psyche their psyche was just Yeah. Crushed.
Steve: I remember one year, it was, like, I think this was recorded. If not, it was just, quoted. But it's like, you guys think you're the seventy two ten in bulls? You guys can just turn it on and turn it off. We were the seventy two ten bulls.
We couldn't. Yeah. You, soft, blah blah blah. Lots of profanity. You guys can do this.
The different management style.
Steve: Yep. 100%. You know what's interesting too? Something just came to mind while you're talking is, you know, I will actually say you said just because you're good at doing it doesn't mean that you can manage it or run it. I'll actually go a step further and say, if you are really good at doing it Mhmm.
You probably are bad at running it Right. Managing it. It's almost connected.
Steve: Mhmm.
Steve: And so our our clients who struggle the most are the ones that are the best hustlers
Steve: Mhmm.
Steve: That are slinging deals, and they just they don't think anybody can do it like them. So it's great hubris to think that no one is you know? You think Jeff Bezos is sitting around thinking, like, nobody can pull a box off a shelf and drive a forklift as good as me. He doesn't care. Like, literally And so a lot of people come through and they take the assessment, and then they're killing it in their business.
And they take our assessment and tell and then they score, like, a nine at all these positions. And they're like, but I'm doing it day in and day out. But largely, you're unemployable.
Steve: We're
Steve: not trying to find another you who's a Superman that can even when you're not naturally gifted to do something, you can make it happen because of your core values and work ethic and all these other things. Not to mention when you're the one putting the money in your pocket, it's a lot easier to do stuff you don't wanna do. And when you hire someone and they just get a paycheck, not it's easier for them to be like, I don't wanna do this. But but I would just challenge all of you guys to pay attention to this. And so if you are a one man show, if you haven't assessed yourself in each position, just realize this.
Somebody might be listening to this thing. Well, I'm not really ready to hire yet. Well, if you're doing any activity, not even closing deals, if you're making calls and doing anything, I got news for you. You've already made your first hire. In fact, you hired yourself to do all the positions,
Steve: and
Steve: it was the worst hire you're ever gonna make. Yeah. Because you not that you're not good at any one of those, but the reality is you just hired yourself to do everything in the business. Now, financially, I understand you might not be ready, but the reality is you can't afford not to hire. Even if it's an assistant or a COO, I don't really care.
The KPIs will tell you, if I'm here with this activity and I wanna be here, we all I'm sure you've covered this on other episodes. It's just reverse engineering where you wanna be, start with the end in mind, and you reverse back to where you are, and you project forward and say, where am I gonna not have enough time to get everything done?
Steve: Yeah. Could you, if you're a one man show, pick the t a 12, figure out who your next hire should be?
Steve: 100%. I but I will caution that the business needs come first. So it it it does matter what you're good at, what you like, and what you're not good at, what you don't like. But even in the face of that, like, we've had people do this a lot where they're, like, hiring an acquisition person, and they're like, I just think they'd be better at dispo. And they run them against the dispositions report, and they score very highly, but their business doesn't need a dispo person
Steve: right now. Mhmm.
Steve: So don't don't hire just because somebody's a good fit. It's not the only reason you make a decision, but I will say this. It's a huge part of it. To say, once I run this against myself, I can if you were on our platform, you could run take the assessment once, score yourself against all the roles, see where your strengths and weaknesses lie. Even if you weren't using that to know who to hire, you would know how to better be better at your job.
And so all that we've talked about today is, like, using this for hiring. But what's more important is once you make the hire, these assessments show you the traits for two reasons. They can help in management and training. One of them is how to squeeze more juice out of that person because you see where their personality traits are. But, also, you can look at yours and theirs and how you compare it to each other to understand how to have a better relationship with each of the people within your organization.
Steve: One of the things that really surprised me, I can't remember which one of the 12. It was but it was the had to do with communication and words.
Steve: I
Steve: think it had to do the shapes. I think it's a lot. Okay. The way we can see shapes and rotate them through space. And you said that that meant I could communicate better or was
Steve: You're combining a couple of the the shapes with spatial visualization. It's the most commonly, like, misunderstood one of the tests for people that are well
Steve: Oh, yeah. They just go slow on me with me on that one.
Steve: Oh, you scored I think you scored well, didn't he?
Steve: I scored well on that part. I'm saying you have to slow it down and explain to me what it was.
Steve: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's really creativity.
So if you think about it, when I see three-dimensional shapes
Steve: Mhmm.
Steve: So a lot of people see a problem, and they see it for face value. Like, a great example is, there's a lien on a property that you're wholesaling. No one knew about it till the end, and it's, like, $10.
Steve: Mhmm.
Steve: And you and you're thinking, well, the seller already went as low as they could. The buyer went as high as they could, and either one's gonna wanna pay it. I'm gonna have to pay it. And, like, in your mind, at face value, one of us has to pay it or we're splitting it somehow or whatever, and you're kinda done. But if you have depth, three-dimensional, like, if you can turn it upside down, turn it around and, like, creativity in a way, but it's not artistic creativity.
It's, like, outside the box thinking. I could say, why does anyone have to pay it? How old? If it's an if it's a ten year old credit card, you know, charge off, let's just get it discounted. Alright.
But no one has to pay it. But without that creativity, which is depth Mhmm. Right? So, yeah, you can see shapes. Ironically, it's also, like, people might be clumsy.
They bump bump doorways or trip on things. Their spatial visualization is low, but that also has to do with when they see things at face value in the world, they don't see the depth behind it too. And so we've been that's one of the sneaky traits that we've put in. When I look at that, if anyone's low in that, they cannot be in a position where it's gonna require discernment to out think outside the box Yeah. Because they'll struggle with it.
Steve: That's funny you said that they're clumsy because I would think that clumsy people, the ones I think of are not the most creative thinkers that comes with problem solving. So it's it's funny. But, yeah, like, that's the thing that the strength I've always brought, and I think that's the reason why our our sales training is so effective. I was like, yeah. This is what they said.
Well, here's how you here's what you say to that. Here's how you overcome that. Right? Or you talk about, like, well, how old is the lien? IRS lien?
Is it a credit card? Right? Like, we have one that, we we had a deal that we just did. I posted about it. I haven't shared how I did it.
Got a bunch of people asking me how I did it. I was like, that's another video. But, like, they had a 200 k Medicaid lien. They had a 40 something thousand solar lien, and they had a $5,000 credit card lien. And we got them all removed so that we could close.
Right? They're like, how did you do it? It's like, just did it. Right? Yeah.
One of them, which is cool, is, you know, play basketball with certain friends who've got connections. Like, hey. I'm dealing with this problem. Can you help me out? You know anyone at this company is like, oh, I'm friends with the CEO and CFO.
Put in a good word for me. Right? That's the way you solve a problem. Yep. But we could've just keep it up.
It was like, oh, feels dead.
Steve: You you know what's interesting with that is just really quickly to add, the opposite's true as well. If you have an administrative assistant who's just supposed to do what they're told Mhmm. And they're extremely, like, creative, And they're thinking of new ways all the time to do everything.
Steve: And they're
Steve: like, you know, just do what I said. So our greatest strengths in the wrong the wrong butt in the wrong seat Mhmm. Become huge weaknesses or even even This is why I'm unemployable. Yeah. My creativity is, like, it's way all the way up, and so is my logical problem solving so I can logically think through.
But when I got involved in deal sessions, you know, we would be holding on to deals that we have. It's such a colossal waste of time because I'm 17 loops deep because I can figure it out. I'm like, no. I can they're like, I don't remember where we started. I'm like, I do.
I remember all 17 loop, but now it's a waste of time. And we're like, we just spent an hour talking about this, and we could've called three more sellers and got another contract.
Steve: And we squeeze out three k on that deal.
Steve: Yep. Yeah.
Steve: Because when we get that creative, sometimes all we're getting is, like, the bottom of the barrel. So what was the other one as far as communication? One I was thinking of.
Steve: So that one's an interesting one. It's called vocabulary.
Steve: Okay.
Steve: And so it does test people complain about that when they take the test, but they're like, I didn't know any of the words. But it does have to do with, like, roots of words and structures of words and, like, does it look like a word I know? Mhmm. But when we test vocabulary, it's not just that you know a bunch of cool words. This is where it really relates to, like, mattering in the business is, you know, how many times there's multiple words that mean the same thing
Steve: Mhmm. But they
Steve: all carry, like, a slightly different connotation. Yeah. And so if I have a bigger vocabulary, I can be more effective and granular with my communication, my outbound communication. Right. So I'll pick and choose from a bigger repertoire Mhmm.
Of words. I just used one of them right there. Yeah. But, also, communication is inbound as well. It's when I'm listening and learning.
And so I can read between the lines better, and I can hear better than I'm listening to you, but I'm also hearing what you're saying because I'm like, oh, and we find that people have larger vocabularies are also better at nonverbal communication with understanding body language and things like that. Yeah. And so if someone has a big vocabulary, it directly correlates to how effective they'll communicate with people and how quickly they'll learn. Mhmm. And so when I need an employee to learn quickly, and it's not just learning the upfront training, but it's like machine learning.
It's like being out in the field and getting the reps in and picking up the Nuance, which acquisitions is a great one to understand that. But if you're in leadership, we can't have anyone in leadership that doesn't have a high vocabulary. Right.
Steve: Because you were saying it affects communication, and that's something that we we lean very, very heavily on inside our sales training is that I need to fully understand the best of my abilities what it is you're trying to tell me and take it at face value. I gotta do my absolute best to understand what you're trying to tell me. And on on top of that, when I'm trying to talk to you, I do my absolute best. And what if I say lands as best as possible? If we're off and it lands poorly, deal can die really fast.
Yep. Alright. So communication leadership is is so so paramount. And they have a note here talking about mindset. You mentioned we gotta make sure we talk about mindset, I believe.
Well, this was in context to you, or this is one of those things where United has shiny object syndrome?
Steve: You know, I think we've kinda covered it a little bit. I just I just think I wanted to make sure that we talked about it, and I you know, it's just everybody gets lost in this business. Yeah. Right, when they get going, and they and they get they get stuck in the x's and o's and the dollar signs. But I if I recall when you and I were, like, prepping and we're like, let's make sure we talk about this, this is something I just feel passionate about personally in bringing up because even if you use Team Architects and you can hire better or you use any of the things they learn here, all the tactics and vendors and all these things come to you, but if you're not in alignment with who you're supposed to be, you're gonna be facing you're up you're in an uphill battle.
Yeah. Right? It's what I did in the first ten years. I built a business that I didn't want. Right?
And the better you are at pushing through when I look back, I had so many signs to get out. Literally, like, I just got so good at with dot bobbing and weaving and keeping jumping over things and blowing through brick walls. And, like, you you kinda becomes your thing, and you're like, nothing can stop me. And you're just like a freight train going down, and and the light at the end of the tunnel is another train coming. You know?
It's not it's not the other side of the mountain. And so I just think it's worth putting in here. I want everyone to understand this concept because I most people fail to grasp what they really want. They're running away from something instead of towards something. And if you don't know who you are, it's almost impossible to figure out what you want, and you and and every new thing sounds cool.
Steve: Mhmm.
Steve: You don't quite feel what you're doing is right. Yeah. But if you can find out who you are first, which is, like, what's the best version of me and what would that person do? Mhmm. And, also, look at the worst version of me.
When I'm at my worst, you know, what what does that mean? Right? And so that's why when I was, you know, literally going to studying all these philosophies and all these different religions and and counseling and therapy and Enneagram and psych I have every psych test I've ever I can I've taken every single one of them. I took all the testing for autism and, like, ADHD. Like, I I I went through I studied the psyche, the human psyche.
And I can tell you that if you can go down and figure out where when you're at your worst and what your potential is at your best, you you can get two data points. So you can get a a line between the two because without it, you can't without two points, you can't align. Yeah. That's what creates alignment. And I feel whenever I get a platform, I like to bring this up because spend as much time as you can.
It's not most of your time needs to be spent making money and doing things. Right? Mhmm. But if you forget about this part, you'll wake up one day ten years in and have to go through a life blowing up session, which any of us do. But it's like, oh, at the time, it was terrible, but now I look back, it was the best thing that could have ever happened.
But if you can learn the idea of alignment before this Mhmm. It might not be as fast and sexy, and it doesn't look as cool as what you see on, you know, your buddy at the mastermind's doing or whatever. But slow and steady will win the race. And because when you're in alignment, there's there's natural momentum in the universe creating flow. Mhmm.
This is when you feel flow state. Yeah. Right? And so I think that's why I told you we should touch on that because about
Steve: this is a a lot of lines of how to be happy and successful.
Steve: Yeah. Absolutely. Because the better you are at something that isn't in alignment, the worse you feel. How many rich people you know aren't happy?
Steve: Surprisingly, I don't know that many.
Steve: Because you hang out in the mastermind, by the way. In the real world In
Steve: the real world. Yes.
Steve: It's most of them.
Steve: I hang out with people that opt to be there. Okay.
Steve: How many wealthy people who are happy, but they're fat? They're probably gonna have diabetes or
Steve: A lot. And there are a lot of them in Washington, DC. But, yes, there are a lot of,
Steve: of Or they're married. They're divorced. Yeah. Or their kids are, like, not
Steve: That's the absolute worst. The the hearing how many people are I I've heard multiple stories, you know, where, like, they did everything in their mind for their family. And then at the end, their family's like, I want nothing.
Steve: Yeah. Or or when someone dies, the family business is inherited. Those kids resent that business because it kept their parents away from them. You know? Yeah.
Create a lot of stress in their parents' life. But, you know, I just the reason we brought that up, I think we wanted to touch on it was just none of this business success matters if you're not happy. And you don't get success and money and then become happy. Everybody says it seems cliche, but being almost 50 and and I'm in the the I'm gonna call it the mid back end of things. Not the back end because I feel like I'm gonna live to a 100 with all the health and biohacking stuff I do.
But my perspective now looking back on it is, you really do take ownership for who you where you are and when you have radical ownership of, like, look. I'm just the sum of all the decisions I made in the hand that was dealt. Like and I'm taking ownership over that. Right? You can become grateful for whatever you've done and whatever you've learned and for the opportunity to change tomorrow.
You can do something completely different. So if I can be if I can be, you know, radical ownership of where I'm at, which makes me content people mistake content and satisfied all the time. I don't think you can be happy unless you're content and dissatisfied. And I'll and I'll say this a different way. If you're discontent, meaning, like, I shoulda that business partner left or ripped me off or I shouldn't have done this or the market screwed me and what you know, if you're feeling that's discontent, but that's looking back.
Steve: Mhmm.
Steve: I need to have grace looking back and ownership and say, look. I did the best I could, and everything else was a learning lesson. And I just I am where I am. So I'm content with being where I am, but I'm unsatisfied with staying here, and satisfied is looking forward. Because when you're satisfied, you start coasting.
Yeah. And so happiness to me is less about the the actual material success you have, and it's more about being content looking back and dissatisfied looking forward and grace looking back and accountability looking forward. Right? And that's also the as above, so below kinda for the for the deep philosophical people on here, but it's also what I said about looking at the best version of me that could be in the future and looking at the worst of me in the past, my problems, and what's happened, and reconciling the two so I can actually move forward. And so I know we wanted to cover real estate and my story and team architects, and you really you can't scale a business without doing something to create the right team.
Yeah. You will never instinctively and naturally create a team on your you will never build the right team on your own. It's it it's not naturally human to know how to discern the decisions and all the things, and we've built team architects largely to help people with that. And, again, with our platform being where it's priced and how cheap it is for us, we're a fraction of a recruiting. All that is makes so it's a no brainer if you're trying to hire or figure things out.
But none of it matters outside of being happy and in alignment. Right. And so if you can work on that, it's really easy to put all these other things that you teach people every week into play, and they can really create change in their life.
Steve: Yeah. And I think it's absolutely, profound, philosophical. We don't really talk about it a lot. Right? But be content with the past, but dissatisfied with the present so that you have a brighter future.
Right? Like, there's there's so many people that mistake you were saying, I'll be happy when I get there. And all the people that say I'll be happy when I get there are freaking miserable. Yeah. They're miserable because they're mistaken that the results determines your happiness whereas the journey.
Right? And it sounds maybe kinda like, hippie ish. Right? But the reality is, the the happiest people I know are the ones that are have, looked back and, like, they made some mistakes, made a lot of mistakes, but they're not they don't regret it, and they're looking forward. I I had I remember someone was like, we held a live event.
It was myself, Ram Panetta, and Sam Primm. And this girl, she asked the questions like, why don't you guys ever show your failures? You know, like, you guys only show the good stuff. So why don't you ever show your failures? You know, your regrets.
I was like, you're getting pretty fast. Right? Like, because I don't dwell on them. Right? Like, so when they ask, like, you know, what's your biggest regret?
Your failures, like, I have plenty. But, man, I take my lesson, and then the rest of it is blacked out. I take the good from it, and the rest is just it's compartmentalized. It's gone. Right?
So I think that's incredibly profound, incredibly profound. And then we're doing something. We're gonna be doing a master class. So we're gonna post a URL in the notes in the show notes. I'm gonna put a a QR code on the screen.
What do you have in mind for the master class?
Steve: Yeah. You know, just to catch everybody up listening, you and I were talking about what we can do here. And I feel like as now that we're, what, ten days into basically hanging out with each other in three different states Yeah.
Steve: So there was it was Friday and Saturday in Boston. Right? And then it was Monday and Tuesday in Tampa, and they were stuck here again today.
Steve: Yeah. It stuck. I like that.
Steve: And we had a pretty late night, I think, on Monday night.
Steve: I had one out could
Steve: I was saying, where you and I were maybe it was Sunday night, but there was a lot of BS ing around the table.
Steve: You basically came to me and you're like, look. I The word choice was the best. Boardroom.
Steve: The word choice wasn't the best. In in hindsight, when you point out, the word choice was not the best. Well, I'm
Steve: not gonna say that, but I'm just gonna say you basically, what you said was, I he came up and said to me, so everyone listening knows. He's like, listen. I just got into boardroom with you. I really wanna work with all these people. But, basically, like, I love team architects, and I realized, like, I have to figure out how to marry the two because no one everyone that's working with me is going to be using team architects.
Right. Like, what did you what Kool Aid did you Mhmm. Spike for everyone in here? And so, it really does this is no hyperbole. It does have a brand.
The brand is incredible in boardroom. I mean, the especially, it's it's it's insane because they've been around from the beginning to see what it does. But because actually, because of that conversation and and hanging around more and knowing that we're gonna work together more, I I felt like and what you and I talked about was a good idea would be us to marry up to understand how to really supercharge sales in your business. And it doesn't matter if you're trying to hire an acquisition right now or you're doing it yourself.
Steve: Mhmm.
Steve: If we can take some of the best sales training to make the most out of a person, whether it's you or someone you're hiring, and also talk about how to build that role, manage, train, and lead it. And we'll also cover some of the recruiting pieces of it, but it's more about how to do the HR and team building side of it along with the in the training piece. Mhmm. They fit so nicely together that we that we have a at least a one part, maybe a two part master class that we'll just do for free for anyone that, you know, that buys into team architects when you sign up, through the disruptors network, or through this podcast. We'll make that master class available to them.
Steve: Yeah. And I think it's great. Right? And a a different bonus because, again, like, while I was there, it was pretty clear. Right?
Like, Steve is hottest girl at the club, so I better get to know that girl.
Steve: And the funny thing is helping run boardroom, being on the board and and and a leader there and also a family being on the commission there, you saw the difference. Everyone's talking about team architects. I'm related to team architects at Boardroom, and then we went to family. No one even knows what I do, but, like, I'm the mushroom Ayahuasca guy that everybody, like, gets to their deepest feelings with, and they wonder if I have a job. It's like you saw both sides of so we just you know, largely, I haven't taken this brand out, and so it's exciting to be on the podcast to talk to you about it because it it really is, it got I'll I'll I think we're wrapping here.
I'll just I'll say this. If you are hiring or building teams without using something like this Mhmm. Whether it's team architects or not, you are literally flying blind. Yeah. It is literally the most colossal typical mistake for a business owner that will set you back years to bring the wrong every time you bring the wrong person on, it's not just the hard cost, it's the opportunity cost and and the stress.
And if you're gonna hire and you think you only deserve, again, some random person that's, you know, from church or your neighbor's wife or whatever, just realize when you hire someone and bring them into where you are because they fit where you are, they are locking you into where you are. And if you can hire the right person higher above who's already been there, done that, and they know what they're doing, they will actually pull you forward. So it's the difference between friction and momentum. That's a 7 figure difference annually for most businesses.
Steve: Yeah. I would say, speaking from a person who's made hiring mistakes, right, the cost of a wrong hire is not the wages. It's the lost sales. It's the damage to the brand. Right?
Like, that guy stands for your company. Boy, what I thought of you and your company and after this experience is drastically different. Right? And, like, brand, you know, maybe the brand doesn't matter for somebody who's listening, but I could say for sure my brand matters. And, like, some of the emails I've gotten, it's like, what did I do in making this wrong hire?
Steve: Absolutely. You know, when in our transactional business over the we have bought so many houses where we offered less than other people Mhmm. Because they trusted us Yeah. Because of our people.
Steve: Right.
Steve: Because we instilled whatever made us special. We were able to build a team with the right people that and that's how you can actually exit a business Yeah. Is to instill the, embody, you know, embody the best parts of you into them so that you can you're basically operating while you're not around. Mhmm. That is the only there is no other way to scale business.
There's a bunch of ways to grow a business. There is no way to scale a business without without people involved in it.
Steve: I appreciate you bringing that up because I was gonna say it earlier. I forgot about it. What is the distinction between growth and scale in your your words?
Steve: Yeah. So growth is linear. So I I work x amount of units harder. I spend x amount of dollars, and I get x amount of growth. Right?
There's it's linear. And so every time I there's two things when I'm growing. One is there is no exponential there's no curve. There's no leverage. Usually, you work harder to grow more.
Right? So every every every dollar you get comes at the expense of a certain amount of time and cost. Right? The other thing is growing has pains with associated and I don't care if you're a person or a business. When something grows, it hurts.
Like we talked about, you said at the very beginning, you and I sat and watched John Maxwell.
Steve: Mhmm.
Steve: It was one of the
Steve: best Incredible presentation.
Steve: Presentation I've seen in years. Yeah. For him to talk about learning from failure, we all know that. And then when you listen to someone like that talk about it and he he said one of the things that sets him apart from everyone else is that he's willing to fail way more than them. He'll fail a 100 times more than you will.
And, yeah, it sucks when it's happening, but after a year of that, he's so far ahead of you. Never look back. Right? And so growing pains are failures, and so we can learn from them, but that doesn't mean they don't hurt because two things can be true at once.
Steve: Mhmm.
Steve: Scale is just amplify is just a leverage that would amplify your results. So we can scale a broken business. And so your revenue will go up, but so do all your problems. Everything everything is magnified, so one plus one equals three. So that's cool.
Sometimes if you're good at it, one plus one equals 10. But the problem is if you don't work the kinks out of it before you scale
Steve: Mhmm.
Steve: Which is what's happening in almost every mastermind around the country is everyone's learning to scale before they learn how to grow. They're they're putting gas on not only their revenue, but they're putting it on all their problems that they don't know they have. And it's not the problem isn't the problems you know you have. The problem the real problems are the ones you don't know that you have. And when you scale, those are the unintended consequences of the complicate or the complex system that you're, like, usually is a lagging indicator that you don't understand it while it's happening.
And you look in your p and l, and you're like, what? We just had the biggest month ever. Why did I why is there nothing left over to pay myself this month? And almost everyone I know that gets into the multiple when they hit the 7 figure and then they go from the they break to the one and into the two and they're in that range, most of them are making less money then than they were back when they were half 1,000,000.
Steve: Yeah. Wow.
Steve: It's almost all of them. Almost all of them. Investing in growth, which doesn't always have a return, because you're fixing problems.
Steve: Right.
Steve: But later, when you invest in scale, you get multiples back. It's compounding versus investing in growth is just pain making your problems go away. Does that make sense?
Steve: It makes total sense. Well, this is for everyone. Wasn't for me.
Steve: Oh, you already know. I know you know.
Steve: I already know you. So, I think, you know, scale was such a big word. Like, 2020, '22 until the industry hikes, and a lot of guys come on scaling. A chunk of them are no longer in business because they scaled their problem. And one of the things I have always hated is, like, I hired all these salespeople or VAs at the phones because I didn't want to.
That's not the first thing to scale. That's not the first thing. Yeah. Other things first. Right?
So I wanna wrap it up asking this question, is you've been coaching now for twenty five long time. What are some of the biggest ahas, lessons, or whatever that you took from that that people can either, a, learn from and benefit from or, b, avoid? You spent countless weeks going back and forth with homeowner only to lose a deal because the seller changed their mind. Another wholesaler made an unreasonable offer or what the seller needs from the sale, you just can't pay. Now imagine you've got the ultimate control on a property that you just locked up, meaning you're on title and every decision has to go through you eliminating virtually every external threat.
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Steve: Great question. I've already talked about the number one biggest one, which is alignment. Yeah. Alignment trumps everything. So I've got a model that I work with with, people that I coach, and it has all these steps in how to manifest whether you're trying to lose weight, fix your marriage, be a better dad, grow your it doesn't it doesn't matter.
It applies to everything. The very top of that is alignment every time. Because if you miss that piece, what I talked about with the two points of knowing where the best version of you is in the future, but being honest with where you are knowing this part of you, the the the current location. This is interesting because a lot of people that you'll go to seminars and they'll talk about, hey. The GPS analogy where you gotta have an exact destination, get really clear on exactly where you wanna go.
I don't agree with that at some to some degree. But, actually, like, I live in Indiana. If I wanna go to Florida, I don't need an address. I can drive for, like, fifteen to seventeen hours before I need to know where I'm going because it's the same. I generally know where I'm headed.
But if I don't put my current location in my GPS, it can't tell me the first turn to make. Right. This is why big companies pay PricewaterhouseCoopers to come in and audit them. You you can't audit yourself clearly. So, like, one of the biggest things I've learned in business is this idea of alignment trumps everything.
Because without it, the better you are at manifesting without alignment, the faster you're gonna get shit you don't want. Right? And then you get down a path further, and it's harder to come back. And so if I if I can give anybody advice out there, it's you gotta get an outside perspective, but you need we owe when I when I have a new client come on, I always start with an audit and a full assessment of them and everyone on their team and an audit of everything. Get really clear on where you're at.
And almost everybody's goals are based on something that they're more about what they're running away from than what they're running towards. Yeah. So all those concepts will really help you with alignment. That's that's probably one of the the the biggest thing. And I'll give you guys one other thing.
If you don't understand KPIs, you are you are stacking the deck so bad against yourself. And you'd it's not like don't download the sheet that someone gave you from the coaching program and plug numbers in and think you're you've got to understand the process like, understand what it is. Right? Like, you, like, you can't you don't wanna give someone a fish. Every time someone's like, download my KPI guide, I hate it because I'm like, everyone's gonna just dump numbers in and think they did something.
And everyone's like, I want Plecto to sit on top of this and automatically go to go high level and automatically and I'm like, no. Use a use a damn notepad and a spreadsheet. Yeah. Almost every company that I work with that's in the highest multiple seven or eight figure, there's two or three people that at the end of the day conglomerate everything, and they're working out of a Excel Mhmm. Making that final dashboard.
And so I'll give you guys this right now. What I mean by that, and this is just some tangible, like, practical takeaway, is learn about leading indicators, which are activities that drive lagging indicators, which are results. The the real power in that, the activities are indicative of success, and they're also controllable. At the very beginning, they're very controllable. I can control putting direct mail out.
That's not very indicative of a deal. I'm talking about real estate. Further down the process as I get closer to a deal, getting a contract is very indicative of getting a deal. Mhmm. Having a contract signed.
It's not very controllable. Right. Somewhere in the middle making an offer is somewhat controllable and somewhat indicative. That's leading indicators. Those are activities I care about is where they're kind of in that somewhat controllable, somewhat indicative.
The lagging results are the ones that matter most. It usually has to do with deals, money, things that happen. The real magic, though, is twofold after that. When I divide the two numbers into each other, the activity and the result, and I get a percentage
Steve: Mhmm.
Steve: Like, how many offers get accepted? How many leads that come in are qualified? What percent? What percent of deals fall out that don't close? Those percentages are are way easier to manage your business to.
It's where you go from being reactive to proactive. Mhmm. And you wanna compare you where you're at against where you wanna be. So I know I got it's hard on the podcast to get in these layers, but the first layer is tracking the activities and the results. The second layer is dividing them into each other, and the third layer is comparing goal versus actual.
That's literally the best practical advice I can give anyone in a business where you can get to a proactive dashboard to make decisions. Because otherwise, you just have a spreadsheet with a bunch of numbers in it
Steve: that doesn't
Steve: mean it doesn't matter.
Steve: Yeah. So He's like doing it by hand or spreadsheet personally will attach a lot more meaning. Meaning, it becomes understanding. With understanding, now you actionable intel.
Steve: Yeah. And and after three months of knowing that every number is completely accurate and tracked properly and you're doing all the math, then you can pay some VA to dump it all into Plecto and make all the pretty cool stuff. Automate it, whatever. But you need to go through that process. And so if I can impart two things and we could run twenty hours of podcast on this easily, If you can work on that alignment piece I talked about personally and then learn how to read to track and process, not just track, but process, like I said, through these ratios and numbers, it now I don't care what business you Yeah.
Literally, you can do anything now.
Steve: Yeah. I'm glad you brought that up because I've recently taken over my own marketing and then even more recently, I'll float it again. But there was a period of time where I had major trust issues because I thought every agency is crap. And so I started doing everything myself. I found a good one.
Steve: Okay. Okay.
Steve: I found a good one. It helps when your coach is coaching.
Steve: Okay. Right?
Steve: And so, in that process, I was like, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm gonna figure out the metrics myself. And so I'm over in Facebook, and I'm exporting the results. I'm looking at the cost per lead, the and then, like, the from how many people I clicked on the ad, and then from the people I clicked on the ad, how many people clicked on the link, clicked on the link, went to the website, how long were they on the website, and how long they're on the website, to how many submitted their email and Mhmm. Email to actually bought the product, right, and then bought the product.
Did they wash the VSL afterwards? Right? Like, did they pay for the upgrade? Right? All these other things.
I didn't understand this at all. And so I was like, I have to understand this before I outsource it again because every time I've outsourced it without understanding it, it's never Yeah. Now that I understand it, now I outsource it. I have measures I can hold them accountable to.
Steve: Hey. You can manage your vendors now.
Steve: Yeah. Whereas before, I was like, hey. What's going on? How many leads? What's and they're like, oh, just put more money into it.
Oh, we're just waiting on this.
Steve: They're like, it went from 1.2 to 2.5. You're like, well, that sounds pretty good.
Steve: Yeah. Sounds great.
Steve: What are we talking about? Doubled.
Steve: Yeah. But your your your point about the exercise Yeah. Once you do it manual manually, you can attach meaning to it. With meaning comes understanding with understanding. Now you can see the patterns.
You can see the, hey. If we do this, then this happens, and if then, and all the, correlation and causation.
Steve: Yeah. You know, I'll tell you nerdy stuff. 100%. And I'll and I'll tell you guys this just to kind of add some color to that. Having things work in your business is cool.
Like, making money and feeling like it's working, but it's a really bad place to be doing a 100 things and not know which ones are working and which ones aren't.
Steve: Yeah. The pizza bar in the business.
Steve: Yeah. And so the second best place you can be than making money is to know exactly what's wrong. You can sleep at night even if your business is sucking right now, but you have all the information Yeah. Which which requires accurate collection and then math and then comparison Mhmm. And then perspective.
And you layer all that into it. You you yes. You're you're scared and worried and all these things, but you go to bed feeling like you actually have your arms around it. And if you have if you're when you're like, when in 2021, when everyone's printing money in real estate, wholesaling especially, those guys should have been scared shitless because they don't know what's working and what's not. They have no idea.
They found out because the market didn't cause as much of the problem as they think when it shifted. It just exposed all the problems that existed.
Steve: That that they got away with.
Steve: Yeah. They were getting away with it because the the the the gains in the market were covering up the flaws. They they counterbalanced it. And when the equity when when the REITs came out and the interest rates, that just shifted all the margin out because there wasn't inflated pricing and there was expensive money. The margin squeezed out and wholesalers operate on margin.
And then after that, the only thing you that you the only way you can make money at that point is by being really good at negotiating and being really good at new marketing. And, like, all those things take attention to detail. Yeah. And all of a sudden, you don't have all the numbers to know. Right?
I I feel sorry for every marketing vendor in the country in the in mid twenty twenty two. I guarantee they all got hit by a Mack truck Yeah. With clients leaving them because they're like, wait. I'm not making money anymore. Oh,
Steve: absolute. Yeah. Yeah. So, guys, hope you guys got a ton of value. I want you to think about, some last thoughts you wanna leave all the listeners with.
Again, guys, we're gonna be doing a master class together. So look for, look for the QR code, look for the URL in the show notes. And, again, if you guys got value today, I think Steve brought a ton a ton of value. Make sure you hit that share button. Leave us a five star review on iTunes and Spotify.
I think. Oh, what are those some last thoughts I'm gonna leave everybody with?
Steve: Yeah. I'll just say this. I'll take I'll take the second to, you know, to talk more personally like I did before and just reiterate that. I really do feel like business owners are are here to change the world, And we create value in exchange for income, and that income an entrepreneur might just be putting in their pocket, right, or a self employed person. But a business owner is taking that money, and they're investing in the team and the people and the product, and they're improving.
So I can't think of a better way than, you know, to be on platforms like this or or or own company or my, like, my coaching business or the team architects or the masterminds we're a part of. All of that stuff is supporting this entrepreneurial business owner community. It's the shift from being a hustler and entrepreneur that's reactive. Right? And they're working for their business.
You can shift into being a business owner and actually have a business that works for you rather than you working for it. It will free things up for you to go out and change the world. And so I'm just happy to be in here talking to you about this and anyone that has interest in in connecting in any way. If anything I said especially I know I hope we team architects has great sales, but, honestly, if anybody just DM's me on Facebook and says, dude, I resonate with what you were saying about being a better person and changing the world. Like, that's why I'm here.
Right? So I appreciate the platform.
Steve: Yeah. Oh, thank you. It was my pleasure. Thank you so much. Thank you guys for watching.
Steve: See you
Steve: guys next.
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