Podcasts about vsas

Transcript: Good afternoon. Either one, I can just get the time change. I was just in Ohio as I'm still trying to figure out what time it is. I just forget every time I visit my friend he's just barely over that timezone like line. Like, so he is maybe like 45 minutes away from that line and you're traveling and you have that weird timezone change where you like, I feel like when I drove across the country I expected but like when I get to where he lives I'm like this doesn't make any sense to me. It's like oz. Gone, gentlemen, good. How are you? I'm just swell. talk amongst ourselves with recordings on. Quite sure I feel free to talk at my leisure for the recording is that where they said that? Yeah, the note taker in there too. So I have a call I do with my marketing company. And the note taker, or the recording agent that they have starts the meeting beforehand. So I always think I'm late to the meeting. That's already there already in the room. I'm missing it. And I get there, just me and a bot. I was like, This is worse, like at least like you would hear we have other people but I'm sitting there with just one thing. Like, I can't hit the mute button fast enough, because I don't know I'm gonna sit down with technicians. And obviously here I'm not in on this call yet. It's a it's a bit of a funny spot to be. Worked out some sort of like, go to a chat TV team come up with a script, and then just start reading it and see what it comes up with in the interpretation. Right? Because lot of times when I'm doing bot recordings. Yeah. It doesn't really get it right. Depending on what it is and how I'm saying what I'm saying. Sounds you there Jack. I always feel like any recording thinks I have marbles in my mouth. And I just I can't do voice of text that can't be voiced anything. And I think I'm understandable but it does not it never has. And I I've seen people who mumble much worse than me be impossible to be translated as good. I'm actually a keep tweaking my presentation because we added one more security suite options for people. But I don't want to make my presentation too long. Because I want to show people Option A and Option B is I don't want to do them a disservice. I'm only showing everyone one solution. But the problem is it when I when I added the other one in my my PowerPoint went up to I think it was it was at 37 slides. So this is your presentation. It was only about a half an hour. So now I gotta get back and contribute things things back out of it too, because some of them are today I've actually cut out a couple other slides. So I'm down to 33. Now it's one of the last ones just like the thank you in the beans the intro So I've cut down a lot on it. Right? Like a one slide I was walking through our ticketing system and showing them all the stuff now I'm like that's more of an onboarding thing. They don't need to know some of these things in here like how to use this icon. It's just taking up space in here so well and time and really you're right. They don't even know that doesn't that doesn't even matter. Until they're Yes. Yep. I didn't have one they updated today. They really liked it was the GPT slides that were so we have a including one of our security stacks, they get the password manager so you know how people have it on their phone and have the thing that stores all the passwords we have. One that we include, and certainly as a point of I thought this was an interesting fact that in 2020, if you had a character password that was 11 characters, with numbers, letters, capitals, symbols, it would be safe for 400 years. Now in 2023, with Chad's UBT, it's down with four days. So the amount that it actually changed how safe passwords were is just, it's ridiculous. And so I kind of showed the generations of that password manager. So I have that little n Have you ever seen it's like little, little chart where it shows like, okay, four characters here, a teens here and a little like, little chart for you to see how safe your password is? No. Is it a chart? When you say that though? It reminds me of the amortization schedule? Is it a flat graph? Or is it a chart that moves? It's, I'm trying to think with it, it's what's the word? I'm thinking almost like if you have four quadrants of something like so you can see, you know, safest to most like, most secure to least secure, right? And it shows you based off of how many characters and how many other variables you have, how safe so I'm trying to remember the name of that chart is ahead. But you know, what would be cool with that? Have you seen like, ECM on Facebook a lot, where it's, it talks about things over time. That's why do something like that, like the population of the United or the, you know, top 10 countries of the world, right, or number one saw our highest selling artists, and then they'll go from like, you know, 60 to 21. And it'll just, you'll see people move up and down calling off the chart. I wonder what it would look like to have a chart like that, that talked about security? And overlap the last 10 years? I don't, I'm able to channel able to share my screen. Yeah, I think I was open to where anybody can share. And so maybe I can get some feedback on this one then too, because I just, I just changed this. Good morning, everybody. Morning. Come on, Jack. We're all waiting. Yeah, no pressure. Stop yelling at me in front of my friends. So you see in this, yeah, looks great. So this was 2020. And this is again, how safe a password was. And when you switch this. So it goes from 2020 skips over 2021 for whatever reason. So you can see how this chart had this, this red is actually going farther down. In 23, here's where it is. And then here's now with using GPT. So this is where people used to think their stuff was safe. So that's where you go from that 400 years to four days and show the different years and how the point of using a password managers 100% of their r&d is on encryption and password management. That's what everything they do. It's very different than your business where you're working on whatever you are unless you are a password manager. And I think they said they blame that almost 80% of breaches on just weak passwords nowadays, and weak passwords has changed a lot over time where people used to think, you know, weak was 12345. Weak is changed a lot in the last couple of years. So Right. I would my I would reverse the graph. Yeah. Yeah, I want to see that. What I what I'm doing is getting worse. Right, that graph almost. And I'm not sure that that's what I would think do I want to see what I'm doing is getting worse. So if I have a seven digit password, I would be looking at that, because I probably have the same, you know, same seven digit password, which is, you know, for the last three years, right, or not the same password, but I change it but it's, you know, the same amount, which is why if you look at almost all things that require a password, they've gone from six to eight to 11 to 15 to 24 characters are characters. So that says this, and I show I show what it used to be and what it is and actually does get worse as you keep going. So what was saved was not saved. Right. And I do have the ability to just scroll back like I use the little Senator on dialer, to roll forwards and backwards to show that 400 years and that four days, and I made sure that the lines lined up the same. So if someone's eyes were in the same spot, when I got to the last page, they're still looking at that same location, because they might think, well I use that patch. What's my address cat's name and how big of that how much of your business is the manager of passwords? How big is that of the whole piece of the pie what we do of what you're trying to sell it? That's a small part of this of the second security stack. So it's a very small All piece is a part that I recommend people have. Absolutely, yes. But then consider that in your proportion of slides and time. Yeah, I did. That's why I think it's one slide and one rolling thing. And they're gonna go right through it. And one piece of one portion of that time, right? If it's 5%, that of my 30 minute presentation, it gets 5% of that piece. I think I have this as like a 32nd. Slide. So I have some of these that have time that look, it's worth a mention. It's not the whole thing. We're talking about cybersecurity, and it has an industry I spend much more time on that one too. Because that's the bigger thing of what we focus on. Good. It's good thought, though. Thank you. But But the great thing about it is it's something everybody understands. Yeah, that's something I mean, if you're giving a 30 minute presentation, I would think you have, you know, 1015 slides, because I don't want you watching the slide, I want you to pay attention to what I'm saying. The slide when we talk about presentations, the slide is to remind me of where I'm going next. Yeah, right. And then I'll give you the slide deck later, or send you more information or answer your questions. But I want you with me, because really, the sales conversation isn't about the product, the sales conversation is about your needs. You're getting clear that I hear your needs, understand your needs, and can solve your needs. And then be our relationship. So you trust my knowledge, and feel comfortable moving forward with me. Right, I know that you're like a sales person. So yeah, but I'm just saying too much information. Usually, it's like, like picking choices, right? It's like getting somebody like you have to now it's like the people will give you five choices. You got your homework and come back and talk to me. Yep. So that's why I keep trimming things down. And I have couple more interactive questions in here too. So like when I asked like these to show how people could get support, and I instead say, Hey, Kevin, how would you like to reach your IT company? Because they might say, hey, I want to email you. That's great. You know, a lot of companies do that. But we have we have four different ways they can send something in, but I want to see how someone wants to interact with us. And so I do that as a question in that part. You know, it's definitely the first questions I ask people in my business, because I want to know how best to support you. If you're a person who texts and I send you emails. Right, we're gonna do this. Or if your personal emails and I send you text and you'll look at your phone all day. Yeah, that's smart. And like I said, you kind of have this new with my pin out, Jack, you know what's up? I'm taking notes. So do understand. I'm still young, so I'm still figuring a lot of stuff out. But like to think I do a lot of potential power trying to improve my craft. Yeah, absolutely. It's impressive. All right, John. Sorry. We just probably talking amongst ourselves without you. No worries. So what, what have you guys covered so far? today? We're talking about Jack's slides. He's got 37 slides and a half an hour presentation. And he's wheedling it down. And he showed us one that was really cool about that he thought was interesting, little fun fact about password that used to take 400 years to crack with chat TBT now thanks for days. Got it. Because I returned that same question for you, Jack. Because you know, I trained speakers. Is that what you would like some coaching on today? I wouldn't mind it. Because I've been, I've been looking at changing phrasings and how I go through this whole thing I actually finished so one of the books we had, where we did fix this next, he also is referring to the storytelling brand. So let me let me stop you there real quick. So I'll make a list here some jack and talk about presentation. Sure. Because we can do today's fourth, Monday, we can do administrative and finance. Or we go around the room and go okay, what is the thing you would like to work on today? Okay, so, Jack presentation and Mike. Any specific thing you'd like to work on today? No, nothing specific. I I need to go through the I forget what it's called the, the 20 contacts eight weeks. I need to go through that. You'll go through those modules go through those trainings, kind of burn that out. And then the other thing I want to do is I've been texting agents once a week of intense texting about 200 agents once a week, industry updates. And I want to try to go to each of their offices and try to meet them in person so they know who's sending the text. That's the other thing I want to do. But other than that, no nothing specific I just need to need to get some business back. Kevin, I would like to create a $7,500 a month coaching program in 90 days right Vanessa, yes, I need to finish my business plan for my new business Okay, so let's start with who you Jack. So the presentation who is the target audience this is my slide deck for for any target audience. But the the addition of the time was I we added an advanced security suite in response to compliance and cyber insurance. And it had added on a couple of products that were probably necessary. But again, I'm trying to condense the time because it is hard to shorten up some of the items in that actual slide going through DNS, spam filter, sock, MFA, play check. So each thing I try not to talk too much on, but kind of give a value proposition to that item. Right? So the reason I asked who the intended audience is, is if you're talking to a group of engineers, this is awesome. Right? Like this is like, yeah, it's gonna be unbelievably great for them. Okay, if you're talking to a small business owner, like myself, like Kevin, like the neasa, like, Michael, I'm going to want to hear more stories. And I'm not going to want to hear too much technical stuff, I'm going to want to hear, what's the problem? How's it affect me? I want you to dig as much as you can into that pain. So I can now relate. And then I want you to give me a solution. That's that's the way you're talking to the audience or when you're crafting a talk, right? Or you're crafting any type of social media message? Who's the target audience? Knowing that first, what's the intended outcome of the post of the presentation? What is the outcome, like any of you guys can attend this webinar that I'm doing with Adrian boy sell at 12pm, today is going to be a two hour. It's not even really a webinar, it's going to be like a dialogue between two business owners, because we're launching a $10,000 a month, guaranteed revenue program. And we're charging 10 grand for it. But you're gonna see how we banter back and forth. Because right now, I think there's 2530 people registered for the thing. We decided we're not going to do this long drawn out PowerPoint presentation. And we're just going to have a dialogue, we may share some of the shoot a few things on the screen, but it's going to be very, very packed. So when we were planning this, and this mon bring this home to you when we were planning this, because Adrian hasn't done as much of this as I have. Okay. I just point blank said, What is the ultimate outcome here? Where do you want to lead this audience to at the end of your talk? And that determines how the talk goes, right? So if your slide deck is for informing other engineers, then you got to look at okay, can I split this up into three talks? part one, part two, part three? Okay. Is the audience business owners, small business owners to educate them on the importance of password management? Right? And in that case, I'll tell you what my mentors always told me is, every single slide in there gets deleted, and it has to find its way back to the presentation. If it's not absolutely necessary, then it doesn't get put on there. Right. And especially if you're talking to for business owners, no more than three or four bullet points per slide. Okay, cuz you want them listening to you, not reading the slide. So I want to talk about something and talk about it in I want to add the bullet point. Okay, so I'm going to give you a resource. I'll just, I'll just drop this in the Dropbox folder for everybody's benefit. The number one PowerPoint, instructor, present presentation guru that worked for Microsoft created a talk on how to deliver a PowerPoint presentation slide deck. Okay. And I have the recording. And so I'm going to put that in the in the deal. Ad. PowerPoint. slide deck. Okay. So are you wanting them to buy something at the end? Are you wanting them to contact you? What is your ultimate outcome of your talk? Sign the contract, are no neck or no next steps. In some cases where I know I'm gonna be doing several presentations, because I might do one for the office manager first and then get to the C suite depends on the company and size, like you said, Sure. I think my biggest client, I think I had to do like a dozen presentations for every VP and everyone in the C suite. Sure. And so I'm in the in the C suite, office manager level. The format is I would do like intro outcomes. Chunk one, chunk two, is a 30 minute deal. Call to action, right? If you got 45 minutes to an hour, it's intro outcomes, chunk one chunk to chunk three call to action. Okay. And so an intro no more than two to three minutes, and its credibility building. Okay, here's who I am. Here's what I've done. Here's what we've done. Here is the reason you should listen to me my favorite thing, and I discovered this years ago, when I was giving lots and lots and lots of talks, is I came up with this thing called three questions. Okay. And all three of you are in this talk that I did, which is how you landed up in this program. Right? So when I first started that talk, I said, there's basically three questions somebody has when when, you know, when they're listening to somebody speak number one, who is this dude? Number two, what's, you know, why should I listen to him? And number three, what's in it for me? Is that a fair statement? Everybody in the room went? Yes. Right? Same thing here, if you're giving a presentation, but it's one on one, okay? You want to craft your talk in such a way where you're giving it to an audience, and then it's easier to take out the stuff that doesn't apply when you're doing a one on one thing? Right? So in this case, is if it's the office manager, and you've never spoken to, they're not an existing client. Okay. Same three questions. Who are you agreeing to take the meeting for a reason? Okay. Why should I listen to you? And what's in it for me? Okay. So, by answering those three questions will help craft this talk. Again, if I'm sitting with a bunch of engineers, I'm going to have some pretty darn technical slides. Okay, for them to geek out on, right? If I'm talking to an office manager, I'm going to paint a real world scenario of, you know, Joe Smith, new employee coming in and setting up their account and using a weak password. And later on, coming to work and get an email from somebody that says click here and he goes ahead and clicks. Okay, next thing, you know, I get a virus spreading around my entire office. Okay, next thing you know, I'm in the office manager running around, like a chicken with my head cut off trying to fix everything I'm calling the IT person, I'm panicky, because, you know, we're getting attacked here. Does that sound familiar? Yes. Okay. So what we do at outsource my it is we prevent that nightmare from ever happening to you as an office manager. Z. I didn't talk about anything technical. Okay, what I did do with the owner, and the office manager and the C level people unless they're a computer engineer, I'm going to talk about pain. I'm going to talk about the fact that if there is a computer problem, if somebody actually hacks the password, it's going to take down the whole network and because you are networked, it's going to it's going to allow that person to grow have anything that's on that computer network, because once they hack into the domain, they have control over everything. And now like, you know that that spreadsheet that you guys did that you guys, you know, you had multiple people in your company work on for over 100 hours times all the employees all that's now gone. That's going to scare the living hell out of them to the point where they're not going to be open to a solution. Okay. So, again with your talk is who what is the ultimate outcome? Who is the intended audience? Okay, you put it together. And then you create one master talk. If you look at Tony Robbins, if you look at Les Brown, if you look at myself, if you look at any unique speaker, there's usually about two to three signature talks that they have. Okay, and their full blown talks. But now because I'm talking to you, I'm taking out this slide, I'm taking out this slide, I'm taking out this slide, I'm taking out this slide. And I'm whittling it down directly to my audience. Okay, so I'll give you some advanced training. If you really want to nail down this talk thing. I'll give you some advanced training that I've done with other coaches, or other people on speaking and, and really nail it down on how to do the talk. Okay, yeah, yes. That the other company I trained with originally was with HR tech to their original presentation, and they trained me on was an hour long, like, at least and I'm thinking, hey, I'm sorry, but you don't understand what jerseys like, like, not people don't give you an hour here, especially even for a sales presentation. Like, we're an hour. You haven't, we have to break this up. So I took a lot of what they originally did. And like you said, I had to start what I do, instead of deleting the slides, I would I would hide them and then revisit, do I need that? Can I add add that add that somewhere else do I need that graphic? And that's a lot of what I've been doing. So HR Tech Academy, because I know Alex Rogers personally. I was there when they started shark sec. Okay, when was Buck 25% Shark sec. I was actually in Alex's office when that happened. So I have a lot of their stuff. And and so again, it's the full talk, but whittle it down to whoever the audience is the least amount of slides the better. I agree, talking to an audience the least amount of slides, the better. Because stories are what sells like when you when you this afternoon between 12 and 2pm. When as Adrienne and I are talking the one thing you will notice if you're there, we're going to record it I'll give you as a recording, we are going to do a tremendous amount of storytelling. Like most of our time is going to be telling story after story after story after story after story. Because we're going to create an evergreen situation where that's going to be promoted out for the next week on an automated webinar type thing. Okay, but it's the stories that are going to sell any questions? Mike, marketing type system. So do you have questions about the actual system? No, don't have questions about the system. I understand the system. It's just a matter of me kind of coming up with things to touch points to use. I know Kevin and I've talked about it before and Toastmasters is one of them, you know inviting them to Toastmasters. And I just I haven't been going to toastmasters for the last month. So I haven't, I haven't wanted to invite anybody. So now that things are starting to calm down with my wife, and I know I'm gonna start going again so that y'all have that to add. So I don't really have questions on it. It's just a matter of me, you know, creating the content and then doing it. So with we go to this and I'm going to share the screen here. Now while you're doing that you and maybe Jack can answer this. You said there are four things I wrote down, who's the audience? What's the outcome? Like? There are a couple other things that I didn't write down. Remember that Jack? What was he saying? I wrote who? Why? And what's in it for them too as the three questions for that, too. Okay. Who is this? Why should I listen to him? What's in it for me? He also, there's one thing that you also said to that I, I'm gonna guess his right out QPS, or question based selling, that's what we talked about, the order of solutions that you want to do with people is problem, alternate solutions, which is also important. And that's a lot of what I think about my slides. Because a lot of times people start with, here's my solution, then they give you a problem. And they showed what you were using as an alternate, but the buying process and your brain is wired a little differently. So if you start with a problem, give the alternate and then show the solution to so you're showing kind of a different direction of those things to they would call it pass versus spa thinking on that one to say that, again, you've said when you're whether it's on the overall presentation, or on the short parts of the slides, when in the book, question based selling time for us talks about doing you go with the problem, the ultimate, the solution, not leading with your solution first, where people start a lot of times with the solution. And that's the easiest order of operations. When you say the alternate you mean, what they're doing now. Use the alternate is more of just the pivot step. That's your transition part two, right? It's how do you do that. But sometimes people put the transition that comparison part at the end to so they have problem solution, or they'll do solution problem. And then in the at the end, and they say well, here's the verses, here's this versus that. So they do comparison at the end of it instead of so here's your problem. Here's what some of those things, here's how you would solve these problems. Here is the solution that does solve those problems, too. So ultimately, I don't know if it's always the best word, but it's usually just your pivot, pivot step about one two. That makes sense. I'm just trying to understand what you said alternate was almost like, obviously, you know, the problem is, is obviously, efficiently at first, right? Because we have a problem, the solution, you know, and we start talk about the solution. First, it gets me thinking about the solution, as opposed to feeling the pain of the problem, and not fixing the solution. I don't have the pain yet. Yeah. So if I said, Hey, we specialize in a Kevin, we specialize in cybersecurity, here's why we're so great at cybersecurity, you might actually have passwords that are out there, and then start going through how to do it. It's just a different order of operations, instead of talking about, hey, a lot of people have, you know, at companies have reached out there because the passwords aren't very strong. So that's the problem. You know, the ultimate is just visually how do you pivot from one to the other, but tactically, and you don't say words like but are things that can be seen more combative, by nature? verbiage? Hey, I know you like this, but because you want people to insinuate that the wrongs Hey, I know you've been doing this for a while at the same time, can I show you how this could be a solution that can save time for you and make your company more safe, you know, something that's not combative. Alright, so on the screen, I just now uploaded this to the folder and didn't find it in the Dropbox folder. Okay, so this is in this folder right here, where it's appointment setting, because I teach the marketing tech system on video, but I actually have a step by step document for you to follow. And in pretty much it's laid out, boom, boom, boom. So the only time you actually have to get creative is twice a month. Okay? So you need one piece of content, it could be, you know, the top 10 things in real estate, the top 10 things and mortgage it can be a sales tip, it can be, you know, if you're going after realtors, you want to solve the number one problem they have. Okay, and that is getting leads. Okay, the number one problem realtors have is leads. The number one problem realtors have is consistency. Okay, now I'm talking new realtors. I'm not talking about seasoned veterans. Okay. So seasoned veterans have all different products like in the VSAs case, she's a seasoned veteran. Okay, her number one problem right now is starting her own brokerage. Getting her business plan up to date, she already has a massive following of people relationships, etc. And her her actual next big move, okay. In fact, all of you should I have let me go and find the actual name of this thing because the number one realtor In the world at the time, I learned from Dan Sullivan wrote a book called Well, him and his buddy have a book called 10x is easier than 2x. Very, very powerful book, I got it on the audio audio version, but she, she told, he told the story of this realtor who did not even want to get in real estate. And next thing, you know, became the number one realtor in Keller Williams nationwide. Okay, they millions and millions of millions of dollars in commission income. Okay. And he goes through exactly how you do it, he goes, okay. It's the I'm not gonna get into that. It's just, it's a squirrel long rabbit hole right there. But this is the marketing Touch system right here. You just follow it step by step once you have about 12 pieces of content, usually recycling, recycling. So what I tell people, hey, you know what your group number one. And let's just say you only have 50 leads, well, now you got two groups to start with. And over the next week, you're going to, you know, maybe you take the 50 leads, and you divide them up into eight groups that you got maybe 10 people in each group or less than that, your job is to grow it to 200 qualified leads. Okay, once you have two under qualified leads, if you follow this system to the tee, the fastest I've been able to get the email sent down is nine minutes and 36 seconds. Okay. And on average, about 10 and a half minutes. And but if you use the system, as I've laid it out here, it's very, very productive, and it's very consistent creates a consistency. Right? You get one new piece of content again, what is the number one thing challenging a realtor? Now one thing, challenges in a realtor most Realtors is I need to lead. You know, I need to be introduced. Okay, I need a relationship. I learned this from Marguerite Chris Villa when I was working with her, and even how to go and as long as it's like too many people chase active listings. You know, to me, people want to time a listing, when we're in reality, they just need to go out and develop a couple of new relationships per day. Over time, they have enough people, where somebody is going to start referring them to somebody that they just heard in the wants to list their home. He knows but you know, I remember Brent telling me this when I trained his team, he goes, he goes and I look back at my real estate career. The only thing I've done is I've gone out and made friends consistently. I've gone out on I've added new friends to my database, every single day I go on, I meet people, I cannot get become a rock star stain in the office, I go out and like meet people, I shake their hand. Yeah, I get I get a contact, I need a contact, I need a warm body. And then I need to determine if I like them or not. And then I need to figure out how I can help them and keep in touch with them in a systematic way. So when they do know of somebody, or they themselves are interested in real estate, I'm the first person they think about. Yeah. And ultimately, you can outsource and have an assistant do all that stuff. But this marketing type system, you do it yourself first. And the five times I've implemented this to start my companies, I get it to the point where I'm too buried to do this anymore, and then I hire an assistant to do it. So that's how it's laid out right there. And feel free to add me to your marketing type system treat me as a prospect, add me to group number one. So that way, you're sending me a piece of content, you can add me to every group, if you want just practice on me every day, I don't care. Okay, you send me a marketing touch and then you follow up with a phone call. So what that's how the system works is you can add whatever content you want here. Right, but the key is, is consistency. So in real estate, you need a warm body as a connection, and even the mortgage, you need a warm body as a connection. The other thing that the two of you can do as a mortgage company, is you can host a webinar, you can say, Hey, come here, John Pyron for 45 minutes talk about referral systems. Right? You promote it out to every realtor that you know. And you set up a time where you want me to be a speaker for you for free. Right, this is what I used to do. I used to go around the mortgage companies and I used to go around the real estate companies. Why? Because they have a meeting every say A week and they always have a guest speaker and I was a guest speaker every week like clockwork somewhere at some place in this town. Okay. So if you go to my YouTube channel and you'll see many talks up there Coldwell Banker there's all kinds of places I've gone and spoken to. The number one requested talk is my talk on how to 10x your referrals that resonates with every mortgage person, every realtor like clockwork and it works. Yeah. And you guys can be the people that host it. And it's just going to be a magnet. Yeah, so that's an idea. Okay, any questions about that? No. All right, Kevin, created a 770 $500 per month coaching business in 90 days and you want to coach you real estate mortgage real estate mortgage. So you want to be a real estate mortgage coach and be able to create $7,500 in 90 days per month Yes sir. Right there's two ways to go about it number one, you need content you see my screen still yes Right. Actually, you know what we do this the benefits of being a part of this group is. That, honestly give it all to you guys. In a six month mentorship program, teaching Coaches and Consultants how to make 100 grand as a coaching consultant, okay. And in order to graduate from the program, you had to create a six figure income and in six months, Okay, step by step, I recorded everything. workbook templates, everything. Okay? So I'm just going to give it to all of you, if you have an ambition of wanting to do that, because it is laid out, boom, boom, boom, workbook everything. Okay? So workbook right here. I paid I don't know, I take pain, Steve Knoppix on $75,000 to learn this. Okay. And with his permission, I just duplicate because I love training coaches and consultants and they've done a lot of that. So this is one path. The other path, you and I are going to have a one on one conversation about how to work together and I can get you there 1015 times faster. So because $7,500 a month and 90 days is a lot of work. I've done it, I can help you do it. It's entirely up to you. Okay, but if I was going to if you want to do a self paced type thing, just follow this workbook step by step. Okay, and all the recordings 12 People in this mastermind that I did for six months, I made the mistake of giving to, to, to the spots to to friends and didn't make make or pay for. And of course, they dropped out. As you know, they didn't have any skin in the game. How did the other remaining 10, eight of them graduated meaning eight of them creating a six figure coaching consulting business in less than six months. Okay, and but I didn't leave anything out, this is exactly what they paid for it. They all the calls are here, step by step speaker training, all that stuff. And you all have access to it now. But really for to make it simple. It's figuring out who do you want to coach real estate and mortgage people? If I put you on a stage right now, and said, Hey, here's a bunch of real estate mortgage people, what are the top 10 Things you can share with them right now? That would have the biggest impact on their business? Here's the mic. That's your first 10 pieces of content you really need to create. Because when you're building a coaching, consulting business, content is everything. Having enough content out there to show that you are an expert and having some success stories, okay. So in your case, if it's coaching real estate and mortgage people, you got Mike, who's worked with you, he's your first call client. Okay? And treat him like he's paying you a lot of money. Okay, and you mentor him for free, because he's already on your team. But you do it on Zoom, so you guys can record your conversations, and that becomes training content. Okay, then you go out and you find a couple other realtors to do the same thing. You put social media posts out there, what's the biggest challenge you have as a realtor? The biggest number one problem you have as a mortgage first. You can even ask a couple of people, what is your number one problem ago, you created a little survey going out of lead generation, at least four areas of business, marketing, sales, lead generation, whatever those bullet points are, what is your biggest challenge that you have as a realtor? And whatever they give you you teach content on that. Because it's the content, it's your talking and I did a lot of training in there on that about that. But it's your your content that is gonna attract people to you. And you go from there. So a classic example here, let me go here Stephanie shell are here, same thing came to me and said, Hey, I want to be a coach. I want to be a speaker. I want to be a consultant. Okay. And it took me three and a half months of working with her one on one to get her to fire her boss, which she did. Now, if you go through any of her stuff here, well, best selling author of 12 books. She has a workshop that we designed. I designed it because I wanted to be an attendee of a great workshop. So we designed it. It's coming up in January. It's called the rare retreat. It's usually in San Antonio. And, but now she has does well over a million dollars a year as the author, speaker trainer, coach that a whole team, etc. Right. We worked together for seven years. And but it was just step by step lumbo She wanted to get she's one of the stories I'm going to be telling between 12 and two today is probably one of the going to be the one one of the stories that resonates the most is she tried for four months to hit 10k a month. And you know there's a video up there called how to give yourself a clean slate. That is a direct result of Stephanie shower. There she calls me up February 9 that says hey, I I'm not going to hit it again. I know you are why it's February 9 Steph what? Well I did the numbers I use see what I have my A pipeline and I just don't see how many hit it today and you'll win. Do you want to hit it? Yeah. Do you really want to hit it? Yeah, you're gonna do exactly what I tell you to do. Yeah, great. Okay, here's what you're gonna do. And I gave her that clean slate strategy. Within seven days, she passed 10k a month. And I said, you're not done. You got another eight or nine days, I forget what the what the actual number is on the video. But she ultimately came in at $14,865. Because it was a mental breakthrough that she needed. She had to how to exact how to give you to get to $7,500 a month, which actually can go a whole lot faster now, because of the amount of people I've done this with now. You know, it works. And the format is this. I give elite. I've got enough content to convict me at what I do as a consultant, or coach, I send you an email. My signature has enough information there for you to be curious enough to go and click OK. Then I have an appointment link on there. You're going to set a 10 minute phone call with me. I'm going to do a 10 minute phone call mash you three things. Number one, what's your big goal that you're trying to hit by the end of this current year? You're gonna tell me, I'm gonna say okay, you'd like to hit it by the end of the year. Yeah. Okay, let's just say you're there and you're, you're achieved it. And I'm gonna walk you through a two minute phone call. The questions I'm gonna ask them the dialogue I'm gonna ask. The most important thing is, is mastering that 10 minute call, she was stubborn as hell about. Right, and she kept failing and failing and failing and failing for about three weeks in a row. She finally calls me ever says this, there's something wrong, I'm not succeeding with this 10 minute call thing. And she was given away 45 minutes to 60 minutes of her time with every prospect and it's just not sustainable. And so I went and we roleplay and she treated me like a prospect says stuff you're not following the 10 minute sprint. Follow 10 minute script over the next week. Verbatim. Don't add live. Stop being stubborn and do it. Can you do that? Yeah. Well, we hold it work. And the rest is history. I'm going to call it a strategy session which led to a ticket to the garage reader which led to a ticket to a workshop which led to a ticket to speaking engagements. And he is having a funnel like I have here on the wall that you can have touch points with them all over the place. So once you have that process and system down is just duplication it's it's it's repetition over and over and over again. Okay, so take a look at the resources that I've shared here. Okay, and and then if you want to talk you know about working together one on one to get you there quicker just let me know you're more than happy to start in the resources huh? You shared when I look when you shared it because there's quite a bit there where do I start and those resources just starting the beginning? Or is there a start creating content because I feel like content seems like the key content is the key. And as a content outline, I would start with this workbook and walk you through step by step how to get your content based started. Because and humor Oh. Sales foundation sales message sales voice This is a funnel, right and this whole workbook walks you through step by step how to create that. Okay. Lisa English business plan. Yes. Do you need there? Where are you stuck? I am stuck at how big I want to go. How what? How big do I want to go or how small do I want to keep my my practice or my my brokerage? So like, I'm thinking okay, do I'm just going to be on my own do this for a year or two? Or should I just you know, just start like hiring people. I go I go back and forth. Sure. Did you get your business plan done? No. Okay. You follow the one page PLAN strategy? Are you doing a full blown 1520 page business plan? I'm actually I'm going back and forth. I tried to do the one foot one page, and then I get distracted, and then start, you know, going through through my mission and objectives. And then I come back down. And, you know, try to do that again. So, yeah. So it starts off with I mean, it's, it's easier to go after a bigger role. And Miss, versus going after a smaller goal. I mean, smaller goals don't really motivate us. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you want something that's, that's like, unrealistic, that you feel like there's just no way I can hit that. Okay. Because the person you're, you don't want to build a business, or set a vision, that doesn't require you to change. Because nothing's gotten your hit the goal, it would be very easy to hit the goal, you're going to be the same in the process, and your targets are going to be set low. And it's going to be easy to not do it. Yeah. So when you set an intention, you know, you're starting a real estate company from scratch. And, you know, what's it going to be like to have, you know, 50 agents. As a real jerk, you're, you're going to be the person that is going to be the Rainmaker in the beginning. And I can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt, the very first hire you're going to hire is going to be an assistant. Yeah, take all that stuff off your plate that you don't want to do. Right? And then even then you might need a second assistant before you hire your first agent. Right? If you get that book 10x is easier than to X. entire chapter one is about a realtor, I forget her name. But she started from nothing. And, and she followed that model, he laid it out step by step how she went from nothing to a million dollars in commission. I mean, step by step. And she built it in increments, big, big leaps. Okay, so out of the 12, out of the 100% of the work that I do 80% of it needs to be given to somebody else. So I can make room for the 20%, which is going to give me the biggest leap, and the biggest jump, and he walks through the psychology of the growth of that. So when you set small goals, you show up in a small level, when you set big goals, you have to grow into that because you don't have the skill set to hit it right now. So the first thing I would do is, is get your business plan done, you don't need unless you're gonna go out and get investor dollars. A one page plan is going to be just fine. Okay, first milestone, how do I get to how do I get to $8,333 a month? How do I get to a six figure income consistently in my new business? And if that doesn't motivate you, to under 50,000? You know, how do I get there? And it'll become very apparent of what you need to do. You can always bring it here and go, Hey, can we look at the plant and they can we can we talk about it? Any questions about that? I mean, the other thing we can do if you if you want is we can schedule a strategy session between the two of us and we can just get it done. Okay, okay. It's always an option for every one of you. There are going to be times where you're going to want to make these big leaps. And there's not enough time on this call to get it done. And any of you can book a strategy session with me, obviously, I'm not going to do it for free. But doesn't mean you have to work with me one on one. Maybe you just need two hours, four hours of one on one time. It's totally fine. You have that option. Okay, because once we get that plan done, then all you got to do is show up here. Here's where I'm at. There's one that hold me accountable here. Hold me Hello there, what's the next step here? What's the next step there? Okay. But I would get that one page plan done first. So you know exactly what that next step is. Because each day that goes by that you don't have it is lost opportunity. Does that make sense? Yeah. Cool. Anybody else have anything else that they want to discuss? Alright guys, I gotta run. And if you want to be a part of this deal here at 12 to two, I will send you a link on that. Just let me know. So all right, I gotta run. I'll see you guys. Can you send me that John? Yes, I will. Talk to you guys later.

An all-new Nissan Frontier pickup truck is big news. The popular midsize pickup has not received a total makeover — until now. We at America on the Road are among the first journalists to drive and review the vehicle. And at the same time Host Jack Nerad had the chance for a lengthy sit-down interview with Nissan's Randy Dale, the chief product planner for the Frontier. In the car review segment Co-Host Chris Teague subjected the Toyota Avalon to his Down East style of vehicle testing. It turns out that Toyota is dropping the Avalon model, so this might be the last road test to be heard on America on the Road. Also in the road test segment, Jack Nerad gives his opinions on the Ford Mustang GT. Is it the best-buy in the extensive Mustang model range? Or does the recently introduced Mach 1 model deserve that honor? Jack and Chris will answer those questions and more. In the news, research firm AutoPacific has announced its findings in the annual New Vehicle Satisfaction Survey of 89,000 new car and light truck owners. Now in its 25th year, the VSAs identify the most satisfying vehicles on the market as rated by the consumer. We'll tell you what the most satisfying vehicle is and which brands did best in their survey. Just a hint: there were several surprises. See what we said about the 2021 Ford Mustang Mach 1

Paul T Tran: How To Start Your Own Business And The Advantage Of Consulting First Meet Paul Tran, a restaurant chain owner, franchise developer, fanatic about using VSAs to automate and scale companies, sales innovator, newsletter publisher, podcaster, and a nonprofit director. Paul is currently residing in Southern California and operates 10 restaurants with The Halal Guys which was his client before. Paul’s main job is as a consultant for restaurant franchises and shares that he has worked with a lot of different restaurants.  In this episode of Construct Your Life with Austin Linney, Paul shares how he started from having a client to him eventually operating this well-known restaurant. Paul will give you an idea of the things you should consider when starting your own business or creating your own brand. Paul provides a bit of advice if you are considering doing a franchise and understanding what aspects of the business are you looking for. Paul will also give you an idea of how owners come up with the food prices and what it actually covers. Listen in to learn why approaching a business consultant is important when you want to grow your business.  “Focus on what you’re good at” - Paul Tran “You need to be where the action is.. you just need to look different” - Paul Tran What You Will Discover: [03:40] How to start your restaurant or food chain business and having the vision of growing it [07:43] Paul helps you understand why having a system is important especially if you have multiple establishments [12:31] The basics in creating your own brand and the objective of getting noticed [16:12] Why focusing on what you’re good at is better than having a lot of options [23:57] Paul explains why it’s better to be near your competitor and understand the importance of knowing your location [27:54] Paul shares that sales is important to him since it can be applied to everything and anything [33:36] Paul’s advice on what to focus on when cultivating your sales techniques   Relevant Links:   Linked in: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulttran/  Website: https://lnk.bio/mxdy/  Website: https://wondrous-leader-4208.ck.page/b813129f24  Website: https://www.prosulum.com  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/paulttran/  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thehalalguyssocal/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Paul-T-Tran-103685014307447  Twitter: https://twitter.com/PaulTTran  Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/honey-badger-seller-podcast/id1516914011  Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcgYYVRmdqrtRhGng67MUeA    #podcast

In this episode of FreedomIn Five Minutes, Dean shares stories about two of his clients. Both experts in their industries, both are very good people. The key difference between these two clients, however, is how they put our Virtual Systems Architects to work and how they prioritize building Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). If you are a Pro Sulum customer or thinking about working with one of our VSAs, then listen to this episode and learn how to bring the best in your VSA (or any VA, in general). And discover the importance of creating SOPs for your business. All that and more in today’s Freedom In Five Minutes episode.

PLEASE NOTE: This episode is part of the discontinued Sow What Podcast. We are now the Honey Badger Seller (www.honeybadgerseller.com). In partnership with Pro Sulum, I'm creating a regular video series for their clients on ways you can deploy your VSA to automate 98% of your business. To learn more, you can reply to this message or visit www.prosulum.com for more details. I had a conversation with an awesome speaker who's been on some pretty prominent stages, and he had a question about using VSAs to continue booking more keynote deals. I share some ideas that you can use for any type of service provider, B2B business. Hope this helps! WORK WITH PAUL: https://paulttran.blog/work-with-me/

PLEASE NOTE: This episode is part of the discontinued Sow What Podcast. We are now the Honey Badger Seller (www.honeybadgerseller.com). Dean Soto (of Pro Sulum) and I were invited to speak to founders of a Catholic startup accelerator, hosted by the University of Notre Dame, called the OSV Innovation Challenge. The topic we taught was about using VSAs (virtual systems architects) to automate all non-critical business tasks - to recover time meant for massive growth, innovation, enjoying the business, and pursuing quality of life. The video version of the episode can be found on my blog, here. And the presentation officially starts at 3:30, so feel free to fast-forward past the small talk we're making =) It was such an honor to meet brilliant, God-focused entrepreneurs; and share our experiences and insights on how to scale - in hopes that they make huge dents in the universe. I also hope to do more of these events, as I felt so full of joy and purpose in doing so. If if I can any way add value to your platform (be it podcast, newsletter, or speaking event), or someone you know, let me know about it!

This summer, if you called or visited the Chamber office, you might have gotten the chance to meet Ezekial Daos, and Sojeong Lee volunteers from the Americorp Vista Summer Associate program.  In today’s episode of Behind the Community, Chamber Director Cecilia Murray sits down with them, and we get to learn a little bit more about these two young leaders.

Have you ever met people who give you the wrong idea — or worse, tell you that you are wrong even though you are right? Life is riddled with these types of people and they can be your closest family and friends! Now, this does not mean that these people are lying to you. Most of them actually mean well. They simply had no idea that they were being untrue. This is simply group thinking. In this episode, Dean talks about how thinking outside the box can lead to better ways of doing things for your business and personal life. ----- Automated Transcription Below Dean Soto  0:00   Hey, this is Dean Soto — founder of FreedomInFiveMinutes.com and ProSulum.com P R O S U L U M .com and we are here again with another Freedom In Five Minutes Podcast episode. Today's topic is this: They Lied to You but They had No Idea that They were Dishonest. That and more coming up.    Dean Soto  0:38   Good morning. Good to be back. Good to be here with you. I'm eating some miner's lettuce. Miner's lettuce is some plant that grows out in the wild where we are at. Right here. So, I'm on my walk with the Luna Meister. We get to enjoy some of this succulent, succulent miner's lettuce.   Dean Soto  1:02   Huh? So delicious.   Dean Soto  1:05   Um, good morning. Luna has not been on a walk in like two days. And she's going cray-cray! She is crazy running around and going nuts! That's what we do. We enjoy that. We allow her to do that. We allow her to be free! Luna be free! Go! Go find them coyotes, doggy! Go get them.    Dean Soto  1:33   So I was a very bad student. I was a very very very bad student as far as I can remember. It was funny I am — as far back as I remember, I just did not fit in well at school. I did not like it. And I don't think it was because I was a dummy — at least I hope I wasn't.    Dean Soto  2:00   When I was younger they were testing me to put me into GATE which is for smart people I guess. And it was funny. I remember I was in the Assistant Principal's office at Clegg Elementary School in Huntington Beach. One of the tests that they gave me, I had apparently passed all their tests. But they gave me this test of putting a puzzle of a girl together — like a little girl. She had a little pink dress or whatever it was. And so funny. And so, they gave me this test. But it wasn't like, you put this puzzle where you have the slots or anything like that. He gave me all the pieces, and I had to do it free form on a table.    Dean Soto  3:10   And so I'm putting the puzzle pieces together. And at the very end, I put the girl's legs so that her legs and her feet were both, you know, attached. And so when I saw her, I put her legs with her feet facing inward. You know, have you ever seen though, you know, in most comics and things like that when the girls are trying to be like very girly and very pretty. They kind of draw them–  with their feet kind of inward, right?    Dean Soto  3:47   Oh. Well, that was wrong! At least according to him. So he said, No, no, no. The feet go outward. You cannot be in GATE. You cannot be with smart people.    Dean Soto  4:04   And so I started my journey of absolutely hating and loathing school. At least public school. So from that point forward, it was the beginning of the end. Pretty much every year after year after year after year after year, I was nothing but trouble. I was extremely bored. I just could not handle it, except for the eighth grade.    Dean Soto  4:39   Eighth grade, I've resolved you know — I'm going to actually do the work. I actually learned. I actually did what they wanted me to do because my poor grandma at the time was like, I cannot handle this. So I ended up getting an honor roll in eighth grade. I did really, really well. And I ended up getting into freshman year of college and it was Mr. Wilford of Marina High School, he's probably still there.    Dean Soto  5:08   He taught electronics. I was excited. I was actually pretty excited. I, you know, I'm like, Okay, well, you know, I'll just keep going and keep getting honor rolls. This stuff is gonna be great.    Dean Soto  5:20   And so I took this electronics class. I thought, oh, electronics sounds really interesting. And we got this test. And the test was one of those where you pick the letter, and there's literally no way you can pick the answer. It could be two of the same letters. So say you had, you know, 15 letters, you had 15 or 26 questions and 26 answers, right. And each answer corresponded with a letter in the alphabet.    Dean Soto  5:57   Well, huh, Logically, there would be no way to do a double letter right there in that case, since each one — each answer corresponds to a single letter. It's kind of like a mixed-up / jumble thing.    Dean Soto  6:14   So I went and I finished my test. I almost got a perfect score. And the reason why I did not get a perfect score on this test was that my T — the letter T had a little bit of a hook on it. And so Mr. Wilford said it was wrong. That's an F that you're trying to do right there.    Dean Soto  6:48   I said, No, it's not an F that I'm trying to do. I did an F over here. It could not possibly be an F because you can only have one letter for every answer. I said, sometimes that's just the way my T's come out. It has a tiny little hook.    Dean Soto  7:06   He said, No, that's an F there, that's an F.    Dean Soto  7:09   And I'm like, No, seriously, there, that's not an F. Logically, it cannot be any other thing, but a T.    Dean Soto  7:17   He said, Nope. It's an F. And so you're not going to get that perfect score.    Dean Soto  7:25   And I was livid. I was like, all right, done. You know what? I'm done with this crap. You know, the injustice, the injustice of it all. I'm done. I am not going to. I'm done. I'm done with that. If that's how it's going to be. And that's how it's going to be.    Dean Soto  7:50   And so from then on, once again, back on track to being a horrible, naughty student. Well, all throughout that time, I hear, you're going to fail out of high school, you're not going to be able to get into college. You're not going to get a good job. You're not going to get this. You're not going to... Dean. You're doing it wrong. You're being very bad.    Dean Soto  8:17   And yeah, I mean, yeah, I was disobeying my Grandma at the time. And so, I totally get that. And I understand that. However, the thing was that in my junior year of college, close to my senior years, like the second half of junior, close a senior year in college.    Dean Soto  8:43   They said, Dean, you know what, you're dumb, dumb. You are a dummy, so you're gonna go to adult school.   Dean Soto  8:51   And I'm like, Okay, great. Now, you know, I'm a dum dum.    Dean Soto  8:56   I've already been beaten down already. Might as well beat me down some more, right? Well, I get to an adult school. And it's right next to Merde Park, right where I love to play basketball. I picked up games of basketball. And I get into the adult school and I see it's literally one building, like one small building with an open room, like large desks everywhere.    Dean Soto  9:17   And I'm like, What is this interesting place? So I went in and they gave me an orientation. And they say that, yeah, all you do is you go and get a packet from whatever class you want to get credit for. You get the packet and you start doing the packet. You can spend as much time as you need, just go ahead and start to open it up. And there are teachers on the outside — on the outer rim of the class and just above their thing. It'll say English it will say history, it'll say whatever. They'll be able to help you If you have any questions. They'll also be the ones that grade your tests.    Dean Soto  10:04   And I'm like, So you're telling me that I can just go grab one of these little packets? And if it takes me a week to do it, I get the semester credit?    Dean Soto  10:17   Yeah, yeah. No, yeah. As long as it takes you to actually do it. You get it.    Dean Soto  10:22   I'm like, What the heck? Why did I not do this three years ago? Why did nobody tell me this? They all said you had to go to high school. And I can actually get my college — like I can actually get my high school diploma doing this?    Dean Soto  10:39   Yeah, yeah. Not GED. No, yeah, you can get your high school diploma.    Dean Soto  10:46   What the heck! That's crazy! And so I blew through those packets. And I wish I knew about that earlier.   Dean Soto  10:57   Well, I came to find out that same thing. That same type of thing can happen in college with CLEP testing — college level examination program testing. I did the same thing in college. I'm like, all I have to do is go take this test that's like two hours long, and I'll get credit for my lower-division classes. Yeah. That's awesome. Blew through those — it was like 100 bucks each. I didn't have to pay to have to go to semester's worth of college and anything that I didn't pass, that's when online stuff started coming out. So I went to Coastline Community College for that. I got those out of the way. Oh, it was awesome.    Dean Soto  11:46   But over and over and over again, to this day, even in business. I see that same thing happening. You have to do it this way. This is the way it must be done. Everybody has to do it this way. If you don't do it. You're a bad bad, bad, bad.    Dean Soto  12:03   And 99% of the time, it's wrong. Right? This is all through life.    Dean Soto  12:11   Oh, yeah. You know, one you have to go to college. You're gonna have to pay for all your kids' college. No. Why? Why?    Dean Soto  12:23   Oh, you have to, you know your kids. You have to go to a private school or public school. No. Why?    Dean Soto  12:36   You have to have employees in order to have a big functioning business. Mm-hmm. No. Why?    Dean Soto  12:49   If you need a copywriter or if you need someone who's good at copywriting and sales. You need somebody who has lots of experience in copywriting sales. No Why?    Dean Soto  13:01   Over and over and over again. It's been shown, at least anecdotally, through my experience, that most of the "What we're taught is BS."    Dean Soto  13:20   And so I don't trust Luna out there. She is staring at me.    Dean Soto  13:29   So now, were all those people lying? No. Some might have been, but a lot of these people literally didn't know any better.    Dean Soto  13:41   And there are a lot of things that I do that I didn't know any better. Right? So the idea that ... Here's the main point behind this. We are trusting and when you're listening to what is essentially the status quo, you're gonna find that if you do a little bit of research, just a little bit of research. That's right, honey, that it's wrong. It doesn't mean that they're lying to you. It's just groupthink.    Dean Soto  14:28   And so you want to have as little groupthink as possible, get away from the groupthink. By doing that, you can start building businesses that automate themselves, you can start building businesses that are way different than anything else that's out there.    Dean Soto  14:45   Like, I'm part of a — Yeah, I'll leave this actually for another time.    Dean Soto  14:52   But just start doing things differently. The more different you can be in what you do, the more you're going to see that there are powerful, easy ways, much easier ways to get something done than traditional people think are   Unknown Speaker  15:15   Luna No, no.   Dean Soto  15:21   She's trying to get to our feral cats right now. We're gonna put you in your crate. Go crate. Go crate. If you're gonna do that, you need to go crate. No.    Dean Soto  15:39   But I just challenge you this week. I challenge you this week. You know, if there's something like with your kids or with your business, where you're like, oh, it has to be this way. That you kind of just examine, just examine for a little bit, whether or not it's true that it has to be that way.    Dean Soto  15:59   More often than not, you're going to find that it's absolutely not true. And there's a much faster, easier way of doing stuff. This is why we have the VSAs at ProSulum.com and Freedom In Five Minutes.com, right?    Dean Soto  16:13   A much faster, much better, much cheaper way of building your business than your typical employee. And yeah, I just challenge you this week. Look at the things you're doing and ask yourself, Is there a better way? Is this the only way to do it?    Dean Soto  16:30   You're gonna find just through a little bit of research, that there are much faster, much easier ways often to do things that you thought there was only one way. Alright, this is Dean Soto of FreedomInFiveMinutes.com. I will go check you out. Well, you go check that out.    Dean Soto  16:48   But I will see you in the next Freedom In Five Minutes Podcast episode.

Although the product is an important factor, at the end of the day, it is customer experience that determines the success of your business. And one of the best things that can lead to great customer experience is through systemizing processes. In today’s episode of Freedom in Five Minutes, guest George Chen, founder of UBestPacks.com talks with Dean about the importance of offloading tasks, leveraging your VSAs, and the influence of customer service over the success of your business. ----- Automated Transcription Below: Dean Soto  0:00   Hey, this is Dean Soto — founder of FreedomInFiveMinutes.com and ProSulum.com P R O S U L U M . com. And we're here again with another Freedom In Five Minutes Podcast episode. Today's topic is this. Systemizing Global Manufacturing the Easy Way with George Chen. That and more coming up.   Oh. Today is going to be a treat. An absolute treat! Because I have one of my favorite people here on this podcast. Someone who has taken – oh my gosh, like he not only does – he systemizes in a way that allows his global manufacturing business to run with as few people as possible.   He is so creative when it comes to systems and really doesn't hesitate to at least try to systemize pretty much everything in his life as well as with his business. So, that being said, I am here with Mr. George Chen. He is the President and CEO of U-BEST PACKAGING SOLUTIONS. George! What is up, my man? How's it going?    George Chen  1:29   Hey. What's up, dude? Stoked to be here. Very excited. Yeah.    Dean Soto  1:34   Awesome. Awesome. So we actually met through — Paul who is a mutual friend of ours.   And he introduced us and we started working together. You do some pretty amazing things. I had no idea - when we first started - all of the things that you do. Can you kind of give an overview of what you are in charge of? And really, how did you get to that point?   George Chen  2:03   Yeah. So, what I'm in charge of. So, I run U-BEST PACKAGING SOLUTIONS. We're based out of Brea, California, Orange County. And we do anything branded. So, if it involves putting your brand on it, whether it be packaging, business cards, flyers, to clothing, apparel, we do it all. So, what I oversee is I oversee our U.S. operations as well as our overseas operations. We have manufacturing sites here in Orange County, as well as in Taiwan and China as well. We not only do packaging, but we also do shoe manufacturing as well. So in various different industries. And how I got here. Well, it's funny, I started a sticker company. In college, I traded two DJ turntables for a vinyl plotter. And what a vinyl plotter is — if you look at cars. And they usually have those family stickers where it has a mom, dad, son, whatever. Yeah, so I traded two turntables for a vinyl plotter to cut both stickers. And from there, we moved into different types of packaging. And that's kind of how it started.   Dean Soto  3:21   That's crazy. That's crazy. So actually, were you selling your vinyl cuts to your friends and things like that? What I mean — that's pretty dang cool.   George Chen  3:36   No. I was — originally, I just wanted to make a bunch of stickers for myself. And I was pretty into the car modding industry where you take the parts off of that. So it kind of went hand in hand. And then eventually, we started selling parts. Vinyl, you know, kind of like tinting parts for certain head lamps and headlights. I would sell it to car modding shops. And that's kind of how it started.    Dean Soto  4:05   That's crazy. That's so crazy. And now, you have a whole manufacturing company in Brea that I have been to a couple of times. You have a staff there, and you do some really amazing things there. So what's out? Give a big rundown of some of the things that you're able to do right now. I know you say you have your shoe manufacturer and you have whatever. What's your favorite thing right now? What's the most innovative or what was your — kind of the thing that you love the most that you're doing right now?   George Chen  4:43   I wouldn't say it's one single product that we do. I think it's more so the gratification of printing something and showing our customers and seeing the look on their face. That's what I love doing. I love — it's not that I love printing or I love manufacturing. I love the feeling of giving my customers a product and having them go, "Holy crap, this is better than I imagined. Thank you for this, like, I'm so stoked." That's usually where I get my gratification. But if you want to boil it down to kind of more so a product, I would say, our paper packaging. Doing boxes and doing retail packaging, or a lot of marketing, influencer marketing packages. So, a lot of times we've worked with global brands and we make special influencer boxes for them that they ship out to all these marketing influencers. And we build like really, really cool custom wooden boxes. Sometimes plastic boxes, clear acrylic boxes and just make the user experience something super cool that they can post online and share with the world.   Dean Soto  5:57   It's amazing. It's amazing. You actually deal with a whole bunch of different industries right? With all of this? And as I've seen your packaging too, and we'll get into some more deep questions in a little bit. But I've seen your packaging. It's funny because when I think of packaging, I think of just — it sounds bad because you're probably gonna be like, "Yeah. That's like totally not what we do." But I actually just think of like, cardboard box around   George Chen  6:31   Brown shipping boxes.   Dean Soto  6:32   Yeah.   George Chen  6:34   Literally what everyone says, "Oh, you do packaging? Can I buy like brown boxes?"   I'm like, I mean, we can do that. But that's not our bread and butter. Yeah. And then everyone's like, Oh, yeah, you guys are like... I say no. Yeah.   Dean Soto  6:48   So yeah. I want people to get an idea of all the different things that you have created. Some of the most creative things like for Afters Ice Cream, which is really big over here in Southern California you did some really creative amazing things for them and for some pretty big named companies right? So what are those kind of things?   George Chen  7:12   We're pretty big in the restaurant industry. I would say we do a lot of franchise restaurants nationwide and we do local franchise areas like Afters Ice Cream. We did everything from their wall installation. So if you go on their website, I think it's AftersIceCream.com. You guys can go through their portfolio and see some stuff that we've done. So we do all of their ice cream cups for them. We do all of their wall installations for them. So, wallpaper wraps, signage, photobooth opportunities. We just recently did the Rick and Morty collaboration, and we did all the window clings that go in the storefront. The wallpaper packaging and merchandise quoting   Dean Soto  7:58   The Rick and Morty Thing man was so cool. Like kind of give an idea of what that actually was just because, man. If you guys saw the video of this, you felt like you were in the cartoon.   George Chen  8:12   Yeah. So I think it was at their Pasadena store. And they have this building on the side just solely for a photo op. But once you walk in the door, it's covered in wallpaper of different designs of Rick and Morty and you go in there and you take photos, and with ice cream and whatnot. But, you know, you just gotta go to the website and take a look at it for yourself. It's kind of hard to explain.   Dean Soto  8:41   I love it. Like I always kind of — I always think of what you do as putting ideas and dreams into a physical and tangible product whether it's actual packaging for something. Or you know, wrap or something like that. It gives that whole physical... You're able to put these ideas into a physical form which is absolutely amazing. I love it man.   George Chen  9:13   We like to say we bring ideas to life. If you have an idea and you saw something super cool and you want to recreate it, or you want to redesign it into something that fits around your product, that's what we're good at. We're really good at building packaging around our customers' products — whether it be boxes, bags, or whatever it may be. We're really good at you know, catering to certain customers and making something very memorable.   Dean Soto  9:41   Yeah, I love it. So guys, if you haven't noticed, I'm like, these guys. You guys got to know exactly what this guy does. So that as we go deeper into how he actually gets this done, you'll just be blown away that he's able to do what he's able to do. So with such a lean organization. All that being said, when we first met, I mean... prior to us even meeting, you already seemed to have a mind for systems and operations and you run your business, from what I can tell, very differently than a lot of other people in your industry. And that one of those things is definitely a focus on outsourcing and documentation. So, what is your whole idea when it comes to those two things — documentation and outsourcing? So that you can maintain a flexible but still powerful organization?   George Chen  10:51   Oh, it's funny. Before we met, I actually did not really thinking that kind of way. It might have seemed that way but not really. I did learn from a friend one time. We were — I can tell you, when we started this company, I was typing out invoices on Microsoft Excel and doing inventory counts manually by hand, typing them into Microsoft Excel and calculating our inventory that way. So that's where we started. And we my friend was helping me out. And we were talking about inventory management systems because going through my inventory every week and counting everything was not working. So we found a company called StitchLabs.com. And he explained to us like, you know, you have to catalogue everything. You have to go through and input all this data. And it's going to take a lot of time, but if you put in the work now, it'll be smooth sailing later down the road, because you'll have all this infrastructure that you've implemented. So that was kind of the beginning of where I had that kind of system thought and operations way to do things. But in the like, until we met, that's when it started really kicking in and understanding. They are doing the outsourcing and documenting all of our processes. Because, you know, in the very beginning it was me. I was doing the account managing. I was doing the sales. I was doing the invoicing. I was doing the purchase orders. I was doing the accounts payable, accounts receivable, so literally doing everything. So there wasn't really a way that I systemize everything, it was just Oh, something came up, I had to do it, and I just did it and then we'll go on. But slowly as we met, you know, I started realizing, "Hey, I can document all this stuff. Cuz at the end of the day, how to type an order is going to be the same every single time."    Dean Soto  12:46   Exactly.    George Chen  12:47   So how do I document it so that I can pass it along and have someone else take care of it for me? Where I can focus on the more important parts of scaling my company, doing business development to product development. Things that actually I'm very valuable at because at the end of day, my time isn't used best if I'm typing up invoices or purchase orders, right? But yeah systems changed the way I run the company.    Dean Soto  13:12   That's awesome. That's awesome. What was  the first thing that you put into a system that — not necessarily the first thing... But the first thing that where you were blown away where thought "Oh crap I don't have to do this thing ever again and now that gives me time to do this other thing that's way valuable. What was the first thing where the light bulb just clicked?   George Chen  13:43   Order processing and invoicing. I hated doing that. Like, I absolutely hated it. I don't like typing out invoices and typing out orders. It's such a waste of my time. And once I implemented that package. I was able to focus on sales. I can just talk to a customer and say, "Hey, please process order and these are the details of that order." And never have to do it again. That was the beginning. And that, you know, that snowballed into even... I mean, we've always had a process on how to do some of the printing in our warehouse. Yeah. But once that happened, I was like, "Okay, now I'm starting to look into all of the different things that we do, and how I systemize this?" Coming from a startup company or coming from, like, not having any business background - learning on the fly. Now I have to think, how would a global corporation do this? Right? They have all the standard operating procedures. Now, that made me realize, because I was doing everything myself — I knew that I had my operating procedures. Those are all in my head.    Dean Soto  14:48   Yeah.   George Chen  14:48   There's no way for me to teach someone and have them replicate it time and time again, without any errors because then it's all subjective. Then it's like, "Oh, you have your way of doing this. I have my way of doing this." I'm teaching you how I'm doing it. But you're not going to be doing it the same way I'm doing it, because there's no documentation.   Dean Soto  15:05   Yeah, exactly. So   George Chen  15:06   I started looking in my warehouse, and, you know, printing facilities. And I'm looking at, how do I systemize this now? So now I went through our printing process and started documenting. Okay, you mix the ink for 16 seconds. And why do we do this? Like, we started listing out all the different reasons why we do certain things, and what to look out for. If the ink is not mixed properly, you're going to get separation and whatnot. And it kind of teaches everyone "Hey, this is the exact way to do it. And if something goes wrong, then we look at that document and say, okay, where did it go wrong?"   Dean Soto  15:42   Yeah.    George Chen  15:42   And you can easily pinpoint now, at what process something went wrong. And now, we have a much better quality control because now we know, "Hey, this print station is producing something different than this other condition. What's the difference between the two? Or what not.   Dean Soto  16:00   I love that. I love that. That's cool. Especially the the idea that because you have the process, you can see where something breaks down. It's not a person, you know. If somebody messes up and it's just because it's in their head, then it's like, "Okay, well how do I fix that?" And that's not very fixable, especially if they keep on messing up. But if it's the process, it makes it super easy to be able to say, "Boom, there's a problem right there." And to fix it, I love that. Before we get into more of the tactical stuff, walk me through how a new customer comes in. Like what's your entire system from new customer comes in to ideation where you're coming up with strategy and everything like that to actually delivering a product. What's your involvement in all of that?   George Chen  17:00   Now. So in the beginning, I was — beginning to end, I was in everything. Now we started outsourcing a lot of our account managing. So now, when a customer comes in, they call us right? Either whoever's in the office will take the call or if I take the call, I'll get their contact information. They'll most likely give me a brief of what they're looking for to do. "Okay, cool, thank you. And I tell I instantly, as soon as that call is done, I provide my VSAs who the customer is, what their email address is. I say, please send them an intro email. And what an intro email is — it has our customer application form. It also has some of our portfolio and some of our past projects, and it kind of gives you a brief about our company and what we do. So it starts off there. They send the customer application, they get set up and then they respond with what they're looking for. Get a quote for, say it's a very standard product, they'll go through a quote, if it's involved. And then they email us what they're looking for: quotes. So then my VSAs, will go ahead and grab that information and start working on the quote, looking at either where to pull some products from different places, wherever it may be, shoot back the quote to the customer. Quote, good customer start placing the order they'll send us the artwork, my same VSA. So at this point, I haven't touched anything. I'm just monitoring my same VSA will take that artwork, send it to our pre-production department, they'll come out with a proof. The proof goes out back to the customer through the VSA. Customer approves the proof. Then we move into manufacturing that is done either here overseas, wherever it may be. And from there, the product gets delivered. I have not touched this product or talked to the customer. The only time I'm involved is more so product development. So if they're trying to build the packaging around their product, or if they're trying to come up with something new with different types of materials, that's where I kind of jump in. More of the creative side and helping them understand what capabilities — because a lot of times, most, I would say 90% of customers... they have a graphic designer in house or they have hired someone to do graphic designing. But that graphic designer is solely for online. You know how to make pictures, put it on a website and make it look nice. Yeah, they don't have the experience of doing graphic design for packaging or for printing because it's way different. You need bleeds, you need Pantone colors, you need all different check points. So the difference is that's where I come in and I help them guide through that process in doing the understanding of how to build these custom projects.   Dean Soto  20:05   That's the stuff that you enjoy. Yeah?   George Chen  20:08   Yeah. No, it's fine. It's fun. Because then I'm on starting it from scratch, and then bringing these ideas to life. Where at the end of the day, the customers like, "Wow, that was super cool." And for us, you know, we try to provide a five-star experience every time we work with a customer. We know what it's like, dealing with, you know, I don't know someone like... Well, I can't really compare but someone like Vistaprint or someone like youprint.com to do your business cards, right? You just send something online, you hope it comes out and you get your product and it's like... We guide you through that whole process because we know what to look out for. We know that if you're printing a box and it needs to go in the fridge or you're printing a box and it's going to go on something that's what... We know that "Hey, you need to use different types of material to get what you're looking for." That's why we're different from most suppliers in that we will look at your product and try to understand it instead of just trying to sell you something. Yeah, that's not our goal. Our goal is to give you a five-star experience where you can tell us "Hey, this is what I'm trying to go for." And we take the reins, and we guide you along the process. And that's our way of providing a five-star experience.   Dean Soto  21:26   I love that and you have the time to actually do that.   George Chen  21:30   Yeah, I'm not typing out invoices and purchase orders all the time.   Dean Soto  21:34   Man, man. So there was a time where, when you were working with your Virtual Systems Architect, your VSA. She did something where... Because she, you know – obviously you guys had the processes that you guys created. All the documentation. everything got systemized but there was a time where the customer actually sent something to you. Like an image. And she knew right away. It wasn't really through the process, she actually knew that it was wrong and like, slapped your customer on the hand a little bit, right?   George Chen  22:21   So that specific example is when one of our customers sent us artwork that was not print ready. So what it means is that once you send us the artwork, all we do is take it, make a proof out of it and print it. We don't touch it. We don't do anything at all. But what they sent to us was an artwork. But it had text in the middle, giving instructions on what needed to be what size and whatnot. And if we took that and we printed it, that would have went wrong, or it would have had all that markings on there. So what my VA did is that she responded and saying "Hey, we noticed that the artwork that you sent was not print ready. Please make sure you remove all of your markings and resend this artwork so that we can move it into print."   Dean Soto  23:11   Oh my gosh, I love that. I love that. And that was like not necessarily something in the process. But you feel like because you had so much documentation... Because all that – because you know, as your VSA is actually creating all that documentation. They're learning your business. Do you feel that that? That's one of the reasons why that happened?   George Chen  23:36   Yeah, I think more so why that happened is that just copying them a lot on every single email that goes out. I think it's more so just the training process, right? If you have someone with you at all times, and they see how you interact with someone, they'll start picking up on that, right. They'll start seeing "Okay, he treats them in a very professional manner. Very courteous. Certain ways you talk to them. They'll start picking up on that. And that's kind of how we've educated every single one of our employees here. You help. You educate them. Versus telling them to do. Yeah. Help them understand why we're doing what we're doing. And why. Because for us, sometimes, a lot of our customers think, "Oh, I need this today." But we realize, "Hey, if you do something quickly, problems happen." Then you start skipping steps. And then that's why we have such a strict, strict guideline on our processes. They're able to pick that up because of our training. And if you have a good training process and teach people why they're doing what they're doing, versus "Hey, go do this." It help them understand a lot more. And for them to pick up on it, and for them to execute it better.   Dean Soto  25:04   Yeah. Yeah, it's cool because, you know, out of all of the people, you definitely — with your documentation, you know, a lot of people that I know who create this type of documentation whether it's with a VSA or not, they just say, "Here's the process. Go do it, but you really do bring the why. Like, why is this process being done? Why? Even like, during the middle of the documentation, you say,"Mix for 15 seconds." like you'll have things like why are you mixing for 15 seconds? Why are you doing this? Why are you doing it? Why? I've just noticed that because of that, your guys are like superhuman. They're able to take on a lot more that they otherwise, wouldn't. A lot of business owners want this kind of robotic kind of just do as I say type thing. Whereas I can tell with your guys to the point where it seems like you're able to just hand off to your I guess she would be your general manager or ops manager — hand whatever off and she handles a lot of the stuff you're doing. What have you noticed that has come with that "why?" Compared to because you know, other people who do this type of systemization stuff. Do you notice that your staff is better because of that?   George Chen  26:42   Yeah. 100%. So, because for us, you can print the sticker using probably five different methods of printing the sticker, right? You could print a sticker, you could digitally print it. You can silk screen it. You could print it with flexo. There's so many different ways to print a single sticker. But you have to understand what your customer is trying to achieve. Are they trying to put it on a box? If they're trying to put it on a shipper box, you know, the brown cardboard box that you thought we do. You don't need such a crazy sticker for that, right. But if you're trying to put a sticker on a bottle that is going to go through a wash, you want to make sure that you're using a vinyl sticker for that. So, understanding "why" helps them better process on which method to print the product for the customer. And teaching them "why" helps them able to empower them to come up with solutions on their own. Right. If you give them an education, they can now offer that same education to your customers. And that creates so much value added to your company. Very, very rarely do you have these companies think for the customer? Because usually it's all about me. How do I get the sale? How do I make this next paycheck? Whatever it may be. For us, it's like, how do we maintain this relationship? So that, you know, you can count on me? Yeah, every single time we talk. Right? That's the difference between us and a lot of other people. We teach them "why" so that our employees can come up with the solutions themselves. So that I don't have to be answering the same way every single time. If I tell you, these are our capabilities, of course, there's going to be times where it's something that they've never experienced or whatever. But a lot of times, it's how you have to understand the machine. You have to understand our different methods of producing a product and which solution is going to be best for the customer. Because it's going to be different every single time. And if I gave you — Okay, if I told them it's a sticker, then you go misprint it but that's not the way, right? You have to understand if they're printing a sticker, what's the sticker for? Yeah. Are they trying to match certain colors? You know, with printing it. That's why we get a lot of customers — they say this today. I got a call from a customer. "Hey. We're looking for woven labels, and we're looking for bags. What's the price?" You're like, I'd be zero information. You told me two categories and expect me to know what's in your head and give you a price. I can't do any of that. Right. So now I have to ask them all these questions and teaching my employees that same thing. Like, you have to understand why you're doing what you're doing. Yeah. So that you can offer the best solution for the customer.   Dean Soto  29:32   Well, it's cool too because you have the ability to do that. Because of all the things that you've systemized in your operation and stuff. It's cool, too, because you could, I mean, theoretically — you probably could just say it would be this much. But then, say they bought that stuff off you. And it didn't work for whatever application they're doing. Like, that hurts your business big time.    George Chen  29:54   Yeah, no. They won't come back. There's no way they would come back. Yeah, and they expect you are the professional. You're supposed to know what I'm looking for. Pretty much, you're supposed to read my mind — is what they want.   Dean Soto  30:07   That's crazy. That's crazy. So one more thing I want to touch on before I ask the strategic Five Minute Question. And then get more information about your business and customer base and stuff. So you kind of mentioned this, you kind of alluded to it before,       There was a pretty big shift where you're getting questions like all the time even when you had systems, documentation, and things like that. You were getting questions. And there was a point where we even talked and you're like, "Oh, I should just make it to where they asked somebody else." Can you kind of explain like how you had to make that mindset shift of always being the person who's getting the questions when you could delegate that to say your general manager who, you know, your VSA who runs the other VSAs?   George Chen  31:10   Yeah. So we originally, you know, I mean, during the training process, you're always going to be the one to answer all the questions. Yeah. But if you're training multiple people, you don't want to be answering the same question for the new trainee every single time after that, right? So what we learned is that we created a frequently asked question document for everything in our company, right? So when, you know, when a customer is asking, what is the duty charge from China to LA for a .... Right? Now we have frequently asked... like that's gonna be asked every single time when we have a new account manager that we're bringing on or whatever. So we've created this document where they can refer to that, and they'll know "Hey, if the customer is asking for duty charge, hey, go look in their frequently asked questions." It should be there. And then if it's not, you know, ask who you report to. Ask them the question and if not, then come ask me. So now I've delegated all the questions that are being asked into my main manager. And then from there, you know, if it needs to get escalated, then it gets escalated.   Dean Soto  32:16   I love that. I love that man. You don't do any of the training whatsoever for anyone new that comes on as far as like a VSA like remote person, right?   George Chen  32:24   Not anymore. So the VSAs of Pro Sulum... they come systems trained. I'm sure if you're listening to this podcast, you know that. They all come to some trainings and I hired one in August of last year. I think August No. Two years ago now. Yeah. August two years ago. And then, within three months, I had that VSA training the other VSA. And it was mind-blowing seeing her you know, within three months, be able to train two new people in the same way that kind of I trained her. And she was really quick to pick up on, you know, how you train. How we do training in our company. And since then, I haven't had to train anyone.   Dean Soto  33:16   The best thing was when I talked to you. One of the speaking engagements that we did. When I said, "Hey, how's your new one coming along?" And you're like, "I don't know, my main VSA is..."   George Chen  33:38   Yeah, I had the ability to say, I have no idea what's going on.   No, it's not good. But no, I mean, I obviously I did kind of know. But I think it's more so just having that weight off your shoulder and knowing that a task that is delegated and being taken care of. Because the worst thing is, you delegate a task, and then you have to go follow up. and say, "Hey, what's the update?" Yeah. Seriously, that is something that I hate. Yeah. But, you know, with these standard operating procedures, "Hey, you need to report to me after a certain amount of time, because that's our operating procedure now. And I haven't had to go follow up anymore. And it's been handed to me." And I think that's one of the biggest differences now. Systemising all this stuff is that these are my expectations. But it's not. It wasn't in our standard operating procedure. Yeah. So when it wasn't happening, it was making me mad. But that's at the end day. That's my fault. Because I didn't systemize it. I didn't implement it into our process. And now that it is, I get so super hands-off approach now, and I get reports handed to me and that's how a company should be run. Yeah, you know, all right.   Dean Soto  34:59   I love it man, I love it. I love it. So, two more questions. The first one is, if you had...if you were talking with someone, and they said, George, what's one thing that you can tell me that if I implemented right now. We call this like the Five Minute Focus Question. If I just did this one thing and more strategic, not like a tool at all or anything like that. I mean, it could be a tool, but more and more in the strategic level that would improve their life, their business. What would that one thing be?   George Chen  35:40   I think it would just be in stead of trying something, just do it. Because if you think about it, you know, as adults, we don't really fail at things nowadays. Right? We have this level of comfort in our decision making that we're going to take — most of the time, we're going to take the same solution or we're going to decide on something that we already know is a most probable outcome. Yeah, when we have come across something that we don't know, a probable outcome, we usually don't make that decision anymore. We just push it off to the side, or we keep not attending to it. And it just kind of gets lost, right. So a lot of people have a hard time trying new things or being willing to fail because we've taken all of that out of our day to day now that we're older, right? When you were kids, you always fail. You always fall down, you always get back up, right. But now, when's the last time you fell? Yep. Never. Right. So I think just doing it and being being willing to fail again, and just being willing to fall down and see what happens because you're not gonna die. It's not the end of the world if something doesn't go right. But then you learn from it. I think that's the biggest thing and just doing it. Whenever, like something comes up, just, just don't be afraid to fail. I think that's, that's one thing that really changed the way I think and just being confident in moving. Once you move like you can only start winning after that.   Dean Soto  37:22   I love that man. I love it. And that's one thing I definitely noticed about you. You just do things.   George Chen  37:29   Like, my motto is do it first and then ask forgiveness later.   Dean Soto  37:36   Man, I love it. It's so good. It's so good. Yes, so who is your dream client? If someone were to come and work with you. Who would be your dream client and what would they expect with working with you and U-BEST?   And keep in mind guys, he works with really big names as well. Like these are huge companies that you're probably wearing shoe-wise right now. But, yeah. Who do you feel that you serve best? Or at least you have the, you know that like, "Oh my gosh, we changed these people's lives all the time." These types of people.   George Chen  38:37   Yeah, that that is a very good question that I have actually not thought about.   Dean Soto  38:42   Sorry. I know.    George Chen  38:45   That's a great question because for us, when we see an opportunity we'll always go... I would say for a while it was Adidas. For a while, it was trying to work with the adidaa. Either in shoe manufacturing or doing marketing or packaging for them for a while. It wasn't even — I guess it could still be. I think I was really into shoes for a while — being a sneaker head and, you know, trying to go for all the easy stuff. But when I was really into that I think Adidas was definitely on my top priority in trying to do because very few companies do "Made in USA" shoe manufacturing.    Dean Soto  39:34   Oh yeah.    George Chen  39:34   We're one of them to supply certain brands that do "Made in the USA" shoes. But the trend has a lot of big shoe pumping brands. They've started moving manufacturing here to reduce lead times and to better serve the changing market nowadays. So yeah, if Adidas was listening. My company would love to work with you. Going back to what you said, what kind of what would they expect? They would expect a five star service, right? Being able to delegate a task to us or a project to us, and letting us take care of it. Because a lot of times how companies utilize us now, when I was the main dealing with all the customers at once...They would be like, "George, this is what I need, go get it done." And then you know, take it, give them the product and have them stoked about it. And that's, I think that's the easiest way to help these brands scale. So our bread and butter is taking a company from either three locations. So in the restaurant industry, our bread and butter taking company from three locate two to three locations and helping them scale in 200 or 500 stores within a short amount of period of time. And the only way to do that is for us to take all their print materials and everything they need printed and taking it off their plate so they could book.   Dean Soto  41:13   Oh, sounds like   George Chen  41:15   there you go.   Dean Soto  41:19   All right, so it sounds like you cut out a little bit. Are you still there right now? I knew this was gonna happen. It always happens at the most inopportune time. Can you hear me right now?   George Chen  41:33   Yeah. I cut out.   Dean Soto  41:34   You cut out right at, like, toward the end of what you were saying like what they can expect...   George Chen  41:44   What they can expect is... they can expect a five star experience regardless if the customer would say "Hey, George, this is what I want. Take it." And then that's what we do. We would take it and then run with it and provide them a product. And that's our bread and butter — helping companies scale and taking away a lot of their tasks to do. So our bread and butter from the restaurant industry is taking a brand with two to three locations and helping them scale to 100 to 500 stores. And how we do that? We help them with all their print marketing & print materials, so that they can go focus on the franchise sales. They can focus on finding their next locations; for their next next door to be open. That's where they're valuable. And utilizing their time not trying to shop for the best or cheapest business cards. That's a waste of their time and working with us they get that five star experience in delegating a task and knowing that it's going to be handled properly and it's going to be executed and the products are gonna come out exactly how they want. And that's our five star experience.   Dean Soto  42:56   And what I've noticed too, for those listening as well is that you're almost actually like a more of a trusted adviser. I've seen where you've taken — I always think of when somebody comes into especially like a restaurant or store where a package is going out. I mean, you know, I'm always proud of my iPhone package when I get it like it's one of the things I look forward to every two years when I get my upgraded iPhone. The packaging and just undoing it. There's something about it that's prestigious and I've noticed that you've actually taken several businesses that had went the cheap route and their packaging has to be wrapped in a rubber band and all this other stuff. And you've made it look like so professional that it takes the brand. It actually does take the brand to another level because people are willing to handle that. It sounds so dumb, but, you know, even just in takeout food. If you have a really cool package. If you have something like, it's like, I'm going to Instagram, I'm going to take pictures of it. There's something about it that you are able to bring to people and it's literally not that much more expensive than going like... They're really paying for you, George. Because you have the time to be that trusted advisor like "Hey, let me help build your physical brand."   George Chen  44:34   Yeah. Well, I mean, what they say is "Camera eats first, right? Yeah. That's the image we live in right now. So everything is instagram every one is taking pictures of food. And yeah, at the end of the day, they get me or they get us. Right? Grant Cardone said it in his book, right? The difference? I can go to this shop down the street and get it at this price. Yep. The difference is you don't get us. You don't get us to think for you and figure out what the best way in keeping your costs low and still getting that wow effect when a customer opens that box or opens that product.   Dean Soto  45:14   I love that man. I love that. So how can people contact you? Work with you? What's the best way for them to actually get to work with George?   George Chen  45:23   Yeah, so our website is UBestPacks.com U as in umbrella. Best B E S T. Packs P A C K S .com. My Instagram is George Chen @georgechen. George with a zero for the O. Yeah, you contact us there through our website or through our Instagram.   Dean Soto  45:48   I love it man.    George Chen  45:49   Would love work with all of you,   Dean Soto  45:51   Dude. Yeah. And so if you're listening and you want some amazing branding, like I mean if you want to really take your business to the next level when it comes to Physical branding and you want your packaging to look better. I mean, better than all of your competition. You have to work with George it is absolutely amazing. So, George, thanks for being on man. And for sharing all the things that you do. It's honestly amazing. There are so many other ninja stuff that he does. But I didn't want to keep him for so long. But yeah, man, it's so good having you and I appreciate you being on.   George Chen  46:29   No, thank you so much it was, it was a treat getting to share our experiences and what we do. And just trying to try to teach people and giving them a better experience, as we know. I mean, we've heard of so many times, customers like "Oh, I can go on Alibaba and order this. And they order $10,000 worth of product and it gets here in the wrong color." That has happened for us, too.    We help customers avoid it. And it's night and day, their experiences. We've had customers leave us a lot of times and saying, "Oh, I got this wrong, you know?" I remember one time this girl. She was nickel and diming us for five cents off a T shirt. For I think for like 500 shirts or something. She was like, "Oh my gosh, like why can't you just give it to me for five cents cheaper?" And I'm like, I've already done so much for you. Like, this is my price. I'm not making any money. I'm doing this out of courtesy because you are a friend of a friend. Whatever it may be, the next order she ended up going to someone else. And I heard that supplier made her cry. The service and how they would not do everything that she asked. And I was like, "Dude that's what you get." But I think customers always have to understand. It's always better to pay five cents more. Yep. And have that peace of mind, knowing that something else is going to be taken care of, where you don't have to worry about it. To have five cents is for something, you know, maybe not in the millions of quantity. But you know, for something — if it's a smaller, like, trust that you get what you pay for at the end of the day. Yeah, and you would want that peace of mind. And paying a little bit more customers have to understand that at the end of the day. It's all about service. It's rarely about product. Of course, the product plays a factor. But at the end of day, it's the service you get and why companies do so well through customer service, because you always remember when you had that great experience with that one supplier. And you always go back to them and you don't really care as much about what the price is. You really care about how you felt and how it was a piece of cake. Yeah.   Dean Soto  48:59   Yeah. No and that's what's... You're spot on with that because you've engineered it yourself to be able to give that service and you know think of all the not just the money that was wasted by her but the time that was wasted by her and the stress and all that stuff that    George Chen  49:23   The stuff that you can't put a price on.   Dean Soto  49:27   I know, exactly. For five cents per shirt.   George Chen  49:32   You got actually five cents.   Dean Soto  49:35   Oh, but it's time that she can't get back. She that probably put a huge amount of stress on her. At the end of the day if you find somebody who's amazing at what they do, and as long as they have the systems to stay amazing like you do, you're only making things better. Like all the time. That's what makes what you do so valuable that I can't think of anybody, any other company that's built like yours to where you're just constantly delivering more and more value over time as you figure out more systems to offload.   George Chen  50:19   That's what we learned. High-end value. How not just to take, but to give even as a supplier, right. Like, how do you give to this person? And that's definitely helped us for longer for sure.    Dean Soto  50:33   Dang, I love it. Well, thanks for being on man. I appreciate it. And guys, go check out UBestPacks.com George is amazing. He is. Yeah. If you really want your brand to soar from the physical design standpoint. you got to go check him out. And we'll have him on again to talk about his other exploits with systems and operations. But until then, guys, thank you. This has been the Freedom In Five Minutes Podcast and I will catch you on the next Freedom In Five Minutes podcast episode.

A lot of times, we find ourselves wanting more customers. Naturally, we want people to like us. Of course we want more people to join our tribe who will allow us to grow our business, so to speak. One valuable lesson I've seen over years, running my service business is that, having less customers is the best. And these customers are people who absolutely love what we do. It is a game changer and I find that we have more fun together, see massive results, and grow in ways we would not have been able to grow before. ----- Automated Transcript Below: Dean Soto 0:00 Hey! This is Dean Soto – founder of FreedomInFiveMinutes.com and ProSulum.com P-R-O-S-U-L-U-M.com. We're here again with another FreedomInFiveMinutes podcast episode. Today's topic is this: "Just Because You Like It Doesn't Mean They Like It." That and more, coming up. Dean Soto 0:31 Good morning! It's nice and chilly here. It's such a good winter morning to go for a walk with the Luna-meister. Luna, say hi to everyone. She just ran off. Bye Luna! Go get them. Go get them birds. Dean Soto 0:45 All right. So the other day, my business partner and I, Paul... So Paul, he's so great at selling. Like, he is such a good salesperson. So non aggressive. So nice. Sometimes, you don't even realize that he is actually selling. And it's just awesome. Just the way he does things. And so, we were on this sales call with this guy who was a referral from one of our other customers. And it was going well it was interesting. Dean Soto 1:24 Even right off the bat, I knew it was "What a small world." I was actually deployed with one of this guy's team members. I was deployed to Kuwait and for Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2008 to 2009. And so, that's one of the first things I brought up. I'm like, "What a small world." He's like, "Wow, that's Yeah, that's awesome." So this prospect–things are going well. We're on the call, and he gets it. He's like, Wow, this is awesome. You know, and, you know, we always ask a lot of questions. Dean Soto 1:59 We want to Make sure it's a good fit because one of the things that is a big no no for us–a big thing for us is that we do not want a lot of people for the sake of having a lot of people. We want people who want to be a part of our tribe, our community. People who understand, like what's going on with what we do. And that the thing that I find, more often than not, is that the temptation is to want to have everyone be a customer, right? The temptation is to want everyone to like you everyone to be around you and so on so forth. It's almost American culture. When there's no conflict, we don't want any conflict. We don't want anybody who doesn't like us and so on and so forth. Dean Soto 2:56 But if you look at some of the greatest businesses out there, The greatest business minds of greatest comedians, the greatest people who are very highly notable. What do you find? You find that they are very polarizing. A lot of them, a lot of people don't like. The ones who like them, love them. The ones who don't like them pretty much hate them. And same thing, you know, you look at Steve Jobs, I mean, he completely revolutionized the whole computer world, right? And you either love Mac or you hated Mac it put you into this binary. Are you a Mac user? Or are you a PC user almost to the point where you couldn't have both. If you're both you almost seem like this hybrid monster at some point in time. So, of course, it's not that way anymore, but it was at that point in time. Dean Soto 3:56 So the thing was that – it was interesting because the conversation was going really well. And the guy said, "Yeah, you know, I'm good. Let's, let's move forward." Dean Soto 4:11 He was somewhat semi-serious, semi... I don't know, it was just a kind of interesting temperament. So, we decided to move forward. And we – for the last two years – have this template email that goes out and the way it works is I introduce the people who are moving forward to our general manager. And he sends over a draft agreement to look over. And if all looks good, then we send final agreements, and so on and so forth. But the template email says something a little bit like this: It says that we're so excited for you to massively grow or 10X your business something like that. It was something we basically say, "We're so excited that you're essentially going to massively grow your business." Dean Soto 5:03 So my general manager sends that out. And then Paul follows up with, "Hey, you know, I'm so excited for you, it's gonna be great. You know, let's stay in close contact just because that way we can share ideas and we can... we really want you to succeed..." and everything like that. Dean Soto 5:20 That's kind of a follow up. So this guy goes to his referral–the customer right now. And he says, "These guys are pretty aggressive, they kind of sound spammy. They sound kind of scammy with the 10x in your business and massively growing your business and they're still trying to sell me after the fact..." and so on and so forth. Dean Soto 5:57 So our client sends an email, basically saying, "Hey guys, I'm getting feedback that you're coming off a little bit aggressive and spammy..." and things like that. Dean Soto 6:10 And so, you know, that really could potentially be harming our reputation. "Can you, you know. Just looking at your emails, the fact that you use 10X and all these buzzwords..." and blah, blah, blah. "That's really, you know, probably not necessary..." and so on and so forth. Dean Soto 6:31 So, I look at that, and I'm like, "This one is a really good customer." So I'm not blowing off anything that he's saying. In fact, I always take this type of stuff in. So I ended up emailing them back, but then I also ended up calling him and being like, "Dude, I am so sorry. I'm so sorry if you got this type of feedback. I'll look into it. I'll look into what's going on with that. I'll look into what exactly was ..." Dean Soto 6:37 And I'm asking him questions to be able to get more specific as to what the heck was the issue? Well, it turns out, that was the issue. The emails afterward and the 10X buzzwords and things like that. And it's funny because you know 10X-ing is definitely a buzzword. But one of the reasons I even have that in there–and it's been in there for about two years now–is because it's true! Dean Soto 7:34 We have seen multiple times where our customers have literally tripled, quadrupled, and even to the point 10X. I have one customer... That one customer who went from a business that was barely squeaking a profit to now he is... I want to say it's almost like it ended up almost being like a 20X return using our VSAs. Because he was able to let go of a lot of dead weight people who weren't doing what they were supposed to be doing. And he has two VSAs and just crushes with them. So it's not this, you know, I mean, we have a proven track record with people who are extremely... Dean Soto 8:24 Hold on. Hold on one second, Luna. Luna. Come Dean Soto 8:36 So one of the things that Luna has been doing... she goes and sneaks away and then sneaks back home. And I don't know why she's doing that and when she's doing that, but like, it is really kind of starting to... just go girl. Good girl. Come on, baby. Let's go down. Let's go down more. Come on. Good girl. Good baby. Dean Soto 9:09 But it's true. So, you know, it's one thing to use buzzwords and stuff like that. But if the buzzwords are true, and I get it, I totally get it. You know, some people are going to get turned off and everything. Dean Soto 9:19 So anyway, this guy got turned off by it. And, essentially – I'm guessing with the way it is – he's not going to move forward which is a good thing. Because at this point, even if he were to want to move forward... You know, going behind rather than coming in and saying "Hey, you know, you guys are being a little too aggressive or whatever. You don't need to sell me or anything like that. I appreciate it." But this whole "Well, oh my gosh, they're a little aggressive." And going to the referal and causing trouble like that. Like, do I really want that that type of person to be a customer anyway? No. I want customers who are good customers. Who are ready to to be a part of our tribe. Dean Soto 10:16 Because that was the other thing, he was like, "The whole 'tribe' thing." Like, no. I want you to... Yes, "tribe" has been used forever but who cares? Honestly, if you're going to be picky about that, who cares? I want you to be a part of our tribe, everyone who is a part of our tribe who really does and utilizes what we do knows that there are certain things that we do. And there are certain things that we don't do... that we don't do training with our Virtual Systems Architects. Training is a very bad word. We don't do training, right? We do process videos. Okay, we do process documentation videos, okay? Dean Soto 11:00 So, if you're going to train, get the hell out of our tribe. It's not ... we do not do that. We do not do that. And so, it's one thing to use buzzwords when you've just started a business, right? When you've just started a business, if you have someone, say, like Warren Buffett say, "Hey, you know, we have a proven track record of 10X-ing your portfolio." Are people going to say, "Oh, why are you using those buzzwords? Warren, you're crazy. You have no credibility now." No, the guy's a billionaire. Right? So no. Like, who cares? Who cares of those buzzwords? Same thing with with what we do. If I say 10X, it's because we actually have and more often than not, I see at least a 2X 3X 4X return on people's investment. Dean Soto 12:06 It's not all the time. Most of the time, the success is because they follow the system. And most of the time, the reason for no success is because they did not follow the system. They were not part of the tribe, they did not have the mentality that we need, that we have as a tribe. And so obviously, I'm going to utilize proven things if he said, "Hey, can you show me a company that you 10Xed? I would say "Why, of course, here's one right here." Dean Soto 12:44 So, all of this being said, Why is this important? It's important because a lot of the times we want customers. We want customers. We want people to like us. We want more and more people that will allow us to grow our business, so to speak, right? Dean Soto 13:07 What I've seen over time, and what I've liked, at least in my service business is less customers. I love having customers who absolutely love what we do. It is a game changer, the more that we have customers that love what we do, the more that we find that we have fun, they see massive results, and we grow in ways that we would not have been able to grow before. Dean Soto 13:40 And so, this whole idea of pleasing these people who aren't even a customer... He's not even a customer yet. Just so that they would become a customer is completely foreign, to our way of thinking and now keep that in mind. Keeping that in mind, I told the person who refers me that we will change and split test a different email just to his referral partners. Dean Soto 14:09 If it does better, great, then we'll use that email. If it doesn't, then we'll use the same old email. But this is the first time in two years that this has ever come up. And the whole idea behind this is that, who cares? Dean Soto 14:27 Honestly, if things are going well... of course, if you just started your business and you're already getting complaints like that... Then yeah, you probably want to change. But the idea is that you want to work with people. Yet again, you want to work with people that make you happy. Dean Soto 14:47 Work with people where you can make them happy, and don't get stuck in a relationship. Do not get stuck in a business relationship. Where already right off the bat, there's some kind of animosity Or something that's not a good fit. Dean Soto 15:01 So anyway, so this is Dean Soto. Freedom In Five Minutes. Go check out FreedomInFiveMinutes.com. Lots of good stuff over there. You can actually punch in the numbers and see what it would be like if you were to get a virtual systems architect and go check out ProSulum.com Dean Soto 15:24 P-R-O-S-U-L-U-M.com. That's our main Virtual Systems Architect site. And you can schedule a discovery call there as well. So, anyway, all that being said, I will see you in the next Freedom In Five Minutes podcast episode.

I think you'll agree with me when I say, it's essential to have a large organization and a ton more employees to be one of the industries included in the Inc 500, or is it? Well, it turns out that you don't really need to be that massive. In this episode, learn how Matt Laird changed the entire scope of the oil industry with just a simple step and an overhead of less than 10 to hit the Inc 500. ----- Automated Transcript Below: Dean Soto 0:01 Hey, this is Dean Soto, founder of freedominfiveminutes.com and prosulum.com, P-R-O-S-U-L-U-M.com and we're here again with another freedom in five minutes podcast episode. Today's topic is this, disrupting the oil industry with Matt Laird. That and more coming up. Cool! So today I have a very, very, very, very special guest. Someone who is near and dear to me and who is also completely disrupting a, an industry that is, for lack of a better word, extremely archaic, but still extremely profitable and brings in a lot of revenue. I'm here with Matt Laird from Camrock Oil & Supply. Matt, how are you doing my friend? Matt Laird 1:02 Man, life is good Dean. Thanks for having me. Dean Soto 1:04 Oh, no problem. It's, it's a long time coming I've, I've been wanting to interview Matt for quite some time, but I wanted things to be like perfect man. Always, I'm always like, okay, well I want it, I want, I want a lot of people to hear him. I wanted a lot of people to hear your story and, and what all the stuff that you've been able to do. And because it really is truly amazing what you're able to do right now. And but all that being said, how in the heck, to first tell us a little bit about yourself and what industry you're in and how did you end up being a part of the whole oil industry in general? Matt Laird 1:48 So, to start now with, with who I am. So, I'm a father of three beautiful daughters, from ages 16 down to five. Dean Soto 1:55 Nice. Matt Laird 1:56 Have an amazing wife, who's, who's from this part of the world which we'll get into why I'm here. But just to start out early so soon as I graduated out of high school and started looking for, for things to do, I found that I wasn't near as good at sports as I, as I had once thought. So I found the next best thing, so I found a drilling rig. So, basically, over the course of the next 20 years, I worked my way up into the drilling ranks. So I started at the bottom, rose about, worked my way all the way up to where I was a drilling consultant. I actually own the company who had several drilling consultants. So I was basically, my job was to manage the people who ran the entire drilling operation well. Really good money, really fun job. Basically, really hard job to raise a family. So when you wake up and you realize it for, for 19 years you've been away from home 300 days a year and nights. Dean Soto 3:02 Holy moly. Matt Laird 3:03 Basically, you have to find your way, right? So, about five years ago, we, we made some, some partners, started a business using Dave Ramsey's logic. We went to build the boat and get the boat close enough to the shore to step off and not make a huge jump. So we, we started a business in the lubrication and filtration business, industry. So, servicing the oil for was our original goal. We were, we're basically a full on, lubricant like motor oils and greases, full line lubricants and then filtrations, just being like your air filters and oil filters similar to what you would put on your car but in a little bit bigger scope. So that brings us up. We've had some really good successes over the last five years. Good enough that I was able to actually sell my consulting company and come on full time so that I'm home every night. If, if I'm not home at night is because I'm on vacation. So, that's where I'm at today so wherever you want to take it, it's yours. Dean Soto 4:12 So, for a little bit of background for those listening, I, so I always pride myself on making very fast decisions like five minutes decisions and, and doing things that will allow me to have more time or whatever, whatever it might be. Matt is on a whole another level. So, that was, that was definitely a, an amazing background. Now, one thing that people don't realize is that, that you, that the consulting side of things, you were making a lot of money which you said and you, like you said you were gone pretty much the entire year away from your family but you very quickly, given the data that you had and, and everything, you very quickly made that decision to let go of that whole entire thing which was bringing in a lot of revenue for you, you know? Matt Laird 5:07 It was, yeah, it was. It was a lot of money to walk away from but at some point, you had to realize what your family's worth. If I didn't make a decision really quickly, I would have just had a lot of money in a empty house. Dean Soto 5:22 I love it. Like, see this is, this is, so from here on out now that you're, you know, while you're listening to this, this, this is the type of man that Matt is and so just keep that in mind as we move forward through all of this. So, it's just absolutely amazing what he, what he and that just quick decision, literally it was like an overnight decision where he's like, I'm done. So it's, it's absolutely just inspiring. So all that being said, give me kind of the day to day with Camrock Oil & Supply and, and we'll talk about how you've been actually disrupting the industry. Like when you first built this business, like, like, what, what were some of likes, kind, kind of what's you in a typical day? Like, what are you servicing? What are you typically doing? Matt Laird 6:12 So early on in this business, we were just primarily a filtration company. So we just had a whole bunch of filters and a whole bunch of people that needed filters. So we've got really big trucks and we fill them up with filters. And we, we drove around and, and realized pretty quickly that those filters are mostly air and there wasn't enough margin, huge invoices but no margin. So we began to, to seek out something that was more profitable, that is more needed in the market that would fit really well with our filter company. So as we added the bulk lubricants, we were able to definitely get into a niche. So we're, we're one of our own, so there's not many small independent lubrication filtration company. So there is some small independent oil companies. And then there's some parts houses, there's not really a, a merger between the two of lubrication filtration. But once we've realized that these two works so well together, we're able to infiltrate these markets that the person who's selling just oil couldn't get into with a person that's just selling filters or truck parts getting into. So basically what we are is when we walk in the house, walk into a shop. We've got a full line of outside sales people who do excellent job at getting us into facilities. But when we walk in the door, we can pride ourselves to say that we're going to get the best service, you're going to get the best overall products because we're able to, to cover needs and niches that no one else can do. So, as far as Camrock as a business, we're a full outside sales. Full delivery business that covers all lubrication filtration. But as far as what I do every day, all I really do is just grow the business. So I spend approximately two hours a day working in the business, you know, about eight to ten hours working on the business. So basically, I pulled myself out of operations so that I can focus on going forward and moving the needle, disrupting the industry not just selling more cardboard boxes, actually finding a way to change the entire scope of the industry. Dean Soto 8:37 That's it, that, that so, so in this industry, because I remember you'd went to a conference not too long ago and you're like, holy crap, like it's, yeah, people tend, in your industry tend to be doing the exact same thing like what differentiates you from, say, your closest competitor with, what is like the big key factor that, that you're doing in this whole filtration and lubrication business that people, if they were if you know if the old school oil type were looking at you they'd be basically say, you know, that's impossible? Matt Laird 9:17 So basically, the way that this deal works is that I'm an old industry. I'm in an industry where there's no influx of new people because the cost and the, just the ability to get into this industry is so expensive and so time consuming. There's not really a big welcome party for new distributors in the market. So my closest competitor in the lubrication side does over a billion a year. So they're a huge, big company that's not nimble, that doesn't care about their quality, doesn't care about their personal services. They're more worried about how many gallons they can sell all these big accounts so, so with this big company growing bigger, and essentially just through acquisitions and mergers taking over all of the small companies, it's just leaving a huge gap for me to get in with a little better service. Maybe not even as well as good a price but just a better service of better customer relationship and a little more technology. Basically, at the point where I'm at now, if I could do something, you know, maybe I don't put my guys on a route, maybe me I go and get people their stuff when they need it coz I'm not worried about every single penny. I could charge a little more margin. And then on my filter side, in our truck parts as well. We've figured out ways through the market that we can offer a product at basically a more competitive price than, than what your auto parts stores can do because of the sheer volume that we do. So, in our market, we have two small auto parts stores, and one decently sized truck parts store. So, I do more in filtration sales per month than the three of those do combined. So, just in the sheer volume that I move in my filtration I'm able to use my 10 or 12 x buying power to push down the, the cost of the point where I'm competitive so that I can cover my entire market with lubrication filtration. So, for what, I do a little better on my lubrication side than what the competitor does as far as quality goes, but my price is slightly higher, but my pricing on the other filtration covers that gap. So it's basically, if you use me for, for all of these product lines that I offer, my price is competitive with what you're paying across the board, yet you're getting a far superior service. Dean Soto 12:05 Hmm, hmm. So that's, that's amazing. Because, because, essentially it's the choice between do, do I go with this big huge company to service all of the, the things that I need who doesn't care about me because I, you know, I'm just one of maybe thousands or one of maybe 10,000 accounts, and they just want to sell me stuff. And that's about it and take it or leave it. Or, I can get the same or better discount from you and know that I'm actually being taken care of. Like that to me is like a huge, huge thing, which has always been good for at least my business has been that ability to scale personal attention and the fact that you can with what you're doing compete with this billion dollar company who's your next biggest competitor. There's very, you have no other competitors, because the barriers to entry, and yet you're able to be small enough to give that, that scale personal attention. That's, that's huge. And do you see, like with your customers, you see a, do you see in them, like a, like appreciation of that? Matt Laird 13:30 So I mean, I would just assume that appreciation or voting is done with your checkbook. So in the, in the five years we've been in business, we've lost a few customers to mergers and acquisitions, but as far as retaining a customer, there's only two customers in the history of our entire company that have actually gone somewhere else. Dean Soto 13:52 Wow. Matt Laird 13:53 Though, of every customer I've ever sold a product to, I've only had two of the hundred or probably pretty high in the hundreds that have ever actually quit working, quit using me and went somewhere else. So I think that our, our culture and our customer focus in our pricing structure and everything else is really, once someone comes to us and learned the way we do things, and learns our culture and realize that we do care is not just something we sell from the street. They never leave. Not to this, up to this point, it's been scalable, so it was scalable at one customer, scalable at 60, scalable at 200. And we just continue to just push that culture into our salespeople. So everyone that touches my customer knows the culture, knows that it's our determination that they do right. And I also have several of my salespeople that, that will follow up and actually we'll cross pollinate between customers just to make sure that there's not any issue. Dean Soto 15:06 Wow. Dude, people would kill for that churn rate, man. The, I mean, most you know a lot of service businesses that you're looking at, 10 to 25%, you know, churn rate people leaving and, and for you to have you know below, below 2%? I mean, it depends on how many hundreds you have like that's a super low and super high, you know super high retention rate that, that a lot of companies would die for. Oh my gosh, that's, that's, that's absolutely amazing, dude. Like so, with like, without that being said this, so a lot of people would think, okay well yeah, well, it's because Matt is, you know, you know smaller company and, and yeah, you know smaller companies, you're able to have the the more personal attention and yada, yada and but, but one thing that people might not realize is that you actually recently hit the Inc 500, right? Matt Laird 16:12 We did we, we hit Inc 500. Number three in the state of Oklahoma. I believe it was 36 in the energy sector. Dean Soto 16:20 Wow. See, look at that. So, how in the heck man, how do you? I mean, I know because you, you follow, you know, books and thoughts like Jason Freed's and David Hannah Meyer Hanson's rework and a whole bunch of other really, really. Matt Laird 16:39 That rework is sitting on my desk right now. Dean Soto 16:40 Yeah, that's why I love you. So, like, you have to grow, right? These days, you know, contrary to popular belief, you know, or you know, I shouldn't say contrary to popular belief, but popular belief is that you have to be this in order to hit the Inc 500 at all, you have to be this huge organization with you know, hundreds of employees, you know how many hundreds of employees you have, man? Matt Laird 17:06 I have about three. Dean Soto 17:10 Not 300? Three employees, right? Matt Laird 17:12 No, no, I have three employees and then I have four outside sales that are, they're contracts that they have other, other lines that they sell other than just mine so, and then my wife and I. So there's essentially less than 10 people in the whole building and then I'm running two, one part-time and one full-time VSA that do all my background stuff, everything that nobody, nobody sees, I have VSAs doing it. Dean Soto 17:38 So cool, dude. Yeah, so then that's, that's, that's one of the reasons why I was so excited to have you on is just how, how you are able to do all of that with such a small amount of overhead when it comes to at least payroll, you know. So what, so like, what one, how, how did you go about structuring that to where you know your next biggest competitor, I'm sure has way more employees than you do because most Inc 500 companies do have a ton more employees like, what, what was going through your mind? And how did you actually make it a reality to have such a small organization that's, that is able to deliver such value that you're able to hit the Inc 500? Matt Laird 18:28 Ok, so there's a lot of pivots along the way. But when we originally started the company with myself and two other partners, we started the company as an investment that we would oversee not as a business we would run day to day. Basically everything was put in place from day one that basically we started with The E-Myth Revisited, right? So the first employee was day one and that employee had to do this, this and this. And then as we grew, we're going to add another, we're gonna add another, we're gonna add another, that didn't work. So it didn't work at all. Basically, this was about three and a half to four years of me working my other job, and then putting in 40 to 50 hours a week on this job plus my business partners as well. I had three different times. I hired someone who was Six Sigma, or what's this? Had all the abbreviations in front of their name and basically, I hired three different people at three different times to try to grow the company. And I had zero success with any of them. So, every single time I would grow up to 8,10, 12 people, then I would go back and realize that this isn't working, that we're, we're losing money, that we're failing that, you know that this is not the path we need to be on. So there was three times In the growth of the five years that we actually ended up back with one employee. Dean Soto 20:04 Wow, wow. Matt Laird 20:06 And one sales person, other than myself. Dean Soto 20:09 Yeah. Matt Laird 20:11 But over the course, so what I finally realized was that, it's not the people, right? So the people that I hire aren't bad people. What I realized was that there's no way I can increase the, increase the ability of my company if I cannot get beyond two to three people, and my culture shift. So basically, that's where I realized that everything had to be documented. Everything has to be written down, checklist. Everything has to be repeated. So how do we, how do we go to a customer today? And we drop off their products and we throw them in the middle of the floor, and they're super upset and then the next day we go back and we put them all on the shelf. Well, that was happening at some point, right? So, maybe not that dramatic but there was, at one point there was no system. There was no follow up, there was no, there was no way that anybody other than my one delivery guy that's always been with me. Dean Soto 21:15 Yeah. Matt Laird 21:16 And my one employee that's always been with me in the office. So if those two people weren't doing it. If anybody else was doing it, they would get sloppy? Dean Soto 21:24 Yeah. Matt Laird 21:24 Well, I just realized that those people aren't training because they don't have any guidelines to train off of. Dean Soto 21:30 Yeah. Matt Laird 21:30 So I've trained them so they know. But it's just the carbon copy effect. And every time I get to the next person, it's lesser of a solid line. Dean Soto 21:39 Yeah. Matt Laird 21:39 And then I get to the next person, then it's a dotted line, and then I get to the next person, and the next person is costing me more money than they're making. So it's, it's basically, I went through this transition three different times and realize that in each of those times, I could have been well-rounded. I think the people would have probably done, done an excellent job, had my training been better. So basically, I was able to come in at that point using first I tried to do it myself, PowerPoint. Tried to build these processes. I spent hundred hours and got three processes documented maybe. It was a, it was definitely a terrible, terrible thing, but. Dean Soto 22:23 I know the feeling, dude. Matt Laird 22:25 Yeah, so then. So then after, Dean and I were talking and he was able to bring his guys in. Basically, it was pay-per-click on these processes and I would spend my day from 4pm until 5pm every day working on the one thing that I never wanted to do again. So whatever I did today between 4pm and 5pm, I didn't ever want to have to do it again and I wanted it to be done correct. So all I would do is, is follow Dean's programs. So basically jumped in, jump on Loom, record that process exactly like you would want it done. Because you, you have a system, your system may suck, but you have a system. So record your system exactly like it is on Loom every day, whatever that process is and I would email it to, to Dean and Dean finally got tired of me emailing him and then he gave me somebody else's email. But I, every day at the end of the day, between four and five, I would email my whatever that process was over to Dean and he would send to his guys. The next morning when I got back to the office. The next morning sometime, I would have a full process document that was just prim and proper. I would look through it very few times that I even have to correct anything on there which is perfect. And then I was able to use that as training. So I would basically start training my staff as I was growing. And then I lost the girl that was working for me, that was my bookkeeper/ receptionist. When I lost her, I decided to give the VSAs a try. And I was able to not only would have the VSAs do what I had primarily been doing, but also what she was doing. And then a few weeks later I lost another employee. And then, so now I have one and, essentially a full-time and a part-time VSA that do the work of the three people that I lost, including myself, which pulled me completely out of the business. Dean Soto 24:39 So cool. Matt Laird 24:40 So that I can just spend a couple hours in the morning checking on things and then off to disrupt the industry. Dean Soto 24:49 That's awesome, dude. I love it. I love it. So like what, like what that's so cool that you won, that you felt the pain of documenting a processes is that like is the worst, man. I mean, because, but it's what was necessary, obviously, you know, any, any real business has to have those documented processes. Like, with, like with, with all of those the, the one of the things that you just what you, you said that we had talked about in private before is that you said that you had systems. Like the systems could have sucked, but you had systems and you document it in any way. Like, that seemed like it was a pretty big game changer, right? Like rather than trying to create a new system that you don't know is proven. Matt Laird 25:34 Yes. So I mean, just one system I use, right? So instead of having some fancy software for my inventory, I use QuickBooks, alright? And I mean, I could use something else and I may at some point use something else but right now I just use QuickBooks. QuickBooks Platinum has an inventory feature. And I have Bernadette, who's my full time VSA. She creates an Excel spreadsheet that I basically I recorded one afternoon when I never wanted to do it again. She jumps onto my QuickBooks. She has full access to my inventory on my QuickBooks. She builds this spreadsheet. She runs through the spreadsheet and, and knows exactly when how long it takes to order something. She knows how long it takes to come in, and then minimum order amounts. And then she will actually take that spreadsheet that I generated, that I taught her how to do on a Loom video. She actually takes that, creates purchase orders in my QuickBooks then puts the, a suffix on the end that, that has the purchase order number with the "-INC". So when I get to the office in the mornings, it's already ready. I open up my open purchase orders folder on QuickBooks. Anything that says "INC" suffix after that, that part. It means that, that has not been ordered. So all I have to do instead of the 45 minutes to an hour it takes me to run through that spreadsheet every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Now I get to the office, open up my QuickBooks, and I can look and see that oh, this particular vendor, I know I need to get to 1500 dollars to get free freight. It's at 1411, I can either throw on one or two, one or two items or I can just wait and then the following when Tuesday or Monday, Wednesday or Friday, I know it'll get over 1500 bucks. So, and then, so I never had this system before. This is something new that just happened to come up. Whenever I was making the videos, once I started making a video, I felt more comfortable and then I was able to, to be more creative as I was doing it. And, and one real big thing that just the straight game changer was that I know that I'm not gonna have to do this process. I may add steps that make it easier for me to go back later. Because I know I'm not the one doing it every day. So there's been several times where I'm, I'm just generating a new process or a process that I'm already doing. And there's stuff that I've always known that I needed to be doing, but I've just been kind of skipping. Dean Soto 25:36 Yeah. Matt Laird 26:21 When you make that process document, you add all that stuff in. Dean Soto 28:33 Yeah. Matt Laird 28:33 And now that stuff that you always wish you would have done is now being done. Dean Soto 28:37 That is so cool. Yeah, I love it. I love it. So I want to ask the, the big question, which is the question I asked everyone during this. So if you had five minutes and it was like a life or death situation so to speak, what's what's this, what is something, strategically if somebody were to implement whatever it might be? What would be something that, that you could strategically give someone or that would absolutely change their life in five minutes if they made the decision to actually do it? Matt Laird 29:25 So if, if I had five minutes to explain it or if they had five minutes to do it? Dean Soto 29:28 That's it, both, five minutes to explain it, five minutes to explain it. Matt Laird 29:32 Oh man, Russell Brunson gave people 30 days for his, at five minutes? Dean Soto 29:38 That's how we roll here man, we're lazy. We need to do something fast. Matt Laird 29:41 Yeah, I really think in, obviously, I'm, I'm kind of biased right now because I've been going through so much of this, this new training to get to mass market. But today I would say if you want to do something to get your life in order or, or would it, would you want it to be life or is it just something that someone could do that? Dean Soto 30:07 Maybe any, it could be, it could be business, it could be life, it could be absolutely anything. Something that's just like that, that is super impactful. It's not like, it's something that, that that you know, you know, would or has made a big difference in your life. Matt Laird 30:24 So, I'm gonna have to go with, with more than one thing. So the most impactful thing that I've ever had in my life is getting my morning routine dialed in. So without my morning routine my days are, are essentially garbage, right? So I'm just chasing that sanity that I would have had with, with my morning routine. So I spend an extra hour a day getting ready to play, you know, getting ready to to win. Dean Soto 30:53 Yeah. Matt Laird 30:53 If, if I don't spend that hour, hour and how long it takes getting ready in the morning , I might as well just stay in bed. That's my number one life hack of today. Dean Soto 31:09 I love that, like go, so and then you can tell me the, the number two after this but so what is your morning, normal morning routine like, like what do you do personally? Matt Laird 31:19 So, so I think you know it personally but, but I'll go through it. So the first thing I do is I get up. Use the bathroom, wet myself, brush my teeth, make a coffee with one teaspoon of either grass-fed Kerrygold butter, unsalted or ghee, whichever I have there. One tablespoon of MCT oil. I use the Brain Octane which is, I've been using it for years, I love it. And while that's brew and I take a scoop of the either Organifi or green smoothie. I use the, I've been using the Oreo brand lately just because it, it tastes so much better. Crush the green smoothie that's still in my, you know, I'm still in my pantry, pop a couple of Nootropics, Alpha Brain or, or whatever I'm on that. I cycle through them a lot. So whichever Nootropics I'm gonna popped that. Dean Soto 32:25 Dude, yeah, you, you got me back on to that, by the way, and it's made a huge difference. Matt Laird 32:30 I mean, I'm 100% it gets the brain impulse. Dean Soto 32:34 Oh my gosh, it's, it's the way I like, so I mean, I was doing the Qualia for a while and that, that would just make me really anxious for whatever reason, but I've been using, I know you've used the, the Thrivous, whole stack that they have. That's what I've been using too and oh my gosh, they had the difference, man. Matt Laird 32:51 It's good thing. Then I, and I come into my office. So in my office, I have four by six index cards, random assortment of colors. So I have my three daughters and one wife. So I'll write them a note to each of them every day. On my note, I'll say something like, had a great time at the movies, can't wait to go, we're going to go to the movies this week, wherever my daddy daughter date or my wife and I date is for the week. Sometimes I'll bring up a unique memory that we share together. You know, I put something on a card, not a whole bunch coz I write with a permanent marker. So it's big, takes up the whole card, boom, kinda in your face. And then I take those into, my oldest daughter charges her phone in the living room, so I will have it in that room. I put her card under there. My two youngest kids, I put them where they eat their breakfast and then my wife I put about the coffee pot. So that's done. Got all my family stuff out of the way just so that when they wake up they know even though I'm not here, I do love them. And then I have, come back into my office, I'll throw on, hit record, I am blogging a book. So I'll do five, seven minutes, 5 AM on my book then I'm dressing out the door, jump in my truck, turn on the Through The Word App, TTW. Right now, coz actually tomorrow I'm finishing up the In Times, which was 70, 70 days worth or something. Dean Soto 34:29 Wow. Matt Laird 34:30 Soon as I pull up at the office. My office isn't very far. So usually I can go through that five to six minutes on the way to the office, go to the office, all ready to kick all the heaters on in the office coz it's cheap. So I turn all the heaters off at night. My staff is in, in the Philippines anyway, so they don't need it at night. So and then I'll jump back in my truck. And so as soon as I get back in my truck, I'll, I'll go through what's called the Stack, which is an app put down by the Warrior, which is Garrett J. White. Dean Soto 35:04 Yep. Matt Laird 35:05 Basically it, it ask yourself a lot of open-ended questions. Dean Soto 35:08 Yep. Matt Laird 35:10 Steady, so there's like 15 different questions it asks you and then it asks you the question, how you feel about what you just said and it was really good app, Warrior brotherhood, Garrett J. White. Dean Soto 35:20 Yeah. Matt Laird 35:21 And then, kick on Headspace. So right there in my truck in the parking lot at work, 10 minutes today, I actually stepped it up to 20 minutes of Headspace. Dean Soto 35:31 Wow. Matt Laird 35:34 Basically do a bunch of, right now I'm doing one of their programs that go through right, so it's like a 10 day challenges or something. And then I'm good enough. It's about 6:10, office is already warmed up. I'm already at the office. I've already had my first coffee and then I'm ready to go. So I skip, I don't do any fitness in the morning. Which to someone who doesn't work out a lot, I would recommend fitness in the morning but for me it just doesn't work with my schedule because I have a hundred plus minute workout regimen that I have to do all together. I would have to get up at three o'clock in the morning so we don't do that so but that's it. I mean, I'm in the office and I'm usually sitting at my desk at 6:15, levelled, centered, I've already pre planned my entire week on Sunday. So I have my schedule lined out in 30 to 45 minute increments and I'm ready to go. Dean Soto 36:37 I love that. Oh man, the and that, that that is why, that is definitely why it's super important as far as the the five minute strategic thing that is, that is awesome. All the stuff that you're able to pack in to an hour and a half. You know obviously a lot of that comes from the, the Warrior stuff that's, that's actually how Matt and I had, had met. We actually did warrior week with, through Garrett J. White's program. Matt Laird 37:07 We're Week 57 man. Dean Soto 37:08 57. Matt Laird 37:09 Most uncomfortable the human body could do without dying. Dean Soto 37:12 I know it was crazy, man. And it wasn't just the physical as all the, all the emotional stuff too man, like it's crazy. The, so yeah, dude. So that, that, that was one you were, you said that you, there was two things. So there's one was the getting your morning routine down, which you out of everybody, you definitely are so structured with that, with that morning routine and actually doing it on a regular basis. I have a morning routine that, that relatively mimics what you're doing. But sometimes it's at six, sometimes it's at eight. Sometimes it's at seven, sometimes it's at nine. My dream is to, to just make it six o'clock from here on out, but we'll see if we can make that happen so. Matt Laird 37:57 Oh, you know, I've been chasing a morning routine for years. Dean Soto 38:00 Really. Matt Laird 38:01 Funny enough, it doesn't, that you wouldn't think that you would. But so like I've heard people talk about their meditation practices and their morning routines. I read Elrod, Miracle Morning, like three or four years ago. And I've always been trying to get it primed and get it right. I just didn't have all the pieces of the puzzle. But it is super important at this point to have all of that correct. Dean Soto 38:26 You know, you know, I love it, man. I love it. It definitely makes a huge difference. Like I got every Monday we have our little, our group that we, that we talked about, that we meet that you're a part of and every time because I have to be on at around, wake up at 4:45 and be on at five. Like, I've gotten so much done today. Like way more than I normally do during the week and I'm like, oh I gotta do this everyday but then Tuesday comes around, and it's kind of harder, harder to wake up. But yeah, so what's this? What's the second thing, man? You mentioned two, you got me all. Matt Laird 39:01 Yes, so, so the second, second thing is where I'm going right now, man. It is, it's the niches. I mean, it's not mass market. I mean, it's obviously mass market. You don't want to be in a, you know the small area. But it's just to get into that niche, right? So you want to find your customer in the niche, in the niche, in the niche. So you want to know, basically, your customer, you want to be able to draw that avatar on a piece of paper. You want to know how many kids they have, you want to know how many trucks they have, or you want to know how many rakes they have or whatever it is that you do, you need to find out what your current customer is. And I have done some soul searching lately and I realized that a majority of the customers that I work with now don't fit into my perfect customer bubble. Not to say that it doesn't work but I do know that the ones that do fit into my customer bubble feel better with my service. They feel better with me as a person, and I like being around them. So you can't force yourself to go to work when you're actually going and it's people you like to be around, it's people you like to serve. But I really think that finding that niche the people you want to work with and finding where they're at inside of their niche is super important. Dean Soto 40:28 That's awesome man. And I, when, so you recently put out a, a funnel and, and a video and when I, even when I heard the video that you did, it was so specific to problems that you face that, that you, that you know, others face those exact same problems that it got me interested and hooked like right away. And, I definitely don't have those problems, but it was, it was as if I was in the room and you were speaking to a friend of mine that was in the oil or, or had a, you know, fleet of trucks, but wasn't big enough to, to be you know, to get the discounts that a lot of these big distributors and so on are able to get. And you, the way that you talked on this video, it was so narrow and specific in the pain that the person's feeling that it, that it was contagious. And I just thought that, like I, I've, the, the fact that you're able to go that deep definitely tells, tells the person listening that you know. You know if they are going to, you know if they are actually going to be a customer, you know, the pain that they're going through and then you have the path and the, the possibility of helping them to get past that pain that they're currently in right now. It's, it was pretty amazing. Matt Laird 42:02 Well, we're hoping to actually launch today, funnel launches today, I'm just finishing up but this would be my first, funny enough, Inc 500 going on probably two years in a row, and I've only spent $250 my entire career in advertising. So, my first funnel launches today and sad to say that as soon as I hit click, it's gonna double my ad spend for my life. Dean Soto 42:31 Oh poor guy, poor guy, dang, dude, so, so all that being said, like, how, how can people reach you? How can people connect with you, whether they're customers or strategic partners? Any? How can, how can people work with you? Matt Laird 42:48 Yeah, so basically, I'm available email or LinkedIn. I see only two platforms that I use. I, I don't do social media. I don't have any of the Instagram, Tick Tock, whatever the newest thing is. LinkedIn or email. So my email is matt.laird@camrocksupply.com and my, my name is Matt Laird on, in LinkedIn. Dean Soto 43:15 Oh, I love it. Let me, I'm going to grab your LinkedIn profile link real quick, hold on one second so, so when my guys are doing the, the blog post for this, they can link to you. You heard that guys, thank you so much for doing my blog posts for me by the way as you're hearing this. So linkedin.com/in/matt-laird-77540b59, okay? Cool, so you can go there and then you can actually go to, what was your website, it was Camrock? Matt Laird 43:54 Camrock Supply.com Dean Soto 43:57 Camrocksupply.com as well. So go check that, C A M R O C K supply.com. Dude, you're amazing. And I would love to have you on again and talk specific things, operations wise and things like that later, but I really wanted to get, get you on just to introduce you and show people that you're able. You're, I mean if you're able to hit Inc 500 with the overhead that you have, and with the flexibility that you have in an industry that is absolutely archaic and old. It, it shows what you're able to do, that you, that you don't have to go with the flow and stuff like that. So it's just amazing to have you on man and see all the things that you're doing. Matt Laird 44:43 Oh man, I appreciate it. Yep, let me know whenever you're ready. I do know that. After the 21st, when I go live with my new project, I would definitely like to talk on how that things go and we're going to disrupt the industry. Dean Soto 44:59 I love it man. Matt Laird 45:00 Wanna keep up with 2020. Dean Soto 45:02 I love it. Well how, how can people get to your, to your funnel? Matt Laird 45:07 It's not launched at the time but the regular email address for that will be fleet, F L E E T E X.net. Dean Soto 45:20 Cool, perfect, fleetex.net, cool. So by that, yeah, by the time this is on, it should be up and running man. That's great. Cool. Well, it's great having you on brother. I appreciate it. And guys, go check out Matt Laird. If, if, and he is just an absolutely amazing, amazing person and then go check out camrocksupply.com and also fleetex.net. Until then, guys, this has been the freedom in five minutes podcast and we will check you out in the next freedom in five minutes podcast episode.  

The power of being a generalist is a major advantage to an entrepreneur. Join me as I recount my struggle to niche down and specialize until I finally had enough and said, “Screw that! I do not need to specialize in something!” This is my journey to becoming a proud generalist. ----- Automated Transcript Below: Dean Soto  0:00   Hey, this is Dean Soto founder of FreedomInFiveMinutes.com and ProSulum.com. We're here again with another Freedom In Five Minutes podcast episode.   Dean Soto  0:15   Today's topic is this: Specialists in Your Business & in Any Business are Stupid. That and more, coming up...   Dean Soto  0:32   Well, good evening! I just took my son. Right now, we're at his martial arts class. I'm going to be walking around, you're going to hear some cars in the background, but that's okay. Let's just talk. Let's talk, all right?   Dean Soto  0:52   Growing up... Let me let me go rewind the clock a bit. Shall we? Growing up, I always had this issue. It reared its ugly head predominantly in school at first but then it started rearing its head in the workplace too when I started getting into my full time job.   Dean Soto  1:33   During elementary school all the way up into college, I really had no idea what I wanted to do. I remember – gosh, it really was from the time I met my wife when I even decided on an actual true major. I was majoring in Japanese and then I majored in music. Eventually I was like, "You know what? Screw this." I just wanted to get out of school. I wanted to get my degree because my wife wasn't going to marry me if I didn't have it. I'm just going to do business. Business Administration. It was the easiest, it was the fastest. And it looks good on my resume if I was going to get a job that paid well.   Dean Soto  2:33   The thing about Business Administration was – and I still remember to this day – I was working at a company I don't even think exists in the same way anymore. I was working at a company called DMJM+Harris. DMJM Harris, and it was a Civil Engineering company. Within the organization, I want to say there was probably 50 people – everything from civil engineers, structural engineers, to finance to accountants to project schedulers, etc... I was an administrative assistant there.   Dean Soto  2:33   It was really cool because it was one of the funnest jobs. And no joke, it was one of the funnest jobs I had. I couldn't put my finger on why I actually enjoyed that job as much as I did but I'll get to why that is in just a little bit. The thing about this organization was there was obviously a lot of skilled people, especially in structural engineering. They're building bridges or roads or building things that perhaps billions of people are driving over and those things have to be perfect.   Dean Soto  6:02   You might be thinking, "Dean, what's the big deal? Really. It's not that big of a deal."   Dean Soto  6:10   Well, for me, I had already spent years going throughout school and getting hounded by councillors as to what I wanted to do. What cog in the wheel did I want to be, right? And I could never decide. There was nothing. There's nothing where I need to dive into so much. There's nothing where I can fall so deeply in love with this thing that I wanted to go. I dabbled in programming and it was fun. Then I dabbled in music, it was fun. But I can only get so far.   Dean Soto  6:53   Everyone was telling me, "You never want to be a jack of all trades and master of none. You are never going to get rich that way. You are never going to see any success that way."   Dean Soto  7:07   When she said that I was like "Crap, I think I'm totally destined just to be this wandering guy who really doesn't know what he's doing and I'm never gonna make anything of myself."   Dean Soto  7:27   It's interesting because right about that time I was applying to Boeing Aerospace. I did not have my bachelor's degree at that time but I did have a security clearance. That was a big thing for Boeing.   Dean Soto  7:49   In my resume when I was applying, I applied for this industrial security job – I didn't quite know what it was. But it sounded like it wasn't armed security. I wasn't wearing a uniform or anything like that. It was more like protecting government secrets. So, I thought, "Wow that's kind of cool! That sounds pretty interesting."   Dean Soto  8:30   You know, honestly, it was still the "fastest" degree. I'm like, "Screw it. I'm going to be destined to this life anyway. I'm just gonna go for it. I'm just gonna keep going." If I'm going to be this poor jack of all trades, master of none, then that's the way it's going to be. I cannot specialize. It's so hard for me to specialize in anything.   Dean Soto  8:53   Lo and behold, as I was working at this civil engineering company, I ended up getting this callback for the position at Boeing and I had an interview. I ended up getting hired.    Dean Soto  9:18   I'm like, "Wait a minute, this is interesting. I didn't think that this would happen. That's pretty cool."   Dean Soto  9:25   I let everyone know at this civil engineering company that I was working for. They were super happy for me. They offered me a job beforehand but it definitely wasn't nearly as much pay so they were happy for me. They gave me a going away lunch and I went to Boeing.    Dean Soto  9:52   It was there that I was like, "Hmm, this is actually pretty cool..." because the industrial engineering job was pretty General. I mean, it had everything from computer security to document control, document security that had physical security. I was climbing the rafters. I was helping to build buildings. I was doing all of this stuff. This is actually really cool.   Dean Soto  10:19   This whole thing that nobody ever talks about in any type of school that was making good money. And it was perfect for a generalist. As I'm doing this, I'm like, "This is awesome. I like it."    Dean Soto  10:40   But it was only at that time when I started to wonder why I liked that administration job so much. I love that administration job so much because I got to talk and help structural engineers. I was doing formulas, popping and creating elaborate spreadsheets that would auto calculate and auto do all the stuff for these engineers; and learning what they needed, how they needed it to go, what needed to be rounded up, and figure out how to make certain things not round up.   Dean Soto  11:16   I even got to these really specialized way of doing formulas in Excel. I learned a ton of stuff in Excel. And so I'm dealing with structural engineers and project schedules. I'm dealing with all these different people. I'm like, Wow, this is so fun. Yet again, with the industrial security, it was the same thing. I'm dealing with engineers I'm dealing with computer security guys, I'm dealing with IT guys I'm dealing with contractors, construction workers, with all these people. This is so cool, and I loved it.   Dean Soto  11:53   I was getting promoted left and right because it was my wheelhouse. I didn't want to specialize in anything. I love the fact that I knew a good amount of all this stuff. I was learning more and more every day. Oh my gosh, it was so wonderful. It was amazing.   Dean Soto  12:15   I got deep into the computer security side of things. They ended up hiring me as a computer security specialist eventually and that was really amazing as well. I'm getting all excited. I'm obviously making a lot more money with that because it's a more technical job and doing a lot of cool things.   Dean Soto  12:37   And then it all came crashing down. Not money wise, it was fine. Not job wise, everything was fine.   Dean Soto  12:51   I got pigeonholed into computer security. There were two ways out. One, leave my job to get promoted to computer security regional management. That was not going to happen because there was one of those jobs and the person who was already there was going to stay for a long time. There was one position like that in all of the western United States. So that wasn't going to happen.   Dean Soto  13:29   Or, I truly deeply specialize as much as I possibly could into computer security. Well, I tried. I honestly tried my hardest. I tried my hardest to make that happen. I tried so hard to really get nerdy and deep and technical and super specific into computer security.    Dean Soto  13:57   But you know what happened? It was extremely painful to the point where I was getting depressed. I was drinking a lot. I hated my job, I could not see a way out. It was so horrible.    Dean Soto  14:14   Like, for me, it just was killing me. I and it got to the point where because a lot of the stuff that I was doing was much more of project management anyway, I would complete a project super super quickly, and then sit around doing nothing because I really did not like the subject anymore. It was getting so boring. It was super valuable to the company because I can come in, fix what needed to be fixed when it came to getting government compliance with computers and everything like that.    Dean Soto  14:43   They could bring me in when people were failing. That's government inspections and all other stuff. They bring me in, get everything up to speed, get everything fixed, and then boom, we're all done. Everything's good to go. That would happen over and over again. The vast majority of the time – because I was not interested in the subject – I'm like, this sucks, I'm done. I'm trying to do better, but I can't get anywhere because it's too specialized. I was feeling like the biggest failure.    Dean Soto  15:19   It wasn't until I became an entrepreneur where I'm leading probably over 100 people or more in building organizations, when I'm supporting client after client and doing all of this general stuff from accounting to payroll by myself and our core team of four people – the core team of four people – those other people who work for me. They work specifically for my clients doing all of these, that I started to see specializing sucks.   Dean Soto  16:16   I mean, they say, Oh yeah, you can't really make a lot of money if you're not specializing... Yeah, maybe in the employee world. Maybe in the employee world that's true but I'm doing just fine. I can work pretty much as little or as long – as as much as I want to. And I make way more money, and I'm not doing this to brag. I make way more money than I ever did as a specialist. It's not meant to brag.   Dean Soto  16:49   This is for those people out there who are a generalist when you just didn't really know what you wanted to do. This is for you. For all those people who say, "Oh, you need to specialize in something." Screw that. You don't. You don't.   Dean Soto  17:11   There are plenty of opportunities out there. And there are plenty of things that make you so valuable. I like to say that I specialize in generalization. I specialize in being a general. I guess the highest ranking people in the military are their generals. Right? Why are they called generals? Because they know they know a good amount of everything but don't specialize in any of it. And they lead those who are specialized, right?   Dean Soto  17:46   Why is this important? It's important because specializing in your business as well, I think, is so dumb. This is why we have Virtual Systems Architects at ProSulum.com and FreedomInFiveMinutes.com because these guys – I have a core team of four people. They do everything from design to copywriting, recruiting, accounting, payroll, invoicing, accounts receivable, accounts payable... they they do everything. Everything.    Dean Soto  18:19   If I was going to go the traditional route of business, I would have 50 people working for me all in some stupid department all doing one thing in one department. For four people in one department doing all that stuff, my overhead costs would go through the roof.    Dean Soto  18:41   When I see these organizations that have their bookkeeper and then they have their accounts receivable person. They have their accounts payable person. They have their marketer there. They have their advertisers they have all of these specialized people. You guys are retarded. And if you're listening to this right now you're probably thinking I'm the biggest jerk.   Dean Soto  19:06   But honestly, the way that things can be done if you use systems and if you document everything you're doing, you do not have to specialize and have those specialists in your business because they suck up so much resources. So many resources and they kill your overhead. They destroy your overhead.   Dean Soto  19:28   So how is it that Matt from Camrock is able to do with only a few people – two VSAs and only a few people – he's able to do what his other competitors do with hundreds of people. It's because he does not specialize. He doesn't get all these specialized people. He has people he can train with systems. They have processes to do whatever they need to do. But they're generalists and they're able to do so many different things in that business. So it's able to grow exponentially. All that being said, rethink the idea of specializing.   Dean Soto  20:23   If you need copywriting, your first gut instinct should not be "I need to hire a copywriter." If you need marketing, like a social media manager, your first gut instinct should not be "I need to hire a Social Media Manager." Your gut instinct needs to change with the times, which is "How can I build systems and processes – some documentation around the process of social media management?" Get it all documented, have someone do that, and then have someone do that bookkeeping. Have that same person, who does bookkeeping, do the social media management. Have the same person, who's doing social media management, do accounts receivable and collections.   Dean Soto  21:10   How can he make that happen and get out of this realm of specialization?   Dean Soto  21:16   When you do, you'll see that your overhead costs will drop significantly. Significantly. And your revenue will – more than likely – grow exponentially because you have these few people who are able to do everything and giving you the ability to be creative and grow in several different ways as well.    Dean Soto  21:31   All that being said, I have to go pick up my son. His class is done. So, I will catch you in the next Freedom In Five Minutes podcast episode.    Dean Soto  21:56   This is Dean Soto. Freedom In Five Minutes. Go check out FreedomInFiveMinutes.com. There's a masterclass there that talks about everything that I'm talking about here. I also did a four-part video series at ProSulum.com. P-R-O-S-U-L-U-M.com. It goes through in several days. It's really good as well. Go check out either one of those things and you'll see the power of what is able to be accomplished.   Dean Soto  22:23   So excited for you guys to get into more of the generalization. I'm a proud generalist that specializes in generalization. I'll catch you in the next Freedom In Five Minutes episode. This is Dean Soto. FreedomInFiveMinutes.com and I'll catch you in the next Freedom In Five Minutes podcast episode.

In this podcast episode, we talk about how automation and scaling your business does not necessarily mean becoming impersonal with your clients.  It can be a way of showing love and appreciation to them. Learn how systems and automation can help you create a foolproof customer experience where no customer will be left hanging. ----- Automated Transcript Below: Dean Soto  0:00   Hey! This is Dean Soto, founder of FreedomInFiveMinutes.com and ProSulum.com. P-R-O-S-U-LU-M.com. We're here again with another Freedom In Five Minutes podcast episode. Today's topic is this:   Dean Soto  0:21   I Systemize Because I Love You. That and more, coming up.   Dean Soto  0:29   Well, good morning! And hey, if you have not subscribed to the Freedom In Five Minutes podcast,   Dean Soto  0:35   go to Google and whether you like   Dean Soto  0:39   Apple podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or whatever it might be... Just type Freedom In Five Minutes and Apple podcasts; or Freedom In Five Minutes and Spotify; or Freedom In Five Minutes and Stitcher Radio.   Dean Soto  0:59   And you will get the ability to subscribe using your favorite platform to this podcast. So we're at a couple of hundred episodes. We're in the hundreds of episodes so far and if you have not subscribed yet... What is going on? You've got to get subscribed. Sounded like sound like a... Have you ever seen Homestar Runner? That was one of my favorite cartoons when it was still big and popular. They had a tarantula– No, I forgot. It was the rock band the hair rock band. And that's what the lead singer sounded like.   Dean Soto  1:41   You gotta subscribe. Anyway, Luna is just running around. I'm out on my land. And let's get into this episode.   Dean Soto  1:58   I'm on the board of a particular ministry that does amazing, amazing work. They actually have grown so much in the last few years. To the point where their last conference that happened in January sold out. And they actually had to get more. They had to get more people in there. I think it was like 3000 people. And they had to figure out how they could get more people in there. It looks like it's going to be 6000 people this next year, which is great. The thing about this particular ministry is the person who heads it... One, he's a really good friend; and two, he has the mindset of really being a good steward of his money – of the money that's been entrusted to him. He is being a really, really good steward of that money.   Dean Soto  3:07   If you're going to be a good steward of anything, you want to make sure that you get the most bang for your buck. You want to make sure that you get the most out of whatever it is you are spending. It could be money, it could be time. It could be anything. It doesn't necessarily have to be money. For example, if you have a homestead and you want to get as many eggs as you can out of your chickens while making them as happy as possible. Or with your parenting, you want your kids to get the most out of life without spoiling them. Different things like that. Well, this particular person is really good at utilizing his resources to maximum As much as possible,   Dean Soto  4:03   I had a phone call with him. He uses VSAs from Pro Sulum and FreedomInFiveMinutes.com and he uses Virtual Systems Architects for his ministry. They do everything from reaching out to donors, to talking with new donors, to handling new people who come into the membership site that have content and everything like that. They do all the process documentation, all of that type of stuff. It's pretty amazing what they're able to do. And they have one guy. One guy. This one guy is handling so many different things. And it has been really helping the organization tremendously. And one of the things that I started sharing with my friend is that...   Dean Soto  4:57   It was funny because he was talking about wanting to build the organization and scale the organization. But at the same time, he still wants to have that personal touch. He said essentially that, "If it grows, it's not going to be as personal, I know that but you know, I still want to do that as much as possible." And I rebuked him. I rebuked him and I said, "No, you don't have to get impersonal."   Dean Soto  5:41   No. So I said, "You know what? It's quite the opposite. The cool thing is now we have access to so many different tools that literally would have cost thousands of dollars per month to be able to do. And we now have these tools at our disposal that allow us to be personal, but still have run a small-ish organization."   Dean Soto  6:17   So I started talking to him, I'm like, "Look, my organization does everything from sending text messages to the handwritten cards in the mail, to gifts in the mail, to phone calls, voicemails and a whole bunch of different things. There's a whole mess of stuff that we do which completely wow our customers. It's because we're scaling."   Dean Soto  6:55   It is what Jermaine Griggs calls – one of my mentors – we are scaling personal attention. It doesn't matter if we have one customer or if we have 1000 customers because of what we – the data that we gather – because of the information that we are able to use in cards and we're able to use to trigger different things. We're able to give a personal touch.   Dean Soto  7:28   Even when we're we're a one person organization, a five person organization, a 10 person organization. We're able to touch thousands of people and continue to be profitable. At the same time, wow our customers.   Dean Soto  7:57   And maximize the money and resources that we have. Okay, now is that because "Gosh, Dean, you're just so genius and that's why because you're the Freedom In Five Minutes guy. You're the Pro Sulum guy that has these Virtual Systems Architects where you can show them how to do something in five minutes. They document it and then you never have to do that thing ever again. You're that guy, right? That's why because you were born anointed. So that you may do this for other people."    Dean Soto  8:34   And I do this for other people. You know, sometimes it is. Sometimes, people just have a really, really hard time with that and they pay me several thousand dollars – tens of thousands of dollars to do it for them. But the vast majority of people can do it by themselves. They can do it themselves. A lot of the time, they are just doing one of two things: It's embracing constraints and seeing what you have and utilizing what you have. And then, seeing systems as a way of saying, "I love you," to your customers, and "I appreciate you."   Dean Soto  9:12   A lot of the time, we think, "Well, my customers – the way that they will feel special and taken care of is if I'm constantly the one doing it." And it's true, in a sense, every now and then if you give a call, or you say, hey, I want to give you a free strategy session, just because you've been so amazing. That's totally fine. That's something that's completely true as well. And you know, they would appreciate that. However, the reality is just getting something in the mail – think of all of the different businesses that you do business with and think of how many times you have gotten something in the mail from them that wasn't an advertisement? Even something like a birthday thing?   Dean Soto  10:14   You know, say you got a birthday card in the mail where it was like "Hey, happy birthday. You're gonna get 20% $20 off your next visit." It's always some dumb advertisement. It's something that's never just given to you. Imagine getting a box of cookies in the mail and a card that just said, "Hey, we thank you so much for being a customer. It really does mean a lot to us that you value us and that you are getting a ton of value from what we're doing. Just wanted to say thank you." And not asking for anything in return.   Dean Soto  11:02   To me, that is something that goes so far right? And never happens and it costs you 10 bucks or 15 bucks?Maybe 20 bucks to do and you've already netted and profited from your client like $200 so 10% of that goes back to them just saying thank you.   Dean Soto  11:30   Nobody does that   Dean Soto  11:34   Nobody does that.   Dean Soto  11:37   And so when I have my customers get something like that. They're like, Whoa, I've never had this happen before. This is amazing. Or A phone call like after they buy. Even if it's an automated one where it goes to their voicemail. They're like, "Whoa Dean called. That's amazing." You know, this is all possible you have Twilio. You have Thinkster you have all these different things. You have send-out cards. you have all these different things that you can use to trigger different things based on how much someone has bought and where they are at in the sales cycle. Where are they? As a client and customer, how many people have they referred to you? All of this type of stuff, right? And so, when you set up these systems, you automate the saying of I love you. You automate the saying of I value you as a client and a customer and it keeps it to where... because the personal is great. Don't get me wrong – in person, over the phone, that is great. But there are times when you or an assistant or whomever drops the ball. And now you have a customer who is just dangling there. We want to have people... We always want to make it a foolproof type thing. Okay. So all that being said, I really want to tell you the importance of this. The more systems that you can develop that thank your customers and tell them that I love you, the more you're going to get referrals. Man I my business is based off of referrals for the most part, and they are the best.   Dean Soto  13:58   They come because of all these gifts and Stuff like that to happen and it comes because we have a great product obviously. No one's gonna refer if it's not a great product. But these gifts give the little nudges. These little gifts say I love you, it gives a little nudge to go, "Yeah, you know what? I really like these guys. I really want to have other people experience this as well." So what do you do? What system do you have right now that can say I love you and give that beautiful, wonderful personal touch, even though it might not be actually in person?    Dean Soto  14:35   So all right, this is Dean Soto. Founder of FreedomInFiveMinutes.com and ProSulum.com. I don't know where Luna is. She's somewhere lost in this area. I do not see her. So I'm gonna go and find her. So, all that being said, Go check out FreedomInFiveMinutes.com. Go check out ProSulum.com P-R-O-S-U-L-U-M.com. We got lots of amazing stuff there. And if you're ever wanting a Virtual Systems Architect and want to get to the next level. If you want to scale your business, want to grow your business and do it all in as little as five minutes a day. Go check out FreedomInFiveMinutes.com or ProSulum.com P-R-O-S-U-L-U-M.com. There's the answer to Freedom In Five Minutes. I will catch you on the next Freedom In Five Minutes podcast episode.

Welcome back to another installment of our favorite student-focused series, This Viterbi Life! Tune in to hear about one of the most unique classes all freshmen on campus take, Freshman Academy. Freshman Academy, or ENGR-102, is lead by upperclassmen students, known as Academy Coaches, along with a Viterbi professor-- the class is intended to introduce freshmen to the world of engineering through projects, lectures and activities across all disciplines. Tune in for a great episode by Luz, one of our VSAs and an Academy coach herself!

Dr. Nakul Singh joins the show to share his experience preparing for the ophthalmology match. He provides practical advice based on each of the various sections of the ERAS application.

Meet Steven and learn about his plan to help medical students match into competitive residencies! Also included are statistics from the NRMP 2018 Match.

Be smart with your money. Applying to residency and going on interviews is not the time to be stingy with your money. Save money deciding if you’re going out to eat, or if you’re going to buy that new pair of shoes. Don’t worry about spending another $500 on a plane ticket or $100 on a hotel room. Apply to lots of programs. Go on the interviewsPassing the boards, and being realistic about your speciality. You can match into A residency, even if you don’t do well. It might not be the specialty you really want or the program but you can match. If you fail any part of the boards, even if you do well on the repeat. It is really hard to come back from that. Getting involved in research early. It doesn’t matter all that much if it is the field you are applying to (tho it doesn't hurt), but shows that you are committed. More programs are using research as a requirement now. I never realized how easy it was to get a case report accepted at a medical conference. A well thought out thank you note. Generic thank you note doesn’t mean anything. Some programs will tell you not to write one. If you send one, make it thoughtful. Establishing a personal connection during the interview. Don’t just ask generic questions. Don’t not have any questions to ask. Don’t ask for recommendations to other programs on your interview, or on your away rotation. Can’t believe people do this. Ask for a letter of recommendation from every program you do an away rotation at. Even if it is past the deadlineDon’t lie on your application. Don’t be rude to program coordinators. It can get you removed from an interview.Don’t book interviews too close together. Interview fatigue is real.Apply to multiple VSAS spots per block. Be courteous and timely if you have to reject one. Look for programs that aren’t on VSAS. These programs tend to be less applied to.

This is part two on county away rotations in emergency medicine. We bring back Nicholas Robbins with a story about an X-Ray to remember, and we answer questions from Jonathan Righetti about VSAS, community programs, who writes...

It’s January, which means that it’s VSAS season, and third-year medical students preparing for a residency in emergency medicine are getting ready to apply for fourth-year away rotations and sub-internships. In Episode 25 we dive...

Does the term “away rotation” or “VSAS” raise your blood pressure and induce palpitations? Don’t fret, you are not alone! Applying for away rotations can seem like a stressful task for students going into Emergency...

Dr. Mike Gisondi facilitates a discussion with Dr. Susan Stroud(University of Utah)Dr. Cullen Hegarty (Regions Hospital / HealthPartners)Dr. Scott Sherman (Cook County Hospital) about the ins and outs of VSAS. More info at: http://www.aliem.com/2015/em-match-advice-vsas-101/ Watch the original hangout here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0gsUf7aF8U Edited by Hari Bhatt

In this episode, we discuss some of the ins and outs of applying to away EM rotations using the Visiting Student Application Service. *Note: this episode was originally recorded back in Jan/Feb, and VSAS season is now open!

ㅁ 설기현 은퇴 그리고 인천 5분 15초 ㅁ 유벤투스vsAS로마 우승경쟁 10분 44초 ㅁ ACL, 일정 및 경기소식 14분 04초 - 진행 : 김유라 (데일리 풋볼리스트 진행자) 패널 : 김정용 (풋볼리스트 취재기자)