Turn Your Side Hustle Into a Scalable Business

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Unknown
Oh.

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Speaker 3
Welcome, everybody, to the blue collar start up, the podcast where hard work meets big ideas. This is your home for real talk, real stories and real strategies from the front lines of life and the business of the trades. I’m one of your hosts, Mike Nelson from Five Towers Media.

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Speaker 2
And I’m your co-host, Derek Foster of Daigle Cleaning Systems. How are we doing, Mike?

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Speaker 3
I’m doing great, man. I’ll tell you. I’ve got, I don’t know if it’s the weather. Three rainy days and now a beautiful day outside or just, feeling energized, man. Feeling upbeat. Got things moving. Things are going good. I got a CFO hired now, so, like, I don’t have to worry about any of that crap that I hate dealing with on a day to day basis is my business.

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Speaker 3
So, life’s good, man.

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Speaker 2
How about you? I’m glad to hear it. Oh, same. We’re, We’re rocking and rolling. We got a lot of, a lot of good stuff coming up. I think we’re going to talk about on the show, down the road a little bit, but, Yeah. Save it for then. Super excited about, Steve role.

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Speaker 2
It will let him introduce himself here in a second, but, super excited to have him on the show today. And, welcome, Steve. How are you doing?

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Speaker 1
Mike? Derek, thanks for having me on the show. I’m excited to be here today. I’m coming in from Las Vegas.

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Speaker 3
Las Vegas, baby. Where? It’s. What is it, 100 degrees out there right now.

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Speaker 1
I wish it was actually kind of cool. I know it’s hard to say, but you guys in upstate New York was going to be in 20 degrees, but it was a little chilly this morning around 63. I had to put my jacket on. So if we’re struggling out here in Vegas, let me tell you.

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Speaker 3
It sounds it sounds I rented. Well, you could.

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Speaker 2
Just see the difference in attire. You’re rocking a t shirt and we got flannels on.

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Speaker 3
I know I actually had to put mine on. I got a space heater over here blowing heat on me because my office is the coldest room in the house. Because it’s the oldest room in the house.

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Speaker 1
It’s a breeze. I make shorts 300 days a year, so I am wearing pants. For today’s conversation though, just for you guys.

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Speaker 3
We appreciate that you got it. You know you got to keep it classy. You’ve got to keep it classy, right?

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Speaker 3
Steve, there’s a lot we can talk about here. And we kind of, said this a couple minutes ago before we started recording, but I, you know, maybe you want to give us the broad strokes about who you are and kind of your background of what you do.

00;02;23;23 – 00;02;41;19
Speaker 1
Sort of thing. Well, I’m no stranger to the East Coast. I grew up in the DC area. My dad grew up in Harlem, and so I was kind of from New York to D.C. to Maryland, where my mom grew up. I’m going to a big family, got four brothers, two sisters. Our parents taught us hard work and determination, but they also put us into an environment.

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Speaker 1
We were surrounded by a lot of other poor, broke people, and I thought that was going to be my life. I thought I wanted to grow up, work a dead end job, hope to find a way to retire one day. And I didn’t really have any type of agency like life was happening to us. It definitely wasn’t happening for us and we could barely make ends meet.

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Speaker 1
It was a lot of kids in the house. Luckily for me, I had someone that woke me up and I realized that my actions can actually affect my future. And that was the beginning of me having agency where I learned about having lots of options and lots of options equals a lot of control. And so that led me on a path to the military, where I got an ROTC scholarship that I applied for.

00;03;19;22 – 00;03;42;03
Speaker 1
We were deep in a war at the time, so it was pretty much take a bullet, we’ll give you a scholarship. And so that’s how I graduated. The war was torn down. I never left America. And during the time that I was in the military, because I had an engineering background and I had a bunch of certifications because I was internally motivated for some reason, I got the chance to work after my strong on the line military time working at the Corps of Engineers civilian agency.

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Speaker 1
I’m a green student working with a bunch of civilians. I go from working 15 hours a day to working 7 to 8 hours a day. And I had all this free time, and the military paid for my engineering degree and then also my masters, which was kind of like an MBA for engineers. And so I’m filled with free time and lots of ideas.

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Speaker 1
I have no kids yet. I just want to start businesses. And while I was still in the military, I went through three iterations of starting businesses, some that I thought were going to be unbelievably successful, that ended up failing, others that I thought were just going to be a side hustle. They turned into what I still own today, and ultimately it was through that trial and error and experimental ization that I went through.

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Speaker 1
But I was able to get out of the military, have a day job for six months, long enough to get a loan for a house, have a kid and then go full time into my businesses. And that’s what’s been the last eight years of my life of entrepreneurship. I’ve started 12 different businesses now. Most have been wildly unsuccessful, and there’s been a couple that have been successful across the board.

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Speaker 1
But my very first business that I started that was successful when I was still in the military, I still own to this day the numbers that you see, my resume of selling over $100 million and almost $200 million now, came from that boring little business that I thought was going to be a side hustle. And so that’s my background.

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Speaker 1
Happy to go whatever direction. You guys would love to go with that.

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Speaker 3
Yeah, it’s it’s funny, they say boring business too, because we were just talking. We just interviewed, Oh my God, her name is Escape Me, but it’s Peacock Floors out in San Diego. Last week and we were talking about boring businesses as well, and about how, how much money there is to be made and boring businesses, believe it or not.

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Speaker 3
Right. You know, one of the things in we wanted to talk about today with you, Steve, and given your your wide resume and I love that you talked about how many of your businesses failed because that is the reality of the situation. Right. But one of the things you talk a lot about is, you know, the show standpoint, like what we’re here to do is, is first is to try to get young people to be interested in the trades.

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Speaker 3
Right. And then the second piece of that, though is because, I mean, I don’t I can’t speak for D, but I personally feel that the truest path to freedom is through business ownership and entrepreneurship. And for the people that want to, you know, pay the price that goes along with getting that freedom. If they’re willing to do that, you know, we always want to support them in any way we can.

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Speaker 3
So one of the things is trying to empower people that are currently team members, employees, whatever you want to, whatever word you want to use to own their own business, to go into, small business ownership. So with that segue in mind, you know, really would love to hear about what you’re talking about with I keep want to say, moonlighting, but the side hustle that turns into a full, full blown business.

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Speaker 3
So maybe

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Speaker 3
can you give us the background on that side hustle that became something huge for you, and then also maybe get into why the side hustle first makes the most sense, rather than just quitting the job and jumping in full steam.

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Speaker 1
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00;07;12;27 – 00;07;26;02
Speaker 1
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Speaker 3
can you give us the background on that side hustle that became something huge for you, and then also maybe get into why the side hustle first makes the most sense, rather than just quitting the job and jumping in full steam.

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Speaker 1
Yeah, I think we’ve we’ve developed the sexy path of entrepreneurship because we’re so into the start of five in the Silicon Valley, people forget there’s somebody giving them hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars to quit their day job and going full time into their full time startup. A lot of times that’s not going to be the case for us.

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Speaker 1
In fact, if you are a first time business owner who wants to give you money to do anything, your idea better be phenomenal. And so the better path lay in. The more common pathway for most people is to have a side business where they’ve identified a problem and a customer, and they found a repeatable way to make money that they think, I can now scale this up.

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Speaker 1
I want to zoom out a little bit first because I think it starts with control. Most of us say we want freedom in our lives. In fact, if you ask most entrepreneurs, why do they do it? I don’t want to work for somebody else. I don’t want to have a 9 to 5. I wasn’t able to do what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it.

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Speaker 1
But if you talk to any entrepreneur that’s been doing it for seven, eight, nine, ten years, you realize, well, many people can’t figure out how to find freedom and control, even owning their own business.

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Speaker 1
all of us in life say things like, we want freedom and we want to live lives in control. And one of the saddest things to see is that people that believe they can achieve freedom through entrepreneurship run five, ten years down the path. They get into entrepreneurship and they realize, man, I had more free time and more control of my life when I had a day job than when I came here, because they didn’t really create a business.

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Speaker 1
They created a job for themselves and a job that was worse because now they have insurance. Now they have employees to think about. They’re worried about so much more. They can’t even sleep at night because of the fact that they wanted to gain control through entrepreneurship. So how you do it matters. But I would be remiss if I didn’t start by saying that control can be achieved without starting a business.

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Speaker 1
And I know plenty of people that have a 9 to 5 who are living lives of immense control. And I mentioned this in my intro, because I’ve learned in life that when you have lots of options, you have to choose amongst those options, and when it’s your choice and you realize that you’re in control of choosing what happens next, and you have that agency, that’s what control and freedom really actually means.

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Speaker 1
And for someone who’s worked the same job for five years, who wakes up every single day and says, hey, I have three other job options I could go and do, I’m choosing to do this one because I like it, because I still choose to this day, that’s a person is living a life in control. It’s the person who doesn’t have the options, who’s forced to get up out of bed, who’s forced to go to the job that they don’t want to be at, and they don’t see another alternative.

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Speaker 1
That’s a person who’s not living a life in control. The beautiful thing that happens is when you’re living a life in control and your lifestyle is under control, you’re spending less than you make. You’re able to save. You now have the option to choose whether or not you get into business ownership and entrepreneurship. But the very person that will succeed in business ownership is the same person that has the potential to succeed inside of a job, because they have many other options to choose from as well.

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Speaker 1
And when you understand that the way that you frame your business for yourself and for your employees changes fundamentally, because none of us want to get stuck in a business that we have just the same, we don’t want to be stuck into a job. So how we formed that business matters. And here’s the framework. In general, you want to find a repeatable operating system.

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Speaker 1
That’s the side hustle phase for a lot of people. You don’t want to quit your day job because your day job is the investor into your side hustle. That’s what’s funding all the operations. And many times it takes a little bit of money for you to start making money. Why would you jump off of a cliff? Why would you just go cold turkey and just jump into a business that, you know you don’t have a repeatable playbook for that’s going to predictably make cash for you.

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Speaker 1
That’s what your 9 to 5 is for. And so I wouldn’t get rid of that investor in your side hustle until you know for sure that you understand it’s a repeatable system. I know how it operates. I know how to make it go up. I know it makes it go down, and I’ve removed all the risk from it.

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Speaker 1
And now if I put all of my time into it, I can grow it larger. That’s the time to get rid of the day job. That’s a question people should ask before getting rid of the day job. If your goal is to have freedom and to have control, and to build a business that works for you without, you can stuck inside of it.

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Speaker 1
This is a big question that a lot of people never asked. Do I need to quit my day job in order to grow my business over here? Because there’s a scenario where you never quit the day job, the business is growing, and when you quit, the day job is not to go work inside your business and be the technician.

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Speaker 1
Be the one who’s working on it. Be the manager. It’s unclear the day job because I don’t need that income anymore, because this business has grown to the point, because I built it on the side. I never thought of it as anything more than a side hustle, where I can add people and systems and technology to it that are not coming in.

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Speaker 1
So I can have a job working 40 hours a week. I’m quitting that cause I don’t need the income. I can sit now and think about how I grow this business all day long, without having to be the one who’s down in the trenches actually making it happen. And when you come at it from the right perspective of understanding that you’re going to grow your business through the leverage of people, relationships and capital that doesn’t always involve you being the one in the business doing it.

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Speaker 1
And far too often, people get stuck inside of a business that used to be a side hustle because they quit their income producing job to go and do that job. And then they realized, my back’s up against the wall. I need this to work. And because they needed to work so much, they’re holding on to all the things that are so important in the business.

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Speaker 1
And you see this with business owners every single day where they never let go. They don’t know how to train and delegate the right way because they need it to work. That means they have to be the one who’s doing it. 30 years goes by, they’re still the one doing it. The business hasn’t grown and they’re like, what am I doing wrong?

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Speaker 1
How am I going to edit or retire this thing one day? And the answer is, is because you never allowed yourself to be in an environment where you could delegate and train and elevate others to do the important tasks in the business. That’s why your business has not gotten $2 million a year. That’s why you can’t grow, and that’s why you’re now stuck in it.

00;13;43;28 – 00;13;59;25
Speaker 1
And you don’t see a way back out where if you could, you can whisper somebody say, I take that old job back. At least I could have retired from that. Like, I don’t even know how to get rid of this thing without losing money in the process. And I talk to these business owners every single week who feel stuck in their business.

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Speaker 1
And it’s not because they have bad intentions, it’s because the way that they went around it. And so you started asking about my side hustle and where it came from. And I was still in the military. My wife actually started a little business where she was helping her mom out to move Amazon inventory. So her mom owned a company that sold little soaps and shampoos to distributors who would then sell them to hotels.

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Speaker 1
And so I’m the engineer technical brain working on project management for the military. And I see what she’s doing, and she starts getting the 10,000, $20,000 a month. And they go, man, this is an opportunity here. Let me see if I can help you out. Because she was making a 10% commission. So I got into the head of all the data behind it.

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Speaker 1
And I go, like, this could actually be huge. And so I started helping her out with it. Long story short, my goal was to sell $150,000 a month because I thought to myself, I can make 15KA month on the side and still have my job. We’re never going to run for anything, right? So that’s a you money right there, you know.

00;14;55;11 – 00;15;15;07
Speaker 1
And that was that’s what I started doing. And we got the point that we scale that up to 150,000 a month. Didn’t own any piece of it whatsoever at all. And we’re not for a very fortunate set of steps where that side hustle was forced to turn into a business. It never would have happened. But when it became a business, became a full time effort for me.

00;15;15;10 – 00;15;44;17
Speaker 1
That’s now turned into over $100 million in sales. A team of 25 people that’s managing it and growing it every single day, independent of me, where I’ve not been involved in the business for over two years now, and I’m able to appreciate what it looks like on the back end. They have the freedom that I was always looking for, to have a business that I can always add input to, but to know that it doesn’t need me, and I can always think about the business without having to be inside the business.

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Speaker 3
I think as you’re talking, there’s a couple things that came to my mind. First, when you’re talking about leveraging people, leveraging technology and not doing it, and focusing on being the technician, and it’s kind of keeping you from growing. Right. And I always love to throw myself under the bus. So for probably four years now, I have delayed hiring someone to be a CFO.

00;16;10;08 – 00;16;27;27
Speaker 3
Right? I was like, I can do and I’m not paying money, right? Right. And forcing myself to be the technician in that area of the business, even though it’s not my skill set, I’m not good at it. To be fair, I’m really bad at it. But recently I made that. Well, a month ago I made that decision.

00;16;27;27 – 00;16;46;21
Speaker 3
The last month has been absolutely amazing because I realized I was being held hostage by those daily activities. Like, legitimately felt like I was being suffocated by these things that I had to do. And then now that I don’t have to worry about them anymore, I’m like, oh my God, I like, love my business again. This is amazing.

00;16;46;24 – 00;17;06;09
Speaker 3
I have quit my job this week, which I normally quit at least once a week. So I guess there is a question in here, I promise. With that story in mind and with what you were saying, like, this is a common thing, I have to assume that people are keeping themselves in these confining roles inside their business.

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Speaker 3
What’s the advice or what’s the what’s the

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Speaker 3
way out that you would normally work with? People are tell people that to do.

00;17;14;14 – 00;17;38;08
Speaker 1
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Speaker 3
way out that you would normally work with? People are tell people that to do.

00;17;42;28 – 00;18;04;02
Speaker 1
I think, is to start with where the problem comes from. Yes. There’s a lack of wanting to go pay someone for something you can do for yourself, but there’s also things that you recognize me. And knowing the numbers in the business is vital to the business. I care about the business more than anybody else. How is it possible I can have somebody else come in from the outside and do this job?

00;18;04;08 – 00;18;20;21
Speaker 1
Now? I’m not going to be the one who’s digging in the trench to find the numbers. And it’s the thing still going to work. Is the business still going to operate the same way you go out, you hire a CFO, and one month later your life has changed. Here’s the argument. I would say wait for six months. Wait for 12 months now.

00;18;20;24 – 00;18;42;01
Speaker 1
Because now that you’re freed up from the responsibility of having to do that, what is the highest leverage thing that you can be doing inside your business, I promise you, is not doing the accounting and figuring out the numbers should you know the numbers 100%. But when you’re doing the work associated with finding those numbers, you’re not thinking about the highest leverage thing that makes you special.

00;18;42;03 – 00;19;02;05
Speaker 1
And for a lot of business owners, what we find out is that the relationships is what made them special. Then selling big deals or attracting people into their company is really what makes them special. And by the way, they really enjoy doing those things. And so the universe tells you things sometimes where you’re thinking like, man, this is a chore for me to do every single month.

00;19;02;08 – 00;19;21;13
Speaker 1
It’s important what I have to do and if I don’t do, the business is going to fail. I went through the same iteration kicking and screaming just like you did, where I thought, well, if I’m not doing the important stuff, who’s going to do it? But I reached the end of my own capability because I have a finite amount of time of what I can do in the business.

00;19;21;20 – 00;19;41;21
Speaker 1
And if I hadn’t gotten stuck selling $2 million a year in my business and realizing I want to make more money and I want to have more free time, but if I’m, I don’t have any more capacity for me to do anything more like this. I’ve reached the limits of that. And a lot of times it takes reaching your own limits where you realize I don’t have any more hours in the day to do it.

00;19;41;23 – 00;20;04;09
Speaker 1
I have to bring someone else in to do it as well. I want to be able to grow. But the beautiful thing that happens when you get yourself out of the mindset of doing everything in your business is you realize, okay, I was wearing the CFO, CEO, CEO hat and I’m also a technician in like 30 other things as a business owner that I’m always involved in, how many hours a week can I give focus attention to any of those things?

00;20;04;11 – 00;20;22;10
Speaker 1
Three, if we’re lucky. Probably more like one. It’s it’s a distracted hour that you’re giving to those tasks. Yeah, but you realize that when you start to bring people in, yes, you will work harder as you’re training them because the train still has to keep on going while you’re training them. So you’re keeping it going, you’re doing all the work, and now you’re also training on top of that.

00;20;22;16 – 00;20;51;03
Speaker 1
But on the back end of that, as you hand off the ownership of responsibility, teach them your system of how you do it, but implore them to find a way to do it better than what you were doing, because they’re going to own that system. You taught them the why behind it. The beautiful thing that happens is you see your employees start to put a 20, 30, 40 hour workweek into the thing that you only had an hour to focus on, and they’re better at it than you were, and they can manage more of it than you can, because they can wear one hat and focus.

00;20;51;10 – 00;21;06;07
Speaker 1
And you realize this thing about human beings, whatever we do for a long period of time, we’re not only going to get good at it, but we’re going to start optimizing that thing. And so instead of you wearing 40 hats, you’re bringing in someone else to wear each one of those hats, and now they’re getting better at it.

00;21;06;07 – 00;21;22;01
Speaker 1
They can do a whole lot more. The whole system’s moving better because you have people involved in those roles, and you want to elevate yourself up to the owner role, where you have this time to think and go out for a long walk and play. What can we be doing more? One of the things that I’m really, really good at, where can we grow?

00;21;22;02 – 00;21;40;20
Speaker 1
Those ideas tend not come to you when you are the one doing the work. And the biggest thing I see holding business owners back from grow into the level that they want to be at, is they’re not bored enough. You need time to be bored and you need time to think as a business owner, because if you’re doing the work, you can’t have fresh, new, innovative ideas.

00;21;40;20 – 00;22;04;28
Speaker 1
Even if you have them, they get stuck because you don’t have time to sit there and focus on them, to sit there and play around with, I think about it and talk to people, talk on the phone and think through your greatest ideas. You need time to be bored, and every business that grows significantly has somebody who’s bored, who’s thinking about how we can grow more not by them doing more, but by creating an ecosystem for others to succeed inside.

00;22;05;01 – 00;22;25;14
Speaker 1
So it starts with the realization that you can never exceed the number of hours that you can do on a day like that’s cat. And once you reach that point, you realize that, well, this is a job, because if I stop working, things start breaking and all it takes. It sounds so simple and it’s a cliche at this point.

00;22;25;14 – 00;22;46;02
Speaker 1
Oh, systems and processes. Write down what you’re doing. But I’m here to tell you write down what you’re doing. Look at the systems that you’ve worked on. What is your repeatable system and how do you build an engine around that through a person? That is not necessary because the person who’s doing it should be running it off of your operating system, of how you know it gets done perfectly.

00;22;46;02 – 00;23;08;19
Speaker 1
They’re improving it, but they’re updating the operating system. That person may decide to go to a different job three weeks from now. What happens then? Are you going to go back to it, or does someone else come in and run the operating system? Because that’s so stupid. Simple. You can bring somebody off the street and run that job because they’re being told what to do, why it’s important, how to do it, and that it’s their job to now come in and improve that.

00;23;08;21 – 00;23;30;04
Speaker 1
And I make it sound easy, and I oversimplified it when I say that, because it truly is a very, very difficult thing. If it was easy, all of us would have $1 billion businesses. But it’s really difficult to get the details right. But if you simplify it to understand what’s the repeatable operating system that makes you money, okay, let’s bring people into own each function of that so we can turn it into an engine that operates without me.

00;23;30;11 – 00;23;35;03
Speaker 1
And now I have time to be bored. When I’m bored, the business grows.

00;23;35;05 – 00;23;52;01
Speaker 3
It’s funny you say that. I laughed because, probably on a daily basis, I respond to someone. I’m like, well, I’m never bored. Go with it. Ask them, you know, how’s business? Like? Well, I’m never bored. Got a lot of stuff going on. So a new goal. New life goal. I need to be bored.

00;23;52;03 – 00;24;11;05
Speaker 1
Yes, yes. Honestly, I believe that strongly in my heart. I say this for. For every family you want to have. Someone in the family has a few hours to be bored, to think about your family’s financial future. And for every business, you want to have someone in the organization in a leadership role who has time to be bored, to think of new ideas.

00;24;11;07 – 00;24;26;21
Speaker 1
Because when we’re in the day to day, when we’re inside the trench, we cannot think about growing because we’re just doing the day to day things to survive. And if the owner is just surviving, then the organization is not thriving.

00;24;26;24 – 00;24;46;20
Speaker 2
Steve, in this, in this climate, it’s funny, I just had this conversation with our director of finance the other day. She’s about at capacity with what what she can handle. And, you know, we started the conversation of, okay, well, what are we doing to offload some of those things so somebody could do it better? Very similar conversation, but now I’m having it with some of my my higher level employees.

00;24;46;22 – 00;25;06;10
Speaker 2
And she said, well, we can’t find anyone. So and I think with today’s, hiring climate, that’s the common response or answer. Well, how am I going to find somebody to do that? Is there, a process or a system that, you know, you’ve used successfully to find those people? And what does that look like?

00;25;06;12 – 00;25;29;08
Speaker 1
Then we have to break it into parts because there is technical, almost manual labor, that you need a human being to be attracted to your company to come and do. And you can’t find someone. There’s usually something off that you. The compensation isn’t right, the job isn’t interesting. You not made the company attractive to those people. But on the other side of the house, we’re talking about operational jobs.

00;25;29;10 – 00;26;06;10
Speaker 1
We have to ask ourselves, okay, we need a person to come into this operational job. Wait, do we need a person to come in and do this operational job, or do we need to find a way for the person who’s doing that job to better leverage automation and technology for them to be able to do more? And nine times out of ten, what I’m seeing right now is that what used to take a human that we would hire and come off the street, we can now find a way to have the person that already knows it understands that function, leverage automation, and particularly right now, artificial intelligence and AI to enable them to do more.

00;26;06;13 – 00;26;26;21
Speaker 1
I’m so bogged down in the weeds doing it that, again, I don’t have the time to sit there and figure out how to start using automation to my advantage. And we need to free up some of that person’s time and not everyone’s eye forward. And that’s I think the fundamental problem right now is that we’re living in a world where if you are eye forward, you see someone is bogged down on operational tasks.

00;26;26;22 – 00;26;46;26
Speaker 1
You go, oh, well, I can do that. Oh, ChatGPT, you can do that for you. You can build that specific function. If there’s anything repeatable that runs off of a series of rules that can be automated. AI is a nice buzzword, but I is in a functional sense on the agent side. It’s a template for automation, and that’s existed for 30 years.

00;26;46;26 – 00;27;19;21
Speaker 1
If you talk to any software developer, they’ve been giving the rules based automation and building software around that for a really long time. But we functionally, as business owners, never got out of the mindset of, oh, it’s a huge problem. I have to go hire another who that comes into this, what I’m learning right now, and I think every business owner should be paying attention to, is that if you have the right who that understands it, that’s built the system functionally, them templating out their work and finding a way to automate that, and they don’t have to know everything technical.

00;27;19;23 – 00;27;43;16
Speaker 1
The beautiful thing right now is that they can say, here’s a problem I have. I’m overloaded. Hey, what parts of this could I be using automation or AI or an AI agent for right now? And that is something that they can teach them how to leverage it so that I can do a lot more work for them. But when you talk about the people and you can’t find someone to come in and do it, job, something’s broken.

00;27;43;19 – 00;28;13;25
Speaker 1
Are we not paying enough? Is our business not attractive to those people? Why not? And if you can’t answer those questions, then I think that there’s more of the fundamental reason behind. If we’re ever going to grow, we will need technology, but we’re also going to need people involved in our organization has to be attractive to people. And I think that comes down to the business center really starting to put the hat on to say, okay, how am I making my company a place that people really want to come and go to work?

00;28;13;25 – 00;28;33;19
Speaker 1
What opportunities? And it may not always be about the money and the benefits. Those are the easy things, but I’m going to pay 100% of your health care. That’s awesome. Most small businesses can’t afford to do that. But where are you providing growth opportunities for people? And it comes down to reverse engineering the psychology of someone who wants to succeed in life and come to your company.

00;28;33;19 – 00;28;52;19
Speaker 1
You’re hiring based off of a certain set of, of ideals, and probably have values in your company and know what type of person you’re looking for. But if you know that type of person, what motivates that person? How do they want to grow and progress in their career? Do they want to maybe start their own business or be more entrepreneurialism out of your business?

00;28;52;25 – 00;29;08;07
Speaker 1
And how are you creating a pathway for them? And one of the things that I’ve learned in the interview process is to show people, this is the job you’re coming into. Here’s the growth trajectory of that job and how it’s going to turn into what you want in the future, and how do you know what they want to do in the future?

00;29;08;14 – 00;29;27;07
Speaker 1
You have to ask. And that very first thing of you understanding, what are you looking for do in the future? Do you want to grow? Because not everybody wants to, and we can design a future for people based off of what they want, what our company has to be attractive to them. That’s to be something about it. And it’s the same way you differentiate your product in the marketplace.

00;29;27;07 – 00;29;46;13
Speaker 1
Like why does the customer choose you? I ask the same question why does your employee choose to work for you? There’s something in there for them that may be intangible today, but you better figure out what that thing is, because that, I think, is what becomes the secret sauce of the company, that if you can lean into it, you can better attract people.

00;29;46;15 – 00;30;00;26
Speaker 1
But I think that the biggest thing for most people right now in operational jobs, understanding where can I automate things, where can I use AI, and if I don’t know how to use it, can I learn to ask it how I use AI so that I can better use it? And then I don’t have to go hire someone?

00;30;00;29 – 00;30;14;04
Speaker 1
I’ve got this agent that works 24 hours a day, and there’s a world right now that is possible. It seems like it’s not. But but that’s achieved over the last six months or so inside of artificial intelligence. And there’s people doing it today.

00;30;14;06 – 00;30;31;07
Speaker 3
Yeah, it’s pretty wild, actually. What they’re doing with all that stuff I’ve been, I’ve been going down that rabbit hole for the last few months as far as using using agents and setting those up. And now with the recent advancements from or meta just launched their, their muse product, I think it’s called and meta one and all this other stuff.

00;30;31;07 – 00;30;39;22
Speaker 3
And then you’ve got, the grok bots. I’m actually, been digging into those this morning. Pretty wild what it looks like you can do.

00;30;39;25 – 00;31;07;21
Speaker 1
Oh. It’s unbelievable. I mean, I’m very I forward and I’m of the opinion now that what I’m trying to do is take the smallest number of people and have the largest amount of impact and leverage from those people. And so when I think about an employee coming at it, and also it means that you’re getting a mac mini, you’re getting a maxed out ChatGPT subscription that comes with Codex, where okay, mused Rock bot, the dot from ChatGPT.

00;31;07;27 – 00;31;27;15
Speaker 1
Those are all kind of the same thing now, and learning to leverage that so that that person can do more. They always say, you can’t motivate someone to want more than they want for themselves. Well, that’s true for your kids. It’s true for your players. If you’re a coach, that is not true for your employees per se, because I can make you use technology.

00;31;27;22 – 00;31;39;29
Speaker 1
And if I can make you use technology the same way I make you use a computer, if someone came in and said, well, I don’t use computers, like, well then you can’t work here like we used to. We’re not going to use typewriters, we use computers. The next level of that is, well, I’m not going to use AI.

00;31;40;01 – 00;31;58;16
Speaker 1
Well, if you’re going to work here, we’re going to use AI and find ways to be on the cutting edge of ways to use it so we can do better than our competitors and do way more for the people that we have here. I don’t see AI is much of a job killer as much of a scene as a job enhancer, and enabling people who care, who want to do more to learn.

00;31;58;18 – 00;32;17;06
Speaker 1
And what I’ve noticed is that when I force people that don’t want to use, I can use AI, because if we use AI, if you’re going to work here, they start to see what it’s capable of. And I encourage people to lean into their own personal interests, not just do your work with, I like find things that you want to do, because I want you to lean in to how this makes your life better and grok.

00;32;17;06 – 00;32;34;29
Speaker 1
Bot use and the dot from ChatGPT. These are unbelievable executive assistants that work 24 over seven, that if you connect them and give them the same access that you have to your email, your text messages, your slack messages, access to the things that you do in your daily job, it just tells you, hey, I can help out with that.

00;32;35;03 – 00;32;53;12
Speaker 1
I can help out with that, too. And we’re so early in this right now that anyone is leaning in today to understand how to have this, these agents that are helping them out, they’re learning to make themselves more scalable, whether they know it or not. And that’s the beautiful thing that I’m seeing, is that you can just connect someone and say, no, you’re going to use technology.

00;32;53;12 – 00;33;09;25
Speaker 1
Oh, you hate it. But let me give you a real world project to do with it. Look how much more you got done because you were using it. Hey, by the way, this is not going to put you out of a job. This is going to make you AI proof, because the people that know how to use it the best, every company is going to want to work with them.

00;33;10;02 – 00;33;27;23
Speaker 1
And so I’m arming you with the tools to make yourself better in this organization. And wherever you go after this is you may not work here for 30 years. I’d love for you to, but you may not. And I’m making you eye proof. So you’re always going to be able to have a job because you’re leaning into what’s new and what’s coming up in the future.

00;33;27;26 – 00;33;30;20
Speaker 2
Steve, that’s an interesting way to look at it.

00;33;30;22 – 00;33;47;13
Speaker 1
And I look at it. I mean, from the retention side, we always want our employees worked for us forever. But the reality is that most employees are changing jobs every three years. And so we understand that it’s, well, okay, you’re going to be here for three years. You say you want to stay here for ten. That’s great. I’m going to get you for three.

00;33;47;16 – 00;34;08;24
Speaker 1
So what’s the highest amount of leverage you can produce for our organization while you’re here? And move on to the next person? And can I make sure that the things that you’re working on, as you make yourself high leverage, that we are capturing that through our technology and through our standard operating procedures, so that the next person that comes in can pick up where you left off.

00;34;08;26 – 00;34;30;20
Speaker 1
The problem people Leadings I used to leave with all the information side of their head because nobody was making them put it down on paper and force it. But when you’re methodical about your employees coming in and working with the systems that are now tracking the technology that they’re using to make their job better, and you’re bringing somebody else in who’s just you’re going to use the same systems, you’re going to use the same type of artificial intelligence.

00;34;30;20 – 00;34;48;07
Speaker 1
And now is GPT eight or GPT nine. They’ll be able to pick up so much faster to run the same systems. And I think that ultimately that does lead to less people being needed inside where it does become a job killer. But right now, it’s the people that lean into it and say, how much can I get out of you while you’re still here?

00;34;48;07 – 00;34;55;03
Speaker 1
And if they stay for ten years, fantastic. I’d love to have you for ten years. But I understand the reality. And I’m planning you being here for three.

00;34;55;05 – 00;35;17;09
Speaker 3
That, Steve, you had mentioned earlier, couple things. And I think if if I’d love to get your insight on it. And if it’s something that Derek and you can solve for Derek, and I think we’ll probably both have to start sending in checks on a regular basis. But, from a standpoint of like, you had talked about having sales teams that operate without you.

00;35;17;09 – 00;35;38;17
Speaker 3
And, you know, I it’s been a stumbling block for me, certainly for ever. As far as being able to recruit, train and hire, salespeople, like, what? You know, and there’s plenty of organizations out there. You know, you look in the trades, it’s it’s normally looked at as a, as a salesperson, but more of an estimator or something along those lines.

00;35;38;17 – 00;35;44;12
Speaker 3
But we’re still talking about a salesperson, regardless of what the overall role looks like. So

00;35;44;15 – 00;35;52;06
Speaker 3
do you have any, words of wisdom there that can solve this problem for Derek and I? As far as hiring salespeople.

00;35;52;08 – 00;36;18;24
Speaker 1
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00;36;18;27 – 00;36;25;16
Speaker 3
do you have any, words of wisdom there that can solve this problem for Derek and I? As far as hiring salespeople.

00;36;25;19 – 00;36;51;16
Speaker 1
I’ll tell you, I think from white right way to think about a salesperson, particularly in construction and in the trade, you’re talking about an estimator who’s going out, depending if you’re going with residential or going with with the commercial side of the house, that changes things. On the commercial side of the house, that estimator, is one step away from owning their own business because they can go out and win the work on themselves, right on the residential side of the house.

00;36;51;18 – 00;37;25;00
Speaker 1
That person who’s doing sales generally has leaves handed to them. And so there are a few more steps away because those leads, they’re depending on if it’s not the same department, you have more staying power. But what I see a lot of times with commercial businesses is the clearest pathway to a side hustle that turns into a business is being the person that knows how to win the work, and has enough knowledge to say, when I win this work, it’s a much more simple equation to go find the laborers to do it, because I can go to the union and get the labor that I need to go and perform the function.

00;37;25;04 – 00;37;41;10
Speaker 1
And so if anyone’s out there, the easiest side hustle for you to start, if you’re working in the trades, is if you are learning to be an estimator. Because if you can go on when the work, the union can supply you with the labor to go and make it happen. And that becomes the limiting function of you just going out and putting lots and lots of estimates down.

00;37;41;17 – 00;38;00;17
Speaker 1
Okay, at a broad level, though, you want your salespeople to be attracted to your company and to be bought into the incentive structure of your company where it makes sense to them. I did a sales job for six months after I got out of the military. I had to get a loan for a house. I had to have a day job.

00;38;00;17 – 00;38;15;07
Speaker 1
The bank loan would not give me any credit without having a W2, even though I was making three times more than that in my business. And I went to sales cause I love talking to people. I love building relationships, and I thought, I can make a lot of money doing this, and who knows what I’m going to have this job for.

00;38;15;10 – 00;38;35;00
Speaker 1
And what I found is that as a salesperson, I realized on day one the disconnect between what I was being told to do that was going to make me money versus what I knew I actually had to do to make me much. And then the incentive structure of how I was getting paid versus how the company was getting paid also was not aligned.

00;38;35;02 – 00;38;54;00
Speaker 1
And so I think when you see that misalignment, most sales jobs in small businesses, you start off with a bad taste in your mouth almost immediately. The first customer that you close when you realize the economics and how that works, you go, man, is this, is this that hard that I could have just go out and sell this for myself?

00;38;54;06 – 00;39;13;15
Speaker 1
And here’s the key. With small businesses, when you’re going out and saying, hey, my name is Michael and I’m calling from fill in the Blank company. Nobody’s ever heard of that company unless you’re a fortune 500 company, no one’s ever heard of it. And here’s what happens in a sales person’s mind. I’m Michael, I’m calling from fill in the blank XYZ Corporation.

00;39;13;17 – 00;39;30;18
Speaker 1
Man, would it make a difference if I have to go from 0 to 100% of this customer? They’ve never heard of me. That means our marketing has done nothing to help me close this deal. What if I get a difference if I’m calling from XYZ Corporation or if I’m calling from hey, I’m Michael calling from Michael and Sons Corporation?

00;39;30;20 – 00;40;03;19
Speaker 1
Well, if that’s the case, then now I see a pathway for me to go and just do this for myself because I’m not getting anything from the organization in terms of support. So there’s attracting people to we talked about earlier, but retaining those salespeople. The incentives have to be aligned in a way that they realize you are giving them a great opportunity to make a lot of money, and you’re not giving them the entire pieces of the puzzle or forcing them to go from zero all the way to fruition with those customers.

00;40;03;21 – 00;40;27;06
Speaker 1
At a broad level, though, the companies I see that are winning with salespeople, they are showing them a pathway to growth that is outside of just, hey, sell more and you’ll make more money. Because if you understand what somebody really wants and most business owners never ask, then you can design a pathway for that individual to succeed. And a lot of salespeople see themselves on a natural trajectory.

00;40;27;10 – 00;40;45;03
Speaker 1
I’m going to be a sales development representative, an SDR, and then I’m going to be an account executive, and then I’m going to be a sales manager. And then I’m only one level away from being a VP in a company. How many small businesses can offer a salesperson that track, you know, they don’t exist? If you’re a salesperson, you’re a salesperson.

00;40;45;10 – 00;41;07;18
Speaker 1
That’s it. And so when you think about what that salesperson really wants for themselves, do they want to go that corporate track or are they looking to become an entrepreneur themselves? If you’re not showing them a pathway to the executive level inside of your business, they start to lose that incentive and they look elsewhere. And salespeople are great with people, so they’re always looking to other companies to say, okay, I can move up laterally.

00;41;07;18 – 00;41;26;23
Speaker 1
If I do the SDR position at company A, I can go faster to get to a Co-Executive a, company B and the fastest pathway for success for a salesperson is to jump flattery from SDR account executive to sales manager, because in the same company you’re waiting for somebody to retire, especially if that company is small and it’s not going to change.

00;41;26;28 – 00;41;56;12
Speaker 1
So I would challenge both of you to think about what is the incentive structure in your organization today for salesperson. And if you were that salesperson coming into looking at your company, is there a trajectory that you care about that incentivizes you to want to come work there and stay there for a long time? And to the extent that the answer to that is no, it doesn’t exist yet, what can you put in place that give someone a reason to come and join you, and then also to stay with you for a long time?

00;41;56;15 – 00;42;14;25
Speaker 1
Nine times out of ten for small businesses, the thing I have seen works at best for salespeople is to show them a pathway to equity ownership in the company, whether it’s phantom stock or whether it’s actual equity, whether they become an executive, an owned chunk of the company in the long run. Because ultimately the salesperson is growing your business for you.

00;42;14;28 – 00;42;32;06
Speaker 1
And I ask the question this way it’s not I don’t give a chunk of my business up to somebody. I ask the question this what? What would have to be true for me to be wildly excited to give this salesperson a 5% stake in my company? How much would they have to sell? Okay, I’m gonna double that number and put that down on paper form right now.

00;42;32;12 – 00;42;58;09
Speaker 1
If you achieve this, I’m going to help you get there. We’re going to give you this portion of the company. Are you going to work towards going to vest over a period of time? But that’s what you get. The people who have the potential to be entrepreneurialism, they have that entrepreneur’s mindset. But inside of your company and you inside them, a an incentive structure that shows them a long term trajectory of here’s what happens if I stay here for ten years, like, look what this can become.

00;42;58;16 – 00;43;32;20
Speaker 1
And now I’m going against in my mind, I’m a salesperson. You show me this incentive structure. Now, as I’m looking over here at company B, that I have a job offer from, that I know I can go get a job tomorrow because they’ve told me that they would hire me. I have the optionality. I’m now weighing the long term benefits of staying with you at company A, against the benefits of working at A company B and most companies are not showing people a five year or ten year plan of what it looks like, at least not one that’s incentivizing someone to stay for a really long time and to be someone that wants to grow

00;43;32;26 – 00;43;52;10
Speaker 1
someone’s company. And so I always challenge, what is the incentive structure? Hey, would you want to come and be a salesperson at your company? Why or why not? And if the answer is why not, then what can you put in place that makes it attractive for you to come work at your sales and your sales organization, and that be there for a really long time.

00;43;52;15 – 00;44;13;00
Speaker 1
For someone who’s extremely motivated, especially by money, because most salespeople, I should say all good salespeople are motivated by money. It’s I want to reverse engineer what they want. I’m thinking about their psychology from the very first interview to figure out I’m in that flat out. Ask them what they want. I’m trying to figure out, hey, what is it that you’re looking for?

00;44;13;07 – 00;44;27;19
Speaker 1
But I can create you a long term incentive to make a lot of money in this organization and be wildly excited about him. And you have 5 or 10% chunk of this company and in equity, because I know if you do that, you’ve made me a multi-millionaire.

00;44;27;21 – 00;44;30;23
Speaker 2
It’s fair that that’s fair.

00;44;30;26 – 00;44;42;26
Speaker 3
Though. I know we’re getting short on time, but, you know, obviously we want to talk about the future. You choose, and what what that is all about. And, can you kind of give us the rundown on that?

00;44;42;28 – 00;45;07;22
Speaker 1
I sure can. I appreciate the doing the plug for the book. So this books out on Amazon right now, it’s called The Future you Choose. You can search my name or the title on Amazon and find the book, but it’s really a story two fold of agency in me growing up in a community where I didn’t have control over my life, and I was told that I would never would have control over my life, to the mindset shift that it took to realize, no, my actions affect my future.

00;45;07;24 – 00;45;27;02
Speaker 1
And so if my life is is not going the way I want it to, it’s my actions that can affect and change that for the future. But ultimately, it’s my fault as well. If my life isn’t going the way I want, it’s nobody else’s fault. Not the government’s fault. It’s not my environment’s fault. It’s my fault. It’s a story of me getting up and leaving my environment to go out and form a whole bunch of new habits.

00;45;27;02 – 00;45;46;00
Speaker 1
With the second part of the book comes to fruition, where I tell the story. That is a blueprint for an entrepreneur to go from not having an idea to having the idea, starting a side hustle, turning it into a business, building the engines that let that business run without you, and then ultimately exiting from the business. An exit means a couple different things.

00;45;46;00 – 00;46;00;02
Speaker 1
A lot of people think the exit is someone gives you millions of dollars and you walk away from the business. Two years and no one in my business, I was offered $6 million for the business from a public company. I turned it down, so I thought, I’m just getting started. I want to go grow this thing on my own.

00;46;00;04 – 00;46;22;07
Speaker 1
I would then get another multimillion offer for the business years later that I would still turn down again. And ultimately, I found a way to use M&A mergers and acquisitions to merge my company with a much larger company that I could still own my stake, but not have to be solely responsible for the company. Overall, where I found a really happy home for myself and for my employees.

00;46;22;13 – 00;46;51;24
Speaker 1
I was CEO of the company for two years and then ultimately was able to let go and still enjoy the economic benefit and the interest of making money from the business, but not having to be the one who was doing it because of systems and processes. So in that book, I showcased the thought process and the step by step blueprint on how to be able to go from not having an idea to being able to exit your business, either for millions or to be able to own the business for a long time and have it pay you, but also provide you with the freedom that you wanted.

00;46;51;26 – 00;46;55;20
Speaker 1
When you said you wanted to start a business in the first place.

00;46;55;22 – 00;47;11;00
Speaker 3
Amazing. And do you have a like, you know, as far as rule management group goes, like, are you working with other organizations or beyond just the book and kind of about using those lessons learned, how people grow or what does that look like?

00;47;11;02 – 00;47;27;14
Speaker 1
Yeah, I don’t have a coaching program, and I know it’s not something that interests me at this point in my life. And so it’s something that is a natural progression that people go from. I started a business, I sold the business. I have this coaching program now, and I question those people because I wonder, how much money are you actually making?

00;47;27;16 – 00;47;47;09
Speaker 1
If you go right into the coaching business and you’re out there promoting yourself and trying to get clients to coach? Yeah, yeah. To me, if you’re really good at business, then your business is making you a lot of money. Well, then your incentive structure changes from when I’m not actively trying to maximize every dollar that can come in.

00;47;47;12 – 00;48;11;23
Speaker 1
I’m now very selective about who I’m working with, and I work on very few number of projects. I love to be bored, even though I hate to be bored. We talked about it earlier. Yeah, yeah, it’s a benefit for me to have less going on. And so we’re operating very strategically, a very small team at roll management, where we partner with companies that are the, the, the next generation of the company that I started.

00;48;11;25 – 00;48;31;12
Speaker 1
But it looks a lot like my company before I got involved with the one that we merged with today. Yeah. And so these are big brands that sell B2B, that sell wholesale, that don’t have a direct to consumer arm. And I’ve got a really small team of people that have knowledge. My system, Mac minis and I agents. I’m the strategist.

00;48;31;12 – 00;48;48;26
Speaker 1
They’re the implementation of it. And on a daily basis, I’m excited to get up because there’s nothing on my calendar that I don’t want to do. I’m excited to do everything on there, including this podcast, and appreciate it, and I really enjoy it. I absolutely love it. I’ve got my podcast, I’ve come on other people’s podcasts, and I love media.

00;48;48;26 – 00;49;06;28
Speaker 1
I’m building a personal brand, but I don’t have the financial incentive to say I’m trying to make millions of dollars doing this. That’s what the businesses are or are doing things that I enjoy. And I think that’s what’s showcased for a lot of people say, okay, you started a business, you have freedom and control. So you wouldn’t just be making decisions based off how much money you can make.

00;49;06;28 – 00;49;25;17
Speaker 1
Because when you start to make money from things, you can become ultimately in bondage to those things because you have to continue doing them in order to continue making money. So there’s two games in life. There’s the income game or the security game. And once you’ve solved the income security game and you’re not making decisions for money anymore, that’s one.

00;49;25;17 – 00;49;46;27
Speaker 1
Stage two begins. And that’s the impact game. That’s when you have all the freedom in the world to do whatever you want to do. You’re back to being an eight year old kid again. You have no responsibility that you have to do. You’re not thinking about money. Okay? Fast tracked to your deathbed. Who do you care about and who do you who do you know you’re going to care that you spent time with?

00;49;46;29 – 00;50;05;12
Speaker 1
When you’re on your deathbed? Are you prioritizing that as much as you possibly can? And secondly, what impact are you having on your community and on the world around you? Because those are the things that ultimately matter. Life is about the people. You can come in contact with, the people that you can impact, and money is a tool for you to get there.

00;50;05;12 – 00;50;20;24
Speaker 1
Because if you don’t have money, you’re always going to be thinking about how to get it. But when you do get it, your whole mindset shifts to, okay, I have that piece now. I can spend my time where it’s ultimately going to be important and where I’m going to be reverse engineering the things that make me say on my deathbed.

00;50;20;28 – 00;50;38;18
Speaker 1
I lived a good life. I impacted people, the people that I loved also love me back. And if that’s not the primary focus of the impact stage, I don’t know what is it? A lot of people get stuck in the income things. They get stuck because they don’t find a pathway to get themselves out, to get to to security.

00;50;38;20 – 00;51;03;24
Speaker 1
And I promise you this, it’s a lot easier than people think it is because the lifestyle and the spending being under control is far more important than the number of dollars that you make. The number of dollars you make is only important relative to how big your lifestyle actually is. And when you get yourself in bondage with 30 year mortgages and seven year car payments and you’re unable to stop those payments, whatever you want to, your income has to stay exactly where it was when you signed up for that debt.

00;51;03;27 – 00;51;20;08
Speaker 1
And it’s the consumer debt that forces people to live lives that they never wanted. I sat down with somebody on my podcast of the day. He said, you know, all of us start our lives with dreams, all we want to do with our life. None of that involves paying off debt. None of that involves like having a car that you can’t really afford.

00;51;20;08 – 00;51;37;08
Speaker 1
So you’re just making the payments and you’re doing things you don’t want to do, so you’re ultimately able to afford the lifestyle that you chose for yourself. We all wanted to be free and have an impact and be a firefighter. We wanted to go out and we wanted to be a professional sports player, and we wanted to pursue our passions or just play music for a living.

00;51;37;10 – 00;51;57;29
Speaker 1
And along the way we lose that. It’s not that we lost it, it’s that we gave it away because we signed up for things that we never needed that forced us to take a job that we never really wanted, and to do that forever. And I think that’s the major problem, is that people forget what their dreams were, and then they get to their deathbed.

00;51;57;29 – 00;52;23;06
Speaker 1
And the things you hear that they say, the death, that mirror, it’s just taking more risk. You know, I just spent more time with the people, you know, when it mattered. I should have gone on vacation more when I was working, instead of waiting for our 65 to start doing that. And if you think about what those regrets are going to be, and you apply that to your life today, yes, go get the money because you need the money to be able to go and have full optionality and freedom in life.

00;52;23;09 – 00;52;36;04
Speaker 1
But the moment you get there, you ready to turn the switch off. And so I’m living a life for impact. The value, the money’s great, but it was a tool to get me here. Now where am I going to have impact through eternity?

00;52;36;06 – 00;52;45;13
Speaker 3
I’ll tell you if I die tomorrow. Steve, I’m on my deathbed. I’m going to say I wish I spent more time being bored. So that’s,

00;52;45;16 – 00;53;08;18
Speaker 1
People undervalue the importance of being a little bit bored with so busy. We don’t have time to come up with good ideas. We’re so busy. We don’t have time to do anything great. And that boredom and being able to say, what am I going to do with this three hour block that I have? I’m telling you, not enough people sit down to read a book anymore because they don’t have time to, like, we’re so busy, we have so much going on.

00;53;08;20 – 00;53;25;14
Speaker 1
Some of the best ideas I’ve had first down, I got nothing going on, and I open up a good nonfiction book and I’m reading and the ideas start pouring out. It’s 45 minutes of that street, the church epithelia, this idea, this idea, this idea go out for a long walk and you developing it, and that comes in the pauses.

00;53;25;14 – 00;53;46;28
Speaker 1
That’s why some people have great ideas on the weekend when they’re not at work and they’re in the shower, they’re hanging out at the kids baseball games, and the idea of inspiration hits them and like, damn. And I can’t do that because Monday I to go back. I don’t have time to take action on that. If you don’t give yourself opportunities to go and take action and fail at times when it’s not going to, you’re not going to lose your house over it.

00;53;47;03 – 00;54;05;00
Speaker 1
But you thought about an idea and you went and tested the marketplace with it. It’s a great side hustle, but people don’t have time to do it. And so because you don’t have enough time, you spend all of your time in a 9 to 5 where you never able to get the things that you wanted out of life, and it can lead to a life of regret on the back end of it.

00;54;05;02 – 00;54;21;06
Speaker 3
I’d say it. I never considered it until this conversation and a lot of takeaways from today’s conversation, Steve, I’ll tell you, but that one’s definitely a big one. As far as the power of being bored, that’s, book title for your next book, Steve Power.

00;54;21;09 – 00;54;23;13
Speaker 1
Thanks so much for that. I’m gonna copyright it right now.

00;54;23;17 – 00;54;35;24
Speaker 3
Please have yours. Just give me say, give me credit somewhere in the in life or something, but those. Right. Steve, thanks so much for coming on the show today, man. I really, really enjoyed a lot out of it. Really appreciate.

00;54;35;24 – 00;54;40;15
Speaker 1
It. Well, I appreciate you guys having me on and Derek look forward to hanging out with you when you’re out here in Vegas.

00;54;40;17 – 00;54;42;10
Speaker 2
Yeah I’ll see you soon. All right.

00;54;42;10 – 00;55;00;24
Speaker 3
Thank you. Can’t wait to hear that. And thanks, everybody, of course, for listening. You know, of course, every episode we just got to mention a big shout out to our sponsors that not only make the show possible, but also make it possible for us to send send checks to trade schools and local colleges for kids, for tools and tuition.

00;55;00;27 – 00;55;20;22
Speaker 3
Derek was just emailing me, today, actually, about a check. We’ve got sending out the HVC for kids for tools and tuition. So without our sponsors, we wouldn’t be able to do that. So thank you so much. Thank you, everybody for listening. You can find this episode, all of our episodes at Blue Collar Startup, Dot IO. And of course you can hear them at, Spotify, Rumble, YouTube and Apple.

00;55;20;25 – 00;55;22;06
Speaker 3
Thanks for listening, everybody. Appreciate it.

00;55;22;10 – 00;55;50;08
Speaker 1
And that wraps up another episode of Blue Collar Startup. A big thank you to our sponsors, Five Towers Media, Daigle Cleaning Systems, Daigle Fire Solutions, The Michaels Group, Martin Electric, MLB construction, Pinocchio Construction People, and Catamount Consulting for making this podcast possible. And thank you for tuning in. If you learned something or felt inspired. Connect with us on our website at Blue Collar Startup Audio or email us at Hardhat Derby CSU at gmail.com.

00;55;50;08 – 00;56;03;05
Speaker 1
We’d love to hear your questions and topic ideas. Help us spread the word by sharing the show and following us on social media for updates. Until next time, keep on building, keep on dreaming and keep hustling like your future depends on it.

00;56;03;08 – 00;56;04;06
Unknown
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