WEBVTT
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Stop worrying about what people think of you.
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'cause no one's really thinking of you.
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You know, most people are obsessed with themselves thinking about themselves, and they're really not thinking about you.
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So don't worry about what they think of you.
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Welcome to the Wayfinder Show with Louis Hernandez, where guests discuss the why and how of making changes that led them down a more authentic path or allow them to level up in some areas of their life.
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Our goal is to dig deep and provide not only knowledge, but actionable advice to help you get from where you are to where you want to be.
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Come join us and find a way to your dream life.
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Welcome back to the Wayfinder Show.
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I'm your host Louis Hernandez, and today I'm excited to have Mike Weber on the show.
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Mike is the force behind slow burn entrepreneur.
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His approach is all about sustainable growth and embracing the journey rather than chasing overnight success.
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He's here to share his insights on building a business slowly and steadily.
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Please join me in welcoming Mike Weber.
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Mike, welcome to the show.
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Thanks for having me, Luis.
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Appreciate it.
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Yeah.
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So Michael, let's let's let everybody know a little bit more about yourself.
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What's your origin story?
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Where what, got you to where you are now?
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Yeah, sure.
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From Cincinnati, Ohio, went to the Ohio State University, current national champions.
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Yeah.
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You saw that beat Notre Dame pretty handily.
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Yeah.
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And kinda went back and forth between wanting to be a doctor and, wanting to get outta school as quick as possible.
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So I did, four years at Ohio State and then I, moved out to Hawaii to teach scuba diving and I was gonna finish my degree out there, but I made a good, responsible decision as a 23-year-old young man to drop out after another semester and a half.
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So I had five and a half years of school and no degree to show for it.
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Dropped out, became a beach bum.
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On the north shore of Oahu.
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Learned to surf a little bit, taught some surfing lessons with my buddies out there.
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Was actually working as a lunch lady at a preschool at one point in order to pay the bills.
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So I was working three jobs out there just to remain as of each bum on the island.
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And I was recruited, one of my buddies taught a surf lesson to.
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These guys that were recruiting out there at BYU Laier, they were recruiting return missionaries from the Mormon church to come sell door to door.
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And they decided it was a good idea to, to recruit me and my friend who were teaching the surf lesson.
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And so they, brought us to a dinner at the nicest resort out there at Turtle Bay Resort, which is in a bunch of movies, and recruited us to come out to Detroit, Michigan to sell door to door the summer of 2008.
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And I took, the bait.
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I thought it sounded great.
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And, my buddy actually stayed in Hawaii and still is there to, to this day.
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But I ended up starting my kind of jump into sales and entrepreneurship back then, 2008.
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So this will be my 18th year in sales and now it's it's my company and we train our guys to sell door to door roofing and solar.
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In California and in Colorado.
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Oh, wow.
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Yeah.
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Wait, so that, it's the same company you went out to Detroit for?
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Oh, no, sorry.
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So I sold, alarm systems around the country for five years.
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Oh.
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In 40 different cities in 13 different states.
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Sold in across the Midwest and then the East Coast and down across Florida, Texas.
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Wound up in Colorado.
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And built offices in, San Jose, California, Houston, Texas, and Denver for a DT security.
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And then one of my buddies started a roofing company in 2013 and I sold roofs for him for two years, 2013, 14.
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Kinda learned the roofing game.
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2015, got into solar, so basically realized out in Colorado the roofing game was getting a little crowded.
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And figured out how to get into solar.
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Me and a buddy moved out to California.
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We started a solar marketing business in 2015.
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Went through a couple business partners, but basically just all hardcore door to door sales, selling solar.
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And then in 2019 I partnered up with my current business partner.
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He brought the roofing knowledge.
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I brought the solar knowledge.
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We got our contractor's licenses, and we have a roofing and solar company now.
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Name, summit Solar and Roofing since 2019.
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And we have locations here in Southern California and in Denver, Colorado.
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Where you're at?
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Yeah.
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Oh, so you guys must have knocked on my door at least once, twice.
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Oh, I hear me.
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Yeah, it happens all the time.
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That's great.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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That's a great, I've done door-to-door sales in past lives as well.
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It, you really, it's a really good skillset.
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You really learn quite a bit.
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Absolutely.
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But I've never really thought about it in the sense like, like you have for, I guess this is a segue to be like a slow and steady business, right?
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You, knock on doors to get business for that day, right?
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Yeah.
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So, how did you start thinking about this as like a, a slow and steady type of business?
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Yeah, so I guess I talk about this in the book.
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I had two mentors over the last 10 years.
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One was a guy, he was my boss, one of my good friends at the roofing company that I worked at for two years in 2013 and 14.
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And his motto was the, speed method, the go as fast as you can, recruit, as fast as you can build it.
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And who cares if it collapses kind of thing.
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And then do it all again the next year, right?
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And so he would have this turn and burn mentality where it was just this constant revolving door.
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If the guys didn't stick around, he wouldn't pay'em.
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He would suck all the profits out of the business, basically just use people and spit'em out, and then have to do it all again the next year, which to me was just exhausting and didn't seem like a great business model.
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So I had another mentor that met out in Hawaii.
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I sold some pest control for him 12, 12, 13 years ago.
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And he's been mentoring me since 2020.
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He's now built the largest pest control business in Hawaii, and his method is more empower people, pay people well, and create kind of loyalty, create like a family almost amongst your employees, your staff.
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And me and my business partner Dave, have adopted that approach where we do empower people.
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We do pay people really well.
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We, do profit sharing.
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We save a lot of our profits to give back to our employees at the, end of the year, and also as quarterly bonuses.
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And so we've created a lot more loyalty and a lot more retention among our staff that is just much more sustainable, much less stressful.
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I think it's the right way to build a business these days.
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Yeah, I agree.
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That how what, so when you're doing a, business like that, though, initially it's hard, right?
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You, oftentimes when you're not giving, when you're giving the profits back to the team, it means that's less for you, right?
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And, at the beginning when there's just not as many profits to be had, you're building it right.
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How, did you go about getting through that phase?
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I think there, there were, I guess tight months in the first few months especially since most of what we do now is insurance restoration Roofing.
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So insurance is pretty slow pay at times.
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Sometimes you have to wait six months to a year to get paid.
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And I think we just.
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We had been in it for so long that we trusted in our ability to go print money essentially when we knock on doors.
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And the initial leadership team was me, my business partner, Dave, and a guy named Thomas.
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And we had all been in, I had been in door to door at that point for 11 years, Dave for six years, and Thomas for six or seven years.
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So we trusted in our ability to go out and just.
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Print money, knock a door and get a deal.
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And, we were able to feed ourselves while building the business and still saving in profits to, to build the business and to give back to the employees.
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So Excellent.
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You get to a point, you're so good at it, you can have the confidence to do it, yeah.
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And yeah.
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And then you go about getting others and teaching them how to become as good, if not better than yourself.
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Correct.
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So you can replicate that.
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Excellent.
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Huh?
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Absolutely.
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So what else do you mean by, by slow Burn Show.
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Tell me.
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Another, did it require, that, that requires a big mindset shift, right?
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So do you have like examples of some of those, like where you went from the traditional way, like the other mentor you had, always recreating the wheel to, the slow burn method.
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And, what were tips to develop those mindset shifts?
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One of the biggest ones was my, first mentor was he thought he could do everything on his own.
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Very, he ego driven.
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It's all on my shoulders.
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I gotta stay constantly on the phone, constant meetings.
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I gotta micromanage everything because everybody,'cause I'm smarter than everyone and I can't trust anybody to do it.
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And I think part of that is just learning to let go.
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'cause I'm very type A myself and I, can at times be micromanaging and be tough on people and.
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Learning to let go.
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Number one is, the big thing.
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Not be ego driven and always be searching out other like coaches and mentors who can help you with your decision making and your strategy and all that stuff.
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Yeah, one of it is just I hired a coach.
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I sought out a coach, and this is something that he never did.
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My current mentor always does is looking for new coaches, looking for new people to get advice from, whether it be Vistage groups or EO groups.
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And I, sought out a coach from John Maxwell Group.
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2018 they partnered me with this guy that had a big accounting background and it just wasn't, it wasn't a good fit.
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So I told him like, okay let's try to find somebody else.
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I found a guy that he had built and sold a business, and now he's just a coach.
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And he's, been great.
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His name's Mark based outta Orange County here in Southern California, and I've had him since, 2000, I think.
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End of 2018, so going on seven or eight years now.
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Wow.
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Yeah.
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And so having a coach, we, he brought us to EOS.
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Dunno if you're familiar with e os.
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Yeah.
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We've had a, I forget what it's called, when somebody who installs a program.
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Implementer.
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Implementer, yeah.
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On the show in the past.
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It was one of our best episodes actually.
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Yeah.
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Okay, cool.
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So we had an implementer for all of 2019.
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You pay him the equivalent of an admin salary,$25,000 basically to be an A fractional CEO.
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Yeah.
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Is how I describe it.
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And we, have stuck with that since 2020.
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We've self-implemented EOS.
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We attribute EOS to a lot of our success on keeping the processes and keeping the rhythm of the meetings and the business going.
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Oh, neat.
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Yeah, that's good.
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So you've been able to keep it going.
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Do you check back in with them every once in a while, like once a year or something like that to, or is it totally self-managing that process now?
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We actually brought in another implementer this summer and we weren't very impressed because he he did a lot of the beginner stuff and we were we're six years into it, using us and he was trying to bring us back to the beginning, the beginner stuff.
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And we've already done all that, so we kinda decided to keep self implementing.
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Interesting.
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Oh wow.
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Okay.
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Sounds like you guys can start an EOS implementation business you sell, right?
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Yeah.
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Okay.
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Yeah.
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Very good.
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Yeah you've learned some of that process meant learning to let go getting coaches.
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Any other big mindset shifts you've had to, take on to, to reach this level of success or, I think, I, would say.
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Slowing down and I, meditate now and I, I try to meditate twice a day as much as possible.
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And I think that's a big part of,'cause I'm very a DD I'm very distractible.
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Yeah.
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And I would always try to start side businesses and try to, chase squirrels, I guess you'd say.
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And the meditation has allowed me to be able to focus on things for longer periods of time and be able to think more long term.
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I think when you're not thinking long term, you make a lot of wrong moves that are based on short term trying to capitalize on the profit as fast as possible which is what my buddy unfortunately tried to do all the time.
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So it's, more thinking, long term thinking okay, can I sustain this for five years and if I can, great.
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That's, it's a good routine and.
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It's a way that I can build a business for five years now.
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So instead of thinking out just for a season or a year out, yeah.
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That's great.
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Going into, when you mentioned meditation, that's a, like a personal development tool, right?
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And before the show we were talking about running a little bit and clearly these are both things that I think go well with slow burn entrepreneur.
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Mindset.
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It's absolutely, especially running it's your classic slow and steady as a race.
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I know you're a, long distance runner.
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Are there other regular practices like that or can you talk a little bit just about how running has helped you with, slow running entrepreneurship?
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Yeah.
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I talk about this in the book a little bit.
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And I always, when I'm running, I carry a voice recorder with me.
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Nice voice recorder, and I'm, constantly reflecting on the, previous two or three days mostly thinking about the business, thinking about how to, move people around or what, where could we go next with this person?
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What are the resources that we have in order to take on this project, et cetera, et cetera.
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So constantly just reflecting.
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On the business while running, and a lot of times I'll re-listen to my coaching calls.
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I'll record our, level 10 meetings that we do through with EOS and listen to those calls during my long my long run on the Sunday, on that Sunday.
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I get to reflect on a lot of things.
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So it's just a lot of, it's like a snowball effect of.
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Wisdom and experience that builds up a lot faster if you're constantly reflecting on, what you're doing throughout the week versus just trying to put out fires throughout the week and not digesting and reflecting on what's happened that week.
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So I think it's, it sounds cheesy, but it's kinda like a superpower that I've already thought out a lot of the interactions that I'm gonna have.
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The coming week through my reflections, through my voice recordings that I do on my Sunday long runs.
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So yeah.
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That's a great tip, man.
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Just keeping it, is it's I've tried to do that with my phone, but it feels, it's so big and bulky and I don't like to carry a Oh, yeah.
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A phone when I'm running.
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So is that just.
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You showed it to us, is that it's really small digital voice recorder.
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Yeah, it's pretty small.
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I, actually carry two of'em, so I carry one for last quarter's ideas and recordings.
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And then I carry this new one for new, recordings.
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I'm sorry, say that part.
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So you, you carry two, one for last years and one for the new.
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One each quarter.
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One new one each quarter.
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Oh, okay.
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And the one is from the previous quarter.
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And I'm listening to recordings, ideas, thoughts, reflections that I had the previous quarter.
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I see.
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Or coaching calls seminars, everything.
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I record everything.
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And then, I have the other one, which is the new one for new ideas, new thoughts, new to-dos, et cetera.
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In my other hand.
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If I don't have anything to reflect on and record, I'm gonna jog my memory by listening to old recordings.
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I see.
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Interesting.
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So they don't have a, it's a technical question, but those don't have an op something where you can just download'em into something else and save'em for the future?
00:19:32.348 --> 00:19:33.038
Yeah, you do.
00:19:33.038 --> 00:19:38.318
But the process of transcribing them is powerful as well.
00:19:38.318 --> 00:19:42.009
So take either 10 minutes each day, or.
00:19:42.743 --> 00:19:49.493
30 minutes twice a week to just go through'em and transcribe'em and decide does this go on the issues list?
00:19:49.493 --> 00:19:55.703
Does this go into my Asana for long-term projects that I need to remember?
00:19:56.124 --> 00:19:57.534
Do I need to shoot an email off for this idea?