Chris Hallberg, The Business Sergeant – From Prison Sergeant to Business Sergeant: Building Elite Teams, Strong Culture, and Entrepreneurial Freedom

Boy Scouts just wasn't enough in my teens.

So that's where the National Guard comes in a little

different. You know, you get to blow stuff

up, not just like tie knots and, and, and learn first aid.

And now I'm in this civilian world just helping people

beautify their property like this.

Too easy. I can't believe you could make,

you know, four or five times the money with 100 times less danger

and stress. Like a Unicorn is rare.

So like unicorns don't like to be penned up with with

jackasses. And I see it all the time.

So like if we want to create a Unicorn preserve, that's like

the funny part of it, but that's real.

I have teams that are 95% unicorns and 5% junior unicorns.

Hey there and welcome to From the Ground Up Show, the show

where we encourage and inspire the next generation of free

thinking leaders by telling the stories of those that have been

there, done that and are still getting it done.

Building a life that they love with their hearts, their hands

and their hustle. I am your host Eric Loden.

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out there to more leaders and business thinkers to make their

businesses better, their lives better for their employees,

their families and their customers.

So today, this should be a fun one.

I am joined by the Business Sergeant, Chris Hallberg.

Chris is a former National Guard and correction officer turned

business specialist. He scaled and sold a successful

remodeling company during the Great Recession and now offers

his expertise to others as a business consultant.

He is also the author of the Business Sergeant's Field Guide.

Chris, thank you for joining us. This should be fun.

I'm excited to have you. It's great to be here.

Thanks for having me on, Eric. Well, we like to start every

show going clear back to the beginning.

We like to learn a little bit about you and where you came

from and what kind of life experience produces a person

like you. So do you mind starting out

telling us just a little bit about your childhood?

Well, I think my mom and dad met in college.

That's really early, you know, and then we don't need to

describe the rest of how that all worked out.

OK, great. So, you know, so I was born in

December of 1972. So it makes me what, 53 years

old? The Gray is starting.

The, the, the, the salt is overcoming the pepper in a lot

of places here in my life. But all joking aside, you know,

I grew up in the Twin Cities, Minneapolis, Saint Paul, where

it's 40° below 0. I had to walk to school both

ways. It was uphill ones one way, not

the other. But, but basically I, I was not

a great student back then. They just, I spent the majority

of my school in the hallway because my teachers all said,

hey, no, you're way too disruptive.

Like no one's going to pay you to talk all day.

You learn how to be quiet, be a better worker.

So like eventually I proved them wrong because essentially I run

this thing, you know, most days, all day.

And I think school is for workers, right?

Entrepreneurs, influencers, interrupters, you know, the A

kids are the managers managing the B students who all work for

AC student in the the billionaire probably AD student.

So like you, you see everything they tell you it's not

necessarily true and you know, learning disabled, you know,

neurodivergent, you know, hyper ADD got bored easily, but I

loved activities. So I was like the president of

my decade thing in school and thespian society, student

council, like basically a politician like before that was

a thing. So like wasn't a great athlete,

but had a gift for the gap, love bringing people together,

leading teams, volunteer for anything.

So Boy Scouts just wasn't enough in my teens.

So that's where the National Guard comes in a little

different. You know, you get to blow stuff

up not just like tie knots and and and learn first aid.

So you know, I did a nine year career in a bunch of different

uniforms full time 20 years old, super maximum security prison,

five stories underground. Never been an escape even to

this day. Super super interesting place to

be. 20 as a corrections officer by 23 made Sergeant in the

Department of Corrections at a medium security facility.

So 23 years old in charge of, you know, 100 inmates and six

officers. Now my current age essentially

so very young leader and volunteered for everything, made

rank fast everywhere I went because I have two speeds on and

off. Eric, my wife jokes she likes to

hit me with a a dart at about 9/30, 10:30 PM.

And like, wherever it hits me, that's where you'll find me in

the morning all the way on, all the way off.

Not a lot of gears in the middle, which can be a blessing.

And it's also a curse, I assure you.

So like, basically the typical be quiet.

No one wants to listen to you experience.

And now, you know, I'm fortunate to come onto your show and, you

know, be able to, you know, preach against that and say,

hey, we we all have unique skills.

And what I do now and spend my time doing now as a husband and

of 28 years a father to two great sons, 21 and 18, They're

both musicians. So there's a lot of fun rock

music in the house and and we love that.

But you know, as an entrepreneur for the last, I don't know, what

would you say probably pushing 20 years as an entrepreneur help

other people scale businesses after getting out all those

uniforms. I just love people, Not all

people, the right people. There's a lot of people that,

yeah, I don't see the utility here.

But what's neat about business and human relationships and

being great is became the business Sergeant once I

understood personal branding. And when you hire the business

Sergeant, you're not hiring a Sunday school teacher to romance

your issues or tiptoe around your Tulip field.

You're hiring someone to come in and call the balls and strikes

and you know, get everyone committed, fired up and liberate

those that aren't and replace those with those that are Our I

coach EOS or the entrepreneurial operating system EOS, the

traction program. I've been doing that for 12 plus

years. Great system to align and

synchronize all the moving parts of the business.

So I've really enjoyed implementing EOS and about 135

companies. I have my business Sergeant

brand, which is a veteran powered recruiting company.

We get like, you know, my partner is a Green Beret veteran

who's only been out for a year and a half.

So we have access to all these superhumans that want to go do

business stuff. And they're so smart and so well

trained. You know, you can put them any,

almost any business, like 90% of the businesses could just take a

world class leader and then teach them what you do.

And the other 10% nuclear fission, like just you do that.

We'll be over here doing that. And then I have a software

brand. I'm a big fan of of softwares

for this software is a specifically EOS licensed

product called Go expand. So like I sold my last business,

the energy efficient remodeling company in 2011 when I had like

employees and stuff. And I've just been coaching CE

OS and their leadership teams ever since.

And now I have the software brand, I have the the veteran

powered recruiting brand, and I'm just having fun because I

have what we call integrators in the EOS process, you know, chief

operating officers, presidents, you know, I have a team that

runs a software company. I come and go as I please.

You know, I'm talking about a right here.

I'm doing my job as we speak. And then the recruiting company,

like I said, I have a team that runs that.

So I get to just be a visionary entrepreneur with two brands and

I still have basically a part time coaching practice.

So what does what does that all mean, Eric?

That's a lot is I'm living the life that I've always wanted,

that I can have a huge impact to spend time with people, you

know, be compensated appropriately, have time for

other passions, right? That EOS life we talk about.

And I'm blessed to be here to talk to you today and be happy

to share any of these tips and tricks it takes to build a world

class team. My clients do all the work.

I just come up with some crazy ideas and some of those actually

are scalable. So that's the way I like to look

at it. And and like I said, pleasure to

be here today. That's fantastic.

I'm I'm a little bit envious. I would love to be sitting in

the chair you're in and hopefully someday I can get

there, but. When I was working on a roof all

day every day, sweating in the hot sun, I was always frustrated

that my clothes really didn't get clean.

They would be stiff and uncomfortable to wear.

A smell came back after just a few moments of wearing them,

even in a drawer. They would start to smell musty

in a very short period of time. So I wanted to tell you about my

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ground up show I know you. You kind of hopped right over it

there. You went from school straight

into the National Guard. What was that decision like?

Did did you ever consider a college education?

Was college ever on the table? What were some of the

considerations you looked at? Yeah, well, I, I came from a a

pretty modest family, so the the guard and the GI Bill was the

answer to that. But I had so much fun actually

applying the skills that I had learned in the military Police

Corps, in the Army National Guard and the corrections that I

found myself just doing the work that one would go to school to

do. Right.

And I didn't really appreciate, like I was explaining the

confines, like the discipline and the structure of the Army.

Yeah, you, you're not going to change that.

You're going to you're going to bend before that one does.

But like, you know that high school or, or what I perceive

college to be like, like I just said, including kindergarten,

right, I had 13 years of programming and that was enough

for me. So I was at least going to do a

gap year three. And then ultimately you just got

back to, I just was full time working and thought, do I really

want to go get this piece of paper?

And it's probably important for a little bit later in life, not

knowing about AI and Google and not having to memorize random

shit and, and the utility of that, right?

And getting an underwater BB stacking degree, right?

Liberal arts, something like that.

You know, they, they don't have a lot of use in today's society,

right? And now they told everybody, go

and learn how to code software. You'll, you'll always be

valuable. And, and now we're going through

the AI interruption. So like, I think that I think

the, the thing here is all the people that know what you should

do really don't know what's coming.

And I kind of leaned into that. And everyone's an entrepreneur.

Like if they want to be, what's the old saying?

Everyone wants to be a gangster until it's time to do gangster

shit. So I think it's the same thing

with entrepreneurialism. Like maybe 10% of the population

is wired for this kind of stress and operation tempo and super

high highs and super low lows. Most people kind of want to have

a some stability and some regularity in their life.

But for those that are like never fit in, go against the

grain. Like I have an Android, my whole

family has iPhones. Like I'm that guy.

Like whatever else is doing, I almost always want to do the

opposite thing because that's just kind of how I like to be

different or, or somewhat unique I I guess.

But you know, being unique doesn't make you useful.

It it just, you know, lets you kind of do things your own way.

So you you dove into my next question there a little bit.

I can guess what your opinions going to be.

But you know, you have two now adult sons as they were reaching

the end of high school. What is your opinion of a formal

education now? How did you advise your sons as

they reach that point in their life?

Well, we actually homeschooled both of them.

There are a couple years where they went to school, formative

years. I thought that was important.

But once, once we got into Corona here in Colorado, the

government kind of lost their way with like telling you kind

of how to live your life a little more than I'd liked.

And then the schools were 10 times worse.

You know what I mean? You see the meme of the kids in

band with the surgical mask with the hole cut so they could play

their instrument. You know, like if you understand

anything about infectious diseases or common sense, you

have like 4 brain cells or more. You are safe or you are unsafe.

There is not like a Gray middle ground where you're like almost

safe, kind of safe, somewhat safe.

So like understanding that and seeing that the rules, I'm just

like, Nope, we're going to do this.

So think about, you know, them starting businesses.

My oldest son won a worldwide guitar competition in 2018.

Young guitars to the year, you know, for the world, the big the

big contest that he won in London.

And he's, you know, got an album and a new single out.

So he's like a practicing, you know, artist who who?

So we created a record company and we produced an album and,

you know, for a senior project. Hunter Hallberg shameless plug.

If you like instrumental guitar music, the the boy is a phenom.

So we did kind of a practical thing where, hey, I have some

business work. I need you guys to help me with

some client work. So instead of going to a

traditional school, we did they, we still had to follow the, the,

the county or the state, whoever that was stuff.

But it's, it's pretty easy. All that stuff is an open book

test when you have the Internet. So they obviously got that

experience. And and so to answer your

question, I had such a poor experience with formal

education. We're like, hey, could we just,

you know, do it at home? And the answer is, yeah, but

there's a horticulture class meeting the pine cones and the

pine needles got to get, we have a couple of acres here.

So their schooling involved a bunch of running the household,

learning about life, helping me with business and being good

humans. So we did things a little

differently at our house. And I have two super smart, well

adjusted, handsome young guys who who I'm very proud to call

my sons, but they're not good at waiting in lines.

They don't like to, you know, be in environments where we know

we're not speaking the truth. So, you know, I've got some mini

Mees and, and, and that's the neat thing about having kids,

but they're also quite different and I'm in all of their

abilities and they helped me many times to, to, to be a, a

better person. And you learn a lot from the

innocence of children. And as they come up and you know

what I mean, you look back and you're like, yeah, I didn't do a

good job with that. I did a really good job with

that or I won't even take credit for this.

I don't know sure how this happened, but it did.

So we're going to take AW on that.

So I think there's lesser and lesser utility to that.

Now at the same time, you know, going to school or certainly

going to college is like, even after drinking too much and

staying up too late for four years, you still have to go to

class, you still have to pass. Your GPA can't be trash if

you're really trying to be competitive in the workspace.

So what I think it is, it's kind of like it's an, it's a, it's an

unpaid internship. Can you show up not disheveled

at 8:00 or 9:00 AM for four years in a row without being

arrested more than a couple of times?

So like, so that's my joke that at college and high school to

some degree, you know, lower school, it's about how we need

to learn to interact with other humans.

So I think if, if anything they missed right was that, but we

had a a cooperative, A homeschool group and the kids

that they entered homeschool with it when they're 5 or 6 were

the same kids they graduated with at 18.

There's the same group of, you know, shout out to all the

homeschool moms, my wife included, who loved just think

about your school and my school. We went on one or two field

trips a year and they were the greatest days.

Every week they are going on some amazing behind the scenes

access field trip. So I actually think that their

experience was pretty awesome. They agree when we talked about

it. And I don't think, you know,

setting your kids to be programmed by people is

necessarily the, the right thing to do.

And now it's never been easier, you know, right to, to get

access to information. So other than the social stuff,

which we acknowledged and, and had a plan for that.

So they were well socialized because there's a lot of joke

about homeschool kids. And I remember the homeschool

kids when I was a kid and they weren't the most social kids.

So that was my concern, is that they were able to, you know,

find a pack and run with it. We were able to figure that out

through Taekwondo and their homeschool group and you know,

church and other activities to to make sure they were socially

rounded, if not academically rounded as well.

Close friends. He chose to go the homeschool

route. him and I discussed that a lot.

Both of us have similar opinions to you as far as school and how

it should be done. And he said that, yeah, when he

was growing up, you know, there's all the jokes about the

weird homeschool kids and, and most the homeschool kids he knew

were weird. But when he sat down and really

thought about it, the weird homeschool kids came from weird

families, and they were just weird kids.

And so he thought, you know, is it that homeschooling made the

kids weird? Or was it just that the weird

kids were the ones doing homeschooling when we were a

kid? And I think having watched his

kids grow up and the experience I have with my own kids and as a

parent, I think he nailed that. It's weird families produce

weird kids. And it's it doesn't necessarily

have anything to do with homeschooling.

Yeah, I think you're right there.

I mean, kids and adults and, you know, humans in general.

I like, I talk to clients all the time and say, listen, like

your job isn't to take broken humans and fix them.

Your job is to locate unbroken somebody else's kids, right?

And then on board them onto your team because how do I put this

here? Society is not putting more

accountable kids out on the street.

I think like public education, like the spending's up, but the

results are down because it's bureaucratic, you know, virtual

signaling. It's become politicized and

weaponized and it's it's not a healthy environment where like

free thinking happens, right? Universities used to be a place

with great discussion. Now, if you like, you think this

way or you get cancelled. So it's like no longer.

So I think there was an arc right in American Society where

all of that made sense. It's just it's changed.

And I think that one thing social media and you know,

democratization of media in general and you know, it used to

be Walter Cronkite said, and this is the news and everyone

believed them. Now, you know, network news is

not believed very it's under 10% confidence because, you know,

they don't report on the news. They just give click bait

headlines. So I think like even young

people today know that it's a lot of bullshit out there.

And, and you get to opt in. You got to double opt in to the

life you want to live. And like, I think about like

when I was a kid, like having a bunch of tattoos.

You must be a felon. Oh, you have a child out of

wedlock, you must be this or whatever.

And now we look at society today and all the stuff people used to

get so uptight about isn't even like a thing we worry about

today. Now people are found other

things to be uptight about and they're equally as dumb, but

they're just new things. So, you know, society moves

forward and you know what I mean?

We need our heroes, we need our villains.

That's like the storyline of life as a human being.

But you know, one could say, I wish we could go back, right?

You get all the memes being in a wooden spoon survivor, right?

Born in the 70s, like, fully like awake in the 80s and 90s.

Like, I'm not gonna lie, Like I think these kids got a pretty

crappy deal today. You know, these high school kids

are treated like adults, right? There weren't cell phones

around, you know, cameras everywhere.

I, I would, I would be in jail versus working at one.

I have said that, you know what I mean?

From 16 to 19, you know, if all that stuff was documented.

So like, I, I think there's some advantages to being a young

person today, but I don't know, I, I, I, I think it's outside of

our control. And, you know, your job as a

human is to adapt. That's what humans are good at.

It's the best thing about us and it's the worst thing about us as

we can get used to anything. So that's a bit of a rant.

But, you know, life is what you make it and what works at your

house doesn't need to work at my house or vice versa.

You know, that's the beautiful thing about America, you know,

the land of the free, free speech.

And it's pretty neat to be a part of, you know, the greatest

nation and history of civilization.

I agree 100%. This is not necessarily what

we're here to talk about today, but you hopped over it really

fast. I found it pretty interesting.

Tell me a little bit more about this Mac security prison that's

five stories underground. What, what does that look like?

What kind of people wind up there?

What was your role? Can you run us through that real

quick? Yeah.

So the facility opened in 1982. I started there in 1992, 93, I

want to say early, 93 actually. And the name of the facility is

called the Oak Park Heights Correctional Facility.

It's in Minnesota. It's built into the side of a

riverbank. So you roll up to the parking

lot and it's a one level, but looks like a junior high school

one level 1. And then it's, you know, has 5

levels underground with a a yard in the middle.

Never been an escape. The only way to get out of there

is probably, you know, by a couple of gunship helicopters

like like no one's climbing out of their high security layers

and layers of technology and a place where at that supermax

tag, you have to do something really, really bad at another

prison to be there, OK. Or you need to be on the news

famous for your crimes to spend your first couple of years there

to high control situation. So it was the worst of the

worst. Quite a few federal inmates that

were escape wrists at other facilities because they had

money or gang influences. So lots of famous inmates, you

know, people that made movies about so kind of like the place

to be and their philosophy was really interesting.

I think it hasn't changed much and it's a ton of privileges if

you're getting along and absolutely nothing if you're

not. So it was a really a bipolar

example of, all right, you're here for 400 years, like we're

not here to punish you, right? You know, that that's not what

corrections is. They're not really

rehabilitating either. They're just kind of you're on a

time out from the world is the best way to to explain it.

So the philosophy was unique. You know, it's very low homicide

rate per person. So it's a very, you know, safe.

I mean, don't get me wrong, there's they still have issues.

It's a maximum security prison, but it was just truly kind of

statistically an anomaly in the maximum security prison game.

So it was more about respect and dignity and, and your reputation

and, and talking to people. Because when someone's got five

life sentences, they can just kill you for being a petty, you

know, writing you up for this right now.

Like guys, like, I mean, they just snap and they would even

take him to court because they're already not getting out.

So just imagine, right, there's guns on the roof, right?

There's a perimeter, there's weapons that can come out.

But day-to-day correctional officers are unarmed because any

of the weapons could be instantly procured by the, you

know, 20 to 1 or whatever. You know, three officers to 57

inmates, one in a secure bubble, you know, and the other two who

are expendable. So you learn to be really good

at de escalating situations and speaking like here's a quick

example, right, like being a being a rookie and being in that

environment where some convicted, you know, is a very

senior gang leader, highly respected and feared by everyone

except for the new guy who's kind of feeling his uniform and,

you know, spend a few years in the Army National Guard and

thinks he's big stuff. You know, then noticing doing a

line of searches like, Hey, what's in your hand?

The guy says nothing and then you say, let me see.

And then I just realized, oh, I just disrespected this gang

leader and and and the coaching was after.

Next time just say open your hand.

If you ask somebody a question and then you instantly don't

believe them. That was disrespectful.

You something sharp might land in your soft parts if you

continue down that road. So that was a little kind of a

wake up to be like, yes, we're in charge because they allow it.

And you know, twice during my career, one disturbance there

and another disturbance, we were not going to call them riots

because we put them down in a matter of an hour or two in each

location. But if you've ever lost control

of the situation for even just a little bit, I assure you, not,

not not fun, not something you want to repeat.

So to go through two of those and make it out the other side,

respect is the the currency. And that was the the biggest

kind of oh, OK. So when you work in a life and

death environment for a number of years, you gain a certain

respect for humans and their capabilities.

So like a bad day at the office and a coaching session or, you

know, leadership team thing or this is sucks, we're all going

to die or oh, we're getting like, oh, what are we going to

do? Like, hey, everybody, story

time. This is this is like a wonderful

place to be right now, even though everything isn't perfect.

Let's have a little story time here.

This is what a bad day at work looks like, right?

You're, you know, putting your insides back in or you know what

I mean? You're covered in, in, in stuff

and in it and it's not a great experience.

So I think that perspective has helped me kind of help other

people see that I, I know, and, and you're making this a big

deal, but it's really not a big deal.

And as soon as you decide that this is no longer a big deal and

it's not going to control you, it won't.

So really understanding and you get a fair amount of time to,

you know, talk to people and you know, I've, I've learned a lot

of life lessons from people that made a really big mistake.

And when you realize that like, you know, 50 some percent of

homicides are alcohol influenced and you know, the another

percentage are drug fueled, you know, makes these are some

pretty normal people in a lot of cases just made a really bad

decision or three in a row and now they're like in a place

that, you know, you think you're having a bad day.

I assure you they have a bad day every day, whether they want to

or not. So that was just really kind of

a lesson in humanity of not a course that just anyone can

take. So I, I feel like that's some

advantages understanding the full spectrum of the human

psyche, you know, hope of gain, fear of loss.

These are all interpersonal communication skills that I

brought into the business world and you know, they're effective.

Man, I'm sure we could. I bet you have some stories.

We could probably chat about that for hours, but.

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I want to. Move into your next big

transition as you move from correctional officer into

entrepreneur and business owner. What was the impetus for that

transition and what did that look like?

Well, I, I left Department of Corrections and then worked for

a couple Sheriff's Office ending as a deputy sheriff, which is

ultimately what I wanted to do is get out of the correctional

environment, work a road environment.

But the reality of, of, of that is that's just a, a different

set of rules, right? And when I was at a Sheriff's

Office and realized that the Tuesday, Wednesday's off working

11 at night to 7:00 in the morning and getting punched in

the face on a regular basis, at some point I realized there's

some other things that I could do.

So I started selling part time in in sales, doing construction

sales and you know, made about four or five months worth of

income in my first month of deputy pay as a salesperson and

thought, oh, this looks fun. So, you know, got out of all my

different uniforms in 1999 and got into sales, became a sales

manager, became the sales executive, and then started, you

know, a series of businesses. Some I sold, some I crashed,

some I, I, I abandoned, you know, typical ADD business

owner. But when I realized that all

those interpersonal communication skills, no one's

trying to stab me right now. I'm just asking for someone's

business. And when you're in hostage

negotiations situations or life and death like conversations,

confrontations, and you can excel in that environment.

And now I'm in this civilian world just helping people

beautify their property like this.

Too easy. I can't believe you could make,

you know, four or five times the money with 100 times less danger

and stress. So it was one of those things I

didn't want to do. 20 years and a gold watch because the average

correction person retires at 55 and dies at 58.

It is not a profession for long healthy retirements.

It is a hard job, lots of caffeine, lots of nicotine, lots

of alcohol, lots of divorce, lots of sadness and saw the

writing on the wall, saw this opportunity crush it and said,

OK, we're going to close uniform Chris and we're going to start

civilian Chris. And that was a very exciting

time to transition. But I didn't want to lose it.

I loved it. So that's that personal

branding. I'm going to be the business

Sergeant and that'll give me license to give some hoorahs and

some colorful language and some very direct communication.

Some, you know, really inspirational.

Let's go be awesome. Oh, that's not awesome.

What are you going to do about that?

OK, you're OK. You need to go and use that

military team building mindset to help civilians.

And 93% of civilians never served.

Only 7 of Americans are considered veterans.

So it was kind of neat to bring like some of that style to folks

that never experienced that. And it was fun for them and it

was fun for me. And now, you know, 252627 years

later, almost 30 years, people still like the whole shtick.

And that's all I know. That's just being genuine and I

think, you know, leaning into who you are and being 100% your

authentic self. It's been one of the most

liberating, great life experiences and I highly

recommend it to everyone. Even if you think you can't do

it, somebody's going to love what you do.

I assure you, it's a big world. That's some good advice.

So was there some fear that came with that change of of leaving

the regimented officer military lifestyle to 1st go into sales

and then leaving a sales job working for someone else to

actually starting it yourself and being the the the person

with the most in and and putting your entire livelihood in your

own hands. Yeah, that's a little scary, but

you know, you know, paying in taxes my first year, what my

salary was made it a little bit easier.

So just to having instant gratification that it wasn't

scary it at all. It's like this is liberating.

This is freeing. You know, here are the rules.

Don't break the law, be a good human and have fun.

A very short set of just basic civilian worker rules.

So to me, I miss being part of the team like most people don't

miss the pay, the hours, the, the, the weather conditions, the

sleeping conditions in the military.

Most people miss those relationships.

So I've done an OK job, you know, keeping in contact with a

lot of people I served with. And that feels great because I

can't remember all the crazy stories, but they remind me from

time to time. And I really appreciate,

appreciate that. But no, it wasn't.

It wasn't scary. Now the discipline, the roll

call, the uniform inspection, the learning, all these

acronyms, Here's the process for this disaster.

Here's how we do this dangerous thing.

Yeah, it's just you just learn new things.

So you take that capacity and you just vector at other people.

So wasn't scary for me. But going from a, you know, safe

government salary, great benefits, job security up the

wazoo to I've been 100% Commission since 1999.

I haven't really had a salary or any stable things in my life.

It's, it's been go out and create a future for almost 30

years. And I wouldn't trade that for

anything because, you know, obviously the ROI can be really

good or it could be really bad. But I'll, I'll take betting on

yourself because if you don't like your boss, you can just

have a conversation in the mirror with that boss and you

can get things fixed. If you've got a shitty boss and

they're 10 years from retirement, well, this is going

to hurt. And I like to joke like TV shows

like the Office, like that stuff's hilarious.

Unless you're kind of in the cast and you have a Dwight

Schrute and a Michael Scott in your field office.

And it's less, it's less amusing when that's your real life.

So like, stay away from those TPS reports.

They can. They can get you.

Good stuff, good stuff. Well, when you were building

your remodeling and construction company, what was the most

difficult step? Building a business when maybe

you didn't have the experience that you have now today.

Finding the right people right back to what I was saying, your

your job isn't to take broken humans and then repair them in

the workforce. Your job is to identify people

that have the correct attributes, that have a good

work ethic, can communicate, can express their feelings.

You know, really want to be with like minded people who care and

go above and beyond. And when you can curate A-Team

like that, there's very little management.

It's more curation like assembling The Avengers, not

managing The Avengers. I think Captain America might

actually be in charge of The Avengers, but you wouldn't

really know like they're all superheroes that don't require a

lot of management. So I'd rather assemble a small

team Avengers than a large team of corporate lemmings, right?

You know, and, and, and I think being privately held, being

entrepreneurial is where you can create your own reality.

And, and, and I don't want to knock, you know, working in a

big corporation because there's certainly some good ones, but

most of them are just like the sitcom.

And when you've got two kids in college and that stuff's

expensive and you just heard the dumbest idea on the planet and

they asked for feedback, you have to capture that and hope

push it down inside because they don't really want to hear that

it's a dumb idea. That's a rhetorical question.

When someone says, hey, am I crazy?

The answer should be like, yeah, all the time.

Look at the last 14 things that failed, right?

So I, I think, like really creating your own world happens

by you having enough control over it.

Even if control is a construct and we could get all esoteric

and spiritual about what do you really control?

It's a, it's a much smaller list than than what people attempt,

myself included, right? You can control your attitude,

how you respond to things, your views, like the little things

you get to vote on, the little things that you have say in.

It's a very small list. The things that you try to

influence or control, it's a much larger list.

And it, it really doesn't work that once in a while you get

lucky with some happenstance and then you think you did that.

So that empowers you to keep down that.

So the older I get now, 53, I realized that control is largely

A construct. And what you can do is plan a

flag and say, this is who we are.

This is what we do, This is why we exist.

This is who we help, and we love doing it.

Are there any of you else out there who feel the same way

about this? And then a few hands raise up

and then, yeah, that you can come in.

Other people are like, yeah, it's cool, I can take it or

leave it. There we are.

So when you spend a third of your life with people you know

that would leave for another dollar an hour, that's a very

mercenary, very, you know, subjective experience versus,

you know, the best teams are slow to hire and quick to fire.

Most teams are very quick to hire and very slow to fire, so

not everybody feels the same way I do.

And that's OK. You know, you can create your

own adventure on this rock and that's all I'm all about that

personal freedoms and personal choice.

But I choose to spend my time with people that if you're going

to spend 8 to 10 hours away from your loved ones, whole reason

why you work, right? Not just to have some meaning

and purpose, but to drag a big bag back for your family so they

can have these great experiences, right?

Because you've figured this out. That's what's exciting to me.

Is to share that dream with other like minded people and for

other people. I want to operate differently.

Bless your heart. Knock yourself out.

It's just that being mediocre like doing the minimum

unnecessary every week not to get fired, which pretty much

sums up all those shows and most you know, American workers,

right that that that never appealed to me.

Go big or go home was kind of how I was raised or that was

kind of my Etho. My spirit animal as a child was

probably a lion or tiger or some other animal that's pretty, but

you would want to hang out with one for a while.

So I think I think, you know, people burn at different the

pilot lights. You know what I mean?

The you've met people, their pilot like a little flickering

little bit of breeze and that thing's out.

And then other people, it burns like all the time.

I'm more of the latter, not the former.

And that's not for everyone. So like being back to personal

branding and being your authentic self, which is like

for getting into the advice stage right in your intro, you

do you, I'll do me. And if if that's compatible and

you're liking that, I'm liking that.

Let's keep that going. But let's not assume that we're

both going to be the same Meese 10 years from now.

And you know, being a human, it's evolution, baby.

Like I'm not the same person I was five years ago.

Thank God for that. Or five years before that or, or

even 5 years from now. And I'm excited to where things

are heading. And if anything's scary, it's

the robots. And like the destabilization.

What's even scary to me are the people in charge of all this

stuff. Like, I don't have a lot of

confidence in them. So that's what scares me is our

politicians or children, you know, who are just, you know,

robbing people blind in the guise of helping people.

And they probably do a little bit of that.

Like, you got to put up the facade.

But yeah, if I look at like technology and AI and just

relationships, like this whole batch of kids these days, what

was important to me at 18, my youngest son, Hayden, like none

of the stuff that was important to me at 18 is important to him.

So it's really interesting to kind of see the evolution or you

know, the degradation of some parts of society and, and the

evolution of others. Yeah, you don't accept the the

Jim Halpert recipe for success to do mediocre work half

heartedly. Yeah, no, I, I that's never been

my jam. And, you know, bless him and all

those that subscribe to that thought, but that's not me and

that's not how we operate here. And that's that free will that

I'm expressing here. And I'm not knocking anyone who

thinks that's awesome. That's just not me.

That's not how I vibrate. That's not my frequency that I'm

operating on. That reminds me of another a

quote from another military guy, Charlie Beckwith said I would

rather go upriver with 7 studs than 100 knuckleheads, except I

think he used a little more colorful language.

So. Yeah, and obviously Colonel

Beckwith, you know, started Delta Force and, you know, was a

Green Beret and a legend in the special operations community.

So like, I'm with the Colonel there.

A small team of butt kickers can run circles around a massive

team of, you know, mediocre C type players.

Good stuff, good stuff. Well, I want to hear a little

bit more about the building of your construction company.

I know it kind of one of the the big accolades you have is

building and exiting a a large and successful company in the

middle of the Great Recession. What did that look like and how

did you pull it off? Man, I don't know if I could do

it again today. It was like lightning in a

bottle. I the last job I had was AVP of

sales and marketing for a disaster restoration company.

The first year I got there doing about 9 million in sales.

Six months later we were, you know, trending over 20 or just

under 20. And then for a few years well

into the high 20s. And then in the third year, the

the owner sold it to a private equity group and the new equity

guys came in and we're like, Hey, you could you, you could

stay for about half the money. We have other companies in our

portfolio. And, you know, I'm like, yeah,

it's probably not a deal I'm going to take like, yeah, we, we

don't know each other well, but that's, that's a hard pass.

So basically I, I was like, OK, I got to do my own thing now.

And not the best time to start a, you know, a high ticket

construction company in the middle of the Great Recession.

But there were some energy tax credits and EPA Energy Star tax

credits. So I just figured out to get

some really super efficient windows, use the tax credits and

the leads are what the hard part.

So even people that weren't affected by the Great Recession

adopted low spending behaviors like the people that were.

It was the weirdest thing and that was one of the reasons why

it was the Great Recession and not just a big recession is

because even the folks that weren't impacted all adopted the

same, which exacerbated the situation.

So finding opportunities went from about two $250 for a warm

lead to run to about 2500 bucks in a matter of months.

So it just wasn't sustainable to be able to get fresh

appointments. So what did I do?

I leaned into the whole green thing.

So whether you, you, you're into global warming or not, we can

all agree that being miserly, you know, having good

efficiency, if you use half as much energy, it cost half as

much money for you and draws on half the resources with them not

doing it that way. So to me it was like, duh, this

is commonsensical. Let's just get rid of some of

these big name brands that people pay this huge money for.

And let's get some other name name brands that aren't as namey

but are wonderful brands and they're highly efficient.

So finding marketers that would go out Minneapolis at night, in

the dark, in the cold, in the winter, not easy to do.

So, of course, because my central mission was energy

efficiency and saving energy and using less and being responsible

and also accelerates your ROI. It's comfortable, it's quiet,

there's all these other features.

But my marketing team was led by a Greenpeace environmental team

leader, city leader. Shout out to Josh Slip, my man,

and he got about, I don't know, 20 greenpeacers to go out, knock

doors because we're here to lower your energy dependency.

This is the greenest energy is this.

So like I just had all the leads 'cause I had a bunch of

fanatical people who cared about that and we are the only ones

that were getting out there. And when you had a tax credit, I

built the sales presentation where I showed those big name

products and their efficiency and their cost and they're all

I. So it was like windows and

siding and insulation and energy audits and weather sealing for

smart people. Like you can do it this way or

you can do it this way. Like, Oh my God, I can't believe

this. This is like twice as good for

half the money with these. I'm like, yeah, you get it.

Oh, you get it. So I had this brand new company

everyone. I you don't strike me as a

Greenpeace supporter or person yourself, but to, to partner

with them and an aligned vision like that, yeah, it's just

brilliant. I, I have no other words that

that's amazing. I love it.

Well, it was, it was counterintuitive, right?

If everyone else like they had these programs, but everyone was

broke, it was session, I can't spend money.

Well, this tax credits going to expire.

So it's an opportunity. So yeah, if you want to pay an

extra 1500 in taxes, knock yourself out, but you don't have

to. And we can show you this

accelerated ROI and and we can get to it in six to eight weeks

like done, done. And and so we had, we had

success where others did and as a brand new company within three

or four months we're in the leaderboard for a number of of

those different vertical products they.

Had the most fanatical salesman ever.

They're, they're not just working for a job, they're

working for a mission, like. Yeah, no, and, and, and the

other thing was the other thing that I did, which was very

different is most people treated their canvassers, you know,

like. And when the carnival's over,

let's go find these people or let's go to the jail and see who

needs to get bailed out. Like it's a could be kind of a

rough space. I'll just say politely, OK, and

these aren't folks watching your house when you're on vacation.

OK, let's just throw it out there.

The average door knocker, door to door sales.

And I'm generalizing and I apologize There's, there's 10%

of those folks that are have all their teeth and don't have 14

felonies. But at the time, the demographic

was pretty rough. So canvas crews by and large

were a bit of a crapshoot because, you know, you it was

they were coming in drunk, high or calling in.

I'm in jail. I'll be there on Tuesday, my

lawyer thinks. And so to find a highly

educated, fanatical about the environment group to go out and

do a very hard job and do it gladly, yeah, that's different.

But everyone in the industry prior to this recession would

pay these folks like minimum wage and like a half a percent

or a percent of the contract total.

So think, you know, 200 bucks on, you know, 220 grand or

something like small, but you know, adds up.

When the leads got hard, I just took the sales Commission and

lowered it and said, look, listen, if you want to go out

and knock doors and get your own leads, I'm going to give you a

little bit more for that. These company leads are in

really short supply. So paying you guys full freight

to sell the most valuable, you know, hey guys, go to the fancy

restaurant. Lobster says market price.

OK, so the market price for a lead has changed, right?

Since we're not fishing for, for lobster like we used to.

So I think I, I think it was, oh gosh.

So it was 8%, it became equal. It was 8% of the contract to be

the door knocker. So if we sold a $20,000 project,

that's like a $1600 check. And the Greenpeace folks were

used to working for almost no money because of their passion.

So now they could go out and save the world and make crazy

money doing it. That was the second piece that

that really made the rocket fuel.

So we are canvas team continue to grow.

I think we had 20 some people when I sold the business and

it's because they were paid for what they brought and they were

excited to do it. So I had all the leads when

multi generational huge twenty $30 million businesses were

going out of business and within three months I was leading

several manufacturers sales boards.

So that got some attention and eventually one of those larger

manufacturers, you know, said, OK, you don't need to run this

business. You need to show us your system

and then I want you to teach the system and we want to license

this approach across other brands that we represent.

So, you know, I, I basically sold the company quick to

another operator and went on to this joint venture.

And several companies today still sell with the systems and

the process and the, you know, elevated high touch, high data,

common sense selling versus high pressure.

What's it going to take to get together?

So it was really cerebral and it just built all right.

This is a no brainer argument because it really was if you

took the time to explain all the components and then had world

class installation and beautiful warranties and like 5 star

rating, you know, hundreds of jobs in a couple of years.

All you know, really, really well received.

So it was a lot of fun, but if I was just going to do what

everybody else was doing, wouldn't have made it like like

being the new guy in an environment that is really beat

down. And the guys that have been

there forever that never had a downturn, they were laying off

half their staff, 3/4 of their staff.

The only way you can do something like that is to be

really interruptive. And everyone said I was crazy

and it wouldn't work. Of course they did.

But I'm like, you know, I got six months to year to prove this

yes or no. And if it doesn't work in the

year, I'll just go lead somebody else's team like I did

successfully in the past. So it was really kind of a, a

lower risk thing. And, you know, I built that

business for five or six months before I ran my first

appointment because I knew I was going to have a team.

We're going to do things differently.

So I wasn't like never swung a hammer.

I I never set one screw on any one of those jobs and for good

reason. We had professionals doing the

installation. That's a great story.

I love it. There's there's a lot of wisdom

in that and a lot of unique angles.

You mentioned that you kind of sold that business relatively

quickly to pursue yet another opportunity.

It was less about exiting the business and and more about the

opportunity in front of you. But what did that exit look

like? Was that still a a successful

exit that you were pleased with? Yeah, I mean, it was, it was

successful, right, But it wasn't optimized, right.

So if I said, all right, I got a year to prep this for sale, I'm

going to get myself out. It was like, I have this

opportunity. Well, I can't do both of these.

And the truth is I really didn't enjoy operating the business.

I'm more of a visionary. I like to start businesses,

right. I don't necessarily like to get

in the day-to-day. And when your crew has roofed

the wrong house, right, and the the owner of the right house

shows up at their lunch break and calls you and say you're

doing my neighbor Bob's house. You know, eating those 10

thousand $15,000 mistakes was like, I really don't enjoy this.

That's why we have a photo right after that incident of, of every

house with clear address and, you know, written what color it

is and what the address is. And then a photo showing those

same elements. That's something I learned in

the military. I have experienced that exact

same mistake. Yeah, I mean, think about the

homeowner who's getting a free roof and didn't say anything.

You know, they were home, didn't stop it.

They they knew like, like, hey, at least give me half for this.

Nope. Nope.

That's not how it works. Like, yeah, you're right.

This is our mistake. So hopefully you like the color.

Yeah, I didn't stop them. I thought the color was great.

So Yep. You know, that's where if you if

you know anything about contracting, right.

And if you have the same experience, it sounds like you

do, Eric, if you look at the back of a contractor's contract,

all that four point font like the more texts on the back of

there just shows how long they've been in business because

you know what I mean? There's a reason why they're

small print on the back of construction contracts, because

some contractor bled a bunch of time and money and doesn't

didn't want to do that a second or a third time.

Yep, Yep. Oh me.

What mistake have you made that cost you the most money?

Oh goodness, like being in a bad partnership, like like it's an,

it's an arranged marriage sometimes and not a good one,

even though it's, you know, it's optional.

You know, things look this way, like equal partnerships.

There's no such thing someone just the way humans are.

Nothing's equal, someone's going to outwork the other one,

someone's going to add more value.

Like without having that discussion upfront and right,

you know equity should be more about initial capital risk.

There's some sweat equity for sure, I get that.

But don't confuse the ownership with the leadership having

equity in a company. Also there's oh, they're an

owner. They don't have to do it like

that. Like a family business where if

your last name is this, here's a small set of rules.

If your name is that all the other names except for that one,

it's a very long list of rules in, in, in.

So I would say like not being selective enough with partners

or realizing like if I I did a partnership where I was a, a

perfect third and the two partners had done business

together for 10 plus years. So when you enter an existing

partnership as the minority of the 66.66 carries the 33.3 every

time. So it really wasn't an equal

partnership. Even those three people with

equal partnerships, I automatically was outvoted on on

anything I wanted to do. And, and and that it was a very

short lived experience because I realized like my next business

partnership, I'm going to have 51%.

I'm OK with someone else being a high equity partner, but I need

to have the final say to be able to sleep at night and and

there's nothing worse than, you know, getting your ship close to

the rocks. And you ever been in the

passenger side? My wife will kill me.

But but I'll mention this like there's not a brake pedal on the

passenger side. But when my wife's dropping me

off somewhere or something like that, like I wish I had like a

student driver thing. She's like, you are the worst

passenger. Your job is to work the radio,

deliver the snacks and like, if a bus is going to hit us, please

say danger, right or something. But you know the like when

anytime we go anywhere, she's like, OK, here are the keys.

You're driving. Because I'm not somebody who's a

good passenger. I'd rather, you know, have have

the wheel and being in a business partnership feels like

heading towards a wall and feeling like the break point is

here, but not feeling the brakes for another 100 feet.

And that's not an experience that I really care to spend a

lot more time in. But you can't be the major every

time in in the business world. So if you have a great

partnership agreement or you know what I mean, you have

partners that you have a past with, you can mitigate all of

these concerns. But at the end of the day,

people are in different seasons of life, and there's only so

many FS to give. And once you've ran out of FS to

give, you know you operate differently.

When you give an F about everything, when everything's

important, a little later in life, you realize it's not.

So I would say some early partnerships that sounded great

on paper. We're like, we're going to crush

this. Getting in a echo chamber with a

bunch of industry experts. Like, how can this lose?

And failing to test that to the actual end users who are like,

this is a dumb idea, right? You know, so second idea, right,

is getting stuck in your bubble, your echo chamber.

First one is being in that echo chamber with the wrong people.

So if you could, if I could add 2 to one, that would be the one

for me. That didn't feel great at all.

OK. Is there an opinion that you

once held strongly that you have changed as a result of your

experiences? Yeah, thinking back to what I

started the changing people, right.

What's the what's what's the quote?

I don't know who said this. My apologies.

What's up? You can't change the people

around you, but you can change the people around you.

That's good. That's like a great, that's a

great, you know what I mean? Yeah, I have not heard that one

before, but I'm going to repeat it.

Yeah, I stole it. It's not original by far, but,

but like you can't change the people around you, but you can

change the people around you. Like, like, I know that

sometimes it takes a couple of times to hit, but it's, it's

brilliant that quote. Because like, that's what I've

learned. It's that curation of a team,

not necessarily building, you know, the bad news Bears into

the, you know, World Series champions because that's, that's

a movie arc. That's not really realistic.

The World Series teams right are built and curated and there are

5 or 6 years of building a team. To go to the Super Bowl or the

Stanley Cup or, you know, the NBA Finals or any of these other

sports teams, not every year you're fighting for the trophy

you're building to be in a position to run for it with a

handful of teams who also did the correct things.

And businesses are kind of the same way, right?

You're in a building your business, you're leaning out

your business for sale, you know what I mean?

Like reuse staples, everybody. We're going to try to sell this

thing versus we're rich. Get whatever you want.

And and seeing the different seasons of of a business and and

understanding that the behaviors that, you know, I would do the

amount of hours, the just the sheer tenacity in my 30s when I

was, you know, building that company and then some other ones

after it completely different than now.

Now, I have other people who believe that while I'm just now

using some of these Gray hairs, like, oh, this thing right here,

I've seen this three or four times.

This isn't good. Oh, you think this is good?

OK, hang on, campfire talk. I've seen this however many

times, and it ends this way every time because everyone says

what just came out of your mouth every time they say that.

And what they're missing is XY and Z, and they figure that out

here when it's too late to do this, when X&Y converge and it's

too late kind of a thing. So based on all of these

conditions being the exact same, this is how the team figure it

out. So let's just adopt that posture

right now, even if it sounds extra conservative, not cool.

Some extra work, some extra time.

This is the vegetables. This is good for you.

Eat this and be quiet. And getting to be kind of the

sage grizzly gristle, you know, well worn by losing a bunch of

money on on dumb things. When you see those dumb things

now you're like, I know what that is.

Everybody's like, what do you mean?

And then you give them story time.

They're like, wow, that is so awesome.

I'm so glad we didn't do that. Hey, if he wasn't here today, we

would have just did that. Yeah.

We would have had feel like it's OK, maybe you should just do

that to really get the lesson. But if if you're OK with the

Cliff Notes version, you know, that's what I see.

And helping people like that, using my past experience for

their present and future things that feels good.

That's like, that was an expensive mistake.

You know, I'm not cheap to work with, but the ROI on some of my

time is way better than, you know, A7 figure haircut by not,

you know, seeing that the ice is a little thinner and not driving

your truck on it. Yeah, that's great.

I don't have quite as much Gray hair as you.

It's starting to get there. But I'm, I'm starting to turn

that corner and make that transition transition in my

career. And it's a lot.

It's a lot of fun to sit in that advisor's seat and feel like

your experience can give more value rather than being the

practitioner, just the the experience, the wisdom, the

knowledge can provide significant value that that's a

fun place to be so. Yeah, to be a trusted advisors

honor just came from a lunch right before the interview.

And my past client who just exited his company for $33

million after it being almost dead on life support when I

started with him, said some very nice things.

I won't repeat them here. But he, you know, basically it

was like the praise was overly high, right?

You know, you want to be humble like now, definitely not the

smartest guy in this room, but after the meeting, like comes to

me and he's like, listen, there's no doubt about it in my

mind that you are the smartest guy in this room.

This room is filled with business people that have done

way more in business than I've done.

But they weren't in the foxhole with this guy when things were

bleak. They didn't do this turn around,

you know, you know what I mean? They years in a foxhole with

someone gives you a different perspective.

So it was humbling. It was honoring and I walked out

of there on Cloud 9, but I also thought, well, I could see from

his perspective considering how bleak it was.

And now he's like on Cloud 9 and this whole meeting was getting

investors. And now he's got money to

invest. And now he's like, all right,

we're going to do it again and we're going to do it with The

Avengers. This guy and does this, this gal

does this, Chris is going to keep us out of trouble.

We're going to implement the operating system and he's going

to be on the board. Like this guy already has worked

with, you know, 135 businesses, a lot of them in the space we're

about ready to embark in. So like I like our odds with

Chris on the board. You know, let's make Chris an

equity partner and let's meet with him.

Let's get let's he's going to help you get your team set up.

We'll get the structure going and you know, you're going to

see some Chris and I'm going to, I'm going to feel much more

comfortable deploying almost all of my capital because he's

involved. So like that wouldn't have

happened 1520 years ago. You know what I mean?

Like, I, I didn't have those experiences.

So it's weird because at 53, I still think I'm 33, like in

every department. And, and I'm, I'm starting to

learn and that and that's part of it, right?

Just just be in your own little world And no one can tell you

that, but it's been a journey. And, and to be one of the oldest

people in the room at today's lunch and to be this is the old

guy, this is the ringer, this is the guy who's seen it.

It's like, wait a minute, I'm not the 33 year old Chris here.

Like in my mind, that's me. So like seeing my reflection in

the mirrors, I walked out like, Yep, I guess I am getting to be

the old guy here. And that's a trip.

But you're as old as you feel, right?

Age is a number Eric 100%. Yeah, my my background is in

roofing, so I can relate to that with the the age I feel like is

very different than the age I am, which is very different than

the wear and tear on my body. Yeah, well, if you spend any

time on on the roof deck, then yeah, that is, that is a young

person's sport all day long. You know, it's like pilots,

right? What's the old saying?

You're going to see some old pilots and you're going to see

some bold pilots, but you'll never see an old.

I love it. That's one of my favorite

quotes. I use that all.

The time, yeah, yeah. And then like a roofer, like

it's hard to see a roofer with Gray hair because they either

lawn dart in and that's the end of them or the stress and the

roofing people, the the humans of roofing, like just for

anybody who doesn't know, there's every industry has a red

headed stepchild, right? That's that's the one in the

construction business and the roofing industry is full of

great stories. And when I was the VP of sales

and marketing, that last job at that disaster restoration

roofing, insurance roofing is what that company did.

They were like pioneers of it back in the 90s.

Now I don't think anyone buys a roof without, you know, some

sort of a hail damage claim or something that that whole

industry changed and that's why people's premiums are crazy.

But anyone who had some success or had been around on that had

been sued, had been divorced, had been imprisoned, like that

is a rough industry to have long time success in.

It is hand grenades everywhere. So I shout out to any roofers

listening. You guys are on hard mode every

day. Like even an easy day is is

complex. It's a tough just.

Like the Navy Seals, the only easy day was yesterday.

Yeah. So you've had quite a number of

experiences and your career trajectory has been quite

unique. If you could go back to the

beginning and do it all over again, is there anything that

you would change? Yeah, I might, might have went

to college because back then it actually mattered, you know what

I mean? Or, you know, maybe I would have

went full time for three or four years in the Army instead of

just doing part time for my 9 year National Guard enlistment.

So, you know, those are things I think about, you know, now that

my business partner is a Green Beret, you know, Silver Star,

Purple Heart, Bronze Star, the Valley, like, like a legit war

hero, Michael Cristilla. His stories in the Army are way

better than my stories in the Army, you know, And, and so I, I

do think like, yeah, maybe maybe I could have, you know, worked

out for a year to be in shape to, to try out for special

forces or something like that. So like maybe maybe some earlier

regrets, right? And that's the whole point.

But then I think, well, if I'd done that, I might not be where

I'm at today. And where I'm at today feels

kind of good too. So I, I would say, as the tattoo

says, misspelled, no regrets. You know what I mean?

RAGRETS regrets. I, I don't really have too many

because they're, they're useless.

You, I can't take a regret and deposit it.

Worrying about the past too much is what where depression comes

from. Worrying about the future so

unnecessarily is where anxiety comes from.

So like I did a, an ayahuasca trip a few years back and I let

go of a lot of things, regrets, second guessing and stuff.

And now it's just kind of like you hit the reset button, you

know, kind of reinstalled the operating system on your hard

drive. I definitely see things much

more differently now. You know, I'm, I'm, I'm still

half crazy for sure. But I, I, I sweat things a lot

less than I used to sweat the little minute things.

And life is a lot better when you're again, not like worried

or controlling or like this could happen.

All this Navy Seals right back to the Seals, you know, they're

they're saying is don't borrow pain from the future.

You know, you don't need to sound like a credit card where

you're like, let me get some fear, but I got to pay for it

later, you know, No Fear on the layaway plan like you, there's

plenty right here right now for us all to bask in if you choose

to do so. So maybe maybe understanding

that I don't control everything so don't try and then when it

actually works out because you're a control freak kind of

powers you to do more. So I've said this before, like

the early part, not even your best years, your most productive

years, society itself, Eric doesn't always reward the best

version of you, right? So I think like happiness is not

$1,000,000 in the bank because if you're not happy, you could

have $20 million or $100 million or, you know, I don't know how

happy Elon Musk is with the billion or trillion dollars

almost now. But you know, it's harder to be

depressed on a jet ski is, is my counterpoint to that, right?

So like there, there are money, right?

Is a vehicle, it provides opportunity, but it thinks if I

just achieve this, then I'll be happy.

That's a big fallacy. I'm sure you have this.

You had that discussion more than once being a a podcast

host. So yeah, I think if I would have

mellowed out a little bit, maybe I wouldn't got there or maybe I

would have got twice as far because I wasn't holding on with

the white knuckled grip. And I can only imagine, you

know, the people that worked with me and for me back then.

If anyone's listen, I apologize. I've healed.

I've learned, right, You know, but at the same time, sometimes

I meet those people and they're like, man, you were wild back

there. But I learned so much.

A lot of it was like what not to do like which is which is as a

leader, like I learned more from probably bad leaders than I did

good leaders. But you know, but this was

really good and and this has helped me and and thank you for

that. But yeah, I never wanted to did

all that stuff you did because I thought it was crazy at the time

and even more so now. And now with the benefit of

hindsight being 2020, I would agree with them.

So, yeah, not not trying to control everything, squeeze and

everything till it bleeds its last drop.

Being OK, you know what I mean with, with being OK with being

OK, I think is something that happens a little later in life

when you realize that maybe you don't have some great

relationships because of how you were or you didn't communicate

really well or you've steamrolled 1000 people and now

you know, that's their recollection of you and re

engaging with people and people saying, man, you're completely

different. You've, you're, you still burn

pretty hot, but you're, you're, you're more chill about it or

you're, you're less like holding on so tightly.

There's an old saying, you're right.

You can't want things for other people more than they wanted

themselves. So I think that would have been

just everyone needs to be like this all the time.

We're going to be maniacs and work 100 hour weeks and do the

impossible every day. And you know, high 5 is like

high praise. And now I think I stop and smell

the roses and appreciate the sound of the birds.

And you know, life is actually the moments, the present and not

looking as the present is just purely a vehicle for investment

in activities to gain this future.

But understanding you got to enjoy the journey.

It's really the only part you get to keep.

Yeah. So this is a a little bit of a

left turn, but you threw something out there I know

almost nothing about. What is ayahuasca?

What? What was that?

What did that do for you? Yeah, it's not common in the

roofing industry, but there are other.

So it is a thousands of year old plant medicine therapy that

happens in the Amazon, right? I went down to Costa Rica and

basically it is not a recreational drug.

This is not a fun experience. Think about projectile vomiting

and diarrhea for four nights in a row all night long.

So this is where you take a root and a leaf and add them together

and the active chemical is DMT. Like when someone's about ready

to die, they had this bounce back or this life review or any

of these out of body experiences, they're like you

have DMT inside of you, but it's a very small dose.

So it's like basically if you have a mother lode dose, you

kind of go back to your childhood where you lost your

innocence. You wherever you lost your

innocence, you kind of try to go back to that moment and reattach

your soul. And then you know, what have I

been? Show me what I've become merging

back in my soul at all costs and heal my heart.

Of the three intentions that you get to 1, then you go to two,

then you go to three and then you feel like $1,000,000.

So it is work. It is.

I wouldn't say it was fun, although there were some fun

parts, but not like let's do mushrooms and go to The Walking

Dead show or something. It's not felt like that.

So basically you just purge one way, the other way or both ways

if you're lucky and just feeling horrible and retching all this

stuff out is purging the bad energy, the bad thoughts, the

pain, the guilt, the suffering, the anxiety, the depression,

trauma, the abuse, the, you know, all the, the stuff,

chemical dependencies, all those things.

When you go through like a week of intensive things, it's life

changing because you just leave a bunch of dark energy weights

behind that don't serve you. And it is the way it was

pitched. And it was pitched by Ron White

on Joe Rogan's podcast. And Ron White, the comedian, had

a pretty big trouble with alcohol.

And then he started a tequila company, which is a great idea

when you're an active alcoholic. And that wasn't working out for

Ron. So he cleaned himself up a

little bit and then went down there, and he hasn't had a drink

since. So I was just up later than I

should, stressed out about the world.

And it's like he says he told Joe Rogan as well.

It's like 10 years of therapy in one week.

And I'm like, that sounds like me.

That sounds like the fast pass at Disney or you know what I

mean, the express lane. I'll, I'll, I'll drive in any

express lane. I'm the big fan of, you know,

living my life 10 or 20 minutes earlier then bumper to bumper

traffic. So there's small things in life

that all upgrade every time and, and, and, and fast and, and,

and, and sure is, is, is to for sure.

So I, I just basically went down there and my father passed away

in like Monday when we were his Hospice team.

And that was traumatic to to lose your pops and, you know, be

with him when he passed was was a gift.

But it was also a very tough weekend of watching somebody you

love very much die. And I was scheduled already, you

know, months ago to go to this Arrhythmia Life Advancement

Center, the top place to do ayahuasca and Costa Rica.

And I'm like, yeah, I should probably cancel and just deal

with this stuff. But his funeral wasn't going to

be for a couple of weeks. And I'm just like, let me take

this fresh trauma with the old trauma and see if I can just

batch it all together. So, you know, my stepmom and,

and, and family said, yeah, you should, you should definitely

keep your thing because I was not in a great place.

And then to go through that. So I went down there and got

there on Saturday, you know, after he passed.

So less less than a week did the week experience felt like a

complete like a baby taking his first breaths and eyeballs looks

at at everything. It was it was really I I can't

even really explain it. You just have to go go and do it

and and went and gave his eulogy at his funeral a week after I

got back and probably didn't integrate, You know, you should

probably have a week or two if not heavy stuff like that.

So my recommendation is have a very chill week to reintegrate.

On trauma on yeah, public speaking.

On public speaking, yeah. Yeah.

But I'm a. Professional public speaker.

So to me it was like less so, right?

And I, I, I lost it in my rehearsal an hour before the

speech, but somehow just looked over the top of everyone's

eyeballs into the back of the room and made it through in one

piece. So that was, like, it worked

out. But now they have, like,

ibogaine, which is a medical drip for, like, veterans with

traumatic brain injuries. Yeah.

That's one I've heard of. I was going to ask kind of what

the what the comparison there is or how those line up.

Yeah. So like, I think ibogaine is a

pretty rough run, but it's highly effective.

It's a very big treatment. But there's like, not just the

ibogaine, there's a counselor and you're talking through

things. Ayahuasca's like go to your

mattress and work this out between you and the bucket and

the bathroom and another glass of the stuff that tastes like

dirt until the spirits show you where you've kind of lost your

way. And and, you know, I, you know,

had this huge purge during ayahuasca and I saw spaghettios

arranged in a word, what have I become?

And there it is. And you know, that's that's

weird. So I've never done any

Loosenagenix my entire life. It just wasn't my thing.

So to go from none recreational stuff to the top of the

mountain, which is like a plant Madison experience with the

experts for four nights in a row.

Yeah, you know, I think it was a life changing experience.

And, you know, it'll be three years in August and I'm thinking

about a return visit. You know, I think like there's a

layer, there's a couple of coats of stuff in the last three

years. So like, remembering how I felt.

So remember how I got there and it's like, oh boy.

But juice? Totally worth the squeeze, no

pun intended. OK.

So is that something you would recommend for everybody?

Only people really struggling with something.

Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, I think everyone should do

it on their 18th birthday because we're all, you know, her

children. And back to this whole premise

of being separated from your soul.

The premise down there is from four to seven years, you lost

your innocence, you got bullied, you got abused.

There's divorce, trauma, death of the family.

Like, oof, Things aren't sunshine, ice cream cones and

Unicorn horns and. Everything changes when that

happens, so it's kind of reunite and re plug in that cord and

kind of get back to that fun, playful, not so jaded.

Like anyone in law enforcement, corrections, you know, law

enforcement, the military, first responders, firefighters, EM TS

like you're looking at really gnarly stuff every day.

And even if you've got good at suppressing that pain and

suffering, it's it's there. So I think anyone who's had any

of those things, the vocation, personal trauma and trauma is

not like a a a sport like like like, yeah, that's about a three

on the 10 scale. Like it could be your three,

right, could be my 10 or my 10 could be your two or three.

So all the stuff is relative again, but I think it without

it, I wasn't doing good. That's putting it mildly.

Like drinking a lot, being really sad for no reason, being

very dark, like it's, it's not a healthy, happy place to be.

And when your friends and family are noticing that, hey, you're

extra salty today, like what happened?

Who peed in your cornflakes this morning?

Then you realize, like, all right, this is the problem.

Then after you get back from that experience and people are

like, Oh my God, I can just see like whole glow around your

whole self. You are so much brighter and,

and so much more and like interested and you know, I mean

like you're not so go, go, go. You're like, tell me more.

And old Chris would be like, is there a point?

Stop circling in the airport, land the plane.

I need a point, you know, so I I don't know.

For me it was good. I I don't know if it works for

everyone. I think it's highly effective.

So if you can gather up the courage to go do it and if

you're carrying around things that don't serve you anymore,

highly recommend Rhythmia. They've done like 15,000

patients or something like that in 10 years.

So I, I wanted to go to the place with the most experience,

you know, doctors on staff, you know something.

Like that, you don't want to be. You don't want to be somebody's

first. Time Weirdos basement in

Boulder, which is the other way to do it, which no, that doesn't

didn't sound good to me at all. Yeah.

Well, you said something a minute ago that hit me.

You said you've learned more from bad leaders than you have

good. What is the resource or the

source of the most significant growth for you?

How have you improved as a leader?

Well, I think learning from bad leaders, when something happens

and you're just like, is this happening for real?

And everyone's looking at each other and like there's low

trust. So you can't say anything

because there's you stick your neck out.

Somebody might just collect it. Like somebody talk about another

consultant, Patrick Lencioni, Pat Lencioni's five dysfunctions

of the team, like he's got if you want to talk about team

health and just being a great leader, like Pat's work is

Seminole. Like it is awesome.

He is probably also the best clean comedian.

Maybe Nate Bargatze could give him a run.

But if you ever heard Pat speak, he's hilarious and he doesn't

swear at all. So basically, he's got this

trust triangle. At least 5 dysfunctions.

The first one at the bottom, the basement is trust.

So if you can't be vulnerable and I can't trust that you're

due here for the right reasons and you're doing the right

things and I have to assume positive intent that you're not

trying to, you know, steal from me, take from me or subvert me

or hurl over me or whatever. Then when you could be

vulnerable like in those bad boss situations, like want to

say like, excuse me, it sounded like you all want us to kill

ourselves for your benefit. Like that didn't like where is

the, you know, like where's the equity in this situation, right?

You know, but like anyone talks, you're fired.

You're fired. Like, like we all need our

paychecks. Like what 6070% of Americans are

paycheck to paycheck. So it's really hard for people

to stand on their morals when your house, car payment and

whatever is due. Like let's just be honest there.

So what he says is if you can't be vulnerable and we can't speak

the truth, then you can't get to the next one, which is conflict.

Not F you, no F you no F you. More unhealthy conflict.

But actual Hey, I love you man, but that's wack.

I think you've completely glossed over this.

You forgot this and the way you just said that to to marry, you

should just apologize right now and then we'll move on versus

the Oh my God, I don't want him to say that to me.

So I'm not going to say anything right.

Conflict and growing up in Minnesota, long the land of the

passive aggressive people like oh, that's wonderful, dumbass.

You know, like soon as you turn around, that's like I grew up

her own, you know, you know, you ever meet somebody that grew up

in New York City? F you know, F you too, like, oh,

that's a greeting. They like each other, right,

completely. Then the South is like, oh,

bless your heart. And that's code word for damn,

you're dumb even for down here, right.

You know, all joking aside. And then, you know, the West

Coast is like, it's cool, bro, you know, you know, So like

wherever you came up. Anyways, Midwesterners are known

for being passive aggressive. And we all saw Bambi and

Thumper's mom saying the Thumper.

If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at

all. So like that whole thing.

So we can't get into conflict because we're like, no conflict,

run from conflict. There's no conflict here.

Like, even if I disagree with you, hey, it's not worth

fighting over. It's good.

Just yeah, that's great. I just was trying to help, you

know, just completely diminish that.

So if you can't get into healthy conflict, you can't get to the

next one, the third one on the ladder, which is commitment

because how do you so hold someone accountable?

The 4th ladder accountability and the results is number 5 with

the backup. So being vulnerable means I can

engage in healthy conflict and we can have our conflict and

whoever loses, get shoulder to shoulder with whoever preferably

wins. Don't have to look at that way,

but just for ease. And we'll be arm in arm as

teammates now. Thank you for letting me have

some conflict. Thank you for altering 2 parts

of your 47 point plan because of my input.

But ultimately we're going with you and we're on the same team.

So I now support you. That's the good conflict.

Now, because we've had the conflict, we can commit because

we've talked about what could happen, what is going to happen.

You're like all that is out there and now we can really

commit to something. If you don't have the have the

people that shoot holes in it, like I'm not getting in this

boat. Oh, it's the first that you just

built this airplane. This is the first flight I'm

going to. I'm going to watch the next five

flights. Put me in for the last flight.

You know what I mean? I'm not going to be the first

one in a new airframe. Sorry, that's not not me

conflict. Then we get to commitment.

I will go in the 100th flight. That's more of my commitment

level for for that example. And then once we have that

commitment, then the accountability, the 4th 1

happens almost automatically and then results is at the very top.

So most people bring me in. I want my team to be more

accountable and I'll just be like, well, how's the trust?

What do you mean? Like, well, if this meeting

sucks and it could have been an e-mail, can someone say that?

No, you would probably get fired for that.

OK, Then that's why your team isn't accountable, because there

isn't a safe place for them to have healthy conflict the second

run. And because that no one's really

committed because they're not committed and is why they're

missing deadlines. Because at at this point, it's

easier just to go along to get along than it is to stop and

say, hey, This is why we're failing.

And it's because of you, boss. Or it's because of you, Jeremy.

Or it's because of you, Mary, right?

And, and, and when people really understand, everyone wants the

results. They want a highly accountable

team, but they're not willing to be vulnerable.

They're not willing to engage. I'm the boss.

Do it. Or I'll transfer you to the

Anchorage field office, right? That's why you got these huge

companies working on fake problems and they don't deliver.

And and no one cares because somehow this big company makes

enough money for us to piss away half of it and still have happy

shareholders, right? Versus a small business, a

roofing company of 2030 employees.

Like just having an extra one or two crazy people can be the

difference between no fun and some fun.

And having a very low for the industry level of crazy people

means you're going to have an amazing roofing company.

It's probably going to be super profitable and you're going to

get a ton of referrals because you guys are just kind of crazy

on the crazy O meter. Not you're not like full roofing

crazy, right? You're just kind of crazy.

And that's a competitive industry when you're in in that

space. So I would just go back to can

we speak the truth or are we going to be polite?

So the answer your question, because I've been circling the

airport, I'm going to land the plane.

You have to be kind to people, not nice to people.

If there's a lot of niceness, niceness doesn't involve, Hey,

you got a little something right there.

Hey, that wasn't your best work. That meeting could have been an

e-mail. You know what the problem is?

You know, grab a mirror. You'll, you'll, you'll find it.

And, and being kind to someone means you're bringing up a blind

spot and putting it into the open pane.

And sometimes that's uncomfortable.

And that's why if you have like a new business idea and you show

your friends and family, they're all going to this, you're going

to be a millionaire. Can I swim in your pool?

Like, this is going to be so great.

Show it to someone who actually cares for you, that's not

related to you, that doesn't want to see you go bankrupt.

And they're going to be like, this is the almost.

This is like the second dumbest idea I've heard in the last

year. Yeah.

And you're like, what do you mean?

Everyone else has been. My mom said it was wonderful.

Well, remember, your mom loves you no matter what.

Never vet your business ideas through mom or dad unless

they're world class entrepreneurs because your

friends and your family are going to be nice.

They're probably not going to be kind.

And the one relative who's actually kind, you're like Uncle

Jerry's a Dick head. Well, actually Uncle Jerry was

the only one at the entire party who who saw what actually

happened a year from now and had you not just dismissed his thing

as well. He's an idiot, doesn't know what

he's talking about. You could have maybe not lost a

half 1,000,000 bucks or you know what I mean, some sort of a

scar, A souvenir AT shirt one gets after learning a lesson

like that. Yeah, I know it.

You brought it up a lot there and I know this is something you

really talk about and work on in your coaching and helping other

businesses is accountability. What do most companies

misunderstand about accountability?

Yeah, that it's not situational. You either are you are not also,

if you haven't really defined what the standard is and you've

trained to it and you've enabled and empowered it, it's not going

to happen. So you know, holding employees

accountable for your failure as a leader is is a very common

thing. So like the right person in the

right seat. Now we'll talk about Jim Collins

here in in good to great, like sold 5 million copies.

Most people have heard of it or at least had the Cliff Notes

version of it, right. The right people share your core

values. They value what you value.

Like they're in it to win it just like you.

Whereas someone with the opposite work style, like oof,

this is, you know, oil and water positive and negative polarity

and then write seats in the EOS terminology.

We got an an acronym called GWC or get it wanted capacity to do

it. If you live the core values

right, you're the right person and you get it.

You want it and you have a high capacity to be awesome at it.

We're going to go. Most companies are not 90 to

100% right people, right seats, even profitable ones.

Certainly ones on the TV show might be 3040% engaged.

People actually like it there. They're they're culturally a

match because the company's done a really explicit job to say

this is what, what's one of our teammates look like.

If you're not that, we want you to go and find your people.

Most people are overly inclusive.

So your unicorns will bite through the fence and eat

Skittles elsewhere, chase other rainbows because you put a

Jackass right next to them, right?

And a donkey, a Burrow Jackass. I mean, they'll eat bolts,

saddles, like the wagon itself, like anything you put in there,

they're going to eat it. Where's unicorns?

Right? Also 4 legged hoofed animals.

But the Skittles, they chase the rainbow like a Unicorn is rare.

So like unicorns don't like to be penned up with with

jackasses. And I see it all the time.

So like if we want to create a Unicorn preserve, that's like

the funny part of it, but that's real.

I have teams that are 95% unicorns and 5% junior unicorns.

The horn is just starting to butt, but they're no longer

eating metal and wood and and other things.

And and really understanding that if if your company is in

the excellence business and you really mean it, then it'll the

being consistent with that will culturally be the norm.

Being not awesome should cue the scratch record sound and

everyone all looking at the exact same time.

But when you have pockets of awesome and pockets of jackasses

and the jackasses are the loud ones and like, you know what I'm

saying? It's, it's confusing.

If there isn't like a standard, it well, pay for for Jeff.

That's about as good as you're going to get.

That's in Jeff's world, that's a 10 and in Marcy's world, that's

a four. Well, no, A4 should be a same

across the company. A10 is the same across the

company. There shouldn't be a sliding

scale or a bell curve. There is the standard and then

you have 7 billion people on the planet to pick from to fill in

the 15 to 1500, you know, 15,000 depending on the scale of your

business. So the companies that curate a

team of, you know, I'll say 80%, right, people write seats.

You can have a top performing business, very profitable, great

numbers across, but it's still hard that 20% is enough for that

80% to not to get to the final stage.

Once you curate A-Team, about 90% right, people write seats,

they have enough mass and volume to clear out the last 10%

organically from the bottom up. And once, once you're 96 1/2

percent amazing, that's where there's a waiting list to work

there. I I have my clients have won

over 200 individual best places to work awards and these are not

write a check to get a crystal award.

These are full engagement surveys. 75% of the company has

to participate in the survey. If your people don't like the

coffee filters, you're going to hear about it because it's an

anonymous. What do you think about your

boss? It is like the moment for an

employee who is not being treated well to light you on

fire four times in an hour. So in order to win these awards,

Eric, you better be high 80s, low to mid 90th percentile to be

in the finals. So over 200 of those is the end

result of a couple years of doing EOS coaching, putting the

right people in the right seats, getting this mindset, doing the

stuff. So very high success rate.

And it's a proven process. So if you're not running a

business operating system like EOS, there's other ones, but

that's the one I know the best. So I don't want to be salesy.

But at the same time, if you're a business owner and you don't

have a business operating system, you are making it up and

that's going to catch up with you.

So I highly recommend. And if you're a smaller company,

you can join the self implementer Academy and get the

tools to nominate someone on your team to to be your Chris.

Or you can hire a professional certified or expert you a

supplementer locally. And we are like Sherpas, we help

people get to the top of the mountain back without falling

off the Cliff basically is how that works.

Oh man, you speak with such imagery.

I love it. It's been a lot of fun.

So your background, you have a lot of military background that

I think has served you well as you brought it into business.

What did you learn in the military that you don't think

just strictly a business career would have ever taught you?

You are 74% less cool than you think you are.

Like in every case, like always someone bigger, always someone

stronger, always something faster or somebody can shoot

better or somebody can memorize things better.

Like like no matter who you are, there's always a better version

of you. In the military, it's just like

the place where these types of people tend to congregate and

measure themselves against some pretty impressive measuring

sticks, so to speak. So like thinking I was pretty

hot shit and then realizing oh boy, I am probably in the middle

3rd of this group physically right, the bottom third in this,

maybe the top third and this thing or thing.

But I am really going to have to like summon up at all to make it

through like this environment. This is not me making it look

easy. This is, you know, finding some

actual adversity and not having it solved for me or you know

what I mean? Like I just so I think that was

just kind of like the learning how respect and respect comes

from your teammates by being technically and tactically

proficient, not one, not the other, both being that holistic

soldier or, or or whatever and not being a because I said so,

because I have more stripes than you have, because I've done it

before and this is how I was taught.

And this is let me show you how this works.

Come over here. Not let me tell you, let me show

you. So I found the best leaders are

the ones that would show you. The worst leaders would just

tell you and then not be around for Q and.

AI love that. I I think it has to include the

why. That was always a big thing for

me as a leader. You give somebody a rule, you

give them some parameters. They may or may not follow it,

but they don't care. And if you can give them a why,

This is why it matters. This is why it's important.

This is the story, This is the experience that led to the fine

print on the back of the contract.

You know, then it hits home, then they get it, then they're

bought in just the, the, this is how we do it.

Yeah. So Gino Gino Wickman, the

founder of EOS, the book is traction.

Get a grip on your business. If you don't have that book, you

should really get that book because that's like the entry to

to EOS right there. It's just a book and it's

usually CEO to CEO, Hey, read this.

I know there's a million business books out there.

This one's different. And he talks about in there, as

EOS implementers, our job is to set the context, facilitate the

conversation, and then conclude and move on to something else.

Context. Why?

What we're doing here, right? Facilitate.

Let's have not just the popular answers.

Who's got an unpopular answer, who disagrees, who thinks all of

this is bullshit. OK, OK, you got one.

Good like do we have your permission to be open and

honest? OK, great.

Send it. The more you send it, the more I

like you. So getting people to enter the

danger and making it more of a support a sport with high 5.

See that everyone he they didn't spontaneously combust, they

didn't get fired. So like we got to stop holding

back. You know, that's that really

good facilitation. And then once we got the answer,

all right, who's got the to do? Who's called?

What's the next step on this? All right, let's end this one.

Let's go on to another issue. Set the context, facilitate,

conclude if you operate as a business owner or leader or just

a good human, because you ever meet someone that can't make a

point? I know I've been drifting a

little bit on this conversation, but hopefully I'm landing the

plane for you. I talked to some people and like

a minute later, like, what topic are you even on?

We're we're, we're like, you know, some people really don't

have Agps and they just kind of float around.

So just being super clear with what you want.

Having an economical, efficient conversation, no fluff, you

know, no bread, just the meat. Let's go carnivore conversation.

And then what's the action step? Who's going to do it by next

week? By what?

OK. And then have those promises

come true when 90% of your weekly commitments, your to do's

come true. That's the only part of the tire

that touches the actual Rd. when we talk about traction, is 90%

of your promises to each other coming true?

I'll, I'll get this done by next week.

I'll get it this far and I'll deliver that next week.

You might not have solved it right?

But you, you, you move the ball down the gridiron and we're

going to score at some point if we keep having positive yardage.

So I think, I think those three things are what separate the

rock stars from the groupies in business right there.

OK, Well, we, we talked about the military lessons and their

how they're applicable in business.

Was there anything from your military experience that fails

when you bring it to the civilian world and try to apply

it in business? Yeah you can take your

supervisor if you like them and lash them.

Do a cannon and shoot it twice. Like pretty sure the Department

of employee resources are probably going to probably get

it's probably not going to buff. Hazing would be the first thing

that comes to mind. And even though there's like

civilian versions of code Reds or hazing, like yeah, that's not

in the military. Like the amount of of team stuff

in a great team is next level world class.

It feels great. But also you could also be

sentenced to go to Delta Company, right?

If Bravo Companies, the big, the best unit in the battalion,

Delta Companies where they send you when they're not happy with

you at Bravo Company and Alpha Company and General Company.

So like every unit kind of has a reputation.

Alpha Companies, awesome. Like that's the one you want to

go to the first Sergeant at Delta.

Yeah. This guy has got some issues

that he hasn't resolved. So like being a leader where

people want to be on your team, it doesn't feel like a sentence

or oh boy, what did I do to deserve this?

You know, like a discipline that's a big deal.

The reputation of your company, your culture.

Like your Glassdoor says you're horrible human beings at 80%.

Like you're probably not good if your Glassdoor says you're 80%

amazing. Like that's about as high as

praise you'll get from humans today is about 8.

You're right. Like political polls, the, the

top is 80, the bottom is 40. Like that, that's a poll.

Like there's no, there's no such thing as, you know what I mean?

Like it's, it's not 100 and it's not 0.

That's just not how humans operate.

So I would say that that is is is something that might take a

while to figure out, but if you can figure that out early, you

have a huge competitive advantage over people still

operate into the old Hospice. Yeah, I know a a big part of

your program, what you help with, what you teach is scaling

businesses. Are there any businesses that

cannot or maybe should not scale, but are better off

remaining kind of the small office business?

Or is everything capable of scaling?

Well, I think that's a individual decision for the

founder and what works well for them, right?

A lifestyle business. I mean, you know, making

1,000,000 bucks a year with no employees doing what you love,

that sounds good. Or managing a $10 million

business with 50 employees and it's one calamity after the

other, you know, to make that same $1,000,000 EBITDA and then,

you know, get taxed on that. And all the other thing, like I

ask people all the time, you, you want a $20 million business

that makes 10%. You want a $10 million business

that makes 20%. Like, which one sounds better to

you? I already know which one I want

half the brain damage for the same amount of money.

Like, let's go. What line is that?

Where do I, where do I sign up? Yeah.

So some businesses are obviously, you know, easier to

scale. Some are better to say yourself,

but that's a founder thing. And I know private equity gets a

bad rap for ruining everything. Like veterinarians, like it's 5

grand to take your dog to the vet.

You know, five years ago it was 500 bucks.

So there's a great example where, yeah, we're going to

inject $30 million into this. And in order to pay for all

these people in advertising and systems and technology, the end

users going to pay. So not everything is being

scaled well, if that makes sense, Eric.

And I think some things should probably, I don't know, be

better closely held lifestyle. But once the founders like I'm

getting too old to do this. I've done this for 20 years.

I don't enjoy it anymore. I have this reputation.

I have this brand. Some other people could really

do great things with this. And you know, I want to scale my

business and then sell it. Then ultimately, you know, you

mean you can't sell a job. I guess that's the short answer.

You can sell a company and the multiples you'll get are the the

least the, the, the less the business is dependent on the

founder, the more valuable the business is.

If you slide down the brass pole with your Cape on and you put

out all the fires three times a day like that business isn't

worth much without your hose and and, you know, turn out gear.

Or you might just be an arsonist too, because some people, you

know, start start fires. You know, the founder is the

most disrupted person in the company.

And I know that's funny, but, you know, a little less so to

the people being subjected to that or literally trying to help

the founder from not murder themselves every day and keep

the wheels on the bus or keep it between the ditches, whatever

you want to say so that that's a founder thing.

But I don't know off the top of my head any businesses that

shouldn't or should be scaled. I'll say that's an individual

decision. OK.

All right. Well, this is my favorite

question I ask of every guest. Are you a person of a particular

faith tradition? And if so, how has that shaped

your business, shaped your leadership?

Yeah, I, I think, you know, I was baptized and went through

communion, so identify as a Christian.

However, there's a lot of flavors of Christians, right?

It, there's a, there's a lot of different sects that, that you

could be a Lutheran, you could be a Catholic, you can be a

Baptist, right? So it's all JC, it's all Jesus

Christ, Father, Son, Holy Spirit at the triune God.

That's a little bit more on the Catholic side, right?

But I mean religion by definition, I also have kind of

more of a worldly view because if you meet people with wildly

different religions and you talk to them, they're all 100%

convinced that their version is correct and your version is

somehow wrong. By definition.

If everyone's right, you're all wrong.

If if you're saying I'm saying so like this is where I, I get

into like the spirituality God source RA, Jesus Christ, right?

You know, Ganesh, Muhammad, Hari Krishna, you know, John Smith,

like I think of all the right, the the prophets of all these

different religions, they all say, hey, we're doing it right.

Everyone else is do it. Don't mind these other people.

They're just doing it wrong. Try to try to get them to do it

our way. So when I met mother Ayahuasca,

right? And in this voice I'm hearing,

well, it's my voice. This is my psyche, right?

I choose what I believe, but pretty clearly look around at

this beautiful world like an accident.

The things bang together and made all these Beautiful

Creatures probably not so like like you know what I'm saying is

there a God as energy source, a singular thing that created this

has to be what name do they go by?

What's on their name tag when you meet them at the pearly

gates or some other feature Don't know that either.

So I am, you know, identify as a Christian.

We have a great church we go to, but I also don't go with the

company line hook, line and sinker.

I am a critical thinker, otherwise known as a conspiracy

theorist. Now the conspiracy theorist is

our but bat made hundred the last 10 years new name critical

thinker. I'd like to be a critical

thinker everywhere and I I also will do that with religion.

So, you know, probably not 100% lock, stock and barrel, a 100%

Christian score. But I think the whole point is

you get to kind of do it your own way and you can't tell me

I'm doing it wrong. You can, but I don't have to

believe that, OK, Even if we roughly agree on the book, the

story, all that. I mean, I also sit and listen to

people to say that religion is just a construct to help the

batteries, the souls, not murder each other between now and the

aliens going to harvest our energy source.

Isn't that the Matrix? Wasn't that like the the whole

concept were batteries? Like I've seen some sci-fi

movies and there's a handful of them.

Like that could actually be the simulation we're in, right?

So like, I know that's a really wacky answer, right, But I'm

doing my own thing over here, Eric.

I don't even want to be pigeonholed into saying I'm

this. I can be all those things.

What's important about religion, right, is taking care of each

other and making yourself small and, and, and, you know, making

God or the earth the thing that we serve and fellowship.

And a bunch of broken people get together on Sunday and sing

songs about being good people and aspiring to be better and

helping each other out, lifting each other up.

Like, I don't know how you can make fun of that because so many

people get so much from religion.

At the same time, religion has been weaponized to murder

societies, entire races and creeds.

And you could also have a pretty good argument that religion has

has harmed more than it's it's done good.

So I I don't really share any of those particular opinions, but I

entertain them all. And the truth is, I don't know.

I wasn't there. It's a story you can believe or

not believe, or you can believe most of it and leave a little

door open like I do. And some people would say that's

blasphemy. You're a bad like whatever, it's

just a label. It's your construct.

It's what you think. Good luck to you with those

thoughts. They your thoughts don't reflect

in my thoughts and that's OK. So I think anything that allows

a group of people to get together and help others and

level up and do good is a good thing.

That's my so. I don't even care of what flavor

you like. Just if it makes you and your

family happy and you're giving back, you're making deposits,

you're not just taking withdrawals from this planet.

I'm a big fan and we don't need to argue about who versions,

right? Because I don't, I don't care if

that's right for you. More power to you if, if you

need to project your version of 1000 year old story to me.

And if I don't take it 100% and you don't like me, well, I think

you're probably violating whatever verse or book by doing

that. But that doesn't stop people.

So to answer your question, it depends.

There's great religion and there's not so great religion

and there's a bunch of Gray between those two poles.

And whatever works for you works for me.

That's the way I operate. Is there anybody that you would

like to see on the show? Somebody that has a really

unique business, a unique career, a great story to tell.

Oh, that's a great question. I kind of have to think about

that one and send you a list of names.

But yeah, I, I, I definitely, if you're looking for guests, I

know a lot, actually, quite a few really, really, really

amazing people. The work I get to do, I'm so

blessed to, to not be the smartest guy in the room and

learn a lot from, you know, hundreds of really smart people.

And I think, I think it's this, this whole earthly experience as

a choose your own adventure thing.

So I definitely, I don't have everybody give you here right

now, but I'm sure if I just looked at my contacts and

started flipping, I could give you 100 of them.

OK, well I might reach out. We're always looking for a great

story, an interesting business and interesting industry,

something that we can all learn from.

Chris, thank you so much for joining us.

This has been a lot of fun. You have a tremendous amount of

experience, a tremendous amount of wisdom, and I really

appreciate you taking the time to share that with us today.

This has been fun for me and I think our listeners are going to

get a lot out of it, so thank you.

I'm happy to contribute. Thanks again for having me on

your show. Great and thank you guys for

joining us here on from the Ground Up Show.

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