{"id":111582,"date":"2019-06-04T00:02:06","date_gmt":"2019-06-04T06:02:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/?p=111582"},"modified":"2022-04-15T14:36:39","modified_gmt":"2022-04-15T20:36:39","slug":"biggerpockets-business-podcast-06-how-to-manage-your-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/biggerpockets-business-podcast-06-how-to-manage-your-time","title":{"rendered":"How to Manage Your Time Like a Millionaire"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We all share the same 24 hours\u2026 so how do peak performers seem to squeeze in so much more?<\/p>\n<p>Today, you\u2019ll learn the tools author <strong>Jay Papasan<\/strong> uses to lead the publishing arm of Keller Williams Realty, all while growing a thriving family business (and raising two kids and a dog named Taco).<\/p>\n<p>For Jay, it\u2019s not just about saying yes or no to opportunities. It\u2019s about setting up systems (a virtual FAQ has saved him countless hours) and putting conditions around his commitments (use the words, \u201cYes, IF\u2026\u201c).<\/p>\n<p>Jay also goes in-depth on hiring and tells us why it\u2019s a scary but worthwhile exercise to do the math on how much a single bad hire would cost a company.<\/p>\n<p>Looking for that one person who will take your business to the next level? You\u2019ll want to hear about the \u201cmissing persons report\u201d Jay uses to stay on the lookout for his next team member and the counterintuitive question he asks himself before each and every hire he makes.<\/p>\n<p>This episode is packed with proven wisdom from one of the sharpest business minds in the game. So make sure you listen through to the end, and subscribe so you won\u2019t miss the next one!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/biggerpockets-business-podcast\/id1460051721\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Click here<\/a>\u00a0to listen on iTunes.<\/p>\n<h2>Listen to the Podcast Here<\/h2>\n<p><iframe style=\"width: 100%; height: 200px; border: 0 none;\" src=\"https:\/\/art19.com\/shows\/7062093e-949f-4752-abdc-0cdbe09da5cc\/episodes\/21059a07-782b-499f-8631-3f3853ae249e\/embed\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h2>Read the Transcript Here<\/h2>\n<div style=\"overflow-y: scroll; max-height: 400px; background: #eee; padding: 20px; border: 1px solid #ddd;\">\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>Welcome to the BiggerPockets Business podcast, Show #6.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>\u201cGosh, probably about 50% of my hires over the last five years have come from my singular networking activity, that coffee. Either it was that person or they knew someone that they could connect me with and a referral is a great way to fill a spot on your team\u201d.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>Welcome to a real-world MBA from the School of Hard-Knocks, where entrepreneurs reveal what it really takes to make it. Whether you\u2019re already in business or you\u2019re on your way there, this show is for you. This is BiggerPockets Business.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>Hey there everybody, I am J. Scott, your co-host for the BiggerPockets Business podcast and I am here with the one, the only, Carol Scott. How are you doing, Carol?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Hello, darling. Doing great today. How are you?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>I am doing awesome. Glad to be here.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>So I have a fun little story that happened. So the other day, I got a phone call from a friend and she said, I\u2019m just done with my house. I\u2019ve been with it for 15 years, but I don\u2019t feel like moving. I need to remodel the whole thing. So, please, please, please\u2014I know you\u2019re moving, so I need you to come over to my house and tell me exactly what to do with it before we head out of town.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And I\u2019m like, okay, great\u2014you have exactly one option. I\u2019m going to be in your neighborhood Sunday at 11:00 dropping off both my boys for different play dates, so I\u2019m going to be there Sunday at 11:00. And she\u2019s like, oh my gosh, I have so many other things to do that day. And I\u2019m like, don\u2019t know what to tell you. That\u2019s realistically my only option at this point. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And she\u2019s like, okay, great. Sorry, I shouldn\u2019t have said anything. Just come on over. So we go over, we chitchat, we laid out a whole plan of everything that she\u2019s going to do. And at the end of it, she was like, seriously? I have to apologize. I\u2019ve known you since you were 18 years old, because we knew each other forever ago. And she\u2019s like, you\u2019ve always been exactly this way. You decide what needs to happen and you figure out your schedule is, and you basically tell everybody that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">You know, I love you, but this is the time that I have carved out for you. And you either kind of fit into it or you don\u2019t. So, it was just kind of a good reminder that you need to really protect your time. You can say no. You can set boundaries. You can set parameters so that you can still be really effective and make the other person happy and keep yourself happy because you\u2019re not overcommitting.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>I love that tip. You have to protect your time. And that is a great segue into today\u2019s guest, Jay Papasan. He is the VP of Publishing for KellerINK He has written some of the greatest investing books on the planet, including <i>The Millionaire Real Estate Investor<\/i>, <i>The Millionaire Real Estate Agent, <\/i>and one of my favorite books of all time\u2014<i>The One Thing<\/i>. Today, he is here and he\u2019s going to talk about some really cool stuff.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">One, he\u2019s going to talk about communication and how we can communicate better to protect our times. So just like you were talking about protecting your time with your friend, he\u2019s going to help us all protect our times within our business. He\u2019s going to help us learn how to say \u201cno\u201d, learn when to say no, when to say yes, and how to provide tremendous value when we do say yes without spending too much of our time.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And then we\u2019re going to go into some of his favorite hiring tips and he\u2019s going to tell us about how to be better managers and better hiring managers when we\u2019re bringing in people into our business.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>And do you want to hear the coolest thing? He really explains how protecting your time in your business is really brought to a whole new level when you hire the right way, because they really have a lot of correlations with each other. So make sure you stick around for all those tips.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>Yep. And if you want more information about today\u2019s show, if you want links for things we discussed in today\u2019s show, make sure you check out our Show Notes at BiggerPockets.com\/BizShow6. And let\u2019s welcome to the show, Jay Papasan. How are you doing, Jay?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Jay: <\/b>I\u2019m doing awesome, J. It\u2019s fun to have another J. on the other side of this.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Jay and J. and Carol in between. Thank you so much for coming on the show with us today, Jay. Great to talk to you.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Jay: <\/b>Thanks for having me. I\u2019m super excited.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>So for those who don\u2019t know who Jay is, and I assume it\u2019s probably not too many of you, let\u2019s do a quick recap of who Jay is. Jay, you are the Vice President of KellerINK, which is the publishing arm of Keller Williams Realty. You are the co-author of a whole lot of books, some that are audio and you guys have probably heard of. <i>The Millionaire Real Estate Investor<\/i>, <i>The Millionaire Real Estate Agent<\/i>, and probably your most seminal work, <i>The One Thing<\/i>. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So these aren\u2019t just bestselling books, these are amazing books. Sometimes those two are mutually exclusive, but in your case, both bestselling and absolutely amazing books. You\u2019re a husband, you\u2019re a father. I believe you have two kids? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Jay: <\/b>That\u2019s right. I\u2019ve got a 13-year-old son named Gus and a 13-year-old daughter named Veronica\u201414-year-old son. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>Awesome, awesome.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Super fun.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>And you live in Austin, Texas? What did I miss? What do you want to add to that little autobiography there?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Jay: <\/b>I\u2019ve got a dog named Taco that rules our life. That\u2019s pretty much it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Hi, Taco!<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>So, Jay, originally when we were planning this show, we wanted to talk a lot about hiring. I know you and I chatted a few weeks ago and you had mentioned hiring was a topic that you wanted to chat about as a topic that we wanted to chat about, but that was our first discussion. That was about six weeks ago and that was a discussion that you and I had that really made an impact on me.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Basically, it just changed my perspective on communication. The way you controlled the discussion, the way you kind of steered the discussion, the way you added value to me, and ultimately the way you kind of\u2014I want to say this gently, but because you ensured that I didn\u2019t infringe too much on any of your future time. It was really amazing. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And it\u2019s changed over the last six weeks the way I\u2019ve approached communication with other people that have reached out to me for conversations and the way that I network. So if it\u2019s okay with you, I\u2019d love to spend the first part of this discussion talking about communication, talking about networking, talking about some of the strategies that you employ to ensure that you\u2019re providing value to others without detracting too much from your own time and your own bandwidth. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>Love it. Excellent. Fantastic.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Jay: <\/b>Dive in. This is like stuff I get to talk about all the time but I still love it. It forces me to live it, even on my bad days, I don\u2019t want to.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>That\u2019s great. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>I\u2019m going to start with the question that has driven me nuts for ten years now, ever since we kind of semi-retired and started our own businesses. You seem to be really good at being able to say no. And a lot of people aren\u2019t good at saying no. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">But you\u2019re also good at when you say yes, putting boundaries around that yes. So can you talk a little bit about how you say no, when you say no, when you say yes, and how you put those boundaries around your yeses?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Jay: <\/b>Sure, sure. And in all fairness\u2014I appreciate the compliment. It\u2019s a great compliment, for me to have someone say you\u2019re good at saying no. Because for me, it\u2019s not always easy. I find that there are two broad behavioral groups. Assessments would back that up. There are people who are task-oriented and people-oriented.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And when we wrote the one thing, the two feeds of focus stood out, is the inability to say no and fear of chaos. So I happen to be task-focused. That\u2019s like, I first go to like, what are we doing and how are we going to do it? Not, who am I going to do it with?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">My wife is on the opposite end of the spectrum. She\u2019s people-focused. And in my experience, people who are people-focused struggle with no. People who are task-focused struggle with chaos. I want everything to be neat and in order and in my control, right?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So part of that is a little bit of natural behavior. But I also had to role model this as a business people. So the first step to saying no, especially if you\u2019re people-oriented, and a lot of people in sales and real estate are definitely people-people because you have to know what you\u2019re saying yes to. And I think a lot of people haven\u2019t made firm commitments.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So, I think about, ask yourself, when was a time in your life when your whole world revolved around one thing? Maybe it was finals when you were in college, right? Maybe it was that three weeks before your wedding when everything had to happen by a certain time and everything was revolving around it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I remember when I was training for a marathon for the first time in 1997. I trained for it to quit smoking. I think I had run one road race before that like in sixth grade. And certainly I was thrown into the New York marathon with three months to train for it. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">If I didn\u2019t do my mileage every day, like I was doomed. And I knew that so everything revolved around, when am I getting my mileage? And negotiate with everyone around you. So knowing what you\u2019re saying yes to is huge. That tells you what to say no to. And I don\u2019t like saying no. I don\u2019t like saying no specifically to people on my team and people in my family. And even to people I don\u2019t know so well. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So I tend to say things, whether it\u2019s phrased as a no or not. It\u2019s more like a not now, or yes, if you do this. So putting conditions around what you will do. The most common request I get is someone wants to write a book. And I say wow, like today, we were looking and this year, we\u2019ll click over at four million copies of our book sold. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So we got a bunch of bestsellers, like woo hoo. It\u2019s a big milestone coming down the pipeline and each time we announced those milestones, someone in my network says hey, I\u2019m writing a book. Can I get some coaching? And I just created conditions around my yes. I wanted to be able to say yes to everyone just from a karmic standpoint. Because so many people helped me.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">But to get that time on my calendar, you won\u2019t have to formally ask for it and then you have to watch a one-hour video that I created. After so many of these requests came through, I just created a pipeline where if you\u2019ll just watch this video and then circle back and ask again, you\u2019ll get on my calendar. And it\u2019s amazing\u2014out of the seven people\u2014I\u2019ve gotten the stats pretty close. Out of about every seven people who ask me, only one will do that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>That\u2019s really powerful. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Jay: <\/b>Yeah, so I\u2019m saying no to six out of seven people without saying the words \u2018no\u2019. Either that means the video was really good and answered their questions or they couldn\u2019t be bothered to watch it and why should I bother to give them my time? So that\u2019s one technique right there.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>I assume, presumably that that video is providing some value to you if they\u2019re listening to it. It\u2019s also providing value to them, hopefully answering enough of their questions that they don\u2019t necessarily need to sit down with you or they don\u2019t necessarily need to sit down with you right now. Maybe it\u2019s enough information that they can get started and they can push that request out two months or six months or 12 months.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Jay: <\/b>Yeah, it pushes it into the future right away. Already, it\u2019s got a factor where they have to do just something, anything, and a lot of people won\u2019t do anything. They have an instinct to ask but there\u2019s no follow-up attached to it at all. So it filters those people out.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">But I actually, we have an annual convention where we have, I think this last year we had 227 individual breakouts around real estate and real estate investing at Keller Williams Conference. So for two consecutive years, I taught a class called, <i>So You Want to Write a Book<\/i>. But I had the forethought to video record it. And that was all about, the first time I got it mostly right. I got a bunch of people who had a lot of questions.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Second time, a year later, I knew enough to kind of\u2014here\u2019s 80% of the questions people have, I know I\u2019m going to get answered. So it\u2019s just like at a big company, we would have an FAQ. Here are Frequently Asked Questions. I kind of figured out in my world around my number one time request and created something that I didn\u2019t have to show up for to answer those questions.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>That\u2019s right. People walked away saying Jay helped me. He provided me the value I needed and you didn\u2019t have to put in any additional work to do that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Jay: <\/b>That\u2019s right and I didn\u2019t have\u2014I nodded my head. So if someone was watching the video on YouTube, I don\u2019t have anything in there that I think was particularly self-interested. It was really about how do I leverage my time better? I knew I wanted to say yes, so how do I say yes and it take less and less of my time going into the future? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>I like that and I think that\u2019s a really nice tip for our listeners, too. I guess whatever type of business you\u2019re in, you\u2019re always strapped for time, right? You always have people who have requests, and of course, like you said, you don\u2019t physically have the time to do all of those things. So that\u2019s a great tip.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">If you can create some type of tool that will be helpful for your customers, for your vendors, for whoever those people are, then that can be something beneficial to them and you\u2019re not saying no to them. You\u2019re just saying, absolutely\u2014but first, you need to do this. And so it\u2019s a win-win all the way around.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Jay: <\/b>You got it. I think there\u2019s a\u2014I want to credit, it was probably before that but I can connect it to a book called <i>Procrastinate on Purpose<\/i> by Rory Vaten and he\u2019s a friend of mine and when I interviewed him a long time ago, he told me about the 30 times rule. He got this from somebody on the airplane. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So a lot of times we\u2019re in business and it\u2019s something that we do really well and it takes us an hour every week, like some function of business. Just call it widgets, right? We do widgets and we do it really well and it takes us an hour a week. The reason we never delegate that to our team, the reason we don\u2019t say no to it, by making someone else say yes to it, but even if it\u2019s within our control, is it takes about 30 times as long as it takes us to do something, to train someone to do it as well as we do.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I have no idea if there\u2019s any research behind it but I was like, duh. That makes total sense. Because every week, you\u2019re thinking, why would I invest 30 hours to get an hour back? But even if it took you 30 hours to get an hour back, how many hours do I get back that first year?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>Right. You get back 52. So it pays for itself.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Jay: <\/b>22. 52 minus 30, right? And the next year, you get a full 52 back. So I think it took me about four or five hours to prepare for a one-hour talk, an hour of delivery. So call it ten years to get back probably a weekly 30 min call for me for the rest of my life. So it\u2019s the kind of math we have to do. When do we delegate it? When can we automate it? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">It usually just takes, all right, I\u2019m going to make an investment just like BiggerPockets is all about investment. We\u2019re talking about investing our time. Can I invest my time so I get a lot of future time back? I think that\u2019s the way wealthy people think.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>That\u2019s great. So let me ask you a question. So I get a lot of people that, they don\u2019t necessarily ask me, I want to write a book. Or they don\u2019t necessarily say, I want this specific piece of advice because we have a lot of stuff. We get people\u2014unfortunately, Carol and I, we get a lot of people who say, we\u2019re doing the same thing you\u2019re doing. We\u2019d love to take you to lunch. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">We\u2019d love to just pick your brain. We value your time but if we could just have some of your time, that would be tremendously valuable to us. And it\u2019s those people, it\u2019s very difficult to say no because I remember when Carol and I were starting, we had people who, we did the same thing. They said yes to us and we\u2019ve been very successful thanks to their generosity of time. How do you say no to somebody like that? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Jay: <\/b>Well, I\u2019m looking at my bookshelf and I\u2019ve got<i> Face Out, Negotiating Real Estate, Flipping Houses, Estimating Rehab Costs<\/i>. So how much time do you think it took you to write those books?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>Probably about two years total.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Jay: <\/b>So it\u2019s a lot, right? It\u2019s a lot of effort but now a lot of times, you could say hey, would you mind reading this? We\u2019re going to be talking about this. Would you mind reading this book? I invested two years of my life making this available to the world. That could become our baseline for having a better, richer conversation. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So I want to have a better use of our time. You don\u2019t have to say the same things that you have to say in your book. So again, anytime you can do that. Other strategies\u2014making an event, right? Make it an event so that instead of meeting one person, you can meet a bunch of people.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>That is a great tip.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>That\u2019s an excellent tip. We actually\u2014I\u2019m going to take this down to a personal level, really quickly. We\u2019re moving, Jay, and we\u2019re right in the middle\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Jay: <\/b>I\u2019m sorry. I just did that right before my signatory last month. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Oh, my goodness. Just so you know, I never thought of it in these terms, but really, it\u2019s really prominent in a whole life level like us, too. We wanted our kids to be able to see the new school they are going to be going to, so they called the principal, we\u2019re going to be in town on this date. Is there any way we might be able to come and tour the school for a half-hour? Absolutely. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Here\u2019s your half-hour block. We\u2019re actually going to have you meet with the Assistant Principal. Two days before we got there, we received a phone call from the secretary that said, you\u2019re actually going to be meeting with the Principal, but it\u2019s your family along with seven other families. Because what they did, we\u2019re like, wow, if that\u2019s not such an eye-opener from what you\u2019re talking about, from an event standpoint. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">One person is interested, and of course, more requests. If you\u2019re in business or whatever you\u2019re doing, more requests are always going to be coming in. So if you have some time blocked out anyway, perhaps like you said, you can create an event around it. Get more people involved so you\u2019re really maximizing that time.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Jay: <\/b>There you go. So like maybe once a month, ya\u2019ll host a happy hour for couples. And people can show up, right? And they can bring you referrals. There can be a total win if four of you say, look, once a month I get together. It\u2019s on this topic. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">If no one RSVPs, we don\u2019t do it but here\u2019s how you do that. I know people who have turned that into a money-making thing, right? They can charge admission if you get into a system where there\u2019s real value. But it\u2019s a way to leverage your time and still bring value. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">But by making it for that morning or that afternoon, it\u2019s only focused on that topic and you can reach more people, you\u2019re creating more like a legacy. You\u2019ve developed these skills. You want to share those skills. Writing a book is a great legacy thing. But how can you reach a larger impact, a larger audience and have a bigger impact? That\u2019s the question you want to ask.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Instead of being a one-to-one business, it\u2019s going from I do it to we do it to they do it. How do you make that progression? To be able to reach larger and larger audiences with your impact every single day. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>That\u2019s great. Two things that struck out to me from our conversation first, you started the conversation\u2014you showed up about three minutes late and you gave me literally the most sincere apology that I\u2019ve received for anything. You would have thought you just killed my dog the way you apologize for showing up three minutes late. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">That sent the message to me how much you valued my time and there was immediately a personal connection there. This is somebody who isn\u2019t just a random stranger but I\u2019m looking forward to speaking with. I don\u2019t care if you were three minutes late. I was thrilled that we had a chance to talk and you basically demonstrated to me the very first thing off the bat was I value your time. I value you, and that apology, that stuck with me. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Jay: <\/b>Oh, cool.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>So thank you for that. First of all.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Jay: <\/b>I didn\u2019t throw my kids or my dog under the bus. My kids made me late or whatever. That\u2019s good. That\u2019s good. I did a good job that day. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>Yes, you did.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>J. My J. Husband J. Let me just jump into Jay, and just reiterate Jay Papasan. I\u2019ve got to tell you, I\u2019ve got to reiterate everything you\u2019re saying. I remember<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>when he got off that phone call with you and he literally came downstairs. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">He was like, wow, I just had the most impactful conversation I\u2019ve had in years and years. And this is why and these are the things he\u2019s done. It truly has, however long ago that was, it has completely changed the way my J., my husband J., approaches everything. So I\u2019m so grateful for this.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Jay: <\/b>Is he doing the dishes and laundry like I told him to?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Oh, absolutely. You get all the credit. You get all the credit.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>So the second thing\u2014I guess there are three. The second thing you did is your tip. But I\u2019m going to throw it out there because just for expediency, you\u2019d probably get to it. But you started the conversation with, we have a short time together. How can we best use this time to\u2014I don\u2019t remember your exact words but how can we best use the short time we have together to benefit both of us? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So right off the bat, you focused us. You forced me to think about, why are we having this conversation? I assume you probably already thought about it yourself. And then you basically created parameters around the conversation that wouldn\u2019t allow it to go too long or kind of deviated into places where it wasn\u2019t being useful to either of us.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So I just found that tremendously useful. You\u2019re simply saying, how can we best use this short time together? And strategic use of the word \u2018short\u2019 to kind of send the signal to me that your time is valuable as well and I need to respect that. I love that. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Jay: <\/b>Well, thank you. I think it\u2019s a function of over the years, our life, our wife and I, it\u2019s just gotten crazier and crazier. I feel like my day is kind of kneaded out and tablespoons, to quote the old poem, right? There\u2019s just a lot going on. And when I\u2019m meeting with someone I don\u2019t know, I do want to know, what\u2019s the one thing we can talk about that makes this a win? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Did you have an agenda because if it aligns with mine, it\u2019s awesome. I\u2019ll start right there. If it\u2019s way off the reservation, I can reset expectations right off the bat. That came from messing it up a lot of times. So for about five years now, one of my events that I lead people to is people want to get together. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So on Wednesday mornings, I have a standing coffee date. And I went to the same place. People have to come to me. That\u2019s my way. I\u2019m a super incredible introvert. You just wouldn\u2019t believe. I can do this. One on one, I can teach. But usually, it takes energy, not give it back. I like to be alone with a book or a fishing rod. That\u2019s just my personality. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">But I know to be a business person, I have to network. So every week, I try to meet with someone new. And I can focus people on hey, let\u2019s get together for coffee. Great. I meet on Wednesdays. I\u2019ll hook you up with my remote assistant and we\u2019ll find the next date available. But that becomes a thing that I move into, and those meetings, I never know who I\u2019m meeting. That\u2019s how I start them off now.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Because sometimes people have a burning question and they don\u2019t ask it until we\u2019re five minutes to the end. And then I feel really bad because like, I\u2019ve got to go, right? So I just learned the hard way that I need to get that question up front so that we can at least set expectations about whether we\u2019ll get there or not, so hopefully we can really provide value.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>You touched on something I think is really crucial in there, and first of all, fascinated to know that you\u2019re an introvert. That\u2019s a major shocker to me. That\u2019s like, I can\u2019t even get my head around that. Knowing that that is the case, I think that a lot of people are, right? And there are a lot of amazing business people who just happen to be introverts.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So I like how you said that you set that expectation up front. What types of tips for people do you have who are introverts to get them out of their comfort zone so that they can get that maximum information, the best interactions possible? How do you get people to open up more and be more effective?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Jay: <\/b>First off, if you\u2019re in business, and you\u2019re not doing any\u2014we call it prospecting, right? Prospecting is when I go out and I talk to my prospective customer and I look for what might or might not work. If I\u2019m not in touch with the market, my business is going to suffer at some point. If I\u2019m just doing marketing, I\u2019ve got great spreadsheets to tell me what does and doesn\u2019t work. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">But getting in the trenches with people, a lot of times, that\u2019s when the magic happens where you find partners, future employees, all those things. So if you\u2019re an introvert like me, it\u2019s not a \u2018should I\u2019, it\u2019s a \u2018must do\u2019, period. So find your strategy. Going to conferences is not going to work for me. One, I have to leave my family, my kids still want to hang out with me. I just don\u2019t want to do that yet. I don\u2019t like meeting tons of strangers. I get more value. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So you get to pick your poison but you have to do something and you have to do it regularly. Doing it whenever you think about it actually doesn\u2019t yield a lot of results. My little one coffee a week over five years has actually added up to a lot more than just one person added to my database each week because it\u2019s compounded over the years. It forced me to create a newsletter to stay in touch with those people. It\u2019s created events. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">When people want to keep coming back for another one, I can say hey, I\u2019m having a get-together on this time, so I don\u2019t have to do another one-on-one. Regular inputs, right? Regular investments and that really adds up over time. So I would just say pick something that matches your personality. For me, it\u2019s one-on-one. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">If you\u2019re an extrovert, then I mean, my wife\u2014it\u2019s not coffee. It\u2019s like millionaire mochas or millionaire margaritas. It\u2019s more of a party atmosphere for her. But if she does that regularly, it adds up and her business is about, I want to say 70-74% referral-based. And she did over 100 million in volume in real estate last year. So it\u2019s not a small business. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">She\u2019s regularly getting\u2014we throw movie parties. We do things like that. How can I get face-to-face with my potential customers and partners on a regular basis? So I don\u2019t know exactly where all you want to go with that question, but that\u2019s the first thing that came to mind.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>That\u2019s great.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>I love that. The consistency is huge. It sounds like a really big key to making that happen. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Jay: <\/b>Just sticking with it. A small dose of it every week adds up to a lot more than you think. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>That\u2019s awesome. Okay. I want to get to the third thing that you did in that conversation that kind of really stuck with me. You said, what can I do today to help you? Do you have an ask for me? I don\u2019t remember exactly how you said it but I wish I did. I wish I would have recorded it. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">But you basically, you gave e permission to ask something of you and it was great because I had actually gone into the conversation asking could I invite you onto the show today? But you opened yourself up there, so how did you know or what would have happened if I made an ask that was something that you didn\u2019t want to provide or something larger than you had the bandwidth to provide? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I imagine giving that opening to people, and I assume you don\u2019t give that to everybody\u2014I thank you, but how do you ensure that that opening that you give to people doesn\u2019t ultimately infringe on your personal time and bandwidth?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Jay: <\/b>So I\u2019ll just confirm a couple of things. I don\u2019t offer that to everybody. That\u2019s something I kind of feel out. When I feel out, in these meetings, right? The calls or the coffee, that I\u2019m in the presence of someone who is a pretty cool individual, right? I love the fact that ya\u2019ll are a husband and wife team. I don\u2019t find a lot of entrepreneur\u2014in our industry, real estate is pretty common but outside of that, it\u2019s not.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"> But I\u2019m looking for other role models to learn from. So when I find enough dots there, I\u2019m like, okay\u2014I feel like I\u2019m fairly in alignment. I\u2019m willing to make a deeper investment in the relationship, I will set parameters on that, right? People say, will you write a foreword for my book? Will you give me a testimonial? And the answer is always going to be \u201cno\u201d. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">We have 160,000 associates in Keller Willliams. You would not believe how many of them want to write books. And if I start giving testimonials and writing forewords for people who aren\u2019t even in our business partnership, how do I say no to them?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So I usually offer different things. Can I give you advice on marketing? Can I bring you onto our podcast? I have a set series of things that are easy yeses for me. And by the way, if I invite you onto my podcast, who\u2019s got to do that? It\u2019s not me. It\u2019s Jeff. Jeff runs my podcast. So I actually have got standing guests from him, if I think a person is of quality. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So I guess it comes back to, I kind of know in advance what I can say yes to. I\u2019m open to other conversations but I don\u2019t usually say yes on the spot if it\u2019s new. I\u2019ll say hey, can I think about this? And it\u2019s real. Ya\u2019ll have a great built-in governor for that. You know what? My partner is my spouse. Can I chat with them before I give you a firm yes? I would love to say yes, but can I chat with them? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So I have two people like that in my life. One is my wife, Wendy. Who is my business partner in all of my real estate businesses. And then I\u2019ve got Gary Keller, who is my business partner in my publishing business. I have two people that if I\u2019m investing my time outside of those relationships, could have a negative impact. So what\u2019s good about that, you\u2019re a real estate investor, right? This is an offer contingent on my business partner\u2019s approval. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Absolutely.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Jay: <\/b>Right? It\u2019s a standard practice. It allows you an out. It allows you to test the waters and still have an out. Same thing here. You can do that with everything you do. You just have to be aware of it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>That\u2019s great. So yeah, so it\u2019s not even that in negotiations. Like you were saying, just bring it down to your personal interactions and your daily life and how you relate to people. I like that a lot.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>That\u2019s great.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Jay: <\/b>I\u2019ve got some curves, right? The bowling lane has got walls up against it so I can know kind of what I\u2019m going to say no and what I\u2019m going to say yes to. There\u2019s people in those relationships that I find interesting or beneficial. I mean, I\u2019m in the publishing business. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Ya\u2019ll have a podcast. That raises you up. You have a platform that can help my partners, right? You just have to know, what am I looking for If you\u2019re wondering around with no notions of what you\u2019ll say yes to, you\u2019ll say yes to some bad things. So again, it comes back to, what am I willing to say yes to or do you have kind of some rough parameters for that?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>That\u2019s great. So before we move onto the next part of our show, let\u2019s hear from one of our show sponsors.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>Real estate investing is known for a lot of things, mainly making a select group of people a lot of money. But being on cutting edge experience is usually not one of its hallmarks. Well, that\u2019s no longer the case. Fundrise is the future of real estate investing. Their revolutionary model is transforming the industry, thanks to software that cuts out costly middlemen and old market inefficiencies. Fundrise delivers the kind of investing powers you usually only see in giant institutions, bringing real estate\u2019s unique potential for long-term growth and cash flow to individual investors.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>Getting started is simple and usually takes less than five minutes. When you invest, you will be instantly diversified across dozens of real estate projects, each one carefully vetted and actively managed by Fundrise\u2019s team of real estate pros. Then, you can use their intuitive investor dashboard and real-time reporting system to monitor the progress in each property within your portfolio. That\u2019s the future of real estate investing.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>So, ready to get started? Visit Fundrise.com\/BPBusiness. That\u2019s Fundrise.com\/BPBusiness to have your first three months of fees waived. Again, that\u2019s Fundrise.com\/BPBusiness.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>Small business owners wear a lot of hats and while some hats are really great, others, like filing taxes and running payroll hat, not so great. So that\u2019s where Gusto comes in. Gusto makes payroll, taxes, and managing a team actually easy for small businesses. Gusto actually automatically pays and files your federal state and local taxes so you don\u2019t have to worry about it. <\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>Plus, they make it easy to add on health benefits and even 401Ks for your team. Oh, and you can even get direct access to certified HR experts, too. 90% of customers say switching to Gusto was easy. You can do it in less than 10 minutes and if you\u2019re thinking, oh, I already work with tools like say, Quickbooks. Well, get this. Gusto can integrate with those platforms so you can keep everything in one place, all online.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>So listen up for this offer. Because you listen to BiggerPockets Business, you get three months free when you run your first payroll on Gusto. This is one hat you\u2019re going to be glad you gave up. So try a demo and see for yourself at Gusto.com\/BPB. Like BiggerPockets Business. Again, that\u2019s Gusto.com\/BPB. <\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>Okay, I appreciate you kind of taking that detour with us. I know on our discussion, when we were talking about this show and I think I asked you if you had a topic that you would like to kind of delve into, to help our listeners and you had mentioned hiring. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And so I would love it if you\u2019re good with it. It\u2019d love to spend the rest of this discussion, talking about hiring\u2014we have a lot of listeners, I\u2019d imagine, are on the cusp of hiring employees, have thought about hiring employees, maybe have hired their first employee and they\u2019ve either had successes or failures with it. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And I think given your background, I know speaking with you previously, you have a tremendous amount of expertise and experience with hiring employees. So if it\u2019s good with you, I\u2019d love to take the rest of this discussion and talk about hiring. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Jay: <\/b>I love it, and it\u2019s actually, to me, the moment you begin delegating, it\u2019s another way you\u2019re saying no, right? It\u2019s a way you\u2019re investing your time. If I can teach someone over 30 hours to do my one-hour task as well as I do it, a lot of times, they\u2019re going to do it better. As an entrepreneur, it doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019re better at all those things. It just means you\u2019re very invested at making sure they get done. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">You don\u2019t have a janitor, you are the janitor. If you don\u2019t have a call coordinator, you\u2019re the front desk person, right? But you\u2019ll do those because you\u2019re the owner and at the end of the day, the buck stops with you. So it doesn\u2019t even mean you\u2019re better. You\u2019re just invested. So getting those things off your plate so you can do really highly dollar-productive activities? I mean this whole conversation around hiring is what are we saying yes to or what are we saying no to? To me, it\u2019s perfectly aligned.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>That\u2019s great. Love that. So can you take us through how many employees you currently have, whether it be at KellerINK, your publishing company, or within. I know you run a very large real estate team, on your real estate team, like give us an idea of scale of your businesses and how many people you\u2019ve hired over the years.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Jay: <\/b>Sure. Right now, I\u2019m in charge of all content for Keller Williams. So I\u2019ve got our publishing team. I\u2019ve got our course-writing team. And we have a video team. So it\u2019s about 34 people in all. That\u2019s a recent development. I had a team of about seven that was focused on publishing and recently, I got the two new departments. And so, for me, that\u2019s all about do I have the right interim leadership or leadership in place so I don\u2019t have\u2014I can\u2019t have 34 people reporting to me. That\u2019s untenable. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">But I can have five or six people, ideally three to seven is the range where you can have really great managerial leadership relationships. If I had those people in place between me and the larger group, we\u2019re all good. So that\u2019s what I\u2019ve got in my day-to-day. My wife runs a real estate team. We have about 20 agents across five cities and five full-time admin in that group. And I don\u2019t know. Hiring. It comes in spurts, right? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">You have like, right now, I think I have five open positions. I didn\u2019t have one open position for the previous six months. The thing I\u2019m committed to doing, because it\u2019s something that you learn, is you know that there are some core critical positions, right? Admin talent. Sales talent. Creative talent. And all of my networking activities, right? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">First and foremost around, do I have a bench of people I can reach out to, either to fill those positions if my people leave, or who might know the people that will fill those positions? So when you think about building your database, we say around here, your business is your database. There\u2019s a database that you get your business from and there\u2019s a database that you get hiring from. And talent. Whether it\u2019s contract or full-time, and so making that a discipline is huge. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So I would say, gosh, probably about 50% of my hires over the last five years have come from my singular networking activity, that coffee. Either it was that person or they knew someone that they could connect me with. A referral is a great way to fill a spot on your team. I have no idea how many people in the last 18 years, I\u2019ve actually hired. It\u2019s not hundreds, though, right? It\u2019s probably less than a hundred, but it\u2019s up there. I\u2019ve had a lot of those conversations and it\u2019s something I try to do regularly just to stay in the practice.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Right. Following up on that with your coffee conversations and the interactions that leads to, would you say that you have found a lot of people overall that you just know they are a good person for your company, or they\u2019ve got a great talent, and you create roles for them? Or would you say you more intentionally fill specific roles and seek out the person to fit into this role?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Jay: <\/b>Both. Every year, my wife and I do a goalsetting retreat. We get out of the house. We spend at least one night, some place without our kids, without our dog, without any chores. Sometimes we just get a hotel downtown off Priceline. Sometimes we travel. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And one of the things that we look at, at speaking events, people ask us about it over the 12 years we\u2019ve been doing it\u2014we have an annual event that we host. A goalsetting retreat for couples. Because so many people wanted to learn from us, we just made it an event. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">One of the things that we always identify is who are we missing in our lives? And we call it a \u201cMissing Persons Report\u201d and that\u2019s stolen straight out of our KW book. This year, I know my wife has got a personal assistant on her list and we talking about who is it that we\u2019re looking for? What are we looking for?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I was looking for a writer and an editorial director. And those were things, whenever we have a new position, we sit down and say, who is this person, and who are we looking for so we can both have our eyes set on the streets. So if that person shows up, I have my \u201cMissing Persons Report\u201d. Oh, wow. This person might be a match.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So I\u2019ll give you an example. One of our team members, Kailyn, who works on our podcast training team, her partner moved to Austin to be on our team with us. I never really spent a lot of time with him but he always volunteers for our events. He just shows up to help out. Like, super helpful guy. He said, I hear about your coffee thing. Can we have coffee? I was like great.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Well, for almost a year, my wife and I have been wanting to start a new business and we were missing the \u201cwho\u201d. We wanted to start a construction business around maintenance and home. She sells about 300 homes a year\u2014how many of those home sales before the sale or after the sale have work to do? A lot of them.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Yeah, so it\u2019s just a natural extension and we pretty much have made one contractor\u2014we just start 50-60% of his business, period. So why wouldn\u2019t we naturally think about that? But we didn\u2019t have the right \u201cwho\u201d. And we interviewed a few people. So I\u2019m sitting down with Brent. We start talking and I only know him as a guy who helps people with their internet marketing, setting up websites. He\u2019s like a tech guy in my mind. And he works with some big people.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Like, we\u2019re getting together\u2014I have no agenda. Tell me a little bit about yourself. Oh, well in California, for 12 years, I was a carpenter. I was like, oh. That\u2019s interesting. And then he starts walking me through this journey of getting tired of being so tired on the weekends when his friends came back from their internet jobs, right? He was exhausted and just wanted to lay on the couch. They wanted to go out and go surfing in the afternoon. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">He\u2019s like, okay, I need a new job. So he lived in a van, taught himself programming outside of a programming school, actually got on the news for it. And then went on to do this internet marketing thing with a whole bunch of people. I was like, wow. That\u2019s a really weird set of skills to have together\u2014craftsmanship and internet marketing and business consulting? And so he immediately became the candidate and we ended up hiring him to start this business. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">But it wouldn\u2019t have happened if we didn\u2019t have a \u201cMissing Persons Report\u201d. Who are we looking for in general, and what\u2019s our ideal skillset? Right? It just happened to show up. But if you\u2019re always on the corner looking, you\u2019d be surprised how often it does show up. We had a list. We knew we were looking for it, and we were always looking for it. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Very cool. When you and your wife, when you do identify these people in your \u201cMissing Persons Report\u201d, do you go through and really hammer out what the details are of not just that role, but the specific types of things you want those people to do?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Jay: <\/b>A little bit of both. So this is Gary Kellerism. If I say something really smart, just assume Gary Keller or my wife taught me. And we wanted to say this again and again. I don\u2019t like to get credit for things I didn\u2019t come up with. But when we talk about job descriptions, a lot of the time, it\u2019s pretty sterile stuff. A long list. And Gary taught me many years ago to flip that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">He said, what are the three things, if they don\u2019t do well, you\u2019ll have to fire them. And that\u2019s\u2014you\u2019re flipping a whole conversation. There\u2019s all the things that you would love for them to do. Now, what is it that if they don\u2019t do well, you\u2019re going to have to fire them. It gets you very clear\u2014we usually rank those three things one, two, three. And that gives us a sense of who we\u2019re looking for that would have those core skills.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And that becomes a big governor. We also sometimes, if we\u2019re really active in the search, I will literally muse about what kind of background this person might have, right? You know, when I was looking for my editorial director, I was pretty clear. I would love for them to have actual publishing experience. Not self-publishing experience\u2014maybe they\u2019ve worked in New York or Chicago in one of the big houses. They understand that process.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And you just kind of muse through those things. And I keep those very private. You can\u2019t say I\u2019m hopefully looking for a single person who never wants to have kids. Well, that\u2019s great as an employer but that\u2019s completely illegal, right? You can\u2019t screen for that. Right, so what you\u2019re thinking about is, what does the ideal candidate look like? What do they talk like? But that actually becomes what you share with a friend.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Hey, I\u2019m looking for someone who knows a lot about construction. Maybe they\u2019ve been a project manager on a construction team. Maybe they\u2019ve had their own carpenter business or had their handyman business, but we also need someone who is a business person, right? They understand what a PNL is and are willing or interested in learning.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">That dialogue was shaped by the \u201cMissing Persons Report\u201d. But when you ask for something fairly specific, that\u2019s how your network knows how to respond. Otherwise, they would just be looking through the Yellow Pages and sending me a bunch of names of handypersons and that might be at all a good use of our time.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I want someone who is good with construction and has the potential to be a businessperson. And that little thought process narrows and screens a lot of the candidates out. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>It becomes your little elevator speech, like you said, to your network to find those right people rather than using that as what you\u2019re specifically looking for when you\u2019re interviewing that person, right? Like you said, that is your little pitch when you\u2019re looking for that person.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Jay: <\/b>Well, if you have a good pipeline of candidates, like all right, here\u2019s the thing. I\u2019m not a great manager. I am a better coach than a manager. I don\u2019t like all the details. I don\u2019t like project management. There\u2019s a lot of the stuff that I\u2019m not particularly good at. And you look up and you say, what fixes all of that?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">If you hire a great, talented individual, you can be a crappy manager because they are going to be self-managed. Right? They are going to be self-motivated so you don\u2019t have to motivate them. So investment on the front end and having a great pipeline to have the opportunity to attract great talent? That\u2019s 90% of leadership right there, is getting the right person on board.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>So that is, I love that. So I\u2019d love to delve a little bit deeper into that front loading of ensuring that you have great candidates. So for every position, you\u2019re going to have a list of technical questions that are specifically related to does this person have the skills to do that job?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">But then there are going to be a whole bunch of other questions and information that you\u2019re seeking about the person in general. The level of motivation, their level of ability to take initiative, things like that. Are there specific strategies or even specific questions that you will ask potential employees to kind of gauge whether they fit in well with your team or whether they\u2019re going to take that initiative on their own, whether they\u2019d just make good employees outside of the specific technical skills that you might be looking for, for that role? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Jay: <\/b>Yes, yes, yes. So probably before I started at Keller Williams in 2000, I bet Gary had already invested $5-6 million dollars in trying to perfect the hiring process. We called it recruit select. Today, it\u2019s called recruiter vision. We have, I want to say, a five-interview process. And there\u2019s a lot of screening up front. So again, let\u2019s take that three-part job description. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">If your number one is, I don\u2019t know, writing\u2014that\u2019s like for a writer. If they can\u2019t write well, then why would we even be considering them? We don\u2019t just talk to them about it. We have a test. So, we gave every person who\u2019s ever applied for a writing job a very similar assignment. So every job position, we change it a little bit, but it\u2019s the same assignment for every candidate. And now we compare all of their products side by side. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And believe me, when you have a hundred people submitting a five-page essay on how to do a 1031 tax-deferred exchange or whatever it was. That was literally one of ours. Let\u2019s pick something really detailed and boring because they might think this is a sexy publishing job. I want them to know that there\u2019s hard work involved and if they can\u2019t do it right, then they don\u2019t even get to the phone screening. So some people will say, I\u2019m a published author. I don\u2019t need to do that. Awesome. You can apply elsewhere. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>So great. You basically are giving people the opportunity to self-select themselves out of the process.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Jay: <\/b>I\u2019d rather say no to ten good ones than hire one bad one. The same principle of investing, right? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>Absolutely.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Jay: <\/b>There\u2019s no way to avoid that house with a nasty surprise if you invest in enough houses. But you want to do everything in your power to avoid it. You\u2019ll walk away, walk away, walk away so that you can really get the great deals, not get a bad one. Same thing for people.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So it starts with a test. One of the things we do very late in the process, we call it the group interview. We have the core team show up and we just have a lunch. And get a chance to hang out with that person and get a sense of who it is that they might be working with, and they get veto power.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So we do that. We do kind of a biographical interview where we go all the way back to their last education. And we ask them, what would you do? What was their job? What did you learn? The positives and negatives, and what did you earn?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And so, we just walk through that chronology. It\u2019s a different way of going through their resume, basically. But now I have them at the whiteboard. Or the flip chart, and they\u2019re drawing it out and I get to sit back and listen to how they talked about their previous interviews. What did they learn? To me, it\u2019s very valuable to have a learning-based person. So are they learning on their journey?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">What is their career trajectory? Tell me what they earned. I usually annualize it, right? If they make $15 bucks an hour and work 40 hours a week, that\u2019s about $30,000 a year. So we can annualize it. Is their trajectory going up or is it going down? I like to catch people on the way up, right? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">If at all possible, so we have that and we have another one called the motivational interview where we try to say what\u2019s really important to you\u2014it\u2019s too long to explain here. But it\u2019s what\u2019s really important to you. Why is that? What does that mean to you? How does that make you feel? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I mean, people will sometimes will even cry in this interview. But my whole goal is, if they are looking out five years in their life, tell me what they think is most important to them right now. If the job I am offering them is going to prevent that from happening, they\u2019re going to leave me. So we need to exit the process today.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So they don\u2019t know it but we have a built-in process that allows them to interview us. And if the alignment is not there, why are we going to do all of the hard work of training someone, getting them a computer, getting them set up\u2014all of that just so they\u2019ll leave us in two years? I want people that are going to be around. So we\u2019ve got a very involved process.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I would say involve others. Ya\u2019ll are a husband and wife team. So you could take anyone in your team, give someone on your team veto power. Absolute veto power. And it sucks to have to go back to the drawing board. But again, if someone else comes in and you can\u2019t convince them that this is a yes, then you shouldn\u2019t be hiring them, right?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>No, that would be a big time waster for everybody. It\u2019s a time waster for that candidate. It\u2019s a time waster for you. It\u2019s a time waster for the entire team because you\u2019re going to be right back at it doing it all again, like you said, two years from now and that\u2019s no good for anybody, right?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Jay: <\/b>Oh, it sucks. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>It reminds me of the advice we give the contractors. People don\u2019t realize that the worst case scenario with the contractor isn\u2019t that they slow things down. And that they have no impact. The worst case scenario obviously with a contractor is that they have a negative impact. They cost you more money. They cost you more time. They take you backwards. They destroy the quality.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">It\u2019s the same way with a bad hire. A bad hire isn\u2019t just a waste of time. It\u2019s potentially a waste of money. It\u2019s potential bringing down the morale of the entire team. It basically sets you back. So it\u2019s not just a bad hire. It is something neutral for your business. It is something that can actively be negative for your business. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Jay: <\/b>Oh, it costs you goodwill with your customers. Really good employees will leave because of the bad employee that hasn\u2019t been caught being bad yet.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>That\u2019s right.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Jay: <\/b>We do an exercise call \u201cThe Cost of a Bad Hire\u201d where we created about 15 different categories and we ask people to add it up. And one of the times I taught that, I taught it to Alamo Drafthouse. It\u2019s a theater place where you go in and you watch a movie. They have a bar. They have a restaurant. Whatever. And one of the guys in the audience did the exercise and he said, I can tell you very factually that I hired a waiter that cost us $350,000 minimum. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">When people do that math\u2014oh yeah, they just don\u2019t\u2014the stakes are high. So again, there\u2019s no infallible process. Right? Just like in investing. There\u2019s no way you invest in enough houses over time, that your process will be utterly infallible. Like sometimes you are going to get a nasty surprise. But hopefully you\u2019ve made so many good decisions, you can recover from it. It\u2019s the same with hiring.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Invest in the process that minimizes your chances of bringing someone bad on board and maximized your change to bring someone good on board. And then live that process. Be faithful to it. Give someone veto power. We have a defense. At the very end of our process, I walk in, I have Gary. I have like, right now if I hire a writer, I\u2019ll have Gary, our lead writer at the table and maybe one other person. And their job is to say no.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"> And I have to convince them otherwise. Their default answer is no way. We\u2019re not hiring this person. And Gary laughs. He goes, you\u2019re looking defensive, Jay. And I go, I\u2019m feeling defensive. Good. That means the process is going right. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>It\u2019s working how it\u2019s supposed to. It\u2019s working how you mapped it out and you\u2019re following it along so you\u2019re finding those good employees, right? You\u2019re saying no, no, no, no until you find that one that is just the perfect person. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So once you get that person, the best employees, what you do to retain that, what you do to strengthen your team together with that person\u2014what are some tips you have to make sure that you keep that person as long as possible so you\u2019re maximizing your investment with your people?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Jay: <\/b>I love that. It\u2019s a great person. I would say, the first thing is you\u2019ve brought them on board. Congratulations. You\u2019re up now for a 90-day interview. Remember those three parts of your job description? One of our disciplines is the first hundred or 90 days, depending on who you ask. It\u2019s 90 but a lot of people call it their first 100 days like a presidency. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Can you test for those three things? Can you create assignments to make sure that the person you thought could do those three things can actually do them? And at the end of that 90 days, you get to celebrate. So I think one of the first things you can do to ensure longevity is inspect what you expect right off the bat.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Say hey, I love Carol. I love the fact that you joined our team. I\u2019m so flattered that you would join our team. So our first 90 days is our extended interview process. Here are the three things that I want you to be able to do at the end of the 90 days. I\u2019m on the hook for training you how to do it, making sure that you have the time and resources to do it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">You\u2019re on the hook for doing it. Or, failing is such a way that I know that you can do it. Either way, it\u2019s a win. But if you look up and say wow, these three big objectives\u2014I\u2019m going to hate doing my job and you\u2019re in the wrong place. We can very quickly eliminate it. Sometimes we don\u2019t know until we do the job. But this now becomes our exploration.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So first off, right off the bat, select a period of time. Don\u2019t start bonding with them and inviting them to your house for family dinners. Keep some emotional distance. The number one mistake people make is we fall in love with our candidates. So step back for a little while longer and see if they are a good fit. I\u2019ve had people who looked awesome show up and were absolutely a cancer on the team.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">You know those people who are great at managing up? But the moment you leave the room, they are nasty to the waiter or the hired help or just to the people they perceive to be less politically powerful. I\u2019ve hired those people. They are really good at hiding it. But they can\u2019t hide it for 90 days. Most people can\u2019t do it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So beyond that, you just need to make sure that people have a career path. If people\u2014do you understand what it is they want from their occupation? What is the reason they are here? What are they hoping to fulfill? Are you helping open those doors for them. Because if your job is closing doors in their personal life, they will leave you. So how do you earn the right as a manager to know what\u2019s really important to them?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Maybe they\u2019re training for a marathon. Maybe they want to have a baby and they need the security to know their job will be waiting for them. How do you know that level of trust so they tell you what\u2019s actually important in their life, not just their job? So that you can make sure their job is fulfilling that. And I don\u2019t do that for everybody. I mean, I don\u2019t want to be a barrier to people\u2019s lives. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">But the people who report directly to me, those leaders, I need to be in their business. I need to know where they are going, where they want to go. And if their expectations are way off, I need to reset them. But if their expectations are fair, then I need to be willing to answer the question, \u201cHey boss, what would I have to do in order to earn the right for x?\u201d It\u2019s a script. What would I have to do in order to earn the right to x? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">That\u2019s a test of whether you got the right employer. If they can\u2019t answer that or say I need time to think about that, but everything should be earnable. And it could be a crazy task but you have to put it out there. And so, you have to allow them to feel like they are making progress in their life. I don\u2019t want somebody who just wants to hide in my job and feel security. I want someone that feels like they are progressing because guess what, if they are progressing, who is getting progressed, too? Me.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Everybody. You got it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>That\u2019s great. There was an implication there in your examples of maybe you have an employee that runs a marathon. Maybe you have an employee that wants to have a baby. There is an important implication there that this isn\u2019t just a conversation that you want to have when you hire somebody. It\u2019s not even a conversation you want to have once a year at a performance review. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">This should be an ongoing conversation you\u2019re having every month or every month or every week or every two months, whatever it is. Because people\u2019s lives change and we get so wrapped up in ourselves as managers, that we\u2019re focused on the business, the task, driving the business forward that we lose sight of the fact that these are real people that we\u2019re dealing with. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And it may be that somebody on your team, since last week, they\u2019ve had a major change in their life. Maybe something\u2019s happened with their family. Maybe something\u2019s happened with their spouse or their children. And so, as a manager, it\u2019s our job to have these conversations constantly.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Jay: <\/b>I would agree with that, and again, we haven\u2019t formalized it. So for 18 years every week, I create what\u2019s called a 411. I have mine right here. I do it electronically and I carry with me as a bookmark for my notebook. So I always can have my goals in front of me. My annually and weekly goals.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Well, I meet with my key staff members on a weekly basis and we make sure their priorities are aligned with the company priorities. So annual reviews, like if I have to wait until the end of the year to give you the bad news, I am doing a horrible job. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">What we get is a weekly rhythm. It\u2019s a short quick meeting. What are your big rocks for this week, right? What\u2019s your 20%, your one thing? What do you need? Do you have the training? Do you feel like you\u2019re empowered to do it? Well, you learn very quickly is if you ask what are you going to do this week and the next week, they know you are going to ask, how did you do?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">People will know that you\u2019re paying attention. And if they are not actually accountable and they are not actually wanting to do the work, they will self-select out. You don\u2019t even have to be a bad manager. So J., you said you were going to do another FI podcast last week. I see that you do two. How do you feel about that?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I\u2019m not putting any judgment on it. But if over five weeks, you\u2019re happy doing less than 50% of your goal, I\u2019m going to comment on that. I\u2019m going to say look, for the last five weeks, you\u2019ve been doing two out of five. Our goals are way off. How are you going to make up that ground? And we get to have that conversation. And hopefully, it\u2019s not you being the mean boss, the thumb on the head, all of that. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">You are there to mirror their performance and either that gets uncomfortable or it\u2019s very comfortable. And it\u2019s in those conversations where we also find out, well Jay, the reason I did two is because I just had a baby. I didn\u2019t tell you this. But you know, she\u2019s not sleeping through the night or she is calling for you or whatever. It\u2019s like, oh. Well, gosh. Okay, that makes sense.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">When do you think you can get back on track? How can we support you? But if you\u2019re not having those regular conversations, you\u2019re probably not building trust and you\u2019re not building accountability.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>And I love your point about no judgment because we all take business very seriously and sometimes it can be easy to take an employee that\u2019s not meeting his or her goals, to take that personally and think, okay, they\u2019re not helping me meet my goals and again, without having that discussion with them\u2014maybe there\u2019s a good reason for it so instead of judging, just having that factual objective conversation. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Jay: <\/b>I do judge. Like, I\u2019m human. I do judge. But our rule is to come from curiosity. So I\u2019m going to ask you before I judge you. If you said, oh man, I\u2019ve been catching up on Game of Thrones. I\u2019d be like dude, I love that show, too. But your priorities are messed up. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">We\u2019re not here to pay you a salary for you to watch Game of Thrones. So we need to get back on track today, right? But I\u2019ll start with curiosity because what if there is something legitimate that I don\u2019t know about? And I think a lot of times\u2014there\u2019s a great book by Shane Parish. It\u2019s only in Audible form now. It\u2019s called the Great Little Models. I can\u2019t remember the name. It\u2019s not Aucom\u2019s razor, it\u2019s another razor. But it basically means, don\u2019t prescribe to malice what could also be prescribe to ignorance.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And a lot of times we are walking around thinking people are just being really mean to us. Oh, that person cut me off. You know how hard it is to actually cut someone off in traffic without having a wreck? It would take really good driving skills and a lot of premeditation. They just didn\u2019t see you. But we go straight to the emotional place. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So as a manager, as a leader, can we first come from curiosity instead of judgment? You can judge later. And it\u2019s actually appropriate. One of the ways we get people that aren\u2019t really pulling their weight out of the organization is to bring accountability there. But start with curiosity, just to be perfectly clear.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Start with curiosity. That\u2019s just a great tenet right there. Start with curiosity.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>I love it. Okay. I could honestly have this conversation for the next four hours but I want to be respectful of your time. So I\u2019d like to jump, if you don\u2019t mind, into the last segment of our show. We call it the <i>Four More<\/i> and it\u2019s where<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>we ask you four quick questions and then at the end, we give you an opportunity to tell us a little more about you and where we can get in touch with or find out more about you and what you\u2019re doing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So Mrs. Scott, would you like to take the first question?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Oh, I would love to. Okay, Jay Papasan, what was your first job ever, or your worst job ever? And what lessons did you learn from it?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Jay: <\/b>So the first job was also kind of my first business. I first started earning money by mowing the yards. And we wrote about this at the end of <i>The Millionaire Real Estate Agent<\/i>. Most people don\u2019t get to page 400 though. It\u2019s not a spoiler for anybody. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I remember I was going out of town. I had about four lawns. And I needed someone to mow them while I was going to be gone on our two-week vacation. So I think there\u2019s a kid named Larry. And I got him to mow the yards. And he said, how much do I get for this? And I told him $10 bucks a yard. And then I went home and I started feeling really guilty because I was getting paid $20 a yard.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And I went to my dad and I said, was that wrong? And he goes no, that\u2019s a business. You did the work of having the opportunity and now you can\u2014it\u2019s a win for him because he was getting no income. And if it\u2019s worth it to him to say yes, it\u2019s his decision. So you don\u2019t need to feel guilty about that at all. It took me many years to appreciate that. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">But later in life, I remember we spent two weeks in the French Riviera with my extended family. Every three years, we try to do a big family trip. My sister\u2019s family, my mom and dad, and our family. And my wife was in a great place with the real estate business. So for almost two weeks, she just virtually didn\u2019t work at all. We did a few e-mails in the morning because we were the first people to get up. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And I remember on the plane ride back, I said, how does it feel to be a business owner for two weeks? Instead of someone who actually has a job in their business. And she goes, it felt amazing. I said, you got a choice. Do you want to go back to being in your business or do you want to stay on it? And at that time, she had to think about it. She goes, you know what? I think I will go back into it. I think there\u2019s more growth that I need to be involved in. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I wish there had been someone there back at 13-years-old to say, Jay, now that we\u2019re back from Florida, do you want to go back to mowing those yards? Or do you want to go hustle for more yards and go find more Larrys to mow them for you? Aw. You know, what that would have done for me then. But that was my first job and I learned so many great lessons, and one of them was, wow. This is what succeeding through others can look like and it\u2019s amazing. It\u2019s so amazing you feel guilty when it happens. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>That\u2019s cool that you learned it\u2014you didn\u2019t even realize you learned it but at the age of 13, you learned that. So that\u2019s awesome that you got to carry that through in your life.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>Okay, next question. What\u2019s an opportunity either in your personal life or your business life where you had to say no, and in retrospect, you\u2019re glad you did? It was a difficult decision at the time but in retrospect, you\u2019re glad you did?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Jay: <\/b>I had an opportunity to take a C-level position, or I perceived an opportunity to take a C-level position here at Keller Williams. Gary was talking to me about the position. I was asking questions around it. And I remember going back home and talking to my wife, and I said, this will be a big jump in my income but I don\u2019t think I would love the job. You know, I said if I don\u2019t jump at this, they might perceive me as not being ambitious. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And I remember saying no to that. I did not put my hat in the ring. I gave recommendations for other people. And I knew at the time, it was like, this could be a dead end. But saying no to that executive position allowed me to stay in the publishing lane. If I hadn\u2019t have stayed in the publishing lane, we wouldn\u2019t have written <i>The One Thing<\/i>. And that was a life-changer for me. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So I\u2019m very happy with that decision to stay in my lane and my core competency and my big opportunity now, which is just as big as that one was, is because of the success I had by staying in my lane and building my skills. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>That\u2019s fantastic.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>I\u2019m grateful you said no, personally, because I don\u2019t know what we would all do without your book. So thank you for saying no to your C-level gig. All right, I\u2019m going to take the next question, okay? So what is the worst advice you\u2019ve ever been given or the worst advice that\u2019s common in your industry? And what did you do with that advice?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Jay: <\/b>Oh, gosh. And I had an answer. Oh, gosh\u2014there\u2019s so much bad advice. I think it\u2019s not even so much per se advice. I think there\u2019s a cult out there of, I can do it better or this only works because I do it and I just think it\u2019s an argument people make so that they can feel like they\u2019re in control. They are riding on their white horse every day but it prevents them from actually enjoying the business.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So I\u2019ll go back. I said earlier, when we talk about business, it goes from I do it to we do it to they do it. And business ownership is they do it. You have a job until you get to that place. And I just think, whether it be\u2014I just see a lot in real estate. The energy it would take to raise up the people around us to replace ourselves systematically is a skillset that most people don\u2019t have or are unwilling to learn. And because of that, they\u2019re going to have jobs for the rest of their lives.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Whether they call themselves business owners, I call them self-employed. To use Robert Kiyosaki, they are very self-employed and if they stop working, their business stops, too. So being great at what you do is awesome. At some point, to run a business, you have to be great at succeeding to others. And I don\u2019t know why people buy into and they feed this idea of, oh, Carol\u2014you are so good at this. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">How could you ever be replaced? They think they\u2019re creating a compliment. But what they\u2019re doing is perpetuating a system where we have to have our hands on things versus succeeding through other people. So that\u2019s probably very much a product of this call. But that\u2019s definitely the number one mistake I see people make. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>That\u2019s great. Love that. Okay, final question\u2014what is something again, either in your business or your personal life that you\u2019ve splurged on and that was totally worth it?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Jay: <\/b>Oh, gosh. The things where we spend the most money\u2014and we\u2019re pretty good at being investors, right? Experiences and food. And so I\u2019ve look at it. We do our budget annually and we always say we\u2019re out of budget when it comes to our\u2014we have a Wednesday night date night, a standing date night, and we\u2019re very much consistently out of budget there. And our travel. But I have no\u2014I\u2019m an experiences kind of person so that time with my wife, that regular time, and we just got back from New York with the kids. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Those experiences with our family, never regret them and some of them, like we took the kids to the Galapagos Islands I guess three years ago, and that was a crazy expensive investment. Like, it was an investment property we didn\u2019t buy, and I think you and I know\u2014when you go out 30 years on those kinds of investments, we might have spent x amount of dollars. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">But over our lifetime, if we had the opportunity cost of that decision, it could be hundreds of thousands. Still, no regrets. Magical, magical experience. And I know, if I am willing to overpay for experiences I get to pay with people I love, I\u2019ll do it every time. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>That\u2019s great. And I love the fact that\u2014I\u2019m not going to presume to have any idea what your net worth is, but you made a point that even people that are high net worth individuals and again, I\u2019m not presuming anything here, but you still do budgets. You do budgets for date nights. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">You do budgets for experiences and that\u2019s really important in any family regardless of what your financial situation might be because it\u2019s just an indication of what you value. You value having that money to pass onto your kids or for other things in the fuure. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Jay: <\/b>I\u2019m not good with budgets. I don\u2019t like budgets. What I\u2019m good at is, if we invest x dollars out of every paycheck, out of every month\u2019s income. If we\u2019re consistent in how we invest our money, everything else takes care of itself. All we have to do is live within our actual boundaries, for the money that\u2019s left over. So invest first, pay yourself first, set aside money for future investments. Live within your budget. Those are just the two disciplines. I don\u2019t like tracking money. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I\u2019ve done it, way back in the beginning. We got rid of our credit cards. We did everything on cash. We did that until we understood and could track mentally so we didn\u2019t have to physically track anymore. It\u2019s kind of like counting calories. You do it long enough that I know that Lagunas IPA has got like 550 calories. It\u2019s much better for me to take that lager than to go for the awesome IPA. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Guinness. Oh, my gosh. Who knew Guinness was like 70 calories. It\u2019s like right up there with the super light beers and it\u2019s got flavor. You get a sense of what is costly and what\u2019s not costly and you try to live within those boundaries. But yeah, we set goals every year for our net worth and how much we wanted to grow. That\u2019s why we\u2019ve been able to grow consistently. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>That\u2019s awesome. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>You have to stay on top of it. Awesome. Okay, Jay, here is the more question\u2014where can our audience find out more about what you\u2019re doing and connect with you?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Jay: <\/b>Sure. Everything that we\u2019re talking about, we\u2019re currently focused on, is on The1Thing.com. So that\u2019s with the number 1. You can link to my social media accounts. Like, I\u2019m actually active on Instagram. That\u2019s my guilty pleasure. It involves pictures, not words. So I can do that. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">But all of our activities, we have goalsettig retreats. We have midyear retreats. We have 411 training. I talked about how our rhythm is. We have a whole community that\u2019s dedicated to goalsetting and how we stay on top of our goals. So all of that is on The1Thing.com. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>That\u2019s awesome. And I\u2019m embarrassed to say, I was going to hold up a copy of <i>The One Thing<\/i>, literally my favorite book of all time. And we\u2019re in the process of moving\u2014we\u2019re moving to Florida in about two weeks.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Packed already?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>And I literally\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Jay: <\/b>I can see it behind me.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>There you go. I literally packed it last night. Anybody that hasn\u2019t read <i>The One Thing<\/i>, I would love to invite you back in a couple of years\u2014again, I want to invite you back in a couple of years. I\u2019m going to give you some time again. I want to respect your time. But we can talk about that book into perpetuity. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So Jay, thank you so much for all of your insights today, both on communication, networking, hiring\u2014this has been absolutely fantastic. We really appreciate you taking the time. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Jay: <\/b>Thanks for having me. I\u2019m glad to be in relationship with ya\u2019ll.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>Thank you, Jay.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Thank you so much. It\u2019s been awesome. Thanks again.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Jay: <\/b>Thank you.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>Okay, I think I\u2019m in love. I want to be his best friend. What did you think of that show, Carol Scott? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>You don\u2019t want to be just his best friend. You want to be him. Let\u2019s be clear. It\u2019s pretty obvious. You are wanting to be Jay. The other Jay. You are wanting to be Jay.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>Every time I talk to him, he changes my perspective on communication and how I should be managing things in my life. And he makes me a better person. I really mean that. As a business owner, he makes me a better business owner. He makes me a more effective business owner. He makes me a better person. So I loved that conversation. I loved that interview and I can\u2019t wait. Hopefully he\u2019ll talk to us again in a few months or a year or two.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>I know, right? He\u2019s just amazing. I\u2019ve got to tell you, my most powerful takeaway was that whole nugget about creating consistent events. No matter how introverted or extroverted you are, right? Just figuring out something that really suits your personality and you can do over and over and over, and that builds over time to create your network. And that it just works in so many different ways for you. I think that one tip was just magical. I\u2019m thrilled that we got to hear from just directly from him and we can start doing that. It\u2019s awesome.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>Alrighty. Okay. I think we\u2019re good. Do you have anything else to add?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Let\u2019s just wrap it up, baby.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>Okay. She\u2019s Carol. I\u2019m J.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Now, go create an event to start your networking today. Have a good one, everyone!<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>See ya, everybody. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Bye!<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>Rb<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>Wize Hire helps you understand your own personality and the personality of job candidates, which is totally crucial if you are trying to find the perfect match for a position. They do this by using DISC personality assessment, and if you are unfamiliar with it, DISC is a simple survey that explains a lot about you. And it helps you build better relationships.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>The BiggerPockets staff actually uses DISC assessmen in their teams. So here\u2019s how it works. Wize Hire simple software and expert hiring coaches help you write a quality job description and then they post your ad to 60+ job boards, including Indeed, LinkedIn, and Zip Recruiter. Once your candidate starts applying, Wize Hire automatically gives them a personality assessment and stores their score as well as their resume in one place for you to review.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>Over 3,000 small businesses and teams trust Wize Hire to help them grow. So check it out today at WizeHire.com. That\u2019s WizeHire.com.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>Okay, go out and support our show sponsor. Now, let\u2019s jump into our episode with Chris Bossio and Daniel Santana.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Let\u2019s welcome to the show Daniel Santana and Chris Bossio. How are you doing today?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>Doing great, doing great. Happy to be here.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Thanks so much for joining us. Have been really looking forward to talking with you. We\u2019ve watched a lot of videos on both of you. We\u2019ve learned a lot about your shop and we\u2019re excited to hear it from your perspective.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>I\u2019ve learned a whole bunch of stuff about cutting hair the last two days. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>That\u2019s really cool.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>So Daniel, Chris, first let\u2019s start with a little bit of background about you guys. Can you introduce who you are and where you come from and how you got into the barbershop business?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>Yeah, I guess I\u2019ll start. So, I was playing college basketball. And I had a roommate who was cutting hair in his dorm. And when you play basketball in college, you can\u2019t get a job so you\u2019re like broke. So this was during the recession. This is \u201908. So our parents lost their businesses and I didn\u2019t have any money and I was in the middle of nowhere Kansas. And I just saw my roommate cutting hair, making a bunch of money while I\u2019m starving.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">You know, I got homesick. I transferred over to a school in Florida. And you had to sit out a year when you transfer. So I decided I was going to go barber school and learn how to cut hair. Fell in love with it. This was around the same time, it\u2019s funny, that I signed up for BiggerPockets, the website. I was working at Arby\u2019s and I was just trying to figure out a way to change my life around and not struggle financially anymore. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And I started doing some self-development stuff and I told myself that if I was going to do this barbering thing, I needed to own the businesses. I needed to start the business within that niche, within that industry, and so that\u2019s how I got started with barbering and meeting up with Danny. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>So yeah, my side, it\u2019s interesting. Not the profile you would expect to be in the barbershop world or in the barber world. But after something in the area of 14 years in the business world, expatriate from Argentina, almost two million miles flown on a single airline by the time I was 32, running multimillion dollar teams, multimillion dollar deals. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I had a friend I had met since before puberty and he was struggling as a barber. His barbershop owner was a stereotypical barbershop owner, if you will. And we set up a shop together. Originally, it was just a loan and then I kind of enjoyed it. I met Bossio that was the first barber that came over to that shop. I was still doing some work in the corporate world. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Had a gig with a couple of VCs and ultimately what I realized is, this industry is full of extremely driven, extremely intelligent individuals who just didn\u2019t have a formal education. I wanted to jump on their wave, man, because they were helping me out. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So I was very lucky to fall into it and ultimately, that\u2019s how I got into the barbering world after starting my life off as an engineer, a systems engineer on the techie world, business development in the corporate world, airplane Joe for many, many years, suit and tie and now it\u2019s sandals, t-shirts, and hair. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>So that\u2019s awesome. So you guys teamed up as a partnership where Daniel, you brought the business side of the equation, Chris, and I guess you have a third partner, it sounds like? And Chris, and the third partner, you guys brought the operating side of the equation. It sounds like a match made in Heaven.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>It is definitely a nemith circle, a full circle there between different teammates. A lot of growing pains, just as much on Bossio\u2019s side coming over to this side and he\u2019s an extremely quick learner, willing to read or listen, depending on if it\u2019s an audiobook or paper book, as needed, for us to sync up. While I have not cut hair\u2014I feel like I could after watching many of his videos at this point.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>That\u2019s awesome.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>That\u2019s very fun. So I\u2019m wondering, you mentioned, like you said, we have the operator side, we have the business growing person side, and you mentioned there\u2019s a loan in there somewhere. So talk to us a little bit about you decided this might be a good business to start. Did you think you were going to start with this one shop, or did you have a bigger plan from the getgo?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>It\u2019s really interesting because in reality, the shops are called Headlines Barbers. At the beginning, we used to joke that we were like the barber rehab. We were bringing in barbers that were working at stereotypical barbershops with owners, it was a complete lifestyle situation. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">When I built up a business case, I tried showing our third business partner, who isn\u2019t here today, Perez, how he can go get an SBA loan. He went to a couple of different banks, tried to get an SBA loan off of the business case I had built in with my experience. And unfortunately, his credit wasn\u2019t good enough. We have a lot of barbers in this industry who don\u2019t have good credit and would never be able to get qualified.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">But after some talk, he said he had a partner. He came to me with what the potential partner was offering him and it was just one of those bad deals. And me being a friend and being in the corporate world for years, I decided, you know what? Here\u2019s the money. I\u2019m just going to loan it to you. We\u2019ll start there. There was no paper between us. It was just a handshake. I wrote a $50,000 check and we opened the first barbershop. And I think it was like 30 or 60 days in and I sat him down, I sat Bossio down, which was the first barber that I had met outside of my friend, Perez, and we put something together and we said, let\u2019s do five shops in five years.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So I expanded the business case where we rolled over 100% of the revenue that came into the business. None of us took any draws and 100% of the money went back into the second shop. But of course, at the time you build your third shop, you\u2019ve got the revenue from the first and the second shop doing it. Each business case showed the negative cash flow up from and you know, the ramp up and stuff like that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">There was a lot of learning curves on both our sides. Because we started as a lifestyle company and because we positioned ourselves as lifestyles\u2014it was always lifestyle over profits. So we don\u2019t have the most profitable business case but we have the deepest culture business case and that\u2019s what really has helped launched Tomb45, which is our product line and that\u2019s really what we\u2019re hoping can actually make us some money as well as maintain the culture as we scale.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>That\u2019s awesome. So I know there\u2019s a lot of stuff to unpack there, but I want to start with something we talk a lot about on the show, which is partnerships and a lot of times we see partners come in and they have the exact same skills. They have the same strengths, they have the same weaknesses, because you guys made the perfect partner because Chris, you, and it sounds like Perez, you knew how to operate this business, this specific business.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And Daniel, you knew how to grow and scale this business. So between the two of you, basically you had everything in place to build a business and then eventually grow and scale it. But the thing that struck me was that, Chris, you said earlier in the discussion that you kind of had the same goals moving forward. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">You didn\u2019t just want to build a small business that you kind of go to. You didn\u2019t want to build yourself a job. You were looking to build something bigger. So you both had this vision. So before we get to the building it bigger, take us through a little bit about how you started that first shop. What went right? What went wrong? How did this partnership really start out with that very first shop?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>Let me jump in really quick here. I think we took a lot of the stuff from the corporate world, when you\u2019re hiring somebody, when you\u2019re hiring Type A business development sales guys and the idea was, why are we doing this? We answered a lot of \u2018whys\u2019 up front before we decided five shops in five years, before we put the effort in, before we started deciding on how to focus on customer acquisition and who were our\u2014defining our customers and market and all that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Before we ever got to any of that, we didn\u2019t worry about the colors, we didn\u2019t worry about what logo we were going to use. We worried about, what is it that he wants to do, and more importantly, why? Why is it that you want to do this? Why would you jump into a five-year plan where you\u2019re going to work your butt off and not get a single dollar? You\u2019ve got a day job and a night job and an evening job and we\u2019re going to be counting everything in dollars and pennies, not in hundreds and thousands.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">The answer, ultimately, was lifestyle. And then when we sat there and we thought about it and the other partners, all of us got together, we ultimately decided that we were all willing to make the same sacrifices for the lifestyle, first and foremost\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>I\u2019m going to interrupt you for a quick second, because you\u2019ve used \u2018lifestlye\u2019 several times and I love that. But can you define, in your words, because everybody has a different idea of what a lifestyle business is. In your words, what were you trying to achieve with a lifestyle business?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>Basically, as a barber, the hours that are put in as a barber are 10AM to 6PM or 7PM or 8PM on a daily basis. That\u2019s five days a week, plus you\u2019ve got Saturdays. That\u2019s not a 9 to 5 where you can pick up your kids at work and go. You\u2019ve got some flexibility because you can make your own schedule, but a lot of barbers like to say, I make my own schedule\u2014no, they really don\u2019t. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">It\u2019s really a lifestyle in the sense that, from the corporate world, a lot of us that are listening, consider our 9 to 5. Our after-hours. Our kids go to sleep, we jump on our laptops and we put in some extra work. That\u2019s typically what we see but in this blue collar world, it\u2019s really a matter of putting in those hours day in and day out on the weekends, and sacrificing so much family time. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">That if you don\u2019t thoroughly enjoy going to the barber battles, if you don\u2019t enjoy going to the barber shows, if you don\u2019t enjoy going to the get-togethers, if you don\u2019t enjoy doing the events for the cancer societies\u2014that\u2019s one of the things that we do, cut hair for free. That\u2019s one of the questions that we ask all of our barbers that are coming on board, would you cut hair for free? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">If you can\u2019t enjoy that part of it, then that\u2019s not the lifestyle. The lifestyle is thoroughly enjoying the part where you realize the impact you\u2019re giving to anybody who sits in your chair, the conversation you have with anybody who sits in your chair, that\u2019s what I interpret as a lifestyle. What about you, Bossio? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Bossio: It\u2019s funny because I feel like in the barber culture, we like to say that the barber culture is hip-hop. It\u2019s cutting hair. It\u2019s all the same culture. It seems like the popular belief is just grind. You\u2019ve got to grind. You\u2019ve got to put your head down and you\u2019ve just got to work. You\u2019ve got to work all day, every day. And one of the things that struck me early on as we were building this because that was my mindset. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">One thing that struck me with Danny that he would tell me is, it\u2019s a process. We have our destination but we have to enjoy the journey as well because we only have one life. So when we put lifestyle as a priority, it\u2019s you know, are we really able to spend time with our kids? Are we really able to enjoy this? So many barbers, they work so much that they work themselves to the point where they don\u2019t have a passion for what they do anymore. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">It was like, the best analogy I usually give is when I play basketball in high school and AU, I loved it. It was so much fun. But once I got into college, they tell me every day, earn your scholarship. This is your job. And it got\u2014I hated it. I started to hate basketball and that\u2019s a feeling I never want to have in business or in barbering or in life in general.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>That\u2019s great, and I love that it sounds like the two of you have proven that if you do business right, that in a business that is typically not amenable to this type of lifestyle, where you can\u2019t have passion and love what you do, but still be with your family and do the other things that are important outside of that. You have managed by making the right choices, by growing the right way that you don\u2019t have to choose, that you truly can do both, right?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So it\u2019s like you\u2019ve really kind of changed. You\u2019re starting to really change the way that the industry is working by the way that you\u2019ve put things in place. That\u2019s a really cool accomplishment. Okay, so back to, you decided you need to open a store. Your very first one. How\u2019d you go about doing that?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>So, it was scary in the beginning. A lot of it, we didn\u2019t really know. Like, you know, he\u2019s a businessman but a lot of the stuff that we needed for the shop, we kind of overlooked. So one of the ideas that we put together was tabletopping. That\u2019s something Danny introduced and it was really eye-opening because I remember sitting down with Perez in the office at the first shop that we were at, and he was like, what do we need for the shop? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Open the door and look around. What do we need first? And things like floormats, things like garbage cans, you don\u2019t really think about. So we didn\u2019t realize how much money we were really going to spend to open up this shop. A lot of barbers, they just think it\u2019s barber chairs, the station, and we\u2019re good to go. So that was eye-opening, going through that and seeing, damn we\u2019re running through this money pretty quickly. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Really quick.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>Yeah, it\u2019s easy. Like let\u2019s say you want to open a ten-station shop, a lot of barbers won\u2019t put a power strip in their business case or in their concepts, even if they don\u2019t write it down per se. But you\u2019ve got to buy some pretty high-end power strips. You\u2019re spending $60 a power strip, you just spent $600 that you weren\u2019t expecting. That\u2019s just one of many of the things.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So we definitely tabletopped to walk through the process several times of what you do during the haircuts. So I can come up to speed, identify the individual components. I try to write them down. Of course, we totally messed up our business case but we did put a 10% variance on our cap ex. We were pretty darn close at the end of the first shop.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>How did you choose that location for the first one?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>So we looked at several locations. We were actually very scared. We got a very high rent place, but ultimately, we knew we wanted to get somewhere where our customer acquisition cost was low. That\u2019s something that I go after repeatedly. That\u2019s something that\u2019s on my mind for everything we do. Customer acquisition cost. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Coming from the corporate world, we\u2019ve spent thousands of dollars on flights and entertainments with our customers and all that, and we put that to the budget center, so we decided at the end of the day how much it costs us to sign this contract. Well, for us, customer is getting them in the door. And then the barber\u2019s job is to retain them.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">But getting them in the door, for example\u2014we wanted to be next to high schools, next to junior high schools where the customer acquisition cost is low. We wanted to be as close as possible to a gym. And this is a very large L.A. Fitness. The same plaza we\u2019re in has a very large L.A. Fitness. And we said, you know what? We\u2019re going to bite the bullet and I\u2019m going to sign us up.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>And it was very scary with that location. I think that was our fifth choice because the plaza is actually not facing the main road. It\u2019s actually the back of the plaza, facing there. So that was super scary.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>Sure, the demographics were, the street traffic was something that was advertised by the landlord but it was definitely not something that would affect us. But the demographics in the area were good. The L.A. Fitness plaza was good. And ultimately, it\u2019s a model we kept as we expanded.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>Yeah, I think four of our locations are in an L.A. Fitness plaza. You think about gyms, people who want to look good, they go to gyms. So it was a priority for them. It\u2019s a priority.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Yeah, it kind of just fits together, right?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>I love the fact that, and Daniel, I was on your Instagram earlier today so I\u2019ve noticed you posted some things like spreadsheets for how, for barbershops for other people that might want to start a barbershop how they can do the numbers to create a profit and loss statement and kind of model out what it would take to open a barbershop.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So I love the fact that you guys like, from the beginning, it wasn\u2019t just, let\u2019s open a barbershop and see what happens. You actually sat down and thought about this. You thought about your location. You thought about the demographics. You thought about customer retention. You thought about the cap ex, which is capital expenses, all the big equipment that goes into the store. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">You thought about all those costs. I assume you actually created a budget, a spreadsheet that said, if we have this many people cutting hair and we get this many customers per day, and they pay this much, and our costs are this much, at the end of the day, week, month, year, this is what our profits are going to look like. And you actually did all of that before you went out and you started building your first shop. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>Oh yeah, I mean I calculated MPV. My first spreadsheet, I sat down with Perez and Bossio and they just scratched their head and I realized that you know, this was going to be a journey. So we dumbed it down and built it up and at this point, I\u2019m pretty sure Bossio can build his own fairly complex business cases. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">It\u2019s one of those things where, as a barbershop owner, we started defining different things. I define our customers as both the barber and the person getting a haircut, which was a different concept. And it took a while for us to sync on that, if you will, but the barbers ultimately pay us. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">We took the, again, going back to the lifestyle term, the lifestyle method where we wanted to give the individual barber an opportunity to make more money as long as we made our rent, basically. If we can recover, our business case showed a 36-month breakeven point and we weren\u2019t getting a real ROI until month 48. So we built out 48 months and at that point, we stopped. I think we had been in business for six months so yeah, it\u2019s been fantastic to actually build that out. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Bossio has been trying to convince me to do the business classes per year so we decided up front, maybe not up front, but once we decided to focus on the expansion, that we needed to provide value up front through education. And again, customer acquisition costs. We defined it as barbershop owners that our customers were also the barbers. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And the barbers, we needed to acquire them just like we would any other customer. And we wanted to attract a higher level of barber, a higher caliber of professional, and we did that by putting out education and increasing our pool of addressable market and the addressable market grew quite a bit because they knew who we were and they wanted to come work for us. And that\u2019s where we were. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>That is huge. I swear, you read my mind, because I was going to ask you about this. You\u2019re on your first shop, right? And you figured out customer acquisition, but clearly, you need people to serve those customers, so how would you go about getting them? And it sounds like by providing education, that you were able to do that. So how many barbers did you draw into your shop and how did you set up their payment structure or their shared rent structure and can you talk to us about how that worked out?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>And also how you guys differentiate. Because I know a little bit about reading your story. I know a little bit here, I\u2019d love for you to talk a little bit about how you guys basically changed the way you do things compared to much of the rest of the industry.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>Yeah, I think it was just putting the barber first, like Danny was saying earlier. We started doing a whole lot of YouTube videos and putting content out there and it was a blessing because we started getting barbers who probably weren\u2019t the best at cutting hair. But they were moldable. They were teachable. They were ambitious. And with our channel, we didn\u2019t just educate but we also inspired and motivated barbers to step their level up, of barbering.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Because I think a lot of barbers, they think of barbering as kind of like a hustle. They don\u2019t see it as a real career. And so we wanted to change that mindset for the upcoming, the new generation of barbers. And that\u2019s been amazing for us because just like when I read <i>Rich Dad, Poor Dad<\/i> and it changed my entire mindset about how I think about money, I think we\u2019re doing that a lot for the new generation of barbers and that\u2019s what helped us get all these new guys in. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">But you also have to invest into them. You also have to spend time training them and teaching them how to cut hair and teaching them how to save their money. And teaching them how to make more money and we\u2019ve set up a pay structure that pretty much amplifies that. And elevates them to be able to do the best that they can in our environment. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>That\u2019s cool. And even, I can tell from the language, simply from the language that you\u2019re using when you talk about your barbers. You want to elevate them. You want to educate them. You want to amplify their careers. I think that\u2019s a very different mindset, if you will, than how the industry is. I mean, I think that in most women\u2019s hair salon, for example, it\u2019s simply booth rental. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">You come in and it\u2019s a salon professional. You rent booth space. You pay a certain amount of dollars. You keep the profit. End of story. But it sounds like you\u2019re doing it completely differently.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>Danny jokes all the time that we\u2019re terrible businessmen. Because businessmen would see what we do for our barbers and say you guys are crazy, right? And that goes back to the whole lifestyle thing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>It\u2019s long-term vision, right? Short-term vision, we turned down so many barbers that would walk in and want to work for us. And I mean, we would ask them some pretty horrible questions over the barbers and insult them. If that was an issue, then we knew that was going to be a problem. If you couldn\u2019t answer why you wanted to work at my shop other than we have great traffic, other than I hear you\u2019re the up and coming shop, then that wasn\u2019t\u2014they weren\u2019t listening to what we were saying. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">What we were saying was we want to not dominate the industry. We want to elevate the industry and by elevating the industry, they will follow us. There\u2019s a lot of fake leadership in this industry, a lot of guys that say they are leaders. But the thought leadership is only from a few different people. And those people are respected and thought of as in the industry as true leaders. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And you know, sometimes we give it up. It was nice to be able to say, for a couple of years, that we didn\u2019t need to manage the income. These guys were living off of their haircuts. I was living off of my previous money from the corporate world. And of course, that was nice, the two or three years where we were able to completely reinvest 100% of everything worked really well for us. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And being able to say, no, I\u2019m giving up my $1600 a month in free cash flow because I\u2019m not hiring these two guys because they don\u2019t fit our vision. That was really nice and I think that if you built that into your business case and you built that into your concept and into your vision, and then you stick to your leadership thoughts and you don\u2019t give up for it\u2014you don\u2019t sell your moral and your thoughts for the cash flow, then you can ultimately reach your destination, whatever that may be, right? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>That\u2019s awesome, and another thing that I saw and it struck me that you guys are doing is, you\u2019re aligning incentives amongst everybody in the business. Like Carol said in a typical barbershop, it\u2019s not just women\u2019s hair salons but also the barbershop I go to, everybody is renting booths and so all these barbers are competing with one another.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So if I walk up and I say, I want to get my hair cut by Jane, Mary is over there saying, okay, I just lost his business and there\u2019s that competition there. And competition is good, but it doesn\u2019t, to use your words, it doesn\u2019t elevate the business. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And what you guys are doing is more of a, hey, we\u2019re bringing in people and I don\u2019t know if they\u2019re technically employees or not\u2014that doesn\u2019t matter but basically you\u2019re bringing in people and saying, this is a family. This is a business. And we\u2019re all striving for the same goal. We\u2019re all striving to make the business successful, not ourselves as individual successful. And that\u2019s great. That alignment of incentives is good for the business. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>Well, it\u2019s that gig economy, right? So, in the gig economy, everybody\u2019s out for themselves. They want to catch the next ride. They want to catch the next customer. But in reality, what ends up happening in the barbershop world specifically is barber owners will over-expand because their rent is their rent. And of course, there\u2019s all kinds of analogies that you can use that you have to pay your rent regardless if you\u2019re there or not, which is the situation for many barbers. So that\u2019s really where the downfall in the industry is, if you set up rent without providing any income to the business, then the business can\u2019t strive and the individual barber is a business and we want them to survive so that we have longevity. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">We have barbers that have been with us for seven years. Five years ago, we built a flyer that said we have six or seven barbers going on to open their own barbershops and then in big parentheses, and we\u2019re proud of it\u2014even though they opened across the street from us. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">That\u2019s not going to affect me, per se. They\u2019re not going to affect us. They\u2019re just creating more of the same culture where the barbershop world can be seen as somewhere I can take my kids. I\u2019ve got a 13-year-old daughter and a 6-year-old boy and I want to be able to walk into any barbershops and make it happen. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>How did you know? What was the tipping point for the shop, where you said yeah, this is working. We\u2019ve got something good figured out here and it\u2019s time to move onto another. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>So the first couple of days, we thought we were going to go out of business.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>What? Share, please.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>Everything that could go wrong went wrong. I\u2019m in the middle of a haircut, the power goes out. My clients had to call out of work. Like, we were scared like crazy. But I would say we started attracting some barbers like we said earlier, that were abused in the barbershop that they were currently at, and they came over and they brought clientele with them and their passion with them, and then from there, just start snowballing and I would say, by the end of year one, we felt like we had something. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>How many barbers did you have at that first one?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>I would say we opened the second one when we had ten barbers?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>Probably.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>At ten. So you had ten. Go ahead, J.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>I was just going to ask, did you have a plan for when you were going to open the second one? Was it we get ten barbers so we open the second one, or we get a year in where we open the second one, or is it just natural organic growth?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>No, it was the cash on hand row on the spreadsheet. So when the cash on hand was enough to justify the next business plan and still provide a cushion for the original business shop and all that jazz\u2014once we felt we had enough cash on hand, as I said, it was rolling over month to month. That\u2019s basically when it went in. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">For some reason, we decided to put in a cash injection, and by cash injection, I\u2019m talking like $2000 each. We\u2019re not going to put in $15,000 to $20,000 each. If something happened, then we would do that at different times for different shops but for the most part, it was the rollover from Shop 1 to Shop 2 to Shop 3 into the cash on hand account. And then once that cash on hand was enough, we would jump to the next one.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>That\u2019s cool. And when it was time, and you do have enough cash on hand to do that next one, were you able to apply a lot of those initial things that you did from the first shop so did you find that you made significant changes when you went to Shop 2?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>Shop 2, we got creative and we tried something different. We wanted to\u2014we did so good with the first shop and it worked but then we deviated from that and we decided we were going try to change, be innovative. That\u2019s always our thing. We want to be different. We wanted to bring in complimentary beer and have the barbers dress up nicely. We wanted it to be a higher end barbershop. And our customers just didn\u2019t want that. We found that like after six months of trying that, we had to change it up and go back to what was working. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>So were they just like\u2014what did they say? How did you know? Were they polite about it? I\u2019m so curious how it went down.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>They loved it at first. But we knew when no one wanted the complimentary beers. No one\u2014you could tell that it just wasn\u2019t working with our customers.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>It wasn\u2019t worth it but you experimented and you were innovative and you tried something, so kudos to you for doing that. That\u2019s cool.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>So from an operational perspective, obviously Chris, you can\u2019t be managing shop number one and cutting hair and at shop number two, and at the same time, be watching shop number one and at the same time be over at shop number two and managing that one or shop number three, so at some point, did you have to transition from cutting hair into a manager role or how did you cover the management of each of these shops?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>The second shop, I definitely had to be a leader in the shop and I learned a lot through managing other people who believe that they are their own bosses and they are independent contractors and it\u2019s really hard to manage those different personalities as well. I definitely had to change up the way\u2014they used to call me Hitler because I wanted everybody to do everything the way that I wanted it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I had to learn that there\u2019s different ways to lead people, to get them to do exactly what you want and do it in a different way. The way that it worked out was Perez stayed back and he managed New Tampa, which was our first location, and then I managed Northdown. And we learned from that and we found our leaders in each of those shops and they ended up being the ones that would go out to three, four, five, six.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>Yeah, from a macro perspective, from my perspective in not being in a day-to-day operations. Trying to teach my management model to these guys of hands-off macro was interesting. I\u2019m the kind of guy that says we go north, and if we\u2019re going northeast, that\u2019s okay. Try to nudge more towards the north. So I\u2019m definitely not that sniper. I\u2019m much more of a shotgun, if you will. A lot of my pellets and shots miss but then you\u2019ve got the managers that are very sniper but they take three months to make a decision. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">That\u2019s definitely not the style and the concept that I was after. I left the corporate world specifically to get away from some of that and you know, from that perspective, when you\u2019re looking at the business case, you\u2019ve got to put\u2014I\u2019ll use the Spandex CEO\u2019s term here, \u201coopsies\u201d. Right? You\u2019re going to have some oopsies and you\u2019re going to talk about them and you\u2019ve got to put some money aside for these oopsies and know that they are going to happen and remember Bossie and I had a heated discussion one time about how good this direct mailing was going to work, that we were going to do and you know, we were going to do it the least expensive possible way. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">We went out and sorted all of the postcards. We did the rubber band on them and we dropped them off ourselves and all that, but sure enough, it didn\u2019t work. But what you learn there and what you learn from allowing your individual managers as you scale to find themselves and then nudging them in the direction of the vision. And losing some barbers. Some really good barbers along the way because you\u2019re invested in that management team, no different than the corporate world. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">You\u2019re going to lose some employees but you\u2019ve got to invest in your managers and you\u2019ve got to invest in your partners so that they can then realize the confidence that they have in their leadership and their thought and it\u2019s okay to lose some money. It\u2019s okay to lose somebody. It\u2019s okay to lose a resource if you will. Make some mistakes and then learn from them as long as they are all going north. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>That\u2019s great. So it\u2019s always about the business and the long-term vision, not necessarily about what\u2019s easy in the short-term. Sometimes it\u2019s easy to deal with employees that don\u2019t see the same vision you have in the short-term by just saying, okay, well, we\u2019re just going to disagree. But that\u2019s not good for the long-term viability and health for the business. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>Yeah, you can\u2019t just veto your management team and your leaders and what you\u2019re trying to build. If you just veto them, you\u2019re blocking their personal growth. You\u2019ve got to realize that there\u2019s a cost to that. I mean, some of us went to school and had that cost. Others sent out some mailers. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Others lost an employee that would have brought in some revenue for a couple of months and you lost that revenue for two or three months. And that personal growth ultimately I think is what built a team that has become you know, kind of where we are, not just in the barbershops but with Tomb45, the product line. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>Yeah, we\u2019ve done the flyer thing four times knowing that it wasn\u2019t going to work. We\u2019re still doing it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Doing it anyway. Well, you mentioned your flyers and your track mailers and that type of thing. I\u2019m curious, it sounds like so far we\u2019ve talked about the leadership that you have at every store. On kind of the more corporate level though, have you brought in other people like in addition who aren\u2019t barbers, who their main expertise isn\u2019t barbering? So if you brought in or considered bringing in or even consulting with other marketing people or PR people or other types of leadership? Is that a road that you have explored yet? Or how does it work?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>So we do have, oddly enough, we\u2019ve got a meeting set up where we\u2019re flying in a few different guys. We do have a guy that we call our acting CTO. Mostly not into the barbershop business but into the Tomb45, into the products business. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So he\u2019s our Acting Technical Officer. And then we\u2019ve got a couple of other guys that we do bring in, into the software side, we\u2019ve got a COO. Pretty penny there but he\u2019s definitely a business guy and helps us manage and run that. And bring some brain power and thought process to our vision and helps us implement it. Not even enough hours for the rest of us to do a lot of that. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>That\u2019s great.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>Between the software and the product company, we have brought in marketing, technical, and executive support.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>That is awesome, and again, that is, I think, completely unheard of in your type of industry. So you are really so innovative in this. It\u2019s really cool. Now, before we move onto the next part of our show, let\u2019s hear a word from one of our show sponsors.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>Real estate investing is known for a lot of things, mainly making a select group of people a lot of money. But being on cutting edge experience is usually not one of its hallmarks. Well, that\u2019s no longer the case. Fundrise is the future of real estate investing. Their revolutionary model is transforming the industry, thanks to software that cuts out costly middlemen and old market inefficiencies. Fundrise delivers the kind of investing powers you usually only see in giant institutions, bringing real estate\u2019s unique potential for long-term growth and cash flow to individual investors.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>Getting started is simple and usually takes less than five minutes. When you invest, you will be instantly diversified across dozens of real estate projects, each one carefully vetted and actively managed by Fundrise\u2019s team of real estate pros. Then, you can use their intuitive investor dashboard and real-time reporting system to monitor the progress in each property within your portfolio. That\u2019s the future of real estate investing.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>So, ready to get started? Visit Fundrise.com\/BPMoney. That\u2019s Fundrise.com\/BPMoney to have your first three months of fees waived. Again, that\u2019s Fundrise.com\/BPMoney.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>What other marketing efforts do you have in addition? I know you have a YouTube Channel. Do you think that is drawing a lot of customers as well as barbers? Are there other channels that have been really effective for you in gathering those people?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>We have a team that we call Tomb Squad. It\u2019s a group of influencers that we\u2019re friends first. We all have a very common vision and common ideas of where we want the barber industry to be. But we also happen to be influencers. And you know, the name came out\u2014I don\u2019t know how it came about but that\u2019s what they call us now. It\u2019s probably me and maybe four or five other guys that we like to say, we influence the next generation of barbers. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So I think that\u2019s our biggest draw as far as customers and followers and supporters. And then we do other things, too. We\u2019ve tried Facebook marketing and things of that nature, but I would say influencers is our biggest draw.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Influencers. All right.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>For Tomb45, that\u2019s definitely true. So for the barbershops, it\u2019s a little bit different as well. On the barbershop side, what we\u2019ve got\u2014again, focusing on the acquisitions side, we talked about some acquisition as an owner, acquiring a barber as a customer, right? Somebody is going to process that. But getting people in the door is very interesting. So when you have your barber, unless your barber leaves or you move, a lot of the people who you want as customers are pretty faithful to their barbers. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So to get them to change is rather expensive. So what we did is we focused on the young crowd. Basically when your child tells you to stop taking him to SuperCuts, when the kids stop letting mommy and daddy take them to SuperCuts and wants that fresh cut from the barbershop, that\u2019s who we went after. So we went after the middle school kids, the high school kids\u2014it got to the point where the sports directors for two different counties in our region knew us by name. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">They would call us and say hey, get us some more Gatorade. We know how much Gatorade you can fit on a palette because we would buy it by the palette, put our names on it, drop off two bags of Gatorade at each high school in the area. At this point, we have seven shops and quite a few high schools and middle schools and say hey, if you want more, here\u2019s my business card. Call me. We would love to support you. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Instead of dropping off a whole box, that way we generate our conversation, we met the football moms, we met the basketball moms. We used our relationships from the people who sit in our chair, Beef O\u2019Brady\u2019s, these other restaurants, and said hey, this football team needs a meal sponsored on Friday. You know, we\u2019ll pay half of it or give it to us at a really good deal and then we bought the meals and we took them the gameday meals. So by influencing the middle school and high school kids in these sports and the band and stuff like that, that gave us the expansion, if you will. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">We never gave discounts. We\u2019re not a big fan of discounts for acquiring customers. Groupons and stuff. No Groupons ever. I hate them. I think it\u2019s horrible. I don\u2019t want that customer who is chasing the discount. I want that customer who sees the value. And so what we did was we gave the coaches free coupon codes and we told you, listen, we want you to give this free hair coupon code to your MVP for the week. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Don\u2019t give it to your quarterback. Give it to the guy who got good grades, to the guy that had to walk home because he didn\u2019t have a ride. And that really worked for us. That really helped us generate a relationship with the community and to different middle schools and high schools. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>Love it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>That\u2019s awesome. That\u2019s a really humanizing touch that really builds relationships and ultimately drives your business at the same time.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>For Tomb45, it\u2019s definitely Tomb Squad. For the barbershops, it\u2019s much more local and micro.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>You know, at the barbershop, we say it all the time. It\u2019s the community hub for a lot of areas, a lot of communities. And if our barbers aren\u2019t giving back to the community or aren\u2019t creating a relationship with the community\u2014and it starts with schools. It starts with parents. It starts with kids. If we\u2019re not doing that then you know, what\u2019s the point?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>And if I may, I\u2019m going to give a shout-out to True Hair Culture. It\u2019s run by this guy, Tony Suarez. He is a manager at our St. Pete location and after spending I think 15 years in jail, turned his life around. And is now running this True Hair Culture, which basically uses all of its profit to help at-risk youth. And sometimes he goes to the schools, he finds the kids that can barely make it, he gives them rides to and from school. He buys them tools as needed. And that\u2019s definitely something we\u2019re happy to support. And I think that level of community interaction is definitely helping us.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Absolutely wonderful.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>Awesoe. Okay, let\u2019s jump ahead. We\u2019ve talked about the first store. We\u2019ve talked about expanding to the second store. I assume at this point, you guys have gotten this down to a science. You have a spreadsheet. You know what it\u2019s going to cost. You know where to find your locations. You know how you find your barbers. You know how to find your customers. And so, I assume over the last few years, you\u2019ve just kind of grown this and grown this. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So I\u2019d love to hear a little bit about where you are today, how many stores you have, how you\u2019re expanding geographically. But you guys have also started, and we\u2019ve kind of touched on this a little bit but I wanted to save it until the very end here. You guys have also started your own product line where you\u2019re going out and you\u2019re manufacturing products to help barbers and help the industry, so I\u2019d love to hear about that as well.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So I guess break that into two questions. Where are you now with your scaling of your shops, and tell us a little bit about the product side of your business.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>You want to start by telling them how we accidentally opened our last shop?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Yes, please. We have to hear that now.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>So, we actually, we got on this you know, in this mode where we opened three barbershops, I think in a year?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>A couple of years, yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>And then we opened those shops but then we told ourselves, we weren\u2019t going to open anymore shops. We were going to focus on the product line. And then we get a call from one of our landlords, who is an amazing person, that she was opening a plaza and she wanted us in there. So we said yes and ended up opening this barbershop. I\u2019ll let you explain kind of the details of it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>Yeah, so basically we established a relationship with a couple of different landlords who would basically call us and that\u2019s how we ended up opening, going on a rush there at the end. I think like at the end of year three through year five, we went on this crazy rush where the cap ex wasn\u2019t as intense. The tenant allowance wasn\u2019t being provided. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">It was much better\u2014they weren\u2019t used to barbershops that paid the rent on time, that elevated the traffic to their salons, that got good responses from the neighbors, that didn\u2019t allow, if you will, a riff-raff of clientele to hang out in front of the door and stuff like that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So because of that, that relationship was established with the landlords. They came to us and provided a lot more, tenant allowance, gave us much more favorable lease terms. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>Offers we couldn\u2019t say no to, right?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>Build-outs. Complete build-outs. So yeah, I think there\u2019s one lined up for 2022 that they wanted us signing and even though we\u2019re not really looking, we\u2019re going to go ahead and do that because hey, if it\u2019s not going to cost us any cap ex to open it, we can definitely run it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>We literally sat down and said, no more barbershops. We\u2019re done for a while. And now we\u2019re opening\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>They can\u2019t stop. They need you. They need you in their space.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>That\u2019s awesome. Now, tell us about your product line. I think it\u2019s called Tomb45?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>Tomb45, yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>How did that get started? What\u2019s the goal? Tell us a little bit about that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>One of the things that I was doing because of YouTube was educating a lot. And I started touring. I started doing my own tour, put in a list of cities and people would book me to go to teach their classes. And I started going to these shows and these expos and seeing the level of education that was being provided and like Danny was saying, earlier, it\u2019s almost like the same thought leaders for so long, and they were really I feel like old school with their education.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>Selling out.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>Yeah, that too. So we wanted to go to the shows and start teaching but the we found out that there\u2019s a cost. And that when you go to these expos, you\u2019ve got to pay them to do free classes. So we needed to figure out a way, how to fund this. So I talked to my subscribers and I told them what I wanted to do and how I want to help them physically, not just through a video, and they told us, why don\u2019t you just start making product?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And the first product they asked us to make was the shave gel. And we made that shave gel in our kitchens in a bowl with a hand mixer. Literally.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>You did not.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>Yes, we did. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>Has the time expansion passed for the FDA to still come after us?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>Hopefully not but like literally hand labelling, hand pumping, hundreds and thousands of bottles of shave gel.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>Hundreds and thousands?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Wait a minute. From your kitchen? Hundreds and thousands of bottles?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>No, thousands.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>So I sat my wife down and I mentioned to her, babe, I need you to understand that these boxes are going to be in the garage for the next five years, okay? This is something your boss really wants you to do. I think it\u2019s something we need to support. It\u2019s one of those things that you\u2019re going to invest in your leadership and invest in your management. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And you know what? This whole training situation and education team, is it even going to get us out so we can get more barbers? And my wife is like great, so what\u2019s going on in this kitchen? What is all this stuff everywhere?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>So we thought of a name and one of the things I wanted to do was stay true to what we were about and so barbering started during Ancient Eyptian times. It\u2019s one of the oldest professions that\u2019s still around. Back then, you weren\u2019t given a tomb or a proper burial unless you were royalty, a priest, or super wealthy. But there was a barber named Barber Meryma\u2019at, who was actually given a tomb. His tomb number was 45. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And I found this guy because I was trying to find the most successful barber ever. I couldn\u2019t point to you. There\u2019s no one to look up to in the barber industry like there is in any other industry, right? And so you know, this guy has a statue in the museum in Pennsylvania and it showed me that were barbering started, it was respected, it was a real profession. And the culture that I wanted to build was bringing that back. So that\u2019s how we came up with a name Tomb45. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>That is so cool. That is such a good story. While we\u2019re on stories about naming things, I think I got a little glimpse of the story about how the name Headlines came about and I think our listeners would love hearing that. Can you share it?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>Yeah, that\u2019s a funny one. We were in the barbershop and Perez wanted to name it some name that we\u2019re embarrassed to talk about. He doesn\u2019t like people knowing about it. But we\u2019re coming up with names and we hear the song that Drake made, Headlines, come on. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And I\u2019m like, you know what? That would be a really good barbershop name and we talked about it for a little bit but I didn\u2019t think he was actually going to go get the logo made in a couple of days later, and I\u2019d be looking at a logo that said \u201cHeadlines\u201d. So that\u2019s how we came up with the name for the barbershop. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Very cool. And I love how your logo, you mentioned earlier, it kind of all comes full circle now when you\u2019re talking about who your target market is, with all the middle schoolers and the high schoolers and the whole community. It really looks like your brand very much reflects that. It\u2019s almost very comic-book like. Kind of just, it\u2019s cool and hip and fun. Yeah, it\u2019s still very professional, all at the same time, and it really reflects like raising people up in those communities. It\u2019s a really good fit.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>I\u2019d love to hear more about where you\u2019re planning to go with the products. Are these products that you are selling out of your own stores or are you trying to sell them through retail or at other trade shows to other barbershops and what types of products are you looking into expanding to? Is this going to be a key part of you business or is this just a secondary thing to try again to push your education side of things like it originally was?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>I think the company has grown way, way bigger than we ever anticipated. Again, we started with shaved gels and making it in our kitchen then in our backyard and then when we talked about scaling up and Danny, he\u2019s a great businessman. Two million miles flown. Scaling up wasn\u2019t the normal typical scaling up. Scaling up was going from a bowl to a five-gallon bucket to a drum to backyard to a garage. That was scaling up for us. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Awesome.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>But we got so much support from our followers and subscribers and stuff\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>So just for the record, we buy containers from a real factory today. Everything is done legit. FDA-bottled.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>I wasn\u2019t questioning you. Of course it is.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>But it was definitely humble beginnings. Now, like I said, it\u2019s crazy the growth we\u2019ve had and where we\u2019re at today with the product. We didn\u2019t think it was going to be our focus like it is today. Today, it is our focus. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>So, we are focusing on distribution and I think that when you launch a new product line, regardless of how you\u2019re doing it, a lot of our listeners are probably looking through Amazon podcasts and how their people are building their businesses on Amazon and one of the ways you can build it is through your own product line. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">But the pull-through is something very interesting. Amazon has opened a direct distribution like to many, many customers. You\u2019ve got direct access. The direct consumer model, if you will. That does not mean that B2B is dead or business to business and the distribution concept and the distribution value chain is not there.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">What it means is we have a different line and a different vertical for attacking those customers directly. So when we launched a new product and we started putting it on Amazon and we put our own label on it, we had to pull through because we had the name recognition. We had the name recognition because we had the online presence. We had the online presence because we provided value first. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So unbeknownst to us, we were building this trend of a culture where the industry was hungry for something along those lines. And it kind of worked out. If I was to go back and say I was going to do that purposely, and I wanted to build my own product line and be able to launch it, I would say, you can do it in the same way. You can follow all the rules that they tell you to follow with advertising your product and trying to build up the clientele. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">You can go after influences but buying influences is not the same thing as syncing with influence. The synergetic view of the influencers and the team that we call our core team that actually have the same vision, that is actually what creates the strength for the brand. So we do have a direct line distribution to the consumer, either direct through the website, which we have a decent amount of volume through. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I would say today that it counts for 50% of the business. And the other 50% of the business is probably through distribution. We are opening international distribution, which has been a logistics nightmare and an extreme growing pain for us. How do we do it? Especially when you consider that our strategy is both to direct consumer as well as distribution. Old school B2B distribution. When you got direct consumer, you\u2019ve got to worry about opening all your taxes, opening all your VATs in European countries and Canada and South America. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Yeah, so it is all of that. The main thing with our growth and our growth strategy is through innovation. When you look at our shaved gel bottle, which is we\u2019ll start with the first product. Bossio brought me the shaved gel bottle and I\u2019m like, this doesn\u2019t look good on a shelf. There\u2019s no way that this is ever going to sell. But when a barber sees a shaved gel bottle and they\u2019ve never seen it before, they\u2019re like, this is fantastic. Why didn\u2019t somebody think of this before? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So obvious to them. You can see it\u2019s clear when they are running out as opposed to opaque, which when you know you ran out is when you pump it for the last time and there\u2019s nothing there, kind of like a shampoo bottle. That\u2019s when you know you ran out so you have to go out and buy something. Here, you know when you\u2019re running out. You\u2019re good. It\u2019s got an applicator nozzle so you hold it upside down and shake it and you can get 100% of the product out. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Because you can get 100% of the product out, you\u2019re not cutting the bottom of that pump so that you can scoop it out with your fingers because you\u2019ve run out at the last minute. And there\u2019s so much innovation in a very simple package that I was just blown away. We even colored the gel green because green means \u2018rebirth\u2019 in Ancient Eyptian times. So everything we did was on purpose.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">When we looked at the next product, you want to talk about the razor handle, our second product? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>Yeah, the razor handle was interesting because we see things in different perspectives. I\u2019m in the shop working and he comes in and he looks at our behavior in the shop. And one of the things he noticed was, we have these razor handles and you put cartridges in them. But barbers, they want the razors that sits in the cartridges to be exposed or non-exposed or medium-exposed. Why don\u2019t we just include all the cartridges in one package? No one has ever done that before. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>There you go.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>It\u2019s like one of those things, like TV products where you\u2019re like, why didn\u2019t I think of that? Nobody thought of that. So that was our second innovative product that I thought was really cool.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>And so the same business model, when you look at the spreadsheet that we built for Tomb45, it looks very similar to the Headlines business model, especially with the cash on hand. It\u2019s a rollover month to month. There\u2019s a learning curve when you talk about somebody\u2019s\u2014myself and the rest of the team. Nobody on the team had managed inventory and the logistics and online shipping and none of that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So there\u2019s been a learning curve with that. And we still mess that up quite a bit. Fortunately, we\u2019ve never run out of product for long periods of time. We\u2019re out of gel right now and backordered and we\u2019re going to be out of gel for ten days. So I think we\u2019re going to survive this one as well.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And that\u2019s happened a couple of times where we\u2019re running right on logistics. But I think that as we look at the real fun part of what we\u2019re doing and where the money is coming in and what we\u2019re looking at down the road, it\u2019s definitely through innovation that fixes a problem.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So it\u2019s not a commodity. Even though shave gel is a commodity, we were able to add that value. We were able to find somebody that was value add, market the value add, define the value add to the market, ad get it going. When we had the razor handle, we did the same. And of course, now, we\u2019ve just launched this week a product which we\u2019re really proud of, which is a wireless charging mat<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So we\u2019ve got three patent-pending innovation on this one and basically what it is, is we\u2019ve got a device that connects to the clipper, trimmer, or shaver that converts a wireless clipper shaver trimmer that does not charge wirelessly into wireless charging. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">If you\u2019ve ever charge wirelessly into wire charging\u2014if you\u2019ve ever been to the barbershop, there\u2019s a lot of wires everywhere. And when I walk into the barbershop, it\u2019s just like, oh, God. All of these wires everywhere. But they need it because they plug in. Because at the end of the target\u2014your battery is dying down. They\u2019ve got this rat\u2019s nest. They\u2019re cutting hair with the crazy rat\u2019s nest rattling around everywhere.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">But if you can charge throughout the day, it would work so we innovated an input device, a conversion device. We were able to get a patent on that. Or a patent pending on that. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>I would have brought it if I knew it was going to be on video. It\u2019s beautiful. It\u2019s a mat that lays on your barber\u2019s counter. He puts the attachment to his clipper, lays his clipper down, and it\u2019s charging. He\u2019s never going to have any issue running out of battery. It stays on\u2014it\u2019s a game-changer for the industry.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>That\u2019s just so cool listening to all these stories. Did you bring a lot of outside consultants or did you really just realize by operating your shops that these are just things you need? And so you just kind of figured it out.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>We do like crazy stuff, the whole shotgun theory. We didn\u2019t know how to get things started, but Danny, I remember one day we just bought flights to China. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>Jump on a plane and go. Because in reality, none of us had been a product of the element, like true product development. Like R&amp;D of a product. None of us had defined a product, engineered a product, and managed that. I had done some product management in the corporate world but it was all business intelligence software stuff. It was never anything physical.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Right, so when we look at something physical, you\u2019ve got to physically draw it. You\u2019ve got to draw it in Autocad. You\u2019ve got to create tooling for it. Then the tooling has to go through, you\u2019ve got a source component. And we basically jumped on a plane, went over there, wasted a lot of time on our first trip\u2014and money. Actually, we took a big step back with the amount of money. We bought a product that we were going to launch the product guide here, and it was so horrible, we had to throw it all away.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And cash on hand, we spent the cash on hand for this next product. And we literally opened the dumpster and threw it in there because we weren\u2019t putting our name behind that. We were not putting our name behind that. The manufacturer was not backing it. They weren\u2019t going to replace it and we were done with it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So then we built the cash on hand back up. We jumped on the flights, went back out there again. And you know, by the third or fourth time, we realized that we didn\u2019t need a consultant. We have a team in China now that helps us out quite a bit. We land. They pick us up. And they\u2019re with us until we take off. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">All of a sudden, the food is so much better. All of a sudden, I can take a taxi. We don\u2019t have to fly everywhere. We can jump on the trains because getting a train in China, if you don\u2019t speak Chinese, that\u2019s fairly difficult. And our airports and our hotels are much cheaper, too. To the point where if you\u2019re going to spend ten days in China and you can hire one of these consultants, he will probably be cheaper than what you\u2019ll spend on your learning curve.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>And a much better experience.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>That\u2019s a great tip. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>And then of course, we launched a product, an air compressor last year in September and we were told that this was going to be exclusive to us. We helped them finalize the design of it. We launched it, and two weeks later, we saw a competitor with it. And now two and a half months later, we saw it on Alibaba for a fifth of the retail price.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>It was one of the products that we made the market for, we developed it, and yeah\u2014they screwed us over. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Ouch, that\u2019s painful.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>But we learned from that. We moved on.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>You learned.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>We learned and we recently launched our newest compressor, a cordless compressor. It\u2019s got double the power of anything out there, wireless charging capability, it\u2019s another game-changer for the industry. But if that wouldn\u2019t have happened, we wouldn\u2019t have come up with the new innovations we have now. So I guess you\u2019ve got to fail.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>But I\u2019ve got to say, the coolest part of launching that was when we added wireless charging to that device. So we launched it on December 9<\/span><span class=\"s2\"><sup>th<\/sup><\/span><span class=\"s1\"> and what we did was, I wanted to fly in our influencer friends and we realized, wait, that\u2019s a big ticket item. Why don\u2019t we associate with the training thing? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So we did the training class where we did some education and then from there, we also had the influencers and we basically launched this product. We tried to do an Apple Steve Jobs thing. As we learned, we\u2019re going to get better at that. But when we launched it, we launched it and we had this wireless charging capability built into it. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">We could not tell anybody because if we told anybody, they would obviously put two and two together. They would start thinking of wireless charging additional tools. So we launched it, sold it. People were receiving these devices and not knowing that it charged wirelessly until we launched. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>That\u2019s awesome. What a great\u2014if that\u2019s not icing on the cake, right? We\u2019ve got this great tool, and oh, P.S., you can charge it wirelessly. Boom. That\u2019s amazing. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>Value up front, right? Lifestyle.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>We launched and then, they\u2019re like wait? My compressor charges wirelessly? Wow.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>That\u2019s so cool.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>So I think the thing that stands out to me so readily is you guys have really been innovators in this industry that\u2019s been around forever. You\u2019ve innovated on the business model. You\u2019ve innovated on the marketing. You\u2019ve innovated on the employees or the contractors in the business and now you\u2019re innovating on the product side. And I absolutely love that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Again, this isn\u2019t a new industry where there\u2019s always a lot of change going on. You guys took over an industry or jumped into an industry that like you\u2019ve said have been around for thousands of years. Tremendous credit to you guys for what you\u2019ve accomplished.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>Thank you, yeah. We\u2019re definitely looking forward to a post-September or December maybe follow-up. We\u2019ve got a software as a service product that we are launching and again, I think that innovation is because it\u2019s looked at how to make life easier. We\u2019ve identified problems, not problems, but challenges inside the barbershop from the individual barber and from the barbershop owner\u2019s perspective. And how can we make life easier and more efficient?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Not just from that perspective but when you look at a charging mat, it\u2019s a modular growth, if you will, because of the economics behind it. You can start off slow and then you can add modules to increase the capacity. So everything we\u2019ve done has been from that concept where it\u2019s\u2014we\u2019re conscious of the cash flow available for many of these barbers. We\u2019re consciously of the cash flow for the barbershop owner and we\u2019re conscious of the individual growth that they can have. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And I can\u2019t wait until we do some software stuff, which is our next one. Because as much success as we\u2019ve got going on now, we\u2019ve got some products that are launching June 2<\/span><span class=\"s2\"><sup>nd<\/sup><\/span><span class=\"s1\">. We are going to be introducing the additional adapters for more hardware that will allow that hardware to charge wirelessly. But that\u2019s done and over with. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>The next big thing is our software bit.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>That\u2019s so cool. I think it\u2019s fair to say that you\u2019re not only innovating, I think it\u2019s fair to say that you\u2019re revolutionizing the whole barber industry. Because the way you\u2019re talking about this is clearly just stuff that hasn\u2019t been done in a many thousands of years old industry and you\u2019re just changing this whole thing up and it\u2019s amazing. So much fun to listen to.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Thank you so much for all of that. So now we\u2019re going to jump into the part of our show that we call <i>Four More<\/i>, okay? So we\u2019re going to ask you four rapid fire style questions. You can take turns answering them and then at the end, you\u2019re going to tell us about where we can find out more about you. Sound good?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>Let\u2019s go.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>Sure.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Okay, J, you take the first question.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>Okay, and this is for both of you. I want to hear answers from both of you. What is your first or your worst job that you\u2019ve ever had, and what lessons did you take that you\u2019ve used in your industry today?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>Dishwashing at a buffet. Worst job ever. And my dad used to pick me up and laugh at me because I took the job because I was upset about him. Or upset about the job he was giving me. And the thing that I learned from that is, take control of your life. You\u2019re not going to be happy with everything that you receive, but look at the cup half full, not half empty.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>I was thinking about it while you were answering. I\u2019ve only really had one bad job. And it was just micromanagement hell. I\u2019ve been lucky enough to be upper directorship level management, executive level management in the white collar world for most of my corporate career and then working for myself, I get to call the shots and that\u2019s pretty much my personality. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And when you\u2019re managing a group of such talented people, kind of like I am, I got really lucky with the Tomb45 group and the Tomb Squad with the talent they have and the drive and passion that they have, you cannot micromanage that personality. I mean, I realize that it\u2019s doing really well for Elon Musk, apparently, but not me. I can\u2019t do that. I can\u2019t be managed like that. It was micromanagement from hell. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">It was very late in my career. It was a gig that I was looking forward to. I\u2019m a nerd at heart and I want to do some cybersecurity stuff and I wanted to play with it. So I took a job and three months later, I had to tell them I had to go. And what I learned was basically reinforcement from that. Yeah, I\u2019m definitely macro in my style and my beliefs are much more micromanagement styles than micro. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Love it. Okay, next question. What\u2019s an opportunity along the way that you\u2019ve said no to? And do you think it was the right decision? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>A lot of sponsorship offers with bigger companies. I didn\u2019t sell myself out. I wanted to be able to give an unbiased opinion on all the products that I use. And then what I was doing and not taking these sponsorships. I feel like a lot of people would or the culture, in the barber industry, they kind of look up to that and decide no, we\u2019re going to build our own thing. We\u2019re going to do it ourselves because we can. We can create our own platform. And I think that was the one thing that I turned down that I\u2019m happy I did. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>Yeah, I think for me it was basically, I married my middle school sweetheart and somewhere around 34 years old, my wife came back. We were expatriate in Argentina. We came back to our home in Tampa and she didn\u2019t pack. She was done. She wasn\u2019t going to expatriate. And I think most of my peers would have just kept their career. I gave up my career at that point for my family. And I\u2019m thankful I did, obviously. Everything\u2019s worked out.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>That\u2019s awesome.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Amazing. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>So what is some of the worst advice you hear in your industry or some of the worst advice you\u2019ve been given, and how do you turn that into good advice?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>There\u2019s so much bad advice in this industry. There is so much bad advice. In this industry, we hear a lot of people talking about hey, I\u2019m going to go get my LLC. Okay, so who are you partnering with? What do you mean who am I going to partner with? It\u2019s just me. So you\u2019re just going to do a single-member LLC. Why are you doing a single-member LLC? Well, I was told I have to have my own business.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And there\u2019s no context and understanding that an LLC is designed in order to protect him from me and me from him. It\u2019s limited liability from your partner, not from your customers, people. They\u2019re piercing the corporate veil. Come on, you still need insurance and all that. So there\u2019s this misinterpretation of business setup which is the very first conversation. And unfortunately, from there, it goes downhill. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I would definitely say sponsorship is the second one. A lot of people say, go and try to get sponsorship. But then you\u2019re selling out. You\u2019re not standing for everything. There\u2019s no why. It\u2019s just a what. There\u2019s so much what to do. You need to get a company. You need to go get a sponsorship. But nobody really asks why do you need to do that? And does that flow with my mentality and my vision and destination? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Great. Okay, so fourth question\u2014in your personal or business life, what is something that you\u2019ve splurge on that\u2019s been totally worth it?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>For me, I don\u2019t know if this is splurging but I went on like a year where I spent a lot of money on self-development, on education. Like, classes in our industry for continued education are pretty expensive. There\u2019s been times where I\u2019ve spent my month\u2019s income on taking a class because I wanted to better myself and be able to share this information with other people. So I splurged a lot of money on that and cars that break down. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>He won\u2019t let me buy him a nice car. This is a true story. Bossio drives a $1000 car. His car broke down. We went and I find him a $15,000 car and I\u2019m like, I\u2019m going to buy it. Let\u2019s buy this car with the company money and stuff, and that way we\u2019ve got a reliable car. He says, no way we are spending that much money on a car right now. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Find me a cheaper car. So I found him a $7500 car and he says, no way. So I jokingly showed him a $1000 car, which he says, that\u2019s the one I want. So now we manage\u2014we define every expense on the number of Bossio cars. So if we spend $3000, we spend three Bossio cars. When we spend $10,000, we spend 10 Bossio cars.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>I just have really bad luck with cars so I\u2019m not putting more money into it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>That\u2019s a true entrepreneur right there though, who is proud of their car if it costs next to nothing. That is like entrepreneurship wrapped up in a nice package.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>I splurge on my home. I live on the water and it gives me no excuse to not pick up my six-year-old son and go fishing three times a day. Because it takes me five minutes on my boat, two minutes to get on the water where I can fish. I sat next to a lot of what I call airplane Joes where we are obviously workaholics. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">We obviously put in 60-hour work weeks. We\u2019re listening to this podcast and every other podcast that can feed us information and we\u2019re not present when we\u2019re home. I try to leave my phone at the dining room table when I take my son fishing. I try to put my phone down when I\u2019m driving 99.9% of the time in the car and talk to my daughter. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And I sat next to so many airplane Joes for so long that have told me, don\u2019t let your kids\u2019 life go by. And you wake up and they\u2019re gone. So for me, I splurged on the house and being on the water and I do a lot of fishing with my six-year-old. And he swears, he\u2019s caught 15-pound bass. He swears he\u2019s gotten this close to catching alligators. And that\u2019s perfect.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Of course he has. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>Awesome, awesome. Well, thank you guys so much. Daniel, I think you wanted to mention a little honor for Chris.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>I am super excited. This weekend, we attended the world\u2019s largest barber expo dedicated to barbers, known as Connecticut Barbers\u2019 Expo. It\u2019s put on by a fantastic person, Jay Majors. He\u2019s definitely elevating the industry. We\u2019re very proud of where it\u2019s going. And we did the first ever Barber Grammys, which is just put on fantastic.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I mean, it was done right, it was elevated. It\u2019s something that the industry is going to look forward to. The cosmetology industry already has something like this and now we\u2019ve got something like this, too. So the first ever Barber Grammy was won by Chris Bossio for Educator of the Year.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Congratulations, that\u2019s amazing. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>He almost got emotional on stage. He was right on the edge.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>I almost cracked but I held my composure. It was just amazing to get some recognition.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>I can imagine\u2014do you know how many people are in this industry?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>We don\u2019t, but there\u2019s a barbershop on every corner here in Florida. I don\u2019t know about you guys.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>It\u2019s got to be a ridiculous number of people. I mean, that is a huge honor. Congratulations, Chris.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Congratulations. It\u2019s wonderful.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>I appreciate it, guys.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>That\u2019s awesome. Okay, we\u2019re going to take this last piece of the show and I want to give you guys an opportunity to tell us a little bit about where we can find more about you, how we can follow you on social media, how our listeners can get in touch. And most importantly, how we can buy your products and visit one of your shops.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>So for me, I\u2019m all over social media. I\u2019m on every platform as Chris Bossio. You can just look up my name and I\u2019ll pull up, especially YouTube. That\u2019s where I spend most of my time and Instagram. And the website, you can find us at Tomb45.com. All of our products are there. And then we have an app. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">We didn\u2019t even talk about the app. But we have an app, Headlines Barbers that you can go and see all of our locations as well. And then Danny just started becoming an influencer. He signed his first autograph the other day at the Expo. And so he\u2019s on social media now. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>Yeah, so our industry is in need of some basic education so I\u2019ll be putting out some very basic stuff. And then hopefully building it up. The more complex we get, the more we\u2019ll lose people so we need to keep it basic and eye-opening. But yeah, Tomb45.com. I\u2019m on Instagram at @TombDoc. But Tomb45 is spelled as Tomb Raider, but Tomb45. That\u2019s where you can find us.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">We are on Amazon as far as North American markets go and we are expanding internationally at this point. Hopefully in the next couple of months.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>The Tomb45 Instagram is @OfficialTomb45. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>That\u2019s right.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Official Tomb45. Excellent.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>And all of your shops are in\u2014I don\u2019t think we even mentioned. You mentioned New Tampa at one point, but all of your shops are down in Tampa, Florida?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>In the Tampa Bay area, yeah. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>Awesome.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Awesome. Can\u2019t wait to come see you guys. Thank you so much, you amazing barber revolutionaries. You\u2019re inspiring people, for sure.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Daniel: <\/b>Thank you for having us. It was fun talking about this stuff. It had been a while since we told anybody. Actually, I think we kind of kept it under wraps though. We actually did the actual product in our kitchen for a little bit. This may be the first public time that we tell people that we did this product in our kitchen for thousands and thousands of bottles.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Chris: <\/b>I\u2019m proud of it, though. To be where we\u2019re at today. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>The Origin Story. I love it. Cool. Well, thank you guys so much. We appreciate having you here and we will talk to you soon.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>That was an awesome show. I love those guys. What did you think, Carol?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>They are such the real deal, right? They are so completely authentic and I love how they immerse themselves in the community and they talk about elevating the industry. It really shines through in every single thing that they do. I love talking with them.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>And I love the fact that they make such a great partnership. So Chris, he\u2019s the constant operator. He knows the business like nobody else. And then you have Daniel who, he\u2019s the business guy. Between them, they figured out how to scale and grow this thing tremendously. I love it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Me too.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>Okay, are we good?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Let\u2019s wrap this up, baby.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>Okay. She is Carol. I am J.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Carol: <\/b>Now go do something small but figure out how to make it big today. See you later, everybody!<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>J: <\/b>Bye!<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<h2 id=\"podcast-youtube-video\">Watch the Podcast Here<\/h2>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"How to Manage Your Time Like a Millionaire With Jay Papasan | BP Business 6\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/WAnDgnViyUM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h2>This Show Sponsored By<\/h2>\n<p><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-95450 no-display appear\" src=\"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/fundrise-review-300x66.png\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/fundrise-review-300x66.png 300w, https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/fundrise-review-768x168.png 768w, https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/fundrise-review.png 775w\" alt=\"Fundrise\" width=\"300\" height=\"66\" title=\"\">Fundrise<\/strong>\u00a0enables you to invest in high-quality, high-potential private market real estate projects. I\u2019m talking anything from high rises in D.C. to multi-families in L.A. \u2014 institutional-quality stuff. And each project is carefully vetted and actively managed by Fundrise\u2019s team of real estate pros.<\/p>\n<p>Their high-tech, low-cost online platform lets you track the progress of every single project, and keep more of the money you make. Oh, and by the way, you don\u2019t have to be accredited.<\/p>\n<p>Visit\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/fundrise.com\/bpbusiness\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Fundrise.com\/bpbusiness<\/a>\u00a0to have your first 3 months of fees waived.<\/p>\n<h2>Mid-Roll Sponsor<\/h2>\n<p><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-111620\" src=\"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/download.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"251\" height=\"65\" title=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/download.png 441w, https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/download-300x78.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 251px) 100vw, 251px\" \/>Gusto<\/strong> offers fully integrated online payroll services that includes HR, benefits, and everything else you need for your business. Gusto\u2019s mission is to create a world where work empowers a better life. By making the most complicated business tasks simple and personal, Gusto is reimagining payroll, benefits and HR for modern companies. Gusto serves over 60,000 companies nationwide and has offices in San Francisco and Denver.<\/p>\n<p>Get 3 months demo for free by visiting <a href=\"https:\/\/gusto.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">gusto.com\/bpb<\/a><\/p>\n<h2><b>In This Episode We Cover:<\/b><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>How to <strong>defend your time<\/strong> while still being generous<\/li>\n<li>How to scale your influence by <strong>organizing events<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>How to set up regular \u201coffice hours\u201d for <strong>networking<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Why it takes 30 hours to <strong>delegate<\/strong> a 1-hour task<\/li>\n<li><strong>Goal-setting<\/strong> strategies <strong>for couples<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>The question he asks himself before <strong>hiring<\/strong> anyone<\/li>\n<li>How to create a \u201c<strong>missing persons report<\/strong>\u201d to find new hires<\/li>\n<li><strong>And SO much more!<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Links from the Show<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">BiggerPockets<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.kw.com\/kw\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">KellerWilliams Realty<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Books Mentioned in this Show<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/2MBPC3g\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>The Millionaire Real Estate Investor<\/em><\/a> by Jay Papasan and Gary Keller<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/2JYfZy2\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>The Millionaire Real Estate Agent<\/em><\/a> by Jay Papasan and Gary Keller<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/2W89GK1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>The One Thing<\/em><\/a> by Jay Papasan and Gary Keller<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/2Xk28oU\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>Procrastinate on Purpose<\/em><\/a> by Rory Vaden<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/store\/recession-proof-ebook\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>Recession Proof Real Estate Investing<\/em><\/a> by J Scott<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/store\/negotiating-real-estate-ultimate\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>The Book on Negotiating Real Estate<\/em><\/a> by Mark Ferguson, J Scott, &amp; Carol Scott<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/store\/flipping-houses-2-ultimate\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>Flipping Houses<\/em><\/a> by J Scott<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/store\/estimating-rehab-costs-2-ultimate\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>Estimating Rehab Costs<\/em><\/a> by J Scott<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Tweetable Topics:<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;I&#8217;m always looking for other role models to learn from.&#8221; (<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/home?status=%22I&#039;m%20always%20looking%20for%20other%20role%20models%20to%20learn%20from.%22%20BP%20Business%20Podcast%206%20biggerpockets.com\/bizshow6%20%40biggerpockets\" target=\"_blank\">Tweet This!<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;90% of leadership is getting the right person on board.&#8221; (<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/home?status=%2290%25%20of%20leadership%20is%20getting%20the%20right%20person%20on%20board.%22%20BP%20Business%20Podcast%206%20biggerpockets.com\/bizshow6%20%40biggerpockets\" target=\"_blank\">Tweet This!<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Really good employees will leave because of a bad employee that hasn&#8217;t been caught being bad yet.&#8221; (<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/home?status=%22Really%20good%20employees%20will%20leave%20because%20of%20a%20bad%20employee%20that%20hasn&#039;t%20been%20caught%20being%20bad%20yet.%22%20BP%20Business%20Podcast%206%20biggerpockets.com\/bizshow6%20%40biggerpockets\" target=\"_blank\">Tweet This!<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Start with curiosity.&#8221; (<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/home?status=%22Start%20with%20curiosity.%22%20BP%20Business%20Podcast%206%20biggerpockets.com\/bizshow6%20%40biggerpockets\" target=\"_blank\">Tweet This!<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;If we&#8217;re consistent in how we invest our money, everything else takes care of itself.&#8221; (<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/home?status=%22If%20we&#039;re%20consistent%20in%20how%20we%20invest%20our%20money,%20everything%20else%20takes%20care%20of%20itself.%22%20BP%20Business%20Podcast%206%20biggerpockets.com\/bizshow6%20%40biggerpockets\" target=\"_blank\">Tweet This!<\/a>)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Connect with Jay<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.kellerink.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Jay&#8217;s Publishing Website<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/the1thing.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Jay&#8217;s Company Website<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/instagram.com\/jaypapasan\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Jay&#8217;s Instagram<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We all share the same 24 hours, so how do peak performers squeeze in so much more? In this episode, author Jay Papasan discusses the tools he uses to lead the publishing arm of Keller Williams Realty, all while growing a thriving family business. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":573575,"featured_media":111605,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6803],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bizshow"],"acf":[],"comment_count":0,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/573575"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111582\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}