Why You Feel Stuck as an Entrepreneur

The entrepreneur brings so much creativity to business, but they die inside when they stay stuck after they shouldn't be in that place anymore. My role is I'm a temporary like special forces. I'm in, build the system, get out, move on to the next thing. >> How do you decide what's better, whether you job something out to like an agency or a freelancer or you hire it internally? >> There's two things in business. There's things that create value and then everything else is waste. If you can create a business that minimizes waste and you can create predictability to that, then your business is going to run better. It's going to be more valuable if you ever want to exit. >> You got to give time. You can't expect 100% when you just hired somebody. >> And my thinking has always been when you can buy your time back at a discount, you should hire someone. My hourly rate for my consulting clients and stuff is like $3,000. If I'm doing anything that is lower value than that, I have to really take a serious look in the mirror and be like, why am I doing this? You're watching the marketing misfits with Norm Ferrar and Kevin K. Hey, Norm. Uh, you're going to be coming back down to Austin to visit me again uh pretty soon. And I just I just want to remind Do you remember this guy? Do you remember? >> Oh, >> yeah. I know what that is. You >> remember this guy? >> I remember very well. >> Do you remember when I came out and said, "Norm, I have a present for you." And you're like thinking this is like a box of chocolates or some sort of candy or something >> which you do every time I come down >> and then which I do every time. And you're like, "Oh, thank you so much." And then you open it and out comes a a spider. >> And you you hate you hate hate spiders and hate uh and and I I'm still I got to be on guard this time because who knows, you know, like you said, there might be a Colombian in my bed or who knows what I'm going to find. what I'm going to find. But I I got something else. And you and I can get somebody good with this one, I think. So, I saw this on the on the talk ticker shop. Uh so, it's this little thing. Now, listen. Listen here. So, it's got a little thing. What's that sound like? >> Sounds like you're winding something. Watch >> a gun. >> Oh, okay. Okay. I can't hear it too well. So, the way you use this little prank tool, and this ties into our guest today, cuz he loves pranks, is you can walk, someone's walking in the hallway and they're on, you know, you got a an L-shaped hallway, so someone's coming down the hallway and you're coming out this way and you're backing up with your hands up and I cranked it. I I I I click this and then I shoot it and you fall to the ground and they think and you watch people scramble all through into the distance. It's a freaking awesome little little prank thing. Uh, but our guest today is someone who loves pranks. So, that's why I wanted to show you that we have a new cool toy to play with. >> That's I was going to say that if it has a gun sound, that's not a very safe, you know, somebody will end up shooting you in the head. I think going out there with a whoopy cushion is a lot better. I just got to tell you, fart noises aren't going to get you killed. >> I got another one today. I don't have it with me right now, but it looks like a bomb. And here's the thing. Oh, >> don't don't don't. Uh, it looks like it's like a it looks like a bunch of dynamite tied together and it's got a a clock. You put a battery in it and it's got a little countdown clock and then you take some water and you drop it in. It starts to smoke and you just drop it like it at the door. Someone opens it up and like it's counting down like a minute 59 seconds, 58 seconds and this smoke is coming out. So, anyway, enough enough about the pranks. Huh? Who who's our guest today? I mean, you you're familiar with uh what he does? >> No, I'm actually actually I'm not. We we've got uh James on and he's awesome. Uh both of us know him and you know him from Driven. I know him from just some other uh casual conversations, but yeah, we could bring him on right now. >> Let's do it. >> All right. >> All the way from Nassau. >> Yeah. >> All the way from Nassau. That's right. Welcome. How you doing, man? >> I'm good. I uh was listening in the background hearing about your pranks uh which definitely got me chuckling reminded me uh when I was a kid like I insisted that my mom take me to like these little novelty shops to get you know whoopy cushions and like all this sort of stuff and one time I got these blood capsules and I was playing with a friend of mine and you know we'd been hanging out for a little while and I just kind of got bored and I put one of the blood capsules in my mouth and we were playing catch and he threw the ball and I kind of let it hit me in the face and then just like spit blood everywhere and he freaked out. He freaked out and he didn't know what to do with himself and start screaming and ran in to get my mom and my mom came out and she saw me rolling on the ground laughing with like all the pink blood everywhere. immediately knew what I had done because she bought the blood capsules for me. And um anyway, so those prank toys um yeah, I don't know if I'm proud to say it, guys, but yes, I'm I'm no stranger to uh >> you do prank phone calls or something, right? Or you >> do. >> Well, I can't confirm or deny, you know, whether that's happening or not, but um but I have been known to do that in the past. Yeah, I kind of graduated from the blood capsules and whoopy cushions to just doing prank calls. I >> I got to just tell you a quick story because you say blood capsules. This goes back to my college days with my roommate. So we >> 1720s. >> Yeah. Yeah. 1720s before the US was actually >> right. You were your roommate was Benjamin Franklin. That's right. >> Right. Exactly. Yeah. >> That's why it was bald, you know. So, we got into this fake argument, but our next door neighbors were a couple of other guys that we went to school with and we were screaming and we sounded like we're throwing each other against the uh the walls. I was in film so film cinematography and I was taking the bug blood capsules as well. I put a couple in my mouth. >> Reagan, my roommate was, you know, hitting me and throwing me around just faking. But there was blood everywhere. And then I'm on the ground and there's just like a puddle of blood right beside me. He runs over to the neighbors. He tells them to come back. I'm thinking that they're just going to freak out, right? The one guy stands over over me and says, "What do we do with the body?" >> Like, "What do I do with the body?" It's not like, "Hey, let's get an ambulance." >> Right? They they have that there's videos of pranks like that on Tik Tok right now where people will wrap up their you know the wife will wrap up her husband like in like mummy kind of put him on the ground and the Uber guy comes and knocks on the door to deliver or not the Uber guy the Uber Eatats guy comes and knocks on the door to deliver the stuff and she opens up and she's like one hand holding his legs he's on the ground all wrapped up like he's dead she's like can you give me a hand I just need to carry him to the trunk and you see these people like freak out it's it's it's pretty good I love that that kind of print stuff it's speaking Speaking of blood, uh, blood, I mean, there's a lot of businesses that are bleeding, and that's kind of what you your specialty is, uh, James, right? I mean, you come in and fix the bleeding and help, uh, help a lot of businesses turn around and systemize or or something along those lines. And you've even gamified that. I'm sure we'll talk about that as well. So, what what is uh, yeah, there 57 hats. Um, and I I know that I know that feeling sometimes. I think Norm and I feel like we're wearing 57 hats. we're starting a new company together right now and it feels like I'm like man I'm doing we're both doing like 26 things we need like people uh but we're not ready yet to hire those people so we're having to get the systems and everything in place so that we can actually then hire the people to basically duplicate ourselves. Um so tell us a little bit about uh your background uh and uh how you how you came to do what you're doing now. >> Yeah well you know I'm a I'm a recovering engineer I guess I'll start there. uh studied uh aerospace engineering in college and then got into software actually after after school. Um but I think you know back to like the you know the whole bleeding that was a great tiein by the way Kevin I didn't know how you were going to tie it all together but you did remarkable job with that. Um I was like wow that's pretty good. I'm gonna have to remember that maybe do some content on that. But um you know I think from from my perspective there's like there's two things in business. There's things that create value and then everything else is waste. And you know, the the bleeding that you're talking about is the waste, right? We we hire people, we make money, and then we're like, well, where's where's it all going, right? What's what's happening to this? Because you can't, you know, you can't cash revenue in at the bank, right? You have to it's profits that you keep and you can reinvest them or distribute them or whatever. And so, you know, for me, one of the things that I kind of obsess over is how do we make sure that everything we're doing in the business is strategic and it's adding value so that we minimize the waste and we can keep as much money as possible. and you know 57 hats which we can talk about in a little bit I think is our our approach at uh you know kind of making the conver that conversation about you know what hats am I wearing what hats shouldn't I be wearing like who should be doing what it it usually is a very boring heavy conversation and it's not structured in an easy way for people to even talk or think about on their own and so we took a framework that I've used to grow multiple of my own businesses but also So after tens of thousands of hours of consulting businesses to say all right here's how to think about this and how to think about well should you automate something should you outsource it do you need to hire somebody like all of those things are questions that every founder and business owner is faced with and you know my my belief is that if you can create a business that minimizes waste and you can create predictability to that then your business is going to run better. It's going to be more valuable if you ever want to exit. And if you don't want to exit, it's going to be uh ways you're free to run so that you know like you guys have multiple things going and so do I. You know, you can start the next business and be an entrepreneur instead of be, you know, a kind of a not so great manager because I don't think most founders and owners are great managers to begin with. So the ambition of this is to help people kind of get out of the things that they shouldn't be doing and make sure the things that need to be done are being done by the right people. >> Yeah, it's so important. Uh I what you said there about um uh entrepreneurs not being great managers. How many times have you seen like a great business opportunity just run horribly? You know, and I this is I thought I'd ask this question a little bit later on, but the top people that you have to bring on. So you're at that point where you're just Let me back this up, James. So I am um a graduate of the uh ETH Academy. So I went I did the whole course and it really got me going and thinking a whole different way. But there's something called this entrepreneurial sales roller coaster where the entrepreneur is at their max. They can't handle it anymore and they have to hire somebody. They hire somebody they don't train and then they fire them because they can't do it the same way they can and it's just an ongoing cycle. What's your first or what's the first group of people that you should be looking at or even considering when you start a new company? >> Yeah, it's um it's a great it's a great question and I think that my approach to this is sort of um reverse engineering what success looks like. And so if if you if you think about it this way, instead of thinking about who should I hire, you should you should think about well where do you you know like Norm, Kevin, like whoever's listening, like where do you add the most value to the business? Like and that could change over time, right? But if we say that, you know, you should be focusing most of your time on things that you're good at, things that you enjoy, and things that move the business forward, then that gives us a target of what you should be doing, right? So if let's just say, you know, you're great at sales development or something, then I would say do that for a little while while you hire people to do the things that are not that, right? And so think thinking inversely instead of saying all right well I'm going to get rid of all these different things it's more about well what should I be doing first and how do I start forcing out all the other things that I shouldn't be doing and that's going to be different for everybody because not everybody is good at the same things. Not everybody enjoys the same things. Not everybody moves the business forward in the same way because you could be a you know you could be a technical founder of a SAS company but you suck at sales. Okay. Well, then if you're great if you're this tech wizard and you're great at developing solutions that people love, like maybe you should stay in that role for a while longer and complement yourself with somebody who's better at sales. But contrast that with somebody who's not good at developing anything, but they're really good at sales. The advice for those two people is totally different in terms of like who they should hire, but the approach to figuring out how to extricate themselves is the same approach. And it's really by designing what should we be doing and then what are we doing that's not that and starting to offload those things in a strategic way. >> Hey Norm, you'll love this man. I talked to a seller the other day doing 50k a month, but when I asked them what their actual profit was, they just kind of stared at me. >> Are you serious? That's kind of like driving blindfolded. >> Exactly, man. I told them, "You got to check out Sellerboard. This cool profit tool that's built just for Amazon sellers. It tracks everything like fees, PPC, refunds, promos, even changing cogs during using FIFO." >> Aha. But does it do FBM shipping costs, too? >> Sure does. That way you can keep your quarter 4 chaos totally under control and know your numbers because not only does it do that, but it automates your PPC bids. It forecasts inventory. It sends review requests and even helps you get reimbursements from Amazon. >> Now, that's like having a CFO in your back pocket. >> You know what? It's just $15 a month, but you got to go to sellerboard.com/misfits. sellerboard.com/misfits. And if you do that, they'll even throw in a free two-month trial. >> So, you want me to say go to sellerboard.commisfits and get your number straight before your accountant loses it? >> Exactly. All right. >> So, what if you're just starting and you don't have a lot of budget? Maybe it's let's let's say it's just a a couple partners, uh husband and wife or two buddies or something that that is starting something up and they don't have a lot of budget. and they kind of know maybe they're starting I don't know say an agency or something and they're starting an agency to help you know Shopify sellers or Amazon sellers or something like that and they know they know how to do the stuff they have also have the skills to actually do the tax but that's not scalable so they got to set up the systems and the processes and like okay get in here and work with the first client or two or something like that and then set up the system so that someone else can scale that to you know 100 clients or whatever. what, but it's not really where they should be spending their time, but they got to spend their time there to get those systems uh up and running. What What's your advice on something like that? And when is it that you make that first hire? >> Yeah, it's a great question and it's a you know, it's a reality for a lot of people and especially when you're getting something going um is that at first for a little while you might have to do something that's not scalable in order to create the system that is scalable, right? And I think that's okay, right? You know, um, a lot of a lot of founders and owners get trapped up in this like, oh, I should be doing this or I shouldn't be doing this. Like, everybody should be working on what the business needs most at the time. And the problem the problem is that people somehow just start camping out in these areas that they shouldn't stay in for a long period of time. Right. So, you know, the example that you're giving, Kevin, where, you know, you might have to set up some, you know, CRM system or some, you know, landing pages or like whatever, right? That sort of stuff. Like, it has to happen if you want to make money. But the problem is you start making progress and you you you hoard that role that was never meant for you for the long term, right? And we have to be okay building systems and moving past it. And one of the ways that I look at systems is that it's three parts to a system. It's people, processes, and technology, right? And so when I cuz I still will go into like with 57 hats, you know, we launched that a little less than 6 months ago. And there were and that's and that's business number four right now for me that I'm an owner in. And so in that business, I was in very much the same position that you're talking about where I needed to figure out, well, where, you know, how do we ascend people and how do we monetize after they um after they buy the box? And so I've been building a system for selling and upselling and that sort of thing. And I'm kind of moving myself out of that right now, but I've been involved in that for a few months with the knowledge that I'm not giving myself a new job. I'm giving myself a project and that project is to create a system and then I start pulling people in to operate that system that I've built. And so short answer is sometimes you have to do what needs to be done but what needs to be done is not to do the job and to own that hat. The job that you need to do is to build the system. What's who's the people that are going to run this system? What processes are they going to follow? What tools are going to help them do that? and how am I going to manage and observe that the system is on track with metrics and you know KPIs and stuff and if that gets built properly then you move on to the next thing that requires your attention as the entrepreneur right the entrepreneur brings so much creativity to business but they die inside when they stay stuck after they shouldn't be in that place anymore and I and I think that more often than not people torpedo their businesses because they stay in roles that they created for themselves instead of thinking about my role is I'm a temporary like special forces. I'm in build the system get out move on to the next thing. Um instead they're like oh I've been I've done six tours of duty in this one part of my business. And it's like dude you should have been extracted six six years ago. And and so um I think it's I think it's a different way of looking at it. It's not should I do this? It's how should I think about doing this so that this doesn't become a permanent condition. >> So you're if I'm understanding it correctly and I I I agree 100%. Like work on your strengths. You you you have to work on multiple hats at the beginning but work on your strengths at the end. And you know if for me I hate accounting. I went to uh university. I went and took a course or two and that was it. I just wanted to know enough about it then get the hell out. But if you're building I guess long long way around asking this question is it building out your org chart understanding let's say you have four people in the organization who's taking what responsibility and wearing the multiple tasks and then trying to hire out as you go and then sticking with your strength. >> Yeah. I think as much as possible. The other the other thing the other thing that trips people up too so you mentioned accounting so I'll pick on that for a minute. Um you know accounting is not a creative activity it and it shouldn't be right if you have a creative if you have a creative >> accountant you might have some problems with IRS right and so so you take something like that which doesn't require high level creativity there's guidelines that have been in place since Norm was in college with Benjamin Franklin like it's like it's very well set and so for something like that you can pay a reasonable able amount of money to have somebody take that off of your plate. Like I've I've no kidding like I've talked with business owners who are doing multiple millions of dollars who are still spending hours a week in QuickBooks. I'm like what are you doing? Like the opportunity cost for you is extraordinary, right? Because if I'm able to go out and I'm able to generate X dollars in sales, but I could spend 5% of that on somebody to do something for me, my my opportunity cost is too big to keep doing that. And I think that's another way to, you know, kind of balance out when should I hire somebody. Um and and my thinking has always been when you can buy your time back at a discount, you should hire someone, right? So, if I'm, you know, my my hourly rate for my consulting clients and stuff is like $3,000. And if I'm doing anything that is lower value than that, I have to really take a serious look in the mirror and be like, why am I why am I doing this? Because it's costing me that amount of money. And I might be willing to make a trade for a short period of time because I think the long-term benefit might be there. However, if I'm like operating in that role, it makes absolutely no sense. and I'm poorly managing resources at that point. >> So, one of the systems that when when we're looking at it at the very beginning, you have your org chart. Then you're you you have your taskboard very similar to what you're saying. We build out a $10, $100, $1,000, and $10,000 tasks. And they that's just a number. Okay. But anybody that is uh building out the $10 task, you shouldn't be handling. You should be just giving that to whoever especially repeatable $10 tasks. You should be focusing as the business owner on those well thousand task like for Amazon sellers. It might be understanding and implementing your PPC at the beginning but then handing that over to a company or agency later on and you focusing on networking and building and developing doing the bisdev for your company at the $10,000 board and you're just linking that up to your org chart. So it's just a system orchart first, task board second, and then people who you assign to these uh these tasks. That's just a a system that we've dealt with for a few years. >> Yeah, I think I think that's great. Um, one one thing I would I would add to that is a different way of looking at your org chart or your business as a whole is something that is um embedded in the 57 hats framework. But it's this idea that every business whether it's a you know startup uh you know a scaleup billion dollar company or whatever has five five key pillars to the business and it's marketing, sales, delivery, operations and finance. And every business has those and every business needs those. And then taking taking those across, you know, kind of the top and and then looking at where do each one of those rank in terms of red, yellow or green, right? Red where we have no systems in place. We're not getting any leverage. Yellow we have some some systems come some leverage coming together and green where we have fully functional systems. And if you map those five pillars with red, yellow, green, it's it becomes much easier for you to focus where you should be putting that time and attention, right? Because the very, you know, every business is different at different stages of growth and and what they actually require in order to continue to grow. And so when a business has marketing at red and sales at yellow, but their delivery or fulfillment is green, the the things that that business should be working on are different than a business that has marketing and sales on green, but delivery and operations are on red, right? Because if I'm if I have great marketing and sales, but my delivery and my fulfillment and my operations are on red, like how much more money do I want to be putting into ads before I solve those problems? It's like not much because the wheels are going to fall off and my reputation's going to be damaged. I'm gonna have poor service quality for my customers. And so I think sometimes um you know like I'm a big fan of you know education and events and obviously that's how I met you guys and all this other stuff. Um, but I think that sometimes, especially people who are starting up, but even people that have been around for a while, see what one person is doing and they say, "Oh, that works for that person. I should do that, too." And it's like, "Well, it works for that person because the stage of growth they're in, the strengths that they have, the type of team that they have, the type of offer they have, all these different things." And so a lot of people just make mistakes by lifting and shifting what's working for somebody else, but they're misapplying their resources to something because their situation, their circumstances are different. And uh you know, you hear a lot of people be like, "Oh, you know, you're not a a special snowflake or whatever. You should just do this and it'll work." And it's like, well, you know, maybe maybe we don't want whining like special snowflakes, but you guys are different people than everybody else. and the way that you go about running your business, you know, might need to be different and what your business needs at that point in time might be different. So, I love what you said, Norm, about the HR chart and the tasks, but I would also say that you don't have to tackle everything at once, right? Not not all tasks and not all initiatives inside a business are created equal, right? You should be focusing on the things that are going to move you the furthest with the least amount of uh you know brain damage first and then continue to move forward from there. Re-evaluating at each stage what does a business need from me now in order to minimize waste going back to our blood capsule analogy at the beginning. So, you're doing monthly and quarterly analits, right? >> I'm doing quarterly. >> I think quarterly is the right a really good cadence. And I think a lot of people can get a tremendous amount done in a 90-day sprint. Um, as long as that 90-day sprint is laser focused on the thing that's actually going to make the biggest difference in the business. What how do you decide what's better? Whether you you job something out to like an agency or freelancer or you hire it internally when you're doing that analysis like you said earlier, you know, this is a I'm $3,000 and this is a $500 an hour thing. I'm going to job that out. How do you make that decision of which way to go? >> Yeah. I think um I think one of the ways that I think about it is how much internal execution intelligence do we have around this topic? Right. If I don't if I don't know anything about something, I think the odds of me being able to be an a really effective manager over somebody in that area is probably going to be much lower. So unless so it's like if I don't have a lot of execution intelligence on that particular area then I either need to bring somebody in house who is high horsepower probably going to cost a bit more in terms of labor cost or I'm going to outsource that to an agency or an external partner that has a great reputation for it. If I have if I have execution intelligence, that means that going back to the systems thing, people, processes, and tools, if the process that I can develop to plug someone into is good, then it will be easier for me to bring somebody in at a lower cost basis. And so, it really depends on how how clear I am on what needs to be done and how it needs to be done. depends on the level of person that I need to bring in to either build that system or not build that system and you know so for me it's it's a question of capability and where does that capability reside you know back in the day uh I had a company where I had a person that I hired right off the bat day one she worked with me on just a project manager and she was working with uh setting up catalog systems for clients that we had. And she did it all manually on a spreadsheet and that was fine until we started getting more and more and more clients. And what I ended up doing and it was it it was more money. It was5 or $7 an hour more. Um, and I brought in this new person. She didn't know what I was paying, but what this person brought in was automation. and she was able to do what this person would be doing in a week in a few hours. And at the time I was really questioning, you know, should I go and spend all this money on this new person like seven bucks an hour, all this money, but it worked out. It paid. But the problem I had is that that person that saw this person just um just uh killing it on these catalog programs, she knew her job was up. There was no work for her. So she didn't have a job to hire up to. >> Mhm. >> And that was a problem. But I hired smarter at the like when the time was right. But we have to realize that sometimes those people that you hire at the beginning, that level of people, the the people, the employees, the contractors, sometimes you can't train them because you have to have that other specialized person come up and take their job. Unfortunately, I don't know if you've seen that. I don't know what your thoughts are, but it's terrible when it happens. >> Well, um, yeah, I've I've certainly seen it. I've I've lived through it numerous times. I've seen it over and over. I I'm going to challenge the assessment that it's terrible when it happens. Um I'm a big I'm a big believer in trying to see reality for what it is instead of being overly optimistic or you know shades of pessimism. And I think that a thing that so I just we just onboarded four new people on our team in the last couple of weeks and I had a joint onboarding meeting for everybody and one of the things I told him which I' I've uh gotten inspiration from Reed Hastings from Netflix on this is that uh a lot of businesses do a disservice to their team members by telling everyone, hey here we're a family and um and what I told my new team members. I was like, "Look, what I'm about to say to you is potentially going to sound harsh or it's going to sound like, you know, I don't care." But the act it's actually the complete opposite. I said, you know, we're not a family here. I'm not trying to become a substitute for your family. I'm not trying to be part of your family. And as much as I might like you, I don't want you to be part of my family. We are a team. And a team is different than a family. A team is a construct of people that's on on a mission to accomplish something. A family is a social construct for connection and relationship and belonging and all of those things. And and we create dysfunction on teams when we call people family, right? Like you're not going to fire your mom or whatever just, you know, from being your mom. It's like it's just your mom and that's how it is. And you know, even if you go home for Thanksgiving or somebody comes over and it's like one of your crazy fringe relatives, like you're like, "Yeah, they're part of the family." Like, you know, that's how it is. But like team is different than that. And I'm a big sports guy, baseball in particular. And when you look at a baseball team or any other sports team, managers t change team members and team members change teams. And the reality of team is that it is not static and it's fluid. And our job as business owners is to bring in the best possible team member that we can afford for that job that needs to be done at any given point in time. And I think a lot of times it's uh it's very easy to become idealistic and romantic about oh man this person started at the very beginning with me and you know now they've come up and it's like look some people will continue to either level up or maybe they just stay in that same role as the business levels up but it's also totally okay and normal to realize that as you're growing your business you need to make management decisions and sometimes that includes changing team members. And I I think it's only terrible when we have a lens that says it shouldn't be this way when in fact that's how it actually is and that's how it operates and works best. And so if we set that expectation up front that this is how it is, it becomes much easier to manage that later down the line when we need to make changes. >> So even during your on boarding process, you're managing those expectations right at the start. I love it. right? Day one, like literally day one. And by the end of the call, I was like, "Look, and if this doesn't work for you, like no harm, like you guys, you can leave now, but I want you to know going into this, like what to expect." And it's not and it's it's not done in a derisive sort of like I'm a, you know, I can't wait to fire you. I'm waiting for you to trip up sort of way. It's it's done in a in a manner of look, I'm only building this team because I want to win. and you're on this team and if you're on this team, I want to win with you. But our overarching objective as a team is to win, however that gets defined. Um, and it's interesting because when you set those expectations, the right people will feel relief and they'll be grateful. Like every single one of those four people that were on that onboarding meeting that day were like, "So glad you said that. Like, I can't wait to be here and like do my absolute best work, but not under false pretenses that were some sort of like weird, janky, dysfunctional family. Are you looking to quickly boost new Amazon product launches or scale up existing listings to reach first page positioning? The influencer platform Stack Influence can help. >> That's right. Stack Influence pushes high volume external traffic sales straight to Amazon listings using micro influencers that you only have to pay with your products. They've helped upandcoming brands like Magic Spoon compete with Cheerios for top category positioning while also helping Fortune 500 brands like Unilver launch their new products. Right now is one of the best times to get started with Stack Influence. You can sign up at stackinfluence.com or click the link in this video down in the description notes below and mention misfits that's m i sfs to get 10% off your first campaign. stackinfluence.com. So what's an can you give us an example of someone that you've come in that was just a mess? maybe give us a few things of how they were messing how you implemented and and advised them and what the end result was at the end. Do you have a like an example something that you can be specific? You don't have to say the name of the company if you don't want to, but be specific on so the listeners can go, "Oh, that's happening to me. That's happening to me. Oh, this is how he fixed." Oh, something something along those lines. >> Yeah, absolutely. I I I'll uh I'll sort of probably merge a few different examples together to like illustrate your point >> and uh protect the you know protect the innocent so to speak. Um >> some some people listening might even be them. Um but uh but I think one so so there's like a series of things that become problems. One of the problems is that people are working on the wrong things. That's a that's a really big problem. Um, and so the the way that I go about correcting that is doing that, you know, that very high level red, yellow, green assessment that I was talking about there. Like everybody that we start out working with, we go through that process in some shape or form or another. All right? Because it's important to me as an adviser. Um, and even if I'm coming into a business where I'm, you know, a partner or I'm an investor or something like that, I need to know where are we relative to where we want to go. and I can't know I can't have a good I can't create a road map to where we want to go if I don't know where we're starting right and so I think one of the places where um you know you could call it a mess but I think it's probably just lack of clarity I think most most problems start because of a lack of clarity and so if we reverse engineer that we say well what do we need to do first we need to create clarity right and so the clarity is well what area of the business requires most of our attention and where do we need to focus, right? And so I think that's that's generally step number one. Um, and you know that happens in a variety of different levels depending on how we work with somebody, right? It could be, you know, have a quick conversation just to kind of get grounded on where we should focus or it could be, you know, you know, we come in and we interview, you know, 10 people on their team and get a sample of the different different levels of the business or we interview the executive team and get like a 360 degree picture so that we can create that assessment. I think that's that's generally step number one. And then, you know, step number two has like it wears different co it wears like different costumes, but it's still the same thing. And the same thing is people people don't have clarity on what their roles are supposed to be or how what good looks like and how do we know that they're actually doing a good job or not, right? And so we have to clean up that people piece. And you know, we have this um thing that we call uh player scorecard. And the player scorecard has like, okay, these are my big five objectives. These are my critical success factors. These are my key metrics. And this is how I report to everybody. And a lot of times people come into a company and you know, you might have had a job description that you hired them from, but that doesn't really translate to how do we know they're doing a good job on a regular basis. And so I think attacking the people problem is really important. And what a lot of people don't realize when they're running a business and they're managing people is that managing people really isn't so much about managing people as it is managing a process that people plug into. And so if the process is not there, the only alternative is to micromanage people, which nobody likes. Management doesn't like it and the employees don't like it. And so making sure that the right man performance management system is in place so that we get the most out of those people I'd say almost across the board is missing from most companies. Like if I'd say like there's one thing that most companies could do immediately to reduce the bleeding and reduce the waste, it's to have a performance management system on how do we know what good looks like for each of these people? Because all of those people should be contributing towards some business goal. But if you look inside most companies, especially the ones that are struggling, people are doing things and they might even be doing things with enthusiasm and excitement and all of that, but they're not doing things that matter to the goals of the business. And so all of that money is just like you're like lighting it on fire, right? And so I think after that sort of initial highle assessment, what area of the business do we need to focus on? We very quickly get to well, who's focusing on that? Do they know what a good job looks like? and how do we make sure that we're managing their performance effectively and um and it's you know it's a complex question Kevin um however I would say 80 to 90% of the businesses that I've come in contact with maybe probably even higher fail to understand the big picture and then they fail to understand how they get the most uh value out of the people that are working and um what good looks like for those people. And then the the third layer is you have to start putting some sort of structure in place in terms of process on you know how people are going to do their jobs which is distinct from is this person doing a good job. And so going back to that people processes and tools the people and process side of things is where a tremendous amount of opportunity lies and it's also where a tremendous amount of money is just getting wasted and flushed down the toilet on a regular basis for almost every business. I also think that it's important when thinking about your own business for anyone listening to this is to not feel like there's something wrong with you because your business isn't perfect. There's no business that's perfect. Like I I literally have 30,000 hours of consulting experience at this point with, you know, startups all the way to billion-dollar companies. And I can tell you without any question, I've never come inside of a business, no matter how well they're performing, that is perfect. There it just doesn't exist. And so there's this idea in somebody's mind and I went through this in one of my first businesses where you know I you know I didn't know what I was doing. I came from a corporate background and I was like oh I'll just hire a bunch of people and I'll get this thing going. It was like complete mess and I felt so much shame and judgment towards like oh I better not tell anyone how messy this is because I I bet nobody else's business is this bad. And it turns out like everybody's business has, you know, warts and bruises and hair on them. And um I think if you're clear on where we are big picture, then drill into where we need to focus and make sure that we have a system for managing people's performance and then a process that everyone is following it. It definitely solves a tremendous amount of the issues and it will absolutely and undoubtedly uh prevent some of the monumental waste that's happening inside of a company. I've always found that uh people have to know where to find things as well. People waste a lot of time and if we have a task uh in the description, we usually have a link to the policy which has the SOP in it. But like you said, who to report to, how to quantify, and two things, the templates. Do you have templates? Where are they? And they're usually in the same folder. and training. So instead of going back and you know bothering the person re look at the video, it's a step by step through the SOP then if you still need help then no problem. So that's one thing. The other thing that um I learned this from a friend of mine uh is to get the we just call it uh a strength strength weakness uh process at the end of the week where five strengths five weaknesses. So how how can we what worked for you? What didn't work for you? What do we got to work on? But this is the big training. We offer training to anybody who is who wants to train. So part of us is one day a one hour a week, 5 hours a week. We pay for the training and we help you become excellent in whatever you want to achieve. Now, that does help with a lot of this, but again, just going back to what you were talking about, being able to find things and understand them and implement is really important. And a lot of companies that I found don't have a place for that. They they might have a Google Drive with SOPs. You got to go to the SOP folder. You got to figure out these, you know, 100 SOPs. And by the way, I don't know how you feel about this, but you know, I come I I have a SOP on making coffee. I mean, I used to make SOPs on everything, but what I found now is you don't have to make an SOP on every single step. It it, you know, it's just not required. >> Yeah. I mean, I think you could get really carried away with SOPs. Uh, like making coffee potentially might be. >> There was a reason for that. There was a reason for that. >> Yeah. >> Yes. So, you have to have buy in. >> Yeah. I think I think you also um, you know, one thing that needs to be said here too is you need to hire people who know how to do the job that you're hiring them for. A lot of times we as entrepreneurs are really curious and we're good problem solvers and we're good with lots of ambiguity. Uh but a lot of people aren't. And so when we bring them into our company and we're like, "All right, well, like they'll figure it out. I'll put them through some training and then they they'll get the hang of it." We're like really not doing anybody a favor. We're not we're not bringing in a person who's capable of doing the job potentially or who even has the skills to do the job. And then not only do we put them in an awkward position, we also put ourselves in a position where we don't get the results that we need. Right? And I'm reminded of a Warren Buffett quote where he's like, you don't go out and buy a dog and do it barking for it, right? You like you you get somebody you get a dog so the dog can bark, right? And similarly, when you're, you know, when you're bringing people into a company, you're bringing them in because they know how to get the result that you are looking for. Um, you know, all too often, I think as leaders in an organization, we try to focus too much on telling people how to do their jobs instead of telling people what good looks like. Like, what does good look like? Good looks like we're getting this customer acquisition cost. Um, it doesn't look like me telling you exactly how to write sales copy on a page so that we can get that customer acquisition cost. Like, if I have to get to that level, then either I don't need the person that I hired or I'm just like having a really tough time letting go. And I think we need to be masters at telling people what needs to happen and where we need to go and making sure that we're bringing people on who know how to do that. Um it's uh it's it's important to manage based on objectives and not by tasks because if we're just managing on tasks then we never get the opportunity to get the kind of leverage that we're looking for and we also will not really attract the right level of quality and caliber of talent that we really need to grow and scale a business. >> So where did 57 hats come from? Are there Did you just sit down like, "Okay, there's 57 different things needs to do." Or is it like, "That sounds like a cool number. Uh let's let's call it 57. I like Hines ketchup." Um what where did uh where did uh like like Norm does on his macaroni, but where uh uh Canadian thing? I don't get it. Um where did it come from? And for people that are listening, like I know they can go to your website and buy this. I'm assuming you probably get it on Amazon, a few other places. And it's it's a game. It's a it's like a boxed uh like board game kind of thing or explain what what the the game is and then uh the concept of how that helps people get clear in their mind and then like you said earlier the opportunity to take go from the game and getting some clarity to actually getting you uh or your team on the on the phone to really dive deep. >> Yeah. So, so just the short answer to your first question about whether it was just because we like Hines ketchup on our macaroni like norm which I I don't know if I'm going to be able to eat with Norm anymore knowing this but as a you know Italian guy who grew up in New York I'm like oh my can't imagine putting ketchup on my macaroni but um >> disgusting me too the first time I saw him doing what are you doing it wasn't just ketchup red hot us too. >> Oh, wow. Okay. So, it gets even better. Um, but in any case, we we sat down and we were kind of like, "All right, let's think of all the different roles that a typical business could have in their company." And the number was somewhere around 57, like after we whiteboarded it out and all this other stuff. There's actually more cards in the box than 57 as it turns out. Um, but by the time we, you know, we kind of like locked that in, we we already liked the number 57, how it literated and everything like that. But, um, essentially what what the product is, it uh it's almost like having a consultant in a box. Um, and it's it's got a deck of cards greater than 57. Um, and each card has a hat, right? So, if you think about all the different roles that you might have inside of a company, you know, you might have a executive assistant or you might have an operations coordinator or a controller or a CFO or any of these things. And so each card has two sides to it. And on one side it has the picture, a cool, you know, kind of fun creative picture of a hat uh that corresponds with that role. And then on the flip side, it has the key objectives that that role is there to fulfill, right? And so, um, there's all these different roles and all these different hats inside of inside of the box. And then we have a game board that has two sides. And basically, you go to side one. And side one helps guide you through this process of um, what should you delete, what should you delegate, and what should you do. And it has prompts and asks you questions. And so, you have the game board out and you go through the deck of cards. And the very first thing that you do if you're the owner or the founder is you're like, "Okay, yes, I'm wearing that hat. No, I'm not wearing that hat." You just kind of sort the cards into two different piles. And the pile of like, "Hey, here's all the hats that I'm wearing." Uh, for a lot of people the first time they go through the game, they're like, it finally makes sense why I feel spread so thin, and I'm so stressed because I'm wearing so many hats. And it's it's interesting. I think an unanticipated um benefit of this becoming a physical product as opposed to just you know having slides or you know some kind of online component was when people hold that stack of cards and these are all the hats that I'm wearing it really cements in like I need to do something about this it becomes visceral and it becomes real and they can experience the the you know like if you have a five cards that you're holding versus 25 cards you feel the difference in the weight and that difference is real in your business. I I I was talking to a guy like literally right before I had this uh recording with you guys and he's like I went through the game and I was like blown away by all the hats that I was wearing and I showed my wife and for the first time she was like oh it makes sense why you're so stressed like I can see all of the hats that you're wearing. And so if the game does nothing else, it does a lot more, but if all it did was help people get an awareness of these are the hats that I'm wearing and I need to do something about it, it serves that purpose. Obviously, it goes far beyond that, but so then from that deck of cards, then we we ask questions on the game board that help people understand whether they should just completely get rid of something. Because there's a lot of times when you're growing a business that what you used to do a year ago or two years ago or more, you just kind of have been doing it, but maybe you don't even need to be doing it anymore. And that's an that's an opportunity to eliminate waste. And and then the next two sections are do you delete this hat? Sorry, deleted is first. Do you delegate this hat or do you do it? And so we've got questions that guide people through that as well. And so by the end you have this deck of cards that says like these are things I need to delegate and these are things I need to do and you flip the game board over and there basically is like okay who do I currently have on my team and who do I need on my team and so then you start sorting the cards based on those five pillars the marketing sales delivery operations and finance and at the end you're like okay here's I can delegate these cards to the people that I currently have on my team and the cards are dry erase and we include a marker in the box and you can write people's names on it. So, as soon as you're done with that, you can start delegating to those people, but not with just like, hey, go do this, but there's objectives on the card so that you're clear on what they need to be doing. And then the future team helps you understand what hats you're still going to need to hire for. Um, and and so it it really is like from taking people from overwhelm like I just feel overwhelmed, which is a feeling that every entrepreneur can relate to. I feel overwhelmed to oh wow I know what I need to do now and the process really doesn't take uh you know 20 to 30 minutes um to go through the game and you can do it on your own as a founder owner you can do it with your leadership team if you have a leadership team I've I've uh I got a video recording from a guy the other day he's like we weren't really sure what to expect but we took 57 hats to our offsite and it helped us plan out like our org for the next six months and we didn't know going into that how we were going to tackle that. And um and so it's it's it's a really useful tool in helping people get clear on diagnosing what's slowing them down and also what hats they are wearing and what hats they shouldn't be wearing. Um so that's that's kind of it in a nutshell. >> You've got one there, Norm, right? >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I'm gonna have to get me one. I'm have to go in the 57.com and and and order it. >> Yeah. Yeah, we'll uh we'll get you one, Kevin, for sure. >> And it's on uh it's on Amazon as well. >> It's on Amazon, too. >> Yeah. The one thing uh that I noticed when I first received it is the quality. Uh you know, this is a great game, but also you put quality into this. The game board is high quality. The cards are uh great quality. the box itself, uh, the old, you know, anticipation, you know, it takes a few seconds to open it up, but I think when people are going to buy this, it's the old perceived value. Like, you've already told us about what the game is, but when you receive it, like when you sent that uh this over to me, soon as I got it, it just looked like it already had quality even before I opened up the package to take a look what was inside. Yeah, I app I appreciate you saying that. We um you know, we put a lot of a lot of effort into creating a real product, right? This isn't this isn't a you know, kind of a BS product just so that we can capture leads, right? This is this is a product that if somebody buys it and never talks to us ever again, they're going to get value just by using the product. And that's what we wanted. We wanted it to stand on its own two feet. We wanted it to feel like a uh a creative, engaging way to to tackle a problem that every entrepreneur faces at some point or another or on a regular basis and um and in a way that uh feels approachable, right? It doesn't feel like I have to hide from do putting this off like the question of like, "Oh my god, I know I need to hire somebody, but I don't know who." Mhm. >> That's a real thing that everybody faces on a pretty regular basis, especially if their business is growing and people trap themselves in roles that they shouldn't be in for far too long and sacrifice growth uh because they they don't have a solution to how how do I deal with that? And so we wanted to put this product out into the world and help entrepreneurs be able to, you know, grow grow faster and have an intelligent way to map out what they're doing and what everybody else on their team is doing. >> What do you find is the hardest thing to get an entrepreneur to change? They go through this process and then they know they need to change it. they know like I need to hire this person or get rid of these car deck these 12 cards, but what do you find is like the hardest thing for them to let go of usually? >> Um, I think letting go is is probably the right word. U, you know, I I don't know about you guys, but I know in my own experience, you know, I can I can be a control freak, right? I can have a hard time trusting people. I can find it difficult to delegate. Like all of those things I think become hard. And what what I think can help overcome that is the understanding that you don't have to you don't have to hire all these hats at once, right? You don't have to do everything at once. You can do one at a time and start getting those reps and building the practice of, you know, hiring good people and having that performance management framework that I mentioned earlier in place. But letting go in general um is scary for entrepreneurs because you've spent time building something, creating something, and to think that you're going to start handing it off to other people can be really intimidating. You know, taken to the extreme, most entrepreneurs will never have an exit from their business. Uh I don't know if the stat is current, but uh some time ago it was like 86% of businesses that got listed for sale, just the ones that went with a broker and listed themselves for sale, 86% of those would never sell. That doesn't take into account all of the ones that were built but never listed, right? So the the the number of businesses that don't sell is really incredible. And a lot of it comes from an inability to systematically let go and separate yourself from the business because many entrepreneurs wrap up their identity and conflate it with the business like I am one with this business and it's a it's a really unfortunate thing to think that you have you are your business. Um, and if you if you start operating like that, it becomes harder and harder the longer you go to unravel that. And it's not impossible, but it becomes more difficult. And so I would say letting go, Kevin, is probably the number one thing. And if you know, if all 57 hats does is help people start chipping away at that and let go little by little in a way that's not destructive to the business and, you know, can still uh preserve the growth um because they're they're doing it the right way. I think uh I think 57 hats would be a big win. I philosophically I have a major problem with how illquid small businesses are in the world. And you know, one of the things I'm on a mission on is to help create more liquidity in that market for the entrepreneurs that work so hard to build those companies. Hey, Kevin King and Norm Ferrar here. If you've been enjoying this episode of Marketing Misfits, thanks for listening this far. Continue listening. We got some more valuable stuff coming up. Be sure to hit that subscribe button if you're listening to this on your favorite podcast player or if you're watching this on YouTube or Spotify. Make sure you subscribe to our channel because you don't want to miss a single episode of The Marketing Misfits. Have you subscribed yet, Norm? >> Well, this is an old guy alert. Should I subscribe to my own podcast? >> Yeah, but what if you forget to show up one time? It's just me on here. You're not going to know what I say. >> I'll I'll buy you a beard and you can sit in my chair, too. We'll just You can go back and forth with one another. Yikes. But that being said, don't forget to subscribe, share it. Oh, and if you really like this content, somewhere up there there's a banner. Click on it and you'll go to another episode of the Marketing Misfits. Make sure you don't miss a single episode because you don't want to be like Norm. You know, one of the other things that I think a lot of entrepreneurs, especially at the beginning, mostly at the beginning, it's a like you were talking about letting go, but they expect perfection at at the very beginning. And they're the only ones that can do it themselves. And soon as somebody screws up, well, I knew it. they were going to screw up and they get rid of the person and that could be training that could you got to give time. You can't expect 100% when you just hired somebody. >> Yeah. And you also have to give them clarity. Like most most people won't even tell the person they hired what good looks like. Like they don't they're not even on the same page with how do you know when this person's doing a good job, right? It's like it's like a feeling like that doesn't you know maybe maybe you uh didn't sleep well last night. So you wake up today and you feel, you know, wake up on the wrong side of the bed and you're like, "Ah, that person's not doing a good job." They may have done the exact same job they did the day before when you're in a good mood. And if there's no if there's no way to communicate what does good look like, um, >> Kevin, you just have to look at him. >> Well, I mean, >> I just give I just sit on my picture and say, "This is what good looks like." >> Do that. >> Yeah, exactly. >> We might We might not even need 57 hats now. Yeah, I just >> just sent a picture. I just thought by 10 and we're good. >> One hat. >> One hat. >> Kevin hat. >> If you ask Kevin hat, it's like it's like a ace of spades. It just trumpet. >> I am the king, you know. >> That's true. >> He tells me that all the time. All right, we're at the top of the hour and we always ask our guest, our misfit, if they know a misfit. >> Yeah. Well, I think uh either one of my two co-founders of 57 Hats would be a great uh guest for the show. Um Yata Golden uh or Mark Stern are both uh fantastic entrepreneurs and I think uh I think you probably have a great great time with them on the show as well. >> Oh, fantastic. Well, we'll have Mary reach out to them. >> Please do. >> And if people want to learn more about uh your company or get the game, uh what what should they do? Reach out to you. What's the best way for them to do that? >> Yeah, I mean, if if they want to check out the game 57s.com, super easy to remember. Um they can just go there and if anybody has any questions about absolutely feel free to email me, uh james jamespreal.com. Um yeah, but it's pretty straightforward, Kevin. >> Awesome. All right, James. Well, thank you so much for having uh or coming on to the podcast. You are awesome. >> Well, thank you guys. We had a lot of range here. We went from blood capsules to organization planning. >> No, we went from guns. Remember, >> right there. Yeah. I was going to bring that up again, Kevin. Yeah. Yeah. I don't want to get stuck down here on some kind of no-fly list. >> All right. Well, thanks a lot. We will see you later, James. Appreciate it. Cheers. That was great. >> Always good. Always good stuff on the marketing misfits and that's right up your alley. All the systems and the processes and everything. Um that's my weakness. Um and that's your strength. Uh and so that's why we have Dragonfish, right? >> Yeah. Oh, by the way, I got to tell everybody this is worth sticking around, guys. Kevin. Uh, the first event that I met him at, oh, it was the second one, I think, uh, they gave away prizes. This was the Helium 10 or the Illuminati it was called at the at the time. And he was giving little gifts away to everybody that participated. Well, it's not a practical joke. He just came up with these really He's always known for these really cool gifts. So, it was in a wood container like a spider and I threw it in my luggage. I get to the border and all of a sudden I see all these border patrol people coming around me like what's going on? And the problem was I I have to be careful what I say cuz I can get uh you know uh some problems with the with the YouTube. But it was uh it had a cap on it. It was in a metal cylinder and it had wires and they thought it was something um that you shouldn't have in an airport. So, I got detained for probably over an hour while they searched me, searched my bag, searched everything. And I I still have to thank you for that, Kevin. >> Yeah. You're welcome. So, to tell everybody what it was, this was 2018 17 2018, maybe. Yeah, >> 2017. 2017. And uh we had just done this conference down in Mexico. And every we wanted to give everybody the slides, the PDFs of all the presentations. And so instead of putting them on a Google Drive or whatever that people do now, we just dumped them all on these USBs, but we wanted to have make it a unique USB drive. And so it was a cylinder. It looked like a lipstick container long and long and cylinder. It was clear. And inside were all these uh wires. >> Wasn't clear. >> It was not clear. It was a aluminum cylinder with caps on the end >> cuz it would light up. So when you plugged it into USB, it the whole thing would light up like blue color or something and look looked kind of cool. And it's different. But, uh, yeah, that that's what it was. And Norm didn't realize what he had in there. And, uh, the customs people didn't, uh, didn't appreciate, uh, this strange looking object, uh, in his in his luggage. >> Anyways, I had to share that because of some of these interesting things. >> Speaking of sharing, if if you like this episode with James, be sure to share it. Uh, and send it send it on. hit hit a like, subscribe to the channel that you're watching this on because uh that's that's that's how we know that you're out there and uh you're you're you're enjoying what we got and that you made it to the end of the podcast. Um so uh do that and you know we got tons of podcasts. We have a new episode that comes out every single Tuesday. So if if you like this one, check out we've had people like Neil Patel and Forbes Riley and uh you the the list goes on. some pretty big wet time uh marketing guests on there and some guests that people don't know but they should know. Uh so check that out. And where do they do that norm? How they how they check that stuff out? >> Few ways. So you can go to YouTube and you can see the long version at marketingmisfits podcast or we have one that we've created another YouTube channel marketing misfits clips where you get 3 minute or under clips where for example this one every day we'll publish a 3minute clip. So you can go there and see all these nuggets. Hate the word nuggets, but nuggets that you can just choose and you know it's 3 minutes or under and you're getting a ton of value. You can also go over to Tik Tok. We got a great channel over there and uh we're probably four or five months into launching that channel by the time you hear this. So yeah, that's it. >> Awesome. We'll see you guys uh again next week. Take care. >> All right, see you.