Blaze Your Own Trail - Take the Risk! with Frank Mengert

Episode Date: June 10, 2021

About Frank: Every day, I wake up inspired to be a better version of myself. I do this by using three principles: 🅻🅴🅰🆁🅽, 🅲🆁🅴🅰🆃🅴 & 🆂🅷🅰🆁🅴 ❶ 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧 something new. ❷ 𝐂𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐞 something that didn't exist. ❸ 𝐒𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐞 something with someone. In May of 2018, I had the opportunity to meet Gary Vaynerchuk. Among the many pieces of advice he gave me one that impacted me the most was this: “𝙈𝙖𝙠𝙚 𝙫𝙞𝙙𝙚𝙤 𝙤𝙣 𝙇𝙞𝙣𝙠𝙚𝙙𝙄𝙣, 𝙞𝙩 𝙬𝙞𝙡𝙡 𝙘𝙝𝙖𝙣𝙜𝙚 𝙮𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙡𝙞𝙛𝙚 𝙥𝙧𝙤𝙛𝙚𝙨𝙨𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙮 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙥𝙚𝙧𝙨𝙤𝙣𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙮.” I didn’t take that advice until November but he was right. LinkedIn has changed my life. ➨ 𝐌𝐄 𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐅𝐄𝐒𝐒𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐘: In 2003 I went into work, just like any other day. However this day, I was laid off. It devastated me and threw my “game plan” for life in a spiral. I made the decision to take my side-hustle at the time and turn it into my main hustle building my first company. Today, I am on my fourth company, ebm, which is one of the largest employee benefits technology platform providers in the nation. We help benefit consultants, carriers and enrollment firms attract, win & retain business acting as an extension of their team providing expert technology services to organizations nationwide. In this episode we discuss: Frank's early years What he was into as a kid What sports he played Moving to Connecticut What happened after High School Starting his first Business A little about EBM And more! Connect with Frank: linkedin.com/in/frankmengert getebm.com  (Company Website) 5questionswithfrank.com/listen  (Podcast) youtube.com/frankmengert?sub_confirmation=1  (YouTube Channel) Connect with Jordan: LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordanjmendoza/⁠ Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/therealjordanjmendoza/⁠ Clapper: ⁠https://clapper.vip/jordanjmendoza⁠ Join my Facebook Group: ⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/linkedintrailblazers⁠ Website: ⁠https://www.blazeyourowntrailconsulting.com Installing strategic sales systems & processes will stop the constant revenue rollercoaster you might be facing which is attainable through our 6 Week Blazing Business Revenue Coaching ProgramBook a discovery call with Jordan now to learn more! Are you an entrepreneur?Join my FREE Group Coaching Community where we have live calls, Q&A and more! Our Trailblazer Ecosystem also enables you to network with other entrepreneurs and creator hub eliminates multiple subscriptions and logins creating a one stop shop to take action!Use code: FOUNDING100 for 12 months access FREE and Founding pricing for life! (While Supplies Last)Join now! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Are you ready to find out how to blaze your own trail? Welcome to the Blaze Her Own Trail podcast with your host, Jordan Mendoza. In this podcast, Jordan interviews people from around the world to find out about their journey to success. If you're looking for valuable content with actionable advice, you've come to the right place. And now your host, Jordan Mendoza. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Blaze Your Own Trail podcast. I'm your host, Jordan Mendoza. And I've got a very special guest today.

His name is Frank Mengert. And I'm going to give him just a second to tell us who he is and what he does. Hey, what's up, man? Thanks for having me on. The quick, down, dirty version of me. I'm someone who wakes up every day inspired to be a better version of myself. And I do this by three principles. Learn, create, and share.

So learn something new, create something that didn't exist, and share something with someone. I got an eight-year-old daughter. She's definitely the pride and joy of my life. My wife, of course, family is very important to me. And I also run a national employee benefits firm called EBM, where we help HR professionals put time back into their day. So that's a little about me personally and professionally. Awesome. Appreciate you sharing that.

And on the show, we love to really rewind and get context into people's journey. So let's bring it back to childhood. So where did you grow up for the formative years, elementary, middle school, high school? Originally from Hollywood, Florida, in my, it's funny, when I tell people that, you know, like, oh, Mr. Hollywood. So down south in Florida grew up. Really back then, I'm going to be 43 years old. So late 70s, early 80s, Florida was my home, cowboy boots, swamp buggies, trikes. I mean, we were a country as hell down there.

Fun times, I grew up, modest family. My father was a truck driver. My mother took care of four children and we got by. But lots of fun, lots of great memories. My childhood was just nothing special. I'll probably never write a book or anything one day. Yeah, really happy childhood. Love being around the neighborhood.

We were outside back then all day. So lots of friends and family back then. Living in Connecticut now, my parents moved up here when I was about 12, 13 years old. They got divorced. My mom went back down to Florida. I stayed up here with my dad and been here ever since. So Connecticut's my home. My heart's still in Florida.

I get down there so often. But been in Connecticut now for basically my teen years up until now. Awesome. So let's talk about those teen years, man. What kind of kid were you into at that age? You said that you're outside running around all the time. Were you involved in any type of sports? Did you have any other hobbies back then?

So very unathletic. Yeah, I think anyone who puts me into sports, I was on the basketball team when I was in middle school, and that's because my father was the coach. That's the only reason I was on there. I think they felt bad. I'm like, oh, well, let's put Jim's kid on there. And I was a bench warmer. I was terrible. I'm not very athletic even to this day.

I always say, I hope my daughter doesn't have my athleticism. Played soccer would be on the other side of the field, you know, picking daisies, why the rest of the team was out there trying to defend. So not athleticism wasn't, wasn't in my, my, my, my, my soccer would be. jeans there but I was I've always been what I say a tinker I'd love to take things apart put them back together see what's behind you know literally like taking the microwave apart to toaster anything if you gave me a screwdriver and a tool set I I pull everything apart and try to put it back together but love to always the kind of kid who like to see what things what's behind the facade

and and what makes things tick so always inquisitive there but that that that That probably got me to a little bit to where my path, my journey was as it became older and as an adult, because I still consider myself a tinker to this day. Awesome, awesome. So I would love to find out you're a tinker. So what is, what's the thing that you are most proud of taking apart and putting back together, right? And this could be from when you were a kid. It could be maybe from when you're a little older or to now, right? Maybe you could put in the context of something big in business you've taken apart and put together.

Well, that's an easy one for me. So when I started, again, really humble backgrounds and never thought that I would go to college, I was going to be someone who was going to be a truck driver. My dad was a truck driver whose father was in the Navy and drove a milk truck in New York. My father and his father being truck driver, I was going to be a truck driver. Sure, why not? I had the opportunity to go to school. and I didn't have a computer.

So I used to have to go. And back then, computers were very expensive. I went on a website called Bargain News. There's back then we had dial up and everything was mostly in the papers too. So I'm really trying to find a computer. I met someone who had a bunch of stuff online for sale, went to his house.

And I remember pulling up in this driveway of this house. There was this massive house, very wealthy people. and got out of my junk car that I was driving, and literally the guy was very friendly met me in the driveway. Kind of just started a dialogue with me. Hey, what's up? What's your story? This and that.

I kind of told them, hey, I need a computer. I can't afford a new one. I'm going to lab, and it's just, you know, a lot of stress on me. Trying to get to lab. I was working full time. And he brought me into his garage and showed me all these computers. And just stuff that he was like, like these have been my kids over the last couple of years.

They don't use them anymore. He literally filled my trunk with all this computer equipment. A couple towers, monitor, a bunch of peripherals and things like that. Just spare parts he had. And he was like, I'm not going to give you this for free because I don't want you to have this and know that, okay, I didn't earn this. I didn't work for it. So he's like, just give me 50 bucks. And it was like a home run.

But he kind of, when I think back, But now he was like, again, didn't want me to be like, hey, this was given to me. I paid a price for it. And he's like, you know, go do great things in your life. And I went home. I took all this computer stuff and I had it. I remember sitting on the floor and I had no idea like what to do. And I took it apart.

I started taking everything apart, messing with things. And that I got it working. And I made my major computer science in school. I was originally going for business. So that, to me, was one of the biggest ones because it changed really the outlook of where I was and then the trajectory of where my life is because of some changes that I made and taken apart that machine. That's awesome, man.

What a cool story. And, you know, I think there's some great lessons in there, right? The first one being, you know, you got to have skin in the game, right? I mean, what a brilliant lesson to learn at that age, right? because it's stuck with you. All these years, I'm sure, as you've gone on, you find yourself telling other people, hey, no, don't take seven free, you got to earn it,

you know what I'm saying? So that was really cool. And then, you know, being able to shift your entire major, right? And have it be something that now you have this passion for because you're able to take it apart and take something from here and here. And it's kind of like building a Lego set or something like that, right? That changed the trajectory or the path that your life went in. man. So that's a really cool story.

Absolutely. It's definitely something that for a fact. And there's these things in your life. I feel like we all have them there. It's that pivot, that fork in the road. And it's like, do I go left? Do I go right? We all have them. Whether we recognize them and the impact they had or not. Exactly, man. Yeah, there's always pivots and shifts. You know, it's in always going to be storms. It's just all about how do we weather these, right? How do we get through these defining moments like that was for you? I mean, that was defining. So what happened after that? So you finish up school.

You're now getting a degree in computer science. So what happened next? Did you always know that, listen, I want to be an entrepreneur. I want to work for myself, knowing what grandpa did, knowing what my dad did. I want something, I want some ground to stand on for myself. Was that your mindset? Yeah, not fully. So I was the first person in my family to go to college.

So that was kind of a big deal. I went to school, so I put myself through school. I worked a job. I got this job at a paper factory. And back 20 years ago, believe it or not, anyone who might be listening in, photo paper, we used to actually, people used to go to the store, buy photo paper and print their photos on computers. That used to be a thing. So I used to make the actual paper, the big rings of paper in a factory.

I used to make that in the company I worked for used to sell like Kodak and all these big firms. And that's what I did. I worked in a factory. I worked at 11 at night to 7 in the morning. I would get out of work. I'd go to school from about 8.30 to 4. I'd come home. I'd do my homework, get a little sleep, and I'd go back to work 11 o'clock at night. And I did that full time as I put myself through school. And I put money on the table for food and rent and all the things that I needed for the job. So I did all that. I was working at the company and I was actually loved. I loved what I was doing. I'm always been someone who's just gives it 110% and I was working again this factory job that I was a leader on my team. I did very well. I knew everything. I was always asking questions with the engineers, how the ovens work and dampers and the viscosity of the liquid. I wanted to know it all and I had a good position and I figured this is a huge company I'm working for. I'm going to get my degree and I'm going to go work up front and I'm going to be their IT person and had all these aspirations. And shortly after I graduated school, I went into work one day and they were like, oh, Noreen, who is the plant managers,

they're like, Noreen needs to see you in the lunch area. And there was like this room we had lunch in all these tables, vending machines and stuff. So I walk in there and there's Noreen sitting at this round table. She got her back against the wall, asked me to have a seat. And she told me I was getting laid off. She said, you know, we're going to have to lay you off. today and I was devastated. I was like, what? You know, me? I'm one of the best back there. I'm the best you got. I identify everything. You're top runner. And she was like, yeah, but you'll recover. She's like, there's people who've been here in the 20, 25 years that if I let them go, they're not going to recover. She's like, you're going to go places. You're doing great things.

And I know that you'll be successful in life. At the time, I didn't want to hear it. They gave me a two weeks severance. See you later. I'm driving home, devastated. I got bills to pay, got no savings, no nothing. At the time, I was doing some side hustle. I was fixing computers. I was fixing computers. I was fixing anyone's computers. Just trying to learn. So trying to get some knowledge there. I would take things apart and put them back together, identify problems, viruses, things like that, whatever they were going on. I took that side hustle turn to my main hustle and started my first company, which was an IT firm. That's awesome. Very, very cool. So the the woman that you met with, right, that had to lay you off. When did what she told you come back

in your mind and say, man, she was right? And probably years later, I think. I don't think immediately, I was very, I remember I was devastated. I cried. I was like, oh, what am we going to do? I'm not going to find a job like this. This is my forever job. I was a lot younger, obviously, but I was really thought I was going to be there for a while. The problem of not having money to pay my bills. I had a I was renting an apartment. I had a car payment. I had credit cards. I was no, literally no savings. And so so that part, that's what I was focused on. It's focused on all the doom and gloom. And then I was just like, I'm going to give this a shot. I'm going to try to build this company. And it was hard. It was very difficult. I think,

you know, 12, maybe 14 months, I barely made any money. I was scraping to get by. And It took me a while to really land those first clients. So it's like I wanted to, I didn't think, I thought it was going to be a lot easier. I'll tell you that. And it was very scary. There was a lot of times where I wanted to give up five years ago. So maybe 12 years into the journey that I've had since being laid off. I think it was around then where I was like, I always think of nor, I know her name, Noreen Connolly.

I have no idea where she is today, but I think of her. And I can hear those words. And for me, it started as I got older, I think, and you look back on stuff and like, wow, that was kind of pivotal for me. I didn't realize it until I got a little wiser, I guess. And started to appreciate things. So what was the name of the first company? And then how long did you have it before starting the next one? First company was, it went through kind of two phase names, but it was called IT Solutions.

During that time, the company eventually, I started to get some clients and make some revenue and things like that. and did pretty well. In the middle of that, I started another company, a security and surveillance firm that actually started out pretty well. And it was one of a really learning point in my life that I went through because I had really one big client that was keeping me busy. They were really feeding me all the revenue and paying the bills for that entity. I basically built a blueprint for them. So we would go into, and they're still around today. It's a, and they're still around today. It's a daycare center and they're national. I would go into their schools.

We'd go in there, we'd map out all the security cameras. They did remote watching for the parents or the parents can actually see their children at the school during the day. So we installed all the security equipment. And we did this, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat all throughout the US. They stole my, they basically took everything I gave,

the blueprint, the schematics, that the equipment I was using, everything, my vendor. And they fired. me. And it was a tough lesson to learn because I didn't protect anything that I put in there. I didn't protect my own, my own IP. I had no real agreements with them. Things went really well, and then they figured out a cheaper way to do it and they got rid of me. And that really, that was the downfall of the company because that was the revenue. So it was a big learning experience for me to, especially moving on and starting my third and my fourth company, I think I learned so much

from there, you know, people look like, wow, that was stupid. Yeah, it was. stupid, but who's thinking? I wasn't thinking they were to steal my idea and get rid of me. But it happens a lot in business, and it was a learning lesson for me. So, yeah, and I started another company that didn't go anywhere. It was a maintenance company. I had a big idea about calling one company, one company, the plumber, the HVAC person, you know, one stop shop for commercial buildings. Poor planning, poor execution, never went anywhere. And then my fourth company now is called EBM. We're a national HR technology firm. Been doing this about nine years. My most successful company by far. And just loving the ride. Lots of fun, lots of freedom, lots of great people.

So, so this is just really enjoying life right now. Awesome. Awesome. And so thinking about the previous companies, right, going back to the places that you didn't do as well as you could have, where they maybe could have been more successful if you would have done this. So what lessons do you think or can you share with the audience that you learned from those other ventures that made this one more successful? You know, what did you take, like what pieces did you take with you and say, okay, because you like to put things together and take them apart? So I'm sure you're trying to dissect all the things that happened and then make sure that they didn't happen in EBM, right? So what were some of those things that you shifted over? One thing I'll tell you this is that I am someone who looks back at failures and wants to learn from them.

So I don't want to be like, oh, this is a regret or I wish I didn't do this or I could have should or woulda. I don't have that mentality. I really look at, okay, I made this mistake or I had this failure. What did I learn and how can I prevent it from happening again? So moving on through that. And all throughout, I think, life, we can pick things up and say, okay, this is something. that I never want to happen again. I don't want to go through this again.

But in business, you do have to learn that. Unfortunately, there's people out there that you're not gonna be able to trust. There's gonna be people who are out there for financial gain only. Handshake deals, you know, really rarely don't exist with anyone anymore. And you need to have contracts in place.

You have to have terms. You have to set expectations correctly. And the company I run now, I mean, we live and survive or a SaaS company. It's all contracts and they all have terms. They all have fine printing there. And it's because people have expectations from what they're purchasing from you. And then us as the seller, we have expectations from them and what we expect from them.

And we have to be very clear on there. So I think contracts, getting things looked at correctly, having a lawyer, having a good CPA. I think those things are very important to any business owner. And those are things back then where I was like, oh, you know, I'll figure it out. And I think now, as I've learned, you have to protect the business because if someone else could come in there and take what's yours, there's going to be someone out there who's going to do it. What year did EBM start? 2000, TELM 2011.

Okay, so started in 2011. How has the technology changed for your business from 2011 to 2020? I know there has to have been some pretty big things. Yes. So back in 2011, there was really not the, there wasn't the client base that there was. Like, people were not buying the technology the way that they are today. So it was sort of like starting from scratch again, where I did with my IT company. And back with EBM, I was, you know, an employee number one.

I would call, I was calling on everyone, hey, got this great idea, got this great concept, you're going to want it. And they were like, yeah, right. I'd call insurance carriers. Hey, you've got to listen to me. I got this deal. And be like hanging up on me. So I did a lot of back when I started IT solutions, I walked around everywhere and tried to get clients.

With this company, I was calling everyone on the phone all day long. I would just call a list of people and try to get, try to get someone to buy the product. And no one was listening to me. So it was, again, another period of time where I was feeling defeated, feeling this wasn't going to work. And then slowly people started to get the concept. But again, it took a while because of the fact that we're in the technology. we sell if you're an employer you have medical dental vision insurance those types of things you enroll on paper if you if at the time you fill out the paperwork and you give it to the carriers and that's what

a lot of people were used to doing unless they had some big HR system that they were paying a lot of money for most people were doing a paper-based enrollment so not a lot of people were embracing this there was i don't think security was such a big deal back then but people were just kind of skeptical about where they're putting their data and things like that. And it took some time for people to buy into it. So the business probably didn't pop until somewhere around 2014. I think we had like a huge, just, it was like that moment where we skyrocketed and growth. Yeah, that's awesome.

Yeah. And I think it was probably, you know, the shift. Like everybody's, because, you know, sometimes people just kind of wake up and they're like, oh, yeah, I'll do that, you know. Like, I guess I can do that. That's not that big of a deal. Right. So it must have been something like that where everybody just kind of came around to the idea, right?

Or maybe you guys have done a good job at marketing, but it just took a long time for, you know, things to catch around. So I'd love to hear from a marketing perspective, 2011 to 2020. You know, what are the biggest differences in the ways that you've been marketing? I know you've marketed by cold calling, did a lot of calls and things like that. But what other type of marketing did you do back then? And then what are you doing today? Yeah. I mean, over the years, it's progressed, of course, in the way, you know,

technologies enhanced things. But back then, yeah, it was mailers. So we'd literally put stuff in the mailbox and send post it on and send it out through the postal mail phone calls. We tried to trade shows back then too. And over time, that's grown to when people started doing some focus on, on electronic media and how you. you can run ads or just kind of show up to to be able to advertise and banners and things like that.

So it's we we try to always a bunch of things over time. I think our biggest success hasn't been spending and marketing dollars. I think it's been really just doing a great job and people learning about us through referrals. Most of our business has grown on referral-based business where people are like, you got, you know, VM, oh, you don't. Well, you got to call them. They're amazing. And that's just doing what we promised we're going to do for clients, I think has been our biggest thing and having a good brand out there. And it hasn't been the growth. I mean, yeah, if we spent a ton of money on ad spend and things like that, maybe we could have grown faster. But I think the way we grew and how we've

grown has been something that I think clients appreciate and we still have that white glove approach with clients that they're looking for. That's awesome. Yeah. And, you know, when you're doing it that way, when you're growing from word of mouth, which is, you know, organic, right, you're learning from somebody that already knows, likes, and trusts you and they're telling someone that knows, likes, and trust them, right? It's a lot better. And I would agree with that, right? Sometimes faster isn't always better because you're building, the foundation you're building is off of trust. And so that's, that becomes huge.

And I think as you continue to grow in scale, it just, it becomes a lot better of reputation, right, as an organization. Anyone who's started companies and anyone, especially listening and it's been around in 2008, 2009 during the recession that we had, I think anyone who's been down this road before

understands that nothing happens overnight. Today, if you go to start a company, maybe pre-pandemic, But if you go to start a company around these times, we live in this instant gratification society where people just expect it now. They want it now. We've got Uber, we've got Amazon, where there's just things show up. You don't even need to go on a date, swipe, you got Tinder.

I mean, these things happen immediately. And I think everyone, we've expected stuff immediately. So when you start a business, everyone is expecting growth quickly. You know, do this in 30 days and 90 days you can be here or get you, your first million and everyone's really like things that that's reality and for most people it's not i i've worked you know again going on nine years here uh i didn't make money for a long time i was and i was the last person to eat at the table because when you got payroll you got bills to pay you got health insurance to provide and all these employee benefits that you have that you have to give to your team

when there's no money it comes from you so if i there's been months where i couldn't take a salary because I was like, well, we got to do this. We got to do that. We got to make sure there's money in the budget for this. And I have to take little to no money. And I think people who go into running a business or, you know, entrepreneur is thrown around so easily these days. There's a big difference between an entrepreneur and there's a difference between someone

who starts a business. Anyone can start a business. An entrepreneur to me is someone who identifies a problem and wants to find a solution for it and sees things that other people don't see. I think there's a difference there because people call them. an entrepreneur they haven't done anything. So for me it's been it was never about money. It was never about you know having things in life. I just was I loved what I did. I still even when I was suffering and I was not getting all the money that I you know that I needed

to pay some of my bills. I still loved what I did. I didn't lose the passion. I got frustrated but I still saw I knew I'd get through it. I knew that something would come out of it and it's always worked out. I'm always someone who says you know I bet on myself. I've been betting on myself forever. The bets have always paid off. And I think anyone who runs a business and has been through the struggles understands that, things take time and you need patience. Absolutely. Yeah, I love that. It's definitely a journey, right? It's a journey. It's a process. And if you don't enjoy it and love it, it's probably not going to be as successful, right? Even, you know, those down days, you're not being able to take money. You're not being able to feed

your family, but as a leader, we actually work for our teams, not the other way around, right? And so I love the fact that that's what you did. That says a lot about your character and I'm sure your team, the people that, you know, you did that for, they're going to look at you at a different level than if you did it the opposite way, right? If you fed yourself first. Yeah. What are some things that are some goals really for EBM? Are there some goals that you have or are there some strategic partnerships that you're looking into. I'd love to just kind of get inside your head and see where you see EBM, you know, down the road.

Anyone out there might be tuning in who runs a business and he starts to, I would say, you have a team and you're growing. The biggest move I made in business was about 18 months ago and we implemented what's called the entrepreneurial operating system or EOS, it's called. And you can Google it and find it out. But we're running on EOS,

which is basically a business an operating system to run your business one of the best moves i've made because it puts things into perspective from where you're at today where you want to be and short-term goals long-term goals and also looking at the business where are we going to be in 2021 what's our five-year plan what's our 10-year plan and those things when you start to really look at those things say here's a lot of what what a lot of people do is they say i want this i want that what are you doing in between to get that. You have something in front of you there where you're like, I want, whatever, even if it's material, I want this car.

Okay, you want this car. What are you going to do to get the car? Because just talking about the car and dreaming about the car is not going to get you the car. In business, I say, okay, we want to be a $25 million company in 10 years. We need to put some action behind that to make sure that we're doing everything we can and continually grow so that we can get to $25 million. And that's a, that's a process that we need to put in place every day. day and everyone needs to be on board. So for EVM, we have the five year plan, the 10 year plan,

we have our one year plan in place, how we're going to get there. And even looking back 12 months ago, where do we want to be? How do we want to get there? We've done great things. 12 months ago, I wanted to get out of the rent that I had. We were renting for, I mean, I've been renting forever. I said, I want to buy a commercial building. I want to own. I want to get into commercial real estate. I did it. I bought a building. Yeah, we're going to, I'm going to rent part of it. I'm going to be a landlord and then I'm going to have space for the team. It's a huge building. It was the biggest investment of my life financially, but I planned these things out back and it didn't just happen. I set the marker through that marker out there and said, I'm going to get there. There's

at stake. And here's what I need to do to get there. And with the company, even how we grow, how we bring on more clients, how we continue to have excellent client service, all these little things. It can't be just things on paper and it can't be just things that the leader of the organization talks about. The team has to believe it and they have to live it too. They all have to be going in that same direction. And if they're not, you're never going to get there. You can't have one person pulling you back. I believe strongly that everyone on our team is looking in the right direction. They're moving towards the same goals. And they believe what I believe and what the other leadership believes, which is a huge thing for an organization because if people are in

into what you're selling, then you're never going to get anywhere. So I think that planning process, what we're doing and how we're trying to grow. We're trying to dominate our competition every day. And in order to do that, we have to really bank on our strong points and not, also not try to beat stuff that we're not. I think a lot of other companies are like, okay, we're really successful. Let's try this. And it's like, why?

What do you try and not for it's not what you're known for? And they try to bridge, bring in these new programs or products. that they start to focus their attention on, and they lose out on what's made them successful. So I think that us really focusing in on our niche and being very successful in those areas have been our biggest success for us. Yeah, man, I'm a big believer in focusing on and building your strengths, right? Don't focus on your weaknesses because your strengths, like you said, start to diminish when you take the focus off of them.

And yeah, it definitely sounds like your team. They're invested in the mission, the vision, the values. And those are three key things, right? When people are bought in, like you said, they're going to be going to bat for you. When they can also see this journey. So tell us a little bit about this EOS. Is this something that every employee has access to in the palm of their hand? Like, is it mobile?

Can they look at it every day? Can they pull it up when they're at lunch? You know what I'm saying? So how accessible is this? And what does this actually, what does the infrastructure look like for people? Yeah, so EOS isn't like a tangible item. It's more of a living, breathing kind of unit that we are. So it's more about action and really living by the model.

I mean, there's material and things like that. But really from a structure standpoint, you've got the leadership team. You've got accountability throughout the organization. You've got right people in the right seats. We hire by a certain protocol and we're looking for an ideal employee. So there's all these things that we use that are part of the EOS model and make us who we are. And EOS is the framework. Think of it. But how other companies run EOS and don't operate the way that we do.

But just a quick funny story. I was on a call with one of our clients. We did a Zoom meeting and we were just talking and everything. It's going talking about the organization and all these things. and he stopped me and he said, are you guys running EOS? And I said, yeah. And you can tell. He's like, we are too.

But so there's synergies there where you can tell what another organization is running it because it does make it different. So it's, yeah, so it's not like an app, even though there is an app that you can access things, but it's not really an app that we have. It's more of us being a cohesive unit and how do we do that through the modules within EOS. So when it comes to like rewards, recognition, things like that, you know, things to keep the team motivated. Do you all have platforms like that in place, you know,

where people can maybe give each other coot? Like someone's done something well that you can give them kudos, whether that's virtually or a board, something like that. How do you keep your team motivated? Yeah, so we have monthly town halls. So we get together now that we changed to all work from home, middle of March. So we just, and we had remote policies in place.

So it's pretty easy for us to really just shut the doors and go strict remote. But we have for the past five months now, everyone's really been working from home. And so we have to our town halls, which we were doing in person at the time. So monthly we have town halls where we just have an open dialogue, open conversation, kind of state of the company, what's working, what's not working. I speak, HR speaks. So we have other members of the team speak and leadership and really kind of make sure everyone's on the same page. And then we also have this kind of open forum with everyone where people can bring something up

or like you said, recognize employees and things like that. And from a recognition standpoint, I think it's important for leaders to really, to make sure that they are recognizing employees, especially in a remote time like this, it's easy to not recognize the hard work that people are doing because you're not seeing them every day. So reaching out, we use Microsoft teams,

reach out to someone, flip that camera on. Everyone in our team, we sent them all out webcams. When I message someone, we use the video. I want to see you. Let's talk. Let's still have that Facebook. face. I think those are really important and recognizing the work that employees are doing, because a lot of employees are putting a lot of hard work and dealing with the stress of home

and everything else at there. A lot of people aren't working from home isn't the best thing in the world for everyone. And we also do happy hours and things like that where the team gets together. Our HR person's pretty creative. She's always doing something to get us all. I think I think this week is like a know-your meme and we're going to do something around mean. So it's always something creative and fun and it's not you don't have to join not everyone does but we mostly every time we run them we get the team on and it's a lot of fun and just a way just to kind of get together and not focus on work yeah no that's that's good and that shows you know the heart of the company culture right that you know you guys are inclusive you're trying to get everyone involved you're trying to have fun

you know making sure that the cameras are on i want to see you know i want to see you i want to be as close to in-person interaction as possible right since covid hit and And, you know, you guys have been at home for five months now. Has that changed any of your thoughts on what's going to, what the future looks like for the organization as far as physical. I know you bought a commercial space, which is going to be a fantastic addition. And owning it is definitely better, like you said, than renting it. But do you think that, you know, shifts at all for certain people on the team where you say, you know, I don't know if they need to spend the time in their car to commute? You know, maybe they can just do everything that they can do from where they are.

So funny thing is that I was buying the building, the commercial building kind of pre-pandemic, and then pandemic hit. And it's like who's spending seven figures of a commercial building? You know, no one, not many. I think there's two things. One, my mentality was we're still going to need a physical office location. We're in our Connecticut spot. So we're still going to need a physical office location.

But what we did, because the building is so huge, we were like, let's hold the team. see now that we're going to do renovations, how much of this space do we need for us and how much do we need for tenant occupancy? And we did. We pulled our team today. We've been working remote now for three months. Do you love it? Do you hate it? This is something you think you can do forever. And a good portion of our team, maybe 50 percent, we're like, yeah, I'd love to be able to telework forever. And it was surprising to me because a lot of the people I were like, yeah, I want to be telework. I was like, okay, you know, great. And we were like fine with it. And so we put processes in place and everything and kind of security protocols and now we have a portion of our team

that's 100% telework and the other ones now are looking you know they still want to come into the office I'm I have my own office at home so I have a dedicated spot for me I've got my dual monitors up here and I've got it's the perfect work from home location I don't want to work from home forever I don't want to be here that's 100% for me I want to be somewhere and I can't wait to get back to the office because I like to be around the team I feel like is more collaboration. I feel like I just, I'm more, I am too productive, if that even makes sense anyone listening in at home. There's days that go by where I'm sitting at this desk for 11 hours. I'm like, I haven't gotten up. My watch has to remind me to get up and walk around. And that's not a good

thing. Now, I don't like to be so engrossed in my work. So when I'm at the office, it's not like that. I'm in my routine. I get up. I walk around. I'm doing stuff. I'm making sure I carve out time to hit the gym and and so so i i appreciate working from home um i get to see my family more which is awesome and my daughter can pop in and talk to me whenever she wants to and stuff she interrupts me she doesn't care what i'm doing and that's fine but i think the future is going to be a mixed bag i think more work from home yes sure let's do it i think there's going to be companies that are kind of jumping on the bayon wagon and saying yeah we're a culture and you can work from home forever and then that might change in the future.

I think that some of them might say, wait, we made a mistake. This isn't working. So I think there's going to be some of that in the future. But I think a lot of companies that didn't do work from home that are seeing, okay, this works. And we can trust our employees and they're not going to just sit home and watch Netflix all day. They're actually going to work. I think that there was a big problem there with teams. So I think now that they're realizing that they can still get productivity out of there,

they don't need to micromanage their teams. That's a great thing that happened because there are a lot of people. who commute two, three hours a day on a train or whatever it is and now they don't have to do that. But I think there's the other side of that, the commercial real estate market, even though I just bought a commercial building, but I'm not in New York City or any of these big metropolis. But there's going to be a big, big trickle-down effect from commercial real estate, people bailing out in those offices not being occupied anymore. And not just the people who sell commercial real estate, not the people who own those buildings,

the foot traffic that people, you know, you got downtown in Hartford, Connecticut, there's a lot of people that show up down there to go to work and walk around all day and eat at those restaurants. They buy coffee from these distributors. They shop at the stores on their lunch break. And that's not happening now. And as people don't show up there, these businesses all go out of business. They go out.

So you have these small mom and pop shops that have been giving everyone breakfast for 30 years and no one's showing up for breakfast anymore because they're downtown and now people aren't living there. They're working there. So I think there's, and that's going to happen to Chicago and San Fran and New York and Miami and Dallas, all these places where people aren't showing up to work anymore. I think we're going to feel a trickle down effect there from the economy. So that's a negative, I think, from all the people who are making the switch to work from home. I think that's something to think about that. We're going to see some of that.

Well, hey, appreciate you sharing your thoughts on, you know, the things that you're doing, what you've noticed. And 50% I think is where I thought it would be. You know, I think, you know, because, listen, I'm highly extroverted. I need to be around people too. So I don't want to be, I don't want to be at home forever, right? It's nice not having the commute, but I'll put on a podcast or listen to some music and just so I can go. And like you said, the collaborating, you know, just that, you know, being in front of somebody, it's needed for me, for my, for the type of person that I am as well. In closing here, I would love for you to share with the audience just for folks that maybe don't know about EBM.

Just give us kind of a quick, you know, two-minute run down of the organization. And, you know, for the listeners, you know, what types of businesses that you serve, right? Because there might be people listen. They say, wow, I might want to work with EBM and it matches the type of business that they are. Then they can definitely reach out to you. So I'd love to get a quick two minutes of what you're all about. Yeah. So our markets and who we kind of sell to, we sell to insurance brokers.

insurance carriers and an HR consultants that work with organizations. So those are pretty much our three larger distribution channels. The end consumer of our product is the HR professional. So those are the people that are buying their technology, but they're bringing us in on these, if they're kind of aggregators. They have lots of clients that have the need for our tech, and they bring us in.

The end user is that an HR professional that runs an organization, larger organizations are 100 employees or more. They want time back into their day. That's what we do. We put time back into the day of busy HR professionals when it comes to running their employee benefits programs. And anyone who's tuning in that's in HR or sells to HR, they understand how hard it is for delivering the medical, the dental division, all these employee benefit plans, the compliance piece that goes around with it. And the manual work that sometimes is involved. And we take that away.

We get rid of it for them. So that's who we are, what we do in that capacity. awesome awesome thank you for sharing that and so if you are in hr and you're listening he's about to give us where you can reach him and connect with him and you know he's able to solve some of your problems and time my friends is something that we never get back right frank we never get time back so we're the best places to get in touch with frank mingers if you're looking for the organization is it's online at get ebm so get echo boy mary dot com get ebm that's where you can find everything about the organization

who we serve, markets, everything. If you're looking for me, you can find me on LinkedIn, probably your best spot. Frank Mangert, M-N-G-E-R-T, easiest way to find me there. And you can hit me up, reach out to me there. Love to connect and chat. Perfect, perfect. Well, hey, this has been awesome, man,

learning about your journey. You know, the one thing I definitely know about you, man, is you don't give up, right? You're a fighter. You're a hard worker. And so kudos to dad and grandpa for working so hard and instilling that in you, that hard work, man, because it's definitely paying off.

Congrats on nine years, you know, with the newest venture. And I think this episode is going to be a big lesson for people as, you know, Frank failed a bunch, right? A lot of failure, but he didn't look at it as failure, folks. He looked at it as like, what can I do to make sure this doesn't happen again? What are the lessons that I can take away and inject into the next version of me? Because Frank is all about being the best version of himself every day. All right, Frank.

Well, hey, pleasure, my friend. Thanks for coming on to Blaze Your Own Trail Podcast. This is awesome. I can't wait for this to air, and I'll make sure all your info is down in the show notes. Thanks, Jordan. Appreciate it, and love getting to know your audience. Appreciate it, buddy.