The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – A Talent for Giving: Creating a more generous society that benefits everyone by John Studzinski

Episode Date: November 18, 2025

A Talent for Giving: Creating a more generous society that benefits everyone by John Studzinski https://www.amazon.com/Talent-Giving-Creating-generous-benefits/dp/1399418793 “A guide for how all of us can make a difference in the lives of others.” Michael Bloomberg “Made me really think about what it means to give, to care, to be generous.” Sir Grayson Perry Reclaim your individual impact with 'entrepreneurial giving'. It's time to democratize generosity and impact so YOU can make a difference. Philanthropy isn't just about wealth - it's about creativity, passion, and using your unique talents to contribute to what you believe in. Visionary investor and humanitarian John Studzinski challenges the traditional notion that philanthropy is reserved for the ultra-rich, revealing how anyone, regardless of financial means, can become a force for change. This groundbreaking book introduces entrepreneurial giving - a hands-on approach to philanthropy that harnesses skills, expertise, and resources. Through thought-provoking insights, A Talent for Giving offers a powerful new roadmap for impact. More than a guide, this book is a call to action. Whether you're an executive, an artist, a teacher, or an activist, your talents have the power to transform lives. The future of giving isn't about writing cheques - it's about reimagining what's possible. And it all starts with you.About the author John Studzinski, CBE is an American-British investment banker and philanthropist. Since September 2018, he has been Managing Director and Vice Chairman of the global investment management firm PIMCO. In his philanthropic activities, he consistently emphasizes the importance of human dignity and the role in philanthropy of mentoring and active networks. In 2008, he was awarded a CBE for his Services to the Arts and Charity and his philanthropy has been recognized with awards from Pope John Paul II, the Prince of Wales (2014) and the Beacon Prize.

You wanted the best... You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times.

Because you're about to go on a moment. Monster Education Roller Coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. I'm folks, Vaz here from the EchrisVos Show.com. Lady, when the lady's showing the shrill lady sings it, that makes it official. You're on the Chris Voss show. Welcome the big show, as always my friends and family. Be sure to refer the show to your family, friends, and relatives, or, you know, we might

have to increase your taxes. I don't know what that means. I'm just making it up. Go to Goodreads.com, Forrest's Christmas, LinkedIn.com, for it says Christmas. Not all the jokes are funny on the Chris Foss Show, folks. That's how comedy works. Go to YouTube.com, where it says Christmas on all those crazy places on the internet. It's anyway an amazing young man. This is why we have great minds in the show because clearly mine's gone and checked out. People are like, yeah, it left about 15 years ago out of the 16 years he's been doing it. Opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the host or the Chris Foss show. Some guests of the show may be advertising on the podcast. but it is non-endorsement or review of any kind. Hector Alvarado is a Canadian entrepreneur, operations strategist,

multifamily real estate investor, and the co-founder of Optimize Business Systems, which he built alongside his business partner, Willie Smith. With 27 years of experience leading large-scale operations for Fortune 500 companies and then turning a company losing $1 million per quarter into a $35 million success story, that's a great story. Hector has been known for transforming business chaos into clarity through systems, accountability, and leadership structure.

He's a proud father of three, has been married for 17 years, grounding his drive with strong family values. Outside the boardroom, he's a committed gymgoer and lifelong fitness enthusiasts, bringing the same principles that shape his training in the way he leads. Discipline, consistency, form, and reps. If it works in the gym, Hector knows it works in business. I couldn't agree with them more. You know, discipline, that's really what it is about.

You're, when you go to the gym, you're competing with yourself. When you go in business, you're competing with yourself and a lot of other people, too, actually, in business. As a multifamily real estate investor, he practices what he teaches, building long-term wealth, diversifying income streams, and using systems to create freedom from both outside and inside the business world. Welcome to the show, Hector. How are you? Great. Thanks, Chris, for having me. I'm excited for this meeting.

Thanks for coming, eh? We're just happy to have our favorite Canadians on the show. Love it. Love it. You've got to represent Canada. Right. I'm thinking, sorry. Sorry, eh? Sorry, eh? I love my Canadian friends. They're nice as people. So give us to dot coms. Where do you want people to get to know you better on the internet? Yeah, we're at Optimizebusiness Systems.com. You can find us on Instagram, LinkedIn, through looking up optimized business systems. We're also on Spotify and Apple Music on our podcast,

weekly podcast. What's the name of your weekly podcast? We're going to plug in for that. We're the inner circle, the Inner Circle podcast. The Inner Circle podcast. So give us a 30,000 over you, what you guys do there at OBS. Yeah, at OBS, our vision and our really reason for being is that we've created a safe space for entrepreneurs and business unit leaders to come, share their issues, and have that platform to where they can be heard without being criticized, where they can. have access to tools, real-life tools that will help once implemented, get all that frustration

outside, you know, get them to see clarity again and allow them to have structure in their business, right? What we found is with so many entrepreneurs that are struggling with the day-to-day, they go to business with a vision and they are excited. They're super geared up to go and take this venture, this deep dive of the business world, but then it sucks you in. And it gets rough. It gets rough real fast, right? You have people issues. You have, you know, cash flow issues.

You have customer issues and all that stuff that, you know, isn't so cool and isn't so fun and is draining and it freaking sucks. But here's the thing is a lot of these entrepreneurs and leaders, they don't have an outlet. And they go to their spouse or they go to the bottle. and that's where they can vent. But with our community, we have the opportunity to, you know, vent without being judged,

to have realignment and clarity and the tools to get you going, to get you re-engaged and re-excited about your business because we get you winning again. Ah, get me winning again. I like that winning part. That's my favorite part, the winning part. You know, you bring up a good point.

One of the problems I used to have when I came up in the 90s being on entrepreneur was there was no one to turn to. I mean, about the only person you could turn to if you wanted business advice and help was to pay for an attorney or a retainer. Right. It's not expensive when you're doing a startup. I mean, our first company was $2,000. We turned into multi-millionaire company and the year and a half later, $4,000, we turned into multimillionar company. But there was nobody, there was not a lot of people to help us. And if you, like

I said, if you want an attorney, you could do that. I tried to get other entrepreneurs to join up, but, you know, we didn't quite have the internet fully on, turn on by that point, or no, I don't think we had computers quite yet. We were starting to use the laptop for invoices, and, but there just wasn't this community like you guys have built here. And, you know, one of the problems you have as an entrepreneur or want to be entrepreneurs have this problem, especially, is they ask people who've never been an entrepreneur or they talk about their dreams, right?

I want to go start my own company, you know, and then everybody weighs in, all the hoo-ha, you know, boo-hoo, the, oh, you know, Bob started a business and he went bankrupt, so it'll probably happen to you. You should not do that, you know. Right. That kind of negative Nancy stuff. And so having a community, like the one you've talked about, where you can have resources, you can talk to like-minded individuals, especially probably successful ones, and get their

toolkits is invaluable, probably. It is. It is, you know, because what we believe that we have here is that. is that safe space where people can just be open and honest about their learning experience and they're building experience. They can come to you and say, my margins suck. And I don't know why. Because there's the truth is like most entrepreneurs, you ask them, you meet entrepreneurs

every day and you're like, hey, how's your business? Oh, it's fine. It's great. Business is good. But they're just masking it because they're not the ones they're going to tell you, man, my team sucks. It's underperforming. My profits tanking.

They're not telling you that, right? They're not telling you my business is running me instead of me running the business or I feel overwhelmed. Like that stuff never comes out. It's always it's fine. It's great. And that's where we think, you know, and we know because we've lived it, like will you know, I have been there.

We've been, we've tested these tools. We lived it ourselves. And we know how to create the frameworks that will help these entrepreneurs overcome these challenges while giving them the space and the forum to be open about it and just say, let's air it out, let's talk through it, and then we get them back on track. And so looking across the website, there's a lot of cool features you have here. You have the inner circle, and have we fleshed out what that is and what that does enough, or do we need to bring more clarity to it?

You know, I just want to make sure that what we really communicate out there about the inner circle and that makes the tie in and resonates with people is about our core values because you know it's important that the people understand who is who are we what do we do what are we here to serve and so we want to understand that we want to make sure people get that our core values are about first and foremost we lift people up right like leadership is about raising others and that's why the community was built it's that form of taking others with you right and that we want to talk about that experience matters what we bring to the table is not theory. We don't like that BS. This is real world stuff. This is real world solutions. And, you know, that we want to

maintain positivity under pressure. Because as we recognize, you know, a lot of people under pressure, they just, they just go bunker in. They don't really talk through it. And unfortunately, that's when a lot of entrepreneurs and businesses fail because they just, they just go inside. They don't look for those solutions. So positive under pressure, we stay grounded and we teach others to do the same. And then most importantly for us at the inner circle and at OBS is that we want legacy through leadership. We want to build leaders of the future. And that's what our main goal is through really communicating our core values. And is it like an accountability group that maybe keeps me on track with, you know,

maybe performance or advice or some sort of way where people are like, hey, have that workout, Bob, with the thing you're doing there? You nailed it. It is exactly that. It is that. It is completely that where we will have, and we have the forum where, you know, we give assignments at the end of our podcast and we say, hey, here's your takeaway. Next week. We talk about it.

We put some people in the hot spot and we say, hey, Bob, how was that takeaway? Did you complete it last week? And then sometimes it gets a little hot because they're like, shit, I didn't, I didn't complete it. That's the importance of accountability group. You really get things done. And the other thing is, too, when you see other people succeeding and doing things, it opens up that possibility in your head where you go, wait, okay, you know, maybe my family over here is negative Nancy. They're telling me, oh, you can't do it. Oh, you can't, you know, you're never going to make it.

But I've got this whole group of guys that have made it and they know what they're doing. And that motivates me, you know. I mean, I don't know that I would ever start a business. If I didn't know what a business, I don't know if I'd have written a book, if I didn't know people wrote books. But seeing that there's people that can do it, you know, this is one of the things we love about the show, people bring their stories, the cathartic moments, how they survived, you know, seeing other talking to other entrepreneurs finding out how, oh, I failed too, and here's

how I recovered, or my numbers weren't working, you know, maybe I was bleeding out and some some part of my business, you know, was bleeding out revenue or profits and or costs. And I figured out how to fix that and innovate that. You know, seeing what's possible really helps. And of course, you kind of create this sort of click or this peer group. That's the word I'm looking for, where you kind of feel a little peer pressure to Excel. Yes, absolutely. And it's about that the ability to learn from the applicable tools, get the output perform and talk about how it worked.

so that the others now learn best practices as well as pitfalls, right? Because that's what we want to do. We want to make sure that everybody is taking a key learning every single week. Yeah. The other thing is, you know, in business, you know, because people might say, one thing people might say in pushing back is they might say, you know, I have a certain business and I don't know that people in the group are in this business or, you know, they're in different industries or fields.

you know the one thing about business is once you kind of know how to do it it's the same toolbox you know whether it's a widget that's a service or widget that's a product or a piece of steel or a piece of coaching manual or coaching workshop or something yeah it's still a widget and the the process of business the business of business can you call that I mean what do you do Chris I'm involved in the business of business I think I started a podcast or new shirt but the process of it is pretty routine. Like I've created so many companies, I could do it in my sleep. I can do it all in my sleep.

Like the hardest part about me for starting a company is just coming up with the right name, partially because most of the good ones aren't available, but also just coming up with the right name. And that's really the hardest thing I have is starting a company half the time. I've been down in front of the Department of Corporations a million times going, You better come up with the name for me to put on this form people Or else I'm just making some shit up here and annotated in which is one time And that's where AI now comes along and helps us with some of those gaps, eh?

Yeah, yeah, you're just like, and I've done that a lot. I've had companies where I have everything done. I just need a name to put on the stupid form for the guy and we got to come with the name and everyone's just, but you know everything. And so that's one of the beauties of having a group like yours. It is, it is. And what we have in that and you know, you touch. on it was that the repeatable learnings that you take away from certain industries and certain businesses, you can certainly apply those into many. And that's where we bring a framework. And

that framework works with any organization, any service, any product type, because it is a framework. It's an operating system that we're able to help implement and teach to others that they can self-implement as well into their companies. And it gives them clarity on on their core value structure, their purpose, their niche, right? Their reason for being. And ultimately, what are those goals? What are they trying to achieve? And so that there is alignment between what the vision is

and to what the people who have to go get it done have to be aligned and they see it together. And so we create that framework that allows the organization to be healthy for the long term. And really to allow it to scale in a healthy way. And, you know, you can sit around and you can muck about and try and figure out stuff. I mean, I had to do it when we were cheap and, you know, starting a company at $2,000 and top ramen. And we were working 18 hour of days in cars doing deliveries. You know, you can, but there's a certain point where investing in yourself and investing in other people, I would have killed to have this sort of, you know, stuff we have on the internet where I could join a group like yours and I could get, I can just feel back up minds.

I had a pretty innovative mind and being able to see out the box. Obviously, I got somewhere from there to hear. Yeah. But, you know, the decisions that I made that I thought were right, that were completely wrong, I would have loved to have gotten consultation on them because, you know, they almost, you know, the bad decision is almost bankrupt to me and the good decisions made me rich. And fortunately, I did one more good decision than I did one more bad decision.

That's a beauty about it, eh? No, it's, and it's great because that's what we believe our community does, is it allows for that learning curve to really be reduced because we have the tools, right? We have those tested frameworks that we share, we mentor the, you know, the participants on it, you know, because we really have a differential around coaching to mentorship. Our approach is mentorship where we believe like our pitfalls that we went through, we can teach others to avoid doing those things so they don't have to go through the pain that we went through. Oh, yeah.

And it doesn't matter what the widget is. You know, you could be in the restaurant business and my business. And then you'd be like, what do you do? What's your pain point? Oh, my pain point is marketing. We're not getting enough people on the door. What are you doing? And so you can really, you can help people and it helps get through them through those things.

Yeah, absolutely. Looks like there's some key characteristics of the group experience level where you can, hobnob with other professionals, pain points, goals and aspirations. That's like I talked about earlier where, you know, you hang out with like-minded people. Oh, there's one plug to that I should do. You know, I'm a big believer in this. If I ever get told them wrong, I'll probably be heartbroken like it was a religion or Santa Claus maybe or the Easter money. But I'm a big believer in the five or six people you surround yourself with.

Yes. You become. Absolutely. And if you're not surrounded yourself with five or six good entrepreneurs, as an entrepreneur, you know, I mean, roll the dice, I suppose. I don't know. No, you hit it. And that's exactly it, right? Like, I always always of the mindset that if I'm the smartest guy in the room, I got to get into a new room. Yeah. Yeah. You know what I mean? Because you're not scaling. You're not learning, right? And so our community offers that opportunity

to learn and grow. You know, you're in a room with people that may be facing the same issues as you or maybe learned already from them, but you're there to learn from each other's, you know, experience and skill set and in trials and tribulations. And of course, you know, we are there to facilitate those conversations and bring you the tools that I'll help you get that alignment and get you, like I said earlier, get those wins because we know what it goes through. We know how it painful it can be to not be able to make your pay run, right? Like, that sucks. Not making your payroll sucks. So you go over demographics and mindset. That mindset is a big important part of being an entrepreneur.

It is. You know, you, the challenge, one of the challenges to be an entrepreneur is you live at 24-7. I mean, I used to, I used to have dreams every night of what I was going to do the next day, my meetings, who I was going to fire. I would, it was just, it was, it was relentless to the point that I was just like, please, can I just think of Bo Derek on the beach, running down the beach, you know, that famous bikini shot? Can I just get a girl for a change in these dreams? and it was just every night it was business. And you just live it. I mean, morning, noon, night.

There is no 5 o'clock checkout. No. You want a company. No. And so having the right mindset is real important. It is. It's having that mindset and being coachable, being adaptable. And that's all part of that community.

It's where you can come in. And like I've said, like you can learn from others. But it's not just about being coachable. It's also about being open to feedback. You know, a lot of a lot of us, entrepreneurs and business leaders, we are very prideful. And unfortunately, that pride sometimes creates bottlenecks and roadblocks within our businesses. So having a forum to where you can be vulnerable, that changes the game a little bit because it allows you to understand your weaknesses

and maybe what is holding your business back. And so that to me was really important, that Willie and I and the team that we have that we were able to establish that with the community. And sometimes it just takes that one thing. I mean, sometimes you can have, it's like I always equated to being like a safe. Yes. You're trying to crack and you're trying to crack that best operating system where you've got the best R-O-I and yada, yada, yada, sometimes you're just dialing it.

I mean, I've had companies where I'm trying to get them profit, I'm trying to get them to work, And I'm just flipping that dial, man. And I've come up to within a week of, okay, we're giving up at the end of this week. We've tried this. We've sunk a bunch of money into it. And you just keep hitting that dial. And boom, somehow you hit that magic formula. The lights go on and you're like, damn, we found it.

And when you do, like everything, it's like the machine starts running. And you're like, it's going to work. Yeah. That's the beauty about what we've done. Because, you know, as you're talking about like finding the dial and turning that. knob and hoping you click. Well, we just look to our rolodex of already true tested tools and we're like, oh, yeah, we've seen that problem before. Here it is. Here, let's try this one because we did it before, right? And so that's, that's sort of the methodology of what our toolbox brings,

you know, from a value perspective to our members. Now, I see there's an ebook offering on your website. Do you want to tell us about that? Yeah, we're not quite there yet. That's still under development. Okay. All right. I'm going to click it and then see what happens. The doers wake up call. So now there was two different, I believe, communities you have on your website. We talked about pre-show. Tell us about both those. Yeah, certainly. So the inner circle community is our current platform where, you know, those entrepreneurs, young entrepreneurs and business unit leaders can come in. They can have that safe space. They can learn through tested tools. And then we have what we're, us launching. We're super excited to launch this in a couple weeks. It goes live. And this is the

Compass Framework Community. And what the compass is is that this is the structure. This is the ability to go plug and play business out of a box that you can say, here's how I'm going to operate my business. It's your operating system for your business. And we are able to help you create your vision, you know, your long-term goals and the culture that really will help you run and operate your business. And so we have the different pillars that will establish the success for that community. And that's what we're excited to launch with the Compass Group. And so people can get all sorts of help. Now, who's the target audience for this? Is it people all around the world? I know you guys are kind of in Canada, but they're Canadian.

Canada? Canada. You've just been renamed. You're now, you're now the 51st state. Yeah, yeah. That's a hot topic here now. We love Canadians. Screw whatever's going in politics. So it's 20, 25 people. You're watching this 20 years from now on the YouTube channel like you do. And don't, don't write me. Right. We've been on YouTube for 18 years and they do stuff. We've reviewed, I don't know, all the early iPhones.

And to this day, they will still put comments on there. You know this iPhone 2 isn't $500 anymore. Did you look at the date of the video? Anyway, so they can tap into your knowledge. They can tap in other people's knowledge. I guess I didn't finish my question. I kind of segue there, didn't they? Tell us about, you know, who's the best people?

Is there a minimum? Maybe you need to have a net worth? Is there the people who are eligible for this? Yeah, great. It's a great question. So our target audience is really that entrepreneur in our business that is around or less than $10 million in revenue. So from a startup to up to about $10 million and anywhere from, you know, I would say 75 employees or less is really where we believe our sweet spot is because these are the type of organizations that are starting up and are facing those challenges of the startup world and or are just about ready where they're ready to scale and they're not quite sure how to scale past those limitations that they've come.

They've gone from one million and they've increased, but now they recognize once they're going to go into that double, double digit million dollar world, it comes with a lot of investment, a lot of challenges, and some complexities that they may not be ready for. And so having the framework in place that's going to allow them to scale is where I believe we add the most value. Christopher Vogman writes in the show, I agree about showing up in a room of great people and being a sponge. Yeah, love it, love it. And that's, that's amazing, you know, Chris, that you see that because it's all about, you know, being a sponge and being able to absorb, you know, some of those learnings and applying them. You know, the key component after being a sponge is go apply the learnings, go apply them so that you can, you can start winning. Christopher's really on one today. My wife and I are both entrepreneurs, she puts me in shame and her resilience.

Don't let her do that, beat her at her own game. And I always love a good North Star Compass pointing me in the right direction. You know, why invent the wheel? reinvent the wheel. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's exactly it. I think we got support here for the 51st state there, Hector.

Yeah, I see that. I see it. I love it. We're in Alberta. So, you know, you got the toughest province in Canada, so we don't know yet. Oh, yeah. We don't want to fight the Albertans. I think, didn't we do a movie on that with John Candy, the famous community,

a second city comedian from Canada? There wasn't there a war with the movie of Canada or something? There was some movie about that. Oh. comedy or something. Yeah, yeah. The War of the 18th. What was it that?

I know there was 1812 where you guys came and burned our White House. Yeah, yeah. Evidently, we're still sore about that. That must be what the 51st day is. Maybe. Too soon, too soon, my friend. No doubt. Yeah.

So what were some of your influences? How did you become an entrepreneur? Where did you get the bug from? And what influence you growing up? Yeah, you know, I took a very weird route to entrepreneurship. I actually took the safe route where I became really good at being the operator or the second right person to the entrepreneur. And that's where I learned. I learned through corporate boardrooms and corporate practices.

And then after I was able to become really good at that, I then ventured on into, you know, softly becoming an entrepreneur. My first real ad, it was with Willie Schmidt, where he had this trucking outfit in northern Alberta. that was just losing tons of money. It was really struggling, and I had an opportunity to go in there and gain some share equity through my own sweat equity, going in and helping fix the organization. And when we, when we exited that business, it gave me the opportunity to take some of that that money and then go and invest it into my own businesses and my own real estate portfolio. Yeah.

Sometimes you need that training. I had that training where I was an entrepreneur at my final company. I still work for them, but they called me an entrepreneur. And so I'd be able to walk around, kind of like the CEO, I had a carte blanche and could do innovative changes. And that was kind of the last of my entrepreneurial training that I needed and also to work directly with the CEO really helped. That really helped. Absolutely. And I learned, you know, I came up through the rankings of the PepsiCo golden years where we learned efficiency and lean Six Sigma to the core and really team development at,

the heart of it. And so I took all of those practices and taken them off and put them into place for my own entrepreneur ventures. And, you know, people becoming entrepreneurs, there's so much greatness in it. I mean, you grow as a person. You're going to definitely become self-accountable. That's for sure. That is for sure. And that's where like having the repetition mindset is critical so that you can continue to stay focused in on the right path. Yeah. I mean, it's so critical. And, you know, having the advice, like I said, not reinventing the wheel because the worst thing you can do in business is reinvent the wheel or try to reinvent the wheel. And sometimes the wheel can't really be invented. Yeah.

I mean, you know, I, that was one of the things I learned from my last CEO I worked for. He sent me out one day door knocking to try and sell the product we had offered. And, you know, we did it by mail and telemarketing. But he's, I want to go, I want you to go door to door and spend the day going door to door. I'm like, what? He goes, you get paid for it. it, go do it. I'm like, seriously. And he goes, because if there's any way you can make this work, it would be you.

So he really believed in me. Nice. And I remember I went and spent a whole day wearing a hole in some very expensive leather shoes and knocking on a door in a suit that made me look like, I don't know, a billionaire Mormon knocking on the door. Have you heard about our Lord's seat? So anyway, it was a horrible day. And I came back, beaten down, worn down from walking all our neighborhoods in this suit and

wearing a hole in my and it's nothing worse than when you're doing door to door and you've got to walk back to your car with a hole in your shoe oh that sucks yeah and they were expensive too I was really pissed so I get back to the office and I said to them I go I go yeah I mean people were just like what the fuck is going on our front door we're not open that for nothing

I mean if that guy it looks like a serial killer in a suit this must be the new scam or something you know and no one I think I had three people open the door and no one would open it for me and so I said to him I go yeah total bomb only three people open the door so I couldn't even you know pitch people if you can't pitch people you can't sell yeah and I mean the only the only their option I have was a break in their house the cops says I can't do that anymore so I get one of my six ankle bracelets that's off me too anyway I just clank when I walk it's kind of cool and I can't bathe so anyway callback jokes in the show he said to me

he said to me something in passing as I was walking in the room. He goes, I guess it still doesn't work. And I was at the door leaving and I, my brain went, what the fuck did he just say? And I turned around and I go, what, what did you just say? It still doesn't work. And he goes, he goes, yeah, we tried this two or three years ago and then some

a few years before that and it bombed horrendously. We wanted to see that it still didn't work. Wow. And I asked him, I go, what the fuck? You sent me out, you ruined a great pair of shoes and worked my ass off and you knew it wasn't going to work. He goes, Chris, he goes, I believe in you. If there was one guy who I thought could make it work, it would be you. But you can't even open the door.

That's fine. He goes, so we check to make sure it still doesn't work. There are times where technology or, you know, markets change where, something doesn't work and then suddenly it will work and he goes and you just confirmed it for us and so he taught me what i call the crazy ivan it's taken from the hunt for red october where sometimes it's good to turn the ship around and check your six yeah and see you know see if you're operating in reality or whatever but at first i was it took me a while ago we're being pissed and i might still be pissed but it was a great lesson because like i mentioned earlier

sometimes you try and invent the widget and the widget just doesn't need to be invented. Yeah. Sometimes it needs to be innovated or modified. Like I remember when I used to look at paper clips and be like somebody's got that paperclip thing down. I mean, there's just no way to make this invention any better. And then I started seeing staples and stuff

all these different ridged paper clips and then painted paper clips, all sorts of different colors, Boko-a-up paper. You know, and then there was like somebody invented this weird, plastic thing that is better than a paperclip. And, you know, and so there's always ways to improve, but sometimes the improvement isn't making a new widget. It's just innovating it. It's innovated, tweaking it, right? It's finding what is relatable now, right? And, you know, and again, I tie it back to having the forum of where you could do that in that safe space, right? You

were made to go walk. You could have said to choose if I was in your forum. Yeah, exactly, right? You know, that owner or unit leader could have gone into the forum and be like, hey, we're thinking about doing this. Anybody else try it lately? And, you know, may have saved your shoes and your feet.

Yeah, that or one of the other guys could be like, yeah, he's just setting you up, man. He's just playing you. Just like to work because it's not going to work and save your shoes. Exactly.

But no, I mean, a lot of people do that. You know, one of the things we used to do when we got really successful was we would loan out money and we'd put up ads in the paper to give loans to the business that we're struggling. And of course, we used them to cherry pick what we wanted and see

if it would fold in our empire of companies. And it was just amazing what people will give you. I mean, they just send over their P&Ls and everything else. No one never send yet. And they tell you all their horror stories. But a lot of times, it was nine times out of 10, 99% of the time, it was a guy who had started a company either with some money. So you'd burn through it and his ideas still weren't working or maybe they got it to work for a month or two. a short while before the market changed or whatever, they misstyled the combo and suddenly it didn't work anymore. But they would ride it into the wall. And by the time they would be reaching me, they would be within a few months of bankruptcy. Yeah. And so I would go there and I'd be like,

here, I'll give you a first ride of refusal. So that means you need to contact me first when you're ready to sell this. And here's my offer now. And usually it was mostly walking money. Because I'm like, okay, I'm going to have to fire your whole family who's working here, and I'm going to fire you. And they're like, boy, because you're the problem. Yeah. You need to go back to McDonald's and learn how to be an entrepreneur or join your group. And I'd be like, don't call me a week before bankruptcy. I can't save you.

I can save you now. Yes. But I can't save you a week before bankruptcy. Yeah. And they would get gas from the fact that I was interested in because they're like, I have some value here. he must see something that I don't see. And I'd be like, no, that's not it. We've got other companies.

You know, sometimes we just wanted people's furniture. Yeah. You know, they were cash poor and they had great furniture or maybe a great office building. And we're like, we just want that. And then we'll put one of our other companies there. So it was a fold-in. Right. But they just wouldn't see it.

And they would always call me, you know when, a week before bankruptcy. Oh, yeah. Hey, you want to do that? But just a perfect example of how they would ride trying to make the wrong. widget work or trying to make a good widget work in the wrong way into the wall. Absolutely. And I can relate to that specific story because I just had an organization that we were working with that was in the same boat.

So similar concept in that, you know, they kept trying, trying, trying to scale their business. But they were going about it the wrong way and they were just so top heavy, right? The fact that they wanted to carry all this overhead forced them to take loan after loan after loan after loan all of a sudden they're like a million dollars in debt right carrying like $50,000 a month in debt servicing just to just to like to survive they have to have revenues that are exceeding what the output really is required right and so we go into it and we're hearing them out and we look at their penis and we say we know what the problem is look at look at your overhead like

you got to you got to do some tough decision making and and and you got to get rid of these roles because number one, they're killing you, they're absorbing your actual profitability. And number two, your business doesn't need them anymore. They served as a function maybe when you were starting out, but you're now leveraging technology into the business so you don't need those roles anymore. Let's make the smart decision. And through conversations and through some coaching and mentorship, we were able to get them there in the success stories that they were able to get rid of that overhead, cost,

paid down their debt burden, and then, you know, be able to make payroll again and now have some profitability because they were literally getting payday loans just so that they can make pay, like pay their people. And the interest on those things. Oh, it's horrible. It was crazy. Horrible. I think I had someone on the show where I had a friend who either owned one of those big chains

of Vegas or knew someone. And they told me about the interest rates. I mean, you're better borrow money from the mob. at least they only break your legs or take your business so as we go out give people a final pitch out on how they can onboard with you

how they can get to know you guys better and maybe ask questions or get familiar with everything that's going on there and I think isn't there a trial period? There is, yeah, there's a 14-day free trial if you click the link to optimize business systems.com you can go in there, you'll see the landing page it'll take you to our community free trial

you know and gives you access to our tools gives you access to the community we have a mobile app for apple users and the android devices are coming out soon and then you're able to interact while you're mobile you know like any social social app that you have out there and then you also partake in our weekly zoom calls where we discuss issues and we have live tutorials we do that we actually just wrapped up before this call we had ours this week do it every thursday night at 5 p.m. Mountain Standard Time. Oh, yeah. This has been fun, and entrepreneurs should definitely do it.

I mean, having someone who has the blueprint you need or the toolkit you need to fix a problem, instead of hunting around, trying 50 different versions, you know, spending months or weeks, burning through money. You know, you got to pay attention to that burn rate. Exactly. We got the shortcuts for you. Don't go out there. We got the cheat codes. Come listen to.

That's it. This is what we got. We have the cheat codes. Cheat codes in the business of business. Thank you very much, Hector, for coming on. It was wonderful to have you. Tell everybody in Canada, we love them. And yeah, it's a wonderful place up there.

I miss Second City. You guys put out some of the best comedians in the world. And, of course, we steal them and hijack him down here. I appreciate it. You're like, why does everyone leave Canada and go to the U.S.? Like, you started here. It's cold. There's too many moose.

and that Quebec is always trying to get away for some reason. I know. I know. It's an amazing country with a lot of funny things. Yeah, and a lot of good people. Yeah, amazing people. Give us the dot com one last time as we go. Yeah, Optimize Business Systems.com. And again, you can find us on Instagram, LinkedIn, all the social media platforms.

And again, we have the inner city podcast on Spotify and on Apple Music. love to have you join our community and again be part of that locker room and safe space for business owners, entrepreneurs, and business unit leaders. Thanks for plugging the thing there Christopher. He's helping us out. Get the word out. I love it. Thank you. Thank you.

Thanks everyone for coming in the show and listening. We certainly appreciate you. Go to goodreads.com, Fortresschus Christchristch, Christfoss, LinkedIn.com, Fortresschristch, Christfoss, YouTube. com, dot com, Fortress Chris Foss. Some other Chris Foss place. I don't know. Just look them up, man. The Chris Foss Show. You can't miss it.

go to all those great places on the internet be good to each other stay safe we'll see you guys next time brain farting at the end of the show