The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – John T. Hewitt, CEO of Loyalty Brands, Discusses His Entrepreneurial Journey and the Importance of Servant Leadership

Episode Date: December 24, 2023

John T. Hewitt, CEO of Loyalty Brands, Discusses His Entrepreneurial Journey and the Importance of Servant Leadership Loyaltybrands.com Show Notes About The Guest(s): John T. Hewitt is a renowned American entrepreneur who has made a significant impact in the business world through his innovative ideas and strategic thinking. He is best known for his success in the tax preparation industry, having founded two of the largest tax preparation companies in the United States, Jackson Hewitt and Liberty Tax. With over 54 years of experience in the industry, John has built a reputation for his expertise and leadership skills. Summary: John T. Hewitt, the founder of Jackson Hewitt and Liberty Tax, joins Chris Voss on The Chris Voss Show to discuss his new company, Loyalty Brands. Loyalty Brands is a conglomerate of different franchisors that offer franchise opportunities in various industries, including tax preparation, insurance, business brokerage, staffing services, and more. John shares his insights on entrepreneurship, leadership, and the importance of setting audacious goals. He emphasizes the value of servant leadership and the need to delegate and allow employees to make mistakes and learn from them. John also highlights the benefits of franchising and the role of systems in achieving exponential growth. Key Takeaways: Setting audacious goals is essential for achieving exponential growth. Servant leadership involves doing what's best for every person and allowing employees to make mistakes and learn from them. Delegating tasks and hiring people with different skill sets are crucial for building a complete team. Rolling out new systems and improving them requires flexibility and a willingness to learn from customers and employees. Franchising offers a higher chance of success compared to starting a business from scratch. Quotes: "The number one attribute that enabled me to achieve exponential growth is always wanting what's best for every person." - John T. Hewitt "Smart people learn from their mistakes, but wise people learn from the mistakes of others." - John T. Hewitt

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We have an amazing gentleman and author on the show with us today. And you may have heard of some of his prior business with his tax service, et cetera, et cetera. He is the author of the book that came out April 26, 2016, I Compete, How My Extraordinary Strategy for Winning Can Be Yours. John T. Hewitt joins us on the show today. And we're talking to him about his new company, what he's been doing, and how he's doing it.

John Hewitt is a renowned American entrepreneur who's made a significant impact in the business world through his innovative ideas and strategic thinking. He is best known for his success in the tax preparation industry, having founded two of the largest tax preparation companies in the United States, Jackson Hewitt and Liberty Tax. I'm sure everyone's seen the guys out in the corner doing those spinning things to do that and probably the ads. Both companies represent two of the largest top 100 retail organizations in North America. He founded and grew two of them. In 2012, Liberty Tax Service operated 4,000 locations in the U.S. and Canada. International Franchise Association Entrepreneur in 2005.

Accounting Today, top 100 most influential people, best-selling author in his book, I Compete, which is kind of like iPhone. It's got a little small E-I before the compete. And Inc. Magazine was ranked number two in the tax industry and was one of the fastest-growing private companies in the United States. And he joins us here today. Welcome to the show, John. How are you? Incredible. Incredible. Awesome. It's wonderful to have you as well, sir. Give us the today. Welcome to the show, John. How are you? Incredible. Thank you. Incredible. Awesome. It's wonderful to have you as well, sir. Give us the dot-com of the new company we're going to be talking about today that you're working on.

Working on Loyalty Brands. We have eight different franchisors under our umbrella. There you go. Loyaltybrands.com is the website. Do I have that correct? That's exactly right. There you go. And is there any other places on the internet you want people to get to know you better? I'm happy with everything under loyalty brands. There you go. So go there for all the good stuff. So give us a 30,000 overview, John, of what you're doing there at Loyalty Brands.

Well, as you already mentioned, I found and so two large public companies that have 10 000 locations at jackson hewitt and liberty tax and then i said what am i going to do next and i said let's let's get a conglomerate of different franchisors that can do cross marketingmarketing. We can mentor and grow together. And so we have eight different brands that we are building simultaneously. Now, it's sort of the 80-20 rule. Two of them are growing by leaps and bounds, and the others are slower. But our two premier brands are taxes, for sure. That's been my 54-year career at A-Tax.

But Zoom and Grooming, the mobile grooming, is growing exponentially faster than even the tax division. Wow. Yeah, well, you know, the great thing about it, I should have went in the tax business years ago because there's always two constants in life, as the ancient people say death and taxes so it was either that or the funeral business i guess there you go benjamin franklin said that 250 years ago there you go and boy was he that man had some vision zoom and grooming is

probably a great business too because you know i have dogs and probably with covid and all the weird things that that went on you know, remote working, people working from home now, that's probably a great business for that as well. Yeah, I've learned that that's another certainty of life. People, you know, there's nowhere else you can get unconditional love. And some people love their pets better than their children, better than their spouse, better than anything. Again, that love is just unbelievable. It's the best. I've had four Huskies.

And aside from the hair, the love is the best. So there you go. There's good and bad in everything. Oh, yeah. And it's so hard to take your dog, you know, get him in the car, then they want to tear up the car and your car gets full for at least mine for Huskies, having someone come and, you know, pick them up and do it. And then, you know, you gotta, you gotta go into the pet store that does the grooming and, you know, then they want to fight or bark at the other pets. And it's

a whole, it's a whole drama thing to try and go to the pet store with for grooming. So yeah, having someone come and do a home-based mobile grooming seems to be a lot better. So what was your objective in, and these are franchise opportunities that you're offering to people who want to buy franchises, who want to buy pre-modeled businesses where they don't have to learn the business, they don't have to go through the rigmarole and potential loss of trying to figure out the proper way to do the business and market it, as opposed to failing at it, which a lot of business owners do when they start their own companies. Exactly. 95% of businesses that aren't franchises fail within five years.

95% of franchises succeed after five years. It's 19 to 1 more likely you're going to succeed if you're a franchisee rather than a than a mom and pop and and that's because you you nailed it you have to have a system of doing business that's critical here and and it's our job and my job to give you the best system in the industry it's your job to to follow that recipe and and build your business with our help and so you guys offer several different companies let me see there's estrella insurance there's property casualty insurance ledgers which says helping small business owners loyalty business brokers that i guess buying and selling of companies and businesses little medical school provides

curriculum for children with focus on health care. The Inspection Boys, which has home inspections, staffing service, Jostum staffing service. That seems like that would be pretty good for recruitment. American Exteriors, Experts, and Bubbly, all-in-one laundry and dry cleaning service. I need that, actually. I hate going to the dry cleaning thing. does that does that a is that a thing where they do pickup or yeah it's absolutely all mobile oh i love that i hate having doing the dry cleaning separately i mean i'll do my laundry but the dry cleaning is always a pain in the butt you got to go over to the thing and deliver it and then and all that stuff so you offer these businesses and

people can franchise them they can reach out to your guys's website and find out different opportunities how to get started they can call you guys what what are some of the ways that they can onboard with you well the easiest thing to do is is to reach out to us and we take you through the steps i mean when when we bring in a new franchise it's not we don't try to sell anyone anything. We try to find the right person. And so we take people through a number of steps. Number one, should you be self-employed? 70% of Americans want to be self-employed, but only about 20 can be self-employed. 20%?

Yeah. We have to help you decide if you should be self-employed. Help you decide what's the right industry. And then if you decide on an industry, what's the right vehicle? And then is this the right time in your life? Can you afford to step out of your business? Are everyone healthy in your family? Are you going to stay in the same city for the next five or ten years?

There's a lot of things to consider to make sure that we find the right people. There you go. Let's extrapolate that a little bit more because I have that argument with some people about whether or not everybody can be an entrepreneur. And I've been an entrepreneur since 18, started over 30 companies. You've been incredibly successful with what you've done, built the offices. And you've probably seen so many different people come and go and trying to start companies as, as, as someone I have probably yours in a larger scale. Do you, so you really believe that that maybe 20% of people have that sort of

capability, that mindset, that ability to be agile and, and, and do what entrepreneurs do. Yeah. agile and do what entrepreneurs do? Yeah, those are statistics from the 5,200 people I brought in as franchisees. And it comes down to a number of things, risk-taking. You know, the 10 most important two-letter words are, if it is to be, it is up to me. And some people need a boss. Some people aren't going to get up in the morning and they're not self-starters.

So you have to be a self-starter. You have to be a risk taker. And you have to understand that no one's put on earth to skate. You're going to face adversity. And there's going to be ups and downs. And those things stop a lot of people they just were never meant to be self-employed yeah we had a mortgage one of my big companies is a mortgage company for 20 years and every now and then someone would come to me

and they'd be like hey i'm a retired math teacher i want to i want to quit my job and and go start a company and you know i'd sit with them and and they would have this rudimentary sort of thinking that you see math teachers is probably a good way to break it down. And I'd just be like, you really don't have the sort of agility of mindset to really become an entrepreneur. And they want to borrow money out of the equity of their home. And I would tell them, I'd just be like, you just do not have the mindset for this. And I'm just warning you that if you're going to go spend 30 or 50,000 doing a mortgage loan to tap in your home equity, and you're going to blow it

on this, you can do it. I mean, we built, as I wrote my book, Beacons of Leadership, we built my first company, multimillion dollar company with $2,000 in sweat equity. And a year and a half later, we started a mortgage company with $4,000 in sweat equity. And a year and a half later, we started a mortgage company with $4,000 in sweat equity. And those companies lasted almost 20 years until 2008. But I've seen people, I remember having a guy in my mortgage company one time, we started with $4,000. It was profitable. Both companies were profitable in the first three months and just grew exponentially. And I remember one time at our pinnacle, I had a guy come in and he'd blown through $200,000 to start his mortgage company. And he'd, of course, bought all the class A office buildings, the nicest furniture. Meanwhile, when we started our company, we were just like, we're going down to Goodwill and buying stuff.

And he was just astounded that he couldn't. He'd blown through $200,000 to build a company in a year, and he'd hit the wall. And here we'd built our company with $4,000. And he was just astounded. He's like, I can't figure out how I made it work. I was astounded, too. I'm like, how did you blow it? I'm going to cite you anytime I get these arguments with people because sometimes people

will tell me, they're like, no, anybody can be an entrepreneur. They just have to learn. And I'm like, well, it's a lot of learning because I've been doing it since 18. So there you go. Let's get into your journey. I think people are probably interested in you at this point. Can you give us your hero's journey, your story, what shaped you, what got you in the tax business, what got you being an entrepreneur, gave you that bug? Yeah, I was blessed when I was in college.

My dad had always wanted to be an entrepreneur. And I was born in the summer of his freshman year at Michigan State and he had three children before he graduated and five children a few years later so he never had the the amount of income and net worth to become self-employed by the time I was in college he said okay now I can do it and he called H&R Block and tried to buy a franchise in a suburb of Buffalo where we live. I was going to the University of Buffalo. And they said, as a matter of fact, we're going to open a company store this year. But why don't you have your son take our tax course? Maybe he could work for us. And I was blessed. I found out at 20 years old

what I wanted to do the rest of my life. And 12 years later, I was running 250 H&R Block locations. And my dad interceded again. He said, ready to be self-employed. Now he was the CFO of a public company. And he liked the little Apple computer that he bought by mail better than the mainframe that was running his public company. So he decided we should build tax software for an Apple computer. So we both quit our jobs in 1981 and built Apple tax software, the first of its kind. No one wanted it way ahead of its time. God bless. And I found a company in

Virginia Beach called Mel Jackson Tax Service. Mel had died. We bought six offices from his widow. The biggest blessing was I moved to Virginia Beach and the weather is so much nicer than Buffalo. I've been in Virginia Beach since August of 1982. We changed the name to Jackson Hewitt. We merged the two companies. We only raised $129,000 to start Jackson Hewitt. Wow.

And 15 years later, we sold it for $483 million. That is awesome. And here, the other guy blew through $200,000. Yeah, exactly. There you go. So he's not at our level. Definitely. Sold my company and then had a three-year non-compete,

opened Liberty tax in canada because there were no jackson hewitts in canada no non-compete and having grown up in buffalo i knew the canadian tax system so came back to the united states in 2000 now i had to compete against my own name and my own software and my own system and yet we kicked their butt we grew faster than jackson Hewitt and Block combined. We opened 4,000 offices in 12 years. Wow. And became the top 10 fastest growing franchisor ever.

My second of the top 100 retail franchise chains in the country. And again, a $500 million public company. Again, I sold my my stock and now we have loyalty brands there you go so what do you what do you i mean you grew at an exponential rate and obviously have a track record of being successful what do you cite as your as the reason for that is it you is it your leadership style uh i mean what mean, what do you think of that in your head? Yeah, absolutely. I'm blessed.

I've seen hundreds of people try to go national against H&R Block, and only one person's done it, and now I've done it twice. So when people say, what is the number one attribute that you have that enabled you to do that? And really, it's, I always, number one is I try to do what's best for every person. And when it's best for both of us, that's even nicer. But if being with us isn't the best for them, God bless you, go find somewhere else to be extraordinary. So the number one attribute that I've grown up with is trying to do what's right for best for every person I meet. Oh, there you go. You know, as you've done this, I mean, this has to be done with leadership.

Of course, leadership is one of my favorite topics to talk about on the show, as our audience knows. What aspects of your leadership and your mindset do you feel are the real strengths that you've developed over the years that give you the ability to move in the ways that you move and build what leaders, still think of their employees as servants or lesser individuals. And so they order them around without listening to them. So I learned long ago that as long as I have happy, successful franchisees and happy, successful employees, then I can't, I can't, I'm going to grow exponentially. So it comes down to happy, successful franchisees, happy, successful employees. So when I, someone works for me, most people think, well, they got to make me happy. Well, I got to make them happy as much as they make me happy. So that's why we call our company Loyalty because I have three

people with me 35 years, three people with me 30 years, five people with me 25 years. I have just an immense following because the only way you get loyalty is to give loyalty. So you need to treat people right. There you go. There's a kind of a new thing that everyone talks about. I'm not sure how new it is, but it seems to be catching fire, at least in discussions we have with authors on the show, of servant leadership of, you know, kind of, it seemed like in the old world, we kind of had this world where, you know, especially like the old IBM sort of status world where, you working from home, people, employees having this discretion where they can be like, I think I'd just rather go work for somebody else and really quitting jobs because leadership sucks.

What's your take on this concept of servant leadership? I abide by it 100%. And the way that I feel, I define servant leadership is for each of the people that report to me, every year we set up goals and budgets. And once we have that budget and goals decided, then I stand back and I'm here to help you. And you know your targets, right? If you know, for example, if your target is to do X number of tax returns each month or open X number of offices, you know black and white whether you're failing or succeeding. So your goal is to hit those numbers, and I'm here to assist you. I'm not here to direct you.

If both of us think alike, one of us is useless. I like your paradigm. think alike, one of us is useless. I need to allow you to make mistakes, but you have to keep me informed. If you have a goal at the end of a month or three months that you know you're

going to miss, then you can't wait until you miss. You have to tell me in advance that I'm not going to be able to meet this goal. So I either need advice or more resources. I need to change my budget or get some advice because I'm not going to meet those goals. And that's servant leadership.

And I totally agree 100% that that's the way to manage in the 21st century. There you go. And you've got the pedigree to show for it. I mean, when you've got a loyalty group, executive group around you, like you say, for a multitude of decades and years, I mean, that means people stay with you and you've got your finger on the pulse. You talk about in your book, and you alluded to it there, where you must not monitor or you must monitor results, not activities. And so it sounds like you set the goal, you set the vision out there and then help people to achieve it. Yeah. Even some of the executives I've hired, I had a CFO one time that would watch out the

window to see which of his employees were in the office by 9 o'clock. I mean, that's ridiculous, right? You know where you stand with me because you have targets that are deadlines with numerical targets. And if you're on target, then you don't need to wonder where you stand. But if you're missing, then you know where you stand. It's either it's pass-fail. You're meeting your target or not. And you know where you stand. But if you're missing, then you know where you stand. It's either it's pass fail, you're meeting your target or not. And you know where you stand with me, you don't have to wonder, I don't really care what time you come to work. I don't care how much vacation you take. You we agree on the resources you get, mostly money and people and so forth. And then we agree on your

goals. And then it's up to you to achieve it there you go and i like that sort of methodology you know a lot of leaders don't really think about the culture they build the how they come off and how they represent themselves how their people perceive them you know sometimes they're not self-accountable i've seen cultures that are blame cultures where everyone's trying to avoid liability and being blamed for something and getting fired i've seen cultures that are blame cultures where everyone's trying to avoid liability and being blamed for something and getting fired. I've seen cultures where it's very high school popularity contest where little to no work gets done, but everyone just kisses ass to the boss and the boss just adulates and the attention and stuff. And I've seen the micromanagement that you referred to as well. But I like your aspect of giving people the goals to

go to because it's a real it's a real vision sort of thing you know the the great people who built companies in this world to see jobs etc etc they they've built they've given people a vision to go for and chase how important do you think vision is into what you do do you think about it consciously and set goals i mean obviously you've set goals, so I'm setting out for this. Yeah, I think one of the key two or three most important things about exponential growth, and I'm talking about growing from zero to 4,000 in 12 years, right? That's a lot of offices that's kind of competing against my own name and my own software. That's a lot of offices that's kind of and competing against my own name and my own software that's a big hairy audacious goal but you have to set high goals when i mean if you think about how

it's almost stupid or crazy when i set out in 2000 to compete against my own company jackson hewitt and hr block with Block with 9,000 offices and said, we're going to be number one. We're going to grow faster than Block or Jackson Hewitt. And that's crazy with zero offices and competing against 12,000 of their offices. And to believe that you can do that is either crazy or stupid, right? But we proved it. we opened 4 000 offices

in 12 years more than both of them combined and top 10 fastest growing franchisor ever so you have to set goals and have vision so to be a to accomplish great things you have to have a vision that's that's audacious yet yet some realism to it, that you're proven that you can accomplish those numbers. It can't be totally insane, but it has to be challenging, for sure. What are some other top strengths that you have in your CEO toolbox that you utilize, would you say? Well, the key is always always what's best for other people.

And I'll give you some of my weaknesses. One is I'm not a great communicator. That's, Peter Drucker said in the book, The Effective Executive, he said, people with great strengths have great weaknesses. So, if you want to, I agree with that wholeheartedly. So if I believe I have great strengths, then I have great weaknesses. But I am good at identifying people and giving them the opportunity. I've created a thousand millionaires, and people often thank me for they thank me for what i've done what i what i tell them i get for a net i gave you a chance for a nanosecond after that it's up to you

to run with it right again if it is to be it is up to me i create the system but you do the work and you you're the one that i give all the training to and the guidance to and the mentorship to. And I think part of that then is I'm a good listener. When I have a conversation with my employees or my franchisees or potential franchisees, they will always do 99% of the time do most of the talking. I do things. I accomplish things by asking questions and listening and then then making a informed decision after i have all the information there you go it you know and the thing you mentioned that you know your fallacies you know

that your your your your things you're not strong on. But that invokes that you have self-accountability and self-actualization where you know your strengths. You know your weaknesses. You're very aware of them. Most people I don't think are aware, and especially leaders, maybe aren't aware of their weaknesses. We had somebody on yesterday who does a huge business they've been doing for 20 years this these business surveys where they go into a company with leaders and they do these giant surveys from the employees as to how they evaluate their leadership and sometimes it's it's a i was joking it was a crossfire circular firing squad sometimes they'll do the whole company you know a thousand people where they're evaluating everybody in the company

and then they sit down with the surveys afterwards and try and figure out their strengths and how they're perceived and all that sort of good stuff. And I think being self-actualized as a entrepreneur is really important. Like for me in my business, I could be the visionary. I could be the guy who could generate ideas and come up with stuff and was constantly the tinkerer and the innovator. But I had to have a business partner as my vice president for 13, 14 years that was not only my best friend of 22 years, but that I could trust beyond a shadow of a doubt. But also, he could do the rudimentary work. So I could make a business model or a widget or some sort of function or I could be like okay here's the application of the business operations for our R&D or you know telemarketing or whatever

you know sort of business function it was and I could innovate that and then I could give it to him and he could make sure that that that plate kept spinning where for me that aspect of the business was just mentally draining like Like I would just, that just make me mental, do the same thing over and over again. But he, for him, it was great. If I handed him a yellow pad and said, Hey, I need you to come up with some visionary ideas to fix maybe what's bleeding out in our company, or I need a, I need some help on this. Cause you know, I don't have all the great ideas. Can you come up with anything? And he, he literally couldn't come up with anything. And so we had't come up with anything.

And so we had that great partnership. And me knowing what were my strengths and he knowing what were his strengths made for the great combo. And I think a lot of leaders need to know, you know, not only like you say, and a spouse, what their strengths are and know what their weaknesses are so they can find people who can fill that gap. Yeah, I was interviewed just the other day and someone said, well, when you're starting a company from scratch and you're the CEO, who's your first hire? And I said, it depends on your skill set. You hire people with skills that you don't have. And I'm poor at communication. I'm poor at delegation.

I'm sorry, I'm great at delegation. I'm sorry. I'm poor at delegation. I'm sorry. I'm great at delegation. I'm sorry. I'm poor at detail. And I want to go too fast. You know, a great CEO needs a great CFO to hold them back. There you go. So if it were up to me, I would run too fast and the rest couldn't keep up. So I need help in detail. I need help in structure and slowing down occasionally and communicating. So you hire people that have different skill sets. And they complement yours. And so fill in those gaps and then build a complete team around you.

I think, well, I'm not going to shade it with my thing, but do you think that one of the problems that CEOs have is they think they have to be all of the things that they need. They have to do all the things and they have problems delegating. They think that they have to be the person who does everything. And a lot of times they have to start out that way for financial reasons. When you're starting at your home, you kind of have to does everything. And a lot of times they have to start out that way for financial reasons. When you're starting at your home, you kind of have to do everything.

But there's a point of scale where you need to delegate and not do everything. And I think a lot of people get stuck with that in their head. They become micromanagers usually at that point. Yeah, I think there's two problems in that. And one problem is some people think they can do everything, which is a huge, huge fail-see. And then

most people can't delegate. To me, it's the number one disease in American management. Really? Inability to delegate. There you go. And then do what you do, where you set goals and you let them run and give them servant leadership as opposed to

that's difficult to let people make mistakes yeah you know i did an interview at jackson hewitt with my marketing director chief marketing officer in 1990 she had been with me two years now she's been with me 35 years wow and and i did a we did-of-the-year review, and I said, I always finish off the review as saying, was there any way I could help you do your job better? And she said, yeah, sometimes I make mistakes, and you know better, and you could save me from making the mistake. I said, but then you wouldn't learn, and then I would have to do everything. I need a skilled chief marketing officer, and the human beings tend to learn best by making mistakes. So I need to allow you the flexibility of not telling you exactly what to do. Otherwise, you're useless.

If I have to tell you everything, then why do I need you? I need someone to think freely when you think separately. And I'm not always right when two of us are stronger than each of us separately. There you go. You write about that in your book, Why Mistakes Are a Wise Person's Education. Why is making mistakes important in doing education as an entrepreneur? Well, they say, you know, the saying is smart people learn from their mistakes. And I got to tell you, there's not a lot of smart people.

And then the corollary is wise people learn from the mistakes of others. And so that takes a special ability because most people don't even learn from their own mistakes. They keep repeating their mistakes. That's essential. And that's what you need to understand when you're part of a franchise system. Again, it's our job to give you the best system in the industry it's your job to follow that system and not not invent and recreate the wheel you know i i talk about this a lot on the show being you know we joke about how people

constantly come up to me hey chris i'm going to be like you're going to start a company okay great go ahead let's do it and they're like oh well got to wait. I got to wait until it's perfect. Everything's perfect and I'm ready and everything's ready to go. And you're like, it's never going to be perfect. You have to get started. You're constantly problem solving and making mistakes or finding mistakes and problem solving for how to get that widget to work in the most profitable sense and then to scale it. And you just have to get started. It's basically, I think they should just call entrepreneurs problem solvers because that's pretty much all you do all day long. I was watching a TikTok recently of a guy who sells planes, executive private planes,

and he's been doing it for 40 years. And he was doing a day in the life, and I was just watching this two days ago. And he talked about how, I've been doing it for 40 years and he was doing a day in the life and i was just watching this two days ago and and he talked about how you know i've been doing this for 40 years selling planes to people and and people all over the world and he goes you know what's funny is every day i still have new stuff that i have to problem solve on things i have to fix new issues that come up new new regulations or problems he goes you would think would think after 40 years that it would just be like a cakewalk. You'd be just like, it's the same thing over and over again. He goes, no, after 40 years, it's still new problems. I still have to problem solve every day.

And that's really what people have to do. And you bring up a good point of people making mistakes. And you have to be okay with those mistakes. You have to be able to take the paradigm of going, okay, well, we failed at this. We sucked at this. How do we turn this around? How do we make this a building block? There's an old famous story.

It might be Watson from IBM, the old CEO. I think it came from Hewlett-Packard. Tom Watson came from IBM. Probably him. Yeah, it either came from Tom Watson and IBM, or it was Hewlett Packard or Tom Watson probably yeah yeah it either came from Tom Watson and IBM or it was Hewlett Packard I can't remember where it came from but it's a story of how one of their vice presidents lost like I think the figure was like 11 million dollars or 12 million dollars on a deal and the executive comes into his office the CEO and says hey I'm here to tender my resignation

I just lost the company millions of dollars. And he says, what do you mean? We're not letting you quit. We're not firing you. We just spent $11 million educating you on what not to do. We're not letting you go. We just made an investment in you. And so that mindset, I think, is so important to realize that yeah you've got to let your

employees make mistakes you've got to let them learn and probably make sure that they learn from it because you know what the employee's doing the same thing over and over again i've fired a number of those where i'm just like this is the eighth time we've said that we shouldn't do this you keep doing it but yeah problem solving and all that good stuff exactly and and earlier in that you said that in rolling out new systems and and i it frustrates me beyond belief that we continually roll out and improve and develop a new system but but people try to get it exactly right before they roll it out and a hundred percent i think a hundred percent of the systems i've i've rolled out whether we spent four hours preparing or four days preparing it needed to be adjusted so i'm like you let's you know let's get

it started and learn learn from the customers learn from the employees, learn on the fly. You're not going to think of everything in advance. So roll it out and then test it and then improve it and be ready to fix it and improve it. There you go. I mean, I remember the early days of our business. There were some times where I was standing in front of clients, selling them on our services, and then I'd leave the thing, getting a contract and a deal. And I'm like, I got to get a whole lot more of these deals put together, or I don't know how we're going to deliver on what we're going to, what we just promised.

But I knew we could do it from a, from a, from a sweat equity point of view. But I'm like, I have to get more customers to make this really work and be profitable. And so you just had to build it, sell it and go. And people bought me, but you're right. It's constant problem solving. I mean, maybe that's what they should name entrepreneurs. It shouldn't be called entrepreneurs, should just be called eternal problem solvers. Every day you're having to deal with stuff. But John, as we go out, final thoughts and pitch out on people that can onboard with you, reach out to you that are interested in the franchise opportunities there at Loyalty Brands. Sure. I'm easy to reach. I'm on Wikipedia. I'm on loyaltybrands.com.

My email is john at loyaltybrands.com. Easy to find me. There you go. Loyaltybrands.com. You can check out some of the services they have going on over there. John, it's been wonderful to have you on and brilliant discussion on entrepreneurism you've made over 1 000 millionaires i have that correct that's exactly right there you go that should just be your tag i'm john hewitt and i made a thousand millionaires there you go thank you for coming on the show and inspiring everybody. And hopefully we'll make some more with your guys' service and what you do. Thanks for coming on the show. Thank you.

Thanks. Thanks for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, 4Chess, Chris Voss. Order up his book, I Compete. That's a small I with the word compete attached to it like iPhone. I Compete, How My Extraordinary Strategy for Winning Can be yours by John T. Hewitt. Go to youtube.com. Forrest has Chris Voss.

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