The Home Service Expert Podcast - Embracing Multiplier Leadership To Bring The Best Out Of Your Team

Episode Date: May 7, 2021

Dirk van Reenen is the founder of BERGflow, a company launched in 2017 that specializes in helping service based companies build better teams to grow and scale through talent acquisition systems, focused organizational structure and processes and training. Prior to founding BERGflow, Dirk ran a business for six years until the age of 27, eventually becoming the CEO of a company doing close to $800M in sales annually. In this episode, we talked about leadership development, team building, human resources...

The first thing is that most people don't even have a definition of talent. And we tell our clients, look, you're going to have to define what talent looks like in your organization. You're going to have to really say, okay, what is talent and what is talent not? And then anytime that somebody fits your talent box, you engage them in a conversation about an opportunity in your company. And this is exactly what you say. Look, you're wanting to put in time and effort and energy a lot personally into your recruiting team because that's their job.

Their job is to go find the next level of talent. And what we believe is that your whole organization can become a recruiting force, right? Whether you're the CEO or you're the janitor, it doesn't matter, right? Everybody can go out there and the way that they speak about the company, but that's when everybody is on board with growth. Because here's the thing that we see is a lot of companies,

when they decide to make the leap to growth, they start having a lot of people on their team that start digging in their heels and start fighting growth. And if that's the case, then you're going to have a really hard time because those people are never going to be bought into hiring a lot more people, driving revenue, doing things they haven't done before, learning. Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello.

Welcome back to the Home Service Expert. My name is Tommy Mello. Today, I have a guest, an awesome guest visiting us from Frenswood, Texas, Dirk Van Rienen. It's a pleasure to have you on. Tommy, thanks, man. You nailed it. You got it right. Yeah, look at that. And then what I want to do is I'll give you nailed it you got it right yeah he's look at that and then what i want to do is uh i'll give you some of uh the overview and history of dirk uh dirk's an expert in leadership development team building human resources executive coaching and entrepreneurship bird flow founder from 2016 to present cap rock auctions he He's the CEO and lead auctioneer from 2009 to 2019. CEO from 2012 to 2017.

Keller Williams Realty in Perlin, Texas, in Columbia, Maryland. He was a CEO and team leader from 2014 to 2016. XBO Social Media, owner of business development 2011 a prudential ada realtors director of special asset solutions for three years back in the early 2000s jerk is the founder and visionary of burge flow a company launched in 2017 that specializes in helping service-based companies build their better teams or build better teams to grow and scale through talent acquisition systems focused organizational structure and processes and training. Birchflow currently works with over 220 service-based companies in various industries across North America.

Prior to founding Birchflow, he ran businesses for six years until the age of 27, eventually becoming the CEO of a company doing close to $800 million in sales annually by age 34. Quite the history here, Dirk. Yeah, thanks, man. Appreciate it. And there's a lot of chaos in all of that. Hey, listen, it made you who you are today. I'm curious. Let's hear about your entrepreneurial journey and a little bit more about where you're at today and what you think is going to happen in the future. Let's just get a good five-minute overview. Yeah. Man, growing up, I'm originally from South Africa.

I was born and raised there. So at age 14, my family immigrated to the U.S. And I mean, it's kind of the classic, you know, immigrant type story. By the time we came over here, we had no money, kind of started over completely and started working from age 14. But, you know, I kind of had an entrepreneurial blueprint of what my dad did in South Africa. So kind of grew up with my dad working for himself, right? Having kind of his own businesses. And I always was really attracted to that. So I knew I wanted to kind of his own businesses and i always was really attracted to that so i knew i wanted to kind of be in business and then i actually bought my first business at age 21 the owner financed the business for me and i got into the ski and snowboard industry

and i actually worked in that industry for about seven years owning that shop that shop did fail in 2008 miserably so put me it was about $300,000 in the hole, had nothing really to show for it and really just started over at that point, just in a massive hole. My wife and I were expecting our first child right around that time. So it was just kind of this really messy stage of life and just kind of went after that, just kind of did what I knew how to do, which is just work really hard. And, you know, probably four or five, six years in this journey of just trying to survive working six, seven days a week, 12, 14, 16 hours a day. Had a couple of businesses during that time, but I mean, just never really got to this place of freedom or feeling like we're getting ahead. And I started realizing like there's just a lot of things that I kind of had a blueprint for growing up, like working hard and like doing're getting ahead. And I started realizing there's just a lot of things that

I kind of had a blueprint for growing up, like working hard and doing the right thing, but at the same time, just missing a lot of key elements and what does it take to actually build a successful business. So I really started kind of going on this journey of just learning and studying everything that I could because I figured at 31, 32 years old, as hard as I was working, I should have been ahead of where I was. So I just went on a different journey and ended up running some really large businesses and learning how to really work with other businesses and scaling them. So in 2017, I launched Bergflow and we just started to say, hey, we want to help other people that are in that messy entrepreneurial journey and launched the company in 2017. Also launched a niche company in 2017

called Inspector Empire Builder, where we work with over 200 home inspection companies across the U.S. now. Many of them are the fastest and largest growing in that industry. But in Bergflow, we work with all different kinds of industry, different companies, different industries. And really, it's kind of one of these things that we say that we help companies really break through those ceilings. A lot of our clients start off at about a million and a half to $3 million in revenue. And they're the companies that want to go to 10, 15, 25 million in revenue. So they quickly find out kind of the old adage of what got them there won't get them further, right? What got you here won't get you there. And so we really look at the

team dynamic and the human system of these businesses. And that's kind of our deep fascination. And then also recently, we just bought a large ranch down in Pelletier Canyon, and we're busy launching the largest outdoor adventure park in the state of Texas and the fifth largest in the U.S. And that's really like a big passion project that I've been dreaming out for quite a few years. So, you know, we run multiple businesses and the only way that we are able to do that is to really build great teams ourselves. So, you know, we're kind of in the coaching, consulting type space, training space, but we're one of those companies that we are also building companies, right? It's not that we kind of read stuff and then say, hey, here's what works. I

mean, we're in the throes of building multiple, multimillion dollar businesses. And when we work with our clients, it's very authentic because I mean, we're out there getting the crap beat out of us as we're growing continually, but we've been able to really accelerate growing faster with higher profitability and more time freedom. And that's the same thing that we help other businesses with. Yeah. They say, if you can't make it in the real world and teach, right. So out there still doing it. It's a lot here to start with. So let's just play a scenario out. Yeah. You get to spend a couple hours with yourself 16 years ago. So you go back to 2005 and you're not giving yourself personal advice,

like make sure Bobby doesn't choke on, you know, the carrot, whatever. It's more like, it's more advice, business advice. What does that look like? What is the conversation? What is the narrative and it's i always say whatever you could talk to yourself 10 years ago and mine would be mostly evolved around you know definitely hire for your weaknesses spend more time learning and reading and going and find the shops you want to become i mean i could talk for hours about what i would tell myself but i'm curious what would be the big takeaways that you would tell yourself way back then as far as business? Yeah. I mean, I think the first thing that

I would tell myself is get focused. And I would say, look, get really focused on running a repeatable model, something that can really be duplicated over and over and over. And I would say probably exactly what you just said too, is I'd say, look, you're really good in some areas, you're really bad in a lot of areas. So start now and start looking for the right people, hire people that are better than you are and create opportunities for them, support them and step out of your own way. Because I think for me, it took a while for me to actually learn how to get focused. I think when you're kind of entrepreneurial, it's a beautiful gift, and it's a terrible curse at the same time. Because one is you never run out of opportunities, and the curse is that you never

run out of opportunities. So a lot of times you go too wide instead of going deep. So for me, it would just be like, hey, find something, go really deep on it, build a great team around you and get out of your own way. That'd probably be kind of the first conversation and then just diving deep from there. Yeah, I feel like so. This kind of jumps to the next segment of, you know, as business owners, we are leaders for what we have to be. We're kind of like the parents.

We hire these employees and they look up to us. They look for us to lead by example. we have to be we kind of like the parents we hire these employees and they look up to us they look for us to lead by example and unfortunately not a lot of business owners have that mentality that a lot of them they think they're a business owner they tell everybody they're a business owner but they're actually a technician they're still in their trade they never learned to recruit they never learned to train they never learned anything about their financials. They don't know how to hire for their weaknesses. They never heard of the word delegation. At what point can people start growing to that next level?

I mean, I think the first thing is, and we kind of have a word for people like that. We call them like the technical purist, where they believe that by them being really good at a technical skill is what's really going to give them access to a better life. And it's just not. For a lot of people that we work with, we tell actively tell companies, if you haven't reached a million dollars in revenue, and we're talking about, you know, we work with a lot of home service type companies. So if you haven't reached a million dollars in revenue, you haven't even figured out how to really do the thing that you do. And, you know, for a lot of companies, you know, they kind of get offended and they're like,

well, no, I know all of it. I know all the code. I know technically what to do. And they kind of hang their hat on their, like, technical superiority. And we always believe that, look, if you want a really viable business, you've got to have a good service. And yet that's about 20% of actually scaling and building a company. And I think that's the switch that has to happen. And unfortunately, I think a lot of people's egos get in the way and they want to hang on to like, well, my clients only want to work with me. I always have to do their, I've got to make all the decisions. And they want to hold on to something. And exactly what you said, they don't delegate because they don't trust anybody because one, they haven't learned how to actually hire people.

They don't know how to train people at the highest level. And if they do, maybe it's just, they know how to hire and train other technicians. They haven't learned how to hire growth people, you know, operations people. They haven't really started understanding, okay, how do you hire people to help you in the financial side of your world? And that's where most of the time when we work with companies, it's usually the companies that have had the crap kicked out of them. The owner-entrepreneur has just been beat down for so long, and they're so tired of carrying all the weight that finally they're like, hey, I'm open to a different way of doing it. But there's times, I mean, we've gone to trade shows where I'm talking to somebody that does, you know, 150 or $200,000 a year in business. They're kind of a solo type operation and they won't even be open to hearing about anything. Like they think they got it all

figured out. And it's unfortunate because I mean, usually the only way when your ego is that high is that you're going to get the crap beat out of you. Eventually, you're going to get tired of never seeing your spouse, not seeing your kids, your bank account having, don't having a lot of money. And it's kind of like you're in control, but in control of what? And it's exactly, you're not a business owner. You're self-employed. You just created a job for yourself.

So there's definitely this mental shift that has to happen from owners that start off as technicians to say, and I've heard you talk about this is like, look, you have to get out of the field, right? As long as you're actively in the field day in and day out, you're not going to learn how to run that business. You got to get out of the field. You got to start getting a higher point of view of what's happening and you got to start hiring the right people around you. Yeah. I think you hit the nail on the head there. I think that it's really, you're not focused on growth. I just talked to a guy earlier. He's in my,

my program that I help out entrepreneurs and, you know, we're at about 50, my goal is to get it to a thousand. And I think what's really valuable for me is my Rolodex just because I know people that do the work they say they're going to do. They're not like subbing it out and stuff. But this guy's like, you know, Tommy, I decided I'm going to grow. And he goes, I've been three employees for a long, long time. I made the decision to work with you and grow. Then I said, well, here's the thing.

You need to stop living in service time. I look at service time a lot just to look at revenue and sales and give a text message here and there as a leader to the top guys is a good job, buddy. But overall, I interviewed Adam Coffey, CEO of a massive commercial HVAC company. He said, I'm not really sure what CRM we use for the stuff. He goes, I'm too busy with acquisitions. I have a once a month meeting, but we're going to be, you know, we're going to have 600 million in revenue pretty quick here. So the operational side, we got people to handle that. I'm the add on arm to make the company super valuable. And I can appreciate that. That's now I don't love that, but the CEO, the fiduciary responsibility of the shareholders to lead the company to a high valuation.

I always tell people, I happen to do garage doors. But realistically, we're a recruiting agency that happens to do sales who ended up doing garage doors. We're not sales first. In a way, we sell to employees to come on board because we've got a huge training center. We've got trainees. We've got a huge amount of trainers and recruiters and the machine's got to keep going. I mean, for me, a lot of people are like, they're not at this size yet, but I look at really, really great companies and it's all about recruiting. It's all about orienting and onboarding and to continue to

train and retain. Most companies that are small have no idea where that next employee is coming from. They don't have any plan. They just say they kind of cross their fingers and hope for the best. And they don't put a box for that person. I'm curious to hear what's your most important characteristic. What I mean for a box is there's an exact manual. You don't fit a box around the person. You put a person to fit into the box. That's going to help you. But what's your most important characteristic of a leader?

Yeah, I mean, I think for us, you're really going to have to look at, okay, where is that person going to the organization, right? Are they going to the service side of things where you exchange services for, obviously, your revenue? Are they in operations or in their growth? But I think for me, probably the single most important attribute that I'm looking for in a leader today is that they have to be like avid learners. They have to be really learning-based. They have to be coachable.

I think that that's more true today than it's ever been before because things are changing so fast, right? We've got a signature product called Pivot Ready Teams, which really looks at the kind of science behind building high-performance teams in business. And we look at things like behavioral profiling, cognitive agility profiling, and emotional intelligence profiling. And so we look at a lot of different things that we can start really matching to exact job profiles. But all of that is really important. But if you're really looking for leaders, and Tommy, you hit the nail on the head when you said, look, when you get to a certain point, it's about growth and scalability. And most people do not invest into their people, into their leaders early enough. And what happens is they end up having to get out of business with

them. There was actually a study done about three years ago, a big survey was done, where they looked at companies that went from $10 million a year to $100 million a year. And they looked at their executive leadership teams, and the survey, I think there was 105 companies in the survey. And they looked at these companies and they said, okay, how many of you still have your leadership team, your executive leadership team in place from $10 million to $100 million? And it was just under 10% of the companies. It was like 9.2% of the companies still have the same people. So nine out of 10 companies going from 10 million to 100 million completely turned their leadership teams. And when they said, okay, what happened? They said, number one is we didn't have the right people to start with. And secondly, we didn't pour into our people fast enough.

And I think like that's where the game changes for companies when it comes to scalability is that you have to have the right people in the right seats on the bus. And those people have to be learning based. Because if, you know, it's like when we hire somebody onto our team, I sit down with them on day one. And if it's one of my direct reports and I say, look, I want you to know that I hired you today because you are the right person for the job, but you are not the right person a year from now. You are going to have to learn. You're going to have to grow. You're going to have to develop as a leader if you want to still be the right

person a year from now. And I mean, for me, that's as true as it is for them, because as you know, it's like speed of the leader, speed of the pack, right? So I've got to learn, I've got to grow, I've got to develop, I've got to improve my skill. And most of all, as a leader, I got to learn how to pour back into my key leaders because they're the ones that make everything in our ecosystem work. I think that's something that most leaders don't do quick enough into the journey. They maintain too much control and then they get to a point where everything's just the wheels are coming off the bus and they all of a sudden have to start delegating to people that are not being developed, that are not ready for leadership. And they start hitting some serious challenges. And I think a lot of companies are going to hit that challenge around, you know,

somewhere around two to 4 million. And then they start hitting that challenge again, when they're around like eight to 12 million, you know, from, from companies. I mean, we, we typically work with companies up to about probably 20 million. So we're not working with like really large companies that, that are bigger than that. But, you know, that's something that we avidly see that, you know, companies think that everything's going good at a certain level and then their leadership starts tapping out. And then all of a sudden they're in that world hurt.

You know, it's an interesting concept because I feel like when you're a smaller company, you become a firefighter and it feels good. It really does. Early in my firefighting days, it was very, very gratifying to fix things. It's very boring when no fires happen to a firefighter. It's like, what am I here for? Things are just too easy no one needs me i remember last year probably about before covid i just sat here and i'm like everything's running so good it's time to scale fast because with scalability comes problems and now i'm like oh my god you know sometimes i wish there was ten of me and the deal is is you know i got a great team around me

too but by all means I do. I just, you know, sometimes I really struggle to hit a finish line because I have so many ideas. And so I started to really focus on people to get me to the finish line. I know my strengths and I know my weaknesses, and I know that I'm probably my strength is marketing and really connecting. Now, I got to tell, in the last few years, I really became just a person that gets introduced to a lot of people and really bringing ideas to the group. And most of them, they're not all easy. And the harder they are, the better they are, because no one's going to be able to jump in very easy. There's a lot of ideas that people are going to get into the next day. And that means there's going to be a lot of competition

eventually. But it's definitely something that where if I think about it, you're a firefighter and there's a lot of trust that you don't want to give up. And because you know, you get burned a couple of times. Someone opens your mail, they open up a new checking account. You start saying, there's no way I would ever do that again. And then it literally is the owner holding things back because there's no systems in place. And they jump so often.

Owners feel like they're owed something. They feel like now that they're successful, they can go buy that second home, the snowmobile, the lake house, they can get first class on everything they go to. And so when they do finally get successful, they go and blow it. And they go, this is what I'm owed for all that hard work. And I think that's the dumbest thing you could ever do. You finally get momentum and then you're going to take all

the hot air out of the balloon. You know what I'm talking about? Well, yeah. Cause I mean, well, what people don't do is they, they want to pay themselves instead of paying other people, right? So investing back in their business. And it's exactly what you said. And I think it has to do with people's visions, right? Cause I mean, some people get to the point where, I mean, if they're making good, if they're taking home five, six, seven, $800,000 a year, I mean, most people can have a really great lifestyle on that. But it's like the people that even when they're taking home that kind of money, they're saying like, hey, I'm going to continue to invest back into my business because I have a bigger vision.

The HVAC gentleman that you were talking about is like, man, like I want to continue to go. I want to expand. And I think at home services right now, it is the greatest opportunity that, I mean, I think I've ever seen in business to be in home services right now, because one is that the technology is completely changing the game. The industry is changing and there's 10 million small businesses that are going to be shutting down in the next seven, eight years. And a lot of these businesses are actually businesses that are actually very viable, but people are just going to walk away and kind of turn the key and turn it off. So I think right now, people need to be keeping their powder dry. I mean, we've been on a really hot run for a long time. And this is a time to start building relationships to looking at mergers, acquisitions, if you're

in this kind of space, looking at expansion into multiple cities, multiple states. And because of technology and things like Zoom, you can centralize your hub operations and you can decentralize your services and grow companies like massively fast right now. But it's one of those things that I think everybody kind of has a internal compass or they get to a certain level and they're not quite sure. I mean, you said, hey, you were sitting here pre-COVID and you're like, man, things are really good. You decided to grow. Now you're saying I need 10 of me, right? So it's like you're still fighting fires, but you're just fighting fires at a way higher level. Now.

It's not like boots to the ground anymore. It's like, Hey, now you're kind of in centralized operations control and there's fires everywhere. And you're coordinating these big crews to go fight the fires. But there's always a sense of that. There's always issues, but my issues are more, you know, it's interesting as I was talking about, what's the number one thing I need to do. Number one thing is I want to continue to build our trainers and our recruiting team.

Number one thing is buying talent because here's the deal. People think they can make talent. You can. You can teach somebody to sell. It takes a lot longer. There's natural born talent. Being able to identify those people and just teach them what we do is way faster. So you get the right recruiters, the right sales training,

the right technology, the right LMS. And then there's nothing I could do better for the company than get the trainers and the recruiters to the top, top, top to build the best team ever there. Because that's the future. I said I was going to go from 350 employees to a thousand, I think. I don't know if I said that on this call, but I'm going to do that this year with a thousand employees next year, I'll add more than a thousand. So that's the team that's going to do

it. And when you think about that, and then there's a lot of little bottlenecks, like where do the trucks come from? The iPad has got to be set up all these other things, apprentice program, everything. But realistically me as a CEO is to make sure that that happens and make sure I give accountability and make sure I build a team to make sure that that happens. So the second quarter. And then another thing is keeping an eye on the income statement, the balance sheet, keeping an eye on the KPIs,

making sure we're hitting everything to where we've got the money to invest in that stuff. Money's really, really good right now. It's time to grow. We're getting into a lot of acquisitions. Got some letters of intent out there, but it's the vision. The vision is really, I'm a little bit optimistic,

but I think I could take over an industry, broad stores, and I really do. We're doing things differently and it scares people, but overall, we can make a lot of money and we can make people i believe we can make hundreds of millionaires with what we roll this up into be people have amazing businesses out there it's up to us to go out there and educate them and pull it all in and it doesn't even need to be all under my a1 garage door brand it could be several brands but it's we get better buying power better financing power better crm power better data

like no one understands the power of all this united under one roof and that's why the big become huge and i think we're at that stage now i really do dirk i think we're at the stage now we're going to see a lot of well several big big big big big monster winners we're going to see a lot of losers a lot of guys kind of falling saying, I can't keep up. I can't spend the money these guys are spending. I think that's the time, the era, the technology. I really think we entered into that when COVID happened. What are your thoughts?

Well, I think we're already heading there. COVID accelerated all of it, right? Because I mean, the COVID did something interesting and that's, it just threw uncertainty into the mix. It was another market shift, just like anything else. But the biggest thing was it threw uncertainty into the mix, and it started elevating the speed of connection. Because all of a sudden, we realized that, hey, we've got to learn how to connect away from physically being together. So there's a lot of money. There was actually during COVID a lot of money rolling into private equity for tech development.

So what we're going to be seeing over the next couple of years is an explosion of new technologies that are coming out that are connecting people faster. And even stuff like the 5G network being able to power the Internet of Things. It's not about just humans being connected now. It's about devices being connected. I mean, homes are going to become exponentially smarter and intelligent in the next five years. I mean, we're going to see more movement in smart home technology in the next five years than we have in the last 50 years. And globally, you're seeing that it's not just the home services industry. It's every industry across the world is going through massive consolidation right now. Exactly what you're

saying, because the bigger companies are getting bigger so much faster and the mom and pops out there just cannot compete anymore. Right. So they got two choices. Either I got to lock up shop or I go join one of the bigger players. And that's exactly what you're saying. It's like, look, in my industry, in the garage doors, you want to go and say, Hey, I want to take the industry over. And somebody is either going to have to compete with you or they join you. Right. So that's kind of what's happening in every industry. And that's why I think that, you know, for people that are kind of tech-minded, growth-minded, entrepreneurial-minded right now, to learn how to build really good teams, you could build some really great businesses right now. We've seen companies that have just exploded in growth in the last three years

in industries where, you know, historically there hasn't been a lot of competition. And that's where like a lot of these home service companies, I mean, you've got some of the behemoth type companies out there, but there's a lot of these, these industries that don't have those really big companies that are creating a lot of competition. So the doors are wide open right now. I agree. I mean, there's so many opportunities. I mean, and I think it's only going to get stronger in the next year or two. I really do. There's so much money coming in. There's still $3 trillion on the sidelines. So give us your thoughts on finding hidden talents and potential team members and how to bring those talents. Let's talk a little bit about how to even go about

building the team. I mean, because me, I'm, I'm investing in six figure people right now, several of them, I mean, about a dozen of them. And you think about that, that's what, you know, a million and a half bucks, but what is this team going to do? They're all going to be leaders and they could all lead a big group. What does that do to the business? It allows us to go from a hundred million to 500 million. And the caliber that I'm building is going to be able to pass a billion. So I know that. And here's another thing is create incentive plans. And I want to talk about this a few things here, but instead of plans,

there's five dysfunctions of a team, but giving every team leader the same goals for the company to grow. So they look beyond their teams at the whole, and then there's ultimate accountability. So what are your thoughts? Yeah. First off, I talked to a lot of people that kind of have this view of like, man, I can't find talent anywhere. I can't find good people. And my view is they are everywhere. If you know how to look for them, it's the same kind of thing that some people just understand how to find deals with businesses, real estate, whatever it is, they've tuned into like seeking it out. So I think the first thing

is that most people don't even have a definition of talent. And we tell our clients like, look, you're going to have to define what talent looks like in your organization. You're going to have to really say, OK, what is talent and what is talent not? And then any time that somebody fits your talent box, you engage them in a conversation about an opportunity in your company. And this is exactly what you say. Like, look, you're wanting to put in time and effort and energy a lot personally into your recruiting team because that's their job. Their job is to go find the next level of talent. And what we believe is that your whole organization can become a recruiting force, right?

Whether you're the CEO or you're the janitor, it doesn't matter, right? Everybody can go out there and the way that they speak about the company, but that's when everybody is on board with growth. Because here's the thing that we see is a lot of companies, when they decide to make the leap to growth, they start having a lot of people on their team that start digging in their heels and start fighting growth. And if that's the case, then you're going to have a really hard time because those people are never going to be bought into hiring a lot more people, driving revenue, doing things they haven't done before, learning. And so when it comes to talent, it's like you got to find from the time that you're a small team, you got to find the people that are growth driven, that want to develop, that want to grow.

And you constantly have to be looking for talent. I mean, like one of the things that I like to do is I like to have conversations with people that I know that I can't even afford them today or my world's not big enough for them today. But in five years, my world was big enough and I've got the opportunity to hire them. So, and I mean, I've been doing this since I started workflow that, I mean, there's people that I talked to for two, three years before they actually come to work for us. And because I'm looking at the long game, right? So I think it's, it's one of

those things that you gotta be willing to invest in talent. You gotta recognize what talent is. And then ultimately you have to understand what the right profiles are, because that's one thing that so many companies fail at is they find somebody great. They put them on the wrong seat of the bus. They don't know how to train them. They don't know how to lead them. And then that person ends up leaving, right? The number one reason that people are leaving companies right now is because of lack of career development, right? It's not because of money. Money is usually always about number four or five on the list, right? It's usually lack of career development. Number two is it just doesn't feel good around here anymore, right? And people are way more independent today. There's a lot more options.

So if you can help develop a path of ascension is what we call it for your people to even day one, if you bring in a new technician or a new person in your call center, whatever it is, but have the conversations of them. Like, How do you define talent? How do you define opportunities for talent? And what's available to that person in your org chart a year from now, three years from now, five years from now? Because that really gets them to buy in to say, if this company grows, there's a chance that I can move up in this company in a big way. And that's the reason, by the way, that most people go work for big companies. If you go to work for a big company, typically it's because you believe you can climb the ladder

and become a leader in that company. So you have to mimic the same kind of thing in a small business. And I think a lot of company owners don't know how to do that. So you got to be able to explain to your people what's in it for you if we grow and develop. And a lot of times what we see is that's where the hidden talents come out. That's where somebody raises their hand and says, you know what? I have more to offer this company. I've been holding back on my ideas. I haven't played full out. You know what? I'm willing to work harder because if people don't see any kind of a path forward, they're going to do the bare minimum to keep their job and get a paycheck. So I think with owners getting really vested in showing their people the future of the company, sharing that vision, articulating it, that's a huge win in getting your people to step up.

I love that. There's a lot that you said there that's great. I mean, I got a lot of notes. I think career development, you know, we're investing a lot and right now is getting consultants to come in and just teaching us so many things i mean it's crazy how much we're learning and it's expensive it's not uncommon for me to spend 20 30 40 grand on a consultant to come in for a week and i know a lot of people are listening going i can't afford that you know what my consultant used to be audible he used to be reading books he used to be reading books. He used to be listening to podcasts,

you know, when you could afford to develop, but you don't have to have these crazy amounts of money to get started with some of this stuff. I think that's the biggest misconception is we're going to become a behemoth. I want to be 5,000 employees. And you know what? The billion dollar market used to be sound so crazy coming out of my mouth and i'm like it isn't a billion in a couple of years i mean it's going to be easy it's it really is it's just it's knowing that we're ever changing i call it pivot ready just kidding that's yours we got it we got a trademark yeah we're ready and uh you know we're ready for anything and we're really moving we're doing some things that are so unorthodox it's so crazy it scares most people that hear about it in the industry but

they're super scared when i come into town because they know i'm like a pit bull if there's a wall in front of me i'm either going on over it or i'm going around it and i failed a lot i failed a lot in this industry and made a lot of mistakes but you, what's so crazy is the team that we're assembling. We don't fail. We just figured out a better way. Well, here's something I want to say about that, right? Tommy, cause here's the deal. You were okay with the level of messiness and chaos that most people are just not okay with. Right. I heard Darren Hardy say this one time he said, uh, you know, he was the editor of success magazine. They recently sold it. You know, he said, hey, I used to want to be Richard Branson until I found out that Richard Branson deals with 150 you at any given time, right? And it's exactly, I mean, you're talking about these really big numbers. For some people, they're just like, I can't even focus on that because I mean, I may have a business that's got two or three or 10 people and it feels like I'm

struggling. But what you figured out is that you've learned how to grow personally, professionally, and you're bringing really good people around you. And what they're doing is they're multiplying you. Right. And that's the difference is that people that can build great businesses, bring multipliers around them, people that don't bring plus signs, additions around them. So, hey, I hired a new technician. Okay. Plus, but hiring a multiplier, the technician is that, hey, I hired a technician that's now training all the other technicians. It's now hiring the other technicians. I don't have to do anything on the technical side of the business. You hire people like that in operations, you hire people like that in growth, and then your job becomes staying ahead of them

with vision, with opportunity, pouring into them, developing them. I mean, obviously you're spending a lot of money and resources on developing them, bringing the consultants in and trainers. So you're staying ahead of those people with development. And it's a different ballgame, right? It's not about just like growing a business anymore. It's about developing people. It's about leading with vision. It's about seeing stuff that other people can't see. It's about taking risks that other people aren't willing to take. And it's no different. I mean, like people still wake up. I mean, there's people out there today that are a sole owner in a business and they're going to go out and work hard as hell today. They're still out there right now. I mean, it's, you know, almost seven o'clock at night in

Texas. They're still out there working. They're going to be working until 10 o'clock at night. And then they get home and they're going to have other stuff they got to do. And they're getting up tomorrow and doing the same thing. And they, they don't realize if they just start working on something different, they can go to the next level. Well, they say I got to pay the bills. And the problem is I've been short-sighted like that. Hey, if I don't book this call, I've got a lot of people in the company that still are like, they're trying to put out fires.

And I'm like, well, let's have another department handle that. And let's let you figure out to get your own work done. And I like specialists in each department that focus on one thing, the assembly line, you know what I mean? It's interesting. I tell you what, you got a lot of great stuff. I like that higher multipliers. I was thinking earlier of just, I have a gal that works for me. She used to have 1200 people that reported up to her in the casino business. Really smart. She's my corporate trainer.

And she was like, Tommy, she's like, let me just explain to you what my life was like in corporate. She's like, we work eight hours a day, typically five days a week. That's a 40 hour work week.

She goes, but when you work for, when you're in a corporate position, it's high up. She's like, and you've got a lot of people that report to you. I had monthly and quarterly goals that if I didn't get them after my eight-hour day, I'd put my son to bed and I'd work another four hours.

So I'd work a 12-hour day, no problem. She goes, you need to build that mentality here because people are always telling you they can't get stuff done. They get sidetracked, da, da, da, da. It doesn't matter. You get your goal done. And instead of going to meetings every quarter, you don't talk about the people that hit their goals. You say, congratulations, great work.

You got a job. The people that didn't, you find out why they didn't. And if they continue to not hit their goals, you know, there's my brother-in-law who's on my board of directors said, there's a meeting calculator. You get all these people in a room, you put in their salaries for the year, and it'll tell you every minute that that meeting goes, how much you're spending. Make your meetings more effective. Don't talk about the good stuff. Pat people on the back when you see them. But for the most part, if everybody's in that meeting, you talk about the reasons you didn't hit your goals and what needs to happen, and you get a performance improvement plan for that person, then there's no excuses allowed. And it doesn't matter how long it takes because you accepted the responsibility for this.

You are 100% responsible for building your own team. And then I'm responsible because if I keep you on, I'm the reason we're failing that I didn't do my job to find someone else to replace you. So I'm starting to learn how to be a better CEO and a better owner. And basically I thought I knew all this stuff, man. I'm the home service expert stuff, man. I'm the

home service expert, right? But I'm just getting started. I'm continuing to learn, learn, learn, learn, learn, and put myself in other arenas, better industries that are above home service. And what I mean, better, I mean, more experienced. They've been around a lot longer. There's hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars that these CEOs are responsible for. The same thing works in home service. If you can build the team to do it, it's just a little bit easier because we're only focusing on one core thing. We don't own a bunch, at least I don't own a bunch of different things. I don't own a software company, real estate, this, this, this. There's certain CEOs that have to manage all these different companies.

I'm just managing one company and hopefully a bunch of acquisitions. But you hit the nail on the head, man. I mean, I love this conversation. Hire multipliers to find what talent is, share your vision, career development. With the recent events, I just think people are starting to reevaluate the culture and what's going on without mobile and people working from home. I'm starting to see just this is a hiring frenzy. People have options. How do you build that culture, that great atmosphere that people want to be at? Share the vision and mission is a big one. Core values, career development.

But what else can we do to impact the company culture? Yeah, I think, man, like one thing, and you kind of said this a while ago, right, is that if you want to have a great culture, hire great people. And it sounds so simple, but I mean, if you hire people that are negative, that are always complaining about their jobs, that aren't fully in it, it is so hard to have a really thriving culture when you have people in the company that are not into it and we have this this like really in-depth hiring process that's down to kind of fully processed out kind of like at a scientific level of finding the right people for the company the right people for the right positions and again i barely touched on the assessments earlier but i mean if you hire

the right person you put them in the right job that's matched for them behaviorally cognitively and like emotional intelligence wise they're going to automatically be happier and more fulfilled in that job they're going to feel like they're succeeding at a higher level and that alone is going to add to team culture right because if you can put people in jobs like fundamentally if people aren't happy doing what they're doing working for you you're not going to have a great culture. Like it's just not going to happen. At the fundamental level, people have to be able to enjoy at some level what they do every day. And that doesn't mean that it's not hard, right? I mean, like your key leaders probably work really hard. They're under a lot of pressure. The same thing with our key leaders. But the thing is, we work as a team. We talk everything as team. I mean, we talk about

getting outside of your lane and helping your team members. And I mean, this is a big shift that I had probably about four years ago when I started looking at some data about the rate of change in the world. Because I used to be a really like, hey, just stay in your lane and keep focused and just specialize here. But there's actually data that came out in 2016 that the rate of change in the world in 2016 already exceeded the human capacity to adapt to change at the singular level. Meaning that it was only up to you to always learn and adapt and grow to change. That's done. And since the start of human history, humans have been able to adapt to change very easily. Well, you get to 2016, the rate of change, and a lot of people feel like something has shifted in the world in the last few years,

even prior to COVID. And they can't quite put their finger on it, but they feel like something is off. And that's exactly what it is. So when I realized that for the first time and doing this research work, that's when I actually quit my corporate job. That's when I said, hey, I'm not going to be CEO of this really large real estate brokerage anymore. I said, we want to develop the technology and the training that's going to usher companies into the next era of human performance in the workplace. And what we've learned is that the only way that companies can adapt to the rate of change today is through a collaborative human system. Now, think about this, Tommy, is that we think of everything that's in your company that has to do with your tools, your equipment, your software, your systems, your processes. We look at all of

that as the hardware of the company. And then we look at the humans, your software, your systems, your processes, we look at all of that as like the hardware of the company. And then we look at the humans as the software of your company. So when the people come together with all those other things, then you've got your full operating system for your company. But traditionally, most companies have wanted to upgrade, oh, we need better tools, we need better technology, we need better this, and they haven't actively upgraded their software. And what we understand about software today is, I mean, I'm coming to you live from a 2015 MacBook Pro, right? It still works as well as like a 2021 MacBook Pro, but I've updated the software over time. It's the same thing. If you drive a Tesla, you can plug it in the garage tonight. And tomorrow

morning, your car can do stuff that it couldn't do today because you upgraded the software side of it. So we said, look, if you can continually pour into your people and develop them, your business actually gets an exponential advantage over other businesses, especially if you can build a collaborative-based business where people are continually stepping up, helping other people, making decisions together. It's not top-down anymore. And that doesn't mean that there's not goals and vision and pressure and things like that that's coming. But the way that the people respond to it is in a collaborative sense, not an individualistic sense. And the companies that we've worked with and seen, even companies like Google and Facebook

and BMW have started switching their models in how their people collaborate because they realize no matter if they hire the smartest people in the world if they work on an individualistic basis the company's going to fail so a thing like that is probably the most exponential thing that any company can do today is pouring to themselves pouring to their people and get their people to work together as a team you ever watch the uh show billions i have yeah so there's that lady who she's like the wife of the uh the guy that's trying to get what his name's axel trying to get him kind of thrown in jail but she's there at the business to kind of collaborate make sure communication and

so that's something that i'm working on it's pouring back in but i'll tell you what's weird now is you know in the coal mines my grandpa was born in 1910 he used to work in the coal mines i mean he'd work the whole day you're working in the coal mine doing shoveling and you know i think there's so many distractions and so lack of focus with social media and tv and all this stuff and we expect people to work a real day and i look at people's schedule and they'll have things on their schedule but none of it's planned my grandpa used to you know as he was went through and started to work at general motors in the i guess in the 40s he learned shorthand he learned how to get faster and he learned to type really really fast on a typewriter with 100 words a minute he learned

things to make his day faster and learn how to get more done in a meeting. And the more we learn how to do these things, EOS, learn to get meetings that matter and learn to come prepared and learn to take minutes and hold people accountable. I think there's so much when you look at someone's someone could work 10 hours to get more done than an 80 hour. It's not about the hours we spend in work. It's about what we get done. Some people know how to focus and get things to the finish line and get them done and literally be done with them and move on. Those are the people that I search out. I'd rather have a little bit of focused hours than a lot of unfocused hours. And so many people, they get distractions, they get door knocks, they get phone calls.

And I love catching up with people and having a conversation that's not planned. I'm really good at it. I love pouring that into people. I love just finding out what their day's going like. I love peeling back the onion and asking why five times. But a lot of people, they refuse to grow. And that's, I don't think it's necessarily pouring back in. It obviously is pouring into the employees, but I think there's just certain mentalities that are like, I don't like what's going on. I don't like the fact I used to be super important here and deal with the owner every day. I don't remember the last time I talked to the owner.

I don't like the relationship we have anymore. We don't talk like we used to. I don't like that this person's moving up past me. And there's resentment that goes on. And it's not like there's an owner we want or even a manager that we still care about those people that brought us here. But maybe we need to work a little bit harder

to give them the opportunity, but there's still a certain capacity, right? So what do you say to that? Yeah, I mean, first off, because we get asked that question a lot. I mean, sometimes after our trainings, we have some like two-day deep dive trainings and after that people kind of have this look in their face they're like i'm gonna go home and fire everybody and we're like whoa don't do that

right but the first thing that that we tell owners is that look you have to make sure that you are actively talking about the vision right because typically what happens is as the company grows and that disconnect happens that person kind of got left behind because one, either they weren't the right person, you should have actually gotten out of business with them a while back, or they just didn't see the opportunities ahead. And somehow they feel like, why should we grow? Because again, like the person you were describing a minute ago is somebody that's now saying like, they're digging in their heels and they're fighting growth. It doesn't feel good. They're not happy with the culture they're not you know they feel passed by

and we tell you know i tell owners like look when you start thinking about the people in your company and they'll immediately come to you like you can't like bullshit yourself around this like you know the people that are not there for the right reasons you know the people that are not a cultural fit and you have to start having some like straightforward conversations like stop babying it like have like do it in a great way but like come from a place like hey i'm sorry like i feel like i failed you because somewhere i feel like we got kind of out of alignment and i want to grow and drive the company i mean you've been here a long time i want you to be part of that And yet I don't feel like you're bought into that. So I really want to kind of find out like, you know, what's going on and what can we do to either get into alignment and really start working well together again, or what do

we need to do to start getting out of business and see if there's some other opportunities out in the world that are going to be better suited for you. And those are tough conversations to have. And yet those are the conversations you have to have if you ultimately want better culture, because if people aren't there for the right reasons and they don't want to grow, like you can't build around those people, right? Because then they're not even a plus sign. They become like a division sign, right? They're dividing things in the company. They're dividing culture. They're dividing productivity. They're fighting you on the back end. And you have to be able to sit down with those people and have a straightforward conversation. And they're hard conversations, you know.

But I found the best way to go into it is just disarm the other person by saying, hey, I'm sorry because I feel that at some level I failed you. I haven't led enough with vision. I haven't developed you enough. But, I mean, I want to figure out what can we do to make sure that we are in alignment and we can move forward together. And, look, if there's not alignment, then get out of business with them. You know, I mean, it's not fair for them to work for you if you're not alignment and it's not fair for you to have to work with them if they're not showing up in that way.

You know, I got a book on my shelf called fierce conversations. Have you ever heard of that? Susan Scott? Yeah. Great. The deal is, is if I was to you, Dirk, I'd say this, and I just learned this through a consultant, is Dirk, you're a great person. We all know that. You've helped build this company what it is today. But I'll tell you, we're going 90 miles an hour.

We need all buy-in. And the last thing you want, Dirk, is me talking behind your back to the other managers on how we're going to figure out a way to get rid of you. Because that's what's going to happen if we don't start complying with what our mission and vision is. So as your friend, as a buddy, we're always going to be friends. I'll tell you that first of all. But when it starts getting in the way of the vision and mission of what the company's doing and what everybody's kind of riding in the same direction, we're all rowing together. It's not fair for me to be talking behind your back on ways to get rid of you

and ways that we're going to start leaving you behind. So if you like the way the company's going, then let's get on board and let's talk about it. If you don't, I'll write you a recommendation letter. I think you're still an A player. Maybe it's just not a good fit for this company and our vision and mission. So I think that that sounds great. You know what I mean? I think that that

sounds as a friend. The last thing I want to do is talk behind your back. And that's what's going to happen here. If this continues, the executive team is going to get together. We're going to say, how do we move you out of this position? And eventually, you know, not go in the same direction. So I think that there's easier ways to have that conversation that don't, this is the friendship and you'll always be my friend. But it's a real and authentic conversation, right? And I think like, that's what people can respond to is it's not a BS kind of conversation. It's real. It's authentic. It's like, Hey, I care about you. And yet you're not showing up in a way right now. That's conducive for us to be in business long-term. So we've got to talk about it. Yeah. You know, it sounds like Burge Flow is awesome. First of all,

Burge Flow, B-E-R-G, what does that stand for? Well, it's Berg, B-E-R-G, yeah, Berg Flow. Berg Flow. Yeah. The Berg stands for like a mountain and then Flow stands for the state of flow. So when I built a company, I really want to be particular about the name and have a company that signified challenge because if you are willing to go after the challenges in life, then you unlock opportunities. And if you can lock the opportunities, then you get the rewards, right?

So I knew we wanted to go after big challenges. So I'm a big mountain guy and I wanted to signify something with mountains and Berg is like Berg in Afrikaans means mountains, like iceberg, ice mountain. That's where the Berg comes from. And then flow comes from the actual state of flow, which came from a documentary called Happy that I watched like in 2012. They kind of studied the five things that you had to have to experience real joy and happiness in life. And the other ones were kind of common.

You could go, yeah, I get that. But one was actually experiencing the state of flow. And a state of flow is where you're doing something where time ceases to exist. You're not worried about anything. You're not thinking about anything. You're fully immersed in what you're doing. And some people can experience flow, whether it's riding a bike or climbing a mountain or knitting a sweater or reading a book or in a conversation but we wanted to experience flow at work like can we actually create an environment

that's so conducive to the way that somebody's wired and so right for them that when they're working they get into a state of flow where they can go five six hours and kind of pop out of this thing and be like oh my gosh like i can't believe that five or six hours just went by it felt like 20 minutes because when when you get people that can experience flow like that at work dude they're just going to show up in a big way so that's kind of where workflow comes from and i love it yeah i feel like i just got to work an hour ago so i must have been in flow i really realistically well a buddy of mine who actually did some consulting and some of my kind of they they do for a one on little projects. He goes, dude, it seems like you're always in a state of flow.

Like it seems like whenever I come in, you're just your calendar, everything you're doing, your conversation. And I'm like, I just enjoy it. I really do. I love business. I love my business. I love talking business. I love a hearing business. You could talk football and I'll be like, sure, cool. I play football. I know football football but i don't get the same feeling but some people watch football and they love it so much they should maybe be announcers because they're in their state of flow so someone wants to reach out to you personally dirk and then how do they get a hold if they want to hear more about getting involved with berg flow yeah i I mean, I'm on, you know, like LinkedIn and Facebook

and those places, but, uh, I mean, my email is jerk at Bergflow.com B E R G F L O W.com. And the best way to learn about our company is just to go to Bergflow.com. But yeah, man, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm kind of low key when it comes to like social media and that kind of stuff, you know? So really the best way to do is just kind of email me or go to the website cool and um tell me an interesting story about one of your clients yeah man i think you know for us i mean we like we recently just started working with a transmission manufacturing company in atlanta and you know this is a company that they've they've been going about uh nine years now and they've actually never been profitable since they've started. They've kind of been bleeding money.

And probably about six months ago, they started really looking for, okay, we either need to kind of sell this company or we need to do something like... I mean, they just were kind of up in the air about what to do about it. At this point, they're already like a $7 million company $7 million company and their goal is to get to about 15 million. So they were looking at hiring salespeople. They were looking at hiring kind of specialists in their industry and actually somebody else referred us to them. So, you know, they contacted us and after looking at everything, I told him, I said, look, you have some of the wrong people in the wrong places and right people in the wrong places. I said, you don't have a problem with knowing how to technically do what you guys do. You're definitely going to need some help on the sales side.

But I said, you guys have to get out of the weeds. So the key leaders in the company were so much in the weeds that they were losing a bigger picture. Since working with them, they have massively... I mean, like year over year, they're up a hundred percent over last year already and just really changing a few things. And I think like, that's where some people in business at certain levels, there's tweaks that you can make that don't seem like they're the actual tweaks that you need to be making, right? It could feel like, man, we just, we've got to pour more into our servicing side or operation side, or, you know, we just got to spend more money on growth or whatever the case may be when that's not really the issue. And I think for a lot of

companies that we've worked with, we've got another client that we started working with them three years ago, and it was a guy and five other technicians in his business and like one or two operators, things like that. I mean, like eight, nine people in the company. And this year they're going to probably, they're already at about 80 people in their company now and expanding into multiple cities, looking at different business lines. And again, it's one of those things that we don't know anything about the technical side of their business, like nothing about the technical side of the business. We don't even really work with them much on the sales and growth side of their business. But what we're looking at is,

again, it's the human system. It's what happens when your people come together, how do they approach things, how do they work together, and how do they collaborate? Because the same thing with the transmission company, the moment that you can unlock collaboration, then what happens is you unlock a higher level of energy and a higher level of creativity. And just like for you guys, at the highest level, if you can unlock people's creativity, that's where synergy comes from. That's where there's an exponential output of energy. And if you can't unlock that within a company, it gets very expensive to grow, where if you can unlock that in a company, you're going to grow faster with higher profits

and more time freedom. And I think like for us, like that's the thing that's really exciting is that people really understanding how to have their people work together is one of the, the biggest exponential things for, for growth in companies. Have you written a book yet? No, I mean, I've been thinking about it. Like several people told me writing a book is like exceptionally hard like way harder than you think so

i haven't dove into it you got to get a whiteboard and you got to figure out why you're writing it what your goal is start with the goal in mind of why you're writing it and then every day the best advice i could give you is create a file as a google doc as a shortcut in your phone and every time you get an aha moment every time you heard a lesson from one of your breakthroughs you put that in there and you put details in there because eventually you'll have paragraphs after paragraphs after paragraphs and then have somebody just sit down with a guy like me or someone like a writer and then they're just going to ask you a million questions and just say, that's impactful. That's not, this is great. This is not stories are what build a great book. And that's what I'm working on as a book of stories right now. You should

write a book though. I like your mentality. I definitely want to talk to you more in the future because I think you're onto something that most people miss. I love sales and marketing. I think I missed some of the beat of what you're talking about. Not missed it mentally. Like I understand it, but maybe haven't done it completely here. The best news is I love failing. I love telling people I'm not good at stuff. I love telling people there's so many people that are afraid to say I can't do stuff.

And they think they're inferior and they think they're just so good. And I think, man, I am so bad at so so many things i'm the first one to tell you i've got more holes and and myself and a lot of problems and i need to work on a lot of things but overall i know my strengths and they're pretty strong so you know like tommy i think the reason you can say that is because you've had probably you've had your ego beat out of you right like the the pride and the ego that tells you that you can do it all and you're good enough and all that kind of stuff to know it all at a certain level if and this is true man like anybody i've ever met that's built a really like good business become really humble and they they're willing to say like man i am just there's some things that i am super good. And then there's a ton of stuff that I really suck at. And what they get really good at

is hiring the people that can cover their gaps. And I mean, like ultimately, like that's what a high performance team does, right? It's not that everybody has the same profile to do the same thing. Everybody has strengths in different areas. Kind of like you said earlier, you'd like to hire those specialists, right? They got a key strength in a key area. And when the football team comes together and they go to the line, then they could perform well because everybody has a different job, a different body makeup, like all this kind of stuff. But most people don't know how to engineer that team. They don't know how to find the people that like, most people don't even really know what their strengths and weaknesses are. And here's something really interesting, right? This is a fascination that I have is that your strengths, like people think that they have

their strengths up here and their weaknesses are down here. But here's the most significant thing is that in the traditional sense is like, you know, understand your strengths, but work on your weaknesses, right? And it's total bullshit. What you have to do is you got to build massive awareness around your strengths and then build skill around your strengths because then it becomes a superpower. And this is why it's important. Your weaknesses will never really hold you back too much. They'll never really wreck your life. What wrecks your life are your strengths when they're overused or misused. And that's like this new, I mean, we're like three years into this research of like helping people understand their strengths and saying, this is when your strength serves you. And over here is

when your strength becomes a super weakness where it just wrecks the environment around you. And I love that it's different for everybody because everybody has different strengths. So we like to really hone in on what your strength is and when is it serving you? And when is your strength really hurting you? And like, that's a fascination. Yeah, it's cool. I'll tell you a good book. It's Jim Collins. When you said he wrote Good to Great, but I'm talking about a book called Built to Last. Yeah.

And what he discusses in that book is the best CEOs of the world don't have pride. They want to make sure to, the succession plan is to leave the company better off than what it is in today's state of mind. Because they're building, they still had, it's a living organism you care about the employees you want to go on to say this company the most prideful people in the world say it failed when i was gone look at me look at me look at me the best ceos of the world cfo ceOs, they say, we built the processes so strong and filled in people that were better than us for this in a new era that we did such a great job this company is going to live

on. And we set it with the foundation to do that. And I'll tell you what, not a lot of people have that skill. Not a lot of people can actually deal with it. They say, without me, this company would fail. I like to say when I leave, we have the best records ever. The fact is, I think I'm just a little bit more of the gas pedal that makes us grow faster. But we still have better days because I can be somewhat of a distraction because I want to grow. Because I'm willing to take a loss short term to see the huge big term return. But, you know, I do a lot of things wrong. And I don't think there's a right answer to

everything. You know, they say there's 10 ways to the top of the mountain or 10 ways to skin a cat. What are some of the few books that you would recommend? Yeah. So the first one is, is kind of a classic, right? It's think and grow rich by Napoleon Hill. And I read that book for the seventh time this year. I read it once a year and I think it's as relevant every time I read it, I get new things out of it. Another book that i really love is a book called the fish that ate the whale and it's a story about uh samuels murray which was uh he was a russian jewish immigrant that ended up actually becoming one of the wealthiest men in america in the 30s and 40s except it's like one of these guys are like hardly anybody heard about, but the story is fascinating and it's just like full of business

lessons. I love the one thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan, just because it really hones in on focus. Yeah. There's a book called the four agreements. We give every one of our clients that book. It's a really great book. And then recently, I just actually picked up this book recently. It's called The Psychology of Money. And I think that every freaking entrepreneur needs to read that book just because building wealth is like a different animal, right? I mean, there's building a business and there's also building wealth. So those are probably just off the top of my head, a few of my favorite books that I really like. I see your books behind you too, man. I'm away from my home office right now, but I love books.

We order tons of books every month. We love to give books away. But yeah, those are some of the ones that I really love. I could tell you that I'm obsessed. I'm a listener. I got to tell you, I've been falling a little bit behind with COVID just because when I travel, I'll knock out a few books on a trip with a listener. I got to tell you, I've been falling a little bit behind with COVID just because when I travel, I'll knock out a few books on a trip with a plan. I'm buying all the books you just mentioned right now.

It's what I'm in the process of doing. Hold on here. Four agreements. Yep, it's here. Right with the four-hour work week and the psychology of money. I love it. All right. Every single book.

Of course, I've got the napoleon hill so i bought the fish that ate the whale the four agreements and psychology of money and see part of my plan of moving i'm moving into a new house i'm buying a new truck for the first time ever and the new house is i've been in houses that are new but i'm this is a really nice house near the mountains. It's like to find my zen and to be able to invite guys like you to come stay and not be bumping into each other all the time. Because right now I'm in one of my apartments at the apartment complex that we own. And it was supposed to be a short getaway in the apartment, just kind of an in-between homes. It's been over three years, but I'm happy.

And I just want to be at this perfect zen. I'm actually in June, probably going to Columbia to get some stem cells done. And then after you do stem cells, you're supposed to not drink that you're just supposed to be super healthy. So I'm really making my life impossible to screw things up. I mean, as far as like a nutritional level and just I'm super excited for the future, but one of my goals is to be able to spend 15 hours a week reading and i just want to be just consumption of just knowledge yeah and be able to apply it but the more you read readers are leaders and i just think it's super important that i'm excited i'm excited to hang out with you next time you come to phoenix or i'm in texas

you need to come out to our adventure park, man. We'll go off-roading or mountain biking. I'll be your first one. So tell me a little bit about the adventure park, and then I'll have you close us up. But tell me a little bit about the adventure park. Yeah, so this is, man, in 2014, I had this vision of, like, building, like, a really cool adventure park in Palo Duro Canyon. So a lot of people don't know what Palo Duro Canyon is, it's actually the second largest canyon system in north america behind the grand canyon and it's in the texas panhandle and it's just incredibly beautiful place like when you're down

there you feel like you're like in sedona right it's just incredible but in 2014 i mean i there's no way that i could pull a project like this off and then last year i didn't even hadn't thought about it for quite a few years last last year i'm sitting around a campfire one night and it's just like i feel like god just kind of like hits me with a lightning bolt into my heart and says like hey it's time to open that park and i'm just like you know wasn't on our plans for last year anything like this but i was like all right so we started looking for for ranches and uh we just closed on 5500 acres down in these canyons. How many? 5,500.

Oh, my gosh. Yeah. So we're busy with engineering now. We're putting up like 20 cabins, 40 RV sites, 110 sites, a rec center, office, all this kind of stuff. But it's going to be the largest park of its kind in Texas and the sixth largest in the U.S. So I'm kind of bouncing back and forth between Houston and Amarillo right now. Again, the first thing that I did was immediately hire the right team to get this project up and running because obviously I'm still running Bergflow,

still heavily involved in IEB. We've got investment properties, different things like that. And the only way that I can do things like this is by hiring the right people around me. And that's where I'm really blessed because I've been deeply studying this work and high performance team building and business for seven years now. But when you bring the right people into your world, man, it accelerates everything. But yeah, we're super excited about it, man. So definitely come down. We're also going to be building a conference center so that guys like you can come up and have your mastermind and stuff like that at the park and you can we can take you guys out four-wheeling and doing some cool stuff in jeeps during the morning and mastermind in the afternoon mountain biking all that kind of stuff well i'm building a conference room at the new

house i'm building a whole wing of the house with just mountain views of the conference room that i could have you know 20 people in there have professional presentations and you look up this law it's called the augusta law for taxes shit your pants you're gonna fall in love because i'm in the new houses in pv but i'll tell you what this is what i do at the end of every podcast i got your cell phone too and i'm not gonna say it i just want to confirm it's the uh 806 number yeah 654 then i won't tell the rest they'll have to guess the other for it so i'll let you kind of just tell us if there's one thing to get started on today for the listeners what would that be if there's one thing right now i'd say look number one is really get clear about what you want your business to be able to do for you.

Because a lot of people don't know what they want that. Get clear about what you want your business to do for you. And number two, get clear about the people that you are going to need on this journey. Because if you can do those two things, I think that you've already got like 70% of the way. If you are really clear about what the mission and vision of the company are, and you can really know who the right people are that you need around you to make it happen, then you're so far down the game already. And it's, you don't have to get anything into the technical side of it, man. Like that's where the start is. If you start there, you're, you're a long ways down the road. You know, I'm going to call you. We're going to talk this week. I got a couple ideas. I think you're just a different side. You're a different whole side of what I teach. I'm a

marketing dude. I love making the phone ring off the hook. I love every type of marketing and I love sales. I love NLP. I love the thought pattern of just becoming a friend of somebody and doing the right thing and building referrals and references well listen i gotta tell you derek it's been a pleasure i'm happy to have you on we'll do this again and i'll be in touch and good luck in the near future i'm sure you're gonna get this place up and running there and and i'll be the first guy out there you invite me out for the grand opening when you cut it with the scissors and i'll be there yeah man i'll uh i'll do this man i'll get some really cool people to come out

like at your caliber and get 10 or 12 guys out and we'll spend a few days just masterminding and doing some cool stuff. Sounds great, brother. Appreciate y'all. Be in touch. All right, cool. Thanks, Tommy.

Appreciate it, brother. Hey guys, I just wanted to thank you real quick for listening to the podcast. From the bottom of my heart, it means a lot to me. And I hope you're getting as much as I am out of this podcast. Our goal is to enrich your lives and enrich your businesses and your internal customers, which is your staff. And if you get a chance, please, please, please subscribe.

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