The Home Service Expert Podcast - Gino Wickman: Realizing Your Full Potential By Taking The Entrepreneurial Leap

Episode Date: June 19, 2020

Gino Wickman is the author of Traction: Get A Grip On Your Business and Get A Grip: An Entrepreneurial Fable . . . Your Journey to Get Real, Get Simple, and Get Results. He is the founder of EOS Worldwide, a leadership team development company based in Livonia, Michigan aimed at the small business and entrepreneurial community. He developed the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), a practical method with tools that are used by almost 100,000 companies worldwide. In the past two decades, he has personally delivered over 1,900 full-day sessions with over 135 companies. In this episode, we talked about entrepreneurship, systems, business growth...

what's important for that person out there that takes that leap, yes, they first have to decide, are they a technician having an entrepreneurial seizure, as Michael Gerber says it. But more importantly, you want to take that leap because you want that independence. But if you're not a true entrepreneur, you need to come to terms with that. And there's actually peace in realizing, I'm going to go be free. I'm going to go be self-employed. I'm going to be a one-person show. I'm never going to build a hundred person organization, but I'm going to be free. And so I love the industry you're in because these are the two examples I always use. The first one is if you're a handy person and you want to be free, go become a handyman or a woman

charged 60 bucks an hour. You'll make a six-figure income. If you do good work, you'll be referred like crazy and you'll be busy. You'll never have to market again for 20 years. So that's somebody all the way to the left side of the range. And so go do that. Especially if you're a technician, you can make a hundred grand a year being a technician and be free. But now if you really want to build a business and move to the right side of that range, you have to have the six essential traits. In all of my work, all of my experience working with thousands of entrepreneurs, and very quickly, those six essential traits are visionary, passionate, problem solver, driven, risk taker, and responsible. And so we can drill down on that more in a minute. But the point is, if you're sitting there as that one person show and you really want to build an organization,

run yourself through that filter and make sure that you have those traits so you're equipped to become a true entrepreneur. Because it's not all it's cracked up to be. 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, and today is an amazing guest. His book changed my life. Lots of great books.

He's an expert in entrepreneurship systems and business growth. He's based out of Livonia, Michigan, if I would have read that. EOS Worldwide founder from 2000 to present. He's got a new book coming out called The Entrepreneurial Leap. That's a tough word for me. Gino Wickman is the founder of EOS Worldwide, a leadership team development company based in Livonia, Michigan, aimed at small business and entrepreneurial communities. He developed the entrepreneurial operating system, EOS, a practical method for helping companies achieve greatness. The EOS tools are being used by almost 100,000 companies worldwide. In the past 20 years,

he's personally delivered over 1,900 full-day sessions with over 135 companies. He's the author of Traction, Get a Grip on Your Business, and Get a Grip, an Entrepreneurial Fable, Your Journey to Get Real, get simple, get results. And this is, like I said, this book changed my life. If you haven't read it, you'll realize if you're a visionary or an integrator. And sometimes you're both. Everybody thinks they're both. I'm not both.

But I can't wait to hear about the entrepreneurial leap. Gino, it's a pleasure to have you on. It is a pleasure to be here, Tommy. Looking forward to this. So you've been doing this a long time. and I told you how your book changed my life. And you said the reason I did what I did 20 years ago was to hear testimonials from me. Do you want to talk about how you got into understanding where you fit in the business world and how you came about with all this great stuff? You bet. Yeah, so I've been an entrepreneur since 21, never went to college, knew I was

something other than someone destined for academics and a real job. But pretty much took my entrepreneurial leap around 21 years old, took over a family business at 25, took on a big turnaround project, turned the business around, grew it nicely. After seven years, we decided to sell. We sold the business successfully. That's when I set up, when I really discovered why I'm on this planet, and that is to help entrepreneurs get everything they want from their businesses. I set out to do just that. Over about a five-year period, that's when I created the system called EOS, working with my clients directly. Once I put the finishing touches on that, I decided to leverage it and shoot forward to today. We have 374 EOS implementers all over

the world helping companies implement EOS. I've got five books out there. They've sold over a million companies. And like you said, we've got about 100,000 companies running on that system. And now I've shifted my focus and energy, actually sold EOS worldwide. I still own 12.5% of the company. I still own the books. I'm still the EOS guy. I still have clients. It's my number one love. But my passion project now is Entrepreneurial Elite because what I'm doing after all that experience helping entrepreneurs is I'm now going to the front end of that entrepreneurial journey and helping people who think they might be an entrepreneur get a huge jumpstart on becoming why they are on this planet. And that's what Entrepreneurial Leap is all about.

I can't tell you how much it means that you're on here. You know, we're going through this pandemic right now and there's going to be winners and losers. And fortunately we shifted, we made a lot of good plays. We're like a family here and very, very fortunate. We made the best decisions we could in the circumstances. It's horrible for the world, our economy, everything, but I want to hear what your take is on all this and what businesses should be thinking about right now. Yeah. So, you know, as I talk to business owners, it's really interesting. You know, we're three months into this thing now. So the real crisis was the first month or two. And so this, the conversation we're having right now was so hot and heavy. But in that period of all the business owners I was talking to and helping, and I was

just having conversations all day, every day, it was really interesting because half the entrepreneurs were kicking ass and half the entrepreneurs were kicking ass and half the entrepreneurs were getting their asses kicked. So it's really fascinating how you were either on the good side or the bad side of this thing. Different than 08 and 09 when pretty much everybody was on the bad side of that thing other than a choice few. So speaking to the ones that are getting their ass kicked, because that's really what we're talking about, they fall into two categories. They've either getting their ass kicked, because that's really what we're talking about, they fall into two categories. They've either gotten their ass kicked so bad that they've got to completely reinvent themselves, or they just need to get back to work and get a bigger piece of a smaller pie.

And so with that, the reinvention is what I want to talk about, because the idea there is you've just got to get your ear to the ground. You've got to get close to your customers and clients. You've got to find out what has shifted for them and you've got to shift and evolve. And so I've got an example of a client got their ass kicked, literally went to about zero in revenue in the auto industry, as you can imagine. And within a week they were creating PPE equipment and generating the same amount of revenue. So in a week they shifted because they looked at what they were good at and simply went out to the market, looked at what clients needed and kind of reinvented themselves. And so it's a time for reinvention. And then as for the ones that are getting their ass kicked, but they're going to eventually be fine. If you're 40% down, 60% down, it's a really simple formula. You do what we call a reverse accountability chart.

If you were a $10 million company and now you're a $5 million company, listen, you've been a $5 million company before and it was profitable and you survived. You just have to cut back to a $5 million company and you're just starting from there and going forward. So it's just a whole different mind shift. Take yourself to a worst case scenario, make sure you can survive that and then get back to work. So there's a couple of little nuggets there. Yeah, I love that. You know, one of the things I think a lot of people make a mistake, and I'm sure you've seen this a million times, I call it the death spiral is when they cut marketing first. And I'm not a big fan of getting rid of staff, but the numbers should dictate the decisions. And people are like, you know, this guy's been with me for a long time.

And all of a sudden their payroll, they're moving in the negative so fast. What would you say to someone that's, I'm going to work through this. And of course, you know, leaders, you last, you pay yourself last. Hopefully you cut your pay first, but they're literally pulling themselves down faster

than they could ever do it. So what's your advice to someone like that? So I've been through three crises. This would be the fourth. So prior to this, I've been through three. And in this situation, you've got to save the company first. That's got to be your mentality because if there's no company at the end of this, there's no place for your people to come back to work. So it's a simple formula. And it's not fun laying people off, firing people, cutting salaries, doing all those things. And yes, the leader should absolutely take that first bullet, but you've got to save the company.

And like I said, if you were a $10 million company, now you're a $5 million company. Think back to when you were a $5 million company. How many employees you had then? That's probably how many you should have now. And then grow back to $10 million and bring them all back. But if there's no company left, everybody has lost. You've got to know company first. You know, and you got to think, I always say if we have 200 employees, they've got a significant other and usually the average is two kids. So 200 employees is actually 800 people. So I guess the best of the two is

save the 700 for the sacrifice of the 25 or whatever that looks like. And hopefully bring them all back someday. Who knows, but hopefully bring them all back someday. You got the new book called Entrepreneurial Leap. I know you've been putting a lot of time and effort into a book launch and I've got my own book and people don't understand how hard it is to write a book because if you're like me, I'm like, wait a minute, I want to put this in there. And my editor was like, if you don't stop, you'll never stop. Then you're never going to be done. So you got entrepreneurial leap. Talk to me, while it was just released, talk to me about this book, especially in the given state we're in right

now in the world. By impassioned plea to your audience, any entrepreneur out there is to understand that you can have balance. So I built EOS Worldwide over 20 years, grew 40% a year for the last 15 years. And I did that taking 150 days off a year, taking an August sabbatical that I've done for 20 straight years. I take the entire month of August off. And so it's possible to have balance. However, when I'm working, I am working. In other words, I am all in. I am engaged. I am intense. So it's possible. the entrepreneur is just decide your capacity that you're going to devote to work and you can build anything within that capacity because if you're burning the candle at both ends going 24 7 7 days a week you're going to burn out it's not a good formula you're going to lose your family so anyway that's i'll say that little nugget and let's jump to your question i agree with that wholeheartedly it's that balance is tough but yeah, so here goes. So you're asking me to kind of start with what the project is at a high level. Is that the whole book? Yep. Awesome. You know, so like I said, when I was 40, I decided when I turned 50, this is where I'm devoting my energy.

I'm going to go to the front end of the entrepreneurial journey and help entrepreneurs in the making take a better leap. And there's an old saying that says, we teach what we needed the most by Daniel Kennedy. And so what I'm doing is I'm actually teaching my 18-year-old self, who was this lost, confused, insecure, mislabeled derelict, but I was an entrepreneur in the making. And I didn't know that. I was not functioning well in a school system. There was no way on earth I was ever going to college. And so I was lost. And I didn't realize I was an entrepreneur, a true entrepreneur until age 29. So it took me 11 years. And so whether you're 13 or 83, I want you to find out now and I want to help you discover and confirm that you are. And once we do that, I want to show you a path to help you get there. And like I said, become why you're put on the face of this earth.

And that is a true entrepreneur. There's a little context I want to share to help your audience, because I understand that your audience is mostly comprised of home service companies. But go to your next question, because I think we might kind of work our way into that. Yeah. So, you know, there's a lot of people that think they're entrepreneurs and I write about it in my book and, you know, Simon Sinek, find your why. The why is I don't want to work for someone else. And a lot of the time they get stuck in the e-myth

mentality of I'm a technician and they never get into the entrepreneurial side. And they say, I'm good at fixing garage doors. And I hear this all the time. And I want to go into this question because I know how to fix them. And I say, do you know how to build a very good culture? Have you done any hiring? Do you understand an org chart? Do you understand marketing? Do you understand taxes? Do you know how to read a balance sheet, an income statement, a P&L? Do you have bank relationships? Do you know how to, a fleet management? Do you know inventory? There's so much. I mean, I think the technical part is probably a 20th of it. So what do you say to these technicians that are starting a business? Number one is they're considering the idea. What kind of mistakes should they avoid?

Yeah, it's awesome. Awesome. So yeah, so I had a feeling the next question was going to lead right into this context I was talking about. So what I want to say first is, you know, I love your industry. I love this audience. Nextar brought me into keynote their event, a room full of HVAC companies and electrical companies. And so I don't know what it is about you guys that is so near and dear to my heart, but you're just like regular everyday people, good people working your asses off to build something great. And so in answering that question, there's a spectrum, there's a visual I share in the book, and I call it the entrepreneurial range. And it's going to help put some things in perspective. And the entrepreneurial range is identifying and describing all people that own their own business. Because right now,

everybody wants to be an entrepreneur. And I'm trying to help people decide whether they are, but also decide whether they're not, because it's the new rock star. In the 70s, everybody wanted to be a rock star. In this decade, everybody wants to be an entrepreneur. And most aren't, okay? And so that's what I'm trying to clarify. So the range works like this, the entrepreneur range. If you picture the right side of the range, the words true entrepreneur. and on the left side of the range, you picture self-employed. So again, everyone with a business falls somewhere on that range. In my work, Entrepreneurial Leap, what I'm helping to do is helping to discover the true entrepreneurs. I believe a true entrepreneur has six essential traits, which we can talk about next.

But a true entrepreneur are the people that are on the right side of that entrepreneurial range. And so if you picture red line all the way to the right are the greatest entrepreneurs of all time. Henry Ford, Walt Disney, Oprah Winfrey, Sarah Blakely. And on the left side of the range are self-employed one-person shows. And so this is a handyman, this is a consultant, this is somebody with a side hustle. And so everyone with their own business falls on that range. People on the left side of the range, I just don't consider them entrepreneurs. They're one-person shows. It's respectable, it's admirable, they're taking risks.

And so what's important for that person out there that takes that leap, yes, they first have to decide, are they a technician having an entrepreneurial seizure, as Michael Gerber says it. Yeah. But more importantly, you want to take that leap because you want that independence. But if you're not a true entrepreneur, you need to come to terms with that. And there's actually peace in realizing I'm going to go be free. I'm going to go be self-employed. I'm going to be a one-person show. I'm never going to build a 100-person organization, but I'm going to be free free. I'm going to go be self-employed. I'm going to be a one person show. I'm never going to build a hundred person organization, but I'm going to be free. And so I love the industry you're in because these are the two examples I always use.

The first one is if you're a handy person and you want to be free, go become a handyman or a woman charged 60 bucks an hour. You'll make a six figure income. If you do good work, you'll be referred like crazy and you'll be busy. You'll never have to market again for 20 years. So that's somebody all the way to the left side of the range. And so go do that. Especially if you're a technician, you can make a hundred grand a year being a technician and be free. But now if you really want to build a business and move to the right side of that range, you have to have the six essential traits. In all of my work, all of my experience working with thousands of entrepreneurs, and very quickly, those six essential traits are visionary, passionate, problem solver, driven, risk taker, and responsible. And so we can drill down on that more in a minute. But the

point is, if you're sitting there as that one person show and you really want to build an organization, run yourself through that filter and make sure that you have those traits so you're equipped to become a true entrepreneur. Because it's not all it's cracked up to be. Obviously, Tommy, you are a true entrepreneur. There's no question about that. A visionary entrepreneur with those six essential traits. If you don't have them, it will be hell. And so this whole project is a cautionary tale for anyone that doesn't have them because you're about to go through 10 years of sheer hell. And it's just not worth it. Being an entrepreneur is not all it's cracked up to be. I mean, you're getting your ass kicked daily. You're borderline a little crazy. I mean, you're a little bit off. We entrepreneurs, we're wacky, we're crazy, but we love it. We love that battle. And so long dissertation,

but for each one of your listeners and your viewers out there, really think about where you are on that range. And then I offer an assessment you can take on the website. It's also in the book, but it's on the website for free, e-leap.com. Go see if you have those traits. And so again, long dissertation, but there's the context I wanted to make sure that was clear in everyone's mind. You know, it makes sense to

me. And I, on this podcast, I think people criticize me about saying you guys should own a business. Some of you, because you can't get off at 5 p.m. They hate the sound of the phone ringing. They're like, don't these people understand? I got a family. And I'm like, wait a minute, you signed up for this. And then the thing you mentioned with Handyman and that, you know, I know a lot of these guys, but the biggest misconception is I put my blood, sweat and tears into this and I plan on selling it one day to retire. And here's the bad part. This is nuts.

Your business isn't worth anything because you make $120,000, your business makes zero. To replace you and the person with all the connections, I can't. So it's worth your phone number. I'll give you $10,000 for it. People are like, you don't know what I built. It's not sellable. What do you say to – and I feel so bad. And I don't know what I built it's not sellable what do you say to and I feel so bad and I don't try to criticize them the first thing you do is you respect them and you say you built

a really amazing but you know the last thing you want to do is criticize people but they go this thing's worth at least half a million dollars what do you say to somebody like that I feel well so so I'm not in that world so I can't tell you what I would say that because I haven't said that to somebody but what I would suggest to you is, you know, your perspective is right. And it's excruciating because that person put their blood, sweat and tears into building that reputation over 20 years. And you're right, it's probably worth 10 grand, maybe 20 grand, it's not worth a half a million dollars. And I and so if I'm in that situation, again, I don't know exactly what I'd say, because I've never been there. But I would say, listen, if it's worth a half a million,

go sell it to somebody for a half a million. If you don't have any luck, come back and talk to me. There's a $10,000 check here waiting for you. That's probably what I'm going to say. And I hope they go find the half a million bucks just for the record. But you're probably the only guy out there that's going to give them 10 grand for the business. So that's my best swipe at guessing what I would do in that situation. You work with these thousands of businesses, and here's where I want to get to the golden nuggets. Because a lot of us, and it's funny, because I'm talking to about 2,500 people in August. And I told my buddies last night, they're like, what are you going to talk about? And I go, I am going to talk to myself when I

was 20. And unfortunately, I think that was like two years ago. I'm just kidding. But ultimately, I'm going to say, look, Tommy, you got to learn to delegate. Delegate is going to be your most useful tool. The passion you have now with the shiny light district and all that, I've got the shiny light and I've been able to focus on my energy now. Just really essentialism. And the one thing, like Gary Keller, it's changed my mindset. But it seems like we're always just running into fires.

When I started, I was a firefighter and I was the best firefighter and my employees, we prided ourselves, we'll fix any fire. And then we let the processes kind of take over these last 10 years and the processes stop fires from happening. And what do you say to those entrepreneurs that they just, they can't seem to stop getting in the day-to-day fire putting out? They can't seem to work on the structure, the standard operating procedures, the key performance indicators. What's the best advice we could give to them? Well, so, you know, if we go back to that entrepreneurial range we talked about, when

that entrepreneur out there, you know, has their fifth employee and for sure their 10th employee, that's who I created EOS for. That's who traction is for. And so if any of you out there are, you know, five employees on your way to 10, once you're at 10, for sure, I urge you to take a look at EOS as your operating system, because that's exactly what that is. It's a system to get that entrepreneur to stop that madness, to systemize their business, to put process in place, create consistency in their business so that it can scale. And so what do I tell them? I tell them exactly that. And with a lot of clients, we have to tell them seven times

before they hear it for the first time. But here's the sad reality. Many don't listen. Now, the ones that typically aren't listening, they're not joining the process with me or us and embarking on the journey, but some just won't listen. And that's typically that rugged individualist that just is not gonna move past this side of the range. And they're probably gonna remain a one, two, three person show for the rest of their life.

And so after the seventh time of telling them, if they don't see the light, I'm not so sure there's anything that's going to help them see the light. And you're going to go talk to 2,500 people, as do I. I am selling my message with every ounce of passion and belief that I can to those 2,500 people. But I know there's some percentage are going to listen and some percentage are not going to listen. So you can't convince them all. So I'd let go of trying to convince 2,500 out of 2,500.

I mean, what's your goal? When you talk to a big group, but Nexstar is an amazing group of businesses. I got to tell you, it's the best of the best. I know Jack personally, Jack Tester, he's amazing guy, amazing establishment, the best practices, the best businesses in the industry. I was on a podcast yesterday, and I said, let's be honest.

What's the best industry to model your company as? And he goes, HVAC, hands down. They get it. They got it in the 90s, and they built onto it from there. They understand how to sell a business. They know how to get to $100 million. And what would you tell these guys? Because you got to know, this is like the old hardcore.

The average plumber is 47 years old right now. There's a lot of opportunities. $400 billion industry. Google's getting in. Facebook's getting in. Amazon's getting in. But there's still a lot of companies that are failing. So what do you tell somebody?

I mean, you've already done this. I'm going to say two or three things right now. And it's really fascinating. That's why I love talking to this industry, because I always use it in my examples. And you tell me if this hits what you're asking. So in the first part of the book, I'm getting them to confirm that they're entrepreneurs. In the second part of the book, I call a glimpse. I'm showing them a glimpse of their future and all of their options. There are thousands of options as an entrepreneur taking their leap. And there are industries, types of businesses, size of businesses. And the example I always give is I'm trying to make this point

to the entrepreneurial world that becoming a billionaire tech unicorn company is not what entrepreneurship is all correct. That's not the destination. That's not what everybody, it's not the end all be all. And I say these exact words, I say, there's nothing wrong with owning a $3 million HVAC company, throwing off a 20% profit with amazing people. And so to me, that's entrepreneurship. And so the billion dollar tech unicorn is one in a billion. And so the first point I would make is that I think your industry is incredible. I think your industry has so much opportunity. The second thing I say is, man, if you're a 25 year old and you have these six essential traits and you're looking for an industry, holy shit, get into the home service.

I mean, there is so much opportunity because you know this with all due love and respect, 95% of you guys are bad. You know, I mean, I sold real estate when I was age 21 to 23. And I was really good. And I provided a great service. And so I would crush all my competitors because I just followed through on everything. So my point there is, this industry that you're in for a 25 year old, the next 20 years, they'll build a $10 million company if they just follow what's out there. So that's the second thing I always say. I think there's so much opportunity there. And then the third, re-ask your question and let's see if I'm hitting what you're asking me.

Well, you know, it was really just, it's a good business to get into. And I really want to start diving into, you know, your book. My buddy told me to read it. He said, you got to understand your place in the business and you're such a visionary. I'm so far over to that side that it's hard for me to be the integrator. And I started reading it and you said, Roy, no one knows Roy. They know Walt Disney, but Roy was the guy that knew what was in the bank account. He knew how to run the operational site. He integrated the ideas of the visionary. And of course, visionary is super sexy. It's like, I'm a visionary.

And then the integrators kind of left in the dust, kind of picking up the pieces. And it's not as sexy. And everybody I've asked about this book, actually, I made one of my consultants, his name's Al Levy. He read it and he goes, dude, it was awesome. And he, you know what everybody says?

He's probably watching this. Everybody says they're both. Have you ever heard that? You know, especially the most confident people. They say, I think I'm both. And I'm like, I'm not, I know I live over so far on that visionary side, but talk to me about this relationship because that little bit, it was like you were speaking to my soul. Yeah, that's awesome. So, and I'm sorry to do this to you again, but I want to back up to that previous question. That's weighing on my mind

that I have to, you know, and so I said 95% are bad. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 95%. My definition of bad is when you call the company, do you get an immediate response? Number two, do they come out fast? Number three, do they do great work, follow through all that wonderful stuff? And 95% just don't do that well. And when there's an industry like that, there's so much opportunity. So that's my definition of bad.

It's not an integrity thing. It's not saying people are bad. It's doing the work, okay? So I just wanna make sure I've made that clear. Back to your question now, a couple of things here. First of all, let's make sure the concept is clear to your audience. And let's believe is that wild and crazy visionary must be counterbalanced with an integrator. And I learned this in my family business. When I took over the family business, my dad was the visionary, I was the integrator. That's when I actually

created the concept. I applied it there. It worked incredibly. And then from there, I taught it to the world. And now we've got at least 100,000 visionaries out there calling themselves visionaries. And about half of them have integrators, still working on them. So the point is, for you listening out there, you've got to decide, are you that visionary first and foremost? If you are, as you grow your organization

and start to add people, there's going to come a point in time, if you want to continue to grow, that you've got to go find your integrator. And you mentioned that you're going to be doing a podcast with Mark Winters on the book Rocket Fuel. So please watch that podcast. Tommy's going to go deep with you there. I want you to understand the context though. So with that, some entrepreneurs are savvy enough to bring their integrator on very early. Sometimes when they start the business and sometimes they partner, sometimes they pay

them. And I've got one client that waited until a hundred million to bring on their first integrator. Nonetheless, you need an integrator because what it's going to do for you is free you up to stay in your sweet spot, which is doing all those amazing visionary entrepreneur things. And then that integrator can run the day to day for you, keep you out of the details. All that said, 5% of all visionaries have the ability to do both. One out of 20. So with all due love and respect to the ones out there saying they can do both, the reality of what's happening for most is they're having to do both. They don't have a choice but to do both. I mean, if you have a business that's only generating 150 grand right now, you can't go

hire a $100,000 integrator or whatever the number is going to be. And so you have to do both. And then we talk about readiness factors in rocket fuel. And Mark will talk more about that. But that person is just, they're just not ready. Whatever the reason is, economically, psychologically, whatever the reason is, there's a reason that visionary is not ready to bring on their integrator. And so most of the time when you hear them saying they're both, it's an excuse.

But again, one out of 20 times, it is true. I am one of the rare people that can do both. I was a great integrator for the family business. I was a great visionary for EOS Worldwide. I choose visionary at the end of the day. And it's a capacity decision. So you'll do both until you reach capacity and then you've got to make a decision. Does that answer the question? Yeah, that's great. I know for a fact, and the great news is, I hate to say this, but I belong, even when you look at the DISC assessment and any assessment, we use the predictive index, is realizing know thyself, I guess, first. I just think it's incredible to really dig in. You work with so many people and how do you tell them? I can't even imagine not being a visionary. And the problem with a visionary is like, I get ideas. Like yesterday it was like, I'm whiteboarding and I'm

like, the one thing I've learned to do is shelf them and put it in in an order and say this is the first bottle back this is where I need to focus that's a keyword focus my energy my time my blood sweat and tears needs to go into this before it used to kind of go into everything and that integrator pulls you back in most of the time it says whoa whoa right pull in the reins and you know I started 10 different LLCs I got a rapid all this stuff and now i'm like man we do garage doors pretty good let's just focus on that residential retrofit garage doors tell me a little bit about a quick way to understand if you're really that integrator or visionary or if you're not either of them yeah now I want to do a little contextual resource message here as I

answer that one, because we've got two visionaries here, you and I bouncing all over the place with great content. So hopefully your audience is loving this, but as we're having this conversation, I want to keep going back to the range, but here's what's important. Now I want to talk about the life cycle of an entrepreneur. So the life cycle is everything from scratching your head going, I think I might be an entrepreneur, all the way to building your organization to whatever size and number of people. If you are sitting there in the scratch your head phase, all the way to taking your leap and maybe having your first employee, Entrepreneurial Leap is the book for you to read. Just so we're not confusing you, you know the resource.

And again, go to the website, e-leap.com. Ton of free resources there for you because this is gonna help you decide if this is right for you. And if you're even this darn visionary concept that we're talking about. Second resource is like I said, once you've hit your fifth employee,

closing in on 10 for certain 10, it's time for traction, retraction, implement EOS. That's for a 10 to 250 person privately held company typically. With that, those are the two resources. If this visionary concept is intriguing and appealing, anytime is the time for you to read that because that's really going to help shape your thinking. That's kind of a layer across the whole thing that we're helping people with.

And so with that, you're asking an integrator question now and you're asking, how do they know? So RocketFuelNow.com has a great assessment. The book has a great assessment where you fill out the assessment and it gives you an answer. You're either going to score high on visionary or score high on integrator. You're rarely going to score high on both, and that's how you're going to know. I love that you've got all these tests out there because it really, I mean, it's dead odd. I read the book Traction, and I think, is Traction, all these books have done really, really well. Is Traction the largest, probably the most sales? What does this stand for? Traction is the epicenter. It's closing in on a million copies sold,

somewhere between 900,000 and a million right now. Yeah, Traction is the book that teaches and explains the whole EOS system and concept and how to implement that in your business. And then the next four books all in the Tr traction library are iterations of that to drill down on specific topics like RocketFuel with Visionary Integrator. Get a Grip is a fable version of teaching you EOS. How to Be a Great Boss is teaching you how to lead and manage well as a manager. And What the Heck is EOS is for all of your employees so they understand this system that's being implemented in the organization. And you said earlier, you still own 12%. And I wanna know because I try to buy businesses

all the time. I've got plenty of guys in their 60s, amazing people. And they say, Tommy, I just don't know what I'm gonna do. I love to golf, I love to fish, but what's next? And they can't sell their baby. And I say the same thing. This is what I love. This has been my life since my early twenties. You were able to part with it for your next chapter. I want to know what that felt like and how you came to those decisions. Yeah. So it's, I'm a pretty methodical guy. So I have ADD, OCD, and a touch of dyslexia.

So I am visionary, but I'm also highly detail-oriented in terms of my OCD and my obsessiveness. And so my plan with EOS Worldwide, after 15 years of creating EOS and building that company, is about 12 years in, I knew I was going to succeed myself out of the visionary role. I didn't want to run the day-to-day of the business.

I didn't want to be involved in the day-to-day of the business. And so I started a five-year succession plan. I identified my successor five years before that successor took over. And so that's the first piece of advice I would give out there. You can't decide to succeed yourself out of the visionary role or out of the role that you're in. And next week it happens. It's a grooming process.

You've got to prepare everyone in the organization. And so then I succeeded myself out of the visionary role. My partner, Don, succeeded himself out of the integrator role. So he and I, as the owners of the business, freed ourselves up. We moved ourselves up to the board of directors, for lack of a better term. But we just kind of call it the owner's box, if you will. And we gave equity to those two successors. They were in the owner's box with us. We would meet every 90 days. They built a wonderful leadership team using most of the members that they inherited from us. And all

of a sudden we were completely free from the company. That took five years. And then I just decided after about two years of that happening that it was probably time to sell. There were just a lot of indicators. I was ready. No matter how you slice it, I still owned a majority of that business. When I went to bed every night, all those issues were still on my mind. They can't escape me, especially with OCD. And so I decided it was time to sell. And then I'm very unconventional in how I do things. But I think we had 200 implementers at the time, a team of 20, 25 people supporting them. And I did what they said not to do. And I told every single one of them, I'm going to sell the company. So before we even put the company on the market,

I told everyone, and every professional will tell you, do not do that. Well, this is a test of your culture, quite frankly. And so it was greatly appreciated. And then a year, over a year and a half period of time, we went through the process with an investment banker. We had almost a hundred interested parties, whittled it down to the final candidate, sold the business, like I said, a little over two years ago. It continues to grow 40% a year. We'll see how it survives the pandemic, but by all measures, it's up at least 20% through the pandemic. We'll see at the end of the year. And so I'd just be very methodical. Finish Big is another great book by Bo Burlingham I would

recommend if you're thinking about selling. But be methodical, five-year succession plan. Your business is worth a lot more if it's running without you. That's the mistake that most of you make out there is you go to sell the business and you are still the guy or the woman at the helm. And so they still need you to run it. Well, if they need you to run it, number one, you're gonna be working for somebody,

which is sheer hell for a true entrepreneur. And you're still a prisoner of the business. So that's my humble two cents. So you're going on this new journey of the entrepreneurial leap. And you said this is really to tell if you are an entrepreneur. So you're going to even further back to the basics, more even so than traction. Now that you're still involved with EOS, then the whole process of that, but what's the new plan? What's the next 10 years look like?

I love it. And 10 years is the number. And so this next 10 years is all about impacting 1 million entrepreneurs in the making. And so this book, this project, these tools, that website, I'm working with a team of collaborators. So what I'm doing is joining forces with any organization out there that helps entrepreneurs in the making, teaches them, is educating people

on how to become entrepreneurs. I give them all of my content for free. We join forces. They give credit where credit's due and we both win. And so that's what I'm obsessively doing for the next 10 years. I'm a podcast maniac. I didn't do one podcast building EOS Worldwide.

I've done 50 for this project because it just feels right. I'm a hermit. I'm an introvert. I'm a mad scientist. I like to be behind the scenes. I'm coming out from the cave for this project. I'm putting out one piece of video content every single week. I'm writing a piece of content every other week. We're building an amazing YouTube channel. And then again, I'm working and building this team of collaborators all over the world. And so that's what's going on for the next 10 years. And then when I turn 60, we'll see what the next one's going to be. But I tend to operate and think and work in 10 year timeframes. Nice. Well, that's huge. I can't wait to watch you. And just, it's really cool that you're on this podcast. And I really prefer audible

books because i can listen to them faster then and you can bookmark it and all that stuff i've got a couple more questions and we'll we'll ask you like the last three i always ask you know you mentioned earlier i'm trying to think of what i was going to ask you about the uh the system yeah while you're thinking i want to go back to something you said because i'm really eager to share this with your audience because you asked that you talk about mistakes, okay? And so what I want to very quickly do, and you can maybe pick one of these that might intrigue you, but for anyone out there that is thinking about taking their leap, is about to take their leap, just took their leap, and maybe has an employee, two or three, I wanna share with you the eight most common mistakes entrepreneurs make. They're all avoidable, and I wanna help you increase your odds of success right now.

For the rest of you, this will be a little checkup on maybe mistakes you've made in the past that you need to correct. So very quickly, number one is not having a vision. You've got to have a clear vision in writing so everybody knows where you're going. Number two is hiring the wrong people. Classic mistake, an entrepreneur builds their business, needs somebody, they grab the closest

body to them, which is their brother, sister, significant other, neighbor. Don't do it. Hire for core values and skill. Number three is not spending time with your people. That's the biggest issue we hear is communication. Meet with your people every week. Meet with them every quarter. Give them feedback often. Number four, not knowing who your customer is. Know who your ideal customer is, demographic, geographic, psychographic. Who are they? Where are they? What are they? Number five, not charging enough. Get past your psychological barrier. It's insecurity. Cut it out. Charge what you're worth. Most entrepreneurs don't do it. It's the difference between profit and losing money. Number six, not staying true to your core. Stay true to your core. Don't get distracted by shiny stuff. There's endless opportunity in your core. Number seven, not

knowing your numbers. A classic unfortunate weakness of anyone with the six essential traits is you're typically not good with the numbers It's very rare somehow. I am others of us are but most aren't and so just implement a weekly scorecard Look at the 5 to 15 most important numbers every week. Look at a monthly pnl every single month manage a budget Projected to actual every single month if you don't know what those things are just implement it You'll become an expert in two months. And number eight, not crystallizing roles and responsibilities. Make sure everyone knows their role and responsibility. Even if there's only two of you, you'll be much more efficient and get more done. I couldn't hang up without leaving you with that.

So back to what you were about to ask. Well, you know, it kind of went into what you just did it, but I'm looking at this. Every single one of these things I've done failed at. I literally have failed at every single one and they're all pretty much fixed. But why is it that people get so worried about charging enough money? Like they're like, I can't do that. I can't sleep at night. I'm like, wait a minute. You promised when you got into business, your wife, a better life, more time with your family.

You're going to raise your kids. You're going to go to your son's ball games and your daughter's recitals. Your wife works with you. You don't make enough to go on vacation. You work out of your home and you don't want to do the wrong thing by charging enough. You're using an old CRM. You got a broken down truck.

You don't have anything in your retirement. I think that's a huge one. The people that they don't know their customer, they don't charge enough in your retirement. I think that's a huge one that people, they don't know their customer and they don't charge enough. Yeah. So it is huge. I'm very passionate about this topic. So what's the reason? The reason, as I already said, it's a psychological issue. It's a psychological disorder. It's insecurity. You don't feel worthy. You don't feel worth it. And so you got to get past that. So a couple of things. First, Dan Sullivan's strategic coach program, he has this great discipline. He says,

when it comes to pricing, pick the number that scares you and then add 20%. So that's a great formula. That's just, I love that. Number two is watch a Casey Brown's Ted talk. She is an expert on pricing and she'll walk you through that psychological barrier that you're facing. And then another really cool story is, I was actually doing a podcast last week, and the podcaster has an 18-year-old son who's taking his entrepreneurial leap. And he told his son, you must charge $100 an hour. So this kid probably would have went out and charged 20 bucks an hour or 25

bucks an hour. I wish I knew the business. And he actually brought his son into the podcast and we're looking at each other and we're talking. He made his son, he's smart enough to say, listen, son, a hundred bucks an hour, not a penny less, go out there and do it. And so, yes, you're going to hear some no's, but he went out and he did it and he's getting a hundred bucks an hour. So it's all up here. It's psychological. Now, all that said, you can't go charge a million dollars an hour. So there is a number. But by default, human beings, entrepreneurs, you just under charge when you take that a lot of guys, and I was one of them get together. We brag about revenue and the saying now is revenue is for vanity and profits for sanity. And now I really care so much more about profitability. It's crazy how much people brag about how much revenue they do with. Sometimes they're actually losing money.

Yes. And it's, it's number eight or number seven. Know your numbers. And what is it? Like that was the last thing I think I got is a great CFO. And I didn't know my numbers. And I was always so happy. I'm like,

dude, we did all this. We did 200 grand a day. And I'm like, but I never looked at the bank account. I was like, the bank account was scary. I was like,

what? It doesn't make sense. But once you start, once you look at the bank account. I was like, the bank account was scary. I was like, what? This doesn't make sense. But once you start, once you look at the bank account, you dig into those KPIs, you understand profit, it becomes fun again. And I want to dig into that. I'm going to let you go here in a little bit. I appreciate you coming on.

I got one last question. We'll close it up after this one. Yeah. So what I always say is, you know, so when I have a client that says, we want to build a $100 million company, I say, well, a hundred million, it's not all it's cracked up to be. So let's look at why you want to do that, because the reality is having a hundred million dollar company that throws off a one percent profit or let's say a two percent profit, hypothetically, and a ten million dollar company that throws off a 20 percent profit generate the same amount of profit. The $100 million company is 50 times more complex than that $10 million company. Worst case, it's 10 times as complex. So the point is,

profit is everything. And yes, by managing these numbers that I shared, profit's going to go up. If you're not good at this, bring in your accountant, hire a CFO like you did. Not everybody can afford to bring in a full-time CFO. Hire a fractional CFO. I built EOS Worldwide, my partner Don and I. It generated a 50% profit every year until we sold it. So profit is everything. Forget the revenue. Get rid of the ego. If you think revenue is some kind of a win, you're totally missing the point. It's all about bottom line profit. And so if you'll shift your thinking to that, all of a sudden your eyes are going to look there and you're going to think about ways to maximize profit. And let's go back to the first issue or the one issue we just talked about pricing. If you are breaking even right now, a 10 percent price increase gives you a 10 percent profit, a 10% bottom line. The formula is that simple. If you're

losing 5% every year, a 10% increase shifts you to making 5% a year. You got to be looking at the bottom line. It's all about the bottom line. So that's the best and quickest impassioned plea I can give there. Yeah, I had a different customer. I started out on Craigslist during the crisis in 2007. And my customer base was the lowest on the totem pole because there were price shoppers, a lot of them. And now I've realized that people say this, fix it, do everything it needs because I don't want to be stuck in my garage again. And I want the gadgets. I want my car to open up. I want to know if I could close it from my phone and Amazon could deliver packages. Just hook it up, get it all done. And if you get the right people, they're not, you know, I know lawyers, they charge anywhere from 150 all the way up to several thousand dollars an hour. I mean, the crazy New York ones with high level with mergers and acquisitions, it's crazy. And people say, well, you can't charge it. That's highway robbery. Well, people are willing to pay that. And if you don't lie, cheaters still in your upfront and you save the reasons why,

and they're objective reasons. It can't be, I'm the best. It's, this is why you hired me. And there's a real reason why I just think a lot of people, you said it is, it's a brain dysfunction. I like that. And it changes industries when you get somebody that actually comes in and says, no, I'm a business owner that chooses to do garage doors, the business owner and profitability to create network or enterprise value should be every private business is cool, right? You're here. So the last thing I wanted to ask you before the final three is, you say we talked to your earlier self, and I was wondering if you could just give maybe five things like mine would be focused on one thing, then write your job descriptions down and hire the thing you hate

the most. But what are your five just gold nuggets that you say, here's a quick five list that people can really get a lot out of? Yeah. And so you're saying, what would I tell my 18 year old self? Right? Yeah. Back to that point. I saying, what would I tell my 18-year-old self, right? Yeah. Back to that point. I don't know that I'll get to five because less is always more, but the one right at the top of the list is,

if I could go back and give myself advice, it would be let your freak flag fly. That's the way I like to say it. And what that means is, that means be yourself. Don't apologize for it. Be 100% you in the world. And so it took me till age 35, maybe 40 to get totally comfortable with myself and who I am. So what a travesty to lose all those years, second guessing, being insecure, whatever. So that would be number one.

Number two is know thyself, is know yourself, know everything about you. Everyone out there, including me, we have weaknesses, we have strengths, we have a certain personality, we have certain skill sets. And to the degree you can get really clear on what your personal sweet spot is in the world, your MO, who you are, how you operate. You then build a life around that. It's incredibly powerful. And if there were a third, it would be think in 10-year timeframes. Again, this took me till age 35. Up until then, I wanted everything now, now, now. I'm thinking one week out, one month out, maybe one year out. And so when I shifted to thinking in 10-year timeframes, you can accomplish anything in 10 years. And so the

second I shifted to that at age 35, I became more peaceful, less stressed, much clearer. Time slowed down. I made better decisions. And ironically, I got there faster. And so shift to 10-year thinking, 10-year timeframes. So those would probably be the top three. Awesome. I love that concept. I wanted to ask you if there's three books, obviously all your books are amazing, but if there's three that influenced you, could be the Bible, could be a fictional book. It could be something about the space odyssey. I don't know. But if you wanted to give three books that really kind of touched you and moved you, what would the three be? Yeah. And this changes. And so I'm going to give you my top three off my, you know, just from my gut right now, but on the website,

e-leap.com, I list the top, I think it's 20 or 25 books every entrepreneur in the making should read. So they're all there, but off the top of my head right now, the ones that have had the biggest impact on me, Think and Grow Rich is a must read for anybody who thinks they want to be an entrepreneur. That's number one. Number two is Essentialism. You mentioned it earlier in this call, actually. I read that about three or four years ago. That had a profound effect on me. So that one is on my mind right now, if you will. And I'm going to say this one. Read the look at the list of 20 to 25.

But I'm going to say this one because we talked so much about visionaries today. So there is a book called The Hypomanic Edge. Hypomania is a disorder. Pretty much every visionary has hypomania. It's these huge, incredible bursts of creative energy and then big crashes. Bursts of energy, big crashes, and that's basically our life. It's a powerful read to understand your MO and how to really embrace that. Because at the end of the day, it's a gift for an entrepreneur, but it can also be very destructive. And so since I peeked over and saw it there, that's the one I'll share. But there are a lot of great ones. I love it. So if I wanted to get a hold of you, get involved with some of your teachings, your books, the EOS, or more about the entrepreneurial leap, obviously you go to Amazon, buy the books. You mentioned a lot of websites. So I am a believer in this project. I am giving this content away. So you'll see a free chapter. You'll see that assessment. And so everything is there. Please go start your journey. And if you know anyone out there in your life that you think

is an entrepreneur in the making, you know, your kids, your significant other, please send them there. That's where to go find out if they are and how to become a successful entrepreneur. And the final thing I do, which you just kind of did some of it, but I want to give you the last few minutes to talk about anything you want. One last gold nugget, one final thought to put into use today. Wow. So, uh, holy cow. I feel like I said it all. So let me pause here. So give me a context though. What are you looking for? Are you looking for me to teach something? Are you looking for me to request something? What's, uh, you know, typically when I think about this is when I'm

on a podcast and I've been on several here in the last couple of weeks, people say, I tell people, I'll give you my answer. When they say, what's one big thing? And I say, you need to go surround yourself, get out of your comfort zone, get out of your hometown, get out of the city, the state, and engulf yourself around somebody that you look up to in a similar like business, a leader, someone that you aspire to be like, and digest them, take notes, ask questions, get out of your comfort zone, and let it just take you over. And you'll find that your learning curve just accelerates by decades at a time by these small little getaways. And that's what I usually say if somebody gives me the opportunity. So that's kind of an answer.

So that's helpful. And I think, you know, so you, since you're asking and you're giving me this opportunity and I sit here and I think about, you know, what's the number one thing on my mind in terms of what I'm trying to accomplish in the world? Maybe the best opportunity here is for any of you out there that are successful entrepreneurs and you're successful at what you do, please mentor, please give back, please leave a legacy. And so I actually created a tool called Mentor Track. There's a video around it. There's a tool. It's a five-step track. And what it is, is I do 80% of the heavy lifting for you. But you find someone you want to mentor. You give them a copy of Entrepreneur Elite. They read it. You meet for an hour. They ask you lots of questions. And the

content is all there. So you're freed up to just tell your story, answer their questions, give your insight. The other really nice thing is if they're not true entrepreneurs in the making, they won't show up for the meeting after reading the book. And so it saves you the time and it's pre-screening. So the only people you're mentoring and helping are true entrepreneurs. So I urge you to leave a legacy. And please, if you can go into inner cities, I mean, just just help help find that what I call 4% these wonderful, wild and crazy mislabeled derelicts that have six essential traits, help them understand what they are, and put them on a path to putting a dent in the universe. I love that. The six essential traits, the eight most common mistakes. If you guys haven't done it by now, call me up. I'll be part of the book club. We'll do it

together. I love this stuff. I love that you're on here. I've literally owe you the world because I've learned so much and just want to say thank you. And I think the listeners got hopefully as much as I did out of it. I hope so, man. I think we left it all on the table. So hopefully they picked up some nuggets. Yeah, I don't have a plan. I hate people that are like this so methodical. I'm like, let's just get into it because I could talk to you for hours.

So I really appreciate it. And I'll be in Michigan in July. I don't know if I could stop by your office or something. Just reach out. If the stars align and our schedule align, it'd be awesome. So absolutely just reach out. All right, my friend. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you coming on, Gino.

It was a pleasure. Bye, everyone. 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.

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