The First 90 Days: What To Do AFTER You Take Over A Small Business w/ Cody Barton

Summary

Podcast Summary: The First 90 Days – What To Do After You Take Over A Small Business

Action Academy | Millionaire Mentorship For Your Life & Business
Host: Brian Luebben
Guest: Cody Barton
Date: January 22, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into a largely unaddressed but crucial topic: what to actually do in the first 90 days after acquiring a small business. Brian Luebben and seasoned entrepreneur Cody Barton (owner/operator of multiple businesses approaching $60 million in revenue) break down the playbook for successfully transitioning into business ownership after purchase. They discuss month-by-month strategies, how to approach team members, avoid rookie mistakes, and build systems that set the foundation for sustainable, profitable growth.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Myth of "Passive Ownership" (00:52–01:55)

• Brian: Calls out the fantasy of hands-off small business ownership ("sit on the beach, hire an operator").

  "I'm just going to have an operator do all the work... That's not true." (00:52)

• Cody: Echoes this, emphasizing the messiness and hands-on requirement in the early phase, even with perfect acquisition diligence.

  "Week one is chaos week. It's where the bodies are buried that you had no idea existed." (02:53)

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2. The First Week: Focus on Functional, Not Transformational (02:29–07:03)

• Critical Administrative Tasks:

  • Transfer legal paperwork, employment contracts, set up new bank accounts, ensure payroll is ready.
  • Avoid making sweeping changes immediately.

• Build Trust Fast:

  • Offer good news like rolling out employee benefits (optional but effective for buy-in).
  • Main goal: "Daily operations aren't going to be affected. We're able to collect money. We're able to pay money." (05:25)

• Start the Audit Phase:

  • "We come in and act like we're like an 11-year-old and just seek to understand, not seek to change." (06:12)

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3. The First 30–45 Days: Deep Dive, Not Disruption (07:03–14:47)

• Audit All Departments:
  Marketing, Sales, Operations, Finance — walk through the entire customer journey and employee workflows in minute detail.

• Seek to Understand, Not Judge:

  • Use gentle curiosity, not judgment, even when inheriting chaotic or outdated systems.
  • "I'm not saying, 'This is weird, this is insane.' I'm seeking to understand." (08:56)

• Get in the Trenches:

  • Work side-by-side with employees. Deliver coffee, help with daily tasks, build rapport.

  "Do the small, unscalable things to really show that you're in the trenches with them..." (09:39)

• Memorable Quotes:

  • "People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care." (11:37)

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4. One-on-Ones: Superstar vs. Detractor (15:54–22:52)

• How to Have Effective One-on-Ones:

  • Approach every conversation with curiosity, positivity, and genuine interest.
  • Give everyone the benefit of the doubt—avoid snap judgments.

• How to Identify a "Superstar":

  • Solution-oriented, excited about opportunities, engaged in finding and implementing improvements.

• How to Identify a "Detractor":

  • Only focused on problems with no willingness or ideas for solutions; consistently negative attitude.

• Delivery Over Content:

  • "It's the energy and the essence of what they're saying... Are they solution-oriented or problem-oriented?" (19:44)

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5. Implementation Phase – After the Audit (23:06–33:14)

• Prioritize with Impact/Effort Matrix:

  • List all potential areas for improvement (post-audit), and score by impact (on revenue, expenses, morale) and effort required.
  • Execute only 3–5 high-impact initiatives for the next 90 days; everything else waits.

• John's Lesson:

  "If you're trying to fix everything, you'll fix nothing." (26:26)

• Solve Constraints Sequentially:

  • One main problem/constraint at a time: avoid launching ten solutions at once to avoid chaos and confusion about what is actually moving the needle.
  • "Having the least amount of variables possible when we're trying to implement new solutions." (28:29)

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6. The First 90 Days: What Success Looks Like (33:48–35:32)

• Benchmarks for a Successful Transition:
  • Team is bought in and aligned with new direction.
  • Leadership cadence is established (operational scorecards, regular meetings, one-on-ones).
  • Key initiatives from the implementation list are in motion (not everything at once).
  • Finances and customer retention are stable or improving.
  • Cody: "We're not trying to solve world hunger in the first 90 days... We're trying to build trust with the team." (34:06)

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7. Cautionary Tales – “Trust But Verify” (37:21–40:25)

• Even with all this, expect surprises:

  • Cody shares a story where an office manager sabotaged recruiting by simply ignoring applicants yet fabricated activity reports.
  • Lesson: Implement checks to verify what employees claim is happening (e.g., "physically sit with them," check systems, double-check communications).

• Quote (on verification):

  "Trust but verify... I was looking at top-line metrics, but not actually seeing if the work was being done." (40:00)

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8. Cody’s Closing Advice & Motivation (41:57–47:22)

• Change Takes Time:

  • Beware the temptation to overhaul everything—be patient and selective.

• Build Bridges:

  • Focus on relationships, respect established processes, move slowly with major personnel changes.

• Permanent Flexibility:

  "You can only fight so many battles at once... some other areas you're not necessarily happy with are just going to [have to] burn over there for a minute." (43:15)

• Why It’s Worth It:

  • Cody shares a before-and-after of his cleaning business acquisition: within one year, revenue and profit more than doubled, and the team culture was transformed.
  • “We get to have the opportunity to serve 50, 55 people...and actually pour into them and care about them, and like they are all, all on fire to help this company be successful because of the way that we treat them and because of the care that's actually there." (46:15)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:52 – The myth of hands-off small business ownership
• 02:29 – The must-do administrative tasks in week one
• 06:12 – Start of the “audit phase” and why you must seek to understand
• 09:39 – The value of getting “in the trenches” with your team
• 11:37 – “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care”
• 15:54–22:52 – How to approach staff one-on-ones; identifying future top talent or problem employees
• 23:06–26:32 – Impact/Effort Matrix—how to triage improvements after your audit
• 28:29 – Why you should solve one problem at a time
• 34:06 – Success benchmarks at 90 days
• 37:21 – “Trust but verify” as a business owner
• 41:57–44:00 – Final advice for first-time business acquirers
• 46:15 – Why the work pays off: Cody’s business transformation

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Notable Quotes

On Approach & Mindset:

• “Week one is chaos week. It's where the bodies are buried that you had no idea existed.” — Brian (02:53)
• "We come in and act like we're like an 11-year-old and just seek to understand, not seek to change." — Cody (06:12)
• "People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care." — Cody (11:37)
• “It's the energy and the essence of what they're saying... Are they solution-oriented or problem-oriented?” — Cody (19:44)
• “If you're trying to fix everything, you'll fix nothing.” — Cody (26:26)

On Leadership & Culture:

• “Go be with your people, ride a route, go be with them. Bring them coffee at 5 o'clock in the morning... Frickin' fill the coffee pot. Do the small, unscalable things...” — Brian (09:39)
• "The fastest way a business will go south, even the best business you buy, is if your team mutinies on you." — Brian (10:15)
• “We're not trying to solve world hunger in the first 90 days... We're trying to build trust with the team.” — Cody (34:06)

On Business Reality:

• “The only guarantee is that there’s going to be unknowns that you just don’t know that you don’t know.” — Cody (35:32)
• “Trust but verify.” — Cody (40:00)
• “You can only fight so many battles at once. Some of the other areas you're not necessarily happy with are just going to sit and burn over there for a minute and that's okay.” — Cody (43:15)

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Final Takeaways

• The first 90 days post-acquisition are about stability, observation, and rapport—not immediate transformation.
• Approach your new team with humility and curiosity; prioritize understanding existing workflows before making changes.
• Use structured tools (like an Impact/Effort Matrix) to prioritize changes, and solve one problem at a time.
• Constantly “trust but verify”—systems and people should not escape objective scrutiny.
• Above all, treat people well: culture is built early, and “people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
• The real upside is both financial and personal: transforming team culture and business performance can multiply enterprise value and job satisfaction for everyone involved.

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For more from Cody Barton:
Instagram: @codybartonofficial
Consulting: skillwithpros.com

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Transcript

[A]

All right, Cody Barton, welcome back to Action Academy podcast.

[B]

What's going on?

[A]

Round two, round three. Who's counting, man? For people that are brand new to the show, introduce yourself to the audience. Who are you? What are we doing today?

[B]

Awesome. Yeah. My name's Cody Barton here in Arizona and I've been working as an entrepreneur for 13 years now. And you know, it's lots of pain and suffering for the first years, figuring out a lot of things that worked and more things that didn't work. And over the last few years, collective portfolio of businesses is closing in on close to 60 million in revenue and team member count here in the US is over a hundred employees. Between the US based team members and in the Philippines, we have over 500 people working at one of our companies and about 10 million in real estate that I'm actively selling right now to just go more all in on buying businesses, but.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So what I want to focus on today is somebody is buying their first company. So you've bought multiple. You're doing almost $60 million of revenue through both buying companies and building companies. Hundreds of employees. We hear advice all the time about, I'm just going to passively buy a business and hire an operator. Right. I'm just going to have an operator do all the work. I'm going to sit at the beach, send my ties, and I'm going to be financially free and post videos about it. That's not true. So today what I want to talk about is nailing that 90 day transition and what a 90 day transition to a nine month transition to a nine year transition looks like after taking over a freaking business. Yep. So I think by the end of today's episode, people will have some really actionable and practical tools and roadmaps sequential step by step, like month one, do this month to do this month three, do this because it's just this void on the Internet where this information doesn't exist. But let's actually begin the conversation to let's say you have Jack and you have Jill. Right. Jack and Jill partner up together and let's say that they buy a decent business.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Just for the sake of this episode, they buy something that's doing a million dollars, maybe purchase price 300,000 some odd and SDE, they're partnering together. They're like, okay, we're both going to take $100,000 salaries from this. We're going to hire somebody. This is the game plan. Right. And now they go through the sba, they close. Congratulations, Jack. And Jill, you are now business owners of XYZ service company. Xyz, like small town that's tertiary to a major city that has a freaking Courtyard Marriott. I'm a business owner.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Now what? So let's start with the first week.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

What does that first week look like? Maybe give advice about where you see things go wrong in that first week and what your perfect first week would be. And then we'll extrapolate that out to 30 days, 90 days, all that exit.

[B]

Yeah, for sure. And I'm just going to make the assumption of the Jack and Jill business that they did really good due diligence and that all things were accurate and true of the business that they actually bought. And there's no surprises that first week.

[A]

Yeah. To your point, we'll say that Jack and Jill, for people that are in business acquisition, you'll really appreciate. Appreciate this was that they did perfect diligence and they perfectly bought the business. And still everything is wrong. Because week one is chaos week. It's chaos week. It's where the bodies buried that you had no idea existed.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely. It's actually funny because we're working with students of yours, Tyler and Mike, on the business that they just closed on and very similar numbers and all of this what they just bought. So when we're looking at the initial transition, the deal is closed. One of the things that we typically do when we're coming into a business is one, I'm not gonna go in and change a bunch of stuff. Week one, I'm not gonna do that. The only things I'm really going to change is make sure that I have the functional things in place to like legally do business the way that I need to. Like after all the docs are signed and we've closed the deal, we are now the owners of the business. I wanna make sure like my employees or the employees that are not mine actually have employment paperwork sign that they're now working for my company, not the old company that doesn't exist anymore. I want to make sure that I have bank accounts with like money in them and stuff. So when payroll is due that following week that those that money can go and actually pay those people and not scare all of those people that I'm just now I'm trying to build trust with that I'm not going to just blow up this thing. And that's called the place of their employment. It's a lot of just administrative things on the initial transition, like making sure that we have all of the legal stuff taken care of like the employment contracts are signed with all of the employees, we have bank accounts set up, we have the payroll system set up in the company, we have our HR system in place. We're in, in that process. Like just something that we do is we offer benefits and all the companies that we buy so we come in, we offer dental, vision, full medical. And upon that transition we like to give some good news which is hey, like we're, we're rolling out a benefit plan and so if someone's buying the business that you don't have to do that. But this is just like some of the things we initially do and it builds some favor with those people too. Of like o oh like this isn't going to just be bad. We're already getting like some benefits to this transition. So that's one of the first things is just making sure daily operations aren't going to be affected. We're able to collect money, we're able to pay money. Like those are just some of the basics. And then what we're actually going to begin doing is beginning what? Our three step process which is whether it's us buying or we're consulting with someone buying a deal, once we close on the deal, we're going to start our audit process and that's where we're going to spend really the first month and a half is not going in and fricking shaking trees and like jacking stuff up because we don't want to break things that are working. So instead the way that we come in and approach this is this audit phase is we come in and act like we're like an 11 year old and just seek to understand, not seek to change. And so we're going in and we're looking at from all areas, marketing, sales, ops, finance, seeking to understand all of those departments and how they're currently functioning today by whoever is actually doing those functions in the business. And so I can give a good example. When we initially bought the plant guy business a couple years ago, when I flew out there right after we closed the purchase and started this audit process and really what it looked like was I asked Matthew, I'm like, all right, Matthew, how the heck does someone buy this stuff here? Like where does this stuff come from? And I know the answers to some of these things, but I want the start to finish of the nitty gritty things that people are actually doing. So I hear the whole process not oh, we get leads and like we sell them and stuff. It's like where how do they come in so this was their process. Like, they would get an Instagram DM to Matthew's Instagram, interested in plants. He would screenshot that. He was literally like, I'm sitting there. He's like, I screenshot the message, I text it. And he points over to the other side of the, you know, the design center. And he's. My sales reps over there. I send the text message to them, and then one of them will heart the message. And whoever hearts it meant that they called them. And then I'm like, okay, then what happens? And he's. Then they either sell them or they don't. And I'm like, okay, then what happens? Where do they go if they don't get sold? And he's. That's it. They either get sold or they don't. And I was like, okay. So notice I didn't suggest people are probably getting a visceral reaction of it's not going in a CRM, because that's what I was thinking internally. But I'm just seeking to understand. I'm not trying to, like, do all make changes yet.

[A]

This is post acquisition.

[B]

This is post acquisition. Yeah. I already knew that. There is. Most of these things are jacked up. Like, this is stuff like, now I want the nitty gritty so then I could build the plan to fix. That's what I'm doing right now. So I'm like, okay, perfect. So that's how the leads are coming in, goes to the sales team. What happens when I walk over and ask the sales rep, okay, so you get a sale. How do you do that? Like, what's going on? Show me your computer. And then they, like, show, like, the invoice. And I'm like, then how the heck does, like, production know when a project sold? And they're like, oh, we print out this paper here. And then they, like, walk me over to the back of the design center, and we go in, like, the back room, and they have this wall. And that's, you know what trello is? It's like they literally have a trello board wall of these papers in the back of their office. And it's active projects, projects to be completed this week, problem projects. And it was just like, that was the wall. And I was like, okay, so this is how all of the production ends up happening here? And they're like, yeah. And I was like, how does production know which projects are going on? And they're like, oh, we'll show you. So then we literally. We're in the design center. Matthew takes me we hop in his car and we drive. It's two blocks away, so it's two minute drive to the production facility. We go inside, they have that same, you know, paper wall. And he's like, then we put the paper on the wall in here and then we'd show him like that's a project in the queue. And I'm like okay, perfect. And he's but if the project needs welding, we drive over to the welding shop and then we put the paper up there first and then it gets done and then the paper comes back to the production facility and then gets done. So like got it. Okay.

[A]

To just chaos. Yeah. Absolute chaos. And through this process I want to emphasize like you are not saying that. Hey, this is weird. This is insane. This is done. This is how. Oh, we need to change that. Oh my God. Have you guys do you know we could do this online. You're just like, oh, oh okay, tell me more.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Oh okay.

[B]

I'm seeking to understand exactly. Yes.

[A]

I think that's so important because people are going to come in and a lot of the people that are buying these companies are going to come from a corporate background.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And so a lot of the people that are working at the companies that you're buying have never been in corporate.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And so there's going to, you're going to try to have like square peg solutions for round hole problems.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. So I like that you're saying that. And another thing that I'd like to add to what you're talking about is like when we're buying a company, the first thing that we want to do is we hear a lot about scale passivity. Work on the business, not in the business. I would say for that first 30 days at minimum to 90 days, it's no work in the business.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Go be with your people, ride a route, go be with them. Bring them coffee at 5 o' clock in the morning, ask them questions for your like your text, get to know them like help like frickin fill the coffee pot. Do the small unscalable things to like really show that you're in the trenches with them and there's nothing that's like beneath you. Yeah. I think that's super important. And that's just like a really old school how to win friends and influence people thing. Yeah. That if you do that like your people freaking ride or die for you. Because the fastest way that a business will go south, even the best business that you buy is that you're going to have your team like Fricking mutiny on you. And either they're going to either rage quit or they're just going to do something that's even worse, which is half ass. The position just good enough or they don't get fired. Yeah. But they're never going to get you.

[B]

The extra effort 100%. And that's where in that process. And I recommend this to anyone that's acquiring a company. Don't go in the big dick guy. That's. I know exactly how to fix all these problems. You guys are idiots. This is. I ran inefficiently. This is being done terribly.

[A]

I'm a 35 year old business owner. I'm a 30 year old business owner now.

[B]

Yeah. It's like you need to go in and be humble and you need to go in and seek to understand and seek to build bridges and build relationships. That's my entire goal. Like people need to understand, like when you're buying a business that one of the scariest things for all of the people that work in that business is that the business is being sold and they're going from a known to an unknown. They know even if they didn't even like their old boss, that was the old owner. It's a devil they knew to a devil maybe that they don't know. And so one. That's why like when we acquired the plant guy, like one of the first, like I, I flew to Florida. Like I went there with my head of ops and we went to build bridges. We're shaking everyone's hand. We're high five and we're looking at their work. We're. Oh my. Like you guys are so talent. We're building relationships and showing that we care. We're showing because people don't know how. They don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. So we're in there to build the bridge and build relationships.

[A]

I like that. People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. Yeah, I'm still on that one.

[B]

Yeah, it's a writer downer stealing that from you.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So that's, that's how we, that's how we want to go in because we're. We all of these people, we need for this thing to be successful. And the last thing I want to do is create a mutiny. So I want to go in there and build bridges. I want to bring in snacks. I want to bring in donuts. Like when we came in there, we were buying. We brought in lunch and breakfast and snacks. And we're trying to, we're trying to make friends here. And we're going through that process. And like, obviously as I'm going through that, I'm making notes, I'm not just like blindlessly, okay, what's happening next? I'm notating all of these areas of opportunity, of things that we can improve. Like I'm going through that audit from start to finish. Marketing, how opportunities come in, sales, how the conversion event happens, operations, fulfillment, how do we actually deliver on the thing that we just sold? And then finance, how are we counting all of the beans and making sure from a cash flow management standpoint things are being done correctly. Like all like start to finish.

[A]

And so it's a customer journey.

[B]

Yeah, it's the whole customer journey and understanding what everyone does too. I like to go and ask what people are doing and what they're working on, what they like about what they do. And one of the other things that we do when we initially come in is we do an ENPS survey. So an employee net promoter score survey. And the reason that we do this as part of our audit process is I want to understand what's the pulse on this team? Like, how are people feeling? And the best way to solve a problem is by actually getting the feedback from the person doing the job in the role that has the problem. People too oftentimes try to make decisions from their ivory tower of this is what's best for the company. And it's like, why don't we ask the front facing customer experience person how to make the customer experience better? Because they're dealing with it every single day more than anyone else in the company. And so that's when we go in, we do that survey and we do it anonymously too. Because I want real feedback. I want to hear tell me the bad. I want to know if there's bodies buried, let me know so we can go figure out what we got to do with them. So we do that survey and identify how happy basically the team members are. And then asking them, what would you do to make the environment better to work in? What would be, what are things that you would like to see the company do differently? What would make your job easier? What would make it easier for you to serve the customer? Whatever their, the thing they do in their role. And we get the most valuable feedback in that process because they, and especially when it's anonymous, they like, well, they'll write freaking paragraphs of crap of like things that they're like, this needs to change the old owner Always would do this, and it's so stupid, and it should be done differently. And it's like we get gold from that. So it's really. And I know it's like we're not doing a lot in this process. We're seeking to understand and we're building out. Okay, here are the 50 things. I literally remember myself and my head of ops, Adriana, we're sitting there with Matthew and then their ops manager named Christine. And we're like, man, like, we had this list of 50 things that we were. We wanted to change once we finished this audit process. And the next thing is, okay, what do we even attack first? Like, how do. It's overwhelming because there's so much change that you want to do. And the next part of our process is we go from audit to then begin implementation here.

[A]

Let's pause really quickly there, because I want to double click on a few different parts of this audit tactically. So first off, some bullet points from that to let you catch your breath here, because this is like when I talk about marketing and sales, this is you, like, talking about operations. It's awesome. It's fun to watch a few different parts of that. What a wonderful way to build rapport, to be having these conversations with people. Seriously. Like, instead of think about the difference between business owner, A that goes in, doesn't listen to this podcast. They come in and they're like, we're gonna change this, this, this, this, this. And you think that that is how you build rapport, but really it's. You gotta get the weigh in before the buy in. Yeah, you can make the same decision. This is business ownership 101. You made the same decision. But if you're. If you give the credit to the team member. Team member is the one that came up with the idea that is a freaking raving fan for life. So the quote that I love is, it's a cash and credit business. I'll take the cash, you get the credit.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

So it's just go and build that rapport. So before we get into the implementation stage, I want to tactically be a fly on the wall with you in the conference room, in your office as we're having these meetings. I want to have three separate meetings. But. And I want to get your opinion on this.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So it's the first 30 days and you're having these one on ones with people where you're like, tell me more about this. Tell me more about this. What do those conversations look like? And two important deviations to the Same question. What does that conversation look like with someone that is obviously, like, you are a superstar. You are so undervalued.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I'm going to be leaning on you a lot.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I'm going to give you so much more opportunity. Yeah. And then what does that same conversation look like with someone that very obviously is. You're a problem. Like, I cannot wait to fire you. Yeah. But I'm not going to let you know that yet.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So general framework of what a conversation looks like with an employee, a one on one, and then a one on one with someone that you're like, you're crushing, and then someone. And then you're like, I'm probably gonna fire you. And this is all within the first 30 days before you're doing anything.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. The general conversation is. It's one, seek to understand process, start to finish. So I'm gonna do, like, general customer journey, start to finish, and, like, how all that's happening. And then I'll go a little bit granular into the individual's processes of the main function. So I'll sit with the sales rep up and I'll just have them, like, show me their workflow. Hey, Brian. Yeah. Let's sit. This is. I was literally doing this, and this is. I've already owned that business for a couple years, but I like, sat with our sales rep to see. I. I was in Florida a couple months ago, and I was just like, show me your workflow now. What? So I could see the progress and then maybe other areas of opportunity. So I just sat down next to Chess and I just kicked up. And I'm like, all right, walk me through this. Show me. Show me how you work you get in the morning. Take me through the thing. And I'm just like, in, like, a cheery attitude. I'm not like, show me how. I'm like, like having a good time. It's like, we just had coffee together. It's like, all right, let's do this thing. I'm just here to figure out how do we make this easier, better, and more efficient for you to make more money. So I'm like, that's the energy, the attitude. Regardless of who the person is, that's the energy I'm trying to come at it with. And I have them show me how they're doing it. I'm there making my notes. I'm like, oh, like, that's really inefficient. Or, oh, this is good that she's doing this. We should make sure that in. In our process that's being done by all the reps. So that's what I'm doing with those individuals. And so. So I'm not. I'm not really. Regardless whether it's like in. In the beginning stage, whether someone may be a problem or not, I like to give everyone the benefit of the doubt of, okay, everyone's like, oh, Bob's freaking annoying, but if Bob is actually really good and it's just people don't like Bob because he, like, pushes people to be better. Bob may not be the problem. It may be other people that are the problem. So I want to give everyone the benefit of the doubt and form my own opinion. Like, I'm not going to just take everyone's opinion for what it is. Like, I want to get context.

[A]

Any rules of thumb that you give to recognize superstars and detractors.

[B]

Superstars are typically the people that are like, they're looking for solutions, are excited about the company, they're excited about the opportunity, they're excited about their work.

[A]

Like, solution oriented.

[B]

Yeah, they're solution oriented. They're like, thinking of, oh, we could do this. We could. This is something we've never done, but with your guys's help, like, maybe we could do that. That's like the type of conversation you're having. Like, the detractor is someone that's like pulling teeth to get information from them in general. And they like, just. Just not giving you anything. But I'll still make that person take me through their process. I'm like, okay. It's like John's. Maybe they're just a super shy person. And I'm like, I'm not gonna hold that against John. It's just, okay, John, walk me through this. So take me through, like, your finance process. Like, how are you doing the purchasing? Or how are you doing the orders? Like, and then as they're going through it, and if he. If the person's man. And yeah, this part's so annoying. I'm like, oh, man. Yeah, that's. That freaking sounds annoying. What would you do different? How would you like to see it be done? And so that's like, how I'm going through those conversations.

[A]

What's the balance that somebody can take from this to where they can say, okay, this person is giving me really good feedback about the critical issues with the business. They're bringing up good quality problems versus this person is a complainer, chronic complainer.

[B]

I think it's the energy and the essence of what they're saying. We've had times where it's like someone's. This is. This part of the process is really. It's just. This thing is really. It's been broken for months, and no one's really done anything about it. And I really wish it could be like this because I know it would be so much better that I want that, not the person that's just, oh, my gosh, the process is so freaking bad. Like, it's. It's a freaking disaster. And like, they're just. It's the energy thing and solution of it could be better. I'm excited for it to be better versus just. I'm just gonna. And moan about it being bad.

[A]

Yeah. And I want to tie this all back to something called career capital. You. And I just did a podcast episode where I was a guest on yours, and I was talking about how a major reframe that you can make while you're sitting in your corporate cubicle today is instead of viewing yourself as being in this freaking prison, white collar prison, view yourself as, dude, I'm getting paid to learn.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like, I'm getting paid to learn these freaking skills. And so I'm saying all of this is somebody. When I went into my sales position, I sold uniforms.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And so when you get your territory, you normally have, on average, 13 route reps that are like the people that are out driving in the box trucks, flipping doormats, filling up soap dispensers, and, like, giving people their uniforms. And so I went to the top rep in the company, top sales rep that sold the uniforms to these companies, because I was going to factories, grease shops, all these places. And they said, you got to get to know your reps. You got to get to know your drivers. Your people call them SSRs, service sales reps. And so I was like, all right, I'm going to do that. So at five o' clock in the morning, my happy tail was in the freaking route room, like, with coffee and freaking biscuit ready for my guy. And I'm like, yo, I'm gonna ride with you. Yeah, I'm gonna. I'm gonna help. I'm gonna help you flip baths. I'm gonna help you, like, scan uniforms. That's what I'm gonna do for all day.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And it's just. That is how it became one of the top reps in the company was because then they would go out and they'd say, hey, like, I've got this lead. The new factory's open across the street. You need to go in there. I'm friends with the ops Director, go do it.

[B]

Yeah, dude.

[A]

Like just rolling up your sleeves and getting in with your people, it's a big thing. But to that point to like Mike land this. There's this one guy, Mike just bitched.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

24 7.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And Mike was good enough to where he could never get fired.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But man, Mike bitched and like he was just the worst. And there wasn't a day that I was with him that he didn't complain about something.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And so that's why I wanted to ask that question from that lens. Yes. To where it's like how to distinguish between a chronic complaint or somebody that you're like. And it just sounds like delivery is the answer.

[B]

It's how they deliver it. And it's like are they seeking for a solution or they just want to complain about it?

[A]

Correct. If they're like problem oriented versus solution oriented. Yeah.

[B]

It's like they're bringing a problem that they can't solve because like sometimes they cannot legitimately solve it. It's like the payment processor that our old owner chose to use is bad and it sucks and it makes the experience bad for the customer. And internal use. It's. We should change that. I would agree with you. That is a problem. And like we should change. So it's just like where is it coming from? Versus just. I just don't like where our office is.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And it's okay. We're not changing the office.

[A]

Yeah. You know what I mean? It sounds like the answer there is problem. Be paying attention for people listening and people watching. Pay attention to are they solution oriented or problem oriented.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So now let's move into phase two, which is now we've conducted our thorough audit, we call it, for 30 days. Yeah. Yeah. We've had our one on ones. We know the customer journey from freaking dollar like the start of the sale to fulfillment. Yep. Now how do we start the rollout?

[B]

Yep. Then we use a tool which is called like our impact Effort analyzer tool, which is basically a very, very non fancy thing that we built on a Google sheet for those that are like, oh, what's this tool? It's on a Google sheet. It's basically just a rating system that we built internally to use to help us make decisions of what we want to attack first or not. And so basically the filter is what are like what things? So we'll go back to that list. Right. It's like we have a list of 50 things that we want to do. Obviously we can't do 50 things at the same Time because we'll get no traction because it's just too many things to change. So we look at, at what are the top 50 of those 50 things. Let's go ahead and let's rank all of those by impact. And the way that we give the rating on impact, it's like a scale of 1 to 5 is the things that are going to, that could make a drastic positive change in increasing revenue, highest impact or could increase, decrease expenses significantly. Super high impact as well. And there's also things in there that are not monetary. It's like we could increase the team's morale massively, which we'd still consider high impact. Happy team members equals happy customers. Happy customers reward you with dollar bills. And that's what we were looking for. So we, we look at that and that impact as well. Because I want my team to be happy and so that, so we rate all of them. So of those 50 things maybe we uncover that 10 out of the 50 have a rating of 5 impact on there. So it's okay, we're probably going to look at those 10 things as like maybe our most important. But then we're going to look at what's the effort. For example, maybe it would be a major impact for us to roll out a new CRM system into the company. But that's a high effort thing. It's like when we went into Black guy for example, just a good example to use is they were using no technology, they were using a paper trello system. Like they didn't have an inventory system that like the business partner there, Matthew and I was like yeah, we're going to implement a CRM. He's like a cr. What he's what the hell is that? And these are like his old team, none of them had worked in a CRM before. So this is like foreign language. So like how hard is it to then get a team that's never used this tool to use the tool and use it every day in their life when they've been working there for years. Never using the tool like that is a big effort thing to be able to execute and you have to get a lot of buy in or the weigh in and to get the buy in to actually use it. And just using that as an example of like on effort we rate those two by a scale of one to five. And so what kind of weighs into that a high effort thing would be multiple team members have to be involved in it. It this is a multi week or multi month project to actually get it done. And it's going, there's going to be a lot of working hours from multiple team members to actually execute on that. So that's how we kind of will rate that. And so what we try to do and it's not, there's not perfect decisions on this. There's a little bit of science and there's a little bit of this is what makes the most sense based on like where the business is right now and what we need to focus on. So like we try to use that as our decision making tool and then from there we try to take, okay, these are the 10 things let's turn, let's look at. Let's take three to five of those as our rocks potentially for the next three months that we want to really focus on. And if we got only those few things done, like we would have a rock star next first 90 days working on this business. And so that's what we'll do. And those will maybe wondering, what do you do with other 45 things? They wait. And there's things that we didn't like that we just waited on. Because you can't fix everything at the same time. Because then you, if you're trying to fix everything, you'll fix nothing.

[A]

Double click on that. Biggest lesson that I learned from Q1 of this year was solve problems, solve constraints in a vacuum.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

One at a time. So an example of that. And also one constraint, one solution at a time. Yeah. Because what we tried to do is we had a marketing constraint in our company and we tried to solve it. You were there along for the ride.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Chaos. Yeah. I was like, okay, cool. So like we need more people to know about Action Academy. So we should do, double down Instagram and do. And hire a podcast contractor for six figures. And we should also hire marketing and email and we should do ads and we should do this, blah, blah, blah. And I'm going to hire a creative director to help me do YouTube and an executive assistant. So I hired, I went and just threw money at the problem because I thought that throwing money at the problem would be the solution. But the problem was that I knew what the primary constraint was, but I was trying to solve it 30 different ways.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And so can you double, can you talk about this? Because I burned. I probably lit 2, $300,000 on fire doing that. Yeah. And now I came back to Instagram.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

We are just doubling down on Instagram because if we double down on Instagram, a good Instagram post for me is 20,000 people. A great Instagram post for me is 2 million people.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So I'm like, if I just make great posts, then that reaches more people and then that those more people can then convert to podcast listeners. So, like, the primary constraint to grow the show, grow the business, grow everything. So nothing else matters. Only Instagram. And so can you talk about the importance of that? Because somebody may see one of these problems that is on this list of 50 and they're like, okay, cool, we're going to solve that constraint. We need to do lead flow. We immediately need to do pay per click ads, we need to do Google SEO, we need to do Facebook ads, meta ads. We probably need to hire an outbound sales team and they're going to start like, coming up all these solutions. So walk us through this process about, like, how do you decide what solution? And like, one singular solution to focus on.

[B]

Yeah. Once we, like, say that we identified those five things that are going to be those projects. Right. We want to look at, like, having the least amount of variables possible. When we're like, trying to implement new solutions.

[A]

I can't see what's working.

[B]

Yeah, you can't see what's working. It's like, you want to, like, the only valuable thing I probably got from like, science class is like the scientific method. It's if you change too many variables, you don't know which variable made the difference positively or negatively. It's like we, we try to make those decisions with very little variable changes at a time so that we're able to see, like, what's making the impact. And so when it comes to marketing, it's okay. Maybe it's just picking one marketing channel. Like, we're doing that with the cleaning company right now. It's like, we're just doing meta ads and other people are like, why aren't you guys doing Google? Why aren't you guys doing direct mail? Why aren't you guys doing flyers? Why aren't you doing that? And like, we are just doing meta and we are going to continue to do meta until it doesn't work or until we reach what might be a saturation point where the cost per lead isn't at this, it's not at our advantage anymore. And then we'll add the next marketing channel. Like, it's to try to not make things more complicated than they need to be because it's already hard. Like when you're running ads, like, you ought to be testing new creatives every week, and as you're figuring out which hook worked the best, which one got the best click through rate which one got you the best cost per lead that then less to the bet in the cleaning business, like the right cost per booked clean, the average order value of that first clean, the lifetime value. So it's like we're trying to have the least amount of variables. So that's for example like why we're only doing that with the cleaning company is like we're going to do meta. We will add in Google, we will add in these other ones. But it's like we are focusing on the one thing.

[A]

Do you have a rule of thumb for like timeline on this? You're like, okay, this quarter we're doing this or is it something to where you can like almost do the 3069 for each strategy? Because there's some where I'm like okay, cool. So for instance like at what point can we say Instagram is done? Now I feel good about adding meta ads. Now I feel good about adding email. Like that's something that we're working on.

[B]

Yeah, I think some of it too is like the capital available to do it.

[A]

True.

[B]

Because like you can rip starting multiple of them if you have the team and the right amount of capital to burn for a little bit longer.

[A]

But we had the right amount of capital. We didn't have the right amount of bandwidth.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. The bandwidth becomes the problem. So it's like you gotta have the bandwidth and the team to be over all of it till that's like excruciatingly watching it to make sure that it's working. And for example like perfect clean. Like part of the reason I don't want to expand to those other areas is that business is, it's grown significantly since we came into it. But it's the nets around 50 grand a month as of the recording of this podcast. And we're, it's not if it was netting a hundred grand, 120, 150, 200 grand a month. It's. I can throw larger test samples at some of these other ad types and, and be running those. But it's for right now we're, we don't, we aren't. It's not, it's, it is not tons of cash that's spitting off every month. It's. I want to be focused in on one and really squeeze the, I want to squeeze the lemon on that one to get the most out of it that I can. And there's a lot to go like most marketing channels like Google Ads, met ads like you can. So you could be spending a hundred grand a Month or more on those. A lot of times people think, oh, am I getting saturated because I'm spending 10 grand a month or 15 grand a month, it's like there's people spending a hundred thousand a day, day on ads and it's like you are not at a saturate. People aren't at a saturation point, but they think they need to be diversified in channels. I think it starts to make sense to diversify the channel so you're not like on one channel that God forbid, like your ads account goes down for a week, it's like detrimental to your business. So I think it is smart to have a couple pillars of how you get business for sure. But if you get up meta ads like just for like what you're doing with Action Academy and you get meta ads up and you're spending 20, 30, 40, 50 grand a month and it's like working profitably. So then it's like, okay, driving more into email marketing, maybe switching obviously from an agency standpoint, getting someone else to be overseeing that. And like I start to look at all the other efficiencies in the business before I'm going to add on more channels. So like with Perfect Clean, for example too, we're doing the marketing of meta ads specifically. But I want to stop any leaks in the bucket where there's no. They didn't have any email marketing going to leads that are coming in. So like we're really focusing on refining the email marketing to all of those people that are in the ecosystem and like the SMS marketing that's going out to those people. So we're really refining in like how fast the sales team's following up with those leads. So it's like we're scaling the ads up, but at the same time we're really working the efficiencies around the leads that are coming in to squeeze, you know, squeeze the lemon, I'm going to squeeze the orange out of everything we can get out of those opportunities before we just throw more opportunities. More opportunities. And it's like, where are these ones coming from and which ones should we optimize? So that's. And it just takes time to do all that.

[A]

Yeah. It comes back to what Hormozi says, which is like more better renewal do.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So it's just like first focus on better improving efficiencies, then more so. Okay, cool. Step one, let's make sure that everything that we're doing is the right stuff.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Step two is let's make. Okay, once we figure out what the right stuff is scale the hell out of it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

We're doing a hundred to a thousand.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

If this outbound cold call, cold calling is working 10 exit hire more.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like mailers send 10x more.

[B]

Just keep sending.

[A]

And then before you do new, new. So let's walk through. So now you've got like the implementation began.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So by day 90 post business acquisition, what are some good benchmarks that you like to see you and your team where you're like okay cool, we've got some traction here. I feel like this is, we can plant our flag in the ground and say this is a successful business. Like this is a successful transition.

[B]

Yeah. During over that first three month period things I like to see is like we have like good like teams, team overall, like buy in and like how we're now doing the business. Because one of the things that we're going to be doing when we come in is we're implementing our the way that we do leadership meetings. It's like we're bringing the team in, we're building a company scorecard. We're then going to have a regular cadence of those meetings. We're then going to start doing one on having leaders doing one on ones with their team. So like really that first 90 days is just working to execute those three to five things that we be put on there to execute and then getting our system of how we do our weekly meetings, how we track the numbers for the company and how like then the team, the teams are doing their one on ones with their team members. If all of those things happen in those first three months, I'm like that's a win. We're not trying to solve world hunger in the first 90 days. We're trying to build trust with the team members. We're trying to make sure all things are integrated correctly. We want to be. The financials are being closed correctly. Hopefully we don't see like a big dip in customer loss or anything like that. And then we just have the team like starting to from like row in the same direction like getting everyone aligned and this is where we're going. But the thing to say to that too for everyone is like business is messy. Like it's just business is messy and expect that. And especially on acquisitions because there's all the things that can come up during that time that you just don't know. That you don't know.

[A]

And that body almost is the only guarantee.

[B]

Yeah it just there's the only guarantee is that there's going to be unknowns that you just, just are going to uncover, like within the cleaning company. We, when we came in, I was like, I mentally, I didn't say this to anyone. I was just like, we're going to be able to fix this recruiting thing no problem. Because they're like, oh, our constraint is we can't recruit enough cleaners. We have, we can get all the business in the world, but we can't recruit cleaners. And I'm like, we're going to solve that. In my head, confidently, I'm like, oh, we're going to solve this. And within two months we were trying to implement these things and we uncovered one of those things that we uncovered was the gal that was in charge of it was just straight lying and saying that things like literally completely untrue things about what was going on with applications coming in. Like, we were implementing this stuff. And she's like, yeah, no, no one calls back. No one's responding or coming that. No one wants to come into an interview. Like, we can't hire people, you guys, as the owners and stuff. You guys need to figure out another way. So our partners that their. This is a true story, they're like, okay. So they went and hired an agency to help us recruit cleaners for this like couple month period. So they spent like 40, 50 grand and like recruiting agency fees to get more cleaners in because we couldn't uncover this. And I was scratching my head cause I'm like, what the. Like, I don't understand. We should be able to do this at the same time. Within three, four months, like we rolled out the company's mission, the vision, the core values, this team member that, that was saying this stuff about the recruiting behemothly, like just, just adamantly hated the vis. The vision, the values was not aligned. Didn't like him, was like, I don't like this. It's always been this way. I don't like this new direction. Long story short, we had to, we had to let the lady go. She was our ops manager, she was office manager and she was a negative, negative lady.

[A]

So what was she, what metrics was she lying about with the applicants?

[B]

She literally was saying she was reporting that she was doing things and she wasn't doing anything of them. So we would be funneling like applications in and she's, yeah, I'm calling them and she'd tell us numbers and yep, reached out to this many this week. This many. I tried to get in for an interview. No one showed. No one showed. And we're like. And so we're scratching our head, like, what is going on? We end up getting. Ryan, my partner there, gets her phone. There was close to 700 text messages from, like, applicants and stuff that were, like, following up to do interviews. She was ignoring all of them.

[A]

This is terrifying because they're even feeding. I'm in a position where I'm like, what if that's happening to us? Not to say that it is. That's terrifying.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So what are some, like, strategies and stuff that you can give to, like, double check? Because, like, you don't know these people. They don't know you. There's no trust or loyalty there. And they could be telling you all the right stuff. And I can. I would go as far as to say that it's almost a certainty that it will happen at some point.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

So. So what are some ways that you can sniff through it a little bit?

[B]

Yeah, yeah. So one of the things is, like, trust but verify. Like, I think what we could have, in hindsight, could have done sooner was because we let that go on for a couple months and, like, we were like, okay. Within the first month, it was like, okay, maybe the way that we're advertising for cleaners is bad.

[A]

That's where I would start.

[B]

So that's where we started. So we're like, okay, let's change, like, job description. Yeah, let's change up our job description. Let's change, like, what we're calling the title. Let's change where there. Let's test some other places that we could be posting. Let's join a bunch of the Facebook groups so we could have some posts going there. So we're like, we're doing all of those things. And so this is like over a month. And then that next month it's, yeah, no one's still coming in. And we're like, what the. What is going on? And so then we, at that time then have to hire the agency. So, like, some of the team's attention has to go to that because they're like, okay, we just need circuiting candidates coming in because, like, we. We got cars that need cleaners. And, like, the cars are. And they're not making money. They need to make money. Like, these are assets when they're making money, they're liabilities when they're not. And so it was really over a couple month period of time. And I think the thing that we could have done. I was unclear of this at the time, which is just, like, things that you learn upon transitions, the things you don't know that you don't know. I didn't know it was on like a company phone that was just like an iPhone that was just her phone that she would use. And like all of the texts and like calls that were coming from for like the interest would go to that phone. So I didn't check that. I just, I didn't think to check it. I was just like, okay, looking at how many applications we got, how many people actually came in for an interview, how many got hired, how many made it to training, how many past training, and how many make it past the first 30 days. That's what I was looking at. And I was just like, what the is going on in this.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

In this thing?

[A]

Trust but verify.

[B]

Yeah. So the trust but verify would have been like, that would have been just going like a little bit deeper to. I probably future now would be like my partner Ryan would be like, Ryan, go sit with her and go through the process with her and just. Is she just like really just misrepresenting the company? Is she just really bad at explaining, like what it. How the benefits are to work here? She was just ignoring them all. Just straight ignoring them all. Didn't want to do the work.

[A]

It's the sucky part, man, because it's. Right now it's like we're having a bit of a dip because now we have 3x lead flow, right. So you solve a constraint at a single time. So it's just breaking down each step of the process. But to like wrap things up for people right now, because now they're like, I see somewhere things can go wrong. Yeah. And I will say this. The coolest part about business ownership is like, it would never be perfect, but it's always messy.

[B]

It's always messy.

[A]

There's always going to be fires to put out. There's always going to be stuff to do. So at the end of the day, like, that's why you get freaking compensated. That's why you get paid. And when you get really good at this stuff, then that's where you have other people that are the ones that are putting out these fires that you only will focus on like one. Like you're not going to be like just chilling, chilling all the time. But you can have, hey, these buckets of fires, like this fire, this fire, these are my fires. Bring me these fires and I'm going to solve those. And those are the biggest problems. Like the biggest fire that you're going to solve, most likely as a business owner, is hiring, like talent. Yeah, Hiring, attracting, retaining talent. That's going to be the big thing. So in closing, if you could give somebody like just some closing pieces of advice for that transition period. And now they're like, come into this, they're like, okay, so from what Cody was saying, I'm going to audit for the first 30 days, then after that we're going to do this implementation process. Then we're going to trust but verify that they're actually doing what they're saying that they're doing. And we're going to come behind to really sit with them through the process.

[B]

Literally physically sit with them.

[A]

Physically sit with them through the process. Is there anything else in closing or any closing words of advice that you would give for people going through the process to make it as smooth as possible?

[B]

Yeah, just be careful with the amount of changes you want to make. You come in, people come in all hot and heavy on all of the ideas that they want to change, but forget that. There's people that are working in this company that have worked there for three years, five years, 10 years, 17 years, doing it the same way day for 17 years. And you think you're gonna just change the entire company and the way that they operate in 60 days? Not gonna happen. It's just not gonna happen. So it's like being patient with. It's gonna take longer than you hope, than you think it's going to take. It just will. So you have to have some grace for that because you're coming in and trying to shake things up on. These old boring, stale businesses are that way for a reason. They're stale and like they haven't had, had things being changed up all the time. So these people get into a rut. So it's like you really have to go in, build the relationships, build the bridges with the people. Don't try to change a ton of things at once. Pick a few key things, start working on those. Understand that some of the other areas you're not necessarily happy with are just going to be. They're just going to sit and burn over there for a minute and that's okay. And that's just it just, you can only fight so many battles at once. You have so much energy and time and the team's time. So just working through that and continuously building, weigh in from the team and the buy in. And then, you know, if you're going to be making personnel changes, obviously like moving people that are just like a detriment to the business out, just be very cautious. And the bridges that you build with maybe some of the positive team members getting feedback from them of what would go wrong if, like, Bob wasn't here anymore. Like, getting, like, understanding, like, the consequence, especially in these older businesses or where there's not a lot of documented processes, if some. The wrong person goes out and it's. Oh, Bob was the only one that knew the ordering person that we'd call at where our main vendor was, and they'd be like, where. No one has this. And it's now your sol. So it's. You gotta be careful on those major changes. So that would be my. My, I guess, Cliff Notes of a few things just to be careful of.

[A]

Yeah. It's a lot of work. Last question. Can you give some advice to somebody or gives maybe some, like, words of motivation.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

To where somebody's listening to this, and if they made it this far, they're like, they're probably really serious about doing this.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And this sounds really hard and really difficult because this is, like, not a fluffy podcast episode. This is one where you're like, yo, let's tell you what the real.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

What makes all this worth it? Give them some, like, a pep talk maybe.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You're like, okay, this sounds a lot. But I promise you, here's the upside to doing all this successful.

[B]

Yeah. We can just take, like, the cleaning company for an example. It's like a more recent one. It's. So I have this. This company with Perfect Clean and came in. They're doing 1.8, 1.9 million a year, 3 to 5% net profit. Not great. Right? We say that is not great. And within eight, nine months of coming in and working with these guys, not only have we seen a transformation from the business financially, it's now we're on a run rate where. Where just. If we just stay on what we're doing monthly, we'll hit 4 million this year, and we're at 8. We're almost at 19% net profit. So it's like significant change. Eight, nine months. And we'll probably end up further because we're just. Each month, we're just steadily growing. So it's like, all that's great. It's also really amazing is like, we've. We've built the team in a way where we brought in a new ops manager and we got in some new supervisors. We literally transformed the culture there where we hit. We have the most amount of reviews for a residential cleaning company in the state of Arizona on Google right now. And we hit over a thousand reviews on there two weeks ago. And so I go into, so Ryan, Zach, the partners there, we go to the office and we just want to go celebrate the team. So I like go meet them over there and I got these balloons that just a thousand on balloon. Bring it into the office manager and our customer service gals. And so we just go in there and we're like celebrating with them and they're just like all excited and hugging us and just all of the work that's went into that and it's just like the culture, culture has shifted significantly from this like kind of negative, stale environment. So the team loves each other, they're excited. In a business where like cleaning's not that exciting, it's cleaning houses, it's hard work. And so it's like we, we now have this team that's just enthusiastic. They, they're like high fiving each other, they're laughing, they're having a good time. We're in there celebrating and they're like referring their friends to come work at the company now. And it's just like this complete transformation. So it's like from a fulfillment standpoint to have a team of people. Like we have close to 50 people between cleaner supervisors and office staff there. And then in the Philippines we have another five team members that do sales and admin. So it's like we, we get to have the opportunity to serve 50, 55 people, jobs and families from a financial standpoint, but also give them a great place to work and actually pour into them and care about them and like they are all, all on fire to help this company be successful because of the way that we treat them and because of the care that's actually there. And it's real like from a value alignment, mission and vision and it's making money. And over that time we increase the enterprise value by over a million dollars. And by the end of this year we'll be, I mean by the probably this summer we'll be on a run rate where this business is making 100 grand a month in net profit, like this summer. So like around 12 months.

[A]

Months.

[B]

So that's cool too. So all the goodness.

[A]

So in closing, people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.

[B]

Yeah, that's it.

[A]

Let's go, dude. If people want to find out more about you, if they want to learn more about all this stuff from you, where can they go?

[B]

Yeah, check me out on Instagram. Cody Barton, official. I post on there sporadically. I should be more consistent like you on there and otherwise find out about what we do with our consulting company, skillwithpros.com and we can get you the info for the show notes.

[A]

Rock and roll. Cody, thanks for coming on, buddy.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely.

[A]

Go hang out in Scottsdale a few times this week. All right, guys, it's been Cody and Brian with the Action Academy podcast signing off.

[B]

Peace.