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- [00:00]
A
So I love to preach the more of those buyer criteria that you can hit as an entrepreneur, provide fewer excuses for a buyer not to buy from you, the more successful you're going to be.
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Welcome to Built online. I'm Cody McGuffey and this podcast is all about one thing. Building the business of your dreams. Selling art, teaching classes, starting a blog, launching a brand. Whatever your passion is, we show you how to turn it into real income. I created Everbee to help anyone with a dream start in scale business. Ever be, ever be ever be Ever.
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Be, ever be, ever be.
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B
We now serve over 800,000 creators all across the globe. On this show, we bring on real entrepreneurs who've done it. They share their secrets, they share their failures. The exact steps that you can take to get started. What if you can get one golden nugget out of today's episode? And it's the breakthrough that takes you from just dreaming to actually living a life on your terms. At Everbee, we believe that every human is a creator. And you and every creator should own a business. Jim, welcome. How are you, Cody?
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A
I'm doing awesome on a beautiful spring day. Thanks for having me.
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B
I appreciate you coming in. As I mentioned before, we hit record, I'm very excited to extract your learnings throughout your. Your career of entrepreneurship and leadership. And I'm excited to just kind of share that with everyone listening here today.
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A
I'm excited to share it as well. I learned a lot of hard lessons.
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B
I want to kind of just briefly introduce what I see on paper and then I want you to fill in the gaps wherever, wherever there is. And I know there's a lot more to you than just this, but I, I guess on LinkedIn you would describe yourself as the Vistage chair, author, speaker, product thought leader and preacher, growth strategy expert. And the way that I would take this all in as you are a, a founder, you're an entrepreneur, you are a builder, you are a creator, and you are a leader. Someone that deeply cares. And for that to all be true, you have to be somebody that deeply cares about one. Your, your craft, which is. Seems like it's business to me and to the people you care about, is. Is all about people, just human beings in general. Can you fill in the gaps or tell me where I, where I miss anything there?
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A
No. I mean, I started seven companies over this journey. Four of them for my, three of them for other companies. I spent over 40 years in the transportation and logistics industry. And like I said, I've learned a lot of tough lessons. But what's fun is the lessons I've learned, I've tried to put together in. In my books. I believe there is a formula for success. I didn't realize that in the early days. I joke that don't start a restaurant just because you like to cook. And I did that. I actually did start a restaurant. My first business ever was a restaurant. Wasn't because I like to cook. I just thought I'd collect checks and it'd be easy. But then I did start a trucking company because I was in the trucking industry, and I thought I knew it and why not? And the big lesson was not about me. It's about them. It's about those who have a need or a desire, and that's what you start a business about. And solving their problems or fulfilling their needs, not about me. And I learned that the hard way the first couple times.
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B
That's so interesting because so many people, I mean, I have this conversation literally every day, probably with somebody that I want to start a business, and they're kind of starting from zero, and they're just like, what am I good at? You know? And so it starts with them, like, right away, it's like, well, I know a little bit about trucking, or I know a little bit about, you know, you know, cooking food. You know, I've done that. But it's true. It's a very, very. I understand why they're saying this. I've said it myself. But you're. What you're saying is that it shouldn't. That shouldn't be the question. We should. We should reposition this.
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A
Absolutely. I. I tell aspiring entrepreneurs, if you want to start a business, find a business or an industry that you're familiar with that has a we. And I profess this in my book, I believe we buyers have four criteria that we're looking for in any purchase. We're looking for convenience. We want to save time, effort. We want simplicity, and we want easier. We don't want a more complicated life. We're looking for competitive pricing, not necessarily the lowest cost, but especially transparency in pricing. We don't like dealing with airlines when you get the fees or I just went to Vegas and got the. Oh, resort fee. Surprise. I hate that. We want a great experience. We want to be treated like we're the only customer and we're meaningful and they're willing to answer questions. And then we want to trust. We want to know we have a perception of what we're buying, and we want to trust that we're going to get that through guarantees, testimonies, all that. Those are the four needs we have. So if an entrepreneur is out there and says, wait a minute, I bought something and man, wasn't very convenient, or they're costs are too high, or, boy, the user experience sucked, start there because you will find customers who go, yeah, I'm not happy with that either. I'd rather have a solution that saved me time or gave me a better experience or cost a little bit less. You know, that, that's so granted now, you know, I'm not going to start a business I know nothing about. But when you're looking to start a business, like in my world, transportation logistics, it's such a broad spectrum, you can find a niche where, hey, wait a minute, they're not doing a very good job here. And I believe customers would love to have, you know, a better experience or they'd like to save time or have a simpler solution. That's where I believe you should start.
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B
You know, I love that. And it's like, for example, to bring it back to the restaurant thing just because everyone understands what restaurants do. And all that good stuff is that, oh, I want to, I want, I want to start a business, okay? And I've been in the restaurant. I've been a server in a restaurant for my whole life, so might as well just start one, right? And I know it. Okay, fine, but you'd probably challenge that and say, well, that that's great, but flip it around a little bit. Well, I want to start a business because, man, it seems like all the people that come into this restaurant that when they have kids, their kids are like, kind of just bored at the table. And what every restaurant needs is they should have a playground over here. And it should just be this. Oh, by the way, should also have a trained somebody watching that, you know, that playground. And, oh, and you could check them in so it's very safe and like, oh, also background checks and like, it should just make this experience for the parents to have such an outstanding experience while they're at this restaurant and make sure their kids have an outstanding experience too. So, like, you're flipping this all about me into all of. I know a little bit about it. I see this problem, and I'm going to solve this problem and it's going to be the best experience ever for the parents. And that's like. Is that what you're kind of talking about?
- [07:23]
A
Absolutely. Perfect. Perfect example. Now you gotta, you gotta match the competition too, in the, in the food and the ancillaries. But Absolutely, that's, that sounds like a great experience. It's not available and families do go out, so. Absolutely. You're fulfilling an unmet need and that's where you want to start.
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B
Totally. My wife and I, that one's pretty close to home for us since we have three kids and we want to go out on dates and we want to do all this stuff. So we like, we think about this problem a lot. I don't want to be in the restaurant business. I'm in the technology business. But, but I wish somebody started more of these businesses just like that. I'm like, I will go to that restaurant, I will pay 50% more for that meal. I will tell everybody about that restaurant. Like I will, man, go ahead.
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A
That's like me. I, I listen. We all have personal value systems. For example, my personal value system says I, I value time more than I do anything. I will pay extra if somebody can save me time. Now I've got a relative whose personal value system says it's all about cost. Lives in a town of 15,000. There's two grocery stores in a Walmart. She cuts coupons, goes to all three, takes her a couple hours, she probably saves 20 bucks. That's not me. I got another friend who will only fly first class. They want the experience, right? So we all have our personal value systems. And what I preach said on my LinkedIn, I'm a preacher and I do this. I believe that if a company can meet all four of our criteria, convenience, price, user experience and trust, I as a buyer don't have an excuse not to buy from you. But so many companies have a conscious trade off. And I use this example, I said Jiffy Lube, right? Go get your oil changed. It's convenience is what they sell. No appointment necessary. 15 to 20 minutes, you're out the door. But it comes at a cost. I can go to Walmart and get my oil changed for half that, but it's going to take twice the time. Aldi's golly, great. Low price groceries, but bring a quarter for the cart. You're not going to talk to a baker, you're not going to talk to a butcher. You're not going to find a lot of brand names there, but you're going to see that's their trade off. It's the experience for, for the cost. And so in my very first book, I talk about, well, how did Amazon get to be the behemoth and just shot past Walmart? How did, how did Netflix, one of my favorite stories, how they put Blockbuster out of business. We all know that story. But then there's a Netflix 2.0. Had they not come up with streaming, Amazon would be at the top of that mountain. And not only that, because streaming is very convenient. I don't have to wait a day for it to come in the mail. And I definitely don't have to go down to a Blockbuster to be disappointed on a Friday night. In the new release, I'll have sold out. Yep. Honey, you want to watch Jaws again now? And so when they came up with streaming and they also came up with a subscription model, no longer do you have to pay per show or movie, as many as you want, as many as you can eat. Now, they've got various plans, so they're hitting it out of the park. But then from a user experience, they now started creating their own content that nobody else can create that provides a very. So I love that story. And then the other one I love is Uber. My God, I hate getting in a cab. Now that I've experienced Uber, I think they come to me. I get to watch them on my app. I know exactly what it's going to cost me versus, let's see, it's. It's a dollar fifty for the first mile, and then, you know, 85 cents per quarter. Well, how many quarter miles am I going? You know, and then you're sitting there sweating when you're at a red light, you know, and the ticker's going and go. And then you got a plexiglass or. Oh, it's an off. The cab is an awful experience. Costs more than. Than Uber. And, and so that, that was all about the hit on all four of our criteria. And we much prefer Uber, so. So I love to preach the more of those buyer criteria that you can hit as an entrepreneur, provide fewer excuses for a buyer not to buy from you, the more successful you're going to be. I brought, you know, I'm an old guy. I'm a baby boomer. I was taught growing up it's all about competitive advantage. And to me, that's singular. Got to have a competitive advantage. Well, now I think, oh, my God, that's like having a one wall castle. We got them covered this way, but they're sneaking up from behind. And. And with technology, you can. You can change the world so quickly. A single competitive advantage probably will not let you survive because you think that.
- [12:28]
B
You'Re for your four. You're for what you call them, the four.
- [12:31]
A
They're not pillars, but for buying criteria. The criteria by which we make our buying decisions.
- [12:36]
B
Do you think that those only mostly apply to B2C, like consumers purchasing? Because your two examples were consumers, in this case at least Netflix and Uber. But how do they relate to, I guess more of a B2B sense, business to business?
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A
I think even professional buyers still have that same need of convenience, of a great experience and trust. Yeah. You know, if you think about Walmart and I called on Walmart back in the day, yeah, they're going to start on price, but if you screw up in the being very convenient and the experience is awful, they're going to cut you off very, very quickly. And I tell B2B salespeople this, don't go in and say, Gee, Mr. Bar, how can we increase our business with you? Why would they answer that? Go in and say, how can I make your life simpler? How can I make your life easier? How can we save you time? How can we give you a better experience with our product? Right. That's the things that will resonate with them versus, hey, tell me how we can increase our market share with you. Yeah, exactly. Why put that burden on them?
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B
I've seen you mention this. I remember if it was like on part of your books or maybe it was something else, but I wrote it down. You kind of suggest that dominant companies don't just do things better, but they do things differently. What do you mean by that?
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A
Well, I give you a great example, and my hero in all of this is Jeff Bezos. I started my first real company in 1999 in the dot com hysteria. And Jeff Bezos had started Amazon already and he was being brutally attacked and crucified. I think he was actually on Time magazine, not for person of the Year, but being clown of the year because he was burning cash and Wall street was crucifying. Saying the same working, Jeff, you got to change. And one of my favorite books is called the Everything Store and it's the Amazon story. I read that and. And you've read that.
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B
I have.
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A
Jeff was steadfast. It's all about the customer. We put the customer at the center of our universe and we work everything backward. And we're going to work diligently to cut costs. Why? So we can be more competitive on pricing. Right. All about the customer that's doing things differently. I've been to a thousand meetings in my career and I'm still waiting for the first one where the, the meeting starts with, okay, we're going to talk about how many customers we gained last month and why. And then we're Going to talk about how many customers we lost last month and why now. The meetings always start. Well, let's talk about our revenue. How do we do the budget? Okay, let's talk about our costs. How are we doing the budget? Oh, we're over on labor. Oh, we're over on raw materials. Okay. Now let's shift to our IT projects. What's on the. It's all me, me, me, we. And thinking differently is saying, I'm going to think about the, the party that starts everything, the customer without them. You know, I don't know if you've ever seen the show the Prophet, Marcus Lemonis. Yeah, it's a, it's a great one. He goes in and he looks at these distressed companies. A lot of them are family owned and operated. And he goes in and, and might invest in them. Okay. But he's looking at the three Ps, people, process and product. And if those three are right, he'll make an investment. But I tell people, I said, look, if the product isn't right, I don't care what your people in process are. That product's got to be right. The product has to be in demand by the buyer, you know, fill those needs.
- [16:42]
B
And so can I ask you a question about that? You mentioned that you go into these meetings all the time and it's always me, me, me, right? And what is the, what is the right way to. That's the wrong way to look at it or what's the wrong way to do it? Probably, or not, not so great. What would be the right way to have that meeting? Would it be like starting off rather than it and marketing budget and all this other stuff and here's our results. What would be the right way to do that? Is it more like, hey guys, we made this. Five people, five people said this about us this week or, or, or our customers made this much money or they, they like, what is the thing that they're. We should be focusing on at the beginning of that meeting versus the end?
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A
I want to know about, I really want to know starting off, are we doing the right thing for the customer? And we'll, we'll know that by the churn or, or we'll know by the number of customers we're doing. And, and so how do we get that intelligence? One of the things I preach a lot is that if you're say B2B and you have salespeople, I think one of the most important aspects of a salesperson is not the amount of business they close, but the intelligence they can give you. I want to know exactly why Customer ABC did not sign with us and who did they sign with, and I want to know the real reason why. I have a big part of my book that talks about we're in competition. And instead of me, me, me, let's focus on the customer, but also let's focus on what are the alternatives that a buyer has compared to us, and how do they compare? On convenience, on price transparency, user experience and trust. And I want to know, matter of fact, have we bought from them? Do we really know what that. What that experience is like and the whole process? Because we need to beat them. We need to beat them, and that's our job. And I joke about this. You know, I'm in Kansas City. I'm a huge Chiefs fan, and I joke about this. Look, Andy Reid does not show up on a Sunday morning and go, wonder who we're playing this week. Oh, it's a Cowboys, huh? I wonder, you know, do they run the ball, do they pass the ball? What about defense? They play zone or. I guess we'll find out. No, they're studying film. They're finding out their weaknesses. I believe every business needs to do that with their competitor. What are their weaknesses, and how do you leverage that? And so staying in tune with both your customers, your prospects, and the competitors will give you the route and the map to succeed. It just will. But I've been in too many meetings. Well, we're going to go. We're going to create a new product, and it's all internal because I think this is what we're good at. And. And I'm pretty sure that, you know, there'll be people who buy it. Pretty sure. Really? I don't believe it. I think the hardest job for any company is to get the voice of the prospect who did not buy. They didn't come into your store or they didn't. Obviously, if they didn't sign a contract and a salesperson, you should get some intelligence. But why didn't they even come into your store? You know, learning that is probably the hardest job of anybody. If you, you know, you should have an ear to the voice of your customers. If you're in retail or online, you know, a loyalty program where you can ping them and survey and call and. And the like. But I just think it's so important to. To hear and understand what the customers are thinking, wanting, and. But it goes along those four criteria.
- [20:41]
B
I love it. I think the customer obsession. I've also studied Bezos for the past. I don't know, ever since starting my companies and I've tried to consume almost everything about, you know, the story of Amazon and the everything store. Read, also read the book the Baser's Letters which some. I forget the author's name, but he also put. He basically accumulated all the Bezos letters all together, the shareholder letters, which is great. And another book from the two executives, Colin Breyer, I think was the. One of the authors. It was about Amazon and kind of their processes. And so I am totally aligned with you, with the customer obsession you mentioned. You've written two books. One of them was Stop the Hassle, Simplify, Satisfy and Succeed. And the other book was the Unconventional Thinking of Dominant Companies. The New Formula for Market Competition Domination. Which one came first?
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A
The Unconventional Thinking of Dominant Companies. That book I. I was really focused on Amazon, Netflix, Uber. Were a couple companies here in Kansas City that dominate the space here. You're probably familiar with Nebraska Furniture, Mark.
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B
I heard of that, yeah.
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A
So they got a 500,000 square feet store here in Kansas City. They put every other furniture company out of business when they came in. And one of the great stories I love, I first tripped up Nebraska Furniture Martin, you know, such a wide variety of products and they're priced well. And I go through the checkout line, a little bit of. A little bit of a line and arrange for my delivery the next time I went in, the associate had an iPad and they had my history. And I'm looking at a tv, I'm able to buy right there. I don't have to go through a line. I go, oh man, how convenient is that? Made all the arrangements. I just love that. And it had my history of all my other purchases. And it was just such a strong user experience, buying experience. It really made an impression on me. But the first book was really talking about these other companies and in their Coke formula. Even though they don't profess that formula, I just believe they all do. Meet those four. This Stop the Hassle is about what any and every company should do with that same formula. But I go more into some cultural aspects. For example, I say, hey, I believe every company should have an R and D function, not a department. You should be researching your competitors, you should be researching your customers. You should be researching new technology like AI and figuring out how can that help you with either the customers or cost you doing all of that. I believe I have a. I have a real passion about value propositions. I grew up in the transportation logistics industry and it's 98% feature propositions. We have a hundred trucks and we service Texas. I don't care. I have, I have deliveries not being delivered on time. They're damaging them. I'm not getting good customer service. It's along those four criteria.
- [24:07]
B
That's my versus saying we have 99% delivery rate or whatever it is.
- [24:12]
A
We have a 99% delivery rate blanketing Texas with exceptional award winning customer service. I believe that buyers are only mildly interested in what it is you do. They're totally interested in themselves. I have a need. Okay, so when you can address that with your value proposition and the structure of your website. I'm a big Donald Miller fan in story brand marketing. I love what he professes on the structure of a website. Having the testimonials showing how your solution works. Step 1, 2, 3. What happens if you know, you stay the course you're on? I like all that he does on the marketing front, but I like to tweak the value proposition or tagline just a little bit better. And because I grew up in transportation logistics, I have a couple of examples. But the one I love the best is when it absolutely, positively has to be their own overnight. Oh, I trust that. Absolutely. And I, in the ad, there's a big jet, cargo jet, right behind them in a little delivery van. I know what it is you do, just by the picture, but you're saying you can get it there overnight and it's absolutely, positively guaranteed. Had they been somebody else, they would go, we got lots of aircraft and we deliver product everywhere. Who cares, right? It's nobody cares. It's about that mental picture of what you really are solving.
- [25:48]
B
How do you think I want to kind of go to. Because you studied all these companies and I want to talk maybe about Amazon or maybe other companies that you think irrelevant about innovation at scale. And because it sounds like it's really important to you to stay true to customer experience. And when you have great customer, to have customer, great customer experience, you have to be innovating all the time, continually to move with the times, because otherwise your customer experience will just fall stale. And so when you have a big company such as Amazon, right, which is multiple thousands of people, how do they continue to scale this innovation? And to set the context once more is it's easy to innovate when you're a team of five people in a room. It's pretty easy because you, there's no bureaucracy, you just kind of move quickly. But as you get to 20 people, 30 people, 40 people, 50 people, 100 people, thousand people, there's a there needs to be a process for this into very intentional. What have you seen amongst all the companies that you've studied? What do they do differently than other companies that don't innovate?
- [26:56]
A
Yeah. First of all, I like to distinguish between invention and innovation. Okay. Invention is rare. Innovation is constant and needs to be constant. And I tell people that innovation doesn't have to be this huge. Aha. Anytime you improve upon the convenience, you shave some time off or shave some effort or make something a little bit simpler, a little bit easier, that's innovation. If you're able to take a little bit of cost out, that's innovation. If you're able to improve the user experience just a little bit bit, you know, that's innovation. Well, so, so innovation, don't think of it as this huge mountain that, that you got to climb. You can take little baby steps. But I believe to, to set in motion constant innovation, you have to have a culture that, that supports that. And in being a Vista's chair and working with leaders all the time, we, I emphasize it's not your culture, Mr. Owner or CEO. Culture is intentional and it's a set of common values, common beliefs that translate into behaviors. Okay, so if you have a culture, especially a customer centric culture like Amazon did, well, it's almost going to force you. We have to constantly innovate to improve that customer experience. But you got to have everybody involved. And I know companies who put together tiger teams. All right, we're going to look at this part of the, the customer service function. What can we do that gives us better customer service experience? Well, guess who knows the most? That person, who's the customer service representative? They're talking to the people. I've got one of my leaders, I love to tell this story. I got one of my leaders who became CEO. It was a private equity backed company. They lost money for six years in a row. He got named the president. He came in aerospace manufacturing, have never been in a machine shop before in his life. He came in and the first thing he did, he did one on ones with everybody and he said what is it we should be doing differently? Because they knew. He didn't know, but nobody had ever asked him and nobody had ever listened to them. So I think it's so important for leaders to delegate to the team, hey, culture, what's our culture going to be? What are we going to believe in and what's our behaviors going to be? And then turn them loose. Set up an infrastructure and structure to support that.
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B
I love that what does the infrastructure structure look like typically? And what are the common ones that you've seen? I mean, anything that come out, come top of your head. Small teams, big teams.
- [30:02]
A
Yeah, you know, it's just, it's enabling them allocating time to, to focus on what could be. All too often, I believe too many companies are focused. Well, we got this issue, we got this issue, so we got to go address it. But, but you got to allocate time on what if what can before the issue crops up. And, but that, that's a commitment. That's an investment. You're investing time. I'm taking you away from you and you away from your job. And I want you to brainstorm and figure out what can be so. And that's a mindset of ownership to enable that, in my opinion.
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B
I love it. I think it's a good time to transition over to rapid fire. Questions? You ready?
- [30:53]
A
Okay. Yeah, sure.
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B
What's your favorite business book?
- [30:59]
A
The Everything Stored by Talking about the Amazon story. That's my favorite.
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B
Love it.
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A
Second is. Second is Stop the Hassle.
- [31:07]
B
There you go. Got it. Of course. Shameless plug. By the way, by the way, your, both your books are on my list. I will read those next.
- [31:13]
A
Very excited for those.
- [31:15]
B
What's one thing that you wish that you knew before starting your businesses?
- [31:21]
A
The advice I give everybody. It's, it's going to take a lot longer. It's going to be a lot harder. There's going to be a lot of bumps in the road. I thought I got this plan, I got this vision, I got this dream, here we go. And we'll go get it done. And every time I wish, I wish I didn't know because you can get, you can get a little depressed or down when it doesn't go exactly to plan, but it never does. And if you expect that there's going to be bumps and it's going to take more time, then you can accommodate that more often. So I wish I'd have known that.
- [32:00]
B
Do you think that if you did know that, that how hard it was going to be, would you start it again?
- [32:07]
A
Yes and no. I would have done some yes and other things I would have, I would have said no on. And maybe that's with age, right? I'm an older, old baby boomer. And when I'm young man, nothing's holding me back. Now that I'm a little older and I've been through those journeys, I would probably go, hey, wait a minute. Remember, it's going to take longer. It's Going to be harder. Yeah. Do I have the, the energy to do it?
- [32:41]
B
Sure. What's the worst advice you've ever received about business?
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A
I think the worst advice was, I think it was good advice, but I didn't listen. I had a board member once that kept telling me cash is king, cash is king. And I didn't, didn't fully understand who he was talking about and I didn't pay attention and it cost me. So it was my own, my own worst advice maybe.
- [33:09]
B
Was it cash that he was referring to? For anyone that's can hopefully hear that advice this time. Is it cash in the bank? Is it cash flow, positive cash flow? What did he mean by that?
- [33:20]
A
Yeah, he meant cash in the bank. So this was a venture sponsored company that I started and my board member, my board member, my board is the group of investors and he keeps telling cash as king and I'm going, wait a minute, I'll just come back to the well. And, and he was telling me no, maybe not. And they didn't, and they didn't come back. So, and, and back in the dot com era, you know, you're spending money on silly stuff and you know, at the, the rose colored lenses and the whole nine yards and I, I should have been much more judicious and, and hey, you know, what is a good amount?
- [34:07]
B
This isn't part of the questions, but what, it kind of has me curious. What is a good amount do you feel like of cash reserves to have in the business bank while you're building your company? Like what's a good, what's just the rule of thumb that you would like? Oh yeah, you should at least have this.
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A
I'm gonna stab at six months to find it. I gotta have six months of, of capital. And if in six months you're not starting to make enough traction then you know, shame on you.
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B
My opinion, Beautiful. So basically if they, if you have six months, okay, like you're, you're on the right track. Like you, you feel like you can make some swings and you could be wrong once or twice and you're not gonna be out of business. But as soon as you kind of get the blow into the 1, 2, 3 months, you're, you're playing with fire here and you're one wrong move away from the entire business, right?
- [34:56]
A
But you got to be judicious the whole way. You can't go, wow, we got six months worth of cash. Let's try throw a big party for everybody and show them how cool we are. And no, and you got to be very judicious about everything. But that, that's my, my rule of thumb.
- [35:12]
B
I like that. I mean, I like it a lot because I feel like I've always operated or not always. I operate that way now. And I think it's, I think people should be. Take that part very seriously. And I talk to a lot of founders and entrepreneurs that they think that, oh, I don't need that much money in the bank. It's just kind of like wasting. I'm like, it's not about you need it, it's about you're, you're bulletproofing for the future. And all your employees, by the way, they rely on your business to be operating. So like, you might be making a couple right decisions now, but you make one wrong move, the market has one, one weird swing that you're not ready for. Like you're having to lay people off now. And, and yeah, not because of the market. It's because you weren't planning ahead of time. And that's the way I. Yeah.
- [35:56]
A
Or oops, pandemic oops tariffs or outside circumstances that are out of your control. And you got to be careful. One other tip that I learned the hard way, as a founder or leader. You're on stage, you walk into the office one day and you fail to say hello to the receptionist and all of a sudden, what's wrong? This, there must be something wrong. He didn't say hi to me. The other thing that I learned the hard way, when I first became a CEO, I would make these off the cuff comments and people take this as golf. I may be making a joke and the next thing I know, everybody in the organization heard this and it was a joke or you have to. As a leader, you gotta remember you are on stage, everybody is watching, everybody is listening. And so what you do and what you say matters. Don't wear your emotions on the sleeve because they'll, they may take it the wrong way.
- [37:03]
B
That's very interesting. How, how many hours do you work nowadays? I know that, but like, what is it? What does life look like for you now?
- [37:14]
A
Yeah, well, when I started my business group, they told me it would take me 40 to 60 hours per month to manage a visage group, but I'm working probably 30 to 35 hours a week.
- [37:30]
B
Awesome. You feel like it's a good amount.
- [37:32]
A
Because I'm involved in, I'm doing so many different things. I love it and I tell the story. I retired for three months in 22 and I flunked. There's no, there's no purpose in pickleball, golf and tennis. And I gotta have purpose. And then I found Vistage and they found me. And it's absolutely one of the best things I've ever done. I love, I'm a business nerd. I love learning all these businesses, what their challenges are, how they make money. And so, you know, me playing a very smart, small role in maybe helping them is very reassuring, gives me purpose. But I don't wake up at 3am in a cold sweat going, oh my God, we got this huge issue. That's what they do.
- [38:22]
B
So, by the way, if anybody's wondering what the heck is Vistage, what is Jim talking about? It is, it's a CEO coaching and peer advisory company. Basically. It's. It's where CEOs, if you're a founder CEO, you can join Vistage and be a member there. And you would probably have somebody like Jim, kind of like that. It's your group, Jim, in your case, in Kansas City. Is that correct?
- [38:45]
A
Correct. Yeah. I got two groups. I got a trusted advisor group and a CEO group. And I tell everybody I did this because in 1999, when I started my first real company, I didn't know about peer groups and I made a ton of mistakes. And boy, had I had peers that I could have leaned on and say, hey, I'm facing this. How would you handle it? Would have made a big difference. That's exactly why I got involved in Vistage, because I said, if I can help anybody avoid some of the pitfalls and mistakes I made, then that's. It gives me good purpose.
- [39:16]
B
There's a lot of. There's a lot of purpose in that. And there's a lot of impact in that because when you, if you can impact the right person, the right CEO, the right founder, the right entrepreneur, the right creator, and if you could really make the impact there, he or she will impact like the millions of people downstream, which is a beautiful thing because. And then all those people that they impact, they all have families and they all have children, grandchildren. And you start seeing this, how the ripple effect across entrepreneurship and capitalism is a beautiful thing in this way. I love it. Is that way.
- [39:50]
A
Yeah, absolutely.
- [39:53]
B
All right, we'll keep going to the questions. If your family and your friends and your customers all had to get together without Jim, Jim, you're not allowed to be there. And they all had to write an honest article or maybe a book specifically about you and your. Your traits, kind of talking about the good things and the bad things and all this stuff. What are some things that they would say about you.
- [40:22]
A
He's passionate, he cares. He, he can be a little reckless with his time management. And, and he, he, he, you know, he just cares. He cares for other people and, but sometimes he gives up that work life balance. Right? He works too much. That's what the family would say. And, and they're right. I did, I didn't have a work life balance. And, you know, my kids were growing up and I look back now and go, I don't know if I'd change it, but I feel badly that I wasn't able to go to all the ball games and that kind of things. When they, when they were growing up, I think they'd say, I'm a, a general good guy, I'm a funny guy, and I'm full of ideas. Always, always thinking.
- [41:25]
B
Would you. And this isn't a question, but I have to ask it. Do you have any. Well, I guess. Would you say that it has to be that way today, in 2025, whereas you missed the ball games because, because it was probably different. When you're up and coming, as in your entrepreneurial career, you had to, you had to make that flight. You had to be there at that business meeting. Whereas today you can do a zoom meeting, a Google meeting. And what are your thoughts there?
- [41:52]
A
Yeah, I teach this to my leaders and I tell her, I tell them all, you're in the people business and you're in the get it right business. You have got to set a structure that you can delegate, you can trust the others in the organization so that you can live a balanced life. And I will tell you that when I first became a leader, I probably had a trust issue that I don't think anybody can do it as well as me or they don't understand it like I do. And therefore I got to be there. And I think it's head trash. Right? But get the very strongest team around you that you can trust and delegate and let them run. Because if you don't lead a balanced life, it'll come back to haunt you. And I tell my CEOs that today you've got to lead a more balanced life because you will burn out if you're working 70 hours a week and trying to do everybody else's job. That means, you know, you got a question? Do you have the right people in the right seats or you have problem delegating? What? Which one is it?
- [43:09]
B
How would you define a creator? Who is a creator to you? Is it a business creator? Is it a content creator? Is it a somebody, just artist? How do you. How do you describe a creator?
- [43:21]
A
I think a creator, to me, is just somebody who's always thinking ahead. What in a what if? What if? That's what they ask. What if I sculpted this or painted this? How would that? But they think differently, like I do. But, you know, one little personal fact. I play the banjo. And a lot of people say, why do you play the banjo? Because I said everybody plays the guitar. Okay. And so I like to be a little bit different, and I think creators are a little bit different. They think they're always thinking ahead, and they want to be different. They want to be not like everybody else.
- [44:11]
B
Who do you think should be a business owner?
- [44:13]
A
Anybody who's got a great deal of passion, who knows how to work with other people, who has a passion for coaching. And I tell people there are three kind of leaders. There's a manager. They direct everybody what to do and plan. There's a mentor, and there's a coach. And a coach is somebody who inspires others to do their best. And there's a real trick to that. So ownership need. Need to be thinking like they. They want to coach others to bring out the best. They enjoy teams, and I think that probably makes the best owners. Those kind of people. They'll be an owner because you just want to get rich. That's not the right reason.
- [45:02]
B
Jim, where can people find you and learn more about you, follow your journey, connect with you?
- [45:07]
A
Well, I'm a big LinkedIn guy, so you can find me Jim Bramlett there. My website is JimBramlett.com and through that website, you can reach out, you can subscribe to my newsletter and that kind of thing. I love, love, love, love helping others. I'm at the age of my life where, you know, I've had a great run. I enjoy what I do. And now if I could just do any. Do anything, anything to help others. I love doing that.
- [45:41]
B
Very special. Again, thank you for your time. I appreciate more than you could ever know. And by the way, for anybody listening to this, I'll drop all of Jim's links that you mentioned in the show notes or the description below. And, Jim, thank you very much for coming on.
- [45:57]
A
Hey, Cody, thank you for doing what you do. I. I know your target and your target audience are those who are wanting to do better, they're wanting to learn, and you're providing them a vehicle to do that. So thanks for doing that.
- [46:14]
B
I'm blessed. Thank you very much, Jim. Talk to you soon.
- [46:18]
A
All right, man.