← Second in Command: The Chief Behind the Chief with Cameron Herold
Second in Command: The Chief Behind the Chief with Cameron Herold
Ep. 540 - The Phoenix Method COO Matt Rhodes - The Proven Mindset That Every Thriving COO Now Loves
00:41:03
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- [00:00]
A
A mentor. It was all part of helping us to develop the Phoenix Method. And all that told me, you know, your job as the number two and your wife's job is the number one. It's to build systems and go hard and go heavy and break them, let them break. You can never grow, you can never scale. Being perfect. You do what you need to do today. Don't wait for it to be the perfect time. Just launch whatever it is and then your job is to go back in there and fix those little things that are breaking.
- [00:33]
B
Welcome to the Second in Command podcast, produced by the COO alliance and brought to you by its founder, Cameron Herold. In the second in command podcast, we talk to top COOs who share the insights, strategies and tactics that made them the chief behind the chief. And now here's your co host, former COO of a multi eight figure remote company and alumni member of the COO Alliance, Savannah Brewer. Today on the Second in Command, I am joined by Matt Rhodes, COO of the Phoenix Method and co founder of Polaris Capital Investments. Matt brings over 25 years of leadership experience across corporate America, entrepreneurship and strategic investing. He and his wife Jen began their journey with Snap Fitness franchises. And after navigating the challenges of COVID 19, they launched the Phoenix Method, an online fitness, nutrition and mindset company, helping clients transform their health and lives. In this episode, Matt opens up about hitting rock bottom in business and in marriage, and how in less than five years, they not only recovered, but they are thriving. We dive into the mindset shifts that fueled their turnaround, how they rebuilt a healthy company culture, and the critical importance of surrounding yourself with the right people and environments. When facing isolation and the pressures of being a CEO or founder. Whether you're leading a team, scaling a business, or simply looking for inspiration to persevere, Matt's story is a masterclass in resilience, leadership and execution. Let's get started. We are live with Matt. Welcome to the show.
- [02:11]
A
Hello. I'm excited to be here. I. I've been anticipating getting an opportunity to chat with you after I've listened to a bunch of you guys podcasts. So.
- [02:19]
B
Yeah, well, I'm really excited for this. I mean, we've already been chatting for like 15 minutes here and just slow and naturally. So let's go ahead and dive in. Give us a little bit of an overview. What do you do and who do you serve?
- [02:31]
A
So quite a few different things which I'm constantly trying to niche down a little bit better. But in the fitness business, I've been in the fitness business for 18 years, 25 years in corporate America. And then I've recently started transition into real estate as well. So in. In the fitness business, which I had the most experience, you know, we serve anyone and any. Anyone and everyone who is looking for to make a change in their health, their mindset.
- [02:58]
B
Do you guys have a physical location and online or how is that down?
- [03:03]
A
Yeah, yeah. We. We opened our first physical location 18 years ago, and that one's still going. We opened a second one 16 years ago. That's still going. And then about five years ago, we went online and started working with people across the country.
- [03:16]
B
Was the online change due to Covid?
- [03:20]
A
It was. There's a lot more backstory to that, I would tell you. I guess. Let me transition back. We were running our gyms. We also had yoga studios. We had a lot of businesses going on, and the yoga studios were not doing so well. Gyms were doing fantastic. And we had great culture everywhere we were at. We built up this great culture. And then as we started opening more businesses, we started getting stretched much more thin. And when I say we, I'm talking about my wife and I. We were stretched much more thin. We were trying to serve a lot, you know, a lot of different hats. And when that happened, we stepped away from our gyms. And Covid happens, we get shut down. We open back up after Covid, and we realized that we lost all that culture in our gyms. And. And I didn't even want to go work out in there, let alone be around the people. And we, We. We did some soul searching because not only was our culture bad in our. In our. Our fitness facilities, it was bad in our relationship. We hired a few different people. One of them, you know, changed our life. A mindset coach and, And. And our online, it's called the Phoenix Method. And it was literally because we burn everything to the ground. So we burn our relationship down to the ground with our kids, with my wife and I, and built it all back up and went back into the gym and did that as well into our gyms. So at that time, I think we had 30 employees, and we got rid of 28. So we stripped everything down. And I say that culture, even though we got rid of those 28 people, they were good people. It was bad leadership. And that was my wife and I. We stepped away and we didn't have the leadership things in place that we thought we had to scale. And so it did start right after Covid, because that's when we went through a lot of mindset training, we dug into nutrition, we dug into workouts, and we completely changed our life and our business. We're like, all right, we know that we can work with people. So that's when we. We opened that online. So that's a long way of saying, yes, it did happen during COVID but it was because of. We were trying to fix a personal problem. And then we said, all right, now we could. There's other people out here who need this.
- [05:25]
B
I got goosebumps listening to that. I mean, there's anything around, like, around the Phoenix and things burning down and then rising back up is actually, there's a. I think it's the number one. Like, number one. When you go on Spotify and you search Ram Dass, there's like a eight. Like, I guess I want to call it a song, but kind of positioned on there like that. And he talks about, like, when you think that you've hit rock bottom and your fire has gone out, if you look around and you move some of the wood, you'll find little embers. And your embers, as long as you're alive, there are still embers there. So it sounds like you guys are able to find the embers and blow on them. What do you. What do you think was the. The thing that catapulted you guys to that place? Because it sounds like you were having some success and then you hit rock bottom. What were the one or two key things that you can look back on now and say, if we would have done this differently, maybe we could have avoided that?
- [06:17]
A
You know, I think. I think our successes that we were having probably led us to believe that we. Which is. Which is. It's a good and a negative. Led us to believe we were untouchable. We were doing so well in that space that we thought, let's transition over to. It's still in fitness. Let's start opening yoga studios. That's a totally different culture, and we were not prepared for that. And I think now the one thing I look back on is I think it's great to make business moves, think bigger, don't analyze things too, too long. But I think we probably should have sat and said, do we have the right team in place for us to scale right now? We put a lot of trust in people where we should have put it in systems, if that makes sense. You can always. I never want to build a business or do anything based on a person. I want to do it based on systems, which. I'm the CEO. That's me. I mean, I Want the systems in place and then find the right people and plug them in. So I think that's probably what we did is we relied too heavily on not having a good, good base.
- [07:21]
B
What is one of those systems that you've been able to put into place that maybe was more like people heavy before that now has like streamlined some of those issues?
- [07:29]
A
I would say it's, it's not necessarily that we're, we still aren't people heavy, but we changed how we hire lately. So we now hire for culture. That's a big, big thing now. There's some offsets as well. Because we're a sales organization, we're customer facing. And sometimes when you hire for someone who's going to provide the best customer experience ever, they may not be the best at sales. And we will always choose the person who's better at customer service than they are at sales because that's what led to our bad culture was hiring a lot of salespeople and not people who are there for the customer. And I think now we have so many check in meetings, we are just much closer to our people than we were before so that they know they're supported. I think what we did was, is when we started working so much in these other businesses, we weren't checking on our people, we weren't asking how they were doing, how are your kids doing, how are you personally doing? Rather than where are the numbers at, where are the numbers at, where are the numbers at? And, and that just leads to a place that people, all they do is think about numbers and they forget about the customer.
- [08:29]
B
I really want to double click on that because it's, you know, I think there's just so much importance behind taking care of your people first and they will take care of the customers. And what you're saying about checking in. Cole's the owner of a company that I helped grow. And Cole, I mean we were very like very result focused. We were moving very, very fast. And some of the most meaningful things that he did was just on a random Wednesday afternoon at 2pm I would just get a text message, hey, how are you actually doing? And it would make me stop and be like, how am I actually doing? And wow, like he, he really cares. And it was those little check ins that really to me built more trust with him. It made me more loyal when things got really hard when they did and they did. And so I think like you said, just being really close to your people is important. And then that ripple effects, you know, back into your customers. What what has been the transition over the last five years? What have you guys been able to rebuild and where are you at now?
- [09:30]
A
So when we, you know, it's funny that the two people that we left in the gyms, one of them was a club manager and the other one was a personal trainer. Actually they were a part time personal trainer. That part time personal trainer flourished, moved into a club manager position and now she is our gm. So she's overseeing the operations on a day to day basis. And I would call her almost my co CEO because I've transitioned, transitioned to some other things, but from there building, you know, letting her really take the reins, which has been tough, but having her take the reins has allowed us to free up our time a little bit. We found the right person and when we found the right person, we're still doing, you know, all those check ins that I told you we learned from that we weren't doing before. Providing support that's allowed us to spend more time taking on more clients online and then transitioning from me, I started a real estate company a couple years ago about, about a year and a half ago. Just allowed us to do more things.
- [10:29]
B
When you said it's been tough transitioning her into the general manager role, what's been tough specifically.
- [10:36]
A
Letting go. It is tough to let go. When you, when you let go so much early on in your business, which led to us having a lot of issues and then you, you build it back up and you've got everything running again. It's really hard to let things go because as an example, she's going to get it done. That's why we hired her. That's, I mean if we didn't think she was going to get it done, she wouldn't be on a team. However, she's not going to do it the way I would do it. She's going to do it her way. And I had to quickly, not quickly. It took me a while to realize just because it's not done the way I would do it doesn't mean that it's not going to get done or it's not even be done better than me. So she's letting those, letting, letting people loose and letting them do what they're good at, find their superpower. And her superpower is in being a general manager and working with people. It was just, it's hard to do as an entrepreneur to let other people take your baby when you, when you've done it before and it crashed and burned totally.
- [11:33]
B
What has been the kind of the Flip side, as you've been able to let go, what have you seen as the positive results of that? Because there's a, there's a lot of CEOs I talk to that. Even though that's like what we're constantly doing as you grow is, is letting go, it's still very difficult. Especially if you've been there for a while and kind of your baby and you know that you can do this really well. Delegating and releasing can be really difficult. So on the flip side of that, what do you see as the positives?
- [12:00]
A
Exactly where I was going to go once we finally started doing that. The positives are, is you're able to grow personally and professionally because you're not bogged down so much trying to do the day to day things. That's allowed us, like I said, to spend more time doing some things that we're really passionate about. It's also allowed us some time to spend more time together, my wife and I. But we're able to grow because she does things differently than we do. So we can still inject those things that have made us special for the last 18 years being in this business. But now we've got a fresh set of eyes that do things differently than we would do. And if we would have continued to manage the way we were, micromanaging, whatever you want to call it, we could never grow. We'd be doing the same thing over and over until we get a new set of eyes in there, a new set of ideas who looks at things differently.
- [12:52]
B
It reminds me of this time when I was at Closers and I ran one of the departments, was our recruiting department and we placed over a hundred salespeople a month. And I had been the one. I was the very first person that ever built this. So I saw everything, I tackled every problem, eventually started hiring and people were taking on other things, but for the most part, I was in an echo chamber. And so when we started getting to the point of scale and feed where I couldn't see things and things started to break, it was a lot harder for me to see. I mean, I'd spent, you know, a year and a half at this point thinking through all of these problems every single day. And I reached this point where I was like, I don't know what else needs to shift. I just, I've kind of reached my, my max here. And so I started looking for people in other industries because up until that point I had only been hiring people in the online education space, people with sales experience that I was kind of teaching our way of recruiting because we were not recruiting like a typical recruiting company, which is part of why we were able to grow so fast. And I think there's a lot of benefit and not knowing what you're doing because you can see you can build things that other people haven't thought of before. And when I reached that one point, like kind of max out, I started looking for real recruiters. And I remember this one interview I had where I actually got into like an argument, but more like heated discussion about like two very different ways of thinking. And I'm sure if I was him on that call, I probably would have thought, there's no way this woman is hiring me. But I hired him because I was like, this is the type of energy that we need. We need a different perspective, a fresh lens. And that is exactly what he did. He brought in, hey you, why are you guys doing it like this? There's a way, easier way to do it. And now he's running that entire team still today, a few years later. So I just want to double click on being able to grow and step out. But like it is important to get out of the weeds and get a different perspective even when it's scary. In that being the case, how do you still, you know, give autonomy, give trust and stay close enough to holding those people accountable? So if things are done at something that might, you know, you said send a cascading effect of something really bad happening. How do you keep that from happening?
- [15:18]
A
Well, a couple things. I mean, I'll go back and say a mentor. It was all part of helping us develop the Phoenix method and all that. Told me, you know, your job as the number two and your wife's job is the number one, it's to build systems and go hard and go heavy and break them, let them break. You can never grow, you can never scale a perfect. You do what you need to do today. Don't wait for it to be the perfect time. Just launch whatever it is. And then your job is to go back in there and fix those little things that are breaking. Don't let them get to the point where they fall off the cliff. That's why you got to stay in the numbers. So we stay, we know exactly what's going on in our businesses by the numbers. We can see trends happening. We, we see customer surveys. We stay very engaged in the, what I would say, the non day to day basis things. And we, we manage through that. When we start to see something that's changing a little bit Maybe leads aren't where they need to be. Okay, where, where do we look at? We need to look at our marketing department. If we start to see some surveys coming in, is it necessary? Is it our. Do we need to. We need to fix equipment or do we need to. We do need to work with people. So it's really managing those outside things and not. Not forgetting to always be looking at the numbers.
- [16:30]
B
Are there some key metrics or like top data points that you're specifically looking at weekly?
- [16:36]
A
Oh, yeah. We look at everything from leads coming in to closing rate to, you know, people, they come into a gym, they're buying gym membership. So. And all they know, all they know is, is when they walk into a gym is how much is it. That's what they've been trained. So our, our job is, is not to sell them a gym membership to get them results. So what we want to do is we want to sell them coaching. And it's not necessarily we're trying to sell it. It's because what they need, you wouldn't go to a dentist and do your own dental work. You need a coach. So we're looking at numbers as, you know, for how many leads does it take to get a coaching client? Where your every everyday gym is looking at, how many leads does it take to get a member? Well, we're not necessarily worried about members. We're worried about results. That's where we get referrals. So we're looking at those type of things. Basically any metric you can, you can look at, we're looking at on a weekly basis. So something we do a little different is we have a, we have a weekly GM meeting where we meet with our gm, we go over everything we need to prepare for, and then the next day we have a meeting with all of our managers. And this is something we learned a long time ago as well, is we open our books up to all of our managers. They know exactly what's going on in the business. Because, you know, some people are afraid to show their P. Ls to their. To the leadership team. And we found that when our leadership team see everything, they know what the goal is. Now, they aren't paid off a profit. Now our GM is, you know, they're compensated off of profit, but our club managers and our managers are. They're not, they're paid off of other areas. But when they see that we're not hitting the profit numbers that we need to, they put in the extra effort because they feel like they're a part of that. And I see it every single week. And each manager goes through and tells what their club's doing and where their profits at for the week and where they need to go. It just, it changed everything. When we started, we would manage by the numbers and we would go in and say, we need to do better. But they didn't understand what better meant until we opened the books and said, oh, I get it. I've got all these leads coming in and I'm selling all these memberships, but they're not getting into coaching.
- [18:35]
B
Yeah, well, it's also be so easy as an employee to hear about how much money the company's making and think, oh, we're doing great. But until you actually see where all the money is going, that, oh, I get it. Now this makes sense. Yeah. In terms of your relationship with your CEO, who happens to be your wife. I would love to hear a little bit about that dynamic. How do you guys. I mean, just marriage aside, the CEO and CEO dynamic is the yin and yang. Tell me a little bit about how are your guys responsibilities divided?
- [19:11]
A
I'll answer the first question. It's always perfect. Everything is perfect because it's my wife.
- [19:17]
B
Good answer.
- [19:19]
A
You know, I think early on in business we were very confused about our roles. I think we always saw me as the CEO because I had a business degree. I come from an entrepreneurial family. And we just thought, we thought I was the CEO. And as we started going through and running our businesses, and we know this was early on, and as we started to mature a little bit in the businesses, we realized that we kind of had our, our, our hats were flipped a little bit. They were flipped a lot. I was not the CEO. She is the type of person that her superpower is seeing that vision of where we want to be, that vision of culture. She dreams it up and says, this is what we're going to do. Where I would sit back and say, okay, how are we going to do that? I got to figure out how to do this and then how do I put these pieces into place? And I was, I don't think, until we realized that that is our superpower and we need to lean into that, that we really started to mesh well as a, as business partners when I realized that this is her lane. She is the face of the business and that's what she enjoys doing and setting that, that, that vision where I really enjoy the nuts and bolts of, all right, if she wants to do this flash sale, you know, bring in a bunch of people, she needs to just walk away Tell us the idea, and then I need to figure out how is the customer to get from A to B to C and have a perfect experience, and then how is our team member going to understand all this? And it wasn't until we leaned into those rules and said, this is what I love doing and this is where I need to be that we really started to communicate better. That makes sense. I will tell you one of the hard things being, you know, being married, and it's awesome to be married to your CEO because you can just have very open conversations. But where it is tough is where do you turn it off? We do dinner together every single night. When I'm not traveling or when she's not traveling, we do dinner and there'll be days where she wants to talk about work and I don't want to talk about work, and then the opposite. And we just have to have the ability to say, hey, let's just have dinner together tonight. But it's tough.
- [21:20]
B
Yeah.
- [21:20]
A
I wouldn't change it, though. Hey, it's Cameron Herold, your COO whisperer and guide to scaling businesses. Check out my YouTube channel at YouTube.com amronherald and that's H E R O L D, where I share tons of raw tips and insider secrets to have you level up as a leader and grow your company. From leadership hacks to growth strategies. It's all there. No fluff. Subscribe now. Hit that bell for notifications and comment on a few of the 100 videos that I've uploaded so far. And let's build your empire together. Let's go.
- [22:03]
B
I interviewed. I interviewed another woman two weeks ago now, who. Her husband is the CEO and they run a recruiting team. And I was asking about kind of the balance and how do you turn it off? And she's like, we don't like it is just sometimes it's impossible to turn off. And kind of like you said, one person might be on for it and one person's off. And you guys also have kids too, so I'm sure there's that dynamic also. Just, do you guys share a lot of this with your kids?
- [22:33]
A
So. So my daughter is now 22 and my son is 19, and they both have. They both have moved out now. They both still live really, really close. But yeah, yeah, we share with them because, you know, they. They've been in the businesses with us forever. I remember when we opened our first gym, our daughter was, you know, two or three years old and our son was like six months old. So it was. They, they. They've grown up around this, and we do share these things with them because we want them to see the mistakes we've made. We also want them to see what a. You know, you can have a loving relationship and still work together. We want them to see those things. Yeah, they. They see everything. We don't open our books to them like we do our managers, but they do. They do. They do understand that. And, you know, I will tell you, growing up in that life, I don't know if either of them want to be business owners.
- [23:21]
B
You know, I have. This has been a really big thing for me. My dad's been an entrepreneur my whole life, except one year. One year when he lost pretty much everything. He went and got a job for a year and just to kind of, like, put food on the table and make sure we didn't lose our house. And that was enough for him. You know, he was like, I cannot be an employee. So we relaunched a business that he's been in since. But as a kid, I mean, you. Even though my dad did such a good job of coming home and really being present with us, you can still feel the energy and the stress and all the thoughts that are running in the background. And, you know, some of the only fights I ever heard my parents have was around business, like, not having enough money coming in. And so there's definitely. When I've thought about launch my own things and kind of always done my own things, but when I really think about running something big and the pressure and the stress of employees and, you know, feeding other people's families, it's. It's a lot. So I could totally empathize with them in that sense. I kind of want to go back to five years ago when you guys hit rock bottom, because your kids would have been, you know, teenagers at that point.
- [24:33]
A
Yeah.
- [24:34]
B
So I'm sure that was affecting everybody. What. What did you guys do? I know you mentioned you leaned on mentorship, and maybe that was something that you hadn't done before. Could you tell me a little bit about that journey?
- [24:44]
A
Yeah. We don't have time, but I'll try and give you the Cliff Notes version. So it was. It was during that Covid time. So you can imagine kids, you know, you know, being at home and the stress that was going on. And. And I always thought that, you know, when you went to college, that's. That's where you got all your education. And, you know, I still read books and listen to podcasts, but it wasn't until that I stepped out and hired My first coach, and it was a fitness coach because I was overweight and I owned gyms, that's a bad thing. But I needed a different perspective. My wife knows everything there is to transform the body. I know a good amount to transform the body, but I needed a different perspective. And it was just like we were talking about earlier with our general manager. Different perspective. And this guy changed my life. You know, he gave me a different perspective on how to do fitness. And then he introduced me to his mindset coach. That's my wife. And I really stepped up and paid a lot of money to meet this mindset coach. And I realized at that point in time that I will never go try and do anything on my own again. I'm always going to hire a coach because they can save me decades and days. They will, they will point out all my blind spots. That's what a coach is for. So we hire these coaches, we started building things up. We completely changed how we viewed the world, how we viewed ourselves and how we viewed our relationship. And we did at that time, you know, this just being raw, we had to sit down with our kids and say, hey, we haven't been the best parents for the last four or five years because we've been working a lot. And we weren't listening to same thing about our employees. We weren't checking in with them. We sat down and we had those tough conversations and said, you know, things are going to change around here. And, and they did change, but it wasn't, you know, it wasn't lip service. We literally went through a lot of mental programming with our coaches to, to change that. And since then, you know, like I told you, I don't do anything about hiring a coach. I need that, that coach to give me the wisdom. And then when days are tough, I need them to tell me it's okay. They've been through that before and just smile at me. But the other thing is the environment. I, I, they, they generally coaches have a, a group of people and they usually have meetups or things like that. And that gives you an opportunity to get an environment with like minded people. And whatever you pay for, whatever I paid for those coaches was worth it, but just being around those other people, you know, it was gold. So I don't know if that answers the question, but yeah, there's a couple.
- [27:06]
B
Places we can, we can go. Had you experienced resistance to getting a coach before this time?
- [27:13]
A
Oh, yeah.
- [27:14]
B
Why, why was that?
- [27:15]
A
It's a waste of money. Why am I going to spend money on a Coach. I mean, what are they going to do for me? I mean, that's. That was my thinking back then. Where's the return on investment? I'm going to give this guy or gal, you know, two, three, four, $20,000, whatever it is. How am I going to get. I don't have that kind of money to spend. And then when I realized, holy crap, I give this person whatever their price is, let's say $5,000, and they can help me make 20 in six months, where it would have taken me three years to figure this out, I was like, that's when my whole mindset changed around what ROI was. And even if it was ROI on a relationship, I needed a coach to help me with my relationship. What is that going to do for the way my kids see this? What's going to do for my business? So it was all. When I started reframing from it being a. An expense to an investment.
- [28:07]
B
Yeah. Did you ever have a bad experience, like, hire a coach that was not worth it?
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A
I'm gonna be careful how I answer this question because I will say I did not get the results that I would. I thought I would get with one of the coaches that I did hire. But I still learned a lot, Meaning I still learned some things that I don't want to do in my business that I saw them doing some of their processes. So even though I didn't get the result I was looking for, I still picked pieces out of that and said, okay, this is how their flow worked. And I didn't like that. I didn't feel like I was being listened to as a. As a customer. I didn't feel like I got the result I wanted. But I did find this little nugget over here. So the answer is yes, but I think you can always get something out of it if you're. If you're looking.
- [28:54]
B
Yeah, I agree. I've. I've got some friends that, I mean, I've pretty much been the last, like 15 years in the coaching space. So it's just like, it's my nature and it's all, like, all I know. I mean, when I was dead broke, I somehow put $3,000 on a credit card to get sales training so I could make money, which I did. But I've also had bad investments. And that's where, like, I have some friends that have never invest in coaching and similar types of things and of, you know, their beliefs around why they're not going to do it. And one of the things is like, well, what if I Pick the wrong person. What if I don't get the results? Like, well, one, partly, you're responsible for results. I hired one coach one time that I was actually very disappointed in what they were bringing. And Cole actually told me he was like, you're responsible for getting. He clearly has the results that we want. You're responsible for getting it. Don't be reliable. Don't be relying on him to bring you everything you need to show up prepared with the right questions. Ask for him to send you resources of things. And even from those, like, trickier people, you're still responsible for getting what you can out of it. And the other thing is, even the ones that didn't produce as high results for me, there were still takeaways. And it being a bad, like, why did I pick this person? What did I miss up front? What was I not clear on? What questions should I have asked? And just thinking, maybe this was a $5,000 investment that wasn't really worth it, but what I learned from it being the wrong person might save me on a $500,000 deal in the future. And so, yeah, I just. I think there's always something that you can pull from it. And in terms of the views that you said changed, what have been some of those one or two major views, beliefs from five years ago versus now that you guys have both kind of picked up on?
- [30:48]
A
Do you mean views and hiring a coach, or what do you mean just in general?
- [30:53]
B
In general, what were maybe some of the mindset shifts that you guys had that allowed you to regain success?
- [30:58]
A
Well, say one of the biggest ones is I'm in control of everything. When I realize that my world changes and what I mean by that, I'm not going to go down a deep, like, mindset rabbit hole. But if I want to change something with my CEO, my wife, our, you know, I want to change something she's doing, instead of going to her and saying, hey, I think you need to change this, then I need to look inside and say, what do I need to change about me? And when I change, when I look at that, all of a sudden I start talking to her differently. And you can transition to your gm, to your kids, to anyone. And all of a sudden I'm thinking nice things about her, so I'm smiling at her. And then all of a sudden, it opens up a whole new conversation. I know it's very. That's a very brief way of saying it, but anytime I need to fix anything or change anything, it starts with me every single time. And when I. When I open myself up to a different attitude about, you know, that person and I don't prejudge anything, it changes the whole conversation. Things start going much more naturally now. It's easy with my wife because I can look at her and just say, my God, you're beautiful. And you immediately change how you think about them. And I smile on my face and, and I'm talking to her differently. I've got different enthusiasm. But it started with knowing that anything I wanted to change in my world goes back to what you said. You're responsible for getting what you need from that coach. That coach has the systems in place. They obviously have people who've gotten success. And if it's you're not getting success from that, maybe it's. You're not following the play, maybe you're not putting enough effort into it. You know, I hired a real estate coach when I started my real estate company, and I know a bunch of people that hired them at the same time. And I will tell you where I'm at versus where they're at. We're in different places because I engaged and I ask a lot of questions and I did what they told me to do and I just, I didn't feel like I had to have everything down before I went and went ahead because that's what the coach is for. They're there to help you and walk you through those things.
- [32:49]
B
Mm. The other thing you mentioned was the importance of environment and people. Could you expand a little bit more on that?
- [32:56]
A
Yeah, every time I go to Scottsdale, I make more money.
- [32:59]
B
I lived in Scottsdale for two and a half years. That's where I made the most amount of money today.
- [33:04]
A
Yeah. So my, my mindset, my wife and I's mindset coach and one of our mentors lives in Scottsdale. So we go out there quite a bit for events and we go out there and it's not just Scott. Scottsdale's a wonderful place, but we get in around in rooms with like minded people, whether they be other CEOs, CEOs, entrepreneurs, whatever they are. And they. And we realize there's many things we get from that. We get ideas, but also we see what they're capable of. These people are making way more money than my wife and I are making. They just are. And we say, oh my God, we had a live what we thought we could do. And look what these guys and gals are doing. That is, that is a massive thing to help make more money. But the other thing is, as a business owner it can get really lonely, you know, and then being the number two, you don't have the limelight of being the face of the company. That can get very lonely. And you start to question yourself, am I doing what I need to be doing? Am I fulfilling these steps to help my CEO, help my wife get what she says she wants done? And that. That loneliness goes away when you get into a different environment. You start to see people just like you, and you can share those stories and the things that are going on, and you realize, hey, I'm not abnormal. There's another guy or gal that lives in Texas and I live in Kansas City. And we meet this thing, we realize, okay, we got a lot in common, and we can talk and share ideas. And then I go back energized. That's what I say. I. I made more money. Come back energized.
- [34:29]
B
Yeah, I. I remember the first duo alliance event that I went to. I mean, I was so nervous, and I walked in there kind of feeling like, imposter syndrome. Like, other people are gonna be better than me, which is good. Like, I wanted to be in those rooms. And I've just was met with, like, so much. Everyone's feeling the same way. Everyone's feeling like, ah, do I really belong here? Until you realize you belong there. And the environment in some communities are way better than others. But SEO alliance event, Cameron, one of the. The first night, he had everybody, and there's probably like 40 of us there. Uh, he had everyone line up from youngest to oldest. I was the youngest one there in the line. And then they. He had us do an order of revenue per month in the company. And I think I was like, upper middle. And I was like, wow, we're like, I'm, you know, we're doing pretty well. And then he did revenue per employee. Like, how many employees do you have? And then I dropped back in the line, and I'm, like, looking down. I was like, oh, there's a lot that I can learn here, because it's not about how big my team is. It's about really, how effective are we and how efficient can we be with our team and being able to be in a room of people that are all older than me, with more experience and even, like, people that are younger than me to bring amazing insight. There's just something so valuable about knowing that you're not alone. And especially in a CEO position, like you said, it can get lonely, and there's not really anyone else that really knows what you're doing and being it can feel like a lone, lone wolf a little bit. And I know maybe it's a little bit different with your wife, but in terms of being on an executive team with people that you're not married to, there's things that you just, you can't really share and you're not sure you're gonna get fired if you really say this or if you speak about this. And yeah, I just think that the, the safety and the trust that comes with people that are in that same position that can give you different perspective and support is super, super important.
- [36:33]
A
Yeah. And one way I look at this is, is anywhere in your life, look around. If you're the most in shape person in your friend group, you're in the wrong group. I'm not saying to dump friends. That's. Don't take that the wrong way. If you're the most in shape, you need to find a new room to go to. If you make the most money out of all of your friends, you need to find another room to go to. If you live in the nicest house on, in the, in the neighborhood, you need to find another room to get to. You need to be looking. That's, that's, that is my always look and see if I'm at the top. I need to find a new room to get to because they'll keep bringing me up.
- [37:08]
B
Love that. One of the things that you had put in your preform is something that's been really impactful for you is this quote. If you want to live a happy life, lower your expectations. If you want to live an exceptional life, raise them. Could you expand on that a bit?
- [37:25]
A
You know, it goes back to what I said earlier. Everything starts with you. But I will, I will say if you want to live a great life and if you want to live a happy life, just lower your expectations. Everything's good. But if you want to live a great life, you got to raise them. And what I mean by that is you've got to raise the expectations of the outcome. What is going to happen? You had to, you had to raise it. You can't be happy with getting halfway there. You know, you need to raise that and you need to raise the expectations of all the people around you. Children, spouse, your, your friends, your employees. When you start raising those expectations, you'll start saying, I may need to find a different group of people. But the important thing is start with you. If you raise the expectations of yourself, you're going to make one more sales call that day. You're going to make you're going to have one more text to a team member saying, how are you doing? You start raising the expectations of how you operate, then everything just seems to fall in line. People start naturally wanting to come around you. People start, want to do deals with you because you're operating at a much higher frequency because you've risen, you, you've raised the expectations of yourself and that's how you get a happy life. If anything, you'll smile more.
- [38:28]
B
Yeah, we, we like to smile more also. Speaking of smiling, what are you most excited about in the next six months?
- [38:37]
A
I'm most excited about the market. I know everyone, everyone listening's like, oh, what are you talking about the market? I think we are, are seeing an opportunity right now with AI. We're with. With where interest rates could be coming down with what's going on with crypto. I just think there's just so much opportunity out there now. I'm still niching. I'm not, I'm not going out into all those areas, but I just think there's so much opportunity that's going to come our way in the next six months that I think it's going to free up some money for people to do a little bit more spending. I think that there's, I think there's an opportunity for the markets to, to lift up. And that's, that's. I know it's a very general, broad answer, but I'm just positive on, on the next six months of what's going to happen in the markets which is going to make things better in all of our businesses.
- [39:22]
B
Good. Take my. I'm heading to Burning man next weekend and my, my buddy Alan, he's, he had this like, dream a few months ago where he just realized like he. The shift on or the focus on AI, all the fear. He was like, I think like one of my missions right now is to change people's fear into excitement. And how do we really, like you said, take the opportunity and make it a good thing. As long as we're scared of it and we're putting all this negativity around it, that's what we're going to create. So just, yeah, double clicking on the positive view of it and stepping into the places that you can make a good impact. Ride the wave, catch the wave for sure. Well, thank you so much for your time here. If anyone wants to reach out and connect with you, where would be the best place to do that?
- [40:13]
A
They can find me on social media, Matt Rhodes on Instagram or on Facebook or Forest Capital Investments is my website.
- [40:22]
B
Awesome. Well, thank you so much Matt. This was great. You've been listening to Second Command, brought to you by COO alliance founder Cameron Herald. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to like, share and subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and our other podcast streaming platforms. For more best practices from industry leading COOs, visit COOAlliance.com.
- [40:54]
A
Sam.