#579: Building a Business That Doesn't Need You with Jason Swenk

Speaker A: I was so depressed because I identified as the CEO, I identified as the agency founder. And when I sold that, that was my baby. That was my identity. I felt like I sold my identity. People think that. End goal, sell the business, do nothing, sit on a beach, have fun for one or two weeks and then you'll be completely bored. If you've worked this many years creating

Speaker B: stuff, what if you could step out of the day to day and see your business from a whole new perspective? Welcome to above the Business where we empower you to rise above the daily GR and embrace a higher way of business ownership. Get ready to build your business by design. Welcome to another episode of the above the Business podcast. My name is Bradley Hamm. You're your host. On today's episode we have Jason Swank. He is the author of Operator to uh, Owner, which is a fantastic name by the way. Look, every small business owner and founder hits the same five ceilings, but most never realize it. In this episode we talk about his own journey, but then the journey that small business owners and founders go through, from operator to manager to architect to CEO and to owner. And if you've ever wondered, is there a difference between CEO and owner? And what does Operator Owner even look like? This episode in Podcast is for you. Without further ado, here's my conversation with Jason Sweik. Um, Ambition is the first step towards success. It's time to level up your agency and Coach P Consulting will help you do just that by using the same strategies he used to sell over 700 life insurance policies in 2021 alone. Now this is not your regular one and done type coaching. You'll get personalized coaching two days a week, every week of the month and you'll get a live look behind the scenes of his team training and an office that's performing at the highest level. There's a reason CoachP Consulting is the fastest growing coaching company for insurance agency owners in the country. Coach P will train your team alongside his own and show you the exact steps they are taking to achieve Chairman Circle Exotic Travel and Multi Line Presence Club and be one of the few agents to be selected to have a third office. So whether your goal is to be at the top of your local market or amongst the best in the country, this training will give you the strategies and the tactics to get there. For just $250 a month, you'll get high level coaching each week from someone who is already getting it done at that level and his strategies work and it's time to put them to work for you sign up@coachbeaconsulting.com and get your first full month for free when you mention the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. Jason, welcome to the above the Business podcast.

Speaker A: Yeah, thanks for having me.

Speaker B: We'd love to start with background origin story. How did people get to be where they are? Tell us your journey.

Speaker A: I graduated college and worked for a company called Arthur Andersen as a computer programmer. But the only problem was is in college, I outsourced all my programming and all my work. And so when they wanted me to program, I just knew it was a matter of time. But the lucky thing for me was one of my friends looked like Justin Timberlake from NSYNC. So in 1999, I created a fake band, fake website called Inshit, and it got popular, and then people started asking me to design websites, and so that's kind of how I started. And then I grew that agency for 12 years, a little over a hundred people, over eight figures, and we were able to sell that.

Speaker B: That's fantastic. Wow. Tell me, how did the sell come about? Did you sell it to another agency? Did you sell it to private equity? What did that look like?

Speaker A: Yeah, we sold it to another, bigger agency, and then we were sold nine months later to a, uh, publicly traded company. So that was a lot of fun. That was a ride. Over the years, we had a lot of people looking at us to buy and finally just got to a time where I felt like I was at my max and I felt like I was holding the company back. I was a CEO, and I wasn't just the title of the CEO. I had that role or that identity that we'll probably talk about later on. But I wasn't really kind of that true owner where I could kind of step away. I felt like I was still holding it back. And only about maybe a year after, when competitors, old competitors started reaching out, was like, hey, can you help me out this? How'd you beat me on this? I started helping them out. I was like, oh, man, I know so much more now. And I didn't realize the evolution of people.

Speaker B: Well, obviously you've got a book that at the time of this recording, is soon to come out. We'll get into it. Love the name, by the way, operator to owner. But inside of there, you've actually got five different identity shifts. And so I would love to kind of walk through each one of these, because I have a lot of questions if those are the shifts that you actually, actually made during your time of building that company to ultimately have a successful exit I guess let's start down at the bottom. When you think about someone being an operator, in fact, I think Chick Fil A, they even refer to their Chick Fil A franchisee owners as operator owners. Okay. But for you and your context, what is the definition in the context of an operator?

Speaker A: So everyone starts off as an operator, right? So think about, I was an accidental agency owner or accidental business own, right? Like, I knew how to do something cool. So for a couple years, I was designing the website, I was selling, I was doing project management, account management. Like, an operator has their hands in everything. But you get to a point where you go, man, like, I'm working 80 hours a week. I can't keep this up. Like, I started a business to have freedom to be able to take some time off, but you can't. Literally, the business owns you rather than you owning the business. That's where the operators really struggle. If you can't take a couple days off. One of the things that every week we always do, I call it Epic Fridays. And it was kind of a test many years ago when we started doing this, I was like, I want to see how well the business does without me on Fridays. And so we'd go do like a bucket list item, like climb a mountain or jump off a cliff or jump out of a plane, whatever it is. And so we call it Epic Fridays. And so it's a good test. Like, if you can't even take one day off, you're stuck in the operator and we need to do something different.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's so true. And a lot of people, what they're thinking too, when they think about a day off, Jason, is they'll say, well, I take Saturdays off. You know, it's like, that's not really a test, is can you take off a Monday through a Friday, specifically in the business, not just a Saturday or Sunday. I mean, certainly that's good if you can do that, but I mean, if you're tied to it and it owns you Monday through Friday and you're not able to take a Friday off, it's a totally different situation. One of the things you mentioned m there that I think is so true is like, people, business owners, accidental or intentional, they have. Whether it's explicitly expressed or not, they want freedom and flexibility. I want to do what I want to do when I want to do it. Yet the reality of the experience becomes anything but that as they're trying to grow the company. Where do you feel like that you hit the glass ceiling, so to speak, to where this really became. I mean, was it 500,000amillion, where this brick wall you were hitting came to be?

Speaker A: Yeah, it was probably a couple hundred thousand before I hired my first employee. And we look at it too, of going, oh, man, like, I don't know who to hire. I don't know how to hire. What should I have them actually do? And so you kind of go up to this next identity, the manager, right? So you start bringing on people. But here's the deal, man. Now you're at the manager level. You were working 80 hours a week. Now you're working 100 hours a week. Because now you're doing everything you were doing. Now you're managing the person and probably doing their job because you're a crappy manager. I'm still a horrible manager. And the only way out that I realized looking back at that is I needed to do two things I needed to figure out. I needed to get the clarity of where I wanted to take that business. Who do I want to serve? What do I want to do for them? Where do I want to take the business? Like, is this an incubator business where I'm going to build other businesses around this? Like, because I was an agency, or did I want to build this up so I had the option to sell it? Right. That's kind of a goal that a lot of people have when they start up into this, and then they kind of put all their eggs in that basket. So I needed to figure that out. But then the most important thing was since I realized I am a horrible manager because I could do everything or what I thought I could do everything. Like, okay, not amazing at all this stuff. I had to hire people that can manage themselves. That was a big unlock for me. And still to this day, the team that I have assembled now, any of them that direct report to me, they manage themselves. I delegate outcomes. I don't delegate tasks.

Speaker B: Tell me more about that. What do you mean when you say, uh, I delegate outcomes, not tasks.

Speaker A: So when you first hire people, you're going to say, here's exactly how I do it. And you need to go do this. Like, if I say, go build me a website or go call 100 people a day. If you're doing sales, that's a task. But if I said, my goal is for you to grow revenue by a million dollars, that's more of an outcome. And then let them figure that out. And so you have to figure out, it goes back to the clarity part of where your business is going, of what are my Values. Because a lot of times when you're in the manager stage, in the very beginning, you're trying to hire your identical twin, and that's just a kiss of death because all you'll do is talk about amazing ideas back and forth, but no execution versus I want to find the person that is an A plus player at something that I really am bad at, and it takes away time from or, uh, it gives me back my time. But they have to have similar beliefs in their values. Like, for example, my core belief is being resourceful, sharing, celebrating success, not hustling all the time. When it's time to hustle, hustle. So I'm looking for people like that. And I'm not like in the interview going, are you resourceful? I'm putting them through tests. I'm always testing people.

Speaker B: Where's the first place that you start when you know that there's a need in the business? Do you look at and ask yourself some sort of a question, what do I need? Like, you know, in Dan Martell's book, he says, you know, you buy back your time. Is his kind of philosophy, like, how do you get things off of me, the owner? But then there's also, what is the business asking? What does the business itself need? So what is your mentality and approach, especially in that first couple million dollars? Are you thinking both? Are you thinking about, I need to free myself up first, or you think more about the business? Or is it a combination of the two?

Speaker A: So everybody always talks about who they need to hire, but it's more about who do they need to become. And, um, in order for you to become that person, you need to really kind of do this exercise that I talk about in the operator owner book, where let's say you take a sheet of paper, like a, uh, 8 and a half by 11 sheet of paper out, you put your fist on that paper and draw a circle around it, okay? Just to give you a proximity of the size. Spend about a half hour on everything you hate doing and you never want to do ever again. So this could be like project management, account management, sales, like all the things, right? I was doing. And so I basically kind of brain dumped everything. And then I said, well, let's spend about 10 minutes on all the stuff that gives me energy that I like doing. I like the design process, so I want to be on the first. I like coaching people. I like figuring out crazy ideas and going after them. And so then I started going, who can I hire to do the stuff I don't want to do so I get my time back. Yeah, Dan's book is great. I used to coach his wife, so I knew them a long, long time ago.

Speaker B: Uh. Oh, wow, cool.

Speaker A: And so when his book came out, I really liked it. It was a great book. But yeah, every hire you hire should not put more time on your plate. It should actually take away time.

Speaker B: Take away time and you'll know.

Speaker A: A lot of people think so the mentality at that manager stage, when you start hiring people, you think, man, I got to hire someone at 80,000 or 100,000. And you think that money goes out the door right away. You pay them monthly or bimonthly so you can test. And the other part is they hold on to people too late. If you look back at anybody you've ever hired and anybody listening to the show and you've had a bad hire, you probably knew they were bad hire within a week or two, but you probably held onto em for like six months or maybe a year or maybe longer. So, you know, that's kind of, uh, what you need to switch up.

Speaker B: So level one, we go from operator. Level two, we go to manager. And now we're making the third identity shift, which is then architect. So tell us about how you think about the move and the identity shift from manager to architecture.

Speaker A: So the architect is really. And all these levels, you have to go through them as in a founder, or you can even go through them as an employee, because employees or, uh, whatever, like this really applies to anybody in business, regardless if you own it, because you can go through these roles and you can become the owner. But I also will tell you, you don't have to go through all the roles. But I want to get everybody out of the operator and the manager role, because those are where you're working all the damn time. And too many people, they work their whole life, they get to 65, 70, whatever, they retire and their bodies are all decrepit and they can't go do cool stuff. It's just like five, 10 years left or whatever. I want you to enjoy that now. So I want them to get the architect. So architects is this. You are designing systems or architecting systems for other people to make decisions without coming to you as the bottleneck. So like, for example, one of the methodologies or kind of things that I used to do at the agency was this one, three, one method. So when a employee, um, would come to me with a problem, what does a lot of managers do? They go, they solve it. Bradley, here's a problem I have. What Would you do? And then you tell me, and then I go do it. So you've trained them just to come to you for all the answers versus the 131. Is this. So what's the problem? What are the three things you're thinking about? What's the thing you recommend I do that enough people like Bradley, uh, you would come to me and you'd be like, jason's going to do that one three, one Jedi mind trick. I know what's going to happen. I'm going to say what we should go do. And he goes, go do it. So it's just designing a system that way. Or let's say you hire a salesperson. A lot of times people hire sales, go, go get sales. There's no direction there. Who am I going after? You're trying to teach them the whole sales process, the whole organization. Why don't we just teach them how to run a discovery call? Just that they shadow you, then you shadow them, then they send you recordings. That's a process. And then you can do what I call the foot in the door offer. Like they shadow you, you shadow them. Um, then they send recordings and, and so on. And you build that up over time like you're creating systems for people to do better at their job.

Speaker B: Yeah, there's a lot of people that listen to this that want to be able to scale their business know that they need to be able to scale their business through developing sales teams. Right. How do I actually take someone, I like the language zero to KPI, you know, I take somebody that's never been maybe in my industry before. I can take them and say over a period of time, teach them what they need to get them up to key performance indicators, basically targets, objectives, quotas, whatever that that may look like. And boy, people get tripped up on that quite a bit. Now obviously people that have been able to scale can get to that and then they can replicate it. But one of the things that when people are making this shift from manager to architect in your language, is that they just almost keep reinventing the wheel. Well, that one didn't work and then that one didn't work. And there's almost a difference between iterating on what works, making it better versus shifting, and almost starting over every single time. Well, nether sales rep flamed out, you know, didn't work again. Now another one didn't work, work. What do you think the difference is though, from the ones that intellectually get the idea of the developing the systems and the ones that actually do it,

Speaker A: it's kind of what I call this rubber band effect. So as you move up in your identity and you become really, uh, kind of a new identity for what the company needs you. A lot of times, like, and especially when you get to the architect level, you're working probably 40 hours a week now. So you were at 80 to 100 now 40. And a lot of times your self worth. You think, I have to outwork everybody, I have to work the most. And you think working more means more value, but it's not. And so a lot of times you kind of self sabotage your team a little bit. I was telling someone at our event we had, uh, a couple weeks ago, you have to let your team have the fender benders. You see it coming, Let them have the fender bender, but you rip them out of the car if they're having a train wreck. If you throw them in with floaties in the pool, they're never going to learn how to swim. But just throw them in. They'll figure it out, hopefully. And you just got to realize, do I have the right people in the right seat? Going back to that one book I can't remember, and just let them go. Give them a direction, give them an outcome that you want. But none of us really kind of communicate that.

Speaker B: That's so true. I'm really anxious, uh, whenever I was preparing for this, I'm really anxious on these next two identity shifts. I don't know where I heard this recently. I wish I could reference it. Maybe it was on a podcast I was listening to, but the person was differentiating between CEO and owner. But before we get to that, we talk about making from the identity shift from architect to CEO. Talk, uh, about that and then we'll get into the one I'm, um, most curious about, which is what is the difference between CEO and owner?

Speaker A: Yeah. So making the jump to an architect is now you're building up your team where they're building systems for their team to do approvals without coming to them. Right. And when you get to the CEO stage now you're working like 20 hours a week, which is a total mind hit in your head because now there's not much work to do because you're really kind of doing like five roles within the CEO realm. Right. You're setting the vision and communicating it to the team. Right. Like you're figuring out where does the ship go and I'm steering around the icebergs and all of that. The other part is you're coaching and mentoring your leadership team. Only so you're making them better leaders. So rather than you becoming a leader, you're making them be better leaders in the organization. You're grooming them to be maybe the CEO or maybe the owner one day.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker A: You're building the key relationships that no one else can. So you should be the face of the organization, getting on podcasts, speaking on stage. And now most people will kind of come back. And Jason, well, I want to sell my business one day. If I'm the face of the organization, that's not possible. And I'll, uh, tell them, well, you're full of shit, because Gary Vaynerchuk proved that model with VaynerMedia. Do you really think, like, he's built an amazing brand where everyone knows him, he has this amazing agency, all these different companies, but he's not working on the deals, he's not selling the deals. He's not doing the strategy.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: He's acting as the owner now, which we'll talk about later on. And so that's really what the CEO does. And you really struggle with the rubber band effect. Because now I remember I would go into a meeting for a creative meeting, and they, uh, go, jason, I don't need you. Okay. I'm like, man, all right. I go into a marketing department now we're good. Go into sales. No good, man. I went home for a couple weeks, and I was depressed. I was like, the agency doesn't need me anymore.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And then you have that decision where you can screw things up, and then you can butt yourself into those meetings and be like, no, we're doing it this way. Which then sabotages what you've built. Right? And then your team's like, well, Jason's just going to do it. So then you actually even go back to the manager stage. Like, you can drop back down. Then everyone's like, well, Jason had to go do it. I might as well not make any decisions. And that kind of stuff. And then because your identity went down, that's as high up as your agency, it can actually grow. And then what you got to realize is the agency needs you for something different.

Speaker B: How were you able, um, to resist the temptation of being an arsonist?

Speaker A: I mean, I was. That's how I know it. Like, I would screw that up. Then I just realized one day that the business needed me for being a CEO. Like, this is the who I need to become. And then even before I got to owner, like, when I sold agency, I wasn't an owner. I wasn't at that role. Looking back when I started other businesses, even this business. Now I designed it where I'm kind of the architect, which is fine because this business is really not built to sell. But the other agency we had a couple years ago, I was an owner. I could step away. The business was making decisions without me, directional decisions, where to put capital, all that kind of stuff. And there's only kind of one person in the world that I've seen that could be a CEO of multiple companies, and that's Elon Musk. He's an alien.

Speaker B: Yeah, he is an alien. Yeah, for sure. Yep, he is. Hey, if you'd like some help in getting above the business, not just working on it or in it, but getting above the business, two ways we can help. Number one, go to blueprintos.com, you can register for one of my above the Business workshops two hours, always on Tuesday. Once a month we take a topic sales, marketing, team development, and we help you go deep. We oftentimes bring on guest speakers. Totally free, completely live, blueprintos.com and then also on that page, you'll see that you can book in a blueprint game plan call. If you would like us to look into your business, myself or someone on my team to find out about where you are today. We call that point A, uh, and find out where you're trying to go. Your point B. Then we'll also help you begin to map out a plan to remove the barriers and whatever's blocking your forward progress. Either way, just go to blueprintos.com and I look forward to seeing you either on a game plan call or one of our above the Business workshops. Hey, let me ask you a question. Are you struggling to turn clicks into clients and grow your business with confidence? With Direct Clicks has helped over a thousand businesses increase their lead volume by an average of 300%. Built by business owners for business owners, Direct Clicks specializes in custom marketing solutions that deliver real results. From paid search campaigns and performance max to SEO and social media management, they provide the comprehensive digital marketing your business needs to grow. Here's an exclusive offer for a, uh, listener's to the above the Business podcast. If you visit directclicksinc.com above the business, you'll get a free marketing campaign audit. They'll assess your website, social media, SEO content and paid advertising. Then they'll provide actionable recommendations. Plus, when you choose to partner with them, they'll waive all your setup fees. Don't miss this opportunity to grow your business with proven marketing strategies with with directclicks directclicksinc.com abovethebusiness. Um, so what's the difference then between CEO and owner? The ultimate place to get.

Speaker A: Well, that's the ultimate place for some people to get.

Speaker B: Oh, okay. Yep.

Speaker A: Just remember, like, the top ones, people may not wanna get there. Right. And that's perfectly fine. You don't have, like. But I want you to see all the different options. Like, the CEO is kind of like the false summit. Like, if you've ever climbed mountains and you come over and you're like, I'm finally up here.

Speaker B: Oh.

Speaker A: You're like, oh, I was so close. And then you see, like, oh, I have to go up to that. And some people are like, no. Like, I'm good there. But. So the owner is. The business does not depend on you. You could go away for a year. It doesn't matter. But a lot of times you have to be accessible. So if your C level, like the CEO is coming on a hard time, he or she might want to hit you up and be like, hey, what would you have done here? So in the book, I talk about Tony Robbins. He owns a thousand companies.

Speaker B: He's not CEO of a thousand companies.

Speaker A: Hell no, you can't do that. That's why I said Elon Musk, he's an alien. SpaceX, Tesla, how. But he doesn't sleep. He probably doesn't have family life and all that kind of stuff. So that's kind of why he's an alien. But he's done an amazing job. But that's not what I want.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. How soon, ideally, in a business. And then kind of. That's part one of this question. And then part two is, how frequently do you revisit your vision?

Speaker A: Well, I think maybe once a quarter. I mean, but I think it just hits you too, right? Like, there was a quote from Steve Jobs many years ago where he's like, if I'm doing something multiple times that I just do not like doing, I'm going to reevaluate what I'm doing. I even told my team this for the agency Mastery business. I'm like, if there's consecutive, over 15 days in a row that I'm just dreading, I don't want to do anymore. That'd probably be the last time I do it.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: And then I'll look at, well, has the vision changed? Has the new mountain? Like, I always tell everybody that I'm always climbing a mountain, but when I reached the top of one mountain, it's the lowest part of the next mountain. Because when I sold the first agency, I thought that was the top of the mountain. I really did. And two weeks later, I was like, cool, I don't have to work ever again. I don't have to do anything, whatever. I was so depressed because I identified as the CEO, I identified as. As the agency founder. And when I sold that, that was my baby. That was my identity. I felt like I sold my identity. That's why I wrote this thing. I was just like, I sold my identity versus realizing my identity is not that my identity is creative, innovative, all that kind of stuff I can apply to everything else, but I have to be creating something. People think that end goal, sell the business, do nothing, sit on a beach, have fun for one or two weeks, and then you'll be completely bored. If you've worked this many years creating stuff, our minds are programmed. I tell everybody I only do 20 hours, maybe 10 hours a week in actual meetings, but my mind is always on. That's the curse of owning a business.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's so true. One of my favorite podcasts is Built to Sell, where John really goes pretty deep into people like yourself that have exited the business. And, you know, I love the nuts and bolts of it. I love. How did they get to the multiple? Was it a multiple of ebitda? Did you sell in a multiple of revenue? How did you guys determine that, et cetera? Uh, just all of those sort of things. What were the negotiations like? Obviously, it's not the approach that we take on this podcast, but I say all that say to your point is that it's 80% of the time people say, I lost my identity. I was depressed. I enjoyed. Whether it's two weeks or some of them take maybe a few months, and they're like, yeah, I was playing golf all the places I wanted to. I bought a couple Rolexes, I bought the car I wanted, the house I wanted. And then I was like, all right, now what am I going to do at this point? So it is something that people have expressed that they lose because the identity is the business to where. Which, by the way, I think also, even if you're not selling when the business is doing well, you seem to think better about yourself. When the business is struggling, you have a down year in revenue, profitability becomes tight market conditions, et cetera. Then it starts to infect your mental model about how you think about yourself. Did you ever experience any of that?

Speaker A: All the time. I still do. I mean, it never goes away. Anybody that says it goes away, they're lying. And they're supporting terrorism. You always have that. Tony Robbins did it well, and I'm going to screw it up. But I think there's seven basic traits of human beings, like significance, contribution, community, love, or connection, something like that. I can't remember all of them. And we all rank them different. And the two that you have that you put the most priority to kind of dictate how you do. And so mine is significance and contribution. So when you took that away, or let's say business has a down year, you're like, I'm losing it. I'm, um, not significant anymore. And you second guess yourself. And the thing that gets me out of it is I treat business as a game. Now, most years, especially with agency mastery, we don't have revenue goals. We have more goals about for our members. Be like, how can they double their EBITDA and get more time back? That's how we measure our success, rather than the revenue goal of like, I want to get to 10 million. All right, why? Many people go, I want to get 10 million. I go, why? I don't know. There's a number I heard someone on a podcast, the Eight Figure Club. What are you going to do? They don't know. Or they put all their eggs in one basket. Like, for example, when I sold agency, I don't think I told anybody this, or maybe I said it maybe one time or two. I only bought one thing ever with the money I sold. I bought a Jeep bumper for a tj, an old dj, and I was like, why am I spending any of this money? Just put this away. Because up until that point, I was only spending 50% of what I make. Most people spend way too much and they rely on one thing happening in their life. They get to 60, they want to sell their business. And then something happened. I created an AI CFO last year. Company Claude just killed it. We'll probably shut it down if I put all my eggs in that one basket. Uh, AI is just coming really quick for a lot of people's what they used to do. And you put all your eggs in one basket. I only lived off 50% of my salary and built it up. I didn't have to sell either.

Speaker B: Just to give a respectful counter to that. What are your thoughts, though? And we use the selling of your company as an example. But marking milestones in a business. Okay, so did you ever think about, let's just use a watch as an example. You may not be a watch guy to relevant to, uh, whatever that may be. Like to say you Know what? It's not about the watch, but it is about the marking of the milestone that you hit. The other thing could be, let's say that you do set a vision, and the vision is, uh, I want to get to $3 million, and then you get to $3 million. Business owners are notorious for not celebrating wins. I mean, that is across the board. We just, like, move on to the next thing. And yet life is short. It's like, gosh, business is freaking hard. Maybe we should, like, celebrate some of these moments. And it may just be appropriate to what the, uh, milestone is, but it could be a nice dinner at one of your favorite restaurants, Right, with your wife and a $200 bottle of wine instead of something like that. So what are your thoughts about money marking milestones with certain things, whatever that may look like for you.

Speaker A: I love that it goes back to one of our core values, celebrating your wins. But here's the thing. It just depends on how you're set. When you have a goal based on revenue, you'll sacrifice everything to get there. You'll sacrifice your time, your family, your health, all that kind of stuff. And I used to do that, and I was fat, miserable. My wife probably hated me. And when my kids were around five, I started realizing they're growing up fast. So then I started setting time goals first. So I will never sacrifice my time goal for a revenue goal.

Speaker B: Oh, that's good.

Speaker A: So my milestones were more on time. That makes sense of, uh, going, I am only going to work Tuesdays through Thursdays from 9 to 2. That's what worked for me. When I was able to achieve over eight figures, there was no, like, all right, ding, ding, ding. Like, parades and all that. I'm like, okay, nothing changed. Same thing. Like with Steve Jobs. I'm not, uh, comparing myself to Steve Jobs at all. Please don't get me wrong on this. But, like, I remember watching an interview with Steve. He was, like, by, like, 22, he was worth 10 million. By 30, he was worth, like, a billion. He was like, I don't care. He had no furniture in his fucking house. Um, he just didn't care. He cared more about that milestone that he set of making the best product, putting the coolest people. I think everybody's different. Build the business around yourself. That's it. And you'll be happy.

Speaker B: I totally agree. I think that whatever that is, a time goal, a revenue goal, personal income goal, an impact that you want to make. I think regardless of how you approach that, don't try to be Bradley don't try to be Jason, be you, whatever that is, you know, for you. I think it's great. I was listening to. I think I saw on Instagram last night Jesse from Banana Ball. He was at a hotel room about to do, you know, something, and he was signing, like, thousands of balls and thousands of books. And he was like, you know, I came in and I was tired after one day. And then he just told him stuff like, I get to do this. I get to do this. And I think for business owners, myself included, oftentimes I have to remind myself, hey, I chose this path. I decided to do this all, uh, right, this podcast. I said I was going to do a podcast, and I've continued to do the podcast. If I, in theory wanted to shut this thing down, I could do it and shut this down and not do it anymore. But I get to do this. I get to meet really cool people like you and hopefully be able to serve Jason. This has been great. People want to connect with you personally. Want to find out about your book. Where would you point them to?

Speaker A: Yeah, go to swank.com. it's s w e n k dot com and you'll see a link to the book operator to owner. It'll be on Amazon. There's an audible. I recorded it. Not AI. Um, I think a lot of people are using AI. I'm like, no. And so I go off on some random. I'll start reading it and I'll just go off on tangents. So, uh, yeah, go to swank.com, you can reach out. If I can ever help any of you guys, let me know one day.

Speaker B: Whenever I do write the book above the business, I think if I do the audio version, I'm going to go off on tangents, too. So I'm glad you shared that. Jason, what does working above the business mean to you?

Speaker A: Being the owner, you could step out and the business keeps continuing, keeps growing for a long time, and that's when you truly are the owner of it. You just got to remember you're still creative, innovative, you still built it. Don't get pulled back into that rubber band effect and go screw stuff up that you've earned the right to get to, uh, that day, but also to realize that you don't earn tomorrow. You have to work for it. You've earned up to today. And so what are you going to do for tomorrow?

Speaker B: That's great. Jason, thanks for coming on the podcast.

Speaker A: Thanks for having me.

Speaker B: Well, I really enjoyed that episode with Jason. There was a ton of things that obviously we have alignment on. We talk about moving from rainmaker to architect and while his language and his approach is different, I think what is key is the fact that you are moving away from being the doer of all of the things. I mean, whenever he was walking through the frameworks of moving from being the operator to then manager to then architect and then CEO and owner, I love the language. Operator to owner. Make sure you go to swank.com and pick up his book. I want to give a thanks to our podcast at above the Business Brand Partners if you want to be able to grow your business, you're growing it through your team and you're growing it through marketing. But marketing has a lot of different things at play. Having someone, a vendor that is in your corner that really knows and understands your business absolutely key. That's why we've partnered with DirectClicks. Go to directclicksinc.com above the business. Book a sales call with somebody on their team and they'll kind of get to know and understand where your marketing is today. They'll understand kind of where it could be in the future. Make some suggestions and if right, they'll be able to help you onboard and make the switch over to Direct Clicks in a seamless way. Directclicksinc.com There is so much change in the marketplace and it feels like that that change is increasing in terms of speed and also kind of just the amount of change that's coming. That's why putting yourself in a group of other business owners, specifically if you're an insurance agency owner, being around others and your team around others to help you navigate that where community becomes so invaluable, go to Coach P consulting.com coachpconsulting.com Business owners know, uh, that you have to grow and develop your team, which means you have to always be recruiting. It's not the concept that's hard, it's the execution of that. But not if you work with Autopilot. Autopilot is going to help you to always make sure that you have fresh job postings so that you can attract a players and then you can actually work those a player candidates just like you were trying to work your leads. Speed to lead is important in marketing, but speed to candidate is important in your recruiting as well. You don't want to lose out on potential a players. Autopilot recruiting can help you go to autopilotrecruiting.com autopilot recruiting.com all right, everyone love that episode. Hoped it served you well till next time. Lead well and go be great.