The RISE Framework: How to Scale & Build a Real Business

Speaker A: Businesses start for three things, right? Number one is passion. Are you, are you even passionate about what you want to do? Number two is product. Do you have a proper product for your passion?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And number three is profits. Can I make money,

Speaker B: Fam? What's up? Welcome back to the CO Pulse podcast where you get the real, the raw and the mind of entrepreneurship. I am sitting down here with, uh, I mean, I feel like one of the topmost authorities when it comes to business, uh, development. Uh, the stuff that you do is very relevant, is very updated. Uh, it's none other than Mr. Gary Harper from Sharper Business Solutions. Right? So if you heard about, you know, the Sharper System, um, I mean, this is the guy behind the entire thing. So I've had a lot of friends and uh, you know, close people that have worked, uh, with you in the past in terms of building their businesses, their brands and everything behind it from SOPs to, to, you know, how to uh, you know, scale and everything. So I'm a fan, let me tell you that much. Uh, I'm a fan. So under Sharper Business Solutions you have a, uh, collection of around 14, uh, companies. Right? So you have, um, also you all, uh, you have a series of books, which is a rise, um, a business series of books and I mean bestsellers. I mean it's incredible what, what you've done. You started, I, ah, don't know if you started in real estate, but I mean you did real estate for a long, long time and then uh, you're still active in it and went into like improving all these businesses. So, so there's. And Pac Man, I want to welcome you to the podcast. I want to give you thanks for taking the time and doing this with us. Um, and uh,

Speaker A: man, yeah, I appreciate the kind words. It means a lot to me. Thank you.

Speaker B: Yeah. And uh, I mean it's, it's really impressive. Like I, I like how your, Your um, your mind works. I feel like you have very. Right, um, before we kicked, you know, record. You know, you have a very objective way of approaching things, but you also take into account the human capital of business, which is one of the big things. That's that showcase in the uh, in the, in the R. Right. So, so with, um, that being said, man, I mean, I, I feel like I want to pull in so many threats, uh, right now, but, uh, I'm going to hand it over to you. Give us a little breakdown of how you got started, um, when you kicked off your entrepreneur career and how have you gotten to this point and we'll go from there.

Speaker A: Yeah. So for me it was early on. I started off. Actually, most people don't know this. I don't share it a lot, so it'll be unique to your podcast. But I actually got kicked out of school. I got, I left school at like 17 years old. Um, mom and dad, um, you know, kind of frustrated with all that. I moved to northwest Indiana from Virginia. And uh, and I moved into my brother in law's rentals and he was remodeling them, getting them ready to be sold or rented out. And that was my job. My job was to like help him remodel them and then live in them. And, and also my job was to live in some of these houses that were in the process of being remodeled. And my job was like, to keep people from breaking in. You know, they were, they were in like Gary, Indiana, Hammond, Indiana, like some of the higher capitals. So I had a Glock 9 millimeter, a 38 special to kind of keep myself safe. And

Speaker B: then

Speaker A: during the day, I remodeled the house. You know, that's kind of how I started in real estate.

Speaker B: Yeah, those areas are rough, man. It's, it's kind of like, you know, you got to have the, the Glock, uh, right next to the keys right there.

Speaker A: Yeah, you do. So I mean, I just had a bed on the floor. You know, I ate ramen noodles. You know, I went to the dollar store, paid my, you know, went to the Mission and ate every day, walked over there. And then, you know, I started, I got my GED and then went to college. But, um, you know, it led me into an opportunity. I, I started off in Corporate America at 7:15 an hour, uh, really with no experience and allowed myself to just hustle, work hard and read and self taught. And I worked my way up. And, and by the time that was at 17, uh, 18 years old, by the time I was 22 years old, I was an executive. I was national manager of business initiatives and development. Right.

Speaker B: Wow.

Speaker A: And so, you know, it was an opportunity. I won't tell you the 100%, like I was ready for it, but I got it

Speaker B: and

Speaker A: I, and I took the opportunity and I definitely, definitely maximize the opportunity that was given to me. It was a smaller organization, you know, it wasn't like a Fortune 500 company, but it allowed me to get my feet under me. It allowed me to learn and allow me m. To help grow. And I traveled a lot. You know, my role was kind of in between like sales and operations. I had to like mix those Two, help sales create a, you know, create a sellable like um, response to an RFP and then operations helping them fulfill it. But then that led me into like working for Fortune 500 companies and, and uh, end up being executive for a Fortune 500 company by till uh, about 2011. And so little story on that. I, I became certified in Six Sigma, which is a process management, you know, program. I got uh, certified in BPM Business Process Management, Lean Sigma, Fundamentals of Quality. Started learning a lot about like how to run a business and how to pro, how to processes work within a company and then really understanding that's what a company is. A company is a collective group of people in process. Right. And so if you're not good at process and you're not good at leading people, you're not good at running a business. Right. It's just what it is. And so 2004 kind of came along. Um, I was doing really good. I mean I won executive of the year many years. Ended up winning 8 out of 10 years. All expense trips paid around the world for, you know, me and my wife and we were able to travel together and do that. But I found myself like having a lot of tax burdens. So I decided to go back to my brother in law and said hey, talk to me about like you, you were doing with these rentals and how do I get more rentals? How do I pay off of these taxes and lower my burden? And he started showing me how to buy and hold and I didn't he me a lot of houses. And um, I had, I had a lot. I ended up having to start a property management company that my dad helped me run. My dad, you know, was right behind me here and God rest his soul, but he helped me run that property management company after he retired from the military. And we had a lot of them. It was called Calumet North Properties. So we didn't just do mine, but we did, we did uh, other investors management as well. And 2008 showed its ugly head and I found myself like looking on the, you know, the barrel of a,

Speaker B: uh,

Speaker A: you know, a bad economy, you know.

Speaker B: Yeah. Anybody with leverage was, was, I mean in a hot, in a hot spot right there. So

Speaker A: it was not fun. It was not fun looking down the barrel of the economy with a, an ugly bankruptcy bullet looking in the eye. Right. And so 2010 showed up and I didn't make it, man. Like, I'll be honest with you, like I, I lost it all. Okay. The Calumet north properties continued on my dad continued. He was managing for other investors. But my, my rentals went underwater. And I tried my best. I did everything I can do. I took every monthly rent, paid the local bank. It was a local federal savings loans company that I got all my loans through, and they ended up going bankrupt. And the investors that were in the area, they really messed them over. They didn't pay them, but they were kept keeping rents. And me, I just felt like I had an ethical responsibility to pay them what I could. So I paid them every month. Every, every dime came in, went straight to them. Every savings that I had made, the profit I had made on them, all gone. It was all underwater. It was all upside down. Finally, I had a call from the lady, you know, sweet lady, and she says, I, I think you're gonna, you're gonna have to file bankruptcy, Gary. Like,

Speaker B: yeah,

Speaker A: there's no way out of this. And, uh, and I did

Speaker B: 2011. You said around 2011.

Speaker A: 2010. 2011. Finally, in 2011, I finally said, okay, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna file bankruptcy.

Speaker B: Yeah,

Speaker A: man. I was never more distraught. I'd won my whole life, you know, I'd won homecoming king in high school, I was football, you know, I had one executive of the year multiple years. You know, I, I, I was pretty confident who I was, but, man, was I humbled. What a humbling year. God put his thumb right down on my life and was like, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna humble you this year. And it was not just the worst of it. The worst of it was not just losing the properties, not losing all my life savings, not losing all that. What was the worst of that year for me is I lost my health.

Speaker B: Um,

Speaker A: right. I got bit by a tick that same year and came down with Lyme disease. And it spit me in a tail spin, man. I got so sick, go so ill. I had to stop working in corporate America. I couldn' anymore. Got to a point Raphael, I couldn't even leave my house, right?

Speaker B: 20

Speaker A: panic attacks a day. It was a rough run. I mean, it was just a rough run. So I had my year of job. I call it in biblical terms, it's a year of job. Job had, like, the worst year ever. He lost his kids, lost his wealth, lost his health, lost it all. His wife looked at him, said, curse God and die and just get it over with. Job. And Job's like, no, I'm gonna. And I found myself in that moment, finding out my. What I was made of.

Speaker B: Yeah,

Speaker A: right. And I Had a long road to come back. I had to heal, I had to get confidence back. I had to mentally heal, emotionally heal. Then I had to find my way back to success, man. I. We got to a point man, where I was looking for dollars and in money and cushions in the house, right? Like we were cleaning out other investors rentals just to uh, you know, get them ready to re rent just so I could make enough money pay. I was doing the dishes at the local school where my wife worked at. In order to keep my kids in private school, right. Like I was, I started a company called Instant PC Profits trying to affiliate market just before nobody was doing it, just to be able to work from the computer in my home. Right?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So it was a very rough year for me. But God, you know, be the glory to him. I came out of it and uh, I called my brother in law and he's the guy who was in real estate and he's like, Gary, what are you gonna do? And I said, well man, I'm gonna, I think I'm gonna have to go back to corporate America. He goes, I don't think God took you out of that, just put you back in it.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: And I'm like, man, I need that 6, 7 figure a year salary. Like I needed it again. That

Speaker B: security blanket quote, unquote. Right?

Speaker A: Yeah, we'll proceed for sure. Yeah. And uh, but boy, was it not, you know, when they're done with you, done with you. So I uh, heeded his words and I said, wayne, what do you think I should do? He says, come, come work with me, man. Like let's do real estate together. I'm like, bro, I don't want to do real estate again.

Speaker B: Yeah,

Speaker A: you're talking like a bad meal that I just had. Threw it up for three days and you want me to eat it again, man, I don't want to do that again.

Speaker B: You went in, got chewed out and spat back out. So yeah, I don't blame you, man. It's, it's, it's rough.

Speaker A: It was not, it was brutal. And so I found myself looking at it and going, okay, you know, I still need a couple more months of healing before I go back to corporate. So let's do this, let's give it a little bit of a go. So I, and I went in and uh, I started wholesaling houses with him. We started the process together and obviously I have a background in process procedures on policy, hiring people and man, we built a pretty successful business together. You know,

Speaker B: he

Speaker A: was the owner we uh, started a company I was part owner of called Good Success and we taught people how to do real estate. But man, that group in northwest Indiana bore a lot of people. A lot of people were born out of that, you know. Josh Caller.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Fourth grade Sunday school boy. And I hired him and he was my marketing man. Right.

Speaker B: Yeah. Uh,

Speaker A: then, then I, then I, me and Wayne hired Dave Richter, you know, and Dave Richter was right high school and Mary and Angela and he came to work with us and did finance and then he moved into, you know, he moved into buying and selling in Kentucky for us for a little while and helped us run our property management. And we started a company together called, called JD Automations. We built podio systems together. And then Dave went out and started Profit first and wrote Profit first and, and my, you know, no name since he was born. You know, my uh, good friends with his dad, Pete Richter and just cool like in that moment of building this real estate company and in over five years we got to 300 deals a year in five states.

Speaker B: Oh wow, that's amazing. Yeah.

Speaker A: So I've done over 1200 transactions with the team. Not me personally, but with the team. Built out a team that did it and man, what a cool opportunity, what a cool experience to be around these like minded individuals in real estate and see success. And 2016 showed up and you know, I built back my wealth. I built back then I felt good about it and I realized something, Rafael. I hate real estate. I mean, I just don't love it, you know.

Speaker B: You know, it's uh. You make a very interesting point. I mean like when I got into it, I used to own a non emergency medical transportation business. There was a lot of logistics. I mean you had vehicles that broke down that would throw your entire, you know, schedule, you know, out the window. And it was just insane. Right? There's a lot of moving pieces. I was like, no, I got to do something better. So I, I, I progressively, I ended up um, in, in the real estate space. Um, and it's like man, I, I don't like, like I don't like transactional real estate. I became a real estate agent, then a broker. And, and it's like, but spuds and, and, and the nuts and bolts of everything. Um, I was talking to one of my uh, one of my coaches actually one time is like, I mean you're getting, you're getting um, like tunnel vision here. There's so many different ways to play in, in a space, right. Like that's, that's so fruitful like, you know, real estate. I mean, I think one of the biggest things that it does, it, like, it creates or brings entrepreneurs together. So that got me thinking, and it's kind of one of the first things that opened up my mind to. To coaching and just operating in different verticals within the same. The same type of industry. But I agree with you, man. Like, the fact of actually doing, you know, the real estate, the transactions and all that stuff, I'm not. I'm not a big fan. I mean, it,

Speaker A: uh, up. I mean, I've sat on my share of dirty couches, right? Yeah,

Speaker B: yeah.

Speaker A: I've seen kids crawling across the trash.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: You know, I've seen. I've seen the worst of the worst. And I just, you know, even in nice houses, man, and in nice neighborhoods and all that, like, I've seen it all sides, you know, from fluent neighborhoods to people struggling. And God bless her soul, everybody has their story. But, like, I just. At some point, man, I got to the point where it's just like, real estate was how I made my money back.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Matt Andrews, from Family, which we both know, uh, he says real estate was my thing to get me to my thing.

Speaker B: Yeah,

Speaker A: I

Speaker B: like that.

Speaker A: And I think that's what it was, right? It was a thing to get me my thing. But I woke up one morning in 2016, and, you know, I had a passion. I felt like my purpose was shifting. And I find purpose comes from three areas. It comes from your past, what you're passionate about. It comes from your future, what you want to be remembered for. But there's a thing called the present. The present gives us a gift. And the gift is like, what gifts do we have that we could give back to the world? And I started getting phone calls from guys from Collective Genius and some other masterminds, Investor Fuel and others. And they, um, they said, hey, man, I need help. Like, you know, you guys obviously run this like a business. It's not just an entrepreneurship for you. Can you help me with it? And so, you know, being an executive for as many years as I was, I definitely knew how to build a business, knew what we did. But, you know, there was one thing that a lot of guys didn't have, and I didn't have the resources to give people time. It was like some level of a framework, something to help them, you know, read and understand and get the education, because the education was the biggest part. I already had that. So I. I recommended the book Traction to him. Gina Wickman, I know, is on your podcast, and really great man. I really like Gino and he's uh, since sold, you know, trash, other companies, PE firms and stuff. Um, so I decided to get like certified with them and I was starting to help other people with it, you know. Now unfortunately for me, and knowing how a company built, is built and where it needs to go and how it goes from entrepreneur to a business, uh, an entrepreneur operating system really isn't just all you need. At some point, you need more. And so I got to the point after helping now we've helped almost 4,000 businesses, which is thing.

Speaker B: Yeah,

Speaker A: 4,000 businesses in Alaska.

Speaker B: What's this in the last, what years?

Speaker A: Nine years? Yeah.

Speaker B: That's insane. Yeah,

Speaker A: and it's, it's great. I mean I, I, I don't put my name on every one of those because I have multiple business coaches. Right. Like I have a lot of business coaches that work for us in the business coaches and on the business coaches. And then there's people come to our workshops and there's people that have come to one day events and there's people that we've worked directly with and we work with them ongoing. But all those numbers add up to like just around 4,000 businesses that we've touched or helped educated on. Now, um, that doesn't take in consideration like how many people read the books. Right. Like that just is like how many people we've had some level of coaching at or towards. And so it's been a lot, it's been a great blessing. But you know, I found myself really struggling with entrepreneurs, uh, not getting, and business owners not getting everything they needed to scale properly. And so like Rise is a book I wrote. It's right here behind my head. It's on Amazon, it's on audible. Um, and it's a framework book. It's a very much a tactical book. And it talks about like how to do things. Not just what to do, but how to do it.

Speaker B: How to do it.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I think right now in this world we need implementation, not information.

Speaker B: Yeah, I would agree with that. I mean, I think we're saturated. If anything, it becomes an issue, especially for things like analysis paralysis. Right. You start comparing shiny objects left and right. There's so much out there. You can go to YouTube University and get confused in 30 seconds if you wanted to. Uh, and that's exactly what happens. Confusion. Right. But, uh, the implementation factor, I feel like it's one of the things that uh, um, I mean, has moved the needle for me. Absolutely. Right. And um, Tom Crow, I think, feel like I feel like is one of the guys that that's, you know, that said it best is like massive imperfect action. It's okay. Uh, you know, when I heard that the first time I was like, okay, that, I mean that makes sense. Um, you know, I feel like sometimes we can get to a space where we wanna just uh, be dialed in on everything, you know, have everything perfect and to a T before we take that first, uh, step forward. And, and uh, I mean you don't even know that if the damn thing's gonna run

Speaker A: well. Massive important action is, is very, very important when you're starting. But once you go from entrepreneur to business.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Will get you in trouble.

Speaker B: Yeah,

Speaker A: right,

Speaker B: yeah, exactly.

Speaker A: You have to be able to have the mindset of that at the beginning. So just so you take steps. Like so many people get stuck in procrastination because they don't have. And here's what we do. Fear causes us to do something or not do something. So fear like FOMO of missing out will cause you to take massive, imperfect, perfect action. But then sometimes the fear of loss or losing cause you not to take the action at all. Right. So like we have to understand fear is replaced with knowledge and sustained with faith.

Speaker B: Yeah,

Speaker A: Right. So we need knowledge, we need information, we need that stuff to just get over the fear. But then we have to take the imperfect action in mass amounts and to get us going. Once we get to a level of success though, we have to then create a sustainable model. And the sustainable model has to be done the right way or it doesn't stand right. It's, it's built on a healthy foundation. And I think that's where a lot of entrepreneurs mess up. They, you know, there's five stages of business. ARV Business Review said there's five stages of business. First stage of business is like that startup, it's like you're just getting going. Second stage is like grind. Right. Stage three is that sustainability like we're sustaining. Stage four is expansion and stage five is success or hitting your purpose. Right.

Speaker B: Um,

Speaker A: and so each one of these stages of business needs a bridge to bridge you from stage to stage. Right. Because you leave one island to go to the other. Right. And so what we've created with the rise business framework is those bridges. So if there's five stages, there's four bridges and rise equals each one of those resources. Rise the R and rise resources. What resources do we need? The next bridge you get us from stage two to stage three is inspiration. And then we have to go from stage Three to stage four with systems, we have to have the right systems losing control. And if we're ever going to go from stage four to stage five, we have to have engagement. We have to have proper sales, marketing and expansion model to help get us to our purpose and why we existed in the first place. And so when writing Rise as a business framework, it's those five stages of business in mind with those four bridges of how to go from stage to stage. And so a lot of times the companies that are in stage one, stage two, using a, you know, an entrepreneurial operating system, right. And, and it gets them, it gets them higher. And I'm not saying that it just keeps them there, but that's usually where that, that avatar is going to be, where then you get like teams that are trying to expand, they'll switch over to scaling up or make big happen or something like that, or the gazelles, you know, one of those systems in order to scale. But what I found was like, nothing really took us from stage to stage without jumping. And there was really nothing outside of like ad hoc programs that was. Really helped you dial in stage three, which is systems.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: That's why, that's where my passion came along in 2016 is like, how do I get that knowledge to every entrepreneur out there? How can I teach them how to do this? Right? And so I started educating, I started speaking more, I got in the podcast and I get on these masterminds and go, teachers. Well, guess what happened, Rafael? I found that teaching wasn't enough because teaching comes from knowledge, coaching comes from experience.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And now I was like, I need to start a coaching company that helps people take my experience and overcome fear with knowledge. Right. Help adjust their mindset, that'll help make the right connections for them in life and then give them systems and processes for scale. Right. And I said this the other day, man, I'll say it today. We gotta stop paying people that are teachers coaching prices.

Speaker B: Yeah, I agree. Uh, there's a big, big difference. I feel like it's, uh, I mean, it's something that I give a lot of thought, you know, to. Right. I feel like as, uh, as a coach or a mentor, you gotta hold that space for, for whoever you're working with. And when you're teaching, you just kind of, you know, you clock in, you clock out, and then. And you know, even, even if it's a, uh. And I've seen it, it's one of my, my triggers really, because, uh, I, I've seen it quite a bit that, uh, yeah, you know, there's. There's coaching involved, but people hop in and they'll teach something and then step away. But not. Not, uh, not. Not. I don't want to say reinforced, but not support, you know, going through the journey and then filling in the gaps and all the questions that really happen. Right. Like, when we have changes in transitions or we're. We're moving from one, you're gonna have. You're gonna have wind tunnels in operation. Like, you have to address that kind of stuff as well as you're going through it. And. And I feel like dropping, you, uh, know, teaching something is dropping the ball on. On that. But when you coach, you actually, like, you're. You're. You're in there, right? Like, there's the. The success, um, you know, ratio. It's a lot higher, too, and it's just a different beast. I agree with you. Yeah.

Speaker A: Yeah. I always say, you know, teaching comes from knowledge. Coaching comes from experience. And, you know, you could read my books and get knowledge and go teach it.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: But it takes 20 years of experience that I have to coach a business, you know, and so you can definitely tell the difference between somebody who's teaching a business versus coaching a business, you know?

Speaker B: Um, yeah, I like that, man. It's a big, big distinction. Yeah.

Speaker A: You know, that's what I love about Tom Crowell. Right. Tom Crow's that way. Like, he's a coaching of coaches. Why? Because he has experience. It's not just knowledge that he's embarking on you. It's like he can look at it and go, oh, this is different. We need to do something different here.

Speaker B: Right,

Speaker A: Right. This is a canned answer, so that's really important to me.

Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. You know, um, taking that just your theoretical base, right. And pushing that out as opposed to, oh, like, experience is gonna. Is gonna teach you how to, uh, how to adapt, how to react, how to project, um, how to, you know, a lot of the forward thinking, you know, comes from that space. And. And, uh, you know, somebody who's mentoring, I feel like that's. That has to be a skill. Like, how can you. How you can you mentor or coach somebody if you're not. You haven't gone through it. You just read it somewhere. So. Yeah,

Speaker A: so true. So very true.

Speaker B: So. So tell me about, um. I mean, you're going through this. I mean, there's a lot to unpack you, right? I mean, you. You made a comment earlier that you started reading when you were, what, 17 years old?

Speaker A: Uh, for me, I know I Actually didn't start reading for me until I was a little later. But I did start studying. So studying was different than me.

Speaker B: Self study? Yeah,

Speaker A: yeah, self teaching. I, you know, I would go to the library and pick up just the topic and read just what I needed to learn.

Speaker B: But

Speaker A: like actually a joy of reading and actually enjoying reading because I read about three books a week now.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Start till I probably was 35 years old. Like I just did not enjoy reading. Right. But there was different ways to learn and teach, uh, even before that. But yeah, I mean, I saw, I started self educating myself about 17.

Speaker B: So I mean, that's a trait. Right. And I'm seeing a pattern here as you're going through the process. I mean, yeah, you probably were not engaged in high school because, I don't know, it just wasn't engaging for you. And that was the thing. Right? And I see, I see that, I see it happening with my son. Like he has, you know, as far as grades and all that stuff, um, he's not, you know, an A, you know, not straight A's or anything like that. So he, his grades are not stellar. Uh, but I sit down like this. Like this kid's only problem is engagement. Like, he's just like, he's getting bored. Uh, and, and a lot of times it's like, you know, he's, there's no purpose or sense to, to for example, what he's learning in his head. Ah, so, so he disengages as he engages in something. It doesn't matter if it's complicated. You know, you take that and you run with it. And I feel like that's a, that's a strong pattern. Right. Especially for a self driven individual like yourself. Um, so you're, you're, you're tapping into self study early on. Um, and uh, I mean, you're scaling through, through the ranks, right, as you're moving through, through the companies. One thing that I feel like it's very, very impressive too is that you're, you're taking, you know, inventory of everything that you're learning throughout the process and then still, still seeing the opportunity, um, outside of that lane, um, you, uh, you said you were, you were doing well, you were, you know, traveling all over the world and everything. And then you just got to a point where, uh, you know, I want more, I need more. And, and then you, you ventured out and took that leap.

Speaker A: Uh,

Speaker B: I feel like that point right there, right, that, that's, it's a fork in the road. Uh, but I feel like it's one of the biggest things that people struggle with. Uh, there's so much dissatisfaction in the workforce. Um, and even then, right. People like, I feel like most people who want to do something, who have a dream or something, you know, aspirations, call them that, um, they get to a point where they need to bet on themselves, uh, and they pull back from that. Right. Uh, in your case, you had, you know, you had stuff going on for you, so it wasn't necessarily a need, it was something that you wanted to do, yet you still did it. Uh, you risked, you went forward with that. How was that possible? You know, talking from a mindset perspective. Right, because you have all this, uh, you know. Well, I think we'll both agree when we're, when we call it a false sense of security, right. When you're in the corporate space. Um, but, uh, you have this, you know, this going on and you're doing well financially and there's like, I'm just gonna leave everything and then move forward with this. How did you work that out?

Speaker A: Well, I mean, I don't think it was an easy thing for me. Uh, first of all, I had to sit down and have some level of vision of what it could look like. You know, every business that I ever start, I start with some level of data driven decision. And so I started with, you know, I always think three bits. Businesses start for three things. Right. Number one is passion. Are you, are you even passionate about what you want to do? Number two is product. Do you have a proper product for your passion?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And number three is profits. Can I make money? So like every business starts with that framework. It starts with a passion, a product that makes profits. Right? And so then what we do is then we get into, have to identify time, money and people. We have to identify how much time is it going to take. For me, how much money do I need to make, how much money do I need to give? And then how much money will I keep? And then, you know, the last is what people, what people do I need to make this successful. And so once I have that in mind, it eliminates the fear.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Right. The Bible says where, uh, there's no vision, the people perish.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: That's what it is. We have to have vision. Right. The, the reason why people don't move forward is they don't see a plan or a vision on how to make it work. Work. Right. And they don't believe in it because there's no vision. And so, you know, vision gives us hope. And a vision of something is Not a guarantee. It's just. It's faith that it can happen.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's direction, right?

Speaker A: Yes, it's direction. Right. Like, so, like, for me, it's never been scary to take a leap. You know, I call it jumping. So I, I helped a, uh, guy this past year jump out of his job and they call it just unleash your potential. Right. Like go after your potential. Right.

Speaker B: You love acronyms. I like that.

Speaker A: Honestly, bro, if you heard how many. I need to start a book of acronyms because I have all kinds of, like my favorite

Speaker B: acronym Bible. Another bestseller. There we go. I see it in the makings.

Speaker A: My favorite acronym is focus. You know, do you ever hear that? You know what focus stands for?

Speaker B: Uh, no. At this point, I feel like I don't.

Speaker A: Okay. All right, well, let's, let's educate. So follow one course until successful.

Speaker B: M.

Speaker A: Right. I always tell people, if you're going to be successful in life, you have to follow one course until you get there.

Speaker B: I like that.

Speaker A: Yeah. So stay focused. Now, it doesn't have to stay focused your whole life. It's just until you get successful at it and then you go try something else. Right?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So like, that's where diversity starts to happen. And then people build generational wealth. He says now they stayed focused for one thing, got very successful at it, then was able to go off and do other things they stay focused on and compounded their diversity of, uh, business. And that's why I have 14 businesses.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: I don't plan to focus on it. Then I won't be the person. I'm going to hire someone else to stay focused. To

Speaker B: stay focused on it. Uh, yeah,

Speaker A: Yeah. I don't have to be focused, but somebody does.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: I think that's a big mistake a lot of entrepreneurs make is they're like, man, I can't stay focused. That's fine. You better find somebody that is.

Speaker B: Yeah. Bring somebody on board who's going to put that energy into it and call that energy into it as well as you're going through it, man. Yeah.

Speaker A: So businesses and jumping, if you will. Jumping into my opportunity.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: I wanted to unleash my potential. Right. And I want others that are watching your podcast to jump. I want them to unleash their potential. But there's a way in which to do it. There's a secure way in which to do. One, you better be passionate about what you're jumping into. Number two, you better have a product that people want. Number three, you better be able to make Profits. And if you don't have those foundational things, then keep looking until you do. Next, you have to think and that's jumping. You're not being perfect at that jump, bro. You just have those three things to take the jump with.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: It's like Tom Crowell says, take massive action and take the jump.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: But you definitely still when you jump better make sure you have land to land on. Right. Because if you don't have land to land on, if you don't have fashion, if you don't have a product and you're not can't make profits with it, then you don't have a foundation to land on. Uh,

Speaker B: yeah,

Speaker A: it's too risky at that point. And you're, you're risking too much. You're risking your security with your family, security with your livelihood, security with your future. Like that's not calculated risk. Fine. Calculate the risk. Make data driven risk decisions. Right. Then we can get into like time, money and people, which is building a business performer. You know, most critical thing I see entrepreneurs not do is they don't build a business. Performa bought a house, Raphael, that you didn't run a perform on.

Speaker B: No, no. Every single one. Well, I mean, I

Speaker A: mean I looked at what it was worth.

Speaker B: Yeah. An analysis at least A basic analysis. Yeah.

Speaker A: That's a perform. Whether it's on a spreadsheet or 10.

Speaker B: Ah,

Speaker A: look at what it was worth worth. After all fixed. What it was going to cost to fix it and who did you need to fix it. Right.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Every time you're not going to just go buy a house down the street. I wouldn't. And if you did and you wanted to borrow my money, I would say no sir. If you wanted to take my money and go borrow it to flip a house and you didn't know what the ARV was, what the comps were, what the repairs estimate was going to be and. And who you and a contractor and a crew to fix it. You ain't getting my money.

Speaker B: Yeah,

Speaker A: right. So we take that approach to uh, investing, but we don't take that approach to our business. And a business has to have a business performer projected revenues month by month for the next year. It's got to have projected expenses month by month for the next year and it's got to have projected profits month by month for the next year. And that performer needs to include people. Who are you going to hire to do this? And if you're going to be in the seats of the company, then you have to budget for every seat you're setting at.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Right. Because if

Speaker B: you're listening to the podcast right now, I hope you're taking notes because this is a full breakdown on how to, how to build the, uh, the infrastructure of, uh, you know, business that works. So I'm

Speaker A: just

Speaker B: making the comment out there.

Speaker A: I mean, you got to get started, right? How do we get started? Passion product, profits. Now that we got a passion, products and profits. Okay, what time, money, people, am I going to give this a year to succeed? What time frame am I going to give it? How much is it going to take for me? All right, next. How much money? What's my revenue, my expense, my net profit? Then people. What people do I need to help me fulfill this product? And that's your framework for resources, time, money and people. And that's an amazing place to be. There's so much confidence in something when you were like, this is how much time I'm going to give it to CC or fail. And if it doesn't succeed, shut it down. I have started 67 businesses, Rafael.

Speaker B: 67?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Wow.

Speaker A: I have 14. I've sold 10.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: How much is that? That's a lot of businesses. Not equate. Equated in there, right?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Yeah. Um, well, the math's not math, and that's because they're no longer alive. They're dead businesses. I shut them down.

Speaker B: Yeah, no, I mean, I, I can. I mean, that resonates, man, that lands. I've started so many different ventures as well, and at the end of the day, you either consolidate a couple of them and put them together. That pans out. Um, I ended up. Right now, I mean, for example, now I have three. Um, but all three talk to each other. Right? They connect. But those three are probably a collection of maybe 12 or 14 businesses that were, you know, up and running as individuals at some point. Um, and like, going forward, I feel like it's, it's, um, it's hard, right, to, to create, uh, or, or see yourself where you're going to be, especially when you haven't had that experience before. Once you have, you know, kind of like the, You've been, you know, tested and tried, uh, you know, for, through, through the ringer, per uh, se. In any business like you, you have that faith, like you, in yourself and, you know, you can. Okay, I'll, I'll manage. I'll figure

Speaker A: this thing out. Yeah,

Speaker B: right. Um, the, uh, the thing is, when you're get. When you're getting started and we're kicking something off, sometimes it can Be. It can be, uh, you know, almost like. I don't know. I know at the beginning I felt silly thinking, um, you know, about what my business was going to look like. And this is a crazy thing because now I, in retrospect, right, I go back you years when I launched the first business, and, and man, like, why wasn't it, like, the confidence wasn't there. It was just hard for me to kind of visualize it and, and, and picture. But you just don't know once you take that step forward. Right. What the, uh, what the next step is going to bring. I mean, you may. We create projections, we create all these. But sometimes I feel like we, we shut ourselves off to, to the possibilities that are out there. And I feel like those are the best things, um, uh, during the journey because they, they open up different options, different, you know, uh, potential. I know the think, for example, got way bigger once they started hanging out with people and, you know, tapping into masterminds. And my business model just, you know, took a, took a, took a turn, you know, for, for something else, something different. Um, I like how you break it down. It's, it's, uh, you know, in terms of the, uh, the passion, product and profits. Uh, I know on my first business, I mean, this is exactly what I was thinking when you were mentioning it. I didn't have the passion for it. So the product was there and the profits were there, but I got burned out. Um, six years into it, it like, literally burned out. I didn't want to wake, like, I didn't want to go into the office. I hated the thing. Uh, I mean, like, you know, I was just fed up and tired, yet it was my livelihood. It was like, man, is this, is this it? Is this all there is? Uh, the passion wasn't there, but, but it wasn't even. It wasn't something that I wasn't even. I didn't have the awareness of it. Right. So it wasn't in my radar at that time.

Speaker A: Yeah. Do you know what caused this burnout?

Speaker B: Um, I mean, that can tell you what caused it. For me. It was just the repetitiveness of this, of the entire thing, just over and over feeling that I had something else to, to offer. I. I felt caged. Um.

Speaker A: Yeah. So burnout. Burnout doesn't come from working too much. Burnout comes from doing something we don't love, we're doing.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that's exactly what happened. Yeah.

Speaker A: It is what it is. It's not a passion for it, and that creates burnout. What creates Passion. So, like, there's these words, and everybody's like, well, what's great's passion? What creates burnout? Well, burnout is caused from not loving what we're doing. And so if we don't love what we're doing, we're not passionate about it. But what creates passion. What creates passion is purpose.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker A: So we have to understand what our purpose is, life is. And then we have to make sure that the business we are starting,

Speaker B: the

Speaker A: business that we own, or the company you're working for today, better support your purpose. Part of the Rise Business framework is we don't just help the businesses understand their personal purpose. We help the owner, the CEO, the cfo, the cmo, uh, the cgo, all the leaders in the organization and the employees discover their personal purpose. Because here's the important part. At any point, Raphael, your companies, the three you have, have. You can no longer see that company helping you achieve your purpose in life. You're gonna burn out.

Speaker B: Yeah. It starts to fizzle out.

Speaker A: Yeah. Uh, and here's, uh, here's the most important part of that purpose can change.

Speaker B: Absolutely. We

Speaker A: change. Was excited about five years ago, and you may have a listener on here today that's been successful in business, and they were passionate about. And they've heard us talking. They're like, man, I was bashing when I started, and I felt really excited about this, but I feel burned out right now. So how did that work? Here's what happened. Purpose comes from three areas. It comes from your past. It comes from what you love to do.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: It comes from your future, what you want to be remembered for. But here's the other ingredient. It comes from right now. It comes from the present. And the present is your gift. What gift do you have that the world could benefit from? And at any point in life, when you gain new gifts, name new knowledge, you gain new experiences, you gain a gift, and that gift could change your purpose. And at any point in life, your purpose shifts because your gift changes and you now want to go do this. Like, real estate for me, man. Like, I didn't. I didn't have a passion for helping people. Before real estate, I had a passion for making money.

Speaker B: Yeah,

Speaker A: right. And the gift I had was a gift of knowledge of how to transact a real estate opportunity. And the gift of remodeling houses. I had that gift. I could get back to. To the world. And the last is I want to be remembered for being successful and helping other people. But then something happened. I got the gift of entrepreneurship. I Got the gift and knowledge from 15 years of coaching and helping in, in the corporate world. And I was like, man, I have a burden now to want to help entrepreneurs. And so my purpose shifted. And the moment that happened, guess what? I stopped loving real estate. Because I'm like, real estate's no longer helping me support my purpose and I've lost a passion for it. It.

Speaker B: Yeah, awareness

Speaker A: is a heavy thing. If you ever run into somebody, Raphael, and they just, you know, say you're on a mastermind or you're on a podcast or just talking to somebody and they say, this, man, I just don't love this anymore. Just not feeling anymore. I feel burned out. You better help them discover their personal purpose again. Because if their purpose isn't seeing how the company can help them achieve it, they're no longer aligned and they're no longer tethered with that business. And you're entrepreneurs and you're honestly, you're people that are listening to the podcast right now. If they work for somebody and they're like, man, I feel burned out. You better evaluate whether or not that companies are helping you achieve your personal purpose.

Speaker B: Yeah, I, I couldn't agree more. I think it's, it's a matter of, um. Well, I feel like at the end of the day there's, there's, ah. There's always going to be a need for contribution, right? We want to feel useful as human beings. We want to feel like we belong as human beings. Well, you know, the, you know, cared and love for, I mean, that all falls into it. And just as important as that is, I mean to me it's, it's um. I've always thought about making a dent. Right? Um, and the, the, uh. On the purpose side, I gave that so much thought and I decided I wanted to inspire people. Like, that was the first thing that kind of came to mind. I was like, okay, cool. And then I thought about it, like, no, inspiration lasts very little. I, uh, mean, it's really good, but it lasts very little. Like if you don' capitalize on it in 15 minutes, like you're gonna get inspired by an app. Um, and then, so, so it's like, no, no, it's not that. And then I, I wanna, I wanted to, um, to uh, to motivate people and, and, and uh, do like. No, that also, like, it also pays. I, I ended up with, with empowering. Right. I feel like when, when we get to a space of, of empowerment, um, we can take that and then follow. Can you continue on the journey? So So I ended up. My purpose is empowering entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship. And it's one thing that I've talked to probably a thousand times in the podcasts. But, um, it's empowering entrepreneurship. So CEO pols does that, um, pulse capital. Even with my team, we have entrepreneurs in the company. It's empowering those people. And when you have that kind of. I feel like when you find that spark, um, it's almost like you wake up with a fire in your belly and you just want to take on the day. It's not, you know, you're taking on it. It's not you having to do another day. It's. It's like you're motivated, you're driven, and you can go on for 12, 14 hours and lose track of time because you're in the middle of, of whatever is passionate for you and lights you up. Right. Um, and, uh, you know, the coolest part is that when you do it right, passion, product and profits, I mean, you get. You get paid for it and make a ton of cash. So. So it's a win. Win.

Speaker A: It's an emotional reward. It's an emotional. And so. And that's what we're searching for. Millennials own the workforce right now. You know.

Speaker B: Yeah. M.

Speaker A: Um, you know, 67 of the people that quit their job, uh, in the great resignation were part of that millennial generation. And, and that great resignation that happened, they cited the lack of emotional paychecks. That is the reason why they quit. And so I have found there are 10 really paychecks in a business. There's brand, like, I, um, might associate with a team or identify with a team and a brand that I want to be part of. That's an emotional one. What niche I work in matters. That is also an emotional paycheck environment. The office space is comfortable and efficient. Where I work is nice. That's an emotional paycheck. The culture, the team they work with has a good vibe. That's an emotional paycheck. So is the hours they work. You know, do they have good work? Life balance and harmony. That's an emotional paycheck. Location where they're located, where are they, where they're working at. Can they easily get to the office? This. Maybe they're working from home. That's why so many people want to work from home, because that's an emotional paycheck growth opportunity. The career that is, that they're in is evolving and they feel like the things they do are moving towards the next level for them. Recognition. They want to feel like they're getting in what they're giving matters. Right? They want to feel like their time matters challenge. They want to feel like they're challenged every day. They want to feel like the work that they're giving gives them a reason to get up in the morning. Morning. And then the last. Honestly is. Is money, you know, salary. That's the last paycheck. But here's the thing. Like I always tell people, will, you do not give an emotional paycheck. You're gonna pay more.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: You're gonna pay more turnover, you're gonna pay more in lost opportunity, lost productivity, but you're gonna pay more. All right? And if you do not give an emotional paycheck, people want to be paid more.

Speaker B: I, uh. You said something that you, uh. Very, very interesting right now. I was talking yesterday to actually one of my students. Uh. Um. And, um. The. I was highlighting the fact that the engagement, uh, rate. Employee, uh, engagement rate is about 33%.

Speaker A: So

Speaker B: right now you said 67% quit. I mean, you know, and. And I mean, it's wild. It's crazy, but I feel like it's. It's. It's one of those things that I. I feel like it's always mattered. But it wasn't that popular before. Right? People didn't have the. The, uh. The. I feel like the. Go back to the 90s, you know, in early 2000s and whatnot. Like, as long as you're making money, at least that's how I was brought up. It's like, all right, yeah, the problem. The work environment is gonna suck. Like, you're. You're almost already counting on that. Um, and I feel like as. As we. As a society, as we, you know, evolve, um, into different, you know, just different things that, you know, started making sense and. And becoming important, like belonging, for example. Um, you know, you have different needs and. And when businesses stay the same way and they don't. They don't change, they don't involve, they don't, you know, create, um. I don't want to say incentive plans, but creative, uh. Create more ways to connect with the team and make them important. Feel, uh, important as well. You know, it's. It's. You lose out on. On. On all of that. I do something super simple, um, On. On my team, and it's, uh. Um. And this is, you know, throughout. But we. We focus, you know, whenever we're going through, like, for example, operations meetings and stuff like that. We all have this one thing that we put on the table that's a Very important personal thing. So I used to call it a top three. Top three personal priorities. But top three, I mean, three became too much to manage, like, during a meeting. So it's like, just talk about your one thing that you. You're. You're shooting for,

Speaker A: and,

Speaker B: uh, if that's, I don't know, taking a trip to Italy, if that's, you know, building a house, if that's, you know, whatever. Right. Um, and I started doing it as an icebreaker, Gary. What. What I found was that, um, the, uh, the rest of the team started buying into it and kind of supporting each other. Hey, how are you doing with. With, uh, you know, with the. Did you find the property? Yeah, exactly. Helping each other out and just kind of rooting for everybody. And. And it really became a. A. I mean, I don't know, like a cultural adhesive. Right.

Speaker A: Well, it is. It's tethering. What happens. And people start to tether because now we're all yoking up to help each other fulfill purpose.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: And so what you've done subconsciously not knowing it is you actually created for them a purpose indicator. It's one of the KPIs I have in Rise. The Rise business has four KPIs. The first per KPI is what is your key purpose indicator? How are you measuring whether or not you're fulfilling your purpose? And m. You subconsciously done that and didn't even know you doing it? Right. So,

Speaker B: I mean, now we do it intentionally as. As a, you know, okay, co. Like, let's connect. Right. But. But back then, it was just something that. That made sense. But. Yeah,

Speaker A: well, I mean, it makes sense, but then you got to go to, like, purpose indicator to profit indicators. What's your gain? What do you got gain to be able to go on that vacation? What do you got to gain in order to fulfill that dream? What do you got to gain in order to buy that house? Right. So for. First thing is purpose indicator. Second thing is profit indicator. Third is performance indicator. Right.

Speaker B: Like.

Speaker A: Like, what do I. How many houses do you got to sell? How many houses you got to buy? How many houses we got to get under contract in order to get our gain in order to get your purpose.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Then drive it down into the daily number, which is what we call the key process indicator.

Speaker B: Process. And

Speaker A: the key process indicator is how many calls you got to make, how many offers you got to make, how many appointments you got to go on, how many title issues do we have to overcome? How many, you know, how many offers do I have to receive? How many leads do we have to get it? Those are daily process indicators that you tie back to somebody and say, if you do enough of these, you're gonna perform.

Speaker B: And

Speaker A: if you perform, you're gonna hit the gain. And if you hit the gain, you're going to get your purpose.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Right. And so that way they see that purpose indicator every day by making the phone call, every day by making the offer, because they know if they do enough of these, they're going to get performance. And they do enough performance, they're going to get their gain, and they get enough. Enough gain, they're gonna hit the purpose.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So we build down from purpose and we measure up with process. It's the same way with weight loss, bro. I lost £120 in the last two years.

Speaker B: Yeah. Yep.

Speaker A: But you know what I did? I took my same mindset around business and I said, all right, what's my purpose? Why do I want to lose weight?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And then I'm like, what's the benefits? What's my gain by losing weight? Right. So then I'm like, I want to lose weight because I want to be healthy. I want to be here for 75 plus years on this lifetime. That's my purpose.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Right. Because I want to rise by lifting others. I want to help other people get where I. And I'm not going to do that if I die young.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: That's my purpose. Then I went into my game, like, what am I going to gain? Well, I got to get healthy blood work. So every 90 days, I get my blood check, make sure my blood's healthy, make sure my body's healthy. Then I go into performance. Like, how many steps did I. I mean, how much weight did I lift this week? How many times did I work out? How many. How many? You, uh, know how much, uh, what was my weight loss? How much weight did I lose? What's, you know, what's my. My performance this week?

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: It takes me down into my daily. How much water did I drink? What were my macros? Right. How many steps did I take? Those are daily process indicators that get us the performance, that get us our gain, that get us back to our purpose. Right. So every aspect of life is built around these four KPIs.

Speaker B: I like it, man. Um, yeah.

Speaker A: And so that's how we have to take the approach not only in our business, but our personal life. And then helping our employees see their purpose and see how the company's purpose helps them achieve it. And then see, okay, in order to do this, you have to gain this money. In order to gain that money, you have to perform at this level. In order to perform at this level, you have to do these daily activities times this amount to get there.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: And that's their body in. Right. And that's a beautiful place to be. I want to say this about what you said. The difference between, like, the early the 80s and the 90s and the early 2000s, there was a. Something that happened. It was in 2020, and it wasn't Covid that happened. But in 2020, do you know the ma. The most significant thing happened in our generation? Your generation? My generation, the last 50 years. You know what the most significant thing happened outside of COVID

Speaker B: I, um, feel that. That it was, uh, People understood that they didn't have to leave home to work.

Speaker A: Yeah. That was part of it. But here's the biggest thing. There was a handoff, a baton handoff from generation generation. In 2020, the baby boomer generation passed the baton to the millennial.

Speaker B: M.

Speaker A: Your generation, because you're 83, is an older millennial. More like closer to my generation. Right. Because I was 77. Right. Where generation Z, we call you the older millennial. The young. Or we call the older M. Millennial and the younger M generation. Uh, Z.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So you're kind of lost in between the two. Well, our generation was raised by baby boomers.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And baby boomers are like, it doesn't matter if you feel good about it. Suck it up and do the job.

Speaker B: Do it. That's. That's how I was raised. Yeah. Child of

Speaker A: the 80s. Same parents. Right. We had parents built the same with. But here's what happened. The baby boomer generation didn't hand the torch off to ours. Our generation was too small.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Who did they hand it off to? Millennials. In 2020, 52% of the workforce became millennial. Covid had a big part in that because a lot of people passed away. Baby boomers passed away from it. But the millennials came over in. Came in and took over. And here's what they saw. They saw in 2020, baby boomers passing away from diseases. And they saw them live a life on a happiness they saw them grind and never achieve. They saw them give and give and give and not return. They saw them become miserable because they modified to do a job and make money and literally their whole lives and is miserable. So the baby boomer generation gave away the millennials. And millennials are like, no, sir, we're not doing that. We're done. They left the workforce. They got RVs, they converted buses into homes and they were like, no, we're gonna go fulfill our purpose. We're going to go enjoy life,

Speaker B: go live. Yeah. And

Speaker A: that's what happen. That was the biggest shift we've seen in a long time. Now here's the thing. As an entrepreneur, a business owner, if you're not providing the emotional paycheck, you're going to have a problem.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: You're not going to get same level of talent that people were just forced to show up for before.

Speaker B: Well, well, that and then. I mean, I feel like one of the biggest complaints is that people do the, or employees do the bare minimum, you know, to, to just, you know, clock in, clock out and that. But it ties right into it. Right. When you feel gratitude, when you're happy, when you're comfortable, when you've, you know, I don't know, you're just part of a space at least. I feel like the, the average person will go the extra mile, uh, just because, you know, it's, this is cool. Like that's what I'm, you know, it's what I want to do for this, this ah, this company, this business. Right. Um, and, and uh, yeah, I mean, the old way, I mean, I think it was a lot. God. Like you said, you know, it's like, just suck it up, do it. I mean, I remember growing up and you know, working grocery stores and, and just like the, the shittiest, uh, work environments and, and it's like, uh. But that was it. Like that's how you learn. That's, you know, that's. That's how it used to be, right?

Speaker A: Yep.

Speaker B: Time change. Yeah. Uh,

Speaker A: you know, you know, productivity is what we're talking about really at the end of the day, like people do it because they have to versus people that want to. Productivity goes up to 64. Goes up 64m when somebody wants to be there.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So George Carlin said,

Speaker B: work

Speaker A: hard enough not to get fired and get paid just enough not to quit.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: But that definition of people working hard enough not to get firing and paid just enough not to quit is actually a. Have to employ. They have to be there. They have to pay their bills, they have to provide for their family, they have to eat right. They have to have this job job. So they do it just enough not to get fired and get paid just enough not to quit. Where the opposite side is when you add the emotional paycheck rewards, they feel good about it. Their purpose matters. You're helping them identify a key purpose indicator that that productivity goes to 64 because want to employees, they want to be there.

Speaker B: They're

Speaker A: engaged in what they're doing and they're going the extra mile for you because they feel the emotional paycheck that comes along with the financial and they drive productivity to it on the roof. You could actually, if you build a company the right way, if you're a good leader. And I always tell people, if you don't like your team, become a better leader. Because people don't want to work for a crappy leader. I said it the other day. I uh, said if you are a bad leader, you have the team you deserve.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: You are. If you want a better team, be a better leader. Right.

Speaker B: Yeah. It all starts with us.

Speaker A: It does, it really does. Like, you know, level B people don't want to work for a level A or level B people don't want to work for a level B leader.

Speaker B: Yeah,

Speaker A: right. Only level A leaders get level A employees and level B employees.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: Right. If you're a level B leader, you're going to get level C, D and F type people. That's just what you're gonna get.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's a cool

Speaker A: quality of the person you're getting. I'm talking about their engagement rate, how much they want to work. Make sense?

Speaker B: Yeah. Uh, what do you think about the idea of hiring fast and firing faster?

Speaker A: Well, I mean, I don't, I don't like the idea of hiring fast. The highest expense you have in your organization is people.

Speaker B: Yeah,

Speaker A: right. I think you should hire as fast as you can the right way.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Right. And so firing faster 100%. Like I, I feel like you haven't gotten employ and you haven't delegated to 75% of what you hired them to do in the first 90 days. You either fail them or they failed you.

Speaker B: Yeah, there's something going on. It's,

Speaker A: there's something wrong. You don't have trust. Right. So like hiring people, it's really important that you hire the right way and get the right people in your organization versus just hiring people.

Speaker B: When I'm, um, when I'm usually diagnosing or you know, looking into issues like this, I think about, you know, a couple of things. Right. When, when you have, um, I don't know, an employee that's failing, uh, or you're failing the employee. We are, um, it's either an attitude problem or, or a training problem. I, it's gonna be one of the two. Right. Attitude is really hard to change. Training we can work with. We can come in, implement, you know, roll out, deploy, you know, spend a little bit more time and then give it more, more of a shot. But I feel like attitude is, is, is if the engagement is not there, if they're really not, you know, clicking or vibing with the culture of the company and, and become uh, more of a drag. That's hard to change. It's hard to shift. And I see so many people just holding on, um, to, to employees for way longer than, than they need to. I mean, I was guilty of that at the beginning. But, but the damages are way, way, you know, worse. The conversation, so difficult conversations. I mean they have to be, um, had. Right? Especially when you're, when you're at the, at the top of the, uh, um, top of the company. But, but I've seen that, I see that happening, man, so, so, so often and I think it uh, it breaks. Um, you know, it's, it's like a virus, right? You have, you know, one bad apple that comes in, starts contaminating the rest. Uh, and

Speaker A: culture.

Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker A: So here's what happens, right? Like when you keep people too long, it means they were culture, fake fit, but they were in the wrong seat. Or they were in the right seat, but they were a bad culture fit. That's the only two reasons we keep people too long, right? They have the right person. But wrong seat, right seat, wrong people. Here's what I tell people. Everything you just described around, like the desire and all that, we call that the heart. The heart, the attitude is the heart of the person. You talk about skills and things. We call that the hands of the person. Understand, when you hire someone, the whole person shows up to work. Work.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: The desire, which is heart and the hands, which is skills, tell you how they're going to perform. But their head and their feet tell you their potential.

Speaker B: How so?

Speaker A: So potential is measured by behavior and competency, right? So we call it the heart, the head, the hands and the feet. Think about it this way. It's a rhyme. The heart, head, hands, feet. Tell me you're in the right spot. Seat.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: So rhyme to help you remember what you got to measure. So you just said two of the four which was desire, attitude, behavior, you know, that mindset, that's all from the heart. Like do you want, do you want this?

Speaker B: Do you want, do you feel? Yeah.

Speaker A: Yeah. Next is skills, right? Like do you have the training, the skills to do the job? Heart and skills will cause people to perform or not perform.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: How long they're going to perform? Is measured by the potential. And the potential is behavior. That's why we use predictive index to make sure that their PI, their behavioral traits match up against what process they're going to do.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: But then we also do what we call the feet, which is what moves them. And that. That's called their competency and their confidence. Yeah. Like we measure their, um, working genius. We use Patrick Lencioni's platform on working genius to measure the feet, which is seriously what it is, is like what your competition. Does this position require you to be galvanizing? And if you are galvanizing, then you're going to get energy from this. Does it require you to have tenacity? Because the truth is, Ravio, you and I are both visionary. Right? We probably don't have a ton of tenacity. Don't want to see it perfect every single time.

Speaker B: Yeah,

Speaker A: Right. But if we're in finance, we better have tenacity.

Speaker B: Brother, throw me in a cubicle and I'll be the most miserable person in the world.

Speaker A: Finance. Right. Right. But here's the thing. Why is that? Because it takes tenacity and it takes not a need for social interaction. So those two things measuring behavior, not a need for social. And then the competency of tenacity, you need those two things to put yourself in a cube, put your head down and work all day. Right. But, but see, if we only measure the heart and the hands, the skills and desire, then we're not going to measure your potential, which is two equations. So if I come to you, I say, hey, do you desire to want to do this job? Yeah, man, I got to pay my bill. Bills I'm desiring. Okay.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Do you have skills? Yeah, I've actually been a finance manager for five years. Cool. Let me give you this cubicle. Work away. And then I wonder why you're like, over here talking to Betty and why you're walking around the office. Why you're. I'm like, what are you doing? And you're like, well, I just re energized and I just took a five minute break. No, what that is, is you have a behavioral trait of, uh, needing social interaction.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: And position doesn't require you to need social interaction. I should have put you in sales.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: You see what I'm saying?

Speaker B: Oh,

Speaker A: yeah. So you have to measure the heart, the head, the hands, and the feet because that tells us you're in the right seat.

Speaker B: Yeah, I like that. It's, it's a very holistic, uh, approach to it. Um, yeah. I mean, I've done. My background. I'm an organizational psychologist and my background is, is it's always been. Right. I've always, uh, looked at the, uh, you know, the candidate, whether or not like they, they have the potential to. To. To, you know, have longevity in any given role based on their natural tendencies. Um, and, and it's. I feel like it's helped me a lot with attrition. Right. Like the, the factor of attrition and um. And when, When I made the mistake of, of, uh, just not doing it and hiring because they had a pulse. Like I'm telling you, man, like 90% of the. The time is backfired. It's like it just felt good at the time, but people readjust within three months and then they'll start, you know, showing their true colors. And. Yeah, and then I was like, oh, okay, I see how it is.

Speaker A: Well, and that's why I say that PI is so important and so is the competency. Because what you're going to get is at the first 90 days you get modifications.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: And when somebody chose their true colors, they're actually just stopped modifying.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And PI and competencies and working genius tell you what their true self is. So, you know, whether or not they're going to end up modifying or not. Not.

Speaker B: Yeah,

Speaker A: right. Because I don't want to hire someone who has the desire and the skills to do it, but over time, they're going to burn out. I don't want to do that. It's just going to cost me more money and more frustration.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah,

Speaker A: sorry, go ahead.

Speaker B: Uh, no, I mean it. On the, on the long run, it's, it's just. I think it all comes down to, to the initial selection. Right? Like we bring people in. And then for me, I can tell you that I have had, uh. I had a big issue with, with difficult conversations at the beginning. Uh, and this is like, especially in the transportation business, man, when, where, where, where you gotta like, it's not the best work environment because, you know, the guys are always on the truck, by. On the car, by themselves. And, and like, you don't have that, that collective, you know, energy and the vibe of the office, per se, unless you come in for whatever. Um, but, uh, it was just different. Right? And having that, uh, those, those conversations, I would keep people for longer than, than they needed to be there for. Uh, and I knew I was looking at the performance and I was looking at, you know, the, you know, where I was. I, I feel like I understood that I failed them. In that way, right at the beginning, early on. Um, and, and now that's, that's exactly why I see it. You know, if I, if I need to get, you know, rid of somebody is like, if I don't do it, this is not just for them. I mean, yeah, they're not, they're not performing, but if I don't do this now, I'm gonna fail them. Uh, and because they're not, they can't move on and do something that they actually enjoy. Enjoy.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So

Speaker A: you're an avid reader. I recommend you read the book or have your listeners read the book, Crucial Conversations.

Speaker B: Yeah,

Speaker A: great book.

Speaker B: I read it. Yeah. It's so good.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: It helps me too if anybody struggles with like, trying to have that hard conversation.

Speaker B: Yeah,

Speaker A: conversation is a great framework of how to have those things.

Speaker B: Yeah, Love it. Um, man, such, such a great talk. I think just gave us a master, uh, class on, on what to do and what not to, uh, in the business development side. And I live and breathe, man, systems and processes. And even then, right, like, we just, we're always, I feel like there's always something good to learn out there. We just stay open to the possibilities. Um, uh, and collaborate. Right. Like, it's amazing. So once again, thank you for, uh, stopping by and dropping all these, uh, golden nuggets. Um, before I move on, uh, to the exit portion of the podcast, um, there's this one question that I love asking myself, my, uh, my guests, and that's it. If you were walking down the street and you ran into your 17 year old self, what advice would you give that kid?

Speaker A: Believe in yourself. Believe in yourself. I don't think belief is talked about enough. I think belief creates the power of success.

Speaker B: Yeah,

Speaker A: like, it's my number one core value, you know, belief, you know, I don't do well with people that don't believe in themselves. Don't do well. People don't believe in us. I don't do well with people that don't believe in what they can be and what they can go in life. And what I mean by don't do well is like, I see such belief and such potential in people that like, I will want it more than they do.

Speaker B: M.

Speaker A: And so 17 year old Gary needs to look himself in the mirror and say, hey, you need to believe in yourself.

Speaker B: I

Speaker A: love it. That's what it needs to be.

Speaker B: I love it. Thank you for that. Um, Gary, if somebody wants to find out more about you guys, um, sharper business and, and maybe connect with you, I Mean, I don't reach out to you for, for, uh, consulting and, and find out more about the book. Where's the best place to find you guys?

Speaker A: Yeah, a couple things. First of all, I, I would encourage people to follow me on social on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, even Facebook. I just hit 9.1 million views on a video this past week. Actually got a little word in the mail from Tik Tok for that.

Speaker B: It's awesome.

Speaker A: Yeah, I hit. And another video hit 1.9 million. And a couple others are trending over a couple hundred thousand. Thousand. And I've really only been focused on it for about 45 days. But on tick tock, Instagram, YouTube, all three platforms have all my content. It's free. It's a lot of stuff like this. You consume enough of it, you probably don't ever need to even hire me, to be honest with you. But I would encourage you to do that in order to get influenced by me. Right. Follow me there and that'll help influence you. I, um, always say there's three ways to make changes in people's life. You can inspire them, take seconds, influence them. Takes moments, but impact takes time. Right. And so I want to definitely impact your life. Life. The books are there for impactful things. They're on Amazon, they're on Audible. I have six books. I have a children's book here, actually, behind me right there. I wrote for kids that are between the ages of 2 to 5. And so it's how to discover your purpose. Even how that framework has for. From a purposeful panda. Right? That's a panda telling us what to do. But, um, yeah, you can find them there. But Gary Harper.com is kind of a connection to all my stuff along with, uh, Sharper Business. Business. And then the book, the Framework is on the rise. Business Framework dot com. So you have sharperbusiness dot com Rise Business framework dot com you have Gary Harper dot com. And then you'll find me on all social.

Speaker B: All right, perfect. What's your handle on Socials?

Speaker A: Uh, my handle on Social is Gary Underscore Harper Underscore Official.

Speaker B: Gary Underscore Harper Underscore Official. All right. And I'll make sure to have all those, uh, on the show notes, uh, for. For the audience as well. So, Gary, once again, man, thank you so much. I mean, we. I mean, great conversation. I. I couldn't be, you know, happier about spending this time with you. So, uh, with that guys and gals, I mean, uh, you know, this is, this is simple, right? Like there's so much gold out there that, that you can tap into. I mean, I would start with Gary right away. So, um, you know, the handles go to the show notes and then click on the links and, uh, go follow this guy. This guy's a brainiac when it comes to everything in business. I mean, we just had a long, you know, one hour masterclass and what it is. Right. Um, with that being said, if you like the podcast as much as I did, make sure that you subscribe, like, and share, and I'll catch you guys on the next one. Until then, stay focused. You got this.