Unlocking Entrepreneurial Success with John Smalley

Speaker A: Welcome to Future Proof, the podcast for founders, marketers and sales leaders who want to scale with clarity. This show is where AI strategy and execution meet to help leaders build durable businesses and systems that actually hold up

Speaker B: in the real world.

Speaker A: Today. I'm joined by John Smalley. John is an investor, serial entrepreneur and seasoned executive with a track record of turning high level vision into consistent operational results across healthcare, wellness, technology, investing and consulting. He's a managing partner at Senterra, principal at Qlio Technologies and leads multiple ventures focused on solving complex real world problems with modern science and thoughtful execution. John is known for his ability to guide organizations through growth, change and transition while building strong teams and value driven outcomes. He brings a grounded people first perspective to leadership, investing and innovation.

Speaker B: John, welcome to the show.

Speaker C: Hey, thanks a lot. Excited to be here and appreciate, uh, you having me on.

Speaker B: Absolutely. Well, we know each other from strategic coach and you drive a lot of value to our cohort. So it was an honor to get you here. You are a man with several companies running all at the same time. I don't know how you do it. I like to think you are mini Elon Musk yourself. Uh, do you mind just kind of sharing, you know, how you came to where you are today? An investor, serial entrepreneur and a dad? All of the above.

Speaker C: Well, I don't know how much you want me to go into the dad part, but I can, I can, I can do that. If your listeners don't know how that works, but uh, now I'm sitting like, I gotta have that conversation with my kid one day. I don't want to have it with your listeners. So, so I am a dad. That's probably the most important job that I have. I've got a 10 year old boy and a 7 year old boy. I have a wife, uh, as well. And you know, honestly, being successful in business has just simply allowed me to have more opportunities, uh, with my kids. Whether it's sharing why I do what I do or how I do what I do, or simply being able to create a, uh, a work life balance where we can go do amazing things and have amazing experiences. So first and foremost I thank God for that because, uh, there is nothing else more important and um, there is no job more. So I do that. I coach baseball for those guys. Um, we're a big baseball family, so spend probably 25 hours a week during baseball season, um, coaching those guys. And I love it. There's so many parallels. You know, I'll be thinking through something. I get stuck on a business idea and Then I go to this three hour practice and backed up by a two hour practice and somehow or another, as I'm talking to a kid about proper fielding position and needing to be ready and thinking through what's going to happen before it happens, the answer to my, my business problem actually pops up. So it's crazy how the parallels work in this world, but. So that's the dad part, how I got to be where I'm at. It's a loaded question, I would say a lot of hard work, uh, there's no substitute for being for hard work. And I think, you know, really trying to be a good person and treat people well and then surrounding myself with people like you and other amazing people, things have kind of gone my way. We, we've got a good track record and we uh, continue to build it. The goal there is to continue to build, continue to grow opportunity for myself, but also for all the people that are doing it with me and just, you know, continue to go down that pat path. But yeah, right now the I, I have a, uh, a group of operating companies that are owned by my holding company. And they're diverse, they're anchored into one thesis, uh, that has sub thesises and I think that's important. I think people have to be anchored into something, um, with regards to what they're doing and why they're doing it and how they're going to do it. And ah, that thesis was kind of going back to the, the last point was a combination of feedback and perspectives that I've got from other extremely successful people. So yeah, man, it's been, it's been a wild ride.

Speaker B: And every time I talk to you, either buying companies or selling companies, how does that work?

Speaker C: Well, whether you're starting companies, buying companies or selling companies, the buying and starting is a situation of just, you know, opportunities presenting themselves. Sometimes we create them, sometimes they come to us. And I told you before that we've got a thesis that we look at. So from an investment standpoint, whether that's starting a company or buying a company, if we, if we buy companies, by the way, Salomon, it's almost always early stage companies. Like I'm not interested in buying a $200 million and then turning it to a, uh, $400 million company, I am interested in buying a company that can be a $200 million company and be sold, you know, as a $400 million company to that private equity firm. Got private equity background working with those guys. So I understand what they do. And I build companies that People are going to want to buy, but not with the intent to sell. So from that standpoint, yes, we are always open minded. The uh, thesis is pretty simple. We look for four key things. We look for margins. I'm a big fan of loving what you do, but I'm not doing anything for free, Solomon. I value my time and when time. Other people value your time. I value your time as well. The second thing is margin. You know, you can look at margin in a lot of different ways. Some people look at it as greed, I look at it as opportunity. If you can keep that margin forever, awesome. That means that there's an extreme value associated with what you're doing. But quite often in my, in my world, if you don't start off with good margins, then you'll, you'll likely go out of business simply because margins are bound to be suppressed over time. And when you have margins and then you have a little bit of momentum, it gives you cash flow which allows you to take chances and to, to invest in yourself investment company and typically companies that are early stage, that's what they need. So the third part of that thesis is recession proof for your, your listeners out there. There's some sense of recession every six years and sometimes everybody feels it and sometimes just some people feel it, but there's some sense of a recession. We're going through an AI recession right now. Right. And, and, and it's not the same type of recession that we're used to, our parents are used to because revenues are going through the roof, but you can start to see how it's impacting employees. Right. And so there's going to be the, the layoff aspect of it. And then the fourth part is, sorry, occurring revenue. Anybody here who is an entrepreneur or owns a business, if you can create enough reoccurring revenue where you're not dispaied on, on the 1st of the month, it's really fun, it's really nice. Not required, but, but definitely a good way to, to grow businesses or to uh, to be happy. And then the fourth one, I think this is the most important Salomon is we look for opportunities to create innovation in industries and in companies where it's rewarded but not necessarily required. And, and that's a big one because I don't want to wake up every day and think to myself that I'm going to have a great idea that somebody else is going idea when, you know, while I'm sleeping and I'm going to be out of business. And so I do like Some of these call it sleepy or less sexy industries that maybe don't move as fast because I think that the clientele in those industries is begging for something new and the uh, desire to do it from a lot of the companies that are out there isn't extremely high. And so if you can come to market with those innovations, people respond to it and it's a great way to grow market share quickly.

Speaker B: Love that. And lately you've been diving a lot more deeper into AI. JOHN M. That's kind of my, my hope is to, to cover your perspective on and where you think that is headed in terms of business owners, entrepreneurs looking to leverage AI and some of the things that you're starting to do yourself. I know you have multiple ventures all at the same time, kind of share with us what you see in the landscape.

Speaker C: Well, it's not the landscape, it's sincere. Right. So I mean, and that, I guess that does make it the landscape, but it's, it's been happening for a handful of years and I've been paying attention to it. And I think we have to understand that AI means different things to different people. It's changing the game for everybody. Whether you're a consumer, whether you're a business entrepreneur or a business owner or an employee. It's changing the game and it's doing it Solomon, at a speed and in a way that nobody has ever seen. And you got two choices. You can be scared shitless of that or you can be like, yes, right, because it's a great equalizer. It's the opportunity for the husband, wife who have their 10 person business to finally compete with, you know, the big billion dollar company that has 1500 people. Right. And so, or you can just be scared because you don't know what's going to happen. But neither does the company that has, you know, the 150 people that I just mentioned and ultimate also, they can't pivot as fast as the husband wife with 10 people. So I choose to look at the upside of it. I think it's going to make amazing advances in medicine. I think it's going to change how people live the way people live. And I'm okay not knowing exactly what that means, but I do think the terms for everything are going to change. I had a conversation with a large company the other day, 300 million. And that's actually a great way to get into that. I said to him, I said, I firmly believe that within three years we will be calling $10 million companies small business. Right? $25 million small business. And the reason I say that solom is the terms are changing and if you're not ready and your business is not ready for the terms to be changed, you're going to be out of luck and you're going to be out of, out of business. And so I believe we use what's called future proof that uh, that comes from a company called Bold Horizons. And you asked earlier like, you know, selling like we sell when we don't have the people to move our company into the next phase. Right. And by that I mean it's changing everything. You got to look at things differently. Are you using automation? Do you have SaaS set up? Is your SaaS aggregating data? Is your data producing, predicting outcomes? Are you in tune with all those things? Because if you are, you're going to have a 10 person company, a 15 person company that has the ability to compete with a hundred person company, right? But if you're not, and it doesn't matter if you're a 10 person company or 100 person company when the day comes, and it's way too complicated to explain in the time frame that you and I have together today, but when the day comes, big company, small company, medium company does not matter, you will go out of business. And I do believe that in the next three to five years there's going to be a lot of companies that go out of business and there's going to be a lot of companies that actually move up the ranks and you're going see new uh, companies taking on those top spots in industries. And I think it's going to be great. And I would encourage all of your listeners to embrace it, to look at things like the future proof model and to get behind it for whatever that means to you personally, but also your business. And I uh, can also tell you, and I know you're a big AI guy, how great is it? It's just fun, right? You get more done. You using your personal life, things that you used to pay or wait for three weeks to get done, you get for free and it gets done in 30 seconds. Now I mean, you know, so there's, there's a lot of ways to get introduced to it, but it just simply takes the effort and the, the desire to, to look into it with an open mind and with a level of excitement. And if you do that then I think you're going to control your path and you're going to manifest what you need. But I would just tell you this, it's changing everything and it's it's not going to happen at the same pace that the dot com bubble happened or that the Internet happened. It's gonna, it's gonna go like this and if you're not ready for it, you're gonna be left behind. And you got a lot of business owners listen to this podcast. It's okay to admit you're not ready for it, but it's not okay to not do anything.

Speaker B: That's very true. I, uh, do want to touch a little bit about future proof because I think that is such a good concept. I don't know how much you can share, but you know, from our conversations, you talked a lot about businesses looking at their total tasks and using AI to automate. I want you to touch a little bit about them because I think entrepreneurs are still in old school mindset. They do see AI happening, but then they're still hiring admin staff and virtual assistants and do you see what I'm saying?

Speaker C: Just adding more open, hiring admin to run AI. Yeah, Y.

Speaker B: You have, you have a very interesting vision of how the world is changing. So I'd love you to share that as much as you can.

Speaker C: Well, sure. So. And maybe you put my, my link in the bio. I'm happy to because it's a much longer conversation, as you know. But, um, there's. Everybody wants AI. Like, don't you want AI? Like, I mean, you have a lot of it, but don't you want more? Right?

Speaker B: I do. You do?

Speaker C: Everybody does. Why not? But, but you know, there's reports out there says, well, 90% of AI has failed.

Speaker B: Well, why has it failed?

Speaker C: Failed.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: It's not the software. The software doesn't wake up and decide, I'm going to fail today. It's the ability to implement AI. It's the ability to manage AI, it's the ability to use AI, make decisions based off of AI. And so I would say a few things there. The future proof concept is really geared around a couple different principles. And the first one is that all your data has to be centralized. And so a lot of us work in multiple SaaS platforms. Your CRM, your QBO, your Elagula for inventory, whatever the industry is, you probably have four or five places that you go to get information and that's the way it works. I need information on finance, I go here. I need information on sales and marketing, I go here. I want information on inventory, I go here. But all those software programs for the most part have the ability to connect. Right? And when you have five pieces of Information, but they're in five different spots. You have five pieces of information, right? When you, and you can do five different things. When you have five different pieces of information and they all collaborate into one CRM, your ability to grow exponentially from that information, predict outcomes, see what's next. Automate goes through the roof. So that's the first thing thing we do is we go through there and we say look, we gotta make sure that our data is all flowing to the same spot so that we can, we can understand what the data is telling us. Right? Because legal might actually be telling sales that something is happening over here, you should react to it. Right? Inventory might be telling marketing. Hey look, this is flying off the shelf. Let's spend a couple extra bucks here. But if you're a business owner, you get so far into the forest you can't see the trees, right? Like we don't pick those things up and most of us are so busy that we don't take time to set aside to, to actually analyze those things. But AI does, does. You just have to have a set up correctly, right? Then really understanding the automations that are available. So, and, and you mentioned task. We, we talk about mcts a lot. Like most common tasks, most common tasks are things that get done every single day, have to be done every single day, should be done every day on time, Solomon, in, in the right way. Well, humans don't like doing things every single day on time, the right way. But when you do those things, they drive everything else, right? So it's almost counterproductive. Well guess what? There's AI in the form of automation. If you have data in, in the uh, in the right area, we can come in and we do it with a company called Lyft or uh, they come in and they'll basically say hey look, you guys do these 25 tasks all day long and it actually accounts for 40% of your time, right? The problem is you don't do them every day even though you should. You forget, you get busy, you don't do them timely even though you should. Like there's no bad intent. You just forget, I'll do that later, you know. And it doesn't always get done at the highest level or consistent level that you want. All of that, Solomon, um, impacts the customer. It impacts the experience, right? So why would you not say hey look Solomon, you work for me, you're awesome, right? But guess what? That thing that you love doing that you spend 30% of your time on, that makes you fired up to come back to work tomorrow. What if I could let you do that 3x? What if you could spend 90% of your time doing that? Right? And that's what we do. We really come in and we say, look, these common tasks, everybody has to be done. Let's create an environment in the company where they're automated so they get done on time every single time, the right time, the right way. And then we're going to put you, Solomon, into those areas where your God given talents actually show up on a regular basis. And you're going to be on fire as an employee, by the way. And we're going to exponentially grow, right? So we go through that, then we have actual AI that we bring into the companies. We start bringing in GPTs, you know, so that if I'm sitting in this podcast with you right now and and somebody in my company has a question, it doesn't need to be answered by me anymore. I can create a GPT that knows how I think that's backloaded with the way that I want things done, right? So they can just go to the GPT. We call it Ask John. Right? But we could have an Ask Solomon and we could have an ask him or whoever else is in the company where you can go on vacation by the and really enjoy your vacation. And we keep moving, right? And God forbid you decide to quit. Guess what? I'm going to use that thing for a while as I backfill you or decide not to backfill you. So, so we're really setting the companies up in a way that allows the company to expand and to not be super dependent on manual task, right? And we're doing that in a way that really is just driving a lot of success. I think right now you have this, you have, this is your, your AI, right? And here's the other thing is a big part of our future proof plan is understanding what you're good at and what you should do and then understanding not good at, but it needs to be done in your company and let other people do it. So we're looking into this business I mentioned earlier called Lyft. They come in and they say, hey look, we're going to go ahead and talk to you about moving all your data to one spot, but we're going to do it for you because Salomon, your employees, if you ask them to do that, they're not going to do their day to day, right? And then we're going to get it in and we're going to identify the most 25, 50% of common tasks that you do and we're going to automate them. M. We're going to do it for you. We're not going to ask your employees to do it because again, it's going to mess up their day to day tasks. Half of them aren't capable of doing it anyways. The other half that are see it as the beginning of the end for them. So until Tuesday when everybody comes in, these things are going to be implemented. You're going to turn on a switch and John's no longer going to have to do A, B, C and D. We highly recommend that you get John to do more of E, F and G, which is actually what requires John's time. Face to face meetings creates a lot of roi, right?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: And then we manage it. That's the other thing is. Or that company does, they come in and they say, solomon, we were supposed to get 4x out of that thing. We're getting 2x. And it's because John's not following the process. This is in place. But for whatever reason, John skirting around it. And if you as a business owner have to make a decision one day to get rid of people or decide to make a decision, decision to get rid of people because you no longer need that, that amount of people and you don't, you know, you're not growing exponentially according to what you should be. Guess what? John's the first one going, right? Or you can have a conversation with John and ask why he's not doing it. So I brought this up earlier. This is AI right now, right? The uh, the service company that goes next to it, the company that does the implementation for you. Okay, I want AI, but I don't want to do the implementation. Almost no CEO does. Right. This is the service industry that does it. I bet you in three years this is AI and this is the service company. And I'm betting big on that concept as well. Betting big on finding the right partners who can actually implement and manage these things for me so much that I am investing in that company, Lyft that I talked about before. So there's so much packed into that. Like, I don't know, I probably create ADHD for people, but it's, it's wild. And if you get behind it, Solomon, and you know this, but if, if you just choose to get behind it and really commit and anchor yourself into, hey, I'm going to do this and I'm going to let other people do this for me, the future is going to be, be amazing. Like absolutely amazing.

Speaker B: Love that. You know, I just look at the outcome that it can create for businesses. If you did get rid of your most common tasks, it elevates your people to do more higher thinking work. Right. Which CEO wants the employees to do the same monotonous work for the next eight years and give them more racism bonus to do the same thing, which I think is what happens in corporate America every day. It's like, oh, John's going to go this way. Then let's hire Molly and put it what John used to do. But they're never thinking about how do we just get rid of this, this eliminate automate, you know, have AI do it. And that's what you're. This episode is brought to you by ims. IMS helps companies use AI, modern marketing and proven sales systems to create predictable growth. If you want better leads, stronger positioning and systems that can scale without complexity, visit ims.net it's not.

Speaker C: Well, it's not just. What about like potential income? Right? Like look, if I'm dealing a task that can be done by a computer, my raise is a couple bucks an hour every year, right?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: But if I'm not, if I'm not doing those, those things but they're being done every single time and I'm spending time in meetings and actually generating real value. My raise is tens of thousands of dollars. My, my take home is $50,000 more. My personal satisfaction and pride in what I do is through the root. Right? So it's good for the business, it's good for the employee, it's good for the consumer. I mean, but only if everybody's bought into it. Only if it's implemented the right way, if it's managed, you know, and if it's not, get those people off your team. You know, I mean I've used the term anchored for some reason like three times now. I haven't used it in a long time. But you need to be anch same people, you know, you got to have people that, that want to achieve the same goals you want to do and want to drive the same way that you do. And I again I choose to, to focus on the upside. I think it's going to be amazing for people and for businesses and there's going to be some people no like, no different than the businesses side of things that don't get behind it and they're probably the first ones that are going to be gone, you know, but.

Speaker B: And would you be buying companies and just implementing this strategy and then add it to your Portfolio. Do you think that would be a model or you evaluating companies who's already started it and you just want to scale their AI, you know, component.

Speaker C: Yes to both, you know, but there's real value in the company who says, look, I want to do this, but I can't do it. And when I buy companies, it's not uncommon for me to buy part of a company and say, look, I'll walk you through it, I'll show you how to do it. We'll bring in our people to do it. But I want 30% of the company at a, uh, discount. Right. And the discounts only called the discount because of where it's at now. I mean we, sure, we double companies in a year, we triple companies over five years, you know, and, but a lot of that has to do with making sure that the mentality and the desire is, is there people, Some people get it just, just aren't. That's not who they like. Then, then partner with somebody else who is, uh, who is that person. So, so yes, I'll buy companies that understand they need to go through that process but don't have a clue how or don't want to do it themselves. Like, cool, I'll do it. I get excited about that, you know, and they're going to get excited about the results. And then I'll buy companies that are also going through it. I'll also sell companies that right now, I mean that's a big thing like that for me. The companies that we sold last year, a lot of them were simply because we didn't have the people or the leadership that we thought we could get through into this, this new, as I mentioned, the terms and the rules of the game are changing. I don't want to spend time around people who deny that, you know, and I do want to spend time around people and share energy with people and success with people who, who get excited about it.

Speaker B: Yeah. I want to touch on one thing. You mentioned that you doubled revenue or 5x did. What were some of the things you had to do? Was it, was it just top, top line sales? Was it improving the employee morale, hiring new people, some lead generation strategy, if you can sum it up. What. Yeah. What did you do? I mean, I think there's so many entrepreneurs here, we'd double their business.

Speaker C: Yeah, well, everybody would. And if it was that easy, you know, and to be fair, I don't do it every time I have done it, you know, but there's, there's core principles. Right. So I mentioned earlier my thesis Is like stick fig. Figure out where your thesis is, you and your business and stick to it, right? That, that is your, that is your road map. You know, somebody told me a long time ago that a genius with a, uh, sorry, a fool with a, with a plan will out produce a genius with an idea every single time, right? So understand who you are and then commit to being that and manifest, manifest that over time. So part of that is being surrounded by the right people, you know. And then yes, you have to have expertise and you have to be self aware enough to understand that you are not going to have all the expertise, but understand where the expertise needs to be had. It has to be there in marketing. Salman, you guys do a ridiculously good job at marketing, right? If I'm not an expert marketer, why would I spend my time there? If I'm an expert at ah, sales but not marketing, shouldn't I go back to spending time at sales? This is right in line with getting rid of the stuff that, that needs to be done but doesn't need to be done by me, right?

Speaker B: Correct.

Speaker C: And so it is a question of uh, being self aware. Hey look, we are, we are a plus in three out of the seven categories that every business should have. And we're a B in two of them. Right? And we're a D in the other two. Let's start with a D. I'm gonna go figure out who my finance leader is going to be and then we're going to come up with a uh, strategy and a thesis. This is how we run our companies. This is how we operate. These are the things that we care about. This is how we drive initiatives in those key sections. And this is how we're going to do that in alignment with sales and legal and HR and everybody else, right? And once you have that plan, you really commit to it and you bring on great people and you ask people to buy in and you let them know that when they buy into the plan, you're buying into them. It's a win win scenario. It's got to be a win win scenario. So there is no quick way. There is no substitute for working hard. There is no substitute for being a good person, you know, but there is the ability to look at how other people have done it and pick out, you know, the most common ways that they, they all have done it or act throughout the process. And for me it is just about dissecting the company, having a really good plan, being bought into what's happening now, what's going happen to, to happen in the future, treating people the right way, asking people to get on board, bringing in AI, creating a level of consistency. Without consistency there can be no quality, right? And then going to work every day and working your butt off. We live in this world where people are like five easy ways to get this done. Like, nah, that doesn't work, you know,

Speaker B: doesn't work for John. Let me ask you this. If you can go back John, and if you had one piece of advice for your younger self, what would you tell 18 year old John? Well, I know knowing what you know now, right, There's a lot of things a dangerous spot.

Speaker C: Salman. My wife's gonn watch this so. And I didn't know her when I was 18. No, the, the, you have seasons and stay humble and work hard and be a good person. There's nothing more profitable than being a good person and doing the right thing. And you're going to have seasons, you're going to have seasons when you're on top. And although you want to go tell people how good you are and how amazing you are, understood, understand that you weren't there, you know, for forever, you weren't like understood what got you there. And understand that if you don't keep those things, you're probably not going to stay there and understand that even if you do keep doing those things, Solomon, you're going to have an another season, right? It's peaks and valleys, man. It's peaks and valleys. And when you're in your peak, stay humble. And when you're in your valley, stay, stay, stay confident, right? And, and commit to being the person that you need to be the person that you want to be and go after what's yours, you know, and, and bet on yourself. That's, that's the other one. That's probably the biggest one. I went through corporate America and I had an amazing experience for 15 years and I finally walked away from those golden handcuffs and I bet on myself and I thought if I can just get back to where I was at within three years or four years and, and then own parts of these companies, I'll be happy. But I bet got locked in. I worked my butt off. I did the right thing even when didn't feel like doing the right thing. Uh, and within a year and a half I was making 2x what I was making there, plus I own the companies, you know, and um, that was 10 years ago. So it's been a, it's been a, a fun ride. But, but definitely M 18 year old John needs to know that he's got a bet on himself, but that doesn't mean that he doesn't have a lot of work to do.

Speaker B: I love that. What do you think is one of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make from all your observations? Buying companies, selling companies, you know, that's, that's preventing them from growing, scaling like, like they should be.

Speaker C: Yeah, I'm, I'm gonna say entrepreneur because you said entrepreneurs. I'm thinking starting companies. Right, sure. Like, there's a difference between a business owner and an entrepreneur. An entrepreneur starts the company, a business owner buys the company, and I'm, um. Both.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: So the entrepreneur is going to start the company. They, they get so sucked into the company that they, they can't grow the company. They get it to whatever potential they can get it to, and then, then they end up having this level of success that leads to what I call, call affectionately entrepreneurial poverty. Right. So I come from a family where nobody's made more than $75,000. Right. And I worked for a guy who was a plumber, and he taught me how to be a great plumber. And I went off and did my own plumbing company, and Now I make $150,000. Right. And we're living in a nicer house, and my kids go to better schools, and we don't stress over some of the things that other people stress over. But I'm still basically poor because I work 80 hours a week. I don't go on dates with my wife. I can't watch my daughter play volleyball. I don't watch my son play bas. I don't have a good relationship there, you know. So, uh, so they get into this lifestyle business where it's work, work, work, and at some point you gotta find your who. You gotta find, you know, the who, not how concept. You gotta start to move yours out of the business. You gotta let other people take on responsibilities so that you can go from here to here. And so where I see the trap being for most entrepreneurs is they're chasing what they deem to be success and success. What drives you to be successful outside of, of your, your family and your marriage isn't, is a lot of times the opposite of actually what drives you to be successful with your family, in your marriage? You know, I put in a ton of time. I work 60 hours a week, 80 hours a week. Well, if, you know, if, if, if you're doing that, you're not putting any time into your family or to your wife. So it's being able to work your butt off, work really hard and simultaneously stay in touch with the big picture. So that's the biggest mistake I see. And joining groups like Strategic Coach or Visage, or just putting yourself, you know, reading quite a bit and staying committed to the. The. And understanding. It's not easy. That's. I think there's like 4% of us that make it right, like in that world, then, Then, you know, staying committed to that concept. On the flip side, the guys, you know, who are successful, like, become friends with them, do something nice for them, you know, and figure out how they do things and why they do things. Because these guys don't always know each other, but they share like 80% of the same characteristics. Right? They, they get up early, they work hard, they work out, they read. You know, they're constantly developing, beaten, you know, they, they treat people well. I, you know, there, there's. There's some of those core functions that I think really work for you in business that also work for you just in general as a human being.

Speaker B: Man. So many nuggets. Just talk to me every 20 minutes. You learn a lot.

Speaker C: Have ADHD. I'm going to create it. So it's. Yeah, I, I love the stuff though, man. It's fun. And the last, maybe the last thing. I don't know how much time we got left, but I mentioned earlier, there's nothing more profitable than doing the right thing. I've been. I've gotten to where I'm at, and I hope to go significantly further because a lot of people, uh, John Smalley, or have done something nice for John Smalley when it probably didn't make sense or they didn't have to, and the, the desire to give that back and help other people, it doesn't, that doesn't always have to come with an immediate roi. Being a good person doing the right thing. Solomon, um, has a huge roi. Help other people. I mean, if I can help anybody who listens to this and says, holy, that's me, like, I need to understand that, you know, put my email or whatever out there and my assistant, when, when they get it, they'll, they'll set something up. Because I feel a thousand percent obligated to, to help other people. And I don. Anything from it.

Speaker B: I love that. See, what goes around comes around, right? So there'll be somebody else wanting to help you, John, because you're willing to help so many people. That's how I believe it. It works.

Speaker C: It does work that way. And it's. Yeah, I, I got to remind myself a lot of times, like don't do that because of that. But.

Speaker B: Right. No, I did. Full circle.

Speaker C: There's. I. I wish I could explain that. I can't. I can just tell you.

Speaker B: I think it's. I, uh, like to think it's a. It's a biblical principle. Right. You reap what you sow. And so, so if you start sowing these kinds of seeds, that, that is going to happen and I. It's, uh, a. Some Eastern mythology or whatever. I think it is literally how it's supposed to be.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: You said work hard million times on this podcast. You work hard, you're going to get the result. Right. Like, there's no substitute for hard work. That's your sewing part. So I love it. This is a. This is definitely a bookmark episode, as usual. I want to know, John, how can they find. Where do you want to be contacted?

Speaker C: That's a good question. Can always hit me up on LinkedIn. Yeah, that being said, I don't manage my own social media, so, uh, you know, if you can't get through to me on LinkedIn or you don't get through to me on LinkedIn, then just give them my email address. You know, the. Give them the one to jsg, which is John Johan at J smally. My last name. S M A L L E Y Group G R O U P dot com. That's the, the, uh, holding company. But it will eventually make its way to me. And if, if I don't answer, it means I didn't see it, I didn't get it. Keep trying and I'll. I'll. I'll figure out a way to make contact. Promise.

Speaker B: Love that. Well, thank you so much for joining me and dropping all those nuggets. Pretty sure we're going to be doing another episode in the coming weeks and months, so thank you again, John.

Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. Happy to do.

Speaker B: Thanks for listening to Future Proof. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe and leave us a review. It will help more leaders find this show. And if you want to see how IMS helps companies grow smarter with AI and sales systems, visit IMS.net as always, thank you so much for listening and I'll see you next time.