Sean: And talking about growth, all these books that you were able to read through, how did you know what books you want to read next? And how, what other methods of growth do you have, aside from books? Did you have mentors? Did you pursue them? Do you listen to podcasts? Do you watch YouTube videos? What channels do you watch? Can you share some of that with us?

Chris: I would always go to the bookstore. Yeah. We don't really have bookstores anymore, but these bookstores are known, go to the business department and grab a stack of books. And just go, you know, you buy a book for $9. I buy five books, go home and read them.

And you started seeing like patterns of like the same people showing up over and over again, know, this guy is writing a book and this guy has a newsletter. So I get a newsletter, Dan Kennedy is one of the guys' newsletter. Just you'd see names popping up over and over again, like people who are really out there doing it or somebody who has a lot of books. 

You know, some of the leadership guys like John Maxwell, right? That guy has a lot of books, you don't have to read them all, but you know, you could read a few of his books to learn ideas about leadership. 

Michael Gerber. I've actually read all his books. He really wrote the same book over and over again. It's really the same concept, but they're really solid.

But I think that is, initially that was something I really did. And then it was things like seminars and conferences you can go to. And there are different ones, you know, like say someone like Tony Robbins has sort of the self-help. How do you get motivated to attend conferences? Well, I'm pretty motivated, so I didn't really need that, but any kind of business-related stuff, I would look at who's a great business leader? Who's going to speak in it? Who's going to be there?

And so I would go to things like that. At some point. I actually, it's funny, my business got audited by the IRS. This is a funny story and it was fine, but they wanted, they need to look at your finances. And so my accountant said, "you know, I do your taxes or your finances.

You're fine. You're not, there's nothing to worry about, but you don't know anything about accounting. So we're going to go to this meeting and don't say anything because everything's fine. So you talking can only make things worse," right? He's like, so just go to a meeting and don't talk. Let me talk. I said, "Okay, great."

So I sat there and they talked about finance and I had no idea what they're talking about. I was like, I don't know anything about accounting. And so after that, I started taking accounting classes and I took about, I don't know, like three or four years' worth of accounting classes.

I really became like this a really beautiful funny accounting person. Yeah, I actually, it's funny because one of my accounting teachers who I see kept in touch with these, she goes, "oh, you know, they have a program at Harvard business school, you should really look into doing it." And I was like, "I don't know if I have the time." But I just learned all about the accounting side of things.

And that was a gap. So I knew marketing. I had learned management and I knew I wasn't very good at it. I learned all sorts of things, but it was like I didn't know anything about finance. So about 10 years ago, I learned as much about small business finances as I could have. And I didn't do it all at once. 

I took a class in the summer. I took one in the fall. I took basically, you know, four classes a year for like three years. So I took basically all the classes you would need to have a degree in accounting.

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