Freedom in Five Minutes

"Botting" is the process of using software automation to perform tasks. It's a very popular tool in social media. However, it is frowned upon among video game consumers and developers.

There is a proper time and situation to use bots. To name a few: in business systems and processes, and in social media interactions. It is important that you know exactly in which situations you should offload your tasks and automate them so that you are able to scale personal attention.

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Automated Transcript Below:

Dean Soto 0:00

Hey. This is Dean Soto – founder of FreedomInFiveMinutes.com and ProSulum.com and we're here again with another Freedom In Five Minutes Podcast episode.

Dean Soto 0:14

Today's topic is this: How Multiplayer Online Video Games Teach You to be a Massive Consumer. That and more, coming up.

Dean Soto 0:32

Good morning! Hey. So, if you have not gone to Google and typed in Freedom In Five Minutes Podcast you better go do that right now. If you go to Google, type in Freedom In Five minutes Podcast, and you type in Apple Podcasts after that... Freedom In Five Minutes Apple Podcasts. It'll take you to the place where you can subscribe to this podcast on Apple iTunes. You could do the same thing with Spotify. Do that. Type in Freedom In Five Minutes Podcast Spotify or Stitcher or many, many other places. You'll be able to get this whenever you want on your mobile device and anything else. You'll be subscribed and you'll get the latest and greatest. You will absolutely love it.

Dean Soto 1:27

So every now and again. I get this hankering. I get this hankering for some botting. That doesn't even make sense—botting. B-O-T-T-I-N-G. There are games out there where that is a big no-no. Nobody. Don't you bot?

Dean Soto 1:56

What the heck is a bot? What are you talking about? Botting. Dean? Well, a bot is something that is essentially a robot that does all of the things for you. It gives you all of the... it basically runs the game, and does all of the quests and does all of this stuff for you. Now, why is that a bad thing? It's a bad thing because they want you to consume and they want you to play fair, right? They want you to play fair in this game.

Dean Soto 2:30

Well, for a long time, I actually can't believe it's already been almost two years. For a long time, I've been playing this game called Final Fantasy 14. Really cool game. The whole Final Fantasy series is a really neat series. I actually play the Final Fantasy series with my oldest daughter, we're actually playing Final Fantasy seven. They are going to be making a remake of Final Fantasy seven which is good. It'd be pretty interesting and cool. But we are playing Final Fantasy seven.

Dean Soto 3:06

The thing that we love about these types of games... not all of them. Not all of the Final Fantasy series is that great. But for the most part, the storylines are really really cool. And it has a lot of emotional and very archetypal images. And one of our favorite games is a game called Chrono Trigger. Which is pretty dang... I love that game. Anyway, I digress. So for the past two years, I've enjoyed playing this game not because of the storyline, but because I'm able to easily bot the game. I'm able to easily automatically do things within the game where I can program some bots to go and do various things, there's a lot of tools that you can do that you can use that allow you to do that.

Dean Soto 4:12

Well, the other night... Every now and then I'll stop the subscription because it does get expensive, especially if you try and run four bots at the same time. So it can run its own party. It's doing all that stuff all by itself, within a party of four different robots.

Dean Soto 4:32

So I'm going through this fantasy land and doing all that jazz. And I turn off the computer and they're running these dungeons where really nobody's supposed to be able to even know. Like, be able to see you. You can run this. Let this thing run and nobody's gonna catch you botting or anything like that. And this morning, I woke up. And I see a little message from someone named "applesauce". Which is a...you can name your character whatever you want. But it said, "H Max Bot? LOL." which I'm guessing is some type of bot software or something like that. Some different types of software that I use.

Dean Soto 5:24

And I'm like, "Ah, crud." Like, how does someone catch me? Because what they can do is they can then report you. And then you'll get your account suspended. And I've had my account suspended many many times. And usually, after a while though, they won't even tell me sometimes how long they're going to suspend. They just suspend and you have to go with it, whatever it is. And then after a while, I'll go and try to log into one of my accounts and I'm Like, "Oh, cool, I'm back." I'm guessing the reason they do that is because it's money. They're getting their money. They're suspending for 7 days or 30 days or whatever. But they're like "Yeah you know we don't mind having the money." It's not that big of a deal. You know because you have people... Anyway all that being said... Why am I even saying this? So I see this person and my initial reaction is like "Dang, all that work. All that. Now, I have to go back to do all this again and then I have to go back to not..." I don't play the game by itself like I just have to go back to doing something else and you know, waiting it out and stuff.

Dean Soto 6:40

Like that sucks. You know, I just started up again, just started botting and one of the things that personally I love in this whole systems thing that goes on with the business. I love seeing things work by themselves and knowing that in the background, it's doing the work for me. It's giving value, right?

Dean Soto 7:04

Well, these massively multiplayer online games they want you to consume. They want you to sit there literally for hours and hours and hours and hours a day and they want you to get so consumed. That when a new gear comes out or new bonuses comes out: new extensions, new expansions, etc... You're going to be one of the first to grab them because you want that extra edge right? You want that extra thing or that new piece of entertainment.

Dean Soto 7:47

They want you to have that going on in your head. And literally, if I look... So these characters are maxed out now. Maxed out characters essentially, for the most part. And if I were to sit there and max out just one of these characters, sit there, doing it all alone, pressing the button. I literally... if I count the number of hours, it's in the hundreds, if not thousands, of hours on this thing, and that's what they want you to do.

Dean Soto 8:33

They want you to if you're mining for gold and for resources and things, they want you traveling by yourself over to the thing, pressing the button a couple of times, go into the next one, pressing another button a couple of times and going into the next one pressing another button. They want you fighting, they want you doing the quest, they want you doing all of that stuff. Because the more that they can suck you into that repetition. The more that they're able to consume off of you, like a vampire, and don't get me wrong like it's business right? it's business.

Dean Soto 9:09

It's part of the success of this game, so to speak. And you know, they also want you to... they want things to be a little bit fair, right? They want people who who are doing this to not feel like "Hey, but this guy over here...I'm playing on this PlayStation but this guy on the PC, he's able to bot and I'm sitting here for hours and hours and hours and this guy is able to just do you know, press a button and let the thing go. That's not fair."

Dean Soto 9:45

Which is totally understandable. But it's the same thing as in businesses. This is what I'm preaching on. Oh, man. Same thing in business. This is so important because a lot of other businesses—a lot of businesspeople say because I have friends who run multi-million dollar businesses and some of them literally think it's not fair. It's not fair to have something that is just doing its thing like a bot. A business that's just doing its thing. And it's funny because I used to have this weird thing where these guys were making millions. My friends are making millions. People that I look up to, they're making millions of dollars in revenue, it's amazing. And here I am, you know, building a cathouse. Here I am spending most of my time in the morning chatting with my family having breakfast, going out, building a cat house, cutting down poison ivy, doing all this stuff. And this is not real. This is not like this is not the way it should be in business, but it's actually the opposite. Where they're like, more and more they're like, "Man I wish I had the cheat code like that." And I'm like you can! Why do you think you can't do that? Why do you think you can't get the cheat code? Some of them have. Some of them got Virtual Systems Architects from Freedom In Five Minutes and ProSulum.com. And they did get the cheat code.

Dean Soto 11:45

But some feel like it's cheating, some feel like, there's a little bit of a botting situation, right? That you would find with some of these types of video games. So why am I bringing this up? One was just the fact that I'm like, "Oh crap." That I got caught yet again. So I'm sure my $15 per bot or whatever for the month is going to be wasted a little bit because they will not let me play for a while.

Dean Soto 12:22

Two, it shows you that we are taught even in video games. Not everything is taught in school. We're taught in video games. We're taught in a lot of different ways that we have to be the ones to do everything. That's the only fair way.

Dean Soto 12:50

We have to be the ones. You're the one with the skill. You're the one summoning the health angel of whatever...Asgard. You're the one that can do the ice spell. You're the only one that can do all of that because you're the hero. You're the hero of Final Fantasy 17,000. No, you're a zero.

Dean Soto 13:21

If you're literally spending our like thousands of hours doing something that somebody else could do or something that you could program you're not. And I'm not taking away from your creativity. This is funny because as I'm doing speaking engagements, this is one of the things that comes up a lot. That you are the creative one. Create! You create the systems. You create the environment, the systems, the processes, all of that.

Dean Soto 13:52

And now, you then are able to make that into a process that someone can do. And you can see this happen over and over with things that people think is absolutely impossible. Right? But not only that, it is having the internal side where you're okay with doing that. You're okay with offloading. You're okay with giving somebody else the keys to the Ferrari that you've built with your own hands, your own custom Ferrari that nobody else has in the entire world.

Dean Soto 14:37

You're okay with handing the keys over to that. And so, what now is something that you're doing, could be watching Netflix. It could be playing massively multiplayer online games. It could be stuff in your business that you won't simply let go of. Even though you could, what are some things right now that are consuming your time when they really don't need to.

Dean Soto 15:14

I want you to be suspended from doing that. I want you to be banned from doing that for 30 days. But give it a try. Give it a try. Give "create" a process. Create a process document. If you have a Virtual Systems Architect, you can do that in five minutes. Start getting that going. Because the sooner you get started getting that going, the sooner you're going to be able to absolutely enjoy the massively multiplayer game of life.

Dean Soto 15:49

Alright, so this is Dean Soto. I'm going to continue my walk with the Luna Meister. So if you haven't checked out FreedomInFiveMinutes.com, go check that out. We have a business process scorecard. We have a masterclass there. Actually, I also have a four video series over at ProSulum.com. I'm gonna be doing a lot of cool automation in the next few weeks that's going to be really surprising.

Dean Soto 16:15

We're gonna see all the things you can do when you start trying to scale yourself and systemize yourself and scale, as Jermaine Griggs would say, my mentor. Scale Personal Attention. I will catch you in the next Freedom In Five Minutes Podcast episode.

Have you ever asked yourself why you are working too many hours? And why do you sometimes still end up feeling you're not getting the job done?

Well, you might want to take a closer look at how you're spending your time and energy because it's actually possible to get things done without spending all your resources.

You want to know how? In this episode, Dean talks about the value of using your energy in the best possible way, and how it inspired a lot of his clients to use their energy efficiently.

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Automated Transcript Below:

Dean 0:00 Hey, this is Dean Soto founder of freedom in five minutes calm and prosulum.com. P R O S U L U M .com. And we're here again with another freedom in five minutes podcast episode. Today's topic is this using more energy doesn't mean you're more productive. That and more coming up. Well, good morning. Man, it is getting a little warmer here in Central California and that is that is not necessarily a good thing. I love the cold and so it's a little bit of a downer that things are getting warmer I want to I want to see more rain more cold. However, however, All of the seeds and stuff that I've planted. With all that being said and done, that means that we will be having more of a crop. Because the winter is bringing spring, right? I'm looking at that I'm actually looking at one area that I planted right now see if anything's popping up. So I created these food forests. So try at least I'm trying to start creating food forests, so that in different places where we're at there, there's there. It's not just it's not just a normal homestead, not just normal farm, but actually, you know, an actual food force that I can go walk to and go pick out some lettuce, go pick out whatever. So anyway,takes a lot less energy to do that. But you have to have the right conditions. You have to have the system that's already set up around trees. So on and so forth, and it kind of leads me on to what we're going to be talking about today. So yesterday was really cool. This. I was. So yesterday I went and did some jujitsu. So some Brazilian jujitsu, which if you've been listening for a while, you know that I've been doing it almost almost a year now. I love it. It's such a good way to exercise a good way to also learn more about yourself and, and develop skills of self defense. One of the best it just I was so hesitant at first, when I first started doing the whole jujitsu thing, but now I'm like, Oh my gosh, this is great. Why did I ever not do this before? So So it's interesting because the It's New Year's right? And so with New Year's comes a whole mess of people who have new year's resolutions, and they want to get into shape or they want to learn something new. They want to start doing something new, right? And And that leads to bigger class sizes. Not even just bigger class size and not only just bigger class sizes, but it also leads to the idea that the it also leads to new people who who are brand new to the sport but might be totally fit, they might be muscular and fit and wrestle or do whatever, they come to the sport and it it's a great way and a great time to test what you actually know. Okay, so.So after class,every after every class that we have on Tuesdays and Thursdays, we do a bit of rolling we do about maybe a half hour of what we call rolling, it's sparring. It's, it's it's actually doing jujitsu with each other and trying to submit each other, right and so there This one guy not gonna say his name, but he is a he's definitely fit. And you can tell that he does something like CrossFit. or something of that nature. And the guy is, I want to say is probably about the same age as me maybe between 30 and 40 around that, that and when I when I see it, like the initial reaction is like oh crap this guy's good at this guy's gonna destroy me right this guy's going to absolutely destroy me because he's all fit and and he also I think wrestles and all that stuff so so it's after class we finished class I went and said hi to him and stuff like that and asked him you know, Hey, have you done any martial arts at all? Have you done Brazilian Jiu Jitsu at all and he did. I think one time, one class before and so it was interesting. So my like I said, My initial reaction was, oh my gosh, this guy's because he was definitely ripped. He definitely was a is a let me turn on airplane mode real quick Hold on one second just had a telemarketers to try and call me. So and so he. So anyway, we I'm like hey, well let's roll and internally I'm like ah crap is gonna suck and you know all of my year of trading is gonna go for nothing. And so we start and he's a wrestler so he knows how to do clinching and stuff, stuff like that. So we start and we clinch and the cool thing is that that he, I kind of got to feel them out a little bit. And right away I ended up getting them in my guard, which in jujitsu is a dominant position. It might not look like a dominant position. But it is a dominant position. It's basically where I have my back on the ground which for wrestlers in wrestling you don't want to do that's the whole point of You know, you want to pin someone to the ground, right? But in jujitsu, having your back on the ground is totally fine. So it's when you have your back and your ground on the ground and your legs are wrapped around the person. Okay? That might not look like a dominant position, but it's actually a dominant position in jujitsu. So, so we're going, and it's cool because he's trying to get he's trying to get out of my guard and I'm constantly putting him off balance this way and that way, and then I was able to then sweep him over and get into mount which is a very dominant position. It's one of the best positions where you have a lot of different opportunities to do different arm locks, armbars chokes, and all that other jazz. So when I get into mount, the first thing that he does, is he wraps his arms around me so mount is basically just so you have an idea of what mount is full mount. It's where my so I'm, I'm on top of him and my legs are headed want to say it I'm on I'm, I'm on top of him, I'm in a position where if I wanted to pound on his face with punches, he can barely do anything. So my legs are kind of North, kind of in the area around his abdominal around his abdomen, right? And then my legs come, I try and wrap them around his legs so that he can't really so I can't really throw me off or anything like that. If you Google Brazilian Jiu Jitsu mount position or something like that, you'll see what it is. But anyway, so he's there, but the first thing he does is he is he goes and wraps his arms around me to hold me close to him, which is sort of what you can do. If someone's punching you you definitely want to do that because now I can't get any strength. I can't get any space to I can't get any space to start start landing punches or anything like that. So he's pulling me close. And the thing was that he's squeezing at the same time he's like her, and it feels to him like he is making a difference. He is constricting. He's a boa constrictor constricting all of my oxygen and making it to where. I'm just going to pass out and give up right?Well, that's what he might be thinking. But in my head, all I'm thinking at that point is yes, yes, young Skywalker. Please keep doing that for the energy is leaving your body. So as he's doing that on thinking as a as literally, yes, yes, yes, keep doing that. Keep doing that because you're going to get very tired You're expending all that energy trying to squeeze me in a position that is in a position that is not going to do anything for you or for me, it is very easy to it's very, it just you're making it easy for me to win later on, because that squeezing is not going to choke me. It's not going to constrict my airflow or anything like that. And so he keeps doing he keeps doing that keeps doing that keeps doing that I just wait and wait it out and I can tell you starting to get tired. So now I move in for different submissions. And ultimately, ultimately, I submit the guy and one of the first tips I gave him was.Don't try to escape don't try Don't try to squeeze don't try it like if you're in a position where you're not. If you're in a position where you are not The dominant one, the person really cannot submit you cannot do anything unless they move first. Okay, so say I got you into mount. Well, now I got you locked in and you're not going to go anywhere. However, if I actually want to do anything to you, if I want to make it to where you, I armbar you or do some kind of submission, hold on you, I have to move first, which means I have to start creating space, I have to start creating the, the, the in setting the tempo of everything. And as soon as that happens, now, I can if I was on the bottom, if I was if I was the one that was in the non dominant position, I can start doing things that take advantage of that space that you just created. But if I try and escape, I try and do all this stuff. I try and move around. I try and squeeze, I try and do all this stuff. Get me out of here, get me out of this. I don't like it. I don't like it, I don't like it. Then I'm using all of that energy and wasting it. And while it might seem like I'm being productive, it might seem like I'm like I'm squeezing and choking, and I'm doing all this other stuff. It is not I'm actually losing energy in the long run. So why is this important? It's important because we do this a lot in business. Right? We do this a lot in business. We all know whether it's you or whether it's somebody else. We all know those workaholics right. We all know those people who are so proud that they pulled an all nighter that they're so proud that they were up till two o'clock in the morning working on something and finally got it done. Right. We know those people that that stay you know if you're in your normal in a Normal nine to five job. We know those people who stayed till 910 11 at night trying to finish things up and then they come back and they're like, yo, yeah, I was here till 910 or 11. And then they make you feel bad for from working normal hours. They make you feel bad for working eight to five or nine to five or whatever it is. Right? Well, those people are those are just like those people who are spending energy and getting nothing done. They're spending energy and, and that energy that's being spent is actually being wasted. The fact that they even have to stay that long is an indicator that there's something wrong in the system. There's something wrong in the process. Okay. Just because you work hard on something, doesn't mean you're doing more doesn't mean you're produced. More, it means that it simply means that you're working hard on something that's it doesn't mean anything else. And so, what's more, one of the things I love about jujitsu, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, is that everything is strategic. Everything is built on leverage, everything is built on a system of techniques, a system of if you move just one inch in this direction, because of how you have your body, their their body will flip over, or their body will board or you can choke them or you can do all of these different things. Right. So the the big thing in business is to pay attention if you're working hard Something if you're working on something in something that's done over and over and over again, especially, it's a big indicator that you're wasting a lot of energy. If you have a team, you should have a standard operating procedure that your team can then use to do that thing, so you're not doing it. So now you can step back, be more strategic, find points of leverage, and have your business grow and excel in so many different ways. If you're working hard, and I'm not saying hard work is not it. Trust me hard work is great when it is necessary. Hard work is great when it's necessary. But if you're just working, if you're the boss, and you're working, working, working, working 12 hours a day, every day on the same thing and it's stuff that your team can do or you are stuff that That you're doing over and over and over again and you think your team can do it. More than likely you're wasting energy. More than likely you're wasting you're wasting all that time. But if you just step back, created a process for it, a documented process, step by step. You could offload that that in many, many other things. So that every ounce of energy that you're spending every single ounce of energy you are spending is spent in an efficient and beautiful and amazing way. So right now what are you doing? Where you are just you are constantly constantly spinning energy. You're constantly doing, doing doing doing right. What what are you doing right now? That Oh, over and over and over again. And you use it as an excuse over and over and over again. You're doing these few things that's keeping you in the office for 12 hours. take a hard look and really truly see especially if you're the one if you've learned how to do this thing over time, more than likely somebody else can do it. What what are you doing right now? That if you simply handed it off created a process for it. That energy that you're spending can be best used for something else. This is Dean Soto freedom in five minutes go check out freedominfiveminutes.com. We have a lot of amazing stuff there. masterclass. We have our business process scorecard, go check that out. Go to prosulum.com, P R O S U L U M .com if you want to be able to do these processes create these processes. is in five minutes, in as little as five minutes,give them step by step have someone do it for you. So you never have to do it. Again. Get a virtual systems architect that's dedicated to you. They're like a, like a virtual assistant with superpowers. And go check that out. And if you if you go if you if you try if you go to pro slim calm and you try to exit it will come up with a course and brand new course that you can subscribe to. It's a four day series it'll teach you how to create all these processes teach you how to create step by step processes so you don't have to do this stuff and waste all that energy on stuff that doesn't matter. Alright, so this Dean Soto freedom in five minutes.com This is the freedom in five minutes podcast. I will catch you on the next freedom in five minutes podcast episode.

Although the product is an important factor, at the end of the day, it is customer experience that determines the success of your business. And one of the best things that can lead to great customer experience is through systemizing processes.

In today's episode of Freedom in Five Minutes, guest George Chen, founder of UBestPacks.com talks with Dean about the importance of offloading tasks, leveraging your VSAs, and the influence of customer service over the success of your business.

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Automated Transcription Below:

Dean Soto 0:00

Hey, this is Dean Soto — founder of FreedomInFiveMinutes.com and ProSulum.com P R O S U L U M . com. And we're here again with another Freedom In Five Minutes Podcast episode. Today's topic is this. Systemizing Global Manufacturing the Easy Way with George Chen. That and more coming up.

Oh. Today is going to be a treat. An absolute treat! Because I have one of my favorite people here on this podcast. Someone who has taken – oh my gosh, like he not only does – he systemizes in a way that allows his global manufacturing business to run with as few people as possible.

He is so creative when it comes to systems and really doesn't hesitate to at least try to systemize pretty much everything in his life as well as with his business. So, that being said, I am here with Mr. George Chen. He is the President and CEO of U-BEST PACKAGING SOLUTIONS. George! What is up, my man? How's it going?

George Chen 1:29

Hey. What's up, dude? Stoked to be here. Very excited. Yeah.

Dean Soto 1:34

Awesome. Awesome. So we actually met through — Paul who is a mutual friend of ours.

And he introduced us and we started working together. You do some pretty amazing things. I had no idea - when we first started - all of the things that you do. Can you kind of give an overview of what you are in charge of? And really, how did you get to that point?

George Chen 2:03

Yeah. So, what I'm in charge of. So, I run U-BEST PACKAGING SOLUTIONS. We're based out of Brea, California, Orange County. And we do anything branded. So, if it involves putting your brand on it, whether it be packaging, business cards, flyers, to clothing, apparel, we do it all. So, what I oversee is I oversee our U.S. operations as well as our overseas operations. We have manufacturing sites here in Orange County, as well as in Taiwan and China as well. We not only do packaging, but we also do shoe manufacturing as well. So in various different industries. And how I got here. Well, it's funny, I started a sticker company. In college, I traded two DJ turntables for a vinyl plotter. And what a vinyl plotter is — if you look at cars. And they usually have those family stickers where it has a mom, dad, son, whatever. Yeah, so I traded two turntables for a vinyl plotter to cut both stickers. And from there, we moved into different types of packaging. And that's kind of how it started.

Dean Soto 3:21

That's crazy. That's crazy. So actually, were you selling your vinyl cuts to your friends and things like that? What I mean — that's pretty dang cool.

George Chen 3:36

No. I was — originally, I just wanted to make a bunch of stickers for myself. And I was pretty into the car modding industry where you take the parts off of that. So it kind of went hand in hand. And then eventually, we started selling parts. Vinyl, you know, kind of like tinting parts for certain head lamps and headlights. I would sell it to car modding shops. And that's kind of how it started.

Dean Soto 4:05

That's crazy. That's so crazy. And now, you have a whole manufacturing company in Brea that I have been to a couple of times. You have a staff there, and you do some really amazing things there. So what's out? Give a big rundown of some of the things that you're able to do right now. I know you say you have your shoe manufacturer and you have whatever. What's your favorite thing right now? What's the most innovative or what was your — kind of the thing that you love the most that you're doing right now?

George Chen 4:43

I wouldn't say it's one single product that we do. I think it's more so the gratification of printing something and showing our customers and seeing the look on their face. That's what I love doing. I love — it's not that I love printing or I love manufacturing. I love the feeling of giving my customers a product and having them go, "Holy crap, this is better than I imagined. Thank you for this, like, I'm so stoked." That's usually where I get my gratification. But if you want to boil it down to kind of more so a product, I would say, our paper packaging. Doing boxes and doing retail packaging, or a lot of marketing, influencer marketing packages. So, a lot of times we've worked with global brands and we make special influencer boxes for them that they ship out to all these marketing influencers. And we build like really, really cool custom wooden boxes. Sometimes plastic boxes, clear acrylic boxes and just make the user experience something super cool that they can post online and share with the world.

Dean Soto 5:57

It's amazing. It's amazing. You actually deal with a whole bunch of different industries right? With all of this? And as I've seen your packaging too, and we'll get into some more deep questions in a little bit. But I've seen your packaging. It's funny because when I think of packaging, I think of just — it sounds bad because you're probably gonna be like, "Yeah. That's like totally not what we do." But I actually just think of like, cardboard box around

George Chen 6:31

Brown shipping boxes.

Dean Soto 6:32

Yeah.

George Chen 6:34

Literally what everyone says, "Oh, you do packaging? Can I buy like brown boxes?"

I'm like, I mean, we can do that. But that's not our bread and butter. Yeah. And then everyone's like, Oh, yeah, you guys are like... I say no. Yeah.

Dean Soto 6:48

So yeah. I want people to get an idea of all the different things that you have created. Some of the most creative things like for Afters Ice Cream, which is really big over here in Southern California you did some really creative amazing things for them and for some pretty big named companies right? So what are those kind of things?

George Chen 7:12

We're pretty big in the restaurant industry. I would say we do a lot of franchise restaurants nationwide and we do local franchise areas like Afters Ice Cream. We did everything from their wall installation. So if you go on their website, I think it's AftersIceCream.com. You guys can go through their portfolio and see some stuff that we've done. So we do all of their ice cream cups for them. We do all of their wall installations for them. So, wallpaper wraps, signage, photobooth opportunities. We just recently did the Rick and Morty collaboration, and we did all the window clings that go in the storefront. The wallpaper packaging and merchandise quoting

Dean Soto 7:58

The Rick and Morty Thing man was so cool. Like kind of give an idea of what that actually was just because, man. If you guys saw the video of this, you felt like you were in the cartoon.

George Chen 8:12

Yeah. So I think it was at their Pasadena store. And they have this building on the side just solely for a photo op. But once you walk in the door, it's covered in wallpaper of different designs of Rick and Morty and you go in there and you take photos, and with ice cream and whatnot. But, you know, you just gotta go to the website and take a look at it for yourself. It's kind of hard to explain.

Dean Soto 8:41

I love it. Like I always kind of — I always think of what you do as putting ideas and dreams into a physical and tangible product whether it's actual packaging for something. Or you know, wrap or something like that. It gives that whole physical... You're able to put these ideas into a physical form which is absolutely amazing. I love it man.

George Chen 9:13

We like to say we bring ideas to life. If you have an idea and you saw something super cool and you want to recreate it, or you want to redesign it into something that fits around your product, that's what we're good at. We're really good at building packaging around our customers' products — whether it be boxes, bags, or whatever it may be. We're really good at you know, catering to certain customers and making something very memorable.

Dean Soto 9:41

Yeah, I love it. So guys, if you haven't noticed, I'm like, these guys. You guys got to know exactly what this guy does. So that as we go deeper into how he actually gets this done, you'll just be blown away that he's able to do what he's able to do. So with such a lean organization. All that being said, when we first met, I mean... prior to us even meeting, you already seemed to have a mind for systems and operations and you run your business, from what I can tell, very differently than a lot of other people in your industry. And that one of those things is definitely a focus on outsourcing and documentation. So, what is your whole idea when it comes to those two things — documentation and outsourcing? So that you can maintain a flexible but still powerful organization?

George Chen 10:51

Oh, it's funny. Before we met, I actually did not really thinking that kind of way. It might have seemed that way but not really. I did learn from a friend one time. We were — I can tell you, when we started this company, I was typing out invoices on Microsoft Excel and doing inventory counts manually by hand, typing them into Microsoft Excel and calculating our inventory that way. So that's where we started. And we my friend was helping me out. And we were talking about inventory management systems because going through my inventory every week and counting everything was not working. So we found a company called StitchLabs.com. And he explained to us like, you know, you have to catalogue everything. You have to go through and input all this data. And it's going to take a lot of time, but if you put in the work now, it'll be smooth sailing later down the road, because you'll have all this infrastructure that you've implemented. So that was kind of the beginning of where I had that kind of system thought and operations way to do things. But in the like, until we met, that's when it started really kicking in and understanding. They are doing the outsourcing and documenting all of our processes. Because, you know, in the very beginning it was me. I was doing the account managing. I was doing the sales. I was doing the invoicing. I was doing the purchase orders. I was doing the accounts payable, accounts receivable, so literally doing everything. So there wasn't really a way that I systemize everything, it was just Oh, something came up, I had to do it, and I just did it and then we'll go on. But slowly as we met, you know, I started realizing, "Hey, I can document all this stuff. Cuz at the end of the day, how to type an order is going to be the same every single time."

Dean Soto 12:46

Exactly.

George Chen 12:47

So how do I document it so that I can pass it along and have someone else take care of it for me? Where I can focus on the more important parts of scaling my company, doing business development to product development. Things that actually I'm very valuable at because at the end of day, my time isn't used best if I'm typing up invoices or purchase orders, right? But yeah systems changed the way I run the company.

Dean Soto 13:12

That's awesome. That's awesome. What was the first thing that you put into a system that — not necessarily the first thing... But the first thing that where you were blown away where thought "Oh crap I don't have to do this thing ever again and now that gives me time to do this other thing that's way valuable. What was the first thing where the light bulb just clicked?

George Chen 13:43

Order processing and invoicing. I hated doing that. Like, I absolutely hated it. I don't like typing out invoices and typing out orders. It's such a waste of my time. And once I implemented that package. I was able to focus on sales. I can just talk to a customer and say, "Hey, please process order and these are the details of that order." And never have to do it again. That was the beginning. And that, you know, that snowballed into even... I mean, we've always had a process on how to do some of the printing in our warehouse. Yeah. But once that happened, I was like, "Okay, now I'm starting to look into all of the different things that we do, and how I systemize this?" Coming from a startup company or coming from, like, not having any business background - learning on the fly. Now I have to think, how would a global corporation do this? Right? They have all the standard operating procedures. Now, that made me realize, because I was doing everything myself — I knew that I had my operating procedures. Those are all in my head.

Dean Soto 14:48

Yeah.

George Chen 14:48

There's no way for me to teach someone and have them replicate it time and time again, without any errors because then it's all subjective. Then it's like, "Oh, you have your way of doing this. I have my way of doing this." I'm teaching you how I'm doing it. But you're not going to be doing it the same way I'm doing it, because there's no documentation.

Dean Soto 15:05

Yeah, exactly. So

George Chen 15:06

I started looking in my warehouse, and, you know, printing facilities. And I'm looking at, how do I systemize this now? So now I went through our printing process and started documenting. Okay, you mix the ink for 16 seconds. And why do we do this? Like, we started listing out all the different reasons why we do certain things, and what to look out for. If the ink is not mixed properly, you're going to get separation and whatnot. And it kind of teaches everyone "Hey, this is the exact way to do it. And if something goes wrong, then we look at that document and say, okay, where did it go wrong?"

Dean Soto 15:42

Yeah.

George Chen 15:42

And you can easily pinpoint now, at what process something went wrong. And now, we have a much better quality control because now we know, "Hey, this print station is producing something different than this other condition. What's the difference between the two? Or what not.

Dean Soto 16:00

I love that. I love that. That's cool. Especially the the idea that because you have the process, you can see where something breaks down. It's not a person, you know. If somebody messes up and it's just because it's in their head, then it's like, "Okay, well how do I fix that?" And that's not very fixable, especially if they keep on messing up. But if it's the process, it makes it super easy to be able to say, "Boom, there's a problem right there." And to fix it, I love that. Before we get into more of the tactical stuff, walk me through how a new customer comes in. Like what's your entire system from new customer comes in to ideation where you're coming up with strategy and everything like that to actually delivering a product. What's your involvement in all of that?

George Chen 17:00

Now. So in the beginning, I was — beginning to end, I was in everything. Now we started outsourcing a lot of our account managing. So now, when a customer comes in, they call us right? Either whoever's in the office will take the call or if I take the call, I'll get their contact information. They'll most likely give me a brief of what they're looking for to do. "Okay, cool, thank you. And I tell I instantly, as soon as that call is done, I provide my VSAs who the customer is, what their email address is. I say, please send them an intro email. And what an intro email is — it has our customer application form. It also has some of our portfolio and some of our past projects, and it kind of gives you a brief about our company and what we do. So it starts off there. They send the customer application, they get set up and then they respond with what they're looking for. Get a quote for, say it's a very standard product, they'll go through a quote, if it's involved. And then they email us what they're looking for: quotes. So then my VSAs, will go ahead and grab that information and start working on the quote, looking at either where to pull some products from different places, wherever it may be, shoot back the quote to the customer. Quote, good customer start placing the order they'll send us the artwork, my same VSA. So at this point, I haven't touched anything. I'm just monitoring my same VSA will take that artwork, send it to our pre-production department, they'll come out with a proof. The proof goes out back to the customer through the VSA. Customer approves the proof. Then we move into manufacturing that is done either here overseas, wherever it may be. And from there, the product gets delivered. I have not touched this product or talked to the customer. The only time I'm involved is more so product development. So if they're trying to build the packaging around their product, or if they're trying to come up with something new with different types of materials, that's where I kind of jump in. More of the creative side and helping them understand what capabilities — because a lot of times, most, I would say 90% of customers... they have a graphic designer in house or they have hired someone to do graphic designing. But that graphic designer is solely for online. You know how to make pictures, put it on a website and make it look nice. Yeah, they don't have the experience of doing graphic design for packaging or for printing because it's way different. You need bleeds, you need Pantone colors, you need all different check points. So the difference is that's where I come in and I help them guide through that process in doing the understanding of how to build these custom projects.

Dean Soto 20:05

That's the stuff that you enjoy. Yeah?

George Chen 20:08

Yeah. No, it's fine. It's fun. Because then I'm on starting it from scratch, and then bringing these ideas to life. Where at the end of the day, the customers like, "Wow, that was super cool." And for us, you know, we try to provide a five-star experience every time we work with a customer. We know what it's like, dealing with, you know, I don't know someone like... Well, I can't really compare but someone like Vistaprint or someone like youprint.com to do your business cards, right? You just send something online, you hope it comes out and you get your product and it's like... We guide you through that whole process because we know what to look out for. We know that if you're printing a box and it needs to go in the fridge or you're printing a box and it's going to go on something that's what... We know that "Hey, you need to use different types of material to get what you're looking for." That's why we're different from most suppliers in that we will look at your product and try to understand it instead of just trying to sell you something. Yeah, that's not our goal. Our goal is to give you a five-star experience where you can tell us "Hey, this is what I'm trying to go for." And we take the reins, and we guide you along the process. And that's our way of providing a five-star experience.

Dean Soto 21:26

I love that and you have the time to actually do that.

George Chen 21:30

Yeah, I'm not typing out invoices and purchase orders all the time.

Dean Soto 21:34

Man, man. So there was a time where, when you were working with your Virtual Systems Architect, your VSA. She did something where... Because she, you know – obviously you guys had the processes that you guys created. All the documentation. everything got systemized but there was a time where the customer actually sent something to you. Like an image. And she knew right away. It wasn't really through the process, she actually knew that it was wrong and like, slapped your customer on the hand a little bit, right?

George Chen 22:21

So that specific example is when one of our customers sent us artwork that was not print ready. So what it means is that once you send us the artwork, all we do is take it, make a proof out of it and print it. We don't touch it. We don't do anything at all. But what they sent to us was an artwork. But it had text in the middle, giving instructions on what needed to be what size and whatnot. And if we took that and we printed it, that would have went wrong, or it would have had all that markings on there. So what my VA did is that she responded and saying "Hey, we noticed that the artwork that you sent was not print ready. Please make sure you remove all of your markings and resend this artwork so that we can move it into print."

Dean Soto 23:11

Oh my gosh, I love that. I love that. And that was like not necessarily something in the process. But you feel like because you had so much documentation... Because all that – because you know, as your VSA is actually creating all that documentation. They're learning your business. Do you feel that that? That's one of the reasons why that happened?

George Chen 23:36

Yeah, I think more so why that happened is that just copying them a lot on every single email that goes out. I think it's more so just the training process, right? If you have someone with you at all times, and they see how you interact with someone, they'll start picking up on that, right. They'll start seeing "Okay, he treats them in a very professional manner. Very courteous. Certain ways you talk to them. They'll start picking up on that. And that's kind of how we've educated every single one of our employees here. You help. You educate them. Versus telling them to do. Yeah. Help them understand why we're doing what we're doing. And why. Because for us, sometimes, a lot of our customers think, "Oh, I need this today." But we realize, "Hey, if you do something quickly, problems happen." Then you start skipping steps. And then that's why we have such a strict, strict guideline on our processes. They're able to pick that up because of our training. And if you have a good training process and teach people why they're doing what they're doing, versus "Hey, go do this." It help them understand a lot more. And for them to pick up on it, and for them to execute it better.

Dean Soto 25:04

Yeah. Yeah, it's cool because, you know, out of all of the people, you definitely — with your documentation, you know, a lot of people that I know who create this type of documentation whether it's with a VSA or not, they just say, "Here's the process. Go do it, but you really do bring the why. Like, why is this process being done? Why? Even like, during the middle of the documentation, you say,"Mix for 15 seconds." like you'll have things like why are you mixing for 15 seconds? Why are you doing this? Why are you doing it? Why? I've just noticed that because of that, your guys are like superhuman. They're able to take on a lot more that they otherwise, wouldn't. A lot of business owners want this kind of robotic kind of just do as I say type thing. Whereas I can tell with your guys to the point where it seems like you're able to just hand off to your I guess she would be your general manager or ops manager — hand whatever off and she handles a lot of the stuff you're doing. What have you noticed that has come with that "why?" Compared to because you know, other people who do this type of systemization stuff. Do you notice that your staff is better because of that?

George Chen 26:42

Yeah. 100%. So, because for us, you can print the sticker using probably five different methods of printing the sticker, right? You could print a sticker, you could digitally print it. You can silk screen it. You could print it with flexo. There's so many different ways to print a single sticker. But you have to understand what your customer is trying to achieve. Are they trying to put it on a box? If they're trying to put it on a shipper box, you know, the brown cardboard box that you thought we do. You don't need such a crazy sticker for that, right. But if you're trying to put a sticker on a bottle that is going to go through a wash, you want to make sure that you're using a vinyl sticker for that. So, understanding "why" helps them better process on which method to print the product for the customer. And teaching them "why" helps them able to empower them to come up with solutions on their own. Right. If you give them an education, they can now offer that same education to your customers. And that creates so much value added to your company. Very, very rarely do you have these companies think for the customer? Because usually it's all about me. How do I get the sale? How do I make this next paycheck? Whatever it may be. For us, it's like, how do we maintain this relationship? So that, you know, you can count on me? Yeah, every single time we talk. Right? That's the difference between us and a lot of other people. We teach them "why" so that our employees can come up with the solutions themselves. So that I don't have to be answering the same way every single time. If I tell you, these are our capabilities, of course, there's going to be times where it's something that they've never experienced or whatever. But a lot of times, it's how you have to understand the machine. You have to understand our different methods of producing a product and which solution is going to be best for the customer. Because it's going to be different every single time. And if I gave you — Okay, if I told them it's a sticker, then you go misprint it but that's not the way, right? You have to understand if they're printing a sticker, what's the sticker for? Yeah. Are they trying to match certain colors? You know, with printing it. That's why we get a lot of customers — they say this today. I got a call from a customer. "Hey. We're looking for woven labels, and we're looking for bags. What's the price?" You're like, I'd be zero information. You told me two categories and expect me to know what's in your head and give you a price. I can't do any of that. Right. So now I have to ask them all these questions and teaching my employees that same thing. Like, you have to understand why you're doing what you're doing. Yeah. So that you can offer the best solution for the customer.

Dean Soto 29:32

Well, it's cool too because you have the ability to do that. Because of all the things that you've systemized in your operation and stuff. It's cool, too, because you could, I mean, theoretically — you probably could just say it would be this much. But then, say they bought that stuff off you. And it didn't work for whatever application they're doing. Like, that hurts your business big time.

George Chen 29:54

Yeah, no. They won't come back. There's no way they would come back. Yeah, and they expect you are the professional. You're supposed to know what I'm looking for. Pretty much, you're supposed to read my mind — is what they want.

Dean Soto 30:07

That's crazy. That's crazy. So one more thing I want to touch on before I ask the strategic Five Minute Question. And then get more information about your business and customer base and stuff. So you kind of mentioned this, you kind of alluded to it before,

There was a pretty big shift where you're getting questions like all the time even when you had systems, documentation, and things like that. You were getting questions. And there was a point where we even talked and you're like, "Oh, I should just make it to where they asked somebody else." Can you kind of explain like how you had to make that mindset shift of always being the person who's getting the questions when you could delegate that to say your general manager who, you know, your VSA who runs the other VSAs?

George Chen 31:10

Yeah. So we originally, you know, I mean, during the training process, you're always going to be the one to answer all the questions. Yeah. But if you're training multiple people, you don't want to be answering the same question for the new trainee every single time after that, right? So what we learned is that we created a frequently asked question document for everything in our company, right? So when, you know, when a customer is asking, what is the duty charge from China to LA for a .... Right? Now we have frequently asked... like that's gonna be asked every single time when we have a new account manager that we're bringing on or whatever. So we've created this document where they can refer to that, and they'll know "Hey, if the customer is asking for duty charge, hey, go look in their frequently asked questions." It should be there. And then if it's not, you know, ask who you report to. Ask them the question and if not, then come ask me. So now I've delegated all the questions that are being asked into my main manager. And then from there, you know, if it needs to get escalated, then it gets escalated.

Dean Soto 32:16

I love that. I love that man. You don't do any of the training whatsoever for anyone new that comes on as far as like a VSA like remote person, right?

George Chen 32:24

Not anymore. So the VSAs of Pro Sulum... they come systems trained. I'm sure if you're listening to this podcast, you know that. They all come to some trainings and I hired one in August of last year. I think August No. Two years ago now. Yeah. August two years ago. And then, within three months, I had that VSA training the other VSA. And it was mind-blowing seeing her you know, within three months, be able to train two new people in the same way that kind of I trained her. And she was really quick to pick up on, you know, how you train. How we do training in our company. And since then, I haven't had to train anyone.

Dean Soto 33:16

The best thing was when I talked to you. One of the speaking engagements that we did. When I said, "Hey, how's your new one coming along?" And you're like, "I don't know, my main VSA is..."

George Chen 33:38

Yeah, I had the ability to say, I have no idea what's going on.

No, it's not good. But no, I mean, I obviously I did kind of know. But I think it's more so just having that weight off your shoulder and knowing that a task that is delegated and being taken care of. Because the worst thing is, you delegate a task, and then you have to go follow up. and say, "Hey, what's the update?" Yeah. Seriously, that is something that I hate. Yeah. But, you know, with these standard operating procedures, "Hey, you need to report to me after a certain amount of time, because that's our operating procedure now. And I haven't had to go follow up anymore. And it's been handed to me." And I think that's one of the biggest differences now. Systemising all this stuff is that these are my expectations. But it's not. It wasn't in our standard operating procedure. Yeah. So when it wasn't happening, it was making me mad. But that's at the end day. That's my fault. Because I didn't systemize it. I didn't implement it into our process. And now that it is, I get so super hands-off approach now, and I get reports handed to me and that's how a company should be run. Yeah, you know, all right.

Dean Soto 34:59

I love it man, I love it. I love it. So, two more questions. The first one is, if you had...if you were talking with someone, and they said, George, what's one thing that you can tell me that if I implemented right now. We call this like the Five Minute Focus Question. If I just did this one thing and more strategic, not like a tool at all or anything like that. I mean, it could be a tool, but more and more in the strategic level that would improve their life, their business. What would that one thing be?

George Chen 35:40

I think it would just be in stead of trying something, just do it. Because if you think about it, you know, as adults, we don't really fail at things nowadays. Right? We have this level of comfort in our decision making that we're going to take — most of the time, we're going to take the same solution or we're going to decide on something that we already know is a most probable outcome. Yeah, when we have come across something that we don't know, a probable outcome, we usually don't make that decision anymore. We just push it off to the side, or we keep not attending to it. And it just kind of gets lost, right. So a lot of people have a hard time trying new things or being willing to fail because we've taken all of that out of our day to day now that we're older, right? When you were kids, you always fail. You always fall down, you always get back up, right. But now, when's the last time you fell? Yep. Never. Right. So I think just doing it and being being willing to fail again, and just being willing to fall down and see what happens because you're not gonna die. It's not the end of the world if something doesn't go right. But then you learn from it. I think that's the biggest thing and just doing it. Whenever, like something comes up, just, just don't be afraid to fail. I think that's, that's one thing that really changed the way I think and just being confident in moving. Once you move like you can only start winning after that.

Dean Soto 37:22

I love that man. I love it. And that's one thing I definitely noticed about you. You just do things.

George Chen 37:29

Like, my motto is do it first and then ask forgiveness later.

Dean Soto 37:36

Man, I love it. It's so good. It's so good. Yes, so who is your dream client? If someone were to come and work with you. Who would be your dream client and what would they expect with working with you and U-BEST?

And keep in mind guys, he works with really big names as well. Like these are huge companies that you're probably wearing shoe-wise right now. But, yeah. Who do you feel that you serve best? Or at least you have the, you know that like, "Oh my gosh, we changed these people's lives all the time." These types of people.

George Chen 38:37

Yeah, that that is a very good question that I have actually not thought about.

Dean Soto 38:42

Sorry. I know.

George Chen 38:45

That's a great question because for us, when we see an opportunity we'll always go... I would say for a while it was Adidas. For a while, it was trying to work with the adidaa. Either in shoe manufacturing or doing marketing or packaging for them for a while. It wasn't even — I guess it could still be. I think I was really into shoes for a while — being a sneaker head and, you know, trying to go for all the easy stuff. But when I was really into that I think Adidas was definitely on my top priority in trying to do because very few companies do "Made in USA" shoe manufacturing.

Dean Soto 39:34

Oh yeah.

George Chen 39:34

We're one of them to supply certain brands that do "Made in the USA" shoes. But the trend has a lot of big shoe pumping brands. They've started moving manufacturing here to reduce lead times and to better serve the changing market nowadays. So yeah, if Adidas was listening. My company would love to work with you. Going back to what you said, what kind of what would they expect? They would expect a five star service, right? Being able to delegate a task to us or a project to us, and letting us take care of it. Because a lot of times how companies utilize us now, when I was the main dealing with all the customers at once...They would be like, "George, this is what I need, go get it done." And then you know, take it, give them the product and have them stoked about it. And that's, I think that's the easiest way to help these brands scale. So our bread and butter is taking a company from either three locations. So in the restaurant industry, our bread and butter taking company from three locate two to three locations and helping them scale in 200 or 500 stores within a short amount of period of time. And the only way to do that is for us to take all their print materials and everything they need printed and taking it off their plate so they could book.

Dean Soto 41:13

Oh, sounds like

George Chen 41:15

there you go.

Dean Soto 41:19

All right, so it sounds like you cut out a little bit. Are you still there right now? I knew this was gonna happen. It always happens at the most inopportune time. Can you hear me right now?

George Chen 41:33

Yeah. I cut out.

Dean Soto 41:34

You cut out right at, like, toward the end of what you were saying like what they can expect...

George Chen 41:44

What they can expect is... they can expect a five star experience regardless if the customer would say "Hey, George, this is what I want. Take it." And then that's what we do. We would take it and then run with it and provide them a product. And that's our bread and butter — helping companies scale and taking away a lot of their tasks to do. So our bread and butter from the restaurant industry is taking a brand with two to three locations and helping them scale to 100 to 500 stores. And how we do that? We help them with all their print marketing & print materials, so that they can go focus on the franchise sales. They can focus on finding their next locations; for their next next door to be open. That's where they're valuable. And utilizing their time not trying to shop for the best or cheapest business cards. That's a waste of their time and working with us they get that five star experience in delegating a task and knowing that it's going to be handled properly and it's going to be executed and the products are gonna come out exactly how they want. And that's our five star experience.

Dean Soto 42:56

And what I've noticed too, for those listening as well is that you're almost actually like a more of a trusted adviser. I've seen where you've taken — I always think of when somebody comes into especially like a restaurant or store where a package is going out. I mean, you know, I'm always proud of my iPhone package when I get it like it's one of the things I look forward to every two years when I get my upgraded iPhone. The packaging and just undoing it. There's something about it that's prestigious and I've noticed that you've actually taken several businesses that had went the cheap route and their packaging has to be wrapped in a rubber band and all this other stuff. And you've made it look like so professional that it takes the brand. It actually does take the brand to another level because people are willing to handle that. It sounds so dumb, but, you know, even just in takeout food. If you have a really cool package. If you have something like, it's like, I'm going to Instagram, I'm going to take pictures of it. There's something about it that you are able to bring to people and it's literally not that much more expensive than going like... They're really paying for you, George. Because you have the time to be that trusted advisor like "Hey, let me help build your physical brand."

George Chen 44:34

Yeah. Well, I mean, what they say is "Camera eats first, right? Yeah. That's the image we live in right now. So everything is instagram every one is taking pictures of food. And yeah, at the end of the day, they get me or they get us. Right? Grant Cardone said it in his book, right? The difference? I can go to this shop down the street and get it at this price. Yep. The difference is you don't get us. You don't get us to think for you and figure out what the best way in keeping your costs low and still getting that wow effect when a customer opens that box or opens that product.

Dean Soto 45:14

I love that man. I love that. So how can people contact you? Work with you? What's the best way for them to actually get to work with George?

George Chen 45:23

Yeah, so our website is UBestPacks.com U as in umbrella. Best B E S T. Packs P A C K S .com. My Instagram is George Chen @georgechen. George with a zero for the O. Yeah, you contact us there through our website or through our Instagram.

Dean Soto 45:48

I love it man.

George Chen 45:49

Would love work with all of you,

Dean Soto 45:51

Dude. Yeah. And so if you're listening and you want some amazing branding, like I mean if you want to really take your business to the next level when it comes to Physical branding and you want your packaging to look better. I mean, better than all of your competition. You have to work with George it is absolutely amazing. So, George, thanks for being on man. And for sharing all the things that you do. It's honestly amazing. There are so many other ninja stuff that he does. But I didn't want to keep him for so long. But yeah, man, it's so good having you and I appreciate you being on.

George Chen 46:29

No, thank you so much it was, it was a treat getting to share our experiences and what we do. And just trying to try to teach people and giving them a better experience, as we know. I mean, we've heard of so many times, customers like "Oh, I can go on Alibaba and order this. And they order $10,000 worth of product and it gets here in the wrong color." That has happened for us, too.

We help customers avoid it. And it's night and day, their experiences. We've had customers leave us a lot of times and saying, "Oh, I got this wrong, you know?" I remember one time this girl. She was nickel and diming us for five cents off a T shirt. For I think for like 500 shirts or something. She was like, "Oh my gosh, like why can't you just give it to me for five cents cheaper?" And I'm like, I've already done so much for you. Like, this is my price. I'm not making any money. I'm doing this out of courtesy because you are a friend of a friend. Whatever it may be, the next order she ended up going to someone else. And I heard that supplier made her cry. The service and how they would not do everything that she asked. And I was like, "Dude that's what you get." But I think customers always have to understand. It's always better to pay five cents more. Yep. And have that peace of mind, knowing that something else is going to be taken care of, where you don't have to worry about it. To have five cents is for something, you know, maybe not in the millions of quantity. But you know, for something — if it's a smaller, like, trust that you get what you pay for at the end of the day. Yeah, and you would want that peace of mind. And paying a little bit more customers have to understand that at the end of the day. It's all about service. It's rarely about product. Of course, the product plays a factor. But at the end of day, it's the service you get and why companies do so well through customer service, because you always remember when you had that great experience with that one supplier. And you always go back to them and you don't really care as much about what the price is. You really care about how you felt and how it was a piece of cake. Yeah.

Dean Soto 48:59

Yeah. No and that's what's... You're spot on with that because you've engineered it yourself to be able to give that service and you know think of all the not just the money that was wasted by her but the time that was wasted by her and the stress and all that stuff that

George Chen 49:23

The stuff that you can't put a price on.

Dean Soto 49:27

I know, exactly. For five cents per shirt.

George Chen 49:32

You got actually five cents.

Dean Soto 49:35

Oh, but it's time that she can't get back. She that probably put a huge amount of stress on her. At the end of the day if you find somebody who's amazing at what they do, and as long as they have the systems to stay amazing like you do, you're only making things better. Like all the time. That's what makes what you do so valuable that I can't think of anybody, any other company that's built like yours to where you're just constantly delivering more and more value over time as you figure out more systems to offload.

George Chen 50:19

That's what we learned. High-end value. How not just to take, but to give even as a supplier, right. Like, how do you give to this person? And that's definitely helped us for longer for sure.

Dean Soto 50:33

Dang, I love it. Well, thanks for being on man. I appreciate it. And guys, go check out UBestPacks.com George is amazing. He is. Yeah. If you really want your brand to soar from the physical design standpoint. you got to go check him out. And we'll have him on again to talk about his other exploits with systems and operations. But until then, guys, thank you. This has been the Freedom In Five Minutes Podcast and I will catch you on the next Freedom In Five Minutes podcast episode.

A lot of times, we find ourselves wanting more customers. Naturally, we want people to like us. Of course we want more people to join our tribe who will allow us to grow our business, so to speak.

One valuable lesson I've seen over years, running my service business is that, having less customers is the best. And these customers are people who absolutely love what we do.

It is a game changer and I find that we have more fun together, see massive results, and grow in ways we would not have been able to grow before.

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Automated Transcript Below:

Dean Soto 0:00 Hey! This is Dean Soto – founder of FreedomInFiveMinutes.com and ProSulum.com P-R-O-S-U-L-U-M.com. We're here again with another FreedomInFiveMinutes podcast episode. Today's topic is this: "Just Because You Like It Doesn't Mean They Like It." That and more, coming up.

Dean Soto 0:31 Good morning! It's nice and chilly here. It's such a good winter morning to go for a walk with the Luna-meister. Luna, say hi to everyone. She just ran off. Bye Luna! Go get them. Go get them birds.

Dean Soto 0:45 All right. So the other day, my business partner and I, Paul... So Paul, he's so great at selling. Like, he is such a good salesperson. So non aggressive. So nice. Sometimes, you don't even realize that he is actually selling. And it's just awesome. Just the way he does things. And so, we were on this sales call with this guy who was a referral from one of our other customers. And it was going well it was interesting.

Dean Soto 1:24 Even right off the bat, I knew it was "What a small world." I was actually deployed with one of this guy's team members. I was deployed to Kuwait and for Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2008 to 2009. And so, that's one of the first things I brought up. I'm like, "What a small world." He's like, "Wow, that's Yeah, that's awesome." So this prospect–things are going well. We're on the call, and he gets it. He's like, Wow, this is awesome. You know, and, you know, we always ask a lot of questions.

Dean Soto 1:59 We want to Make sure it's a good fit because one of the things that is a big no no for us–a big thing for us is that we do not want a lot of people for the sake of having a lot of people. We want people who want to be a part of our tribe, our community. People who understand, like what's going on with what we do. And that the thing that I find, more often than not, is that the temptation is to want to have everyone be a customer, right? The temptation is to want everyone to like you everyone to be around you and so on so forth. It's almost American culture. When there's no conflict, we don't want any conflict. We don't want anybody who doesn't like us and so on and so forth.

Dean Soto 2:56 But if you look at some of the greatest businesses out there, The greatest business minds of greatest comedians, the greatest people who are very highly notable. What do you find? You find that they are very polarizing. A lot of them, a lot of people don't like. The ones who like them, love them. The ones who don't like them pretty much hate them. And same thing, you know, you look at Steve Jobs, I mean, he completely revolutionized the whole computer world, right? And you either love Mac or you hated Mac it put you into this binary. Are you a Mac user? Or are you a PC user almost to the point where you couldn't have both. If you're both you almost seem like this hybrid monster at some point in time. So, of course, it's not that way anymore, but it was at that point in time.

Dean Soto 3:56 So the thing was that – it was interesting because the conversation was going really well. And the guy said, "Yeah, you know, I'm good. Let's, let's move forward."

Dean Soto 4:11 He was somewhat semi-serious, semi... I don't know, it was just a kind of interesting temperament. So, we decided to move forward. And we – for the last two years – have this template email that goes out and the way it works is I introduce the people who are moving forward to our general manager. And he sends over a draft agreement to look over. And if all looks good, then we send final agreements, and so on and so forth. But the template email says something a little bit like this: It says that we're so excited for you to massively grow or 10X your business something like that. It was something we basically say, "We're so excited that you're essentially going to massively grow your business."

Dean Soto 5:03 So my general manager sends that out. And then Paul follows up with, "Hey, you know, I'm so excited for you, it's gonna be great. You know, let's stay in close contact just because that way we can share ideas and we can... we really want you to succeed..." and everything like that.

Dean Soto 5:20 That's kind of a follow up. So this guy goes to his referral–the customer right now. And he says, "These guys are pretty aggressive, they kind of sound spammy. They sound kind of scammy with the 10x in your business and massively growing your business and they're still trying to sell me after the fact..." and so on and so forth.

Dean Soto 5:57 So our client sends an email, basically saying, "Hey guys, I'm getting feedback that you're coming off a little bit aggressive and spammy..." and things like that.

Dean Soto 6:10 And so, you know, that really could potentially be harming our reputation. "Can you, you know. Just looking at your emails, the fact that you use 10X and all these buzzwords..." and blah, blah, blah. "That's really, you know, probably not necessary..." and so on and so forth.

Dean Soto 6:31 So, I look at that, and I'm like, "This one is a really good customer." So I'm not blowing off anything that he's saying. In fact, I always take this type of stuff in. So I ended up emailing them back, but then I also ended up calling him and being like, "Dude, I am so sorry. I'm so sorry if you got this type of feedback. I'll look into it. I'll look into what's going on with that. I'll look into what exactly was ..."

Dean Soto 6:37 And I'm asking him questions to be able to get more specific as to what the heck was the issue? Well, it turns out, that was the issue. The emails afterward and the 10X buzzwords and things like that. And it's funny because you know 10X-ing is definitely a buzzword. But one of the reasons I even have that in there–and it's been in there for about two years now–is because it's true!

Dean Soto 7:34 We have seen multiple times where our customers have literally tripled, quadrupled, and even to the point 10X. I have one customer... That one customer who went from a business that was barely squeaking a profit to now he is... I want to say it's almost like it ended up almost being like a 20X return using our VSAs. Because he was able to let go of a lot of dead weight people who weren't doing what they were supposed to be doing. And he has two VSAs and just crushes with them. So it's not this, you know, I mean, we have a proven track record with people who are extremely...

Dean Soto 8:24 Hold on. Hold on one second, Luna. Luna. Come

Dean Soto 8:36 So one of the things that Luna has been doing... she goes and sneaks away and then sneaks back home. And I don't know why she's doing that and when she's doing that, but like, it is really kind of starting to... just go girl. Good girl. Come on, baby. Let's go down. Let's go down more. Come on. Good girl. Good baby.

Dean Soto 9:09 But it's true. So, you know, it's one thing to use buzzwords and stuff like that. But if the buzzwords are true, and I get it, I totally get it. You know, some people are going to get turned off and everything.

Dean Soto 9:19 So anyway, this guy got turned off by it. And, essentially – I'm guessing with the way it is – he's not going to move forward which is a good thing. Because at this point, even if he were to want to move forward... You know, going behind rather than coming in and saying "Hey, you know, you guys are being a little too aggressive or whatever. You don't need to sell me or anything like that. I appreciate it." But this whole "Well, oh my gosh, they're a little aggressive." And going to the referal and causing trouble like that. Like, do I really want that that type of person to be a customer anyway? No. I want customers who are good customers. Who are ready to to be a part of our tribe.

Dean Soto 10:16 Because that was the other thing, he was like, "The whole 'tribe' thing." Like, no. I want you to... Yes, "tribe" has been used forever but who cares? Honestly, if you're going to be picky about that, who cares? I want you to be a part of our tribe, everyone who is a part of our tribe who really does and utilizes what we do knows that there are certain things that we do. And there are certain things that we don't do... that we don't do training with our Virtual Systems Architects. Training is a very bad word. We don't do training, right? We do process videos. Okay, we do process documentation videos, okay?

Dean Soto 11:00 So, if you're going to train, get the hell out of our tribe. It's not ... we do not do that. We do not do that. And so, it's one thing to use buzzwords when you've just started a business, right? When you've just started a business, if you have someone, say, like Warren Buffett say, "Hey, you know, we have a proven track record of 10X-ing your portfolio." Are people going to say, "Oh, why are you using those buzzwords? Warren, you're crazy. You have no credibility now." No, the guy's a billionaire. Right? So no. Like, who cares? Who cares of those buzzwords? Same thing with with what we do. If I say 10X, it's because we actually have and more often than not, I see at least a 2X 3X 4X return on people's investment.

Dean Soto 12:06 It's not all the time. Most of the time, the success is because they follow the system. And most of the time, the reason for no success is because they did not follow the system. They were not part of the tribe, they did not have the mentality that we need, that we have as a tribe. And so obviously, I'm going to utilize proven things if he said, "Hey, can you show me a company that you 10Xed? I would say "Why, of course, here's one right here."

Dean Soto 12:44 So, all of this being said, Why is this important? It's important because a lot of the times we want customers. We want customers. We want people to like us. We want more and more people that will allow us to grow our business, so to speak, right?

Dean Soto 13:07 What I've seen over time, and what I've liked, at least in my service business is less customers. I love having customers who absolutely love what we do. It is a game changer, the more that we have customers that love what we do, the more that we find that we have fun, they see massive results, and we grow in ways that we would not have been able to grow before.

Dean Soto 13:40 And so, this whole idea of pleasing these people who aren't even a customer... He's not even a customer yet. Just so that they would become a customer is completely foreign, to our way of thinking and now keep that in mind. Keeping that in mind, I told the person who refers me that we will change and split test a different email just to his referral partners.

Dean Soto 14:09 If it does better, great, then we'll use that email. If it doesn't, then we'll use the same old email. But this is the first time in two years that this has ever come up. And the whole idea behind this is that, who cares?

Dean Soto 14:27 Honestly, if things are going well... of course, if you just started your business and you're already getting complaints like that... Then yeah, you probably want to change. But the idea is that you want to work with people. Yet again, you want to work with people that make you happy.

Dean Soto 14:47 Work with people where you can make them happy, and don't get stuck in a relationship. Do not get stuck in a business relationship. Where already right off the bat, there's some kind of animosity Or something that's not a good fit.

Dean Soto 15:01 So anyway, so this is Dean Soto. Freedom In Five Minutes. Go check out FreedomInFiveMinutes.com. Lots of good stuff over there. You can actually punch in the numbers and see what it would be like if you were to get a virtual systems architect and go check out ProSulum.com

Dean Soto 15:24 P-R-O-S-U-L-U-M.com. That's our main Virtual Systems Architect site. And you can schedule a discovery call there as well. So, anyway, all that being said, I will see you in the next Freedom In Five Minutes podcast episode.

I think you'll agree with me when I say, it's essential to have a large organization and a ton more employees to be one of the industries included in the Inc 500, or is it?

Well, it turns out that you don't really need to be that massive.

In this episode, learn how Matt Laird changed the entire scope of the oil industry with just a simple step and an overhead of less than 10 to hit the Inc 500.

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Automated Transcript Below:

Dean Soto 0:01 Hey, this is Dean Soto, founder of freedominfiveminutes.com and prosulum.com, P-R-O-S-U-L-U-M.com and we're here again with another freedom in five minutes podcast episode. Today's topic is this, disrupting the oil industry with Matt Laird. That and more coming up. Cool! So today I have a very, very, very, very special guest. Someone who is near and dear to me and who is also completely disrupting a, an industry that is, for lack of a better word, extremely archaic, but still extremely profitable and brings in a lot of revenue. I'm here with Matt Laird from Camrock Oil & Supply. Matt, how are you doing my friend?

Matt Laird 1:02 Man, life is good Dean. Thanks for having me.

Dean Soto 1:04 Oh, no problem. It's, it's a long time coming I've, I've been wanting to interview Matt for quite some time, but I wanted things to be like perfect man. Always, I'm always like, okay, well I want it, I want, I want a lot of people to hear him. I wanted a lot of people to hear your story and, and what all the stuff that you've been able to do. And because it really is truly amazing what you're able to do right now. And but all that being said, how in the heck, to first tell us a little bit about yourself and what industry you're in and how did you end up being a part of the whole oil industry in general?

Matt Laird 1:48 So, to start now with, with who I am. So, I'm a father of three beautiful daughters, from ages 16 down to five.

Dean Soto 1:55 Nice.

Matt Laird 1:56 Have an amazing wife, who's, who's from this part of the world which we'll get into why I'm here. But just to start out early so soon as I graduated out of high school and started looking for, for things to do, I found that I wasn't near as good at sports as I, as I had once thought. So I found the next best thing, so I found a drilling rig. So, basically, over the course of the next 20 years, I worked my way up into the drilling ranks. So I started at the bottom, rose about, worked my way all the way up to where I was a drilling consultant. I actually own the company who had several drilling consultants. So I was basically, my job was to manage the people who ran the entire drilling operation well. Really good money, really fun job. Basically, really hard job to raise a family. So when you wake up and you realize it for, for 19 years you've been away from home 300 days a year and nights.

Dean Soto 3:02 Holy moly.

Matt Laird 3:03 Basically, you have to find your way, right? So, about five years ago, we, we made some, some partners, started a business using Dave Ramsey's logic. We went to build the boat and get the boat close enough to the shore to step off and not make a huge jump. So we, we started a business in the lubrication and filtration business, industry. So, servicing the oil for was our original goal. We were, we're basically a full on, lubricant like motor oils and greases, full line lubricants and then filtrations, just being like your air filters and oil filters similar to what you would put on your car but in a little bit bigger scope. So that brings us up. We've had some really good successes over the last five years. Good enough that I was able to actually sell my consulting company and come on full time so that I'm home every night. If, if I'm not home at night is because I'm on vacation. So, that's where I'm at today so wherever you want to take it, it's yours.

Dean Soto 4:12 So, for a little bit of background for those listening, I, so I always pride myself on making very fast decisions like five minutes decisions and, and doing things that will allow me to have more time or whatever, whatever it might be. Matt is on a whole another level. So, that was, that was definitely a, an amazing background. Now, one thing that people don't realize is that, that you, that the consulting side of things, you were making a lot of money which you said and you, like you said you were gone pretty much the entire year away from your family but you very quickly, given the data that you had and, and everything, you very quickly made that decision to let go of that whole entire thing which was bringing in a lot of revenue for you, you know?

Matt Laird 5:07 It was, yeah, it was. It was a lot of money to walk away from but at some point, you had to realize what your family's worth. If I didn't make a decision really quickly, I would have just had a lot of money in a empty house.

Dean Soto 5:22 I love it. Like, see this is, this is, so from here on out now that you're, you know, while you're listening to this, this, this is the type of man that Matt is and so just keep that in mind as we move forward through all of this. So, it's just absolutely amazing what he, what he and that just quick decision, literally it was like an overnight decision where he's like, I'm done. So it's, it's absolutely just inspiring. So all that being said, give me kind of the day to day with Camrock Oil & Supply and, and we'll talk about how you've been actually disrupting the industry. Like when you first built this business, like, like, what, what were some of likes, kind, kind of what's you in a typical day? Like, what are you servicing? What are you typically doing?

Matt Laird 6:12 So early on in this business, we were just primarily a filtration company. So we just had a whole bunch of filters and a whole bunch of people that needed filters. So we've got really big trucks and we fill them up with filters. And we, we drove around and, and realized pretty quickly that those filters are mostly air and there wasn't enough margin, huge invoices but no margin. So we began to, to seek out something that was more profitable, that is more needed in the market that would fit really well with our filter company. So as we added the bulk lubricants, we were able to definitely get into a niche. So we're, we're one of our own, so there's not many small independent lubrication filtration company. So there is some small independent oil companies. And then there's some parts houses, there's not really a, a merger between the two of lubrication filtration. But once we've realized that these two works so well together, we're able to infiltrate these markets that the person who's selling just oil couldn't get into with a person that's just selling filters or truck parts getting into. So basically what we are is when we walk in the house, walk into a shop. We've got a full line of outside sales people who do excellent job at getting us into facilities. But when we walk in the door, we can pride ourselves to say that we're going to get the best service, you're going to get the best overall products because we're able to, to cover needs and niches that no one else can do. So, as far as Camrock as a business, we're a full outside sales. Full delivery business that covers all lubrication filtration. But as far as what I do every day, all I really do is just grow the business. So I spend approximately two hours a day working in the business, you know, about eight to ten hours working on the business. So basically, I pulled myself out of operations so that I can focus on going forward and moving the needle, disrupting the industry not just selling more cardboard boxes, actually finding a way to change the entire scope of the industry.

Dean Soto 8:37 That's it, that, that so, so in this industry, because I remember you'd went to a conference not too long ago and you're like, holy crap, like it's, yeah, people tend, in your industry tend to be doing the exact same thing like what differentiates you from, say, your closest competitor with, what is like the big key factor that, that you're doing in this whole filtration and lubrication business that people, if they were if you know if the old school oil type were looking at you they'd be basically say, you know, that's impossible?

Matt Laird 9:17 So basically, the way that this deal works is that I'm an old industry. I'm in an industry where there's no influx of new people because the cost and the, just the ability to get into this industry is so expensive and so time consuming. There's not really a big welcome party for new distributors in the market. So my closest competitor in the lubrication side does over a billion a year. So they're a huge, big company that's not nimble, that doesn't care about their quality, doesn't care about their personal services. They're more worried about how many gallons they can sell all these big accounts so, so with this big company growing bigger, and essentially just through acquisitions and mergers taking over all of the small companies, it's just leaving a huge gap for me to get in with a little better service. Maybe not even as well as good a price but just a better service of better customer relationship and a little more technology. Basically, at the point where I'm at now, if I could do something, you know, maybe I don't put my guys on a route, maybe me I go and get people their stuff when they need it coz I'm not worried about every single penny. I could charge a little more margin. And then on my filter side, in our truck parts as well. We've figured out ways through the market that we can offer a product at basically a more competitive price than, than what your auto parts stores can do because of the sheer volume that we do. So, in our market, we have two small auto parts stores, and one decently sized truck parts store. So, I do more in filtration sales per month than the three of those do combined. So, just in the sheer volume that I move in my filtration I'm able to use my 10 or 12 x buying power to push down the, the cost of the point where I'm competitive so that I can cover my entire market with lubrication filtration. So, for what, I do a little better on my lubrication side than what the competitor does as far as quality goes, but my price is slightly higher, but my pricing on the other filtration covers that gap. So it's basically, if you use me for, for all of these product lines that I offer, my price is competitive with what you're paying across the board, yet you're getting a far superior service.

Dean Soto 12:05 Hmm, hmm. So that's, that's amazing. Because, because, essentially it's the choice between do, do I go with this big huge company to service all of the, the things that I need who doesn't care about me because I, you know, I'm just one of maybe thousands or one of maybe 10,000 accounts, and they just want to sell me stuff. And that's about it and take it or leave it. Or, I can get the same or better discount from you and know that I'm actually being taken care of. Like that to me is like a huge, huge thing, which has always been good for at least my business has been that ability to scale personal attention and the fact that you can with what you're doing compete with this billion dollar company who's your next biggest competitor. There's very, you have no other competitors, because the barriers to entry, and yet you're able to be small enough to give that, that scale personal attention. That's, that's huge. And do you see, like with your customers, you see a, do you see in them, like a, like appreciation of that?

Matt Laird 13:30 So I mean, I would just assume that appreciation or voting is done with your checkbook. So in the, in the five years we've been in business, we've lost a few customers to mergers and acquisitions, but as far as retaining a customer, there's only two customers in the history of our entire company that have actually gone somewhere else.

Dean Soto 13:52 Wow.

Matt Laird 13:53 Though, of every customer I've ever sold a product to, I've only had two of the hundred or probably pretty high in the hundreds that have ever actually quit working, quit using me and went somewhere else. So I think that our, our culture and our customer focus in our pricing structure and everything else is really, once someone comes to us and learned the way we do things, and learns our culture and realize that we do care is not just something we sell from the street. They never leave. Not to this, up to this point, it's been scalable, so it was scalable at one customer, scalable at 60, scalable at 200. And we just continue to just push that culture into our salespeople. So everyone that touches my customer knows the culture, knows that it's our determination that they do right. And I also have several of my salespeople that, that will follow up and actually we'll cross pollinate between customers just to make sure that there's not any issue.

Dean Soto 15:06 Wow.

Dude, people would kill for that churn rate, man. The, I mean, most you know a lot of service businesses that you're looking at, 10 to 25%, you know, churn rate people leaving and, and for you to have you know below, below 2%? I mean, it depends on how many hundreds you have like that's a super low and super high, you know super high retention rate that, that a lot of companies would die for. Oh my gosh, that's, that's, that's absolutely amazing, dude. Like so, with like, without that being said this, so a lot of people would think, okay well yeah, well, it's because Matt is, you know, you know smaller company and, and yeah, you know smaller companies, you're able to have the the more personal attention and yada, yada and but, but one thing that people might not realize is that you actually recently hit the Inc 500, right?

Matt Laird 16:12 We did we, we hit Inc 500. Number three in the state of Oklahoma. I believe it was 36 in the energy sector.

Dean Soto 16:20 Wow. See, look at that. So, how in the heck man, how do you? I mean, I know because you, you follow, you know, books and thoughts like Jason Freed's and David Hannah Meyer Hanson's rework and a whole bunch of other really, really.

Matt Laird 16:39 That rework is sitting on my desk right now.

Dean Soto 16:40 Yeah, that's why I love you. So, like, you have to grow, right? These days, you know, contrary to popular belief, you know, or you know, I shouldn't say contrary to popular belief, but popular belief is that you have to be this in order to hit the Inc 500 at all, you have to be this huge organization with you know, hundreds of employees, you know how many hundreds of employees you have, man?

Matt Laird 17:06 I have about three.

Dean Soto 17:10 Not 300? Three employees, right?

Matt Laird 17:12 No, no, I have three employees and then I have four outside sales that are, they're contracts that they have other, other lines that they sell other than just mine so, and then my wife and I. So there's essentially less than 10 people in the whole building and then I'm running two, one part-time and one full-time VSA that do all my background stuff, everything that nobody, nobody sees, I have VSAs doing it.

Dean Soto 17:38 So cool, dude. Yeah, so then that's, that's, that's one of the reasons why I was so excited to have you on is just how, how you are able to do all of that with such a small amount of overhead when it comes to at least payroll, you know. So what, so like, what one, how, how did you go about structuring that to where you know your next biggest competitor, I'm sure has way more employees than you do because most Inc 500 companies do have a ton more employees like, what, what was going through your mind? And how did you actually make it a reality to have such a small organization that's, that is able to deliver such value that you're able to hit the Inc 500?

Matt Laird 18:28 Ok, so there's a lot of pivots along the way. But when we originally started the company with myself and two other partners, we started the company as an investment that we would oversee not as a business we would run day to day. Basically everything was put in place from day one that basically we started with The E-Myth Revisited, right? So the first employee was day one and that employee had to do this, this and this. And then as we grew, we're going to add another, we're gonna add another, we're gonna add another, that didn't work. So it didn't work at all. Basically, this was about three and a half to four years of me working my other job, and then putting in 40 to 50 hours a week on this job plus my business partners as well. I had three different times. I hired someone who was Six Sigma, or what's this? Had all the abbreviations in front of their name and basically, I hired three different people at three different times to try to grow the company. And I had zero success with any of them. So, every single time I would grow up to 8,10, 12 people, then I would go back and realize that this isn't working, that we're, we're losing money, that we're failing that, you know that this is not the path we need to be on. So there was three times In the growth of the five years that we actually ended up back with one employee.

Dean Soto 20:04 Wow, wow.

Matt Laird 20:06 And one sales person, other than myself.

Dean Soto 20:09 Yeah.

Matt Laird 20:11 But over the course, so what I finally realized was that, it's not the people, right? So the people that I hire aren't bad people. What I realized was that there's no way I can increase the, increase the ability of my company if I cannot get beyond two to three people, and my culture shift. So basically, that's where I realized that everything had to be documented. Everything has to be written down, checklist. Everything has to be repeated. So how do we, how do we go to a customer today? And we drop off their products and we throw them in the middle of the floor, and they're super upset and then the next day we go back and we put them all on the shelf. Well, that was happening at some point, right? So, maybe not that dramatic but there was, at one point there was no system. There was no follow up, there was no, there was no way that anybody other than my one delivery guy that's always been with me.

Dean Soto 21:15 Yeah.

Matt Laird 21:16 And my one employee that's always been with me in the office. So if those two people weren't doing it. If anybody else was doing it, they would get sloppy?

Dean Soto 21:24 Yeah.

Matt Laird 21:24 Well, I just realized that those people aren't training because they don't have any guidelines to train off of.

Dean Soto 21:30 Yeah.

Matt Laird 21:30 So I've trained them so they know. But it's just the carbon copy effect. And every time I get to the next person, it's lesser of a solid line.

Dean Soto 21:39 Yeah.

Matt Laird 21:39 And then I get to the next person, then it's a dotted line, and then I get to the next person, and the next person is costing me more money than they're making. So it's, it's basically, I went through this transition three different times and realize that in each of those times, I could have been well-rounded. I think the people would have probably done, done an excellent job, had my training been better. So basically, I was able to come in at that point using first I tried to do it myself, PowerPoint. Tried to build these processes. I spent hundred hours and got three processes documented maybe. It was a, it was definitely a terrible, terrible thing, but.

Dean Soto 22:23 I know the feeling, dude.

Matt Laird 22:25 Yeah, so then. So then after, Dean and I were talking and he was able to bring his guys in. Basically, it was pay-per-click on these processes and I would spend my day from 4pm until 5pm every day working on the one thing that I never wanted to do again. So whatever I did today between 4pm and 5pm, I didn't ever want to have to do it again and I wanted it to be done correct. So all I would do is, is follow Dean's programs. So basically jumped in, jump on Loom, record that process exactly like you would want it done. Because you, you have a system, your system may suck, but you have a system. So record your system exactly like it is on Loom every day, whatever that process is and I would email it to, to Dean and Dean finally got tired of me emailing him and then he gave me somebody else's email.

But I, every day at the end of the day, between four and five, I would email my whatever that process was over to Dean and he would send to his guys. The next morning when I got back to the office. The next morning sometime, I would have a full process document that was just prim and proper. I would look through it very few times that I even have to correct anything on there which is perfect. And then I was able to use that as training. So I would basically start training my staff as I was growing. And then I lost the girl that was working for me, that was my bookkeeper/ receptionist. When I lost her, I decided to give the VSAs a try. And I was able to not only would have the VSAs do what I had primarily been doing, but also what she was doing. And then a few weeks later I lost another employee. And then, so now I have one and, essentially a full-time and a part-time VSA that do the work of the three people that I lost, including myself, which pulled me completely out of the business.

Dean Soto 24:39 So cool.

Matt Laird 24:40 So that I can just spend a couple hours in the morning checking on things and then off to disrupt the industry.

Dean Soto 24:49 That's awesome, dude. I love it. I love it. So like what, like what that's so cool that you won, that you felt the pain of documenting a processes is that like is the worst, man. I mean, because, but it's what was necessary, obviously, you know, any, any real business has to have those documented processes. Like, with, like with, with all of those the, the one of the things that you just what you, you said that we had talked about in private before is that you said that you had systems. Like the systems could have sucked, but you had systems and you document it in any way. Like, that seemed like it was a pretty big game changer, right? Like rather than trying to create a new system that you don't know is proven.

Matt Laird 25:34 Yes. So I mean, just one system I use, right? So instead of having some fancy software for my inventory, I use QuickBooks, alright? And I mean, I could use something else and I may at some point use something else but right now I just use QuickBooks. QuickBooks Platinum has an inventory feature. And I have Bernadette, who's my full time VSA. She creates an Excel spreadsheet that I basically I recorded one afternoon when I never wanted to do it again. She jumps onto my QuickBooks. She has full access to my inventory on my QuickBooks. She builds this spreadsheet. She runs through the spreadsheet and, and knows exactly when how long it takes to order something. She knows how long it takes to come in, and then minimum order amounts. And then she will actually take that spreadsheet that I generated, that I taught her how to do on a Loom video. She actually takes that, creates purchase orders in my QuickBooks then puts the, a suffix on the end that, that has the purchase order number with the "-INC". So when I get to the office in the mornings, it's already ready. I open up my open purchase orders folder on QuickBooks. Anything that says "INC" suffix after that, that part. It means that, that has not been ordered. So all I have to do instead of the 45 minutes to an hour it takes me to run through that spreadsheet every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Now I get to the office, open up my QuickBooks, and I can look and see that oh, this particular vendor, I know I need to get to 1500 dollars to get free freight. It's at 1411, I can either throw on one or two, one or two items or I can just wait and then the following when Tuesday or Monday, Wednesday or Friday, I know it'll get over 1500 bucks. So, and then, so I never had this system before. This is something new that just happened to come up. Whenever I was making the videos, once I started making a video, I felt more comfortable and then I was able to, to be more creative as I was doing it. And, and one real big thing that just the straight game changer was that I know that I'm not gonna have to do this process. I may add steps that make it easier for me to go back later. Because I know I'm not the one doing it every day. So there's been several times where I'm, I'm just generating a new process or a process that I'm already doing. And there's stuff that I've always known that I needed to be doing, but I've just been kind of skipping.

Dean Soto 25:36 Yeah.

Matt Laird 26:21 When you make that process document, you add all that stuff in.

Dean Soto 28:33 Yeah.

Matt Laird 28:33 And now that stuff that you always wish you would have done is now being done.

Dean Soto 28:37 That is so cool. Yeah, I love it. I love it. So I want to ask the, the big question, which is the question I asked everyone during this. So if you had five minutes and it was like a life or death situation so to speak, what's what's this, what is something, strategically if somebody were to implement whatever it might be? What would be something that, that you could strategically give someone or that would absolutely change their life in five minutes if they made the decision to actually do it?

Matt Laird 29:25 So if, if I had five minutes to explain it or if they had five minutes to do it?

Dean Soto 29:28 That's it, both, five minutes to explain it, five minutes to explain it.

Matt Laird 29:32 Oh man, Russell Brunson gave people 30 days for his, at five minutes?

Dean Soto 29:38 That's how we roll here man, we're lazy. We need to do something fast.

Matt Laird 29:41 Yeah, I really think in, obviously, I'm, I'm kind of biased right now because I've been going through so much of this, this new training to get to mass market. But today I would say if you want to do something to get your life in order or, or would it, would you want it to be life or is it just something that someone could do that?

Dean Soto 30:07 Maybe any, it could be, it could be business, it could be life, it could be absolutely anything. Something that's just like that, that is super impactful. It's not like, it's something that, that that you know, you know, would or has made a big difference in your life.

Matt Laird 30:24 So, I'm gonna have to go with, with more than one thing. So the most impactful thing that I've ever had in my life is getting my morning routine dialed in. So without my morning routine my days are, are essentially garbage, right? So I'm just chasing that sanity that I would have had with, with my morning routine. So I spend an extra hour a day getting ready to play, you know, getting ready to to win.

Dean Soto 30:53 Yeah.

Matt Laird 30:53 If, if I don't spend that hour, hour and how long it takes getting ready in the morning , I might as well just stay in bed. That's my number one life hack of today.

Dean Soto 31:09 I love that, like go, so and then you can tell me the, the number two after this but so what is your morning, normal morning routine like, like what do you do personally?

Matt Laird 31:19 So, so I think you know it personally but, but I'll go through it. So the first thing I do is I get up. Use the bathroom, wet myself, brush my teeth, make a coffee with one teaspoon of either grass-fed Kerrygold butter, unsalted or ghee, whichever I have there. One tablespoon of MCT oil. I use the Brain Octane which is, I've been using it for years, I love it. And while that's brew and I take a scoop of the either Organifi or green smoothie. I use the, I've been using the Oreo brand lately just because it, it tastes so much better. Crush the green smoothie that's still in my, you know, I'm still in my pantry, pop a couple of Nootropics, Alpha Brain or, or whatever I'm on that. I cycle through them a lot. So whichever Nootropics I'm gonna popped that.

Dean Soto 32:25 Dude, yeah, you, you got me back on to that, by the way, and it's made a huge difference.

Matt Laird 32:30 I mean, I'm 100% it gets the brain impulse.

Dean Soto 32:34 Oh my gosh, it's, it's the way I like, so I mean, I was doing the Qualia for a while and that, that would just make me really anxious for whatever reason, but I've been using, I know you've used the, the Thrivous, whole stack that they have. That's what I've been using too and oh my gosh, they had the difference, man.

Matt Laird 32:51 It's good thing. Then I, and I come into my office. So in my office, I have four by six index cards, random assortment of colors. So I have my three daughters and one wife. So I'll write them a note to each of them every day. On my note, I'll say something like, had a great time at the movies, can't wait to go, we're going to go to the movies this week, wherever my daddy daughter date or my wife and I date is for the week. Sometimes I'll bring up a unique memory that we share together. You know, I put something on a card, not a whole bunch coz I write with a permanent marker. So it's big, takes up the whole card, boom, kinda in your face. And then I take those into, my oldest daughter charges her phone in the living room, so I will have it in that room. I put her card under there. My two youngest kids, I put them where they eat their breakfast and then my wife I put about the coffee pot. So that's done. Got all my family stuff out of the way just so that when they wake up they know even though I'm not here, I do love them. And then I have, come back into my office, I'll throw on, hit record, I am blogging a book. So I'll do five, seven minutes, 5 AM on my book then I'm dressing out the door, jump in my truck, turn on the Through The Word App, TTW. Right now, coz actually tomorrow I'm finishing up the In Times, which was 70, 70 days worth or something.

Dean Soto 34:29 Wow.

Matt Laird 34:30 Soon as I pull up at the office. My office isn't very far. So usually I can go through that five to six minutes on the way to the office, go to the office, all ready to kick all the heaters on in the office coz it's cheap. So I turn all the heaters off at night. My staff is in, in the Philippines anyway, so they don't need it at night. So and then I'll jump back in my truck. And so as soon as I get back in my truck, I'll, I'll go through what's called the Stack, which is an app put down by the Warrior, which is Garrett J. White.

Dean Soto 35:04 Yep.

Matt Laird 35:05 Basically it, it ask yourself a lot of open-ended questions.

Dean Soto 35:08 Yep.

Matt Laird 35:10 Steady, so there's like 15 different questions it asks you and then it asks you the question, how you feel about what you just said and it was really good app, Warrior brotherhood, Garrett J. White.

Dean Soto 35:20 Yeah.

Matt Laird 35:21 And then, kick on Headspace. So right there in my truck in the parking lot at work, 10 minutes today, I actually stepped it up to 20 minutes of Headspace.

Dean Soto 35:31 Wow.

Matt Laird 35:34 Basically do a bunch of, right now I'm doing one of their programs that go through right, so it's like a 10 day challenges or something. And then I'm good enough. It's about 6:10, office is already warmed up. I'm already at the office. I've already had my first coffee and then I'm ready to go. So I skip, I don't do any fitness in the morning. Which to someone who doesn't work out a lot, I would recommend fitness in the morning but for me it just doesn't work with my schedule because I have a hundred plus minute workout regimen that I have to do all together. I would have to get up at three o'clock in the morning so we don't do that so but that's it. I mean, I'm in the office and I'm usually sitting at my desk at 6:15, levelled, centered, I've already pre planned my entire week on Sunday. So I have my schedule lined out in 30 to 45 minute increments and I'm ready to go.

Dean Soto 36:37 I love that. Oh man, the and that, that that is why, that is definitely why it's super important as far as the the five minute strategic thing that is, that is awesome. All the stuff that you're able to pack in to an hour and a half. You know obviously a lot of that comes from the, the Warrior stuff that's, that's actually how Matt and I had, had met. We actually did warrior week with, through Garrett J. White's program.

Matt Laird 37:07 We're Week 57 man.

Dean Soto 37:08 57.

Matt Laird 37:09 Most uncomfortable the human body could do without dying.

Dean Soto 37:12 I know it was crazy, man. And it wasn't just the physical as all the, all the emotional stuff too man, like it's crazy. The, so yeah, dude. So that, that, that was one you were, you said that you, there was two things. So there's one was the getting your morning routine down, which you out of everybody, you definitely are so structured with that, with that morning routine and actually doing it on a regular basis. I have a morning routine that, that relatively mimics what you're doing. But sometimes it's at six, sometimes it's at eight. Sometimes it's at seven, sometimes it's at nine. My dream is to, to just make it six o'clock from here on out, but we'll see if we can make that happen so.

Matt Laird 37:57 Oh, you know, I've been chasing a morning routine for years.

Dean Soto 38:00 Really.

Matt Laird 38:01 Funny enough, it doesn't, that you wouldn't think that you would. But so like I've heard people talk about their meditation practices and their morning routines. I read Elrod, Miracle Morning, like three or four years ago. And I've always been trying to get it primed and get it right. I just didn't have all the pieces of the puzzle. But it is super important at this point to have all of that correct.

Dean Soto 38:26 You know, you know, I love it, man. I love it. It definitely makes a huge difference. Like I got every Monday we have our little, our group that we, that we talked about, that we meet that you're a part of and every time because I have to be on at around, wake up at 4:45 and be on at five. Like, I've gotten so much done today. Like way more than I normally do during the week and I'm like, oh I gotta do this everyday but then Tuesday comes around, and it's kind of harder, harder to wake up. But yeah, so what's this? What's the second thing, man? You mentioned two, you got me all.

Matt Laird 39:01 Yes, so, so the second, second thing is where I'm going right now, man. It is, it's the niches. I mean, it's not mass market. I mean, it's obviously mass market. You don't want to be in a, you know the small area. But it's just to get into that niche, right? So you want to find your customer in the niche, in the niche, in the niche. So you want to know, basically, your customer, you want to be able to draw that avatar on a piece of paper. You want to know how many kids they have, you want to know how many trucks they have, or you want to know how many rakes they have or whatever it is that you do, you need to find out what your current customer is. And I have done some soul searching lately and I realized that a majority of the customers that I work with now don't fit into my perfect customer bubble. Not to say that it doesn't work but I do know that the ones that do fit into my customer bubble feel better with my service. They feel better with me as a person, and I like being around them. So you can't force yourself to go to work when you're actually going and it's people you like to be around, it's people you like to serve. But I really think that finding that niche the people you want to work with and finding where they're at inside of their niche is super important.

Dean Soto 40:28 That's awesome man. And I, when, so you recently put out a, a funnel and, and a video and when I, even when I heard the video that you did, it was so specific to problems that you face that, that you, that you know, others face those exact same problems that it got me interested and hooked like right away. And, I definitely don't have those problems, but it was, it was as if I was in the room and you were speaking to a friend of mine that was in the oil or, or had a, you know, fleet of trucks, but wasn't big enough to, to be you know, to get the discounts that a lot of these big distributors and so on are able to get. And you, the way that you talked on this video, it was so narrow and specific in the pain that the person's feeling that it, that it was contagious. And I just thought that, like I, I've, the, the fact that you're able to go that deep definitely tells, tells the person listening that you know. You know if they are going to, you know if they are actually going to be a customer, you know, the pain that they're going through and then you have the path and the, the possibility of helping them to get past that pain that they're currently in right now. It's, it was pretty amazing.

Matt Laird 42:02 Well, we're hoping to actually launch today, funnel launches today, I'm just finishing up but this would be my first, funny enough, Inc 500 going on probably two years in a row, and I've only spent $250 my entire career in advertising. So, my first funnel launches today and sad to say that as soon as I hit click, it's gonna double my ad spend for my life.

Dean Soto 42:31 Oh poor guy, poor guy, dang, dude, so, so all that being said, like, how, how can people reach you? How can people connect with you, whether they're customers or strategic partners? Any? How can, how can people work with you?

Matt Laird 42:48 Yeah, so basically, I'm available email or LinkedIn. I see only two platforms that I use. I, I don't do social media. I don't have any of the Instagram, Tick Tock, whatever the newest thing is. LinkedIn or email. So my email is [email protected] and my, my name is Matt Laird on, in LinkedIn.

Dean Soto 43:15 Oh, I love it. Let me, I'm going to grab your LinkedIn profile link real quick, hold on one second so, so when my guys are doing the, the blog post for this, they can link to you. You heard that guys, thank you so much for doing my blog posts for me by the way as you're hearing this. So linkedin.com/in/matt-laird-77540b59, okay? Cool, so you can go there and then you can actually go to, what was your website, it was Camrock?

Matt Laird 43:54 Camrock Supply.com

Dean Soto 43:57 Camrocksupply.com as well. So go check that, C A M R O C K supply.com. Dude, you're amazing. And I would love to have you on again and talk specific things, operations wise and things like that later, but I really wanted to get, get you on just to introduce you and show people that you're able. You're, I mean if you're able to hit Inc 500 with the overhead that you have, and with the flexibility that you have in an industry that is absolutely archaic and old. It, it shows what you're able to do, that you, that you don't have to go with the flow and stuff like that. So it's just amazing to have you on man and see all the things that you're doing.

Matt Laird 44:43 Oh man, I appreciate it. Yep, let me know whenever you're ready. I do know that. After the 21st, when I go live with my new project, I would definitely like to talk on how that things go and we're going to disrupt the industry.

Dean Soto 44:59 I love it man.

Matt Laird 45:00 Wanna keep up with 2020.

Dean Soto 45:02 I love it. Well how, how can people get to your, to your funnel?

Matt Laird 45:07 It's not launched at the time but the regular email address for that will be fleet, F L E E T E X.net.

Dean Soto 45:20 Cool, perfect, fleetex.net, cool. So by that, yeah, by the time this is on, it should be up and running man. That's great. Cool. Well, it's great having you on brother. I appreciate it. And guys, go check out Matt Laird. If, if, and he is just an absolutely amazing, amazing person and then go check out camrocksupply.com and also fleetex.net. Until then, guys, this has been the freedom in five minutes podcast and we will check you out in the next freedom in five minutes podcast episode.

People nowadays are so eager to produce an output that some of it leads to mediocrity. And because they want to have something right away, most of them end up forgetting about the most important thing when it comes to building something. But what exactly is that "thing" that we need to be aware of? In this episode, Dean talks about what it means to have a strong and reliable foundation and how important it is when you're trying to build your business.

---------- Automated Transcript Below:

Hey, this is Dean Soto founder of freedom in five minutes calm and pro silom. Calm PR O, Su, O u m calm. And we're here again with another freedom in five minutes episode. Today's topic is this, the foundation of what you build is what matters most. That and more coming. Oh, good morning. It's kind of getting warmer here. Which is good, in a sense, but I need to go and take advantage of the snow before it all melts up in the mountain area. Anyway, I'll solve that problem when we get there. So I'm on the walk with the Luna Meister as usual and got some good things. That's some good things. So So building this cat house. It's a it's a feral cat house, we want to get a whole bunch of cats set from the ASPCA who, you know, they've been fixed. They've been spayed, but they just they're just not something they're not a cat that wants to be indoors or not a cat that wants to be with people, and so on and so forth. And so they're not going to be cats that want to be inside right. So. So I'm building a feral cat house is going to be four foot, four foot wide by eight foot long and I need to start putting some more dirt on on my What's it called? My chicken coop I have this I have this wire mesh that comes out from the chicken coop and then you start putting some more dirt or over it. Anyway. That'll be Yet another thing I need to do. So anyway, these feral cats will live in this cat house. So I'm gonna already have kind of the designs for it and everything. So I already started building the foundation and built most of the, the frame of the structure, and so on. And it's good. The way that we're going to actually design and it's going to look like a like a, like a biker bar. Have you ever seen like a, like a biker bar type thing and, and it's going to have like a sign out, out in front of it's gonna be all black and have like spikes and things like that. And it's good. The biker bar is going to be called Hell's kittens. And so or something like that. And so these, these are going to be our rat catchers. They're going to be the ones who get all of the the rodents and snakes and squirrels and and gophers and things Like that, so I'm super excited to get these guys gonna be pretty awesome. But one of the things and I learned this when building other things, but one of the things that has taken me the longest is building the foundation for this house. I've already like I said, I've already built the frame and darn it, I left this piece of wood out. Hopefully it didn't work. I don't think it will. Anyway, I'm sorry, the, the, the the that I've already learned from other structures that have built despite how annoying it is, despite how much I don't like it, whether I like it or not. whether I like it or not the hardest part of this whole thing is the foundation. Right so the foundation is made of cinder blocks is going to be, it's going to be four corners, and then a couple of blocks that are in the center just to keep the keep the floor from bending, and so on and so forth. But the most important part are definitely the four corners. And it's on a slope. Right now it's on a slope. So the front of the structure, the cinder blocks are dug in about halfway down, which is totally fine. That's great. But the ones in the back, because it's on a little slope. Those are barely dug in. So when I was trying to make sure that they didn't shift or anything like that, when I was doing that, I found that it just wasn't going to work. As soon as I put soon as I put the structure on there, and there's any type of movement, it's going to start shifting the cinder blocks, right. Well, luckily, I had a bag of Quick, quick drying concrete I've brought the bag down and I didn't want to do this is just one obviously an added piece of work and then anytime I'm anytime I'm con creating something it's pretty permanent like that's the way I've always feel it's a pretty permanent and so I don't want to mess up so anyway I pour the concrete on it and go and get some water to start winning the concrete and and right when I pour the water on the the thing I realized oh crap, there was concrete on top of the cinder block too. So I had to I had to very quickly brush it all off with my hand and make sure that that so that didn't dry on the cinder block and then make that all uneven and everything like that. But um when I when I finished it was, you know as quick drying concrete so it didn't take that long to dry, but it was a perfect foundation. Perfect. The one on the back. They're not going to shift, the ones in the front are not going to shift. Not too worried about the ones in the center because if those four corners don't shift, we should be good to go should be pretty golden. And so yeah, it was a, it was one of those things where, where I started realizing, you know, I've spent hours spent hours just on this dang foundation. And it's cinder blocks, it's literally just cinder blocks and trying to make them as straight as possible, as highest as as the same height as possible, as well as the same height as possible. But also, more importantly, that all of them are leveled, and they all align with each other. Okay, which is hard. It's a little bit harder. It's not hard, but it just takes a lot of time. And and I realized, wow, yeah, I could literally be doing the fun stuff like cutting word and putting all the word together and doing all our stuff. But here I am doing This foundation Well, if I were to do all of that, the word and cut all that stuff and build everything and then put it on a foundation that was horrible, the foundation that wasn't going to last so foundation that was shaky or an uneven, the whole structure, eventually very quickly is going to give away and it's going to come crashing down. Right? And I don't want to come crashing down on my kitties That would suck. And so, why is this all important? You know, the foundation of everything is so, so important. This is why we are we are ruthless. And I say that in all honesty, like we are ruthless with our customers, making sure that they have the foundation of building systems the foundation of creating systems from systems documentation from video, right. That is a huge, huge thing and a lot of customers want to jump we want to jump just to the building part. Just want to jump just to the fun part and We have to stop them and say that's not how we work here. That's not what we do. So if you don't, if you if you're looking to if you're looking to have a building that and a business that is going to crumble, or you're going to have to go and fix and fix and fix and fix, not the not the right place, right? So what right now of your foundation of your business or your marriage or anything like that, what right now, are you doing that you know, that you should spend more time on even though it's not fun, maybe it's your marriage, maybe it's going on date nights, maybe it's going on? Maybe it's taking time during the day for your family to have a meal together? Maybe it's maybe it could be, you know, going to church more for your spirituality side of things or exercising more stretching, whatever it might be. I challenge you to take the time to build the foundation for that thing. Because the more that you try to, to build, without having that solid ground built, the more difficult is going to be for you to the more difficult it's going to be for you to see results in anything that you're doing. And it's going to be a constant fight and a constant struggle and the constant repairing of everything so so this Dean sort of founder of freedom in five minutes calm, go check out freedom in five minutes calm also go check out. Go check out proselyte calm PR o su lm calm. If you want a virtual systems architect, super, super inexpensive, but they will literally transform your entire business. Sometimes. almost overnight, I would say. I wouldn't say overnight, but pretty darn close. So all that being said You're hearing me in my garage. So I'm going to take off this Dean Soto freedom in five minutes. I'll catch you on the next freedom in five minutes podcast episode.

What are you procrastinating on? What is something right now that you know you have to do? Something in your business that you keep on putting off - it could be bookkeeping.

Some of the tasks in your business are like ticking time bombs that could explode in your face if you do not deal with them sooner than later. It's just going to get worse over time!

Now, I learned this the hard way. The more that you are unwilling to do what needs to be done now, the harder it is gonna be later.

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Automated Transcription

0:00

Hey. This is Dean Soto, founder of FreedomInFiveMinutes.com and ProSulum.com. We're here again with another Freedom In Five Minutes Podcast episode. Today's topic is this:

0:19

If You Leave Poison Oak Next to You, Eventually You're Going to Get Burned. That & more, coming up.

0:32

Oh, good morning. Good morning. Good morning.

0:36

So when we moved onto our property about three years ago,

0:44

one of the handymen - he was someone who did our tree work. He did a whole bunch of stuff. He showed us where we had some Poison Oak on the property within a very close distance to our house.

1:06

And we actually had him come and spray and kill a good amount of it. And then we're going to have him get rid of it but never ended up getting around to it. And then, I started thinking, "Well, the kids really don't play over where that's at." And you know, it's not that big of a deal. It's just poison oak... yada yada yada.

1:27

Well, nearly three years later, we kicked the children out to go and play. Apparently they were wandering right around that area. And they got poison oak on their hands; and subsequently on their body; and subsequently on their face. And now, they have the poison oak rash all over them. And it sucks.

1:56

It sucks. It's funny, like you know, my little guy is a beast... He is a monster when it comes to pain. He's totally fine. Like, he's just, "Oh, I want to go play. I want to go play. I want to go do this. I want to go do that." And yet when you look at his face, you're like, "Oh my gosh, dude, you should be resting. Because man, you look beat up." Um, it's sad because that poison oak is just like, all over him.

2:27

So all that being said, one of the things that is going to be happening in the next few days is I'm getting rid of all of that stuff. I know where it all is. I've been hesitant just because I didn't want to get it but who knows I might actually be immune to it because I was touching his face and doing a whole bunch of stuff and I haven't got it at least as of yet.

2:49

And, you know, there are some people who are immune to poison oak. There are people who are immune to poison ivy and poison oak where it doesn't bother them. I think it's about 50% of people in the United States.

3:01

I don't have an allergic reaction to it at all. And none of my other kids have had any symptoms or any signs. It's just this particular one. At least that's what I think it is from looking at all the pictures online and looking at everything. It looks like it is poison oak.

3:21

And so anyway, we are just looking and just waiting for all his stuff to stop swelling up and everything like that. But one of the things you have to do when you're getting rid of poison oak is you have to have gloves on. You can't burn it because it'll get into your lungs and will cause a whole bunch of damage into your lungs, apparently. So I'm going to take that and we have a place over our fence that I'm going to go to throw it out of - that no one ever goes to. No one will ever go, as far as I know. But I'm going to try and make it kind of spread out on the grass over the fence.

4:00

So that all the oils dry up and it gets all decomposed as fast as possible. But what you have to do is you have to get gloves, you cut down the stuff, and then you move that stuff - you typically would throw it, if you were in the city. You'd throw it away. You try and cut it up as much as possible and throw it away. But then, you have all that stuff on your gloves. You have all that stuff on your tools and everything like that.

4:28

So I gotta go do that. I'm gonna go and start doing that this week.

4:35

Making sure that stuff is just off of our property. Because it was a ticking time bomb. It was there. It was something where I'm like, "Ah, nothing's gonna happen. Nothing's gonna happen." And then, all of a sudden, "Boom!"

4:51

You know, and it sucks. And why is this important? It's important because there are a lot of ticking time bombs. There are a lot of poison oak that you have in your business right now. Right? It could be in your business. It could be in your marriage. It could be in your spirituality. It could be in your health. Things that you've been ignoring for quite a while, you know are bad.

5:10

And I can think of some in my business that I know are just sitting there and they will eventually explode. And when they do, it's going to be not pretty, it's not going to be pleasant.

5:26

So it's best to handle that stuff now. You know, had I done this three years ago, I would have gone through the exact same thing. I would have cut the stuff down, put all the poison oak in a place where it can just decompose by itself as quickly as possible and be done with it. But now, I have a child who was exposed to it and is now healing from all the allergic reaction to it.

6:01

So, either way, I had to cut the stuff down and move it. But because I chose to wait, boom, that's what happened.

6:10

So, what are you waiting on? What is something right now that you know you have to do that if you keep on letting it go... it could be bookkeeping, it could be whatever... You keep on letting it go.

6:25

It's just going to get worse and worse and worse and worse. The more that you are unwilling to do what you need to do now the harder it's gonna be later.

6:45

This is Dean Soto. It's a short one because I'm gonna go and start getting rid of this poison oak.

6:52

This is a short one, but go check out FreedomInFiveMinutes.com. It's a really awesome site.

7:00

Obviously. I wouldn't have a podcast about it if it wasn't.

7:05

We have a business process scorecard. We have a masterclass there on how to automate your business and get things moving in the right direction - systemize and everything like that.

7:17

Go check out ProSulum.com P R O S U L U M .com. There's a four-video series there that you might want to check out. If you try and leave the site, it'll pop up. You can check out that four-video series or you can schedule a discovery call if you want to start systemizing and automating your business in as little as five.

7:37

Yes, five minutes a day. All right. This is Dean Soto. FreedomInFiveMinutes.com

7:43

I will catch you on the next Freedom In Five Minutes Podcast episode.

The power of being a generalist is a major advantage to an entrepreneur. Join me as I recount my struggle to niche down and specialize until I finally had enough and said, "Screw that! I do not need to specialize in something!" This is my journey to becoming a proud generalist.

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Automated Transcript Below:

Dean Soto 0:00

Hey, this is Dean Soto founder of FreedomInFiveMinutes.com and ProSulum.com. We're here again with another Freedom In Five Minutes podcast episode.

Dean Soto 0:15

Today's topic is this: Specialists in Your Business & in Any Business are Stupid. That and more, coming up...

Dean Soto 0:32

Well, good evening! I just took my son. Right now, we're at his martial arts class. I'm going to be walking around, you're going to hear some cars in the background, but that's okay. Let's just talk. Let's talk, all right?

Dean Soto 0:52

Growing up... Let me let me go rewind the clock a bit. Shall we? Growing up, I always had this issue. It reared its ugly head predominantly in school at first but then it started rearing its head in the workplace too when I started getting into my full time job.

Dean Soto 1:33

During elementary school all the way up into college, I really had no idea what I wanted to do. I remember – gosh, it really was from the time I met my wife when I even decided on an actual true major. I was majoring in Japanese and then I majored in music. Eventually I was like, "You know what? Screw this." I just wanted to get out of school. I wanted to get my degree because my wife wasn't going to marry me if I didn't have it. I'm just going to do business. Business Administration. It was the easiest, it was the fastest. And it looks good on my resume if I was going to get a job that paid well.

Dean Soto 2:33

The thing about Business Administration was – and I still remember to this day – I was working at a company I don't even think exists in the same way anymore. I was working at a company called DMJM+Harris. DMJM Harris, and it was a Civil Engineering company. Within the organization, I want to say there was probably 50 people – everything from civil engineers, structural engineers, to finance to accountants to project schedulers, etc... I was an administrative assistant there.

Dean Soto 2:33

It was really cool because it was one of the funnest jobs. And no joke, it was one of the funnest jobs I had. I couldn't put my finger on why I actually enjoyed that job as much as I did but I'll get to why that is in just a little bit. The thing about this organization was there was obviously a lot of skilled people, especially in structural engineering. They're building bridges or roads or building things that perhaps billions of people are driving over and those things have to be perfect.

Dean Soto 6:02

You might be thinking, "Dean, what's the big deal? Really. It's not that big of a deal."

Dean Soto 6:10

Well, for me, I had already spent years going throughout school and getting hounded by councillors as to what I wanted to do. What cog in the wheel did I want to be, right? And I could never decide. There was nothing. There's nothing where I need to dive into so much. There's nothing where I can fall so deeply in love with this thing that I wanted to go. I dabbled in programming and it was fun. Then I dabbled in music, it was fun. But I can only get so far.

Dean Soto 6:53

Everyone was telling me, "You never want to be a jack of all trades and master of none. You are never going to get rich that way. You are never going to see any success that way."

Dean Soto 7:07

When she said that I was like "Crap, I think I'm totally destined just to be this wandering guy who really doesn't know what he's doing and I'm never gonna make anything of myself."

Dean Soto 7:27

It's interesting because right about that time I was applying to Boeing Aerospace. I did not have my bachelor's degree at that time but I did have a security clearance. That was a big thing for Boeing.

Dean Soto 7:49

In my resume when I was applying, I applied for this industrial security job – I didn't quite know what it was. But it sounded like it wasn't armed security. I wasn't wearing a uniform or anything like that. It was more like protecting government secrets. So, I thought, "Wow that's kind of cool! That sounds pretty interesting."

Dean Soto 8:30

You know, honestly, it was still the "fastest" degree. I'm like, "Screw it. I'm going to be destined to this life anyway. I'm just gonna go for it. I'm just gonna keep going." If I'm going to be this poor jack of all trades, master of none, then that's the way it's going to be. I cannot specialize. It's so hard for me to specialize in anything.

Dean Soto 8:53

Lo and behold, as I was working at this civil engineering company, I ended up getting this callback for the position at Boeing and I had an interview. I ended up getting hired.

Dean Soto 9:18

I'm like, "Wait a minute, this is interesting. I didn't think that this would happen. That's pretty cool."

Dean Soto 9:25

I let everyone know at this civil engineering company that I was working for. They were super happy for me. They offered me a job beforehand but it definitely wasn't nearly as much pay so they were happy for me. They gave me a going away lunch and I went to Boeing.

Dean Soto 9:52

It was there that I was like, "Hmm, this is actually pretty cool..." because the industrial engineering job was pretty General. I mean, it had everything from computer security to document control, document security that had physical security. I was climbing the rafters. I was helping to build buildings. I was doing all of this stuff. This is actually really cool.

Dean Soto 10:19

This whole thing that nobody ever talks about in any type of school that was making good money. And it was perfect for a generalist. As I'm doing this, I'm like, "This is awesome. I like it."

Dean Soto 10:40

But it was only at that time when I started to wonder why I liked that administration job so much. I love that administration job so much because I got to talk and help structural engineers. I was doing formulas, popping and creating elaborate spreadsheets that would auto calculate and auto do all the stuff for these engineers; and learning what they needed, how they needed it to go, what needed to be rounded up, and figure out how to make certain things not round up.

Dean Soto 11:16

I even got to these really specialized way of doing formulas in Excel. I learned a ton of stuff in Excel. And so I'm dealing with structural engineers and project schedules. I'm dealing with all these different people. I'm like, Wow, this is so fun. Yet again, with the industrial security, it was the same thing. I'm dealing with engineers I'm dealing with computer security guys, I'm dealing with IT guys I'm dealing with contractors, construction workers, with all these people. This is so cool, and I loved it.

Dean Soto 11:53

I was getting promoted left and right because it was my wheelhouse. I didn't want to specialize in anything. I love the fact that I knew a good amount of all this stuff. I was learning more and more every day. Oh my gosh, it was so wonderful. It was amazing.

Dean Soto 12:15

I got deep into the computer security side of things. They ended up hiring me as a computer security specialist eventually and that was really amazing as well. I'm getting all excited. I'm obviously making a lot more money with that because it's a more technical job and doing a lot of cool things.

Dean Soto 12:37

And then it all came crashing down. Not money wise, it was fine. Not job wise, everything was fine.

Dean Soto 12:51

I got pigeonholed into computer security. There were two ways out. One, leave my job to get promoted to computer security regional management. That was not going to happen because there was one of those jobs and the person who was already there was going to stay for a long time. There was one position like that in all of the western United States. So that wasn't going to happen.

Dean Soto 13:29

Or, I truly deeply specialize as much as I possibly could into computer security. Well, I tried. I honestly tried my hardest. I tried my hardest to make that happen. I tried so hard to really get nerdy and deep and technical and super specific into computer security.

Dean Soto 13:57

But you know what happened? It was extremely painful to the point where I was getting depressed. I was drinking a lot. I hated my job, I could not see a way out. It was so horrible.

Dean Soto 14:14

Like, for me, it just was killing me. I and it got to the point where because a lot of the stuff that I was doing was much more of project management anyway, I would complete a project super super quickly, and then sit around doing nothing because I really did not like the subject anymore. It was getting so boring. It was super valuable to the company because I can come in, fix what needed to be fixed when it came to getting government compliance with computers and everything like that.

Dean Soto 14:43

They could bring me in when people were failing. That's government inspections and all other stuff. They bring me in, get everything up to speed, get everything fixed, and then boom, we're all done. Everything's good to go. That would happen over and over again. The vast majority of the time – because I was not interested in the subject – I'm like, this sucks, I'm done. I'm trying to do better, but I can't get anywhere because it's too specialized. I was feeling like the biggest failure.

Dean Soto 15:19

It wasn't until I became an entrepreneur where I'm leading probably over 100 people or more in building organizations, when I'm supporting client after client and doing all of this general stuff from accounting to payroll by myself and our core team of four people – the core team of four people – those other people who work for me. They work specifically for my clients doing all of these, that I started to see specializing sucks.

Dean Soto 16:16

I mean, they say, Oh yeah, you can't really make a lot of money if you're not specializing... Yeah, maybe in the employee world. Maybe in the employee world that's true but I'm doing just fine. I can work pretty much as little or as long – as as much as I want to. And I make way more money, and I'm not doing this to brag. I make way more money than I ever did as a specialist. It's not meant to brag.

Dean Soto 16:49

This is for those people out there who are a generalist when you just didn't really know what you wanted to do. This is for you. For all those people who say, "Oh, you need to specialize in something." Screw that. You don't. You don't.

Dean Soto 17:11

There are plenty of opportunities out there. And there are plenty of things that make you so valuable. I like to say that I specialize in generalization. I specialize in being a general. I guess the highest ranking people in the military are their generals. Right? Why are they called generals? Because they know they know a good amount of everything but don't specialize in any of it. And they lead those who are specialized, right?

Dean Soto 17:46

Why is this important? It's important because specializing in your business as well, I think, is so dumb. This is why we have Virtual Systems Architects at ProSulum.com and FreedomInFiveMinutes.com because these guys – I have a core team of four people. They do everything from design to copywriting, recruiting, accounting, payroll, invoicing, accounts receivable, accounts payable... they they do everything. Everything.

Dean Soto 18:19

If I was going to go the traditional route of business, I would have 50 people working for me all in some stupid department all doing one thing in one department. For four people in one department doing all that stuff, my overhead costs would go through the roof.

Dean Soto 18:41

When I see these organizations that have their bookkeeper and then they have their accounts receivable person. They have their accounts payable person. They have their marketer there. They have their advertisers they have all of these specialized people. You guys are retarded. And if you're listening to this right now you're probably thinking I'm the biggest jerk.

Dean Soto 19:06

But honestly, the way that things can be done if you use systems and if you document everything you're doing, you do not have to specialize and have those specialists in your business because they suck up so much resources. So many resources and they kill your overhead. They destroy your overhead.

Dean Soto 19:28

So how is it that Matt from Camrock is able to do with only a few people – two VSAs and only a few people – he's able to do what his other competitors do with hundreds of people. It's because he does not specialize. He doesn't get all these specialized people. He has people he can train with systems. They have processes to do whatever they need to do. But they're generalists and they're able to do so many different things in that business. So it's able to grow exponentially. All that being said, rethink the idea of specializing.

Dean Soto 20:23

If you need copywriting, your first gut instinct should not be "I need to hire a copywriter." If you need marketing, like a social media manager, your first gut instinct should not be "I need to hire a Social Media Manager." Your gut instinct needs to change with the times, which is "How can I build systems and processes – some documentation around the process of social media management?" Get it all documented, have someone do that, and then have someone do that bookkeeping. Have that same person, who does bookkeeping, do the social media management. Have the same person, who's doing social media management, do accounts receivable and collections.

Dean Soto 21:10

How can he make that happen and get out of this realm of specialization?

Dean Soto 21:16

When you do, you'll see that your overhead costs will drop significantly. Significantly. And your revenue will – more than likely – grow exponentially because you have these few people who are able to do everything and giving you the ability to be creative and grow in several different ways as well.

Dean Soto 21:31

All that being said, I have to go pick up my son. His class is done. So, I will catch you in the next Freedom In Five Minutes podcast episode.

Dean Soto 21:56

This is Dean Soto. Freedom In Five Minutes. Go check out FreedomInFiveMinutes.com. There's a masterclass there that talks about everything that I'm talking about here. I also did a four-part video series at ProSulum.com. P-R-O-S-U-L-U-M.com. It goes through in several days. It's really good as well. Go check out either one of those things and you'll see the power of what is able to be accomplished.

Dean Soto 22:23

So excited for you guys to get into more of the generalization. I'm a proud generalist that specializes in generalization. I'll catch you in the next Freedom In Five Minutes episode. This is Dean Soto. FreedomInFiveMinutes.com and I'll catch you in the next Freedom In Five Minutes podcast episode.

In this podcast episode, we talk about how automation and scaling your business does not necessarily mean becoming impersonal with your clients. It can be a way of showing love and appreciation to them.

Learn how systems and automation can help you create a foolproof customer experience where no customer will be left hanging.

----- Automated Transcript Below:

Dean Soto 0:00

Hey! This is Dean Soto, founder of FreedomInFiveMinutes.com and ProSulum.com. P-R-O-S-U-LU-M.com. We're here again with another Freedom In Five Minutes podcast episode. Today's topic is this:

Dean Soto 0:21

I Systemize Because I Love You. That and more, coming up.

Dean Soto 0:29

Well, good morning! And hey, if you have not subscribed to the Freedom In Five Minutes podcast,

Dean Soto 0:35

go to Google and whether you like

Dean Soto 0:39

Apple podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or whatever it might be... Just type Freedom In Five Minutes and Apple podcasts; or Freedom In Five Minutes and Spotify; or Freedom In Five Minutes and Stitcher Radio.

Dean Soto 0:59

And you will get the ability to subscribe using your favorite platform to this podcast. So we're at a couple of hundred episodes. We're in the hundreds of episodes so far and if you have not subscribed yet... What is going on? You've got to get subscribed. Sounded like sound like a... Have you ever seen Homestar Runner? That was one of my favorite cartoons when it was still big and popular. They had a tarantula– No, I forgot. It was the rock band the hair rock band. And that's what the lead singer sounded like.

Dean Soto 1:41

You gotta subscribe. Anyway, Luna is just running around. I'm out on my land. And let's get into this episode.

Dean Soto 1:58

I'm on the board of a particular ministry that does amazing, amazing work. They actually have grown so much in the last few years. To the point where their last conference that happened in January sold out. And they actually had to get more. They had to get more people in there. I think it was like 3000 people. And they had to figure out how they could get more people in there. It looks like it's going to be 6000 people this next year, which is great. The thing about this particular ministry is the person who heads it... One, he's a really good friend; and two, he has the mindset of really being a good steward of his money – of the money that's been entrusted to him. He is being a really, really good steward of that money.

Dean Soto 3:07

If you're going to be a good steward of anything, you want to make sure that you get the most bang for your buck. You want to make sure that you get the most out of whatever it is you are spending. It could be money, it could be time. It could be anything. It doesn't necessarily have to be money. For example, if you have a homestead and you want to get as many eggs as you can out of your chickens while making them as happy as possible. Or with your parenting, you want your kids to get the most out of life without spoiling them. Different things like that. Well, this particular person is really good at utilizing his resources to maximum As much as possible,

Dean Soto 4:03

I had a phone call with him. He uses VSAs from Pro Sulum and FreedomInFiveMinutes.com and he uses Virtual Systems Architects for his ministry. They do everything from reaching out to donors, to talking with new donors, to handling new people who come into the membership site that have content and everything like that. They do all the process documentation, all of that type of stuff. It's pretty amazing what they're able to do. And they have one guy. One guy. This one guy is handling so many different things. And it has been really helping the organization tremendously. And one of the things that I started sharing with my friend is that...

Dean Soto 4:57

It was funny because he was talking about wanting to build the organization and scale the organization. But at the same time, he still wants to have that personal touch. He said essentially that, "If it grows, it's not going to be as personal, I know that but you know, I still want to do that as much as possible." And I rebuked him. I rebuked him and I said, "No, you don't have to get impersonal."

Dean Soto 5:41

No. So I said, "You know what? It's quite the opposite. The cool thing is now we have access to so many different tools that literally would have cost thousands of dollars per month to be able to do. And we now have these tools at our disposal that allow us to be personal, but still have run a small-ish organization."

Dean Soto 6:17

So I started talking to him, I'm like, "Look, my organization does everything from sending text messages to the handwritten cards in the mail, to gifts in the mail, to phone calls, voicemails and a whole bunch of different things. There's a whole mess of stuff that we do which completely wow our customers. It's because we're scaling."

Dean Soto 6:55

It is what Jermaine Griggs calls – one of my mentors – we are scaling personal attention. It doesn't matter if we have one customer or if we have 1000 customers because of what we – the data that we gather – because of the information that we are able to use in cards and we're able to use to trigger different things. We're able to give a personal touch.

Dean Soto 7:28

Even when we're we're a one person organization, a five person organization, a 10 person organization. We're able to touch thousands of people and continue to be profitable. At the same time, wow our customers.

Dean Soto 7:57

And maximize the money and resources that we have. Okay, now is that because "Gosh, Dean, you're just so genius and that's why because you're the Freedom In Five Minutes guy. You're the Pro Sulum guy that has these Virtual Systems Architects where you can show them how to do something in five minutes. They document it and then you never have to do that thing ever again. You're that guy, right? That's why because you were born anointed. So that you may do this for other people."

Dean Soto 8:34

And I do this for other people. You know, sometimes it is. Sometimes, people just have a really, really hard time with that and they pay me several thousand dollars – tens of thousands of dollars to do it for them. But the vast majority of people can do it by themselves. They can do it themselves. A lot of the time, they are just doing one of two things: It's embracing constraints and seeing what you have and utilizing what you have. And then, seeing systems as a way of saying, "I love you," to your customers, and "I appreciate you."

Dean Soto 9:12

A lot of the time, we think, "Well, my customers – the way that they will feel special and taken care of is if I'm constantly the one doing it." And it's true, in a sense, every now and then if you give a call, or you say, hey, I want to give you a free strategy session, just because you've been so amazing. That's totally fine. That's something that's completely true as well. And you know, they would appreciate that. However, the reality is just getting something in the mail – think of all of the different businesses that you do business with and think of how many times you have gotten something in the mail from them that wasn't an advertisement? Even something like a birthday thing?

Dean Soto 10:14

You know, say you got a birthday card in the mail where it was like "Hey, happy birthday. You're gonna get 20% $20 off your next visit." It's always some dumb advertisement. It's something that's never just given to you. Imagine getting a box of cookies in the mail and a card that just said, "Hey, we thank you so much for being a customer. It really does mean a lot to us that you value us and that you are getting a ton of value from what we're doing. Just wanted to say thank you." And not asking for anything in return.

Dean Soto 11:02

To me, that is something that goes so far right? And never happens and it costs you 10 bucks or 15 bucks?Maybe 20 bucks to do and you've already netted and profited from your client like $200 so 10% of that goes back to them just saying thank you.

Dean Soto 11:30

Nobody does that

Dean Soto 11:34

Nobody does that.

Dean Soto 11:37

And so when I have my customers get something like that. They're like, Whoa, I've never had this happen before. This is amazing. Or A phone call like after they buy. Even if it's an automated one where it goes to their voicemail. They're like, "Whoa Dean called. That's amazing." You know, this is all possible you have Twilio. You have Thinkster you have all these different things. You have send-out cards. you have all these different things that you can use to trigger different things based on how much someone has bought and where they are at in the sales cycle. Where are they? As a client and customer, how many people have they referred to you? All of this type of stuff, right? And so, when you set up these systems, you automate the saying of I love you. You automate the saying of I value you as a client and a customer and it keeps it to where... because the personal is great. Don't get me wrong – in person, over the phone, that is great. But there are times when you or an assistant or whomever drops the ball. And now you have a customer who is just dangling there. We want to have people... We always want to make it a foolproof type thing. Okay. So all that being said, I really want to tell you the importance of this. The more systems that you can develop that thank your customers and tell them that I love you, the more you're going to get referrals. Man I my business is based off of referrals for the most part, and they are the best.

Dean Soto 13:58

They come because of all these gifts and Stuff like that to happen and it comes because we have a great product obviously. No one's gonna refer if it's not a great product. But these gifts give the little nudges. These little gifts say I love you, it gives a little nudge to go, "Yeah, you know what? I really like these guys. I really want to have other people experience this as well." So what do you do? What system do you have right now that can say I love you and give that beautiful, wonderful personal touch, even though it might not be actually in person?

Dean Soto 14:35

So all right, this is Dean Soto. Founder of FreedomInFiveMinutes.com and ProSulum.com. I don't know where Luna is. She's somewhere lost in this area. I do not see her. So I'm gonna go and find her. So, all that being said, Go check out FreedomInFiveMinutes.com. Go check out ProSulum.com P-R-O-S-U-L-U-M.com. We got lots of amazing stuff there. And if you're ever wanting a Virtual Systems Architect and want to get to the next level. If you want to scale your business, want to grow your business and do it all in as little as five minutes a day. Go check out FreedomInFiveMinutes.com or ProSulum.com P-R-O-S-U-L-U-M.com. There's the answer to Freedom In Five Minutes. I will catch you on the next Freedom In Five Minutes podcast episode.

Are you willing to step out of your comfort zone just to improve on something that you want?

Everybody might say that they want change but few are actually willing. We don't do it unless we want to or unless something in our life prompts us.

In this episode, understand the great margin between knowing how to change from truly wanting to change.

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Automated Transcript Below:

Dean Soto 0:00 Hey, this is Dean Soto, founder of freedom in five minutes.com and Pro Sulum.com, P-R-O-S-U-L-U-M.com and we're here again with another freedom in five minutes episode.

Today's topic is this, people say they want change, but do they really mean it? That and more coming up.

What is up guys? How's it going? Oh man, another great day, another great day to be alive. Another great day for the freedom in five minutes podcast and I'm going up the hill and I'm seeing my chickens. Chickens what are you doing outside the fence? You going out of here guys, get back inside the fence. Let's go. Let's go. So, had a really amazing thing happen couple of days ago. So one of my, one of my customers really, there, they are a really cool software service that is in a billion dollar industry and they use our virtual systems architects to help people in their industry to, to grow massively very quickly and so, so I'm going uphill so I'm going to be all winded and so it's, it's it's interesting because the, I, I'm looking at my chickens I'm getting all you know flustered. Chickens you're making me flustered girls but uh yeah, it's interesting because out of the blue, they posted on Facebook how amazing our services and how it's really transformed their business. And so they referred like literally like 30 people to us. And which was really cool. And so I got about 30 emails from people. 30 emails that were referrals, who all said, oh my gosh, you know, these guys, you know, obviously they're amazing. They, they're one of the top people in this Facebook group. They're, you know, they're doing millions of dollars and yada yada, yada. They've been in Ink Magazine, and I think it's Forbes. And, and so they're like, yeah, we'd love to, you know, schedule a time to, to talk right? Well, out of the 30, guess how many signed up or not signed up, how many actually took the time to schedule a call? Because it's not it's not exactly the easiest to just schedule a call. I actually try as I, so out of 20, so 20, so 20 of them, I used one questionnaire, 10 of them, I used another questionnaire, the first, the first questionnaire, the former questionnaire was a much bigger, much more questions. A lot more questions I should say. The, and the other one was a lot less questions and out of the 30 guess how many actually signed up to schedule a talk to see if they are a good fit?

Probably you're thinking 15, 20. Four, four people scheduled and I even had one person literally just canceled this morning their scheduled call. Now, am I hurt? Am I like, oh my gosh, how dare they, how dare they cancel? How dare they. No, partially because the whole, the, the, the, what's it called the form is meant to weed out a lot of people but in the decade plus of doing this, I've definitely realized that people say they want change, myself include, myself included. People say they want change but more often than not, are they willing to, to actually do it? No, and so for, even with, even with customers, existing customers sometimes it is very difficult to get them to even spend five minutes because it's five minutes a day, right? Five minutes a day and you can literally transform your business, grow your business, quadruple your business I've seen in 30 days, maybe even 60 days depending on your industry by spending five minutes a day. But a lot of people, myself included, are comfortable doing things the way they are doing it. And it might be painful, it might, it might be something that's unhealthy for their relationship for their, for their actual physical health, for their spiritual health, for their business. They might even be losing money because of this thing or losing a ton of time because of whatever it might be, but they're comfortable with it. I see this in the restaurant industry. You know, Paul is my business partner. And he's in the restaurant industry. And I'm like, dude, you guys are archaic. I cannot believe, honestly cannot believe at when I look at what some of the things you guys do, why you still do it this way and it keeps your margins so, so razor thin. I don't know why anybody would want even be in the food service industry. And so, and so when you look at why people do what they do, a lot of the times, a lot of the times they say they want to change, but they get some kind of fulfillment out of the, the thing that they're doing that they say they actually don't want to do. There is some kind of fulfillment. There's something that makes them feel, you know workaholics do this all the time, something that makes them feel important. Something that makes them needed. Something that makes them feel, feel, feel as though things are getting done. This is my, myself included. So what I do, my habit, I can tell you right now, my habit is, because my business is so systemized and for the most part automated, 99% of it, I will have it but so my habit is I will start looking for different business opportunities to start, right? It might be some kind of affiliate marketing thing. It might be this or might be that. Well it, it can be a whole host of things. But I will go and try and try and start a whole new business for whatever reason. And what usually happens, wasted time, wasted time. But, that wasted time what I think is actually wasted time is an indicator that something is not being that, that is, that, that's my comfort zone, is starting new things. Trying to find that, that next sense of security, right? Rather than focusing, sitting and focusing on what is actually working and growing, right? So I have to be, it is actually hard for me to stop with the new business opportunities, but whenever I do, that's when the change happens. That's when the big stuff happens. That's when, when I see massive growth, the growth in my business. So why is this important? You are comfortable doing things that aren't necessarily the best for you. You have habits, I have habits, we all have habits of thinking that this is the way it's supposed to be. This is what's going to make me money. This is what's going to improve my love life. This is what's going to improve my family life. This is what's going to improve my spirituality. And when we see something that's not working, we say, oh, yeah, gosh, I want to change that so badly. And it's like the rubber band effect, right? You stretch a rubber band, whack, it goes right back to where you were sometimes even worse than where you were. So often, this is why people pay for high value coaching. This is why people pay for, pay me 10s of thousands of dollars to automate their business because it forces them. Once they paid, there's no turning back, right? I mean, they can do that, they can start and refuse to do what I say and waste all that money, or they can actually do it. But there's no turning back, right? It's why people pay for stuff like this because they know that they're not going to do it unless they feel some kind of they, they put their all, their chips all in, right? So what are you doing right now? What are you doing right now that's purely out of comfort? Maybe it's onboarding clients, maybe you're, maybe you are doing sales. And you're, you're the one scheduling workshops, or you're the one calling leads, or you're the one doing developing the lead lists. When you don't have to. Some of our clients come from simply cold emails that are built off of lead lists that are built by virtual systems architects from Pro Sulum, P-R-O-S-U-L-U-M.com. Where none, where none of this stuff was done by me.

What are you doing right now? What are you doing right now that's purely, because that's the way everyone does it. That's the way we've always done it. I want you to just look at what you're doing right now and see that, and, and, and see what you're doing and know that there is a better way. That is why it's so nice when you work with people who are outside of your industry. One of the worst things you can do is have people in your industry consult you because they're used to the same thing too. So, what are you doing right now that's purely out of comfort. Just see what it is so you have the information and now you can start making the decision to do something about it.

So this is Dean Soto, freedom in five minutes.com, go check that out. There's, there's process, process scorecard there, masterclass and if you want a virtual systems architect, someone who you can literally no joke, literally spend five minutes a day, showing them something, they'll document the whole thing and then they'll do it. So you never have to do it again. You can literally transform your business in 30 to 60 days into something magical. If you've, that sounds amazing to you, go to Pro Sulum.com and schedule a call with me or one of my team and we'll make it happen. But until then, this is Dean Soto with the freedom in five minutes podcast and I will catch you in the next episode.