Sharran Srivatsaa, CEO of Srilo Capital | 4x Inc. 500 Entrepreneur with 5 Exits in 19 years

Thanks again for joining me today. I am sitting down with Sharon Srivatsa who is the CEO of Kingston Lane. I'm very excited to be sitting down with Sharon. He is a serial entrepreneur. He is a global thought after keynote speaker, an incredible thought leader. He writes and contributes for Wall Street Journal success. I saw a piece on entrepreneur, Huffington Post, Forbes. He has had six exits in the last 19 years, which is absolutely insane. He has a top rated Spotify podcast called Business. We'll have to shout that out. He's done so much over his career. We'll go into all the things that he's worked on in the past and what he's working on now. We'll also speak about where he came from. He speaks a lot about his background and the struggles that he went through to get to where he is today. So really appreciate you sitting down. Really excited to chat. Here's your story and just give some insight and some value from somebody who's done so much. So thank you. Awesome. Hey, Scott, thanks for having me. A lot of people don't realize that this stuff takes a while, right? So even enough camera, where this is not, all of this is not easy to do. And the very fact that you're putting all this together, sharing so freely, helping people that don't have a chance to get access to folks and giving them their message to still down is super powerful. So a lot of kudos to you for one for having me on, but more for you putting this out and doing all the hard work to get a great message out to people. So thank you for doing that. You know, my pleasure, man, my pleasure. But yeah, let's, let's, you know, you do this too. You, you give out knowledge. You work with entrepreneurs, you work with CEOs, work with all these people. So also don't, don't sell yourself short. So lock me through a man. What's, what's your story? How did you get to where you are today? Yeah. So, you know, I am the, you know, the people always say this, right? They say, hey, if I can do it, you can do it too. And they're, they literally could not be anything more untrue. Everyone's like, if, because how often have we heard something like, oh, if I can do it, you can do it too. If that was really true, then everybody could do what everybody else could do. So let's use that as the, the starting point. And let's actually talk about that. I'll come back to that in a second. So I was, I was born in India very mediocre, everything, mediocre, living mediocre, everything, mediocre financial situation. But the one thing that was extraordinary in my life was my parents to amazing parents. They've always, always had my best interests hard. They would go above and beyond to do everything for me. And they didn't know early on that I was struggling in school. I, you know, talk about being the underdog. I am called blind, which doesn't matter for a lot of people. So, but I got kicked out of art class. I'm told that. So I got kicked out of music class. I was the one of the smallest kids growing up. So I was the last to get picked on with sports. I had symptoms of ADD, ADHD dyslexia. So I wasn't really good in the classroom. So you can't hang out with the artsy folks. You can't hang out with the music folks. You can't hang out with the jocks. You can't hang out with the nerds, right? So literally, you can't hang out with anybody. And after a while that, what that, what happens because of that is you get bullied. And because you are the easy pickup or anybody to bully you. And I didn't know any different. I just thought getting beaten by the lockers was a very normal thing. And Scott, there's a time when I remember we're just walking from 100 feet from one classroom to the other. I would actually walk around the entire school just so between the one class from the other was our lockers. And I wouldn't, I didn't want to get beaten. So I would literally run, you know, close to a third of a mile around the school to go to the other classroom just because I would get away, get away from the lockers. And my parents knew that something was up. And they realized that they didn't know how to talk to me about it. And I didn't know how to talk to them about it. And I still remember this day was like my 10th or 11th birthday. I was sitting in a park bench and my dad told me this, you think about it. You're 10 years old. And your dad says to you, Hey, Sharon, we want to give you a bigger and better future. Like that was his favorite word, a bigger and better future. And for the person listening, I would tell you ask yourself this question, like, what is a bigger and better future? And my parents had never left the left India or anything like that. And they said, Hey, there is probably a better cultural system out there, maybe in the US and the UK, Australia, New Zealand, wherever that may, you know, you may succeed. And so we need to find you a capability, a passport out of here. And so that's when I was sitting in front of two tennis courts. My dad was like, Hey, if you can play tennis, that may be an individual skill that can get you out. And so we agreed that day on a whim. I never had a tennis ball before. We agreed that day that I would put all my efforts into that. And academics would be secondary. And so for the next six years, what we did was focus on tennis. I got pretty decent at it. That got me out of India and to the US. And the interesting part there is my parents sold every single thing that they had. When I say every single thing, I mean every single thing. My dad had a little motorcycle in India, like little more, that was the only method of transportation. My dad sold his motorcycle to get me a plane ticket to come to the US. He sold it every single thing. And so they sent me to the US with one year's worth of expenses. And in a blessing to say, okay, go. I got one year's worth of safety net. Go make it. The next three years of college are on you. If you can't make it, come back. And that was the beginning of my journey. That's a scary, scary amount of pressure on a young kid. So you come over. How does tennis work out? How does college work out? Walk me through that journey because I know it wasn't so easy. Becoming a pro athlete is not so easy. Yeah. So there's two stories that are super interesting. And I'll tell you, this goes back to kind of the, if I can do it, anyone can do it. I don't think that's true. Let's, if we nail that down, just because Scott can do it, doesn't mean anyone can do it. Just because Sharan can do it, doesn't mean anyone can do it. What is true is, if Sharan can do it, what was the support system that Sharan had to be in that? If Scott could do it, what was the support system that he had to be able to do that? It's not that I'm trying to emulate and model Scott or Sharan. I'm trying to emulate and model their support systems because if you were the underdog, if I was the underdog, there's a good chance that we could not do it on our own. That's what people need to know. Right? If you were not the underdog, if you were a super smart kid like Elon Musk, you don't need that support system. You're just crazy smart and you figure it out and you're one in 15 million, right? Yeah. So I would say that the thing that everyone should realize from the lesson is and everything that we're talking about is, how do you install this support system that allows underdogs to succeed, that underdogs don't talk about that often, that that's what we need to be modeling, not what other people are doing, but what the support systems that they have, right? So I love it. I like where this conversation is going to as well. It makes a lot of sense in something we speak about a lot, but yeah. Yeah, so the I'll give you two of a very, very quick story. So my first story is that my first day in the United States, I landed in Chicago. I had this before cell phones and all of that interesting stuff. I had someone who was going to come pick me up. I wait for an hour, two hours, four hours, eight hours. No one shows up. And then suddenly the pager or the public address system goes off and it's like, hey, Shuron, Fruvazza, please report to a white courtesy phone. I'm like, oh my gosh, what did I do? So I go to the courtesy phone and says, hey, the your ride, whoever was coming to pick you up, the car broke down. And they need you to take a bus to Molina, Illinois. I'm like, where is Molina, Illinois? I just I just landed here. And and so I said, cool, I'll go take this bus. So I I grabbed my one backpack that I had and I go take this bus. I get on this bus. It's supposed to take like a couple hours. But then I realized three, four, five hours later, it's nighttime. I'm the last person on the bus. I'm at the bus depot. The bus driver comes up to me and says, hey, kid, you may have gotten on the wrong bus where you trying to go. And I'm like, Molina, Illinois, he says, well, we're in La Crosse, Wisconsin. And I go, where is La Crosse, Wisconsin? And the opposite direction. And so I said, okay, well, how do I get there? He's like, well, you may want to, you know, lay low for the night and then grab the bus in the morning. So I grab my stuff, get out of the bus and right when I get out, Scott, this guy out of nowhere jumps me with a knife. So I get mugged on my first day in the US. I don't have anything. I have a hundred and twenty some dollars in my pocket. And this guy mugs me and he's like, hey, give me all your money. And I'm like, I don't have anything. And so he looks to my bags. I have nothing. And he said, you got to have some cash. And I know that I'm in a weird place right now. If I give him my money, I can't get to school. If I don't give him my money, I'm going to get hurt. So I didn't want that to happen. So I don't know where this is what I did. I pulled out a hundred dollar bill that I had. And I said to the mugger, I was like, hey, I have a hundred dollars. I'd be happy to give this to you. Looks like you needed. But I don't think your intention was to hurt me in any way. I just got to the US today. I need to get to school. I have no idea where I'm going. I've had eaten in 12 hours. If I give you this hundred dollars, maybe you will consider giving me 50 back. And he looks at me and he starts laughing. He's like, well, you trying to negotiate. And I was like, I need some money. I'm worth asking. So I hand him the hundred dollars. I kid you not. He opens his rady wallet. And he dishes me back 20, 20 and a five. He takes the hundred bucks and he gives me back $45. That was my first day in the US, right? Like I negotiated with the with the mugger. And I'm not looking back. If that happened to me now, it's gone. Like I couldn't do that. But it just so happened. Like in the moment, it just so happened in the moment. All of that happened. So that happened. And then I found my way to, I found my way to campus after that. But then this second thing happened. So well, I get to campus. I have this check that my parents gave me for a full years worth of tuition. I walk out of financial services. I hand them the check. And I'm like, hey, I'm here. I will never forget this lady. A little Hawaiian lady. She says, welcome, Sharon hands me the keys to my dorm room and says, hey, since it's an international check, it's going to take 10 to 14 days to clear. I had no idea. She goes, at that time, your meal plan will get activated. Like, okay. And then I realize, all right, I give no, my $45 is gone. And I have very less. I have no meal plans or no food, but I have a place to stay. Good. Awesome. So I got my dorm room. So I get in my dorm room. And then I start, Scott, I start crashing every party on campus, right? Every pizza party. It's like every Greek fraternity, you know, mad club, computer science club. I go to every pizza party, every root beer float party. And I don't know why, that's all they had is pizza and root beer floats. That's all I went to every pizza and root beer float party. And after like three days, they're all done. And I hadn't eaten for like 24 hours. And I'm walking by dumpster. So I see this dumpster. I see a bunch of people drop a bunch of pizza boxes into the dumpster. And I'm like, yeah, you know what? Maybe I can grab a couple of slice of pizza. So I wait for the wait for it to get dark. I jump with the dumpster. I grab a couple of slice of pizza. I run to my dorm room. And I'm like, wow, that was a new low. And my parents were not there to see that. Well, another day or two goes by. I had eaten and I was walking by the same dumpster. And I see a couple of kids throw subway sandwiches into this dumpster. It's like, huh. So wait till nightfall. Jump with the dumpster. Grab the subway sandwiches. And then I see a box of pop darts. I grab these pop darts. And no idea what pop darts were. I've been in the US four days. And then suddenly these yellow BDI start looking at me. And I get smacked on my cheek. And I start bleeding. And I'm like, what just happened? Well, there was a raccoon in the dumpster trying to like fight this box of pop darts with me. And like, you can't even make this stuff up because I am like ankle deep in a dumpster with beer bottles and trash and all that. And I'm like, oh, my gosh, so like my fight or flight kicks in. I literally kick this raccoon. So hopefully there's no, you know, it's totally in self-defense kick the raccoon. Grab these subway sandwiches and I just run. And I'm bleeding. So I sit down. I eat and then I go to get a tetanus shot because I at least knew that. And those were my first two days in the US, like really saying, hey, this was a new low. And if I can get through this, I can get through anything. And I don't think if that had happened, if the mugging incident had not happened and if that dumpster diving incident had not happened. And it took me 20 plus years to tell my parents that. And that became kind of the new low because from an entrepreneurs perspective, a high achievers perspective, people talk about taking risks, right? Well, we only know the risk that to take is the risk that we have capacity for. Well, my capacity for risk has suddenly been completely changed. Like I could take on so much more risk because I knew that I'd be okay. Most people have not been homeless or not had my, you know, not had not not had food to eat. But when you know you can do that, you believe that you can take on more risk and not crazy risk. But you're like, yeah, I'll be okay. I can figure it out. I just want to take a moment and thank the sponsor of our show Vidyard. 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Today you can start using it, start integrating into your sales or marketing or outreach strategy. If you use this link, you will also get, as a bonus, their 2021 B2B video trends guide that speaks about how to use video to grow your business. Vidyard has literally changed the game in terms of outreach, sales and marketing. Do yourself a favor, especially because they're giving it to you for free. Hit that link, Vidyard.com, Backslash Scott, and I think it's set a new floor for me of, hey, I think I can take on more risk in my life, and maybe because of that, I'll get more rewards. I would challenge the audience to think about a low point in their life. The low point in your life is probably the floor for the amount of risk you're able to take, the capacity of the risk you're able to take. That's why when tough things happen, when you are in a relationship breakup or a business partner breaks up, a business goes under your backup, your donate payroll for three months, whatever, things like that happen, that's a low point. It also expands your capability, your capacity to take on more risk. I think those two incidents really expanded my personal capacity to take on more risks over the years. Those are great stories and great lessons, and I think that one other thing that you probably do now is you allow people to not have to hit that floor, because it's God forbid. Not every entrepreneur should ever get months or have to fight a raccoon to be successful. You mentioned all these things about getting the right people and bugging the right mentorship, getting the right support system, and I think that a little bit of advice plus support systems can act as some sort of, I don't know, some substitute in terms of allowing people to see what has happened to others, and that's really where I think that's probably what you do now. You help people, they don't have to get to that all-time low to be successful, to emulate that experience through you teaching and guiding and all these factors that you've had to literally, quite literally live through. That's the way I see it. Now, as you have an incredible professional career, how did that kick off? Because you had a hell of an experience as a student, but I'm assuming things hopefully got better over time, it sounds really good. And then you had a really, really strong professional career by anybody's standards. So walk me through your professional career, your exit, you building your own brand, your own name, and sort of elevating yourself to, well, now you deal with the top leadership across, you know, probably four to 100, four to 500 and others, right? Yeah. Yeah, let's, this is great. Thank you. Let's talk about two quick stories. The first one is right out of college, I was at a, and these map really well. I was at a, I was computer science and math major, and I was presenting my senior paper at the University of California Berkeley, at a contest, at a, you know, a programming contest. So I'm presenting on stage, I get my 10 minutes of fame, I get off stage, and one of the judges pulled me aside, and he says, hey, Sharon, great presentation, you're not going to win. And I'm like, oh, thanks a lot. Right. And he says, but I just funded two guys a few months ago to start their own company. So this was, this was 1990, 1999-ish. So this was during the technology boom. A lot of your friends would kind of connect with that. And they said, I funded these guys in the optical switching optical networking space. I think what you have will round out what they're doing, you should talk to them. And that was the thesis of my paper. So I was like, sure, I didn't know any different. So I talked to them, and then I got a chance to join that startup very early on. I was not a founder. I was one of the earliest employees in the company. So I got a chance to get some early equity, which was, which was, which was, which was great for me. And the, the judge of the contest who made the introduction was an angel. So he introduced me to that company first. We raised, we raised over $27 million of venture capital in a few funding rounds. And we were then acquired by a publicly traded company for a little over $550 million. So now it would be awesome if I had gotten all of that I didn't, but I got enough to make, enough to pay off all my debts, enough to do everything and give me a five-year cushion to travel the world. So literally, what I said was, all right, I'm not, I'm single. I don't, you know, I've paid off all my debts, I've put, given everything back to whoever I owe, now it's my chance to, so I spent five years traveling the world teaching tennis, which I thought was very cool, but my, yeah, I was in the Caribbean for a year, in Dubai for a year, and on Maui for three years. So I tried to spend my time trying to expanding my horizons, but this angel, who was at that point, is kind of pulled me aside and he said, he's like, what are you going to do with all this money, right? And there's not a lot. So he became kind of like my advisor. And he, so we started a small fund at that point, and we started investing in companies and real estate. And so as a 21-year-old, and he's, you know, significantly older, like a father to me, he kind of learned, taught me and helped me and without him, I don't know anything about anything. And so after that, he said to me, hey, you've done tennis for five years. This is cool. What are you going to do with your life? I kind of needed a job. So he said, hey, you should think about, if you like business, you should go to Wall Street because the fastest way to learn anything about business and structuring and deal flows to go on Wall Street and you should go to one of the big banks. I was like, how, why is someone going to hire a teaching pro at a big bank? He's like, no one's going to hire you. You need to go to business school. So I actually found the three or four business schools that had the best feeder system into Wall Street. And so I went to, I got my MBA Vanderbilt. And then I got a job, I got job at Goldman Sachs. I had 39 individual one-on-one interviews to get the job at Goldman Sachs. So if people think that, oh yeah, you just went in and you got hand, like it was, I did over 100 interviews in investment banking in a six-month period. It was 39 just with Goldman, just with one firm. So I spent, you know, three years at Goldman and two years at court at Sweden, five years in investment banking. And then the same angel who has started to become my partner over time had invested in, we had invested in the small real estate company in Beverly Hills. He's like, hey, Sharon, the next time you're in Los Angeles, you should talk to these guys. They're a small real estate company. They have one office and like 30 agents. Maybe you can help them. Well, I go visit with them. And then I realized that their original founders of that company are not getting along or just have different visions for the world. Well, I told my, now partner, I told my angel, you know, kind of advisor, I was like, hey, I think this is a great business, we should acquire it. He's like, you're crazy. Who's going to run it? I said, not me. He goes, if you run it, then we can acquire it together. So he and I became partners and we bought this business, which had one office in Beverly Hills, 33 agents. And I didn't have enough money to do this. So I reversed mortgage my house, took loans from my family again to buy a controlling stake in this business. At that time, my wife, who I was, I'm who I'm still married to, and was pregnant with our first child, too. So it was thinking a lot of risk at the same time. But we had one office, 30 agents. And then I, and Scott, you'll appreciate this. I was putting a plan together because I was the operator of the business now putting a plan together and I put and we roughly had done the business was doing fine, but they were doing 300 million roughly in sales. So top line business, I figured out how all that flows together. And I was putting this model together and buy a mistake. Instead of the 300 million, I added an extra zero, made it 3 billion, right? And I looked at the spreadsheet and it was all black. It was all profit. It was all like the greatest spreadsheet you could ever see. And I was like, wait a minute, this is insane. Like if we had this, like we'd have an amazing business. So I showed it my partner, he's like, hey, you should present this to the board. So I put my plan to the board that said, we're at 300 million. Yeah. If we got three billion, of course, we would all make a ton of cash. And this would be an amazing business. But we would only have five years to do it. They're like, well, why do you only have five years to do it? I said, well, economy generally goes in seven years cycles. This is 2008, 2009. We are probably a year and a half in. I don't know how long this would be. We probably need a year and a half to exit. So literally, we have to do 10 X and five years. And so the board was like, okay, we'll come up with a plan for it. So I came up with a plan. I didn't know anything. I was 29 years old. I had no idea how any of this worked. I built a plan. And literally a, Scott, we grew from 330 agents, one office, 300 million in sales to close to 700 agents, 22 offices, 3.4 billion in sales in five years. So we did 10 X, better than 10 X in five years. And then we were acquired by a publicly traded company out of New York called Douglas Element, which was one of the largest real estate transactions in the country. And so it actually worked. It actually worked. So that was the, and so now the original chance meeting of a judge in the contest became my advisor and business partner for the last 20 years. Support system mentor partner. And now, now billion plus dollar exit. Yeah. So yeah, because I know, I know you speak about, see, when you, when you, when you advertise you as individual, you go and say, I work with founders, you don't want to 10 X or 100 X. And I feel like a lot of people even think that's just like a, like a figure of speech. Like, oh, I want to 10 X I've been thinking like, you know, not by a factor of 10, but just significantly. But that's, that's a really good point. Like the proper support now, I don't think it's, it's maybe I'm just being pessimistic that it's hard to replicate in every single circumstance, but you did it. And you, you probably worked with other CEOs to do it too. So is that, is that, you know, you exit that now? Is that where you're working? So I want to, I want to understand how you did it. And I want to understand your process. And, you know, at a high level, we only have a few minutes to do this. But so, so after that, is this when you started advising? Is this when Kingston Lane came to be, is that after the real estate transaction? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so, so totally so that there's two parts of this puzzle, right? One, well, let's actually break down, you know, kind of what is the formula for 10xing the business? So we'll give it to everybody. So that's really good. But very briefly, I'll touch on what I do now. So we three things. Number one is why I have active operating businesses that I run. And there are across the board, some are in the real estate business, some are not. That's, but they're all part of what is part two, which is my partner and I have a fund. So we have a private fund that we invest in businesses. Some we operate, some we don't, which means they have professional operators. And so we are investors, advisors to those. And most of my time is spent either operating businesses that we own or that we're investors in. That's because that way, if I, Scott, you're one of our portfolio company CEOs, I have invested interest in making sure that the business grows 5, 10, 15x and you succeed. I've invested interest in that. Now, outside of that, I probably spend a hand a little bit of time. I probably have 68 founders CEOs at any given time. And the average business size is roughly 25 to 50 million. And the goal for that is to get them to 250 to 500 million over three to five years. So that's the goal. So I never take on more than 68 at any given time. And most of these folks, you know, it's a, it's how do you break the grass glass ceiling of how do I get past this? So it's a, it's a, it's a cool, very cool relationship. All, all my mentoring relationships all have an equity stake in it, which makes sure that I'm aligned with that growth. Because most operators are like, Hey, I'm doing 20 million. You get me 200. You can gladly have the 10% because that's what we started off in the first place. So that's no problem at all. Now, let's talk about the formula for how you actually, you know, 10x. It's a playbook. That's good. That's a. Yeah. Here's a playbook on how you connect something, right? So there's a, it's unfair to say that, oh, yeah, this will work for anything, right? But there's a, there's a, I call it a heuristic. There's, it's a guideline, like go with the framework, right? Framework, there's three parts here. Part number one is singularity of focus. The, if you think that you can add 1700 skews, 18 business lines and all to get that result, you're crazy. That stuff does not work. Like after you've achieved the 10x, then you can add more to it. But the, the, what drives the bus is, Hey, I'm going to turn my focus to one big bone. I'm going to wake up and I'm going to nod on this big bone. I'm going to ask everybody in my organization to figure out what is this big bone that they can nod and the question becomes for them. Hey, I'm waking up in the morning. Am I doing something that's helping me with this big bone or it's not? So the filter becomes very clear. When everyone's working on different initiatives and different divisions, yeah, you start to have some accretive revenue on a lot of the stuff, but the singular visions never driven forward. So I'll give you a very simple example. When we had, we decided in on our roasted businesses growth that we would drive everything by people. So it was all, it was straight up everything related to acquiring great sales talent and that sales talent drove our business. And so everyone was like, well, yeah, we should train productive people, we should have sales skills. And I'm like, I don't care about any of this. Our goals to go higher and recruit and retain the best sales people possible. And that's really hard to do in a competitive environment. So our singularity of focus was if we got to 600 plus really productive sales people doing what they did, they would drive our business. So that was our singularity of focus. Now, every time I did anything, my team would say, Sean, why are you driving to San Diego? Is this going to help us 10X? Like they would ask me that question. So that's really good. Yeah, super. Yes, it's really good. Because then I would ask them the same question, say like, Hey, why are we, why are we spending $3 million on this advertising campaign? Does it help us get there? Right? So the filter is really important. So number one, singularity of focus. And the problem with the singularity of focus is, as an operator, you and I, I call it that when you're inside the bottle, it's hard to read the label. You think 17 things are important. But as an advisor, when I'm looking from the outside, I can tell you 16 of those are noise. Yes, it may drop revenue a little bit, but it's really hard to do by yourself. Right? So that's so singularity of focus is number one. Number two, call it the cadence of accountability. Accountability is an interesting concept, right? Like, hey, if you want to, if you want to lose weight, what do you do? You take an accountability coach. You got to get that. Every single meal that you have. Or that true. Yeah. Yeah. You need some form of accountability, right? Yeah. So I'll tell you, I'll actually give you the practical accountability that we have. So I was like, Hey, we need to go recruit some really bad ass sales people. And normally what I would say is, Hey, we'd have this chicken call every Friday to see where our recruiters were at getting these great sales people. And we made kind of bumping along progress. And I was like, well, this is stupid. This is, we're not growing as fast as we need. So Scott, this is exactly what we did at 9.45 every single morning. We had 11 what we call sales managers. Their job was to go recruit great sales people at 9.45 every single morning, five days a week. We got on a phone call. And the 11 people went in order. It was like Jim, Jack, Scott, Johnny, same order every single day. And they would real out two numbers. They would real out, they would say, two, zero, one, five, eight, seven, whatever it was, right? The first number was how many appointments did I have yesterday? And the second number was how many appointments do I have scheduled today? So think about that for a second. I say two, zero. Then you go, you say it three, one. Then the next person goes and says zero, zero. How do you think that person feels right now? Hey, everyone. Scott here. Just want to press pause on today's episode and thank our sponsor get mister. You can find them at get mister.com. Let me show you why I was so excited when they reached out. So if you're like me, you're getting older, you, your skin, you don't really take care of it as much as you should. You perhaps use moisturizer once in a while. You use sunscreen once in a while. 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Get mister dot com and use code success for 25% off your first purchase. This is an exclusive offer only for listeners for our podcast and it will end soon. Try it out. Your face will thank you. My face sure did. Now let's get back to our show. Terrible. I'll tell you all three of those people feel terrible because they should be moving in the opposite direction. I hear what you're saying. Yeah, yeah. Nobody, what we saw is nobody that said zero zero ever turned up the next day and had a zero zero again. Right? It's motivated. Yeah. And you also realize that if somebody could do it also gives you a perspective of what is possible. If someone said seven three, I had seven appointments yesterday in three today, that's crazy. Someone that says zero nine, you know that hey, I was busy, whatever. And Scott, all we did was this. There was no judgment. It was a you wake up. 945 went in order and if someone missed the call, I paused for 10 seconds to let everybody know that that spot was not taken that day. I mean, it got very, very clear and it sounds militant, but that was the single most important thing that drove the accountability because we knew that appointments drive people. We knew them because without meeting with people, you're not hiring anybody. So our cadence of accountability was this 15 minute chunk that we installed in our business that literally changed the nature of our entire business. Right? So number one, singular to focus number two, cadence of accountability. Now, in the different companies that I work with, that accountability is a different thing. It just so happens that in our business, that was the 15 minute chunk that we came up with. Number three, good process and good process alone drives good results. So a lot of times what we say is I'll figure it out later is what the average entrepreneur says, right? And that's why they that's why they'll like doubling your business is actually easy. You can tighten a few screws, get a few bowls, sell them make a bunch of extra calls, you know, offer a bunch of discounts and you can double your business. But when you do that, it's very hard to sustain a doubling because you hacked your way to doubling it and everything starts to break. So the one thing that we realized from a process perspective was when a new salesperson came in because we drove our business with people that we needed to have like a badass onboarding program. And that's all we focused on because we said, if Scott comes on and he has a delightful onboarding process, he never leaves and continues to be happy producing results for us. So I literally shut down my focus on anything else and all I worked on was how do I have the most amazing like we brought a consultant from four seasons and you are, you know, you see sharp where four seasons was born was Toronto. We brought a consultant from four seasons to say, how do we design this delightful onboarding process? And that was a process for us. So for us, it was, how do we get to, you know, 600 plus people selling $3.4 billion a year? How do we do this 15 minute call every single day? And how do we have an insane onboarding process? Those three things were this very specific three things that actually drove our 10x group. I love it. And it makes sense because now you've taken that you're taking that mantra, that ideology that that that that one bone you have to non. And then you just, you have that one bone in each piece that will actually lead back to your main high level KPI bone, whatever. Now I'm curious. How do you, how do you figure out what that bone is as an entrepreneur stuck in the bottle, right? Yeah. So, so it's a, it's a series of questions. And then I think that's the process that's a little difficult, right? And so I'll give you an, I'll give you an example. I was driving to a con, I drove to a conference that I went to. There was 100 entrepreneurs invited to this conference. I'd never had a, I was busy operating my business at this time. I get to this conference. I sit down, I'm put on my hoodie. I'm sitting in the back. I'm like, Hey, I can't believe I'm here. I committed to being here. It's a whole day. It's wasting my day. That's what most entrepreneurs go to conferences. There's like, I can't believe I'm here, right? And I'm sitting there. It's past lunch. I'm like, I wasted this morning. I'm here. I might as well listen. This, this five foot four lady shows up on stage. She starts talking. And I'm like, Oh, I should probably pay attention. And Scott, she started talking about leadership, building a business, et cetera. And I started writing some notes. And as she was talking, a couple of questions came to mind. So I was almost going to raise my hand, proverbially, to ask the question. But I felt like as soon as I asked the question, she naturally answered it in my head, like a eerie experience, right? And then I would take more notes. I would have another question. And she would magically answer the next question. I was like, that's weird. Like how does she know what I'm thinking? That's weird. And she did this for a whole hour. And I was driving home that day. And I'm like, this is magical. Call my dad. I'm like, God, you won't believe what happened. And just as a, you know, I call my dad because I call my dad. And he says, Oh, well, you should hire her. And I'm like, to do what? Well, she can answer all your questions, even before you're thinking about them. Maybe she can help you with your business, your life, whatever. I was like, well, I don't know what I would do. And so he goes, well, write her an email. And my dad was very good about, you know, scripting, good about language patterns. And he said, I'll give you the phrasing he told me, Citron, write her this email that says, hey, so and so I met you at this event and you're amazing. And here was the phrasing that he used. He says, I would like to offer you blank. And he said, come up with a number, a dollar amount that was painful to you, but still large enough. And at that point in my career, when I was 29 years old, I picked, I'll pick the number. It was $10,000, right? And I said, I would like to offer you $10,000 as a symbol of my seriousness. That was the line, right? All I'm looking for is for you to prioritize some email communication for me. And that's it. I don't need any structured calls. I don't need any meetings or anything. And I was like, fun. And I was like, Dad, really? He goes, yeah, would you pay $10,000 for her to read your mind? I was like, of course. So I wrote her that email within two minutes, Scott, she responds to me and says, is this a joke? I said, no. I said, no, absolutely. I'm dead serious. She responds. She's like, here's my, here are wiring instructions. I was like, awesome. I wired the money and she became my first coach. Literally, she was instrumental in helping me chain, come up with this 10x plan, put the singularity of focus together. Like I had none of these pieces then. And she was the one that told me, Hey, when you're inside the bottle, it's hard to read the label. So while I was discussing all the things that I was working on, she was the one that pulled out that, Hey, you're working on operations and dropping money to the bottom line. But you're telling me that the people are the ones that are driving the growth. Let's think about a future where if we're only the people that you're focused on, what would happen to your organization? The coach asked the right question. And coach is an interesting thing. Coach mentor advisor. I try to call myself, I'm my client's private advisor because for a $200 and an entrepreneur running a $50 million business, dropping $20 million to the bottom line doesn't need a coach per se because they're like, Hey, they just need somebody to talk to who is nonjudgmental, who has been there and done that, right? So whenever my clients are going through right now, I have been there. Like I know, I know that they're thinking about wanting a private jet because their friend has a private jet. I know it. And I told them, I, I've been on enough private jets. You don't want one. You don't want one. And I'll tell you what, you can charter one all day. Like you may think this is a snooty thing to talk about, but that's what goes through their mind when they hit a level of success. Hey, should I have the jet? Should I have the car? Should I have the house? Should I have the bank balance? Should I have the second vacation home? Should I bonus my employees? Should I have an operator? Like that's what they're thinking about. And when you've already been there, I can kind of wade through that stuff and because that's all noise. The other day it is, hey, here's a singularity of focus. Here's a cadence of accountability and here's a good process, right? So it's a discovery process. There's no like formula for it to come out, but I've seen enough businesses, service, product, manufacturing, whatever that after like a couple of conversations, I can at least pick out the candidates pretty quickly of what is going to drive growth. And then you build a hypothesis around saying, hey, Scott, if you focused on this division only will it change your business? Well, let's figure it out. And then that makes for a really good kind of conversation around it. What advice do you have for people that are looking for mentors or advisors or coaches? And it's not on one side to talk, but there must be some, there must be some red flags in the age of internet and gurus and an absolute bullshit. Like how do you find the right people that are actually genuine know their stuff can actually provide value? Yeah. So I'll answer two ways. First way is this is the number one question I've ever gotten asked in my career. Oh, it's really good. It's really good. It's really good. And I think that so what I did was when I launched my podcast, by the way, and we should link it up, my first episode is how to find a mentor. Like literally a walk into the 10 step process, how are you doing that? So we'll link it up anyway. But and if anybody's thinking about that, they should go listen to it because I actually lay out a blueprint for how to go find the right mentor for you. But we should ask a question and the question is this, if I could have blank as my mentor, they would give me X capability so that I can go do why. So let me break it down for you. If I had Tony Robbins as my mentor, he would give me X capability. He would give me the mindset of success so that I can go triple my business. If you can't write that, that person, that means one, you don't know what they can do for you. And I also make sure that you don't know what you actually want. The clarity of that, like that fill in the blank alone will allow you to like sift and sort between mentors very, very, very quickly, right? That's the that's the first thing. The second thing I'll tell you, Scott is I like to do, I think we're all influencer junkies right now. When I say we, it's the you have, you know, you, you, you, I'm going to follow Greg Gary Vee, I'm going to follow Grant Cardone, I'm going to follow Tony Robbins, your entire feed just filled with I saw you had some negative, negative wording about influencers in one of your the one of your past speeches or whatnot. I mean, like, you know, there were influencer junkies, right? And so what I mean by that is that literally we're looking at stuff and we constantly in a stream of weird advice. And that's fine. What I decided to do, just because I was getting overloaded with this stuff, Scott was I stopped and I unfollowed everybody on Instagram. And I, and this is, I started this in 2019 every single month. I pick one person to do a deep dive on somebody that I really admire, somebody that I really appreciate. And I'll give you an example. I did one of my favorite people in the world that I like, I would pay money to have just to have this person just talk and just listen, I don't even want to like talk, right? Is Malcolm Gladwell. I love Malcolm Gladwell. I love everything about Malcolm Gladwell. I love the storytelling capabilities. So I did a whole month just deep diving on Malcolm Gladwell. And it was to the point, Scott, where I would see him on an interview and someone would ask him a question. And I literally knew what he was going to say because you've done such a deep dive on that person. So before you even hire somebody, I would say, just spend like two weeks just devouring everything that they have. And I'll give you a very simple example. I did a deep dive on Seth Godin. Really, I mean, I love Seth Godin. I actually wrote Seth the email. He said, here are the 18 things I've done. I did this. I watched this. I read this book. I did this. I did all of that, right? And I said, there's three questions that I have that were not answered in any of your material. I'm happy to either send them to you or if it's easier for you, I'm happy to do a 14-minute zoom. And I just want to share that with my mastermind group. Are you open to doing that? And he said, sure, like literally I got on with Seth. I asked him the three questions. He's like, thank you for being a man of your word. I hit stop record and I sent it to my mastermind group. I didn't even need to hire him, right? There's a lot of ways in which we can just do a bunch of deep dives and get what we need. But we should definitely link up the episode. But ask the question, hey, if I could have Scott help me develop blank capability. It will help my get me zero result. What is that? Once you have that, I think it really gives you a kind of heat seeker missile on who you should hire. It's a good framework. I appreciate that. Well, I'll link the episode as well. I'll get some socials from you. I want to do a rapid fire from very quick insight from your life before before we close off. I just respect your time. And by the way, before I pivot and then we close off, get some social. Is there anything else that you're working on you want it to bring up? Yeah, so I'm more as a gift. So I'll tell you one thing that everyone should consider. I I spent the last I took the last 20 years of advice. And I put it all together into 20 lessons. I call it the four week MBA. It's 100% free. It's 100% free. There's no like no funnel, nothing. It's a straight up kind of like it's a link to a thousand dollar course for free. It's the number four week MBA dot com. I'd love for people just go grab it because it'll give them a chance to get my 20 lessons that I've learned over the last 20 years. So four week MBA dot com. I'd love for people that that's kind of like my gift to the world. Awesome. I appreciate. I'll link that too. We got any any links by the way you want. I'll put them in the notes below. So if you want to check it out podcast or site for we can be all of that. I'll I'll get those all set with the show notes. Okay. Rapid fire. You know, you can go into as much as little depth as you like, but first question would be one lesson that you would tell your younger staff. Pay for a pay for a coach as soon as you're able to do it. Good. Very good. What is a resource could be a book podcast audible person that you're into now that you would recommend people go check out. I am rereading influence by Robert Chaldeany, one of the one of the greatest books on thought processes, marketing, and really framing your message. So Robert Chaldeany influence is written like 20 plus years ago. Really awesome book. What would be the most influential person outside of family of course that that helped you along your career? Um, that's a that's a tough one. I actually will tell you that one will give you one person who's actually in your neck of the woods. God, his name is Walter Schneider. Walter. Walter Schneider. Walter. Walter owns one third of the world in Remax. So he has 41,000 real estate agents have worked with him and he built it all with his bare hands and he took me on as a, you know, he calls me kid and took me on, you know, he's a mentor and he's been along my side for many, many years. I, you know, he's uncle Walter to me. And so look, look him up is Walter Schneider, one of the one of the kindest people out there. Very good. And what are you curious about or learning about right now in the world of business, tax entrepreneurship? Anything. Yeah, I'm really, I'm really curious about what augmented reality is going to do for the world, especially with you know, us spending more time on screens and devices. I think that, hey, I'm going to buy a product. Can I, can I put it somewhere in my room? I'm going to change a paint color of my house. I'm going to wear this t-shirt. Can I, you know, I have my body? Can I just put my t-shirt on and see what it looked like? I'm a, I think that it really brings the power of visualization back because if you can get, if, if, if, if I can put a piece of art on your wall right now, there's a good chance you're going to buy something from my store, right? It's so amazing from a convincing kind of heuristic. And so I, I've been talking to a lot of augmented reality companies. I be, it's one of the, it's an investment. We've actually set aside monies to make an investment in augmented reality. So that's my, my big charge for the next upcoming years is to put my money where my mouth is and learn more about and invest more in augmented reality. I think with the future e-commerce, that's the one thing to stop people from buying at home, right? That's all you hear. And Ikea is doing it too now. They're doing some sort of augmented reality where you can actually push the furniture into, yeah, it's the next, it's the next iteration of shopping for sure, for sure. And then last question, what does success look like for you? What does it mean for you, excuse me? Yeah, for, for me, for me, success is kind of figuring out what you're good at. I think I'll, for a lot of people, success is a result of money, fame, achievement, et cetera. And I'll tell you, like, I've driven the sports car. I'm very grateful for it coming from a, you know, coming from dumpster diving. I've driven the sports car, lived in the big house, like I've flown on the jets, all of that. That's cool, but it didn't change my life. Like I'm not, that, that's not what made me. I think more and more I wake up and I'm trying to think about God is, okay, what am I good at? And can I do more of that? And I think the faster someone can do that, the happier they get, because then they're spending their time entirely in their zone of genius, right? They're spending their time in who they are and what they were put on this, on this earth to do. Now, I don't think you need money to do that. I just think you need time, and I think you need a great support system to get there. So, asking, I was, I was talking to one of my friends, Rob Hanley today, and he asked an amazing question. He says, ask your friends what you are uncommonly good at. Ask your friends what you're uncommonly good at. And maybe that'll give you a little window into the world of what you are uncommonly good at. And maybe that'll drive you to figuring out that true skill of why you're, what you were put on this earth to do. So, I'm in a mad pursuit of finding that right now. That's smart. It's a very good answer. I've never heard that answer before, but I think that would lead to a lot of other benchmarks for traditional benchmarks for success when you can figure that out. And last, most importantly, where do people connect with you? Website, social, all of that good stuff. Yeah, I'll give them to, we already talked about the four-week MBA. I'll give them two places. Place number one is, we talked a lot about 10X, right? So, I wrote this thing called, I should blog post, it's called 10X in five years. So, literally it's 10X in five years.com. It's 37 lessons that I learned growing the business 10X. So, there's no opt-in, there's nothing it's just a blog post, you should go read it. It's 37 bullet points, 37 lessons that I learned growing our business 10X in five years to 3.4 billion. 10X in five years.com, that's the place I would send you. Every other place is just, you know, I'm on Instagram and all of that stuff, but go to 10X in five years.com. Sign up for the newsletter. I write, I write an email three, four times a week to all the CEOs that I mentor, but I share with everybody else. So 10X in five years.com is a place I'll send everybody.