Ever wondered what successful business leaders really sacrifice? Or what their biggest financial blunders were? This episode of "Show Me Yours" is for every small business owner who's been there, done that, and maybe bought the wrong T-shirt (or leased too much office space!).
Join us as we peel back the curtain with the founders of HR Branches and BRW Tax and Accounting. They're getting vulnerable, sharing the true cost of building a business – from missing family moments to tripling their rent before they were ready.
In this episode, you'll discover:
The unspoken sacrifices: How business ownership impacts family life, and why "too busy" becomes a common refrain.
Financial missteps: Learn from a real-world "face-palm moment" involving a significant office expansion and what they'd do differently.
Finding your "zone of genius": Hear how one leader realized they were operating outside their sweet spot and made a bold leap to align with their true strengths. Plus, why having a team of "ideators" and "executors" is crucial for growth.
This isn't just about mistakes; it's about the invaluable lessons that follow. It's messy, a little irreverent, and packed with insights you'll want to hang onto.
hey everybody welcome to Show Me Yours and today's episode is going to be a
little bit different uh as all of our team is here with us i'm sitting with
the founders of HR Branches Rihanna Warner and Brian Warner from BRW Tax and
Accounting we are the company behind Show Me Yours if you haven't figured that out yet and today we felt like it
was time that we show ours a little bit peel back the curtain ask some questions
have some fun see where this thing goes so thanks guys i'm really excited you're here thanks for putting this together
Jason I'm ready to get dirty and raw yeah I Brian's been ready to show his for a while and they they didn't let me
in for the first 10 episodes i was kind of butt hurt there's a reason why babe yes
we need to establish a base first before we got real and push the thresholds for
all the episodes before you let the animal in absolutely watch out i live with them i
know so we felt like a fun way to to kick off today would actually be um introducing a
new segment something that we'll be doing in the future we have been working hard on our show me yours question
bucket uh in here are 40 questions that have to deal with vulnerability failure
and ultimately showing yours uh that has to deal with everything from business to
life to uh some of your experiences and uh it's kind of a wild ride i I know
some of the questions that are in there i don't know all of them so I too am uh not quite sure what the what the bucket
will bring but I figured let's surrender ourselves to the bucket ask some questions and uh see where this thing
goes today surrender to the bucket that sounds like a a rough
night the bucket appears it really does doesn't it it may be a
rough segment who knows i don't know i think you have to kick us off so we do okay all right we're going straight in
huh no pressure i'm like "Oh my gosh." Okay I'm going to dig deep is nudity permitted here or is that I mean because
I may really have to show it we can blur it out that's fine honey if that's what you want to do I
just need Jason to sign a consent yes make sure he's okay with that or Yeah
get those bubbles ready and those uh like cover that up
watch out ladies he's all mine all right what do we got all right
beyond the P&L what is the biggest personal sacrifice you've made for your
business that looking back you do differently or the same well we're
dropping right in bucket delivers that's a big one for me
um there's a lot honestly
um there's two and it's very family related first our children um while we built
these businesses to enhance our team's family life like
we tell our team members all the time like if you're missing a family event we've got a problem right um and it's
not that we miss family events but our kids know that like the family lives and
breathes around the businesses it's it's almost like another family member to them but they've given up a lot in that
name there's times when mom and dad are stressed out and they want to do
something or need something and they get the stressful reaction um they have sat
through countless dinners of business talk i mean our children really should have an
MBA they're freaking smart they better have an MBA they're not going to get the real one
out out there because they've already got it yeah you know um they anything has is dictated by the
businesses unfortunately um tax season the kids have grown up
knowing that like spring break is off off limits for our family we don't go
anywhere we've never done anything let's not bring up her birthday either my birthday kind of another one right there
in the middle of tax season it is yeah my birthday's right in the middle of tax season so the one time I actually
planned something during tax season and it was for her 40th 2020 oh man we were
all heading down to New Orleans it was like 16 people and then all of a sudden you know country starts shutting down
and I'm calling people and we're on the group text and I'm like "Everybody make sure you bring like at least one roll of
toilet paper it sounds like toilet paper's starting to get kind of thin." And then all of a sudden New Orleans was like "Sorry we're closing all of our
bars and restaurants." And then at that point I was like "Oh I guess we're not going because what else are we going to do down there?" I mean you know
everything's closing down yeah we had to shut down the whole trip what two days before we were scheduled to depart um
yeah so so the business has been a big cost on the on the personal side of things yeah absolutely and the other
aspect is not just our children but our family our family knows that we're busy business owners and I I
feel frustrated and sad all at the same time that we constantly hear from our
family well we didn't call you because we know you're too busy you know we we we don't want to disrupt you you know
and from our family we we want those just general hey how you doing
and unfortunately because of the businesses and how busy our life is they
feel as if that's more important and they don't want to disrupt it which is a
huge sacrifice and we've tried over the years to communicate but it's just our family's so kind and loving and they
don't want Tell me like where where do you feel like you're at now in your relationship
to that versus maybe where you were when things were first getting started right cuz I feel I imagine in the beginning
there's a big push there's there's that now that things are a bit more established like where do you feel like
I guess that second part like kind of where do you feel like you are now with that versus what it has been like in the
past in the past when we first started the businesses I think it was a little less heavy because there was excitement
and enthusiasm and new and adventure and energy and you know it's just like you
know but we're about to it's like that new relationship right it's like you're
just getting to know each other and there's still a lot to get to know so it's like yeah that kind of excitement
and you feel alive you want to spend all your time with that person and you know
it kind of did feel that way that's a good way of putting it yeah so it wasn't as prevalent then because it was new
and then time grew and you know 5 years in we started to see it and we started to hear it and our kids started making
comments and we're like oh and so we became a little bit more intentional and
while I think there's there's reasons for our intentionality like that's the reason big reason why we bought our
house down in Florida yeah it's because we realize that we have to literally pick ourselves up and take ourselves out
of the state of Colorado to have any time to connect with our kiddos um or
even each other um and then now as I sit here I have to
say I'm weary i'm tired i'm sick and tired
of being sick and tired well yeah being on I mean because like she had just
mentioned I mean pretty much we go home we talk about it over dinner even if
it's her and I going out just like for a bite we're sitting down 75% of that conversation is usually
centered around work or you know what needs to be done or what else we're kind of you know looking forward to or what
we're planning on and such and yeah there's definitely times where we kind of look at each other and even our kids
have looked at each other and they're like "Okay that's enough business talk for tonight." I mean like sometimes we
almost have to say it out loud to just kind of like "Okay let's kind of get it wrapped up or whatever can we talk about
something else right because sometimes it can be just kind of I wouldn't say obsessive but it's like
consuming is not the right word either i don't know it's consuming sometimes it is a little bit it tries to consume
let's put it that way like sometimes it can it can feel like it's almost like encroaching or it's attempting to
consume more and more and sometimes you have to be like "Okay I gotta you know draw the line in the sand and be like
"Okay we need to have you know family time or we need to have you know relationship time and such." Like
there's been times that we've looked at each other and we're like "Our relationship's been kind of on the back burner." Yeah you know we got to figure
out how to like put it to that front burner again right make it a priority and such and it's not necessarily
business it could just be like the family or like family health issues and such here's another really good example
is lunch our team probably sees us leave for lunch every single day it's not because we're going out having a
romantic lunch every day it's a business meeting pretty much every single day
that lunch is a chance for Brian and I to connect like okay what's going on on your end what's going on on my end like
this is today's lunch i had a meeting with my CPA
yeah so you know it's it's funny because we leave but we have to take ourselves out of this environment otherwise we'll
get interrupted or the email go off or whatever happens you know totally normal which I mean it's like you know we have
an open door right i mean we want people to come we you know encourage people to
you know whenever they need something check in like we don't want to hold anybody up or whatever but if we don't
go out for lunch we almost like don't get a break yeah you know and like she said we are discussing the business but
at least we get a little bit of a breather where we can be like "Okay just take a little bit especially a screen break." I mean when we take Baxter on a
walk too that's another opportunity for us to just you know stretch the legs and just kind of you know get that break
from that screen [Music] dinking screens yeah that was a good one
i think the bucket delivered on the first question anything i'd say so brother that was good all right that was
really good needs to go next needs to go next let's see what do we got i'm going to go
yeah dig in there just going right off the top i just can't take the first i have to say anybody who's watching and
if you haven't met Jason in in person he is the best question asker so
we got more money here so what was your biggest financial face palm moment a bad
investment a poor spending decision
etc ooh that was the perfect question for you that is the perfect question
wearing money green today and everything i know man it's like gosh what do I share i mean I've got all I got face
palms bad investments poor spending decisions oh
yeah okay you know what let's get a little raw here so this space that we're
currently sitting in became available so we ended up taking on about 2400
uh square ft and we actually kind of started to grow and get up to the point where we were starting to fill out a
little bit and our landlord came to us and pretty much said "Hey the company next to you guys is going out of
business i've got 10,000 square feet you know are you guys interested?" And we're like "Actually we are." So we came over
here and we looked at this and we had always talked about doing you know having a training room and we just saw the space and at that
point it was just like okay everything's like architecturally very similar um we
started kind of running and going through and like talking to some contractors and you know pretty much it
was a very cheap kind of uh you know bringing the spaces together like it
didn't take a whole lot um and that was something that we were just like "Okay we can go ahead and pay for that we don't even need to you know put that
into the lease." However I think we or specifically me actually cuz Rihanna was
a little more hesitant to take this leap i mean our we tripled our rent pretty
much yeah um grabbing this space and it was to that point
where we felt like we were going to probably grow into it pretty fast but then I think we didn't i think we ended
up taking on so much space here that it
was it's taking a lot longer to kind of grow into it and I think I finally see like we are going to grow into it here
probably in the next you know 6 to 12 months um and the space did become available like I when it became
available we kind of looked at each other and we're like it's a little early like we kind of knew we needed probably another 18 months but our landlord was a
good salesperson and he was just like "Well I could put a restaurant in here and then you're going to have to share your bathrooms with the restaurant." And
I'm like "Well we can't do that we have sensitive information here." So um you
know at that point I was just like gosh like I think it was it was early it was
a you know ma major leap of faith um poor decision i I don't think so but
I think it was you know it was one of those decisions where I think if I went back I probably would have waited and we
would have figured out what to do in our existing space cuz um yeah because it
was it was it was a lot it's been a lot of space to chew on and you know it our let's put it this way as
a CFO like I look at our percentage that we you know allocate towards our rent every single month and it's like way
above where it should be even way above where like a really high-end you know
we're we're a high-end professional service firm essentially so but like we're like you know probably double
where we should be so um so yeah
how how do you think about that from a perspective of decision- making and even like other business owners that are
sitting and looking at that kind of weighing out the cost benefit of it obviously the cost has been high the
benefit is evolving it's there in some levels i think an argument could be there to
exped to answer that and either of you guys can like speak to this because I feel like there's a lot of business owners that have to make those kind of
decisions right expansion costs money growth costs money when do you put your chips on red and take the gamble
that's a loaded question definitely and I think it's you know it it's my favorite answer depends right however I
mean hybrid's always an area that you could look at like okay you know can you have people kind of in the virtual
environment or maybe they're only coming in the office for a couple days and you have kind of like a rotating schedule um
do you have some space where maybe you can get creative with that space where maybe it's you know an existing it's
just like an extra conference room or it could be like an extra large office that maybe you could look and convert into
you know some like co-working space or like you know I've seen some beautiful you know that not the cubicles of like
you know 30 years ago but there's some really nice kind of like partitioning you know um furniture pieces that you
can actually partition off and have some sep separate office spaces so um there's
creative ways to work space yeah there is but I also think you know Jason you're you're if I understand you're
asking a little bit more of a broader question on how do you know when to take
that leap of faith when you take that risk we took a really big risk and in
absorbing the second space it's been good for us um but we really did build
our break even analysis based on being able to use the training room and bring
in additional revenue on the training room and we just really couldn't get our training program off the ground um never
grew much traction and so I think our our break even
analysis while it was strong and it was healthy and it was smart it was optimistic
and we kind of leaped in without doing the right research without doing the
right you know market analysis the market well first especially at that
time the market didn't want in-person training yeah this is like postco right just after 22 22 yeah so the market was
like I don't want to hang out in this room with 20 other people and we were
way too optimistic about people wanting to get back into in person and developing relationships and stuff um
the other thing that we really didn't see was the money that we were investing on this side
prevented us from investing money into other areas of the business
right so when it came down to an opportunity for us to maybe make a a
hire or something like that we're like well [ __ ] those funds are already committed to the rent yeah and so we
weren't able to really expand until a couple years in
when our top line had grown our margins were much stronger to where we could say
"Okay now we've got a little bit of breathing room but still now it's like well we still have this huge ass rent to
pay and we have payroll and we have all of this stuff." I mean gosh I think our
monthly expenses are more than I made a hell of a lot more than I made in
my first year after college right those are just our monthly expenses um they're
pretty pretty much encroaching my top salary working for somebody else
oh my gosh annually and that's just monthly just to put it in perspective so
see why we don't sleep
yeah that's that's a it's a big one it is so you know luckily we're able to
breathe a little bit more and you know here we are sitting on the side and now we're able to kind of hopefully
eventually monetize through the podcast we've got the podcast room in use we've got we're we're putting the side more to
use but it's taken a lot longer to get there so when do you put all of your chips on
red you can do all these analysis you can do all of the meetings with your CPA
and your consultants and really it is a I think it comes down to looking at all
of the data and information but also trusting your gut and also taking advantage of opportunity this space was
going to be leased out to someone else which means this was our only opportunity to take advantage of this
space too so and if we didn't that could have stumped our growth as well yep yeah
damned if you do damned if you don't exactly that feels like business
[Laughter] damn all right I'm going to draw the next one keep this train moving see what
the bucket has for us today
share a moment when you realized you were operating outside of your zone of
genius and what was the immediate action you took love this question um that's a
really good one for me it actually was part of the impetus of why I landed here
working with you guys is the company I was working with before i was doing sales coaching and I was giving a lot of
like one-on-one support to relatively junior salespeople um a
lot of them were pretty green they had maybe been in a sales job for a couple years but almost across the board they
were all stepping into an industry that they didn't know and so from a sales perspective trying to sell something you
don't know can be just a longer ramp up time right i mean a good salesperson can sell anything and that was always
something I believed in and continue to believe in but I was just watching a lot of these like junior salespeople coming
in and they were coming you know my job was to effectively train them and to coach them and that isn't really my zone
of genius at the end of the day like I'm good at it but like I was so bored at
the end of the day just like shoot me in the face give me something else to do let me be strategic let me be creative
let me all these things that I have to be able to offer was literally like a cap was put on it and it was like just
train the salespeople oh so I had like 30 people that I was training and I loved the relationships that I was
building with them and all of that but there was this piece like every day I I would wrap up my training sessions or my
one-on- ones that I was doing and I'm like "God I could be doing so much more there's so much more I could offer
there's like I just felt like I was wasting away like all of these other things that I had to offer really what I
felt like my genius was." And when I had brought that genius to the team in the
past it had been kind of shut down or it hadn't really been accepted it had been kind of rubbed up against with others
visions and ideas and there just wasn't a lot of that freedom so once that really started to land I knew my time
there was done and so it was January of last year that I went to Tiffany my wife
and was like "Hey I'm done with this job in June." Like I've I had a a mastermind
that I was leading so I was taking 12 of our like top 10% of our sales people
were in a mastermind with me so that gave me a little bit of freedom to like play more with the better people but
then like the 90% of my time was still spent with the other junior salespeople so still like but I had that so that was like my one thing that I got to play
with and I got to really own and do um so I made them read i picked all the books we had to read i loved the
conversations i led the discussions so that was fun and I had committed to doing that for a year and so I was like
"Okay I'm not leaving this mastermind because everybody kind of paid to come into that so I'm going to deliver it but
when the mastermind's done I'm done." And so yeah that's and I made I quit
without knowing what was next that's made the leap you've got to make the leap so I have a couple one okay when
you look back in that that time were you aware that you weren't operating in your
genius what was your genius what is your genius oh well the beauty so I've had to
learn I think I've been in that process of learning what the the genius is for me and one of the things that I've given
myself permission with is that I have several zones of genius that I can play in that is something I've really
realized about myself and so I've also realized I have to give myself the permission to not get pigeonholed into
just one specific little thing cuz that one little thing will kind of become bored to me yeah so it's like getting
this opportunity to get to do lots of different things and some of that's career related but that's also some of
it's just my own my own life that I get to do the things that I'm creating in this world the ways that I'm giving back
to my community the ways that I'm at service like those are other areas that my my genius can come through and that
was one piece that I loved about my previous experience was it gave me the opportunity to like see that genius come
to play outside of just the workplace like and being able to give back in other ways and so that was that was a
key piece that I got to explore that and play with that and find those other things and see what was working and get
to have some capacity to do that but I guess at the end of the day I would say my zone of genius is typically it
revolves around a couple things like being able to be strategic very much just core to who I am I think very
strategic and it's my strategy it's not necessarily like I've realized I have a very individualistic way of looking at
things and so when I have my strategy it's like well what's that based on and again it's like kind of my gut like this
is my gut feeling on this thing i've done all this investigating done all this other stuff i pulled all these dots
and like the gut is saying this sometimes it's not very um scientific so that can be a rub for sometimes like
people well I don't know about that like Tiffany will be like are you sure and I'm like I don't know but my gut says it so I'm going with it um but so strategy
is key um atmosphere being able to create experiences for people is another
thing that I found is just that zone of genius is getting able to craft an experience or an atmosphere or uh even a
vibe if you want to call it that where when people come into it they're like oh this feels different constantly when
people walk into my home I hear oh my god this is just what is this I've never felt this before this is different what
like what what's going on here so it's just like this is just my presence it's my genius right um but being able to
craft something and and give somebody an exper experience um and then I think the
other piece for me is experience or my genius is just interacting with people the emotional intelligence side of
things just I've really honed that ability to be an active listener to be really good at caring for people but
then also blending in like I would be a horrible therapist i've played with it a lot of like should I be a therapist and
like sit down and talk with people but like the reality is I love giving advice so I'd be a horrible therapist cuz I'm going to tell you what I think like
that's what I hate about therapy is they're like "Well what do you think?" think I'm like I'm paying you to tell me what I should like exactly and that's
like the type So that's what I do is like if people come to me it's like you better be ready to hear like my
perspective and I'll ask for that permission now I've learned like sometimes not to over overce that but
when people come to me now they're they're dealing with stuff in life and and they're struggling and and I'm getting that phone call I listen and
then and then the question is are you ready for my perspective like that's why I called you it's like all right here it
goes and then it's like unleash the hounds and give it to them raw and just tell them the truth so yeah everybody
needs a Jason in their life everybody does definitely yeah i usually sometimes I'll look at someone are you
are you willing to accept unsolicited advice or like you know do you want to know my thoughts at least you guys are
good at asking i'm like well I'm going to give you some whether you like it or not or it's like you know what they ask
the question right and it's just like all of a sudden like okay well you asked me so totally I'm telling you yeah and
that's what's funny about that even in my career like that zone of genius of sharing ideas right early in my career
especially when I was working at Bomb Bomb and we were dealing with tech and new ideas and new con and so much
cutting edge stuff it was so fun to get to like ideulate and come up with ideas
and my boss used to he gave me this adage that I love and he's like "Jason
ideas are cheap execution is everything." Yeah he's like "I don't care about your ideas." And it was
interesting because that came as like a some tough medicine for a little while and then it had to balance out with
realizing but my my genius is the ideas that's just kind of the like I come up
with really good ideas and now I've had to strengthen the muscle and execution yeah and that's kind of the piece that
I'm always working on and strengthening in because ideas are easy for me it's like you give me a little bit of space
some brainstorming time and it's like let's pop up some creativity and we'll figure something out now the execution
of it right that's that's the the game that's really where it matters um so it's been blending those things of but
then also realizing that my genius sometimes is actually just in the ideation and not always in the execution
absolutely and giving myself the permission for that and say you know what people actually will pay me money for my ideas at the end of the day like
they're going to pay for that advice or that that concept and they're the ones that have to kind of go out and execute on it absolutely and I think if you're
on the right team too you need a team of the ideiators and you need a team or
people on the team who are the executors and most people are not built with both abilities ever ever and this is actually
the beauty like some of the AI stuff right is we can ideate with it and all of a sudden it can start executing on
things and it's just like oh that's so helpful so helpful that's one thing I've really been playing and loving with on
that front oh I'm with you cuz I'm an idea person too i hate execution i'm like ah someone else want to do that
well yeah yeah and sometimes it's like okay I don't have the attention to all those details or it's like and I did way
back you know like at the beginning of my career or whatever I was way more attentive to details but it's like as you progress and you kind of you know
elevate and you go into that managerial role then at that point it's like you
don't really have the bandwidth or that's just not really a part of who you
are you're you're the creator and like you said sometimes there there there's
not many people that create and will execute or do it as well so it's like
you got to have both in order to be successful you do um I always said like if you have too many creators then
nothing ever gets done totally that's too many chefs in the kitchen yeah and I
mean honestly a whole bunch of great ideas sitting on the table and never moving that's the worst thing that could
ever happen to a business it is it is it is okay shall we do one do you want one more round let's do it let's do it okay
it's my turn yes oh let's get that one back in there good questions great questions right i
know every time I dip into that bucket I get a little scared though i know the bucket should scare you a little bit did
you go deep in the bucket this time excited i I I stirred I stirred the pot
oh [ __ ] oh good are you [ __ ] kidding me
all right all right all right this is real what's the biggest mistake you made when it came to hiring oh I just Oh my
gosh i can't believe you got that question it's actually in there about 22 times so
pro you know never again rule now so what was your biggest hiring mistake and
what's your never again rule does that that was the question uhhuh
you're gonna make me say this publicly okay i mean show me yours yeah right well I'm pulling down my pants kids
[Laughter] oh this one i cried and here's the deal
with this one like bad hiring mistake big bad um
no names are necessary i know that's what I'm trying to you know yeah um figure out so
we hired this individual to come in and at that time we didn't have a
position posted we didn't even know but we saw this person was available and we
you know we thought the world of this person and their skills and capabilities we loosely t talked about hiring for
this role but they came available they were they were available on the market we're like you know what let's talk to
this person and see if they can come in and and do a few things for us and help us out and
so we did and there was the honeymoon phase
everything was great um but then something happened in that person
because we gave him so much freedom and flexibility because there was no planning for this position right there
was no nothing we just kind of said "Here's your keys to the kingdom have at it we don't know what the hell you're
doing but go do it." And we weren't prepared we didn't even know how to peer
in we didn't even know what to look at to peer in and see what was going on
um until actually another friend colleague of ours started helping consulting within the business and she
started peering in because she had owned a business who employed very similar positions and she started peering in and
she's like this person's not producing they're eating off of a company credit
card pulling a huge salary and there's no production they're like and so this
friend of ours is like "Where's this report where's this?" And we're like "Huh?" Yeah where's where's this system
and we're like "Oh didn't even realize we should have had that system." So yeah and then so we started asking this
person like "Where is this?" And they would get angry at us and like really
mad and start crying and yelling and it was such
an awkward position because a lot of it was our fault we did not prepare
ourselves put the the proper tools resources stop gaps in
place anything like nothing we hoped
this person would do that and educate us and help us become and of course they
didn't um which I mean I can't fault them for that um but then they became
very angry towards us and then it started impacting our culture and they became
nice to our face but very mean behind our backs as soon as we would walk out of the room terrible things were said
about us and so and on top of that they kept telling us that we needed to pay them
more money and they were pulling in more money than Brian and I were bringing home at that
time um so yeah that one was a really really
hard one um so out of that what was the never again never hire unprepared
ever they're like I think I go over the top now in preparation for anybody
especially a new position that we hire i go in I talk to people who have employed that position before i put together a
thorough job description i try and get all the systems in place ahead of time i'll never give the keys to the kingdom
to another employee again like there's stop gaps there's peerins there's check-ins we're watching we have to be
diligent and thoughtful well and also set you know our people up for success too i mean because like you said we
didn't really set that person up for success i think we more were just like okay well we know you've had success
before so you know a lot of free reign a lot of
just you know you create the systems and the procedures and you know the processes and such and there was uh
there wasn't much of a there wasn't much created i think it was just more of a well this is what I'm doing deal with it
yeah and this is you know what Yeah yeah so
so yeah I think I think we Yeah making sure that we put the time in and if we
don't know what we're doing we talk to people that have done it before or they've lived it or it's just like okay
we do that and it's research and yeah you know it's also AI hey what do you
think too so yes thank God for AI yeah yeah that was
a that was a tough pill to swallow and to go through especially
realizing cuz you know for a long time we thought we had made a great hire and they were doing great things and then
coming to that realization that moment like oh [ __ ] what have we done oh yeah
that's such a gut punch oh it kept us up for weeks it just killed us and it was
just so tough to turn around and be like we had no clue first shame on us now we
have to turn around and have these really tough conversations and they didn't go well
oh it was tough it was tough thanks for asking all the good questions Jason you're welcome you just might get a tear
out of it did the Yeah so the boys before we
started recording their goal today is to make Re cry we'll see my goal is not to
let them all right Brian see what's in there all
right going to the bottom again this one's like folded four times
that must be really good all right what's the worst piece of
advice you've ever given or almost gave to another aspiring
entrepreneur that's a good
one i would say let me think through this for a second here
you never give bad advice well I'm sure I have at some juncture
i going back to optimism I know that and I worked with a lot more
startups like when we were a startup and ironically we're almost about to become
a startup again so that's like a whole other topic right I know it's like when
I first started out you know this is almost 10 years ago it's been a decade and um you know at that point Rihanna's
like are you going to buy a book of business to get going or whatever And I looked at her and I'm like I don't think
so i said I think I want to actually like mold this company like mold you know you know the processes and the
systems and I want to work with who I want to work with i said I think I want to you know I want to build this thing
from the ground up and um you know kind of going back and like looking at that I
mean we were living off a Rihanna salary for about two years so I mean I pretty
much started with nothing and um even nine months in when I was in my basement
it wasn't really going anywhere cuz we had a our son who was like what was he
first grade or something five or six or six he would put his fingers underneath
my door cuz there was a gap between the carpet and the door and you know pretty much and his fingers would pop out dad
let's go play baseball and it's like you know dead of summer and I'm like a lot of you know times most accountants
during the summertime it's you know not as busy and especially when you know I was very fixated on like a lot of tax
work when we first started building the business so um so I would say number one
bad piece of advice is trying to bootstrap a business
you can you can plan you can save but I've also seen some entrepreneurs create
it out of what I call adversity yeah so pretty much like maybe they had the
dream job or like you know you were just kind of referring to before like you got to a point where you thought you were
with the right organization and then all of a sudden like for whatever reason your responsibilities shift and then all
of a sudden all the wind is taken out of your sales and you feel like you're about to you know swallow a bunch of
water and you're just like I can't do this anymore so I've seen a lot of those situations where all of a sudden the
entrepreneur is born maybe that caged animal was just caged for a long time
but then all of a sudden it was just like there was that last event that just kind of said you know what i've had
enough i'm going to control my own destiny i'm going to pave my own way and
not going after financing right away right so you know like I said those
people like they usually didn't have a plan and I think
at first like because I did it and I was fortunate enough to have Rihanna and she
was able to continue paying our bills and we didn't have to eat ramen every night thankfully um but probably
encouraging people like "Hey there's a lot of um there's a lot of grants out there there's a lot of you know like
startup financing that we could get you connected with." I think in the beginning just because my experience was
like oh well you know just saved for it or you know which we did and then we lived off of her salary as well and
dipped into our 401ks and yeah you know I mean we sacrifices whatever was available pretty much helock I mean yeah
so we we took out a lot of money so yeah I would say probably to you know a lot of entrepreneurs getting started out
like hey there's ways to get financing you know a lot of banks will be like hey
you need like two years as a company and you got to you know maybe even show a little bit of profit or whatever before
we'll even talk to you but I mean like you know the Colorado Enterprise Fund is one that like really focuses in the
startup sector and they even provide like trainings and classes and like
one-on-one consults and such and of course like the SBDC I mean there's just so many resources out there and I think
probably when I was first starting I was probably aware of about 20% of what was available so I think that would probably
be kind of yeah going back I think I probably should have been a little more well-versed and you know what that kind
of the whole startup just like ecosystem and the support system that's available
here in this community is pretty pretty incredible well I also think bootstrapping looking back because I
think you bring up a good point looking back at our our humble beginnings is
bootstrapping it stunted our capabilities because we didn't take out
you know we took out we didn't strategically borrow money we
didn't strategically plan out our money for marketing or you know sponsorships
or systems or anything like that it was more oh [ __ ] well we need money yeah
need that bill we need money we better go get money um and so and that's
bootstrapping that's a lot of it and bootstrapping oftentimes is very reactionary
you react to often times that that moment where you're like "Fuck it i'm out i'm starting my own thing i'm doing
it." Which both of us have went through um and you go in you jump off the cliff
and then you sit at that desk on that very first day and you're like "What do I do now?" You probably felt that too right Jason what do I do next
i'm a business owner i guess something's going to come my way how do I get a
phone just ring oh no it didn't though we really wish it was yeah checking you your Google Analytics like is anybody on
my website today mhm and it stunts your capabilities because
let's face it those bills those invoices that come in for a business are a lot
higher than your personal expenses i mean business is just expensive and so
if you don't if you want to start a business before you jump off that cliff
and have that [ __ ] it I'm out moment you really do have to spend some time and say okay what is it going to take for me
to strategically get there how much money do I really need what activities
really need to happen i think had you and I actually gone through a proper
practice of that because all we knew how to do was the accountant and the HR side of it
right and we thought we were pretty damn smart too and then we walked into this
world that we knew nothing about i don't think we slapped a business plan together until about 5 years ago
actually so and I remember someone asking "Well did you guys put a business plan together?" And I was like "No." Oh
I remember those from college but no we didn't we just kind of Yeah well we put
it together and planned it out in our heads and planned out a couple spreadsheets or whatever and then it was
like off to the races yeah Tiffany and I were working on she's she's kind of thinking through some new business stuff
for herself and we're supposed to do and we were kind of dreaming and we were working through this concept and we were like doing some math on it right so I
was doing the math i was like "Okay is this viable how does this work out?" So I started kind of doing all this stuff
and you know her being a business owner she I was being optimistic and so I like presented I presented this number to her
and I was like "Oh this would be awesome." She's like "Cut that by 40%." Yep she's like "Whatever you think
you're going to sell or whatever I think I'm going to sell always cut it by at least 40%." And she's like "And if that
number makes sense then maybe." But like don't go off of what you think you can do just at a max right that optimism is
like "Oh we could do this." And it's just that principle of like whatever it is cut it by 40 that was And then to do
the math on that and be like "Oh man that other number was a lot more fun i don't like the 40%." That one was sexier
that one's like ooh yeah that's 60% that's an F that's a failing i don't I
don't want to do that but it probably is the mostful it was the most honest answer
that you needed to see and I think we had most of the optimism in front of us
and we were like "Yay we're going to do all this and do all that." And I mean I
mean we would we've done well we've done well it's worked i mean we have been
able to pay our bills we have been blessed in giving our kids a good life
um hopefully giving our team a great place to work and serving our community
with our whole hearts um but yeah we were stupid we were dumb to this day I'm
like we put together projections and I think they're pretty you know they're usually pretty lofty they're usually
pretty optimistic i don't think we've ever hit one before no we've come close we've been hitting our sales projections
jason has been Yeah and even our revenue projections
you created and you brought brought processes and systems and all the things
right ideas and execution all right let's let's land this plane
let me ask one more here see what we want
oh my goodness i you know I don't I don't have an answer for this one so I'm going to put
it back i'm sorry it was That was a really tough It was But I just don't have I just legit don't have an answer i
I can't even like [ __ ] an answer on that one oh really that's outside of your abilities i know i'm pretty I'm a
pretty That's outside of your genius yeah uh tell us about a time that you had to
fire someone you genuinely liked how did you navigate that emotionally charged
decision uh and for me this was uh an employee
that I had hired um when I was at um at Bomb Bomb and we were it was my first
time really being a manager going through the process of like actually being responsible for the hiring
responsible for my department i had about 10 people that were underneath me and it was the first time that like I
was the one doing the initial rounds of interviews and like making making kind of the call on who I thought was going
to be the right person for the right seat and this person came across instantly thought they were amazing
brought all the right energy um but they were um a little high maintenance there
was a little bit of that like they're going to they're going to ask a lot and and some other of the people had seen
that that were kind of some of the elder staff but I kind of pushed forward i said "Nope I think they're the right
person i really think this is it." And um and because I I liked them i saw something in them right i was I was
being a little optimistic and after about I don't even remember the full amount of time but it was
probably 6 to 8 months a lot of that stuff started to show up and it was like "Oh shoot we're gonna have to let go of
this person." Yeah and the hardest part about it was when you make promises that
you can't deliver on and for me at that time being in middle management that was
probably one of the toughest lessons that I had to learn was that I can't make I can't promise anything because
I'm not in charge yeah and so to be in that hiring position but not get to have
anything that's h you know I don't have any say of what's happening over me i have a little bit of say what's happening in this department but even
then I'm beholden to what I'm being told um and that was hard and it ended up not
being um I think it was a good experience for this person but it was also pretty challenging for them at the
end of the day and if I would have gone back and probably listened to that initial gut of like they might be a lot
not the right culture fit that probably was the answer but I liked them and I thought they were going to be a good fit
and so just the emotions of that like the weight of that of like the disappointment of making those promises
that you couldn't deliver on you know at that point that becomes like trust that becomes integrity that comes you know
these other things and it was a good lesson to learn of like oh did I oversell this you know on some level
because I I was trying to get them because I thought they were going to bring so much value to our team so I
kind of you know pushed the edge a little bit on what reality was and it's like yeah right i It's not a it's a lie
i mean maybe kind of a thing right but when you're in the fast growth environment and you're trying to recruit
the best possible people you kind of can throw those things out there you can kind of throw some big promises out
there especially when things are kind of unknown at the end of the day so it's easier to go towards the shinier side of of things than the harder side of things
uh and so that was that was a tough lesson to go through and learn that it is i think we've at least everybody
sitting in this room has been there yeah i mean yeah I think it's one that we all go through yeah absolutely one thing
I've I definitely know for sure is it's so much easier to tell a person no
during the interview process than it is after you've hired them so much easier
and that's a big thing for us if there's an even hint of a no it's it's a no it's a no like the only
way someone can join our team anymore and I think it goes back to that one person that I was talking about was it
has to be a resounding enthusiastic yes from everybody that they talk to
enthusiastic so cuz I think that turns into like if it's not a [ __ ] yes it's a no yes exactly kind of how rules like if
it's not that it's it's a no yeah we should put that on our interview question here is this a [ __ ] yes
totally jason you just may have added to it
if it's not a [ __ ] yes it's a no yeah it and I think that's how it has to be across the board you know kind of to
bring this to you know a little bit of um a nice little pretty bow is in
business whether it's you know looking at that optimism sprinkled with that 40%
or hiring someone or gosh even those numbers right if it's
not a [ __ ] yes it's a no and business owners and leaders have to be more
willing to say no and do the tough stuff than do the fun fancy frilly things i
mean I think so often you could like boil down the majority of the conversations that we're having in this
room that we're having on this podcast to the very simple concept that somebody
compromised on a No i mean it kind of boils in every way i
feel like that's the thread it always comes back to that it's like it was a no but I compromised right or I I let it
slide or I didn't really hold the line or whatever and thus the the the trickle
down effect of that and so if we just be confident in our [ __ ] yeses maybe we'll never make mistakes again i don't know i
don't know maybe i don't think that's give it a shot but I think that's that to me has been a shift in my own life
back to these other things it's like I'm I'm leaning into the yeses and if it doesn't feel like it's a yes then it's a
no kind of goes back to what you said about your gut like that's always something that we
I've always taught our children like if your gut is telling you like something's off or like you're in a situation where
you're just like "Okay I I just don't it doesn't feel right." Yeah like it's probably your gut's probably right mhm
yeah so and don't fight it kind of a go by the gut with a lot of things pretty
much and so when are we going to Vegas and putting it all on Red i think August
9th i think it's going to do the whole company yes we are
see how it goes we're putting a lot on red on August right now we got some fun
stuff for people coming we do we do well Jason you want to bring us home yeah
this has been a great episode thank you guys for joining us peeling back the layers we've got some really fun guests
teed up that I know are coming in the next few episodes so we look forward to seeing you guys on the next episode of
Show Me Yours peace [ __ ] yeah