welcome to Show Me Yours i am Rihanna Werner your host and along with me my
co-host Jason Sheffield everybody say welcome we can hear you hey everyone
and to my left your right here I have my good friend Jeffrey Radspinner he is the
founder and owner what's your favorite title uh managing member managing member
everybody has a preferred nobody likes CEO though no it's kind of a weird title to have especially if you don't actually
have like full CEO duties right exactly in small business so he is the managing
member of Venture Surplus venture Surplus is actually kind of an
umbrellaish type of organization that houses first online wholesale wholesale
distrib wholesale distribution the retail it does it's all of our um online fulfillment for orders and then
wholesale's coming you just kind of guessed it yeah oops that was our lunch conversation we'll tell you later maybe
we'll fill you in at some point anyways but then you've got the two retail stores too yep and so we'll talk about
the retail stores here in a few but what are the names of the retail stores so one of them is called US Surplus it's
over on Astro and Academy uh that one's actually being rebranded to Venture Surplus later on this year very excited
about that and then the other one is called Glenn's Army Surplus that one's over on Mil Street in Tahhon um it's
actually I mean just outside of downtown and that's your new baby yeah that one's been really fun it's a real interesting
store it's more of a traditional surplus store so little grungy with some piles of stuff everything's a little
disorganized and it's fun to dig through and see what you can find in there oh I'm sure i'm sure there's so many hidden
treasures in there there's always something h Yeah we should go down there sometime yeah go on a treasure hunt it's
a real experience yeah I'm gonna be bringing my boys down there that sounds like something we should be doing together yeah serious i bet you Jack
would enjoy it too my son he's 15 i'm sure he he likes airsoft right he does he'll love this stuff really yeah ah you
Well you guys check out Venture Surplus and the two stores they're incredible and we'll tell you how to find them and
and purchase some pretty cool stuff at the end of today's podcast but let's
have a little fun first with our friend Jeffrey so as everybody knows and we've
prepped and primed you we like to ask some fun questions as we get started
down our podcast path and conversation so my question for you is if you could
choose a song for your entrepreneurial um soundtrack what would be like the
song that you would base your soundtrack off of oh man that's so hard i feel like it would probably be
um probably the soundtrack to a movie no words or anything just epic
cinematic that's that's how I used to kind of inspire myself i would listen to different soundtracks like Lord of the
Rings um or like different pieces from the Star Wars
soundtrack um the Spider-Man soundtracks when those ones came out I would listen to them as I was doing stuff and just
make myself hype myself up make it feel like it was more epic than it actually was oh really so what's like a favorite
soundtrack uh Lord of the Rings lord of the Rings yeah come on it's like a long journey like super epic journey and I'm
listening to that as I'm going through it and oh my gosh trials and tribulations have you ever ventured into like the lowfi version of soundtracks
not really no if you if you like lowfi kind of like jammy chill it's like less epicy but there's like all these uh
people that have gone out and created lowfi versions of like Lord of the Rings and it's really fun so okay for us
idiots who are not as geeky as the two of you with lowfi it's a style of music it's It's kind of more chill kind of uh
instrumental but kind of electronic at the same time so it's very relaxing yeah
it's very relaxing huh that does not sound like an entrepreneurial path it sounds kind of
like something that where I'm at now in the business would enjoy it's like it's still a journey but it's chilled out
just a little bit more i'm not in a race anymore it's just slow and steady keep moving forward every entrepreneur's
dream and you've achieved it we should dissect that a little bit further in our conversation i want to hear more about
that um but it's not always been that way and we're going to get into that boy
has it never is right so here I'm also going to have you choose a card any
card all right and you get to read the card and find an answer to it all right all
right what author would you choose to write your
memoir uh probably is it Walter Isacson
yeah who did like Steve Jobs and kind of like the classic yeah he did Benjamin Franklin Steve Jobs the innovators uh I
love his uh I love his biographies those ones are real interesting he
really drills in and then he puts his own opinion into it mh um so it's not just uh this was public opinion he does
mention that but it's I feel like he kind of draws the conclusion at the end and then still kind of leaves it up to
the reader um I just like the detail that he gets into i think that's really interesting interesting i don't know if
I've ever read any of his you said Steve Jobs who else uh he did Benjamin
Franklin the innovators was just about like um starting from the very first person that created a computer um like
the first computer I mean and the like the theory of computer moving it forward and goes all the way up to present
really um he does that one Leonardo da Vinci um Henry Kissinger
um Steve Jobs was the interesting one but Benjamin Franklin was like I really enjoyed that one really he just did one
on Alain Musk as well that's right I haven't read that one just because I'm a little less interested because Alon Musk
is still doing things he is he's not done the story is not done no not at all yeah we were just talking at lunch today
about the you know the update to the the Teslas that's coming so self-driving i
mean he's he's far from finished so who would write your biography you know I
was thinking about that um I don't think I would use a traditional biographer
um I absolutely love the writing style of Patrick
Lynchion and you know I'm a leadership geek i love that stuff and he's a
leadership expert but he tells leadership in a t in a a series of
fables and um I would just love for my story to be told in a series of fables
lessons learned so maybe Yeah that's a good one i could see that yeah that's
fun what about you Jason um the first thing that popped in my head was Tim Ferrris i
think that would be like an and I would like it in I would want to be in one of his like a book of mentors or the tools
of the Titans and I don't know that I need my whole life story told but I want the summarization of like the key things
that I've learned that uh the the sage advice that would fit on three pages i want Tim to write that down for me so
that's how I think I would want to have be biographied bio is that a word biographified like it is now it is now
that's how I want to be biographed i would read that i think both those styles would be real
interesting to read i love reading biographies and autobiographies memoirs it's just that is one of my favorites
especially like for anyone that had a very interesting like business type career or a founder or someone that just
shook up an industry those are always really good I haven't done that in years now I'm totally inspired i've got to go out and
read a biography i don't think I've read a biography in like 10 years it's a good one when they come when they
pop up all right so my question to you is and this comes from Tim Ferrris so I got to give credit where credits to one
of Tim's questions that he likes to ask but what is a purchase that you've made let's say the last six months that's
$100 or less that's totally changed your life
that has totally changed my life change something that you did or is just like oh my gosh this this was totally worth
it okay this is going to be really weird but it was pants yeah tell tell me about
it i absolutely love pants so there was this really big deal um Beyond Clothing
it's a really high-end made in America outdoor clothing brand but they also had a tactical line uh they were acquired by
5'11 and they had to close out a whole bunch of stuff and they were doing it real cheap so I had uh one of my vendors
reach out to me and say "Hey we're doing all of this." And I was like "Oh I want this stuff that's really
cool these pants are normally I think uh $250 $300." And they're just like a soft
shell material that's kind of windresistant water resistant but they're fleece lined and it's just kind
of a heavier duty pant i started wearing those through the winter and I no longer needed like a
base layer underneath when I was outside it could basically go down to about 15 degrees and be pretty comfortable plus
like that fleece lining is just so nice um so I bought four pairs of them i got
them for 75 bucks a piece and I was like I'm going to have these for like the next four seasons love it a great answer
it is yeah living in Colorado right pants make all the difference especially
as you're out shoveling snow or just getting to and from absolutely and
fleece line nice and soft and warm i love it it feels so nice so comfortable i got my first pair of these line pants
this last winter and they were some of my favorites to wear yeah see us ladies we've been spoiled all these years we
We're the first to get the soft stuff exactly yeah and eventually you boys follow suit
at some point yes i had been talking about fleece pants for like 10 years before they finally started showing up
for men and becoming a more prevalent thing oh my gosh wow why didn't the market listen to you
i wanted to make them if they hadn't I would have done it eventually but I'm also a little bit more in tune with like outdoor clothing because that's what I
do the tactical and outdoor stuff yeah absolutely why don't you actually let's talk about that why don't you tell our
listeners exactly what is tactical gear what is surplus okay so let's go into
what is surplus because that's the real interesting part um so military surplus is just all of the excess gear uh that
the military and the army no longer needs uh soldiers will get issued stuff and when they get out they no longer
need it they get rid of it the army over orders uh for the sake of military preparedness and when they no longer
need it they just kind of liquidate it so we'll get stuff that they bought for
uh like Desert Storm um over 30 years ago and it's just been sitting in a warehouse until they were sure that they
no longer needed it and there'll just be I I mean like pallets truckloads of stuff and they'll just liquidate it to
the market um so it's just all of the excess so okay how do you get your hands on that stuff though is there an auction
or do you have like a hookup or you know you meet in a dark alley
so uh yes there are auctions um there's big government auctions that uh liquidate these i mean we could do it in
the the alley next to Glenn's at night and make it a little more interesting uh
but there like I said there's soldiers that no longer need this stuff they get out they come in and they're like "Hey I
don't need this can you give me cash for it?" Or when they're getting out they have to turn all of this a whole bunch of the gear that they were issued back
in and if they're missing that they have to pay full government price for that whatever the government paid for it they
have to pay it back and that stuff's not cheap i mean when you're thinking about like a a Goreex uh jacket those are 200
bucks and so we'll have them in there for half or even less that price uh but
they'll have excess gear that they don't need and so we'll give them cash for that or we'll trade them for all of the equipment that they're not supposed to
turn in or didn't need to turn in that they don't want anymore um so that was like where the stores came into play and
then of course there's wholesalers that get a hold of this stuff in other ways um I have I call them surplus scouts all
over the country just connections that I made over the last 10 years um and they'll call me when they come across
something it just pops up everywhere and what was the entry point for you into this um so it was really weird um I was
a welder and that just didn't work out um I found out that there was kind of a
cap on what I could really make doing that unless I wanted to own the shop and I didn't exactly want to do that um I
also didn't like where I was working so I ended up just quitting and ended up going out working for this guy um that
was doing all kinds of stuff on eBay and he just had this really interesting niche military surplus and I was really
really into it and that's all I wanted to do but when I asked him if I could focus solely on that he said "No that
wouldn't be fair to everybody else." So I said "Well can I do it on my own?" And he's like "Yeah you're welcome to." I was like "Okay I'll let you know how it
goes." And so I started putting this business together and um after 6 months I came back and I was like "This is
going really well can I please do this here we can really blow this up." And he said "No." So I said "Okay I'm leaving
and I'm going to go do this on my own." And that was just kind of where it started that was my first introduction to military surplus okay and then did
that go into then the outdoor tactical side of things as well i mean I can see the connection there how how did you get
into that side of it so that tactical and outdoor stuff was something that came in later years as we kind of like
started maxing out on the surplus that we could get a hold of that we thought was really interesting we started
reaching out to manufacturers and just the ones that we thought were most interesting and so it was more like that
tactical side the stuff that's meant for uh more durable outdoors so tactical really all it is is just like your
outdoor equipment but in uh more muted uh kind of camo colors like what I'm
wearing right now so like the coyote brown pants and this olive drab shirt uh there's really no difference you can get
one of these uh Patagonia uh it's going to be way more expensive but you'll get
it in a bright color which makes more sense if you're outside you kind of want to be found especially if you get lost like um this is more for I guess
sneaking around and being more invisible outside unless you're roaming around downtown
um so this is a perfect segue into you know the the big drum roll question here
as you were building venture I mean you really just jumped off a cliff i mean
not much experience in surplus you had faith and you're like kind of like [ __ ]
it let's do this and you jumped you quit your job right you quit your job and
really didn't have a whole lot built just a little bit so as you built it up and you look back
what let's talk about the mistake the the big hairy beast mistake how many
2015 is when you started the business right it was 10 years uh 2014 september
2014 oh 2014 so 11 almost 11 years yeah we're coming up on 11 last year was 10
years that was a really big deal it was i know i missed your party it was awesome there were so many people there
we we packed out the room that we had at the view house that's awesome um so when
you reflect back tell us what was that mistake the one really big
mistake um I mean there were lots of like big mistakes i think the first one I made was like a $12,000 mistake um
just buying fake product no way really yeah that one hurt how do you buy fake product so they were uh tourniquets and
I thought that they were North American Rescue brand tourniquets and I bought them uh really great price and I started
selling them and found out that they were just Chinese imports made to look like them and the seller would not take
them back um that cost me $12,000 at a time when I didn't really have $12,000
this was probably in my first two years um and I think second year that we were in business we only did about uh
$250,000 in revenue and so to have $12,000 just disappear useless cuz like
I couldn't even like uh bring myself to sell these things anywhere because they were fakes uh these things were meant
for saving people's lives and they were subpar quality uh the windless would just snap on them when you tried to use
them and so you'd be trying to save someone's life and it just snaps and you got nothing um so we just we threw them
away um after we got yelled at by North American Rescue what happened with North American Rescue they saw them on our
front page when we applied to be a dealer with them and they were like absolutely nuts we will not work with
you and I was like I it was a mistake i didn't know oh my god and I mean now we
work with North American Rescue it's one of our really big vendors we love those guys uh we go and see them at Shot Show
every year and say hi and uh sometimes they recognize us
well thank God it wasn't you know a long-term bruise on a potential relationship so yeah that just sucked at
the time oh yeah especially as a baby company getting started and those are
kind of stand and it's it's like even you know back then only $250 in revenue
$12,000 is a lot of money it's a lot bigger you know it's a bigger chunk of
your margin right that's food you or food you could have been eating at home with you and your wife or Oh yeah
whatever have you um but even still today $12,000 is a lot it doesn't matter
how much your revenue oh yeah that still hurts and I still do that sometimes
make $12,000 mistakes oh yeah it it happens on occasion um now it doesn't i
mean it's it's never not going to hurt yeah that's a lot of money um but now it's like we know we understand it a
little bit better it's a lot more calculated um so we know that it could be a mistake but we've taken a look at
all of the risks and I've got a team that helps me with that now so I can present it to them and they can catch things that I missed ah yeah i mean
there is a cost to doing business it just is right especially retail and what
you Yeah especially with I mean used gear being in the secondhand market primarily yeah never really thought
about it that way h interesting so what
other mistakes have you made you said that's one of many yeah I mean the most recent biggest one um it wasn't buying
the store that we just got um it was everything that I did leading up to buying and post sale um after we
acquired yeah that was Glenn's Army Surplus we bought that last March um I
knew that we had some really big things coming up with venture so I knew that we had one of our key people was going out
on paternity leave for 12 weeks um I knew that we were moving to a new warehouse um right about the time that
this was supposed to close um and those were two things that I didn't
want to try and deal with at the same time and so I made it clear to the seller like I didn't want to do this
because uh I didn't want to deal with two major issues as well as an acquisition all at
once that's three really big things um and he said "Well we'll continue to
run the operations at the store until uh September." Unfortunately right after taking over um the everybody left um
there was only one employee there and he was I mean he should have retired years ago and finally realized like I actually
am ready to retire you're talking about the team over at Glenn's at Glenn's yeah okay uh
so he left and I could have asked the seller like "Hey you made this deal you're working six days a week but it
was also like I don't really want to do that and so I started trying to throw people into this and while I was doing
this revenues declining rapidly um over what it already was
and as that's happening I just have this terrible attitude like I shouldn't have bought the store this was a terrible mistake i knew this wasn't going to be a
good idea because I had all these other things i should have just like delayed it or not done it at all why did I do this why do we even need two stores in
Colorado Springs um and as I was trying to fix it I just for some reason kept
that attitude and I knew what I was doing and my wife even called me out on it and said "Hey you're attitude's not
very good." And I was like "It's fine." And I I knew she was right say that yeah
i knew she was right but at the same time like I was having to deal with this and I was having to work 14 hours a day
and deal with the people and trying to get the people on and hired and dealing with new hires cuz we had six new hires
last year oh jeez our team was only eight people before so like wow grew at
nearly 50% or nearly 100% like half the people are new and I'm trying to train
all of these guys and just having a terrible attitude about it at the same time and it wasn't
until uh probably 6 months after the initial acquisition that I finally decided like okay I'm doing this wrong i
need to change the mindset it's already happened i did it and I need to deal with it correctly um this wasn't a
mistake I knew what I was doing and I knew that I wanted this and I knew why I wanted it and after that happened
everything turned around really quick and I don't know if it was because my attitude changed or because all of the
work that I had done over the last 6 months finally came together or a combination of both um but attitude
makes a huge difference in everything that you're doing and to go into a huge project like that with a very poor
attitude just thinking that you don't want to do this or this was a mistake and this is someone else's fault is just not the way to do it and I knew that
after all of the experience I've had with everything else I've done and I still did it let's tear this apart a
little bit mindset it is so so true i've been in that mindset before you know things
aren't going exactly as I want it i become resentful and grouchy and then it's like cancer yep it's so so tell me
first if you could assign one descriptive word to that mindset
what was that how would you label it destructive destructive yeah cuz it was
it it destroyed um everything that I had planned for and the whole mindset that I had built leading up to it knowing that
this was coming and that it was going to be a really really hard project uh and
it completely destroyed that mindset and I went into this isn't my fault this isn't my problem i don't want to do this
what it destroyed oh sorry i mean it destroyed my attitude that attitude that
I had very carefully prepped for everything that I had prepped for leading up to it cuz this wasn't the first store that I bought i had bought
US surplus uh just a few years before and I had a really good attitude going
into that i knew what I was doing and I got in there and the sellers there were actually supposed to continue to work
for 3 months after uh we bought it and continued to train me and assist as I
worked through everything and right after I bought it uh their mom died and
immediately I was like "What do you guys need?" Um and I took over operations in the store for two weeks while they
handled all of the affairs and the funeral and just dealt with losing their mom and I had a great attitude through
all of that and it was an experience it was good and I turned that store around so fast after purchasing it uh I mean we
had it we nearly doubled revenue in the first year on that one um we had seen improvements in revenue nearly overnight
like 20% increase in revenue near overnight wow um and it was just because I went into it with a great mindset um I
had a really good attitude and I knew what I was doing and I knew it was going to be hard and I was like "That's okay." And I just accepted it and continued to
work through everything that was thrown at me so yeah okay i'm going to take it one step further yeah it destroyed your
attitude but your attitude and this destructive
mindset probably left other damage in its wake
i think it definitely hurt the team um because
when the leader has a very poor mindset uh it doesn't really allow anybody else
on the team to be constructive and move forward and get
better so yeah I think it hurt the team and it would have been a lot quicker if I had had a better attitude because it
would have influenced them their attitudes would have been better we could have built it up faster yeah yeah
it's amazing how mindset yields into productivity which yields into money oh
yeah yeah it's huge it's one of the most important parts of everything that you're doing so kind of in that vein I'm
curious you know you came in as saying doing surplus and but now you're business leader you have a team you have
all of these other things that come along with that tell us a little bit about your rise and some maybe kind of
mistakes or how that led into some lessons learned around being now a leader not just selling like army
surplus but having the responsibility of a team and all the other things that
have kind of come over the last 10 years so that was probably the hardest
transition was going from working in the business and running everything to
pulling back a little bit and being a leader instead i spent a lot of time preparing for it and reading about it
and talking to people and talking to other leaders and listening to them um I think the game changer for me was
um there was this one guy on my mastermind group and I was talking about
how do I get everything done it's really hard to get everything done and he just
said with a straight face without even like no hesitation just delegate everything all the time i love him
and that was really hard because delegating made me feel lazy and that was the hardest transition was
handing this stuff off to other people trusting them to do it but also like me feeling lazy because I'm no longer doing
everything but at the same time the business can't continue to grow if I'm in the business and I had multiple team
members that realized that in different cases where uh someone left and we were short staffed so I jumped back in and I
was helping in the business we immediately see revenue start to level off and drop um because I'm no longer
working on the business and helping everyone and lead everyone uh
and so it just kind of starts to tank yeah it's amazing when you do do that as a leader and you jump in and you get
into the weeds you actually take away from your team too you take away their
sense of contribution their sense of value and what they take pride in and
that was a hard lesson for me to learn at one point i thought I was being helpful yeah but backing off and
allowing them to take over is kind of important to them and it wasn't
The biggest game changer as a leader um that I think made the most difference was when we bought US surplus I could no
longer be in the warehouse managing operations and it was on them and they had to figure it out i didn't even have time to
help them with all of the problems so a lot of times they would call me and say "Hey this is happening what do I do?" And it was like "I don't know what do
you think you should do?" And that was the best that I could do for them and so I only showed up for
the biggest problems and the warehouse team right now is the strongest team
that's only because they're also like the oldest team the stores teams are very very good uh but they haven't been
around for as long and they continue to get better and within the next year they will be as strong as our warehouse team
because I've been able to back off and just say "Here is what we need to do make it happen." And that's all if they
need help they ask me for help and I will step in if I actually think it's something that I should help with but
sometimes helping doesn't help so how do you feel like you developed your leadership style right kind of not
having a lot of leadership experience prior i know maybe you did but did let me ask that did you have a lot of leadership experience no I was I think
right yeah i I mean I had like managed a Louis Pizza as like a shift lead i
wasn't even store manager or anything so I would manage the shift okay um that was about the extent of my leadership experience before so now here you are
running a business developing a leadership style how did you go about curating that developing it coming into
kind of this leader that you are today it was a lot of reading and a lot of talking to other very successful leaders
um so I read a lot of John Maxwell he is got to be one of the most effective leaders of all time um meet him last
year did you he's magnificent yeah I knew he was here last year but I I didn't make it to the event um that
would have been really cool um so a lot of John Maxwell um Jaco Willink I really
like his leadership style and also it kind of like appeals to what I'm doing cuz I I work with military surplus so um
having a Navy Seal write about his leadership experience but the the concepts are the same his are just more
extreme concepts yeah um or situations that cause him to learn that real quick
if you don't do that people die um in my case people don't die we just lose money
or people lose their jobs um so it was a lot of reading and then there were several different people that I talked
to that helped me through it um uh the the people on my tabboard the guy that
headed it up um Neil he was very helpful Allan um and then um Kelly from STS uh
they're up north just off of I25 in Woodman um she has helped me out with stuff pretty much my entire life wow um
and I watched her leadership style and learned a whole lot from her um she was a really big deal for that um and then
Daryl Fleck from the SBDC um he was a huge help at the beginning and currently
um but there were I mean lots of other people that just assisted in there and kind of helped me develop it and
continue to get better and not done yeah um I'm just better than I was before
there's no such thing as done no not for that and I think Okay i'm I'm curious to ask you this because most people who
take leadership as seriously as you and I we all have our own like little leadership mantra do you have a
leadership mantra philosophy delegate everything all the time oh really that's that's always what
I think about and I I had a conversation with a friend that also has a surplus store or a surplus website um in Oregon
and he was asking me about that and that was the first thing I told him he was like "How do I get stuff done?" Delegate
everything all the time and if you want to get more technical delegate everything all the time to the lowest
paid highest qualified person um because that it sounds like a terrible thing
when you say it like that but the thing is when you're delegating it to the highest qual qualified lowest paid
person you are allowing them to develop their skill set and allow them to move up y they will not remain the lowest
paid person for long as long as they are handling that well yeah and they'll grow
and continue to be more qualified and that's huge growing the people and making sure that they're not just great
at their jobs but they are learning how to lead as well that's been the hardest part
i'm sorry you're going to say the hardest part has been allowing your people to lead teaching them or teaching them how to to lead yeah because it's
not exactly teaching them it's kind of guiding them as they push to become leaders i've given them the same books
that I've read um and just kind of tried to guide them and ask them questions
because they can only become a leader on their own if they really really want to i can only help so much it's true
absolutely um I want to circle back around into working in your business versus on your business because
something really struck me as you were talking you said when you were working in the business your revenues were
declining and I've actually found that to be true in my business too anytime I dabble
around in too much of the details in the day-to-day my business suffers it's like here we
are we built this business up and then all of a sudden we start getting into the weeds and it's like nope uh-uh right
the business tells you get out so I'd love to hear from you um how do you define or what does it
look like for Jeffrey to work on the business versus in the business how do
you find the most productive time or use of your time i found that it is training
my people giving direction to what they're doing and working on the largest
deals so I still work in the business to an extent um I do all of the inventory
purchasing and that's actually slowly being handed off which is sad because that was six years ago I had made a goal
that was what I wanted to do was uh I wanted to just spend my time purchasing inventory uh unfortunately it's being
handed off but um I oversee the new products that are coming in um I do the
purchasing for them right now i pick them out i build the business relationships especially with the vendors um and I work out the biggest
deals which I think is really really fun that is fun it is and so important
especially training your team because if you personally train your team a part of
you lives on behind that cash register or as they're packing the box and you
know your team hears Jeffrey in the back of their mind okay make sure you tape it that way make sure you put the the
peanuts in this way you know whatever that is it lives on but you know your standards are being upheld and more than
likely they're taking your standards and probably doing better yeah they have definitely
improved on what I did um I came up with most of the initial systems that we use
in the business and everybody took them and improved on them shipping is a lot
more efficient um since I built out that system uh processing is a lot more efficient inventory is huge because I
have Jade in there that oversees all of that and continues to make it better and better and all I'm
doing now is just directing hey I see some inefficiencies over here um
because there's too much inventory and it's you're having to relocate stuff how do we fix that and so basically come up
with solutions for the hardest problems m but you're watching you're seeing that
and then asking them say "Hey listen let's make this shift." Yep it's pretty cool what do you What would you say kind
of in that theme of mistakes as a leader what has been one of the largest mistakes you've made
um I feel like it's with people um there are some people that I feel like I just
absolutely failed and had to let go because I didn't do well enough and had
I been able to spend more time with them and really focus on their training and their development they might still be
with the company today and anytime I lose someone I feel like it's my fault and my failure because I didn't do well
enough to develop them to be successful in that position
yeah people man it's tough it's the toughest part it's
also the best part it is right yeah yeah i think as a leader there's so much
reward that you get when you see that investment and you give people those opportunities and you see them rise up
or you see them grow or you see them get sparked on something and just kind of the the reward that that feels and and
how good that is and at the same time it can also be so horrible when it goes the other way as well yeah and I think what
kind of set me down that path was one of the last things my grandpa said to me um was people are the most important thing
and I thought about that and I think leadership is kind of where that goes um
because I'm capable of doing it or most capable in this particular instance i'm the one that should be doing this and
developing those people making them better helping them develop and making their lives better yeah absolutely
absolutely well this has been a really interesting path because we kind of went down the journey
of first a bad purchase but then we get into you made a decision regretted it
got into a bad mindset which impacted your organization and as we drilled down
it impacted your leadership and then we get into leadership and have a wonderful conversation
um I kind of see you know the mindset in the leadership as a very united aspect
when you're in a great state of mind and you're focused on leading your team things thrive and then when you're in a
bad mindset and you're not leading your team with intentionality your team feels left
behind forgotten right yeah and so it's it's really interesting kind of
reflecting on this conversation because I I see a lot of what you've gone through not just you know in your own
story but a lot of leaders that I come across like daytoday and I think it's
actually more of a common thing to happen but the conversation doesn't really happen it doesn't take place
which I think is interesting anyway so as you reflect back down through
these journeys that we've talked about what's the number one lesson you've learned through all of this
mindset is everything that is the one thing that makes the biggest difference and you'll see it over and over is the
theme of books um the way that you're thinking about everything is the way that it's going to
turn out and if you can be positive through all of it you're going to have a positive outcome um I can't remember the
guy's name he was a Holocaust survivor uh and he wrote a book and he was an inspirational speaker uh just because he
had a positive mindset through the internment camp was it Eil Weiss i
cannot remember i I know he's referenced over and over in leadership when they talk about mindset and I think mindset
is the key to everything if you have a good mindset going into the project that you're working on or the business that
you're going into even if it fails you're going to have a good outcome either way because if it fails you're
going to learn one of the greatest lessons ever and you're going to be not happy about it but you got something out
of it you're satisfied um it turned out okay so what practices do you have today
to help you with your mindset it's a lot of uh just positive
affirmation in my head I guess just thinking this is going to turn out really well this is going really well we're going to do this and we're going
to get there that didn't work out very well but it's okay we're going to fix this and we're going to get there this is the outcome that we're going for uh
and I take a lot of time to myself to make sure that I can actually remain in that mindset and make sure that I can
recharge and be ready for everything because I should have a great attitude anytime that I'm around my team yeah
what are some tangible pieces of advice that you can give to others to keep a positive
mindset to make sure that they don't get to the place where you were a couple years ago when you were in a bad mindset
and you probably didn't even realize it at the time like right like your wife even said you got to fix this and you're
like fine well I'm fine you know you you thought you were fine in that moment leave me alone how do you this is really
dumb and elementary but at the same time not dumb because it works um so in my
calendar my daily calendar when I'm having issues I'll write stuff down in there and it's just a repeating task
that goes off every day in my ClickUp and it's just positive affirmations that
I'm going to read and see every single day um so right now because it's not
really an issue I just have one at the end of every week that I go through and I think about that and I make sure that I'm focused on those but then also again
like I said in your head constantly just thinking this is going to turn out great i'm going to do this and even if I fail
I'm going to learn something great no matter what happens here there's going to be a really good outcome how do you
develop your affirmations just over time um it was weirdly a class
that I took at PPC uh really no they offered that class didn't you it was it
was one that was uh required it was like an entry course that every student was required to take and they just got into
mindset and what a big difference that makes the victim mindset um and how to avoid that and so that was something
that I paid really close attention to after that was making sure that I wasn't victimizing myself no matter what I'm
not the victim um and as I kind of slipped my business partner Ross gave me this book on stoicism
um there are certain things you can control and there are certain things that you can't control the ones that you
can and let the rest go there's nothing you can do about it that's fantastic is that a Ryan Holiday book still Yeah yeah
yeah it's a really good one yeah i still like listening to his uh YouTube videos
he's got some good stuff nice nice well thank you for such a lovely conversation today i think you put some incredible
thought on the table for not just our viewers but also for our viewers but for
Jason and I it was very insightful thank you for allowing us to get into your brain and uh talking this through with
us so um but before we part ways I definitely want to plug um Jeffrey and
the venture surplus crew a he has probably one of the best teams in retail
your team is just spectacular you kind of walk into a surplus store and expect
like a rough and tough type of crowd but it's not that they're so kind welcoming
warm and helpful oh yeah so it's it's really neat to see um but why don't you
tell our viewers how they can purchase some incredible surplus and tactical gear
from you okay so um Venture Surplus you can get it online that was where we started was online that's just
venturesplus.com um you can get everything there you can even do warehouse pickup place the order come to
the warehouse grab it or you can have it shipped um and we're shipping to Canada now also that was a cool development um
we also have the two stores in Colorado Springs us Surplus which is soon to be Venture Surplus um is over on Astros and
Academy at 2475 South Academy Boulevard uh you can call them anytime um I think
their phone number is 719-5948993 um and then there's uh
Glenn's Army Surplus uh it's over at 114 East Mil Street it's just south of downtown on uh Tahhon and Mil Street or
Nevada and Mil Street kind of sandwiched in there and I mean that's Glenn Surplus
is the real experience when it comes to like authentic military surplus um and US Surplus is kind of your modern take
on a military surplus store um so we've got the two stores locally and our website online you guys go and visit our
friends and uh thank you again go out um we will leave the retail store uh
information in our show notes as well so don't feel like you need to bust out your pen and hit
rewind but thank you for joining us i am Rihanna Werner your your co-host and
Jason yeah absolutely thank you guys we'll see you on the next episode
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