Episode 109 Part 2 – Jerry Brazie

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Jerry Brazie 0:00
And that was a big deal. Something as simple as sugar cereal wrapped in Christmas wrap. For me, Christmas has always meant something because it’s that time that I got this really special treat as a kid. And so I thought, Okay, I’m going to try to help families that need help at Christmas to help kids kind of get the same kind of feeling to have a gift under the tree if you will. And so I hired an outside firm and they found me 4 years in a row of 4 families and I said okay, before I’m going to do this, so I want to interview the families. I’m not just gonna give my money. I want to interview the families. And so 3 of the 4 cases – I went to the house, it’s two o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon and there sits the dad playing video games. And I said, I can’t do this. I can’t I can’t help this. right this is not – they won’t help themselves. I’m like that Dad should have been working two jobs without a doubt. And he wasn’t. Just playing video games. So I said, that’s not really gonna suit well, for me. What can I do? So my way of giving back is to do exactly what I’m doing now is to, you know, again, give people access to someone who has the experience of I have both both growing up experience, workforce experience, and then ultimately, you know, growing and doing $500 million worth of revenue over 20 years. There’s not many of us out here and so I can help almost anybody and I talk with people all the time, and I give away my time for free because I want to help other people that want the same things that I want, be successful.

Richard Matthews 1:24
…3-2-1

When you are looking at things that are sold online in business and all these things, like I have learned over the years that I’ve been in business, that if everyone else is doing it, it’s probably wrong.

Jerry Brazie 2:31
That’s it.

Richard Matthews 2:32
That applies to pretty much everything in life. If everyone else is doing it, it’s probably wrong.

Jerry Brazie 2:36
And so many of these things have become cliche. And this is one of them. That really it’s too bad that it’s cliche, you know, hard work. If everybody’s doing it, it must be right or wrong. You know, I want to – don’t follow the crowd; go the opposite way. All of these things. I don’t know if that’s on purpose or not. They’ve been so overused and they’ve become such a cliche as to almost maybe not have value anymore. And so entrepreneurship along the way, has kind of lost that definition of what it truly is to be an entrepreneur, which is going against the grain and put in work like no other. And now it’s all guys that design apps and they live fat lifestyles as billionaires within nine months of letting the app go. And of course, then we don’t see the 80 million other apps that never make it and the hard work that people put into growing it and, and that that that bastardization of entrepreneurship, I think, plays into the reality of what the tools are necessary to be successful, and to be a successful entrepreneur, which is the old cliches, go the opposite direction and work harder than everybody else.

Richard Matthews 3:43
Yeah, and it’s crazy too, because you mentioned if you were starting at 30 years old now like with the tools you have available and everything like it’s so much easier now today than it was for you know, than when you started. The tools that we have access to and the stuff that we’re doing and I think With the combination between easy access to, like enterprise level tools, like stuff like Zoom and stuff like Trello, and stuff like that like things like, you know, Fortune 500 companies use to operate their businesses, right, you can have access to the same tools and use them in the same way that they’re using them to build your organization, stuff like that. So like the easy access to that stuff, along with this social media, the whole I call it the influencer space, right? People are – being an entrepreneur has become the cool thing. Without realizing that like it, what you’re looking at is you’re looking at the results, you know, the promised land side of the results, you’re not looking at someone who’s, you know, they have to swim through the crocodile infested river before they get to the promised land. And so all you’re looking at is people who are already in the promised land. Right? And if you’re over on the other side of the river, you still have to swim through the crocodile infested river to get there, right. You don’t just know, take a helicopter ride and drop into the promised land. That’s not how it works.

Jerry Brazie 4:57
And that’s whereas a person you have to you have to, again, critical thinking kicks in, because you see that guy pulling in, in his Mercedes and you’re like, Oh, I’d like to be him. But what you don’t see is the 25 years of struggle that came before, it came before that, to put him in the position where he can buy that Mercedes. We like to go right to the Mercedes. We don’t like to go to the 20 years of nightmare that that guy had to live through to get to that position.

Richard Matthews 5:24
Yeah, right. And like, I’ve got that same kind of thing going on in my life, like people are like men, you’re lucky because you love the life you get to live right. Like, I’ve been traveling full time for three years with my family and we’re all over the country and stuff like that. I’m only 34 years old. And people like, you know, you just did that. And I’m like, Well, no, I started in business at nine years old. And it took me 20 years to get to a point where I could do the things that I wanted to do. And like there’s a lot of effort that goes into that. So it’s interesting that people say, you know, it took me you know, took me 10 years, you know, 10-15 years ….

Jerry Brazie 6:01
Right? Yeah, that’s that’s exactly right. And in talking about you know, being 30 year old me and and I wouldn’t want to have to compete with a 25 year old Jerry today. My art people always say, I mean, particularly younger people tell me it’s more difficult. And I’ll say to you that I could reach today, more people who are looking to buy my product in one day than I have reached in the entirety of my 22 year career. Because every sales I’ve ever made is a handshake and a knock on a door and a phone call and 500 phone calls and 500 no’s to get the one yes to just sit down at the meeting. I mean, that’s how business is earned. It’s not earned – Not that these things can’t play a part in it, but it’s still earned one door knock at a time, one meeting at a time, and it’s so much easier to get those meetings and if you can sell yourself And you can sell your product, getting those meetings, one out of every 500. Imagine if you made a one out of 100 or, you know, whatever your number, I mean, a 1% return rate and a half percent return rate on digital media, probably right in the realm of possibility. So it’s just to think that I can reach more people in the next hour than I could reach in the entirety of my 22 year career.

Richard Matthews 7:24
It’s definitely insane. And like, I know, you know, now it’s funny because you said door knocking and going one one place to the next. And now it’s like, it’s one Zoom meeting to the next. right, and like, Just today, I’ve talked to several people all over the country. And I haven’t left my room, right, like, left my my little office here. And it’s the ability that we have, but it’s interesting, like, my business is still operated and sold one meeting at a time, right? with real people on the other side and learning how to have those communication skills and learning how to sell what it is that you do and learning how to find out like, what’s the value I can provide to you and how does You know, like, you’d have to learn how to how to communicate that value exchange because like, that’s how capitalism works is, it’s got to be a win for me. It’s got to be a win for you. It’s got to be a win for everyone involved in order for the yes to happen. And if it’s not a win, it doesn’t go anywhere. Right? So you have to learn how to be a dealmaker.

Jerry Brazie 8:18
Yeah, that’s, that’s exactly right. And that, you know, I would add, as you were saying that it made me think about the message that I’m trying to get out. And that also when you said that’s how capitalism works and and and a big push for me is to illustrate what capitalism – define that word capitalism because so much of what we hear about capitalism is so negative in the media, that when I’m trying to entice new entrepreneurs to come in, and be a part of the process, and they feel jaded, or they feel like the system’s stacked against them because of what they hear about capitalism. What we have in the United States at the biggest levels is crony capitalism. That’s not capitalism. Capitalism is what you’re doing, and what I’m doing every day and what they would be doing. And you have to compete against these crony capitalists who love to make it more difficult for us. And they love to put in regulations and they love to put in taxes that … $15 minimum wages only serves Amazon, it hurts everyone else, and it serves Amazon’s business. And so those kinds of things, that’s crony capitalism, that’s not capitalism. And when you hear the media talking negatively about business owners and businesses in general, it’s typically around crony capitalism, and not the pure I’m going to create a product someone’s going to buy it for me. And the reality is, most of us business owners out here in the United States work in capitalism, and we don’t have connections to the big waves and the politicians. That’s right. That’s right. So I want to make that clear –

Richard Matthews 9:53
Voluntary equal exchange of value. It’s such a powerful thing. And again that’s why we run this show, it’s probably the same reason you run yours is like, Hey, we’re trying to change the conversation a bit and realize that one of the things that I think a lot of entrepreneurs, young entrepreneurs particularly struggle with, they struggle with this idea that capitalism is evil, and profit is evil and making money is evil. And because that’s what our culture tells them. And it’s not, it’s actually the exact opposite. It’s how the world works. It’s how we create value. It’s how we lift up those around us is by that equal voluntary exchange of value.

Jerry Brazie 10:28
I’ve never seen somebody turn down a raise. I’ve never heard of somebody turning down a raise. So if you’ve never turned down a raise, then I don’t want to hear about earning money is evil and the bad capitalists because unless you’ve turned down a raise, you’re all about making money too. And no one’s turned down a raise. So for me, we kind of all inherently want to have more money.

Richard Matthews 10:50
So I think that’s actually a really good, you know, pigtail into our next or dovetails what I meant into the next question I have, which is your driving force, right. So the flip side of your common enemy is your driving force. So just like Spider Man fights to save New York or Batman by saving Gotham or Google fights to index and categorize all the world’s information, what is it that you fight for personally, like you have a mission, what is it?

Jerry Brazie 11:13
What I’m doing right now. So years ago, as I started to become successful, I wanted to pay back where I come from and what I’ve done. And so I thought when I was a kid, I would get Christmas – Christmas for me was a box of sugar cereal wrapped in Christmas wrap. And I couldn’t wait to open that box. I knew it was a box of sugar cereal. I knew what was coming because we’d never get anything like that. So my little brother and I would grab the box and try to figure out what was in the box. And and and you know, what were we getting versus what was he getting? And that was a big deal. Something as simple as sugar cereal wrapped in Christmas wrap. Well, for me, Christmas has always meant something because it’s that time that I got this really special treat as a kid. And so I thought, Okay, I’m going to try to help families that need Help at Christmas to help kids kind of get the same kind of feeling of having a gift under the tree if you will. And so I I hired an outside firm and they found me 4 years in a row, 4 families and I said okay before I’m going to do this, I want to interview the families. I’m not going to just give my money. I want to interview the families. 3 of the 4 cases I went to the house, it’s two o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon and there sits the dad playing video games on the couch. And I said I can’t do this. I can’t I can’t help this. right this is not – if they won’t help themselves. I’m not gonna. That dad should have been working two jobs without a doubt. And he wasn’t. He was playing video games. So I said, that’s not really going to suit well for me. What can I do? So my way of giving back is to do exactly what I’m doing now is to, you know, again, give people access to somebody that and this again, always sounds self serving. I hate saying this, but to someone who has the experience that I have both growing up experience, workforce experience, and then ultimately, you know, growing and doing $500 million worth of revenue over 20 years. There’s not many of us out here and so I can help almost anybody and I talk with people all the time. And I give away my time for free because I want to help other people that want the same things that I want to be successful.

Richard Matthews 13:18
Absolutely, yeah. I love that. And it’s an interesting thing, right? So like you, you can’t help people who won’t help themselves. Right? And what’s interesting is about a medium like this is not something that you shove on people’s faces or something and they go looking for. And so they’re already in that mode of I want to help myself I can I can move forward and stuff like that and you can you can put your message out there actually help people. So I completely agree. And what’s funny is like you mentioned, you know, playing video games at two o’clock in the afternoon. I actually do that but only at this point because my son is ridiculously into Pokemon.

Jerry Brazie 13:59
But you’re not asking somebody else to buy Christmas gifts for your kids.

Richard Matthews 14:04
No, no, no, definitely not. But we are at that point where I have got my business down to such a point that I work about four hours a day, four days a week, and my staff takes care of everything else. So I have time to play video games with my kids and be there for them. That’s why I built my business. So that’s that’s where we’re at. But anyways, yeah, I love that. I love that that’s where you’re going with it. And it’s sort of, I’m not quite to that point in my business where I have a huge amount of experience. I’m still in the building. I’m on the path up, hopefully. But I’m just, you know, I just figured I’ve learned so much from people like you in my life, that I’ve gotten to a point where like, I already want to be sort of in the same boat where like, I’ve started that method, and I’ve started to have an audience of like, hey, how can how can we share more stories like that from other entrepreneurs, to realize that, you know, entrepreneurs are really what make the world go And we need to change that conversation and just understand sort of what it is that we’re actually trying to do and trying to accomplish. Because I think all the problems that we face in the world can be solved by more smart entrepreneurs coming in, and, you know, bringing their, their skills and their value to bear on the problems that we face.

Jerry Brazie 15:17
The thing about being an entrepreneur too is that you have to know. I mean, there’s a mindset that comes with it. And you got to understand that the beautiful thing about conversations is that you understand that there’s a broad range of entrepreneurs. And and for a lot of people, it may not be that an entrepreneur is your thing, but being that number two guy, and this is something that’s pretty popular out there, in the ether, that being that number two guy isn’t such a bad thing. So having all of that responsibility, but being able to put in the work and maybe earn some of that sweat equity is an option for you other than being that entrepreneur, but you’re still contributing. And the other thing too is there’s all different kinds of entrepreneurs and you need to know yourself. So, in my case, while I’m jealous of what you’re doing, that you can drive around and do that. I could never do that. I would go nuts. I’d go insane. I have to be working. I’m insane. And so the more I work, the more I enjoy it. And the more risk I take, the more I enjoy it. And the more time I put in, the more I enjoy it. But that’s my personality. And again, I’ve raised three kids, and I’ve never missed an event. And I’ve been to all the graduations, and I’ve never missed anything, but then I just go back to work. And so for me, that fits what my expectations are for my life. And so if you set those expectations for yourself as an entrepreneur, there are different levels to that, that doesn’t mean that you have to be the 500 million guy or the billion dollar guy. You can make a very nice living for yourself and you can do very well and be happy at almost any level that you set for yourself. So I don’t want to make it sound like you know – … I got to do 40 years because it’s not, it depends on what you want. Now don’t bitch about wanting to be a, you know, a 10 time millionaire, or a 20 time millionaire, but you’re not willing to do what it takes to become a 20 time millionaire. That’s kind of where I fall off from that, you know, I don’t want to hear you crying about it. But see you on vacations. I haven’t taken a vacation when I was 33 years old. And so I don’t want to hear about that. But there’s still there’s no reason not to jump in and just start mowing somebody’s lawn, you know, just just start, I don’t know, you know, the myriad of things that you can do to start a business.

Richard Matthews 17:36
We’ve talked about that on the show all the time. And the concept, I call it that knowing the monster you want to build. Building a business is like building a monster, right? Yeah. And and there are people who want to build the Apples and the Googles of the world, right, who want to build big giant businesses that have, you know, hundreds of thousands of employees and change the world. Right. And there’s people who like me, I’m building Building specifically a lifestyle business, right where I have a particular thing that I want to accomplish. And it does require having a staff. It does require building a pretty large substantial business. And it’s going to grow beyond where, like where I’m at. But like, you have to know what it is that you want in order to build a business that serves that. And what’s interesting is like, when I was younger, I had a thought in my head that like the thing that I wanted was I wanted to hit a million dollars in revenue. Right. And like, that’s the thing that I wanted. I was like, by the time I’m 30, I’ve made a 100 million dollars in revenue. And like, that’s the only thing that that I was focused on was like, I’m gonna get there. And what’s funny is like, along the path to that revenue thing, I hit a level of revenue where I didn’t care anymore. I was like, I can do all the things I want to do. Like I’m more interested in these other things. And so it became like, it was a switch where in my head I was like, I don’t – like that’s actually not what I want. And I have other things that I was looking to do and I shifted my business and shifted from the things that I was trying to go for. And what’s interesting is like, once I sort of – it was it was a struggle all the way up until that point where I realized what I actually wanted in life. And now my business is a lot easier. And it’s growing. And it’s actually far beyond where I was when I had that epiphany. And it’s funny because like you have you have to build a business that serves you as well as serve your clients and your customers and that kind of stuff. Otherwise, you know, it’s difficult to build and difficult to do those things. So funny because like, I don’t think you can just know, I think you have to, you have to sort of experience it and figure it out along the way, but you have to actually be in motion.

Jerry Brazie 19:37
That’s right. Right. Yeah, I’m driven my way and not everybody is driven that way, but doesn’t mean you can’t be an entrepreneur. We all are driven in different ways.

Richard Matthews 19:49
Cool. So I got a couple more questions at the end here. This one is my practical portion of the show. I call it the Hero’s Toolbelt just like every superhero has their tool belt with awesome gadgets like batarangs, or web slingers or laser eyes or whatever. We want to know the top one or two tools that you use in your business you couldn’t live without to, you know, accomplish what it is you do could be, you know, your notepad for thinking or your calendar, your marketing tools, you know, something that you use to produce and deliver, you know, a couple one or two things that you guys use every day to do what you do you couldn’t do without.

Jerry Brazie 20:20
So obviously, people are critical for me because that’s how I make my money. But specifically, I have an assistant, Brooke, that’s been with me for 20 years now. And I’m an – Richard, I’m an idiot. I mean, I literally am a functional idiot. I can’t remember a piece of paper if you set it in front of me. You know, I operate at a 30,000 foot view, I do not operate on the ground. And I have a lot of very good people that operate on the ground, my mind never stops. And that means that I literally am half retarded. So it’s it, it’s if I didn’t have good people around me, I’d really be in trouble. And so one in particular, she’d been with me for 20 years, you know, I barely know my social security number, she takes care of all of that. I don’t know where my checking accounts are. Again, I have people who do all these things for me so that I spend my time figuring out how to make money, I kind of made me sound like an asshole, I don’t even know what my bank account number is, but I don’t. Somebody does all of those things for me, so that I concentrate on doing my business and it takes a very special person that can do that. So for me, I would say that that number one, it would be my assistant. And then number two, throughout my company, I have great operations people and tech people and sales people. And I just kind of have to have conversations with them, but they’re on the ground, doing the hard work. So I don’t have a tool specifically. I mean, I use Outlook like anybody else and an Excel spreadsheet and all the rest of those things, but it’s really the people that I can use to exploit those tools that bring all the value.

Richard Matthews 21:55
So that’s actually a really interesting discussion because I’m at the beginning part of that in my business. Right, I’ve just – we’re a four person team right now, right? You know, two years ago I was, one person on a team, it was me. And I have gotten to that point, I know you were probably there, you know, at some point when you started your business where you’re hiring and getting these people started. And I’ve sort of come to that realization, right? I operate the best at that 30,000 foot view, right? Where I’m like, Hey, here’s what I want to do, here’s how it’s going to get done. And like figuring out how we’re going to solve problems and building the systems that help us solve those problems. That’s where I shine and when it comes to like, okay, as soon as I’ve got like, the solution in my head, of how it’s gonna happen, I lose interest. I just don’t care anymore. Right. And so my problem is I have liked or used to be my problem was the implementation after you solve the problem is cause I just don’t care to implement. That’s just not the thing that I want to do. Like I solved the problem. I had the big idea. I had the thing. We got a way to get it done. So bringing in people that actually do the things that are good at the minutia, that are good at doing like you called it on the ground work is such a potent aspect of learning where you fit into your business? And how you can operate that. So, for those of us who are, you know, haven’t got there yet or who are just starting like me, what’s your advice for bringing on those types of people and how you bring people on to help do that on the ground work to help you grow your business?

Jerry Brazie 23:27
What’s your question? Specifically how to bring them on? Or why would you bring them on?

Richard Matthews 23:30
How do you how do you bring them on like what are sort of like your what’s your advice for the people part of the business when you’re at the beginning the beginning stages of bringing people on and like, who are the types of people that you should be bringing on first in those early stages of business where you’re like, hey, I need to get someone other than myself.

Jerry Brazie 23:49
So you hit on it. And I thought about this way back when we were talking about the guy told you to hire somebody, because that’s why that hits so close to home because when I was 33 years old – let me think I’m 51. When I was 31 years old, I was told I needed to hire an assistant. I’ve been in a CEO group for 20 years, the same kind of mastermind group. And it’s been – I was the young guy then and now I’m the guy that’s giving the advice 20 years later, and everybody was in their 50s when I joined, and it’s a great group. And I would encourage anybody that wants to, they should go and find one of these groups. So they encouraged me though, they encouraged me to find an assistant. And because I was sitting there, I don’t remember specifically bitching about, you know, how long it takes to pay my bills, or to spend time doing things that weren’t making money. And I never thought about it in terms of finding somebody. And so like you, when I hired her – it was very hard for me to give up too, again, that whole ego street kid, I can do everything kind of mantra, and she was like it’s dumb for you to be doing this. You’re going to make exponentially more money. You’re going to do things that I can’t do and no one else in the company can do. You need to go do what you do, and let me do these things. And so she was 100% right. So as soon as you can afford it, maybe even before you can afford it, you don’t know what you’re missing spending time on things that don’t help grow your business. And if you’re paying your bills, that’s not growing your business, right? If you’re the one worrying about payroll, you’re not growing your business. You want to worry about to the extent that you can, depending on how big you are, how to grow your business. There are a lot of services out there that will do a lot of this work at very reasonable prices for small businesses. And so I would encourage anyone that they can to figure out how to find that person that can help, they’re either a service or a person that can take those kinds of responsibilities away from you that don’t earn you any money and just concentrate on the things that earn you money. So a great example is an operation. You know, we do 10s of millions of dollars at this size. I’ll bet on any given year, I make half a million dollars just from keeping the operation straight. Right. So if I’m overspending by 100 bucks over here, and I cut it out, that’s 2100 dollars a month, right? Well, that’s pretty easy. I just made 25 grand a year by finding this hundred dollar mistake. And so I want to be spending my time and effort and energy as an example on those sorts of things, making the company even more money, but that might just be running away because I’m busy paying the bills, or I’m busy doing payroll, or any of those things, I might miss a sales call because I’m I’m dealing with things that aren’t germane to meet growing that business. So that would be my advice as soon as you can, and don’t think you have to hire somebody because there are services as I said, that help dilute the cost to you. That can still help you do some of the things that you’re going to waste your time doing, just because you can do it doesn’t mean you should and too often as entrepreneurs, I think it’s people generally but specifically as entrepreneurs, because we can we think we should and that’s exactly the wrong way to go about it.

Richard Matthews 27:16
Yeah, absolutely. And I know, one of my – a couple of the other ladies in our entrepreneur group, one thing that she mentioned to me is like, She’s like, now that you have someone in your team, you need to start looking at how a CEO operates? And they operate at the high levels in their business, like what are the things that CEOs work on, and they work on things like systems and operations. They work on things like sales and vision and like the big things that move the company forward. And she’s like, if you’re not doing those things, you’re not doing the high level activities you’re doing. If you’re doing the minutia, you’re not operating like a CEO and you’re not, you’re not ever going to grow, right, you’re doing things that you should have people that are trying to do those things.

Jerry Brazie 28:02
Yeah, I’ll push back on that a little bit. I don’t necessarily disagree with that. But I would say that you need to have a good mix. So maybe it’s 75. I’m not one of these 75%-25% I’m not one of these guys that says work on your business, not in your business. I don’t think that’s true. I’ve known 40-50 multi million dollar companies that I’ve been intimately involved with. And I’ve known $500 million companies, this is yearly revenue, that I work with all the time on an almost weekly basis. And so I have insight into a broad swath of businesses in all different industries. And the one constant in all of them is that owners are involved in those businesses. So you’d like to say go work on the business and have people take care of that hundred dollar thing like I’m talking about, but as owners, no one is going to care. And this is we’re talking about, you know, businesses at some reasonable size. Nobody’s going to care about it the way that you do. And so if you’re reluctant to step down on that floor, and actually see how that gets done, and figure out how that work gets done, don’t do it. But figure out how it is to have a conversation with those people who understand what’s happening, encourage where you need to, change what you might need to. Jerry, I count on other people to do it. Yep, you’re right, train them. When you learn about how you would want it done relative to how they’re doing it. I just mean that for me, all these years later, and all of these businesses, I’m not a work on your business. I work in your business, at least 25%. So a 75-25 mix.

Richard Matthews 29:46
Yeah, so I think we’re probably in agreement. I just didn’t speak well in that area. So like when I say like your systems and processes like that’s the CEO level role, where you go and you actually see what the work is being done and how it’s getting done. And you can bring to bear your skill as the entrepreneur to say, hey, like, this is inefficient here, here’s how we need to document this, here’s where you need to do that. That’s one of the important CEO level skills is to be able to go into the business in any area, and understand how you can improve those processes and put them together and make them better. Right. So I think I think it’s probably the same thing, you just said it better than I did.

Jerry Brazie 30:22
Yeah. And I think I’m sensitive to that, because so much I see on social media is, you know, you don’t know what you’re doing. If you’re gonna be a CEO, and you’re not working on your business instead of in your business. You’re doing it all wrong. And I was like, Okay, I, you know, again, I’ve only done a dozen businesses and 500 million, and I’m telling you, that doesn’t work for me and I know 40 other businesses that it doesn’t work for either, but go ahead and listen to the guy who wrote a book.

Richard Matthews 30:47
Yeah. I agree, pretty much completely on that. And I just, it’s one of those things that like you have you have the other side where people are like they’re only working in their business and they need to learn –

Jerry Brazie 31:00
Correct. That’s not healthy either.

Richard Matthews 31:01
They need to learn how to learn how to work on it. And one of the things that, like in my head, the way that I’ve been thinking about it lately is like, the thing that you need to be doing in your business is you need to be understanding the processes, and understanding the people who are putting the processes in place, understand how they’re documented and where and like, where and how they work. So you can like, that’s the visionary part of the CEO is like, how is the business system. And that’s the thing that you need to be doing in your business all the time.

Jerry Brazie 31:27
And not discounting how important your presence is. So, again, as somebody that’s humble and comes from nothing, I don’t think I’m any better than anybody else. And I’ve learned now over the years, but it’s very different. One of the things that was very difficult for me to comprehend was how I’m viewed because I’m not, again, I’m that kid from the street. I didn’t ever forget that no matter how old I get. And so I’ve realized the power of of my presence, that you’re the boss, that you’re in charge, that you sign the checks, and even though they may never see you, there is value in you being out there on the floor and they see you working on how their machine works or how they’re routed out or whatever how they do their sorts or whatever it is, and that they see every now and then has a lot of value to then the product that they are producing. The work –

Richard Matthews 32:18
Absolutely. So just out of curiosity, with a company as large as yours, how do you go about establishing and keeping the culture and the values that you want to have in the company?

Jerry Brazie 32:29
Yeah, that is it’s easier to do. I don’t want to make it sound easy. In context here. It’s easier to do when in a market where employees are more plentiful. It’s harder to do when it’s harder to get employees because you’re hanging on to employees that aren’t part of that personality of your company, if you will. And so there are challenges employee wise that you may keep even though they’re not going along with what you’re trying to get done that will really inhibit trying to set those policies and try to set that standard. And so, in a low employment environment, it can be much harder to do than in a high unemployment, I should say environment high, but you know, in a reasonably unemployed environment where you have more employees that are available. For a lot of businesses, I think that turnover can be healthy because not everybody will work within the system that you’re trying to put together. And so for me, I’ve been working with the same group of people. My employees have been with me for 30 years, going back to the company that I dispatched at. So I have employees that I’ve worked together with for 30. My management crew’s been together for 21 years. We’re 22 years old. And so it’s really a tight knit group, but what we learn is that we hang on To people way too long. And in trying to set that standard, it will slow it down one person out of 50 that might slow it down, as opposed to getting 49 people working on the same page.

Richard Matthews 34:14
Absolutely. Yeah. So that’s just a selfish question at the beginning of that and trying to establish the team and the culture and that kind of stuff. I think we’re doing a pretty good job because our teams get along really well and do cool things. But yeah, it’s interesting to like, sort of figure out like, that wasn’t a thing that I was aware, I had to even think about, right until you hire people. You’re like, well, now I’ve got like a company and we have to have a company culture and like, we have values and things like that, that we want to establish and get going through the company.

Jerry Brazie 34:40
Obviously, the bigger it gets, the harder that gets.

Richard Matthews 34:43
Yeah, yeah, I could see that happening already. So we’ll see how it goes. So I got a couple more questions for you. Next one is pretty simple, right? We call it you’re your own personal heroes, right? Every hero has their mentors. You know, it’s like Frodo had Gandalf or Luke had Obi Wan or Robert Kiyosaki had his Rich Dad. Who were some of your heroes? Were they real life mentors, speakers, authors, you know, peers who are a couple years ahead of you and how important were they to what you’ve accomplished so far in your life?

Jerry Brazie 35:07
So when I was – this is a little bit different. When I was going through that nose broken, went blind process. I was 14-15 years old. I was in the seventh grade, and I got introduced to a youth pastor. Steve Paulson is his name and he came into my life at the perfect time. And what he did is – my sister died, I went blind. My family picked up and moved to Montana my my parents freaked out and they wanted out of Portland. And, you know, this is where their daughter died and off they go and they packed up as younger kids, the older kids were all older. They wanted to pack up as younger kids and take us all to Montana. So my little brother and my little sister went. I was like, I’m not going. I’ll just stay here and so he took me in. He took me in. I lasted about nine months before I wore out my Welcome. So the guy who didn’t even really know me that well, but out of the kindness of his heart took me in. He had two daughters. One was about 4 or 5 years younger than me, and maybe 6 or 7 years younger than me, him and his wife, and they were the youth pastor or they were youth pastors. And he took me to ball games, to softball games, and he played catch with me. I remember the first morning of school, she hands me my lunch box, which was one of these industrial lunch boxes that you see the construction guys have, you know, that you could live out of if it was a suitcase. And it was so heavy. I remember this very clearly right there in their little kitchen, and I opened it and in the top of it where you put the thermos was an entire jar of canned peaches. So I immediately go to Okay, how do I split this lunch up? Right? Who just so I know when lunchtime comes at school? Who do I give this to? Because I assume I’m carrying everybody’s lunch. No, that was my lunch, and it’s certainly the biggest lunch I had up until then. It was a sandwich if I was lucky with peanut butter in the middle of some crappy wheat bread. And so I had this big – I had this big lunch. So all of those things were very endearing. And I got to see how a father acted towards his wife and towards his towards his kids and towards me, and it just gave me a view that there was a different life out there than the one that I had become so jaded about and the one that I had seen, and it was a perfect time in my life, because I wasn’t willing to accept it, but I saw. you know, again, I had just gone blind, my sister just died. I was just a nightmare. And I lasted like I said, about nine months before the cops, you know, come knocking on the door, and and and out I go, but I talked about that. It wasn’t a hockey stick. But I like to think that I skipped off the water if you will. And I started, you know, just kind of slowly going in a different direction and it probably was one of those epiphanies or that epiphany at 28 which was Probably the culmination of what started at 14 or 15 years old, by him, giving me advice and just showing me what normal life can look like. That kept me probably out of more trouble and I’ll give you a specific one. He taught me the stories and taught me about Christian values, and then showed me how those work. You know, I’ve been preached that my whole life, I knew that very well. But he, you know, practiced what he preached. And somewhere I’m maybe 17-18-19 years old. I’m on the street and in two different times, I had gotten into fights in downtown Portland, and I had my boot up. The fights over, I had my boot up and I was going to bring it crashing down. I had two different instances that this happened, crashing down on the guy’s head, going way too far. But you know, I’m enraged and full of testosterone. I’m 18 year old street kid. And something a little voice on the side – It was actually here on my right side, a little voice goes off and said, don’t do it. And this is, Richard, with my foot up in the air getting ready because I’d have killed the guy. And it said, don’t do it. That’s enough. That’s far enough. Stop right there. And so I like to think that that person kept me out of prison. Kept me out of possibly killing somebody or multiples of somebody and really put me on that path that then at 28 years old, I was able to realize and kind of take off from there. So for me, it would be this youth pastor that came across my path when I was in the seventh grade.

Richard Matthews 39:33
That’s a really cool story too. Having someone who can give you a glimpse of what life could be like, right? even if you didn’t accept it, at that point, you have an idea of like, Hey, this is where you could be. And I was really lucky that the person for me was my dad, right? He gave me a really good picture of what life could be like. right because he lived a life like yours right where he grew up poor and grew up struggling and grew up a lot of those things. So I had that nice juxtaposition of all of his stories growing up, versus what we had. And knowing knowing where I could go from there. So anyways, it’s interesting to see how that plays out for different people, right? Because my wife grew up really really poor as well, like, you know, lived in houses without plumbing. And you know, they ate from the chickens who put the eggs out. If they didn’t have chickens, they wouldn’t have eaten kind of poor. And it wasn’t until she married me and she became, you know, a middle class wife that like we still to this day, like I just barely gotten her to the point where she’s like, she’ll spend money like go get her hair done and stuff like that. And not look at the right side of the menu when she’s when she’s ordering.

Jerry Brazie 40:43
I know that so well. Go find the cheapest thing at a restaurant. I could tell you the cheapest. For years, I could have told you what the cheapest thing is on a menu because that’s what I ordered. Absolute. Grilled cheese typically is the cheapest thing on the menu. Because if I was ever at a restaurant, that’s what I ordered. I know that one very well.

Richard Matthews 41:00
Yeah, yeah. And it’s one of those things that I’ve had to help educate my wife a little bit because she grew up poor and I grew up middle class and like, we’re at a place now where our business is doing pretty well. We’re not struggling by any stretch of the imagination, and I’m like, trying to help encourage her that like, hey, part of the reason we work is so you can enjoy the fruits of our labor. And and like you’re allowed to go get your hair done if you want to go get your hair done. You’re allowed to, you know, order the thing you want on the menu instead of the thing you think we can afford.

Jerry Brazie 41:27
Yeah, I think I’ll jump on that, at that point there and add to it by saying the other misnomer or the other thing that gurus all tell us is that you shouldn’t have that BMW, you shouldn’t have that car, you shouldn’t have that expense. And I say bs to all of that. I’m the guy with the Lamborghini on his wall. You know, the Khun Tosh in the 80s, and the Diablo in the early 90s. I’m a huge car nut. And so the first opportunity I had in 2004, actually in about 2001-2002, Ford announced that they were coming out with what they call the Ford GT 40. The Ford, it’s their little supercar that they made and they were about $160,000. 2002 they announced it. And so 2003 I told my brothers, I’m going to own one of those. So I’m going to get one of those. Now, I was no closer to that than flying to the moon in 2003. But I mean, it took me up to another level of work and I bought a brand new one in 2006. So in three years, I went from not being able to afford $160,000 car to I bought $160,000 car and $135,000 car in the same year, because for me, that’s the fruit of my labor and it made me work that much harder. I don’t know if I would have been as successful or had been in businesses as long or sacrifice the way that I did that I did or I do had I not bought those things that I had to then pay for, but that I really wanted that really paid off all of that kind of seeing that stuff on On television as a kid, and living through the life that I lived through, and this was the ultimate payoff. So for me, I’m not one of those guys that says, Don’t go buy your toy. I’m 100% into going and buying your toy, because in a way those toys put me here. They kept me here, I should say, they made me do things I wouldn’t have otherwise done.

Richard Matthews 43:18
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Jerry Brazie 44:48
So for me, I’m not one of those guys that says don’t go buy your toy. I’m 100% into going and buying your toy because in a way those toys put me here, they kept me here I should say, they made me do things I wouldn’t have otherwise done.

Richard Matthews 45:02
It’s really interesting and this is where I think a lot of people miss. They miss the value of that. right that you are building something in order to achieve a goal – something that you want. right and the way that you do that is you have to go out and got to provide more value in your business. you have to serve more customers at a higher level than you know to a higher degree in order to get that result right. The way that you earned that car was by giving more value to more people. You raised the lives of everyone that you work with from your clients to your employees to everything that went into that and it’s a it’s a you know, it’s a trinket that comes on the other side of it right for me it was you know, the things that I wanted my life is I want to travel … right like those are the things that I do. And so like when we started we paid cash for a small little RV and then we were going around. Then we bought this one a couple years later as we grew our business and it’s a big 40 foot bus that you know it’s crazy cool and awesome like that and we go to restaurants all over the country. And, you know, order the nice things on the menu and like, that’s what I wanted to do with my life. Yeah. And so like, that’s my Lamborghini, right?

Jerry Brazie 46:08
Yes. And that’s the benefit to the entrepreneurial side. You know, there’s this whole school of thought about, live frugally and save money. If you save money, I think that’s stupid. But I mean, live frugally, and save money. And when you retire, then you’re rich. And I think god damn, by the time I retire, it’s too late to spend it. It’s too late to have any fun. I was a millionaire at 33. It took 16-18 hour days for a decade to really cement that and a ton of risk. I mortgaged my house three different times to finance the company. I almost went out of business. I don’t know how many times I’ve made seven figure mistakes. So I’ve made mistakes that cost me seven figures more than once. So you survive all of those things and you keep your business pushing forward and you keep doing those things. I’m not working to be rich at 65, I want to change my life at 35 or 40. I’m not saying go out and buy way more than you can afford, I was buying what I could afford. But at the same time, the argument could be made that I would have been better served taking that money and using it in the business. And I just don’t think I would be here if I didn’t reward myself for all of that crazy hard work and all of that insane risk that I took on. And for me, that wasn’t a big fancy house. I mean, I live in a nice house now but I didn’t forever. I lived in the same house for years and years and years. For me, it was cars so I have a big 4500 square foot shop and I own 20 some vehicles and I drive every one of them and that’s that’s the payback to myself for all of this hard work. So I’m not one of those guys that says don’t go buy something stupid. I’m all about going and buying something stupid because I don’t know it’s one of the best ways to push yourself in business that I can … short of having a family.

Richard Matthews 47:59
I agree. Yeah. Like I remember the first RV that we bought to travel, when I got I got in the car with my family to go buy it. It was gonna be a three and a half day drive before we got there to where the RV was. I did not have the money to buy it before I got there. And my wife was like, Are you insane? And I was like, No, I’m gonna earn it between now in there, you’ll drive. I’ll figure out how to come up with money there. And by the time we got to the driveway where I purchased the RV, I had cash in hand to pay for the RV.

Jerry Brazie 48:25
I love that story.

Richard Matthews 48:26
Yeah, like, that’s how entrepreneurship works. Right. And that is done. Right. And like the client that that happened because of like, they’re still my client today, right, like four years later. And they have paid me in terms of revenue, probably, I don’t know, 14 or 15 times more than the cost of that RV when we bought it. Like but that’s and we’ve turned that company, they’re doing $120,000 a month in sales on Amazon right now, because of the work that we did because of that and like so they’re serving clients all over the world. And you know, it for me it was a thing I wanted right? But what happens in the world is you’re raising that tide right you’re raising the tide of everyone going out and so I think that the trinkets are an important part of actually growing and expanding and building our world and changing the world for the better. I agree. So I got one last question for you and you know hopefully bringing up the end of this incredibly fascinating conversation is your guiding principle, right. So one of the things that makes heroes heroic is that they live by a code. For instance, Batman never killed his enemies, he always brings them to Arkham Asylum. So as we wrap up this interview, I want to talk about the top one or two principles that you regularly use in your life, maybe something you wish you’d known when you first started out on your own hero’s journey.

Jerry Brazie 49:48
The first one I would say, is one that is more of a detriment than it is an asset, but it has also been an asset and that is that I am fiercely loyal. So again, I always refer, and I’ve referred to it, God knows how many times in this interview, that I’m a kid from the street. And when you’re a kid from the street, on the street, people who have your back are invaluable. And so I have friends from there that I still have to this day. And we’re thick as thieves, we’re strong as can be.

And we rarely see each other. And so it forms these bonds. And so that loyalty that comes from having people that have your back literally from stopping harm to happen to you, is very strong. And I’m kind of fascinated by the fact that all these years later and I live this great lifestyle, that that those those those those things have taken such route that they’re still in my in my mind, and I still have those same habits and so I’ve let people work for me far too long, and to the detriment of me, and to the detriment detriment To them as it turns out strictly out of some sort of belief that I needed to be as loyal as I can because they were loyal to me. Now the flip side to that is that I have people that I have been loyal to, and I have taken care of, and with all of them money is something that follows it doesn’t lead. And so they have raised kids and sent them to private schools. And my kids have gone to private school. We’ve kind of done this together. We’ve been together for all of these years. And so in terms of in terms of a positive and a negative, I think I would do a disservice if I pointed it out only as a positive, that loyalty. Because that loyalty could work against me. But I’d say that’s probably that’s probably number one guiding principle is just to the extent that I can I try to be loyal. On a more on a more on the ground basis,

I never asked anybody to do anything I won’t do myself. So I bring in a service to clean the bathrooms because I won’t clean bathrooms and from the first day when I couldn’t even – I did three orders on my first day in business. And in that first month, I was cleaning bathrooms. And I hated it. And probably for the first couple months, it’s been 22 years. But I remember specifically in the beginning doing the bathrooms, and I was like, this sucks. I hate doing bathrooms. And so I said, I’m not gonna – I’m gonna have somebody come in and do bathrooms as soon as we can afford it. And then because I will not ask somebody else to do something that I won’t do myself. That doesn’t mean that I’m out working on the floor, you know, certain whatever. But I have done it. Right. I’ve done every job there is. And I’m not opposed to doing any of those jobs. And so in that context, that keeps me connected to the employees, keeps me connected to the job and keeps me connected to the business. And so asking somebody to do something I wouldn’t do myself is probably something that I would not do.

Richard Matthews 52:48
Yeah, it’s actually fascinating. I think I follow the same kind of rule in my house with my kids and like raising them is like, I don’t ask my kids to do anything I’m not willing to do but at the same time, I also have things that like, I’m not willing to do that I make my kids do. Like one of my agreements is like we have – my poodle just came in and sat down next to me. I got a big, big Standard Poodle that my kids wanted, right? They wanted this dog and I was like I got one rule. I spent my whole childhood cleaning up poop if I have to clean up the poop the dog goes away, right? Like I’m not doing it. And so it’s it’s kind of a funny thing like I will clean up his poop if I have to like for things like that, but it’s one of those like, I will occasionally show my kids that I will but for the most time I’m like, Hey, your dog, you take care of responsibilities. Yeah, definitely applies all the way through my whole business. And it’s one of the things that I’ve got a lot of my staff now the things that they’re working on, is I’ll hop in and work together with them on those things. And be like, Where where are you here? What are the problems and you know, I come in and help make it better and like we do a company meeting every week where I’m like, Hey, what are the projects that you’re working on? And how can you know how can I help support them and like, you know, generally we’ll try to pick something and I’ll come in and and see if I can help them make it better, easier, faster, automate portions of it for them so they can do their job to a better higher degree. So yeah, I completely agree you have to be willing to do all the things you have your employees doing or they’re not They’re not going to respect you.

Jerry Brazie 54:10
And this is a little bit off subject but you made me think about this as you were talking, and I alluded to this a second ago where I’ve said I’ve made seven figure mistakes. I don’t want to make it sound from an entrepreneurial perspective and a business owner’s perspective, that this has been something that’s just gone great. And I’ve just done it for the most part perfectly. I hope I am portraying the difficulty I mean, I’ve made more mistakes employee wise and and work wise, operationally sales wise, real estate wise. You know, again, this is just how you learn. No one can teach you this. School won’t ever teach you this. You learn this stuff on the fly. So I don’t want to make it sound like I have all of the answers. I only have the answers because I’ve gone through the experiences and been wrong and had to eat it and fix it. And I’m talking about multiple seven figure mistakes that have just cost me millions of dollars. And it seems amazing that that could even happen. I don’t know how the hell are you still in business, Jerry making those kinds of mistakes. Well get up in the morning, you put your foot on – I mean, again, it’s cliche. You put your feet on the floor, and you go to work. I had, back in 2004, I almost lost the business. I ended up dropping both of my largest customers. I took the business from 14 million to 8 million dollars a year in one month, because I just couldn’t get my hands around and I wasn’t making any money at 14 million. I had a $400,000 payroll due on Monday and I turned the lights or I ended the day at five o’clock on Friday night with zero money in the bank. Now, I don’t remember specifically how I got through that one. But let me tell you that you want to talk about a short weekend. That’s a short weekend. So I just want to, I want to stress how difficult it is, but how rewarding It can also be. And I worry when I am just dispensing advice or giving stories out left and right, I sound like, Oh shit, that’s a guy that’s got everything together. I suppose at this point, I got a lot more things together than I would, then I did otherwise. And that’s why you and I are talking. But this is by no means a perfect game entrepreneurship and I rarely will try to give my opinion on anything that I haven’t actually lived through or experienced.

Richard Matthews 56:35
Yeah, it’s one of those lessons that’s really hard to learn. And I’ve actively been trying to teach my oldest son the idea that failure is like they’re the stepping stones to greatness. Right. And it’s a phrase I use all the time in my family. And so I mentioned earlier, he’s into Pokemon right now. So we’ve got the, they’ve got a trading card game. It’s a strategy game and he’s actually started to get really good at it and One of the things I keep pointing out to him is like I don’t I don’t play easy. When I play with him I play at the top of my game, and I’m pretty damn good at some of these strategy games. And so like the other like, last week, he beat me for the first time. And like he was completely elated. But like, it was an interesting thing for him to both realize that like, hey, and I was like, so what did you learn when you won? And he was like, nothing, right? Like it was it was like, you don’t win any – you don’t learn anything when you win. Because like one of the things we’ve been doing is every time he would lose is we were like, where did it go wrong? Like, where did you fail? How can we change it? What was the weakness? Like Where was the problem and the strategy? How could you have changed that? like there’s things to talk about. But when he wins, like he’s like, what do you do? And he’s like, I don’t I don’t know what to do from here. I was like like, that’s the whole point that we’ve been getting across and like it clicked for him and like in over the next couple of weeks He’s been making a lot of changes to his strategy and things like that, because like it wasn’t it wasn’t thinking in until they had his first big win. But like what I’ve been doing is trying to help teach him that like, hey, losing is how you improve. And now like, he plays the game with me and like at the end of the game, like the thing that he is so excited for is our little debrief we do at the end of the game where he’s like, he’s like, okay, so like, this is where the weakness was, and like this is where – like, and and now, like, he’s he’s beating me like, 30% of the time now. And he’s not excited by that anymore. Like, he’s more excited by like he’s like, you need to up your game dad because I need to lose more.

Jerry Brazie 58:27
Yeah, the other piece of advice I would give along those lines for business that goes against popular theory here. That has been my experience across my career is that I concentrate on what I’m not good at, not what I’m good at. So I save myself and make myself more money by knowing what I’m not good at and working on that by either finding somebody to do it. When you’re good at something. When you make money. You feel satisfied. When you lose money. You want to blow the world up. The problem is you should want to blow the world up when you make money so that you can make more money or make sure you’re doing things as efficiently as you can. But making money makes you soft, so that it’s easy when you’re making money. It’s hard when you’re not making money and it makes you do the right things when it’s hard and you’re not making money.

And so I stress to any entrepreneur, particularly the younger folks, concentrate on what you’re not good at. What you’re good at will take care of itself. It always does, it’ll come naturally, you’ll be able to do it. It’s what you’re not good at, that’s going to bite you. It’s what you’re not good at that’s going to get you. Now that goes against, you know a lot of the gurus out there are going to say something completely different. And as I always say I can only give you the benefit of having done it with these hands over 22 years and that’s been my experience. Concentrate on what you’re not good at and work on that because what you’re good at will take care of itself.

Richard Matthews 59:50
I agree completely. So I’ve got – that basically is a wrap on our interview. I finish every interview with a simple challenge. I call this the Hero’s Challenge and you basically, it’s a selfish thing I do because it helps us get access to more cool stories that we might never find on our own. So the question is pretty simple. You have someone in your life or in your network that you think has a cool entrepreneurial story. Who are they? First names are fine if you don’t have their permission. And why do you think they should come share their story on our show?

Jerry Brazie 1:00:17
So I have a buddy of mine, Mark, and Mark worked in the food industry. He works for Knott’s Berry Farm’s food, they have a whole jam.

Richard Matthews 1:00:27
Yeah, I love Knott’s Berry Farm jams.

Jerry Brazie 1:00:29
Yeah. And he worked for them. And one of his food processors, a company out here in Oregon, was going bankrupt. And he stepped in and the owners financed the business for him. And he took on a failing business and he thought he could win doing it. He had owner financing, so there was no money out of his pocket. This has been 15 years ago. He’s part of the group that I belong to. Maybe 20 years, 20 years probably. And over the next 10 to 12 to 15 years that guy suffered through turning this company around. Ultimately, he ended up selling the business to one of his customers. And then he ended up selling the real estate under the business to that same customer a couple of years later. And he now owns 400 apartment buildings that he took the money that he made the millions that he made there and put it towards apartment buildings and brings in close to a seven figure cash flow income per year from his apartment buildings. And so he’s older than I am, 20 years or so older than I am. But I appreciate again, that’s the 30,000 foot view on that story. But you can get the amount of work and the risk and the effort and the energy that he took. It was a food processor. It was an international food processor’s food processors, and he was able to turn that business around and ultimately made multiples of $10 million.

Richard Matthews 1:01:53
That is really cool. Yeah, we’ll see if we can connect later and get him on the show and and hear his story. That’s really cool. Yeah. So for our send off, you see, you know, in comic books, there’s always the crowd who’s, you know, clapping and cheering on the act of heroism. So as we close, I just want to know from you, where can people find you if they want your help in the future? You know, where can they light up the Bat Signal so to speak, if they want to hear more from you, and more importantly, who are the right types of people to reach out and say, Hey, you know, Jerry, I’d love to have a chat with you or hear your podcast or whatever. Where can they find you?

Jerry Brazie 1:02:23
So they can Jerry Brazie, will get you everywhere you need to go. Go to http://jerrybrazie.com/ and you can get to Instagram and Twitter and Facebook and all of that. And so Jerry Brazie or http://jerrybrazie.com/ . Also on Facebook, I have a group of the successful mindset that I’ve just started here a few months ago, and I’m looking for people who are looking for this kind of knowledge, you get direct access to me, it costs nothing, and to everybody else involved. And I’m just trying to – like many of these groups trying to get conversation started and answers and kind of here’s what I’m thinking on a current day event or from business perspective, here’s the thoughts that I have. And I’m looking for in and out, back and forth. So we just started that up. There’s a couple hundred people in it now. And it’s called A Successful Mindset so that you could go there too, but like I said, Jerry Brazie on Twitter and Instagram, it’s all under my name. And then the people that are looking for is I’m looking for anyone that’s looking to find success. Defined however you define success. I think the same rules that apply to a successful businessman apply to whatever else you want to be successful in, in your life, be that your marriage or your kids or your life or home or family or mom and dad or whatever it happens to – school – no matter what it is. And so I think those lessons apply. So anybody that’s really trying to better yourself and and think that you might be able to learn something from my experience that’s the people that I’m looking for, in particular though, as I said, guys and girls with backgrounds like mine, I just want you to know what’s possible. And I want you to know that it’s hard contrary to what you’re seeing in popular media, but that if you have questions about what to do, I am happy to help and to all the middle class folks and above, you don’t have to come from a tough background to be a successful entrepreneur. You don’t need the kind of inspiration and push that I had as an example. In fact, I’m the rarity. And so the same things that I can teach you are going to probably come a lot easier to you than they did to me or they did to others that come from the streets the way that I did. And so really, anybody that’s trying to improve themselves, wants to be successful, may not really be able to help you if you’re just looking if you want to, you know, make more money and be more successful in business. I’ve been married for 25 years so I can give you my advice on that. But really that kind of advice. That’s that’s who I’m trying to reach and Just tell people what’s possible by telling a bunch of stupid stories about a kid who grew up in northeast Portland.

Awesome. Well, you know, Jerry, it has been a fantastic interview. I think today, this is probably the longest interview we’ve done on The HERO Show. So I will probably have to give you a little badge for that or something. But anyways, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story. It’s been really fascinating. And before we hit this little stop record button, do you have any final words of wisdom to share with the audience?

You know what, don’t fall Don’t fall into believing these things are cliche, the things that we talk about, the stuff that you hear, we talked about this earlier, the only way to be – you want success? You need two things in particular, you need to be willing to work hard and critical think those two things together, above everything else. You need other tools. But those two tools in particular are why I’m sitting in front of you kind of dispensing the stories that I am.

Richard Matthews 1:05:55
Gotta be willing to work harder than everyone else around you. So again, thank you so much for coming on here. Really appreciate it.

Jerry Brazie 1:06:01
Absolutely. Thanks, Richard.