Episode 210 – Kurt Uhlir

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Automated Transcription

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[00:00:00] I think for the most part that superpower has been finding and cultivating ideas from the people you least likely expect them to come from. What I mean by that it’s like we started 25 internal companies within that company that I mentioned, and about half of those ideas did not come from our product teams or innovation teams.

[00:00:19] They came from somebody like our front desk, office manager that had an idea that was like, and you just kind of cultivated and pull that idea out because they have a different approach about looking at things. And often there are people in the companies that everybody else it’s not that from a position level that people disregard them.

[00:00:36] But from an expertise level perspective, people don’t look to many positions for solutions in other areas of the company. And I’ve had this unique ability to always kind of go outside of the core expert areas and find unique solutions that existed within the company and teams, but nobody else was listening to somebody, raising a hand going, I hav an idea.

[00:01:00] Heroes are an inspiring group of people. Every one of them from the larger than life comic book heroes, you see on the big silver screen, the everyday heroes that let us live the privileged lives we do. Every hero has a story to tell from the doctor is saving lives at your local hospital. The war veteran down the street, who risked his life for our freedom to the police officers and the firefighters who risk their safety to ensure ours, every hero is special and every story worth telling.

[00:01:19] But there was one class of heroes that I think is often ignored, the entrepreneur, the creator, the producer, the ones who look at the problems in this world and think to themselves, you know what? I can fix that, I can help people. I can make a difference and they go out and do exactly that by creating a new product or introducing a new service, some go on to change the world.

[00:01:35] Others make a world of difference to their customers. Welcome to The Hero Show. Join us as we pull back the masks on the world’s finest hero preneurs and learn the secrets to their powers, their success and their influence. So you can use those secrets to attract more sales, make more money and experience more freedom in your business. I’m your host, Richard Matthews, and we are on in 3, 2, 1.

[00:01:56] Hello and welcome back to the Hero Show, my name is Richard Matthews, and today I have Kurt Uhir here on the line. Did I pronounce that right?

[00:02:01] Uhir, but close enough.

[00:02:03] I should’ve checked with you ahead of time. I normally do. So Kurt Uhir, where are you calling in from today?

[00:02:07] Atlanta, georgia.

[00:02:08] Atlanta, Georgia. Have you guys started getting the warm weather there yet?

[00:02:11] Very warm, very warm. We have some mountain property north of the state. That’s nice to go to. Cause it’s about 10 to 15 degrees cooler usually.

[00:02:18] Yeah, my family and I decided we would take a trip up the Rockies from Colorado all the way up to glacier national parks.

[00:02:25] We were in glacier last week and it’s like last week of May and it’s still at 80 feet of snow on the ground up there and they got roads closed and I’m like, it’s almost June. What is this? So we’re in Western Wyoming today and today’s the first day in like five weeks that I’ve seen the sun.

[00:02:41] Oh, wow.

[00:02:43] So it’s crazy. Cause I’m a Southern boy myself, right. Southern California and Florida and Southern Texas had been where I spent most of my time. So like I’m used to, you know, like winter is like two months.

[00:02:53] Yup, yup.

[00:02:55] Not nine. So what I want to do real quick before we get into the interview is just do a brief introduction for you.

[00:03:00] And then we’ll get in and start talking about your story. So Kurt is a globally recognized marketer operator and speaker he’s built and run businesses from startups to over 500 million in annual revenue, assembled teams across six continents, been part of small team leading an IPO that was $880 million and participated in dozens of acquisitions.

[00:03:18] So you’ve done all sorts of stuff, but I want to start off with is what is it that you’re known for? What’s your business like now? Who do you serve? What do you do for them?

[00:03:26] I’m known for helping companies big and small scale. So I’ve tried things at that very early stage. That’s not where I’m best suited for, where I’m best suited for is where companies have figured out something and they need two 50X or even a 1000X that figure out how to systematically do that in a very short amount of time that hyper-growth phase.

[00:03:45] And so do you focused on any particular industry for that? Is it like e-commerce or is it service-based stuff or does it matter really?

[00:03:52] It doesn’t really matter for last five years, I’ve been pretty heavy in real estate or for my day job anyways, but it’s kinda unique in my background is I’ve done this in 11 industries over time.

[00:04:03] And so I found a lot of the things that work kind of across the board in industries and it’s more of coming in and helping people kind of get outside of the daily grind that they have, it locks them up so that they can’t grow their business. And so sometimes that small businesses right now I’m helping do that with a large public company as well. So we’re growing quite fast.

[00:04:25] So how do you know when someone is done with that small business stage and ready for hyper-growth like what’s the trigger that says, hey, you know what? I should call Kurt and ask him to help us rapidly scale.

[00:04:38] Well, I mean, at the smaller level, at least I’d say, they’re doing single digit millions of tens of millions of dollars in business already.

[00:04:45] And so, offer advice and things that help for a lot of other businesses influence is a big part of no matter where you’re at in your growth curve. But as far as somebody who’s found that repeatable business, they’ve hit a plateau. And so they know that they need an inflection point to kind of jump up to the next level.

[00:05:03] But they could just sit there and be repeatedly successful, you know, one to $10 million a year in revenue and that’s comfortable money for most people in most companies. But they just can’t figure out how to break through. I can help them break through that.

[00:05:16] Yeah. I had a guest on a few months ago who mentioned that there’s a whole stage that she calls like baby business under the six-figures where they’re learning, how to like what to do and what to serve. And then from about a hundred thousand dollars to about two to 3 million where they’re learning, she called it like toddler business. You’ve got systems, you’ve got a product at that point. And she’s like, and then you have the plateau where everyone gets stuck is between two and 10 million.

[00:05:44] And she’s like after 10 million, that’s when you’re starting to build in a big business and big brand.

[00:05:50] Very much so I do see that, and it’s more of how I talk to the entrepreneurs or the leaders. I’ve been part of growing some companies that were pretty big at the time for a lot of people, you know, 85 million a year in revenue to 1.4, 4 billion a year in revenue.

[00:06:06] And now I have had a couple companies similar growth structures that hypergrowth, but yeah, it’s often looking at things where, you just can’t do a billion dollars a year in revenue without things being very systematic. Very like my love languages are Trello and SOPs.

[00:06:22] And my wife has very similar love languages to that, but those same things that work for very, very big businesses. You can step into all those growth phases. You kind of mentioned and realize, yeah, people are stuck by doing too many things that are manual and that’s, what’s holding them in one of those stages.

[00:06:40] Yeah. Actually, my podcast production agency, that’s what I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time doing is building our SOP’s and the system structures behind everything that we do. Because I was like, I already recognized with just the number of clients we have now that I was like, if I don’t have all of this stuff nailed from SOPs and systems, it’ll never grow.

[00:07:01] And at every stage, I mean, whether it’s small as a solo entrepreneur doing six figures or a billion dollars a year, you know, a thousand people on the team, there’s always manual stuff that has to be done. But the more things you can systematize, the better.

[00:07:16] Yeah. And like I always talk with my team and the clients that I work with is like systems involve both people and robots.

[00:07:25] Right. And you have to know where the line is between robot and human. And how you design your systems and your processes to handle that.

[00:07:33] And trusting the humans on your team. So I find too often, you know, especially at smaller stage companies, the leader, especially if it’s a single owner, he, or she tends to feel like they don’t mean to, but they’re like they’ve been successful through their blood, sweat, and tears.

[00:07:51] And they often end up getting in a place where they feel like they have to make so many decisions as opposed to like, one of the core things I know about my business on any given day is I am the bottleneck and I have to get myself out of the way and empower my people so that even if I have to help them today, they shouldn’t need to come to me with the same issue next time, or especially not in a couple of weeks.

[00:08:13] Yeah, absolutely. And I worked with a couple of companies, one of them I’m in the process of trying to buy, but one of the things that I’ve noticed is that in every company there always seems to be I don’t have to call it other than like, you have a bunch of key men, right?

[00:08:28] Where all the information is locked in a certain role, a certain person’s head. And if that person were to get hit by a bus today, that whole section of the business would stop working. And that always freaks me out. It freaks me out about my business and I always, like, I have a whole list of things.

[00:08:42] I’m like, these are all the things that if I get hit by a bus today that won’t work in my business. So I’ve go a checklist of things.

[00:08:49] Yeah. I mean, it’s de-risking the company. So it’s one thing when I’m keenly aware of it as a leader that of course, you know, I’m providing for my family or my family being provided for, by my work, but everybody on my team and on their teams underneath them, like we’re all provided for them.

[00:09:08] So like, if I was to get hit by a bus, it’s not just my family, that suffers it’s hundreds of families underneath me as well. And so it’s like, I need to, de-risk not just the company, but everybody’s personal life as well.

[00:09:20] Yeah, absolutely. As my company has been growing that particular thing has been weighing on me more heavily than when I was younger and only had myself to worry about in my business, myself and my family.

[00:09:31] It should. I mean, that’s an important part for me anyways, of like, you know, being a servant leader is realizing that I’m here, of course I’m trying to grow a business and hopefully that’s to provide for my family generations to come, but it’s like on a day to day basis, I’m here to serve the people on my team.

[00:09:48] And that’s not just them when they’re at the office, it’s realizing that, Hey, that’s providing for their families at home.

[00:09:54] Yeah. And I know one of the things I like to know with my staff is who all they have in their family and how their support structure works and whatnot, just cause like, I don’t know.

[00:10:04] It helps me just to think about like who I’m actually serving, cause you know, your business serves your customers, but it also serves your team.

[00:10:12] Well, it comes to me too, is just over the decades, for whatever reason, I’ve had a lot of people gravitate towards me that it is traditional lifestyle, a traditional life, but they’re deep elder care.

[00:10:24] They have special needs children. They have a spouse or a partner that may be going through cancer, some sort of situation. And part from a growth perspective is knowing it’s one thing when you just have a couple people on your team, but especially if you have a dozen people on your team, I almost guarantee you have somebody on their team that’s in one of those scenarios or something else.

[00:10:43] And so, I don’t want people just to work with me and for me for six months or a year. So they work for me over a couple of years. They’re going to have ebbs and flows in those personal things that are going on. I have to know what’s going on in their personal lives so that I can one serve them from a work perspective, it’s like, oh, your spouse, Kate got a big health decision that came down.

[00:11:09] They need a little bit more margin at home. And so those are the types of things that, you know, make people better employees, but also realize, there’s this whole, it’s not work. It’s personal. Nope. Nope. It’s both like, whatever’s going on in your personal life, if your personal life falls apart, it’s going to impact your job at work and it’s going to impact the company.

[00:11:28] So I mean a little self-serving, it is in my interest to make sure that I can accommodate your personal life, but I can’t do that unless I know what’s going on as well.

[00:11:36] Yeah. And I know just from some of the companies that I’ve worked with and my own, like I’ve had staff members that gets married and has like honeymoons coming up and you know, they’ve probably got babies in the future and all those are big things.

[00:11:48] And like I had one of my other clients said one of their top sales person. They had a breakup in their relationship that they’d had for like 15 years, something like that. It tanked their ability to do sales and whatnot and that impacts the company, but it also impacts them.

[00:12:02] And how do you support and work through those things? There’s a lot that goes into growing a team.

[00:12:09] Yeah. I won’t name the company, but I had a number of friends that were with a very large public company that was known for divorces, affairs and other type of not necessarily a great work relationships in there.

[00:12:22] Well, not anything from a social judgment perspective, but what I noticed was, oh my gosh, the turmoil on those businesses, people were putting in so many more hours when I just found out, because I had dozens of friends at this company. And I’m like, when I actually started talking to them, I’m like.

[00:12:37] You all are kind of burning so many hours because the company is expecting people to work in such crazy things. It’s destroying personal lives. And because of that, it was actually impacting the business without realizing that this was kind of an incestuous thing. They were expecting people to work 70, 80 hours a week and more, and that was destroying personal lives, which was then causing turmoil back in work as projects went derail for some of the reasons you mentioned.

[00:13:02] And I’m like, you could just fix this, by just stepping back. And now they have tens of thousand employees and we’re like, and just take a different approach to work is okay. I mean, I’m not wanting to shy away from working a lot of hours. I don’t sleep a lot my wife and I had discussed that if we got married, it’s like, I work more hours than most people. I also don’t watch Netflix. So it’s like if I want to work 70 or 80 hours a week, that’s okay. It’s just, my companies will never expect that from me or of me or anybody on my teams.

[00:13:32] Yeah. And I’m the same way. I will work really long and really hard when I’m working on something, but I never expect that from my team members. Cause it’s, I dunno what you call it. Like entrepreneurs are different breed of people for sure.

[00:13:48] Well, I find from that as well, especially that I have helped a lot of companies and invest in a lot of companies in earlier stage, I think a big portion of it for leaders, especially if you want to have influence within your organization, but it’s like, it is on our role as team leaders to make sure that it’s not my job to make sure that say you are planning dates with your wife or, you know, like time with your kids, but it is my job to make sure that you’re answering and planning intentionally, whatever that means to you. And so I tried talking to people that worked for me and I’m like, Hey, I need you as early as possible to start to plan your vacations for the year, because otherwise we will get busy. You will enjoy what we’re working on and you’ll get to December and realize, gosh, you didn’t take time off. You didn’t spend the time with your partner or spouse that you may want to.

[00:14:39] And so planning for that upfront, the business will accommodate that. And what that timing looks like needs to be up to you, that’s your personal life, but part of it is on my role to say, hey, like, I don’t expect you to work 70 hours a week. And if you love what you do, like most of us, it sounds like you I’m guessing much to your listeners are like, I wouldn’t get caught up in work if I don’t plan ahead from when my wife and I are going to take time off, I will hit the end of every week.

[00:15:06] And I’ve spent very little time and from a personal side, which is not going to be good and not something that I would want when I look back, I’m going to be very distraught that like, wow, I did not spend time with my family.

[00:15:19] Yeah. I operate a little strangely there because of the way we do our lifestyle. We travel full time. We’ve been on the road for five years and I worked with four different companies, including my own. And I practice something, I call a time restriction. And so like, I generally won’t work more than four hours a day, four days a week. And what I found is that when I do that, when I put really tight restrictions on it, I only get the most important things done.

[00:15:46] And then the rest of the time I spent at venturing and doing stuff with my family, but it also meant that I’ve grown my companies a lot over the last couple of years, which is interesting because seven or eight years ago, I was the guy who was like, let’s see how much work I get done in 80 hours a week. And my businesses were smaller and struggling.

[00:16:02] Okay. Yep. I can appreciate that. I do somewhat of the same. I do time block a lot of my day. And so for the things that kind of you’re mentioned, like here’s my core things, but I also attend to divvy up things in a deep work and shallow work.

[00:16:15] And so, I think we all have this long list of shallow work things, much of which we hand off to other people in our teams. But since, you know, Hey, I’m a huge star wars fan, huge star Trek fan. And so by all means I love vegging on some of those things at two o’clock in the morning when my wife and kids are sleeping, but you know, Hey, Kenobi hasn’t come out yet.

[00:16:35] I mean, it did just come out now that we’re taping this, but you know, I’m kind of caught up on all my shows. Like I’m going to go and work because I’m not one to just sit in front of the TV usually. And so I always have those things kind of take off or look and see what’s on people on my team’s list and go, hey, I can go take that off of Michael’s list.

[00:16:53] Yep. I’m not much of a TV watcher. My wife and I will occasionally get a TV show we want to watch and then we’ll binge watch it and watch the whole thing. But I can’t remember the last time I watched a TV show it’s been several months, if not more. And so my bingeing at night when I’m like sitting up with my wife in bed has been playing with a no-code app building, which is like, I don’t think it’s actually relevant, I might have, I might have something we might do with my companies, but it’s mostly just been, it’s been like an explorative.

[00:17:25] Like I wonder if we could leverage any of this. So, you know, I always have something like that going on. It’s like shallow, it doesn’t really relate to anything, but it’s like instead of vegging watching TV, I’m vegging. I don’t even know if you’d call it vegging. It’s more like I’m learning something that I can probably apply in one of my businesses somewhere.

[00:17:41] You’re picking up hobbies perhaps.

[00:17:42] Yeah. There you go. Picking up hobbies

[00:17:44] Hobbies or skills.

[00:17:45] Hobbies or skills. It was the piano for awhile. I’m still doing that. My wife and I have been learning piano. But yeah, I’ve always got something that’s not it’s not generally like consumption related. It’s more learning related that I use my downtime for.

[00:18:02] So, well, I want to talk a little bit about your origin story then. You know, every good comic book hero has an origin story. It’s the thing that made them into the hero they are today. And it’s basically where you bit by a radioactive spider that made you get into a rapid growth or were you born a hero or did you start in a job and eventually move over to doing what you do now? Essentially where’d you come from?

[00:18:24] A little of both, I guess, by kind of the nature and the nurture side. I build my first hours to bell labs when I was still like seven or eight because my dad worked for bell labs, became Lucent Technologies as part of AT&T. And he used to take me into work periodically, pull me out of school and I helped him solve some math and math issues.

[00:18:42] And he was like, well, we pay contractor for this. And so he built me as a contractor to some things. And so I did get into that kind of very early with a dad that like, literally didn’t sleep. Like he slept an hour and a half to maybe two hours a night for until I think his second bout with cancer.

[00:18:58] And so then he started sleeping a little bit more like a normal person, like five to six hours a night. So I remember him waking me up at like three o’clock in the morning and being like, let’s go on a field trip. And so I don’t know if that was like not sleeping. It’s kind of been in my DNA or if that was just the fact that dad wake me up so often and mom was still in bed and so I kind of get used to it, but not having to sleep as much as most people does help get started and make a lot more progress than a lot of people.

[00:19:27] So how did you get into the helping businesses do the rapid?

[00:19:31] So I mean, some of that was I started my first, actually two legal entities when I was 14. Both of which became seven-figure businesses within a couple of years, ended up selling one off when I went to college. So I always had kind of a business background, but I kinda lucked into helping people grow. So when I came out of my masters, I ended up joining a company called Navteq became Here Technologies thinking about MapQuest back in the day, a Garmin device, Google maps now, but like we were around before then, they’re still the largest spatial data company in the world.

[00:20:01] So I ended up being able to join Denise Doyle and solid encon of that company. And so we basically ran this umbrella organization where think about all the places that use a spatial data or map. And so I would walk out of a meeting with Siemens VDO that makes the navigation system for Alexis, into Microsoft video games that actually helped design Microsoft flight simulator.

[00:20:21] That was back there on the thing, and then into a meeting with FedEx or UPS logistics. And so like kind of like 10 to 11 different industries, like day in and day out, one meeting to the next and almost as an in-house management consultant, helping these companies grow, use our data. And I’m learning a lot from solid encon.

[00:20:39] So I didn’t actually know what I was learning at the time. I was just along this crazy ride when we grew the company from 85 million a year in revenue to 1.4, 4 billion over 10 years. And so when I left there, by that point, I had probably made two dozen angel investment deals. So I’ve been on the board for some companies, advising things, and I kind of looked back and was like, wow.

[00:21:01] I had a mentor at the time that kind of pointed out, he was like, do you realize what the last like decade of your life has been like? And I was like, no, because we’d been working really hard.

[00:21:10] Like I haven’t taken a chance to look at it yet.

[00:21:13] Yeah. And so I ended up moving down to Atlanta and just starting to help a lot of companies from that. And I mean, by nature is to try to look for problems and look for people I can help. And so that’s actually why I started writing angel investment checks originally and offering advice, some good advice, some bad advice. But helping companies along the way. And I kind of stumbled into this place of hyper-growth because I mean, in 10 years, regrew that company so fast across so many different industries, I didn’t even think about it at the time.

[00:21:39] I just had some really good mentors along the ways that showed me kind of the path that I’ve now followed.

[00:21:44] Awesome. So over the course of that time, I assume you’ve probably developed what we call on this show superpowers, right? Every iconic hero has a superpower, whether that’s fancy flying suit made by their genius intellect, or the ability to call down thunder from the sky in the real world heroes have what I call a zone of genius, which is either a skill they were born with, or they developed over the course of time that really sets you apart. It helps you to slay your client’s villains, so to speak and help them come out on top of their own journeys. And the way I like to frame this for my guests is if you look at the skills that you developed over your career, there’s probably a common thread that sort of ties them all together.

[00:22:16] And that common thread is probably where your superpower is. And with that framing, what do you think your super power is in your business?

[00:22:22] I think for the most part, my superpower has been finding and cultivating ideas from the people you least likely expect them to come from.

[00:22:31] So what I mean by that it’s like we started 25 internal companies within that company that I mentioned, and about half of those ideas did not come from our product teams or our innovation team. They came from somebody like our front desk office manager that had an idea that was like, and you just kind of cultivate and pull that idea cause they have a different approach about looking at things.

[00:22:50] And often there are people in the companies that everybody else it’s not that from a position level that people disregard them. But from an expertise level perspective, people don’t look to many positions for solutions in other areas of the company. And I’ve had this unique ability to always go kind of go outside of the core expert areas.

[00:23:11] And find unique solutions that existed within the company and teams, but nobody else was listening to somebody, raising a hand, going, I have an idea.

[00:23:22] Yeah. It reminds me of you know, they say most of the innovation in business-based comes like cross sector. Like the what is it? A Ronald McDonald came up with the drive-through from looking at drive drug stores. Right? It wasn’t a food thing. It wasn’t even in that industry. And so it’s like, you’re just bringing that same concept internally into the company that just because someone’s working at the front desk doesn’t mean they can’t come up with ideas that will help production or help help something else.

[00:23:49] Yeah. That was early on my career. It’s morphed a little bit in the last, probably 12 years. I think now it’s kind of cultivated to the places I have this unique ability to be completely okay with the belief that I am fundamentally wrong about at least three things in my business right now.

[00:24:08] And I don’t know what those are. And I say that like consistently, if I look back over time and possibly with you yourself at any one point, you can look back and go, yeah, last year I was completely wrong about this thing, but now I know I should’ve made a different choice on, and so, you know, we did a lot of work with Georgia tech back in the day, and we kind of realized that it was like, wow, being wrong and being right about something feels exactly the same until you realize that that you’re wildly coyote out over the cliff and the road runners back over there.

[00:24:41] And you’re like, oh my gosh, I’ve invested a million and a half dollars in two years on something that was completely the wrong decision. But I’m really comfortable with that too. And so I build processes into my companies now, and I also surround myself with people saying, again, I know that I’m wrong about at least three things in my business and my teams today. And my fundamental role today is to try to figure out what am I wrong about so that I can become right sooner. And we can make a more wise choice.

[00:25:14] Yeah. One of the things I found interesting is that despite being wrong about so many things, you can still make progress.

[00:25:21] Yeah, I have no problem with the make a decision and fail fast concept. I just, consistently I’d looked back the early part of my career. And I was like, I could have known that I was wrong much earlier than I actually did. And so when we did that research for Georgia Tech and I’m like, yeah, being wrong feels just like being right.

[00:25:42] And I was like, okay, well, how do you fix that? You’d be very comfortable with there’s something I’m wrong about today and being very open to other people speaking into what that could be.

[00:25:53] Yeah, absolutely. So I want to talk about the flip side then of your super power, right? So if your super power is that ability to be comfortable with being wrong and getting ideas from anywhere.

[00:26:01] The flip side of every superpower is of course the fatal flaw, right? So just like Superman has kryptonite or wonder woman can’t remove for bracelets of victory without going mad. You’ve probably had something that you’ve struggled with. Something has held you back. For me, I struggled with a lot of things.

[00:26:12] I struggled with perfectionism for a long time, which kept me from shipping product. I also struggled with a lack of self-care, which we talked a little bit about, but you know, not sleeping. I actually tried not sleeping for like three days. Once that doesn’t go well, in case you’re wondering.

[00:26:24] But I think more important than what the flaw is, is how have you worked to overcome it so that our audience might want a little bit from your expertise or from your experience?

[00:26:31] Yeah, my flaw is in the past has been, not always necessarily realizing my own needs or other people. So a lot of times I found that I will show up to a certain way in companies or in a decision or in a meeting, but that’s not actually my core need,

[00:26:48] AS an example, I’ve been very successful knowing that the faster we can make a decision and move forward, even if we’re wrong, that tends to be better because we can iterate going forward. But my core need is the bigger the decision is I actually need time to go sit back by myself and think it through, but I don’t show up that way.

[00:27:07] So. That’s one of the ways realizing that how people show up is not often what they actually need and then apply it to myself. So that by having kind of that common language it allows me then to kind of figure out more who you are and what you need. I’ve really kind of come to a lot of that conclusion too.

[00:27:24] Some of it just was struggling, but everybody in my team, when we hire goes through the Birkman assessment, which is less of a personality assessment and much more of a communication assessment, so that we all have common language to talk about our needs, our stressors. And then it gives us a way to kind of as a third party talk about, oh, this is how I think you show up Richard in the meeting.

[00:27:45] And that stresses me out. And let’s talk about that because it’s not anything negative about you. I just like, let’s talk about how you may show up and how I react to that. And once we acknowledge that, then we can move forward very easily.

[00:27:59] Yeah, because you have a common language to discuss those differences.

[00:28:02] Yep. And it’s very similar experience as well. So it kind of gives everybody a common language and then everybody, like on our genes gets everybody else’s report too. So it’s like, if you want to know how I’m going to respond in any one of these nine areas, go read my 30 page Birkman report. And it’s kind of the snapshot, the cliff notes for who is Kurt and what the interaction is going to be like.

[00:28:21] Yeah. It’s like a more complex version of like the love languages that you mentioned earlier, right. Once you sort of know your love language or your spouse’s love languages, it’s really easy to see how you guys can interact with each other to make the relationship stronger.

[00:28:33] Yep.

[00:28:35] Yeah. So you’re just leveraging that in your team and I assume you build processes around that, you said for hiring and for like actually making sure everyone knows and is aware of like how the communication works between people.

[00:28:46] Yeah, much more like we use the Birkman after somebody been hired, we do hire different cultural traits that it’s like from years of kind of doing this at different companies.

[00:28:55] You know, they’re on my website. So I’m going to interview and ask you, you know, what does healthy conflict mean to you and how do you deal with that? And some people are a little bit too much into conflict. And other people I say healthy conflict and they almost freak out because any conflict is toxic to them.

[00:29:12] And that’s a problem because like, you can’t avoid conflict, but you can deal with it early on in my experience. So it’s like, we’re going to hire to certain people that have traits like that or bias towards action. And I always going to get a right. No, but like, I want to hire people that like, I want to make a decision and I want to solve it and I’m going to have an idea.

[00:29:31] So we put a lot of those things for hiring up front and then the Birkman just really kind of tells us once you’re here, how do we communicate back and forth.

[00:29:39] Yeah, absolutely. I’d be interested to hear more about how you do some of the hiring stuff. Cause we’re in that stage now where we’re trying to hire people.

[00:29:47] We’re also running into this problem recently with at least one of my companies that even getting people to show up for interviews has been difficult, but that’s probably more of just where the world is right now. Than companies.

[00:29:58] That’s a little of both, I think both from a hiring perspective and even getting people to show up, it’s having that culture, but having it very transparent about who the current team is, who you are, what your flaws are.

[00:30:11] Cause there’s a lot of places that I could go and work and I’m at a company right now. We’re both, even the most senior person who started public company, you know, you get a pretty good idea when you hear him on interviews, who he is. And when I interact, that is exactly who he is.

[00:30:27] And so that level of transparency, it almost acts as a gravitational force, as I think now there’s so much where from an influence perspective, people are trying to put personas out. And instead if you’re just, it’s kind of clear when people are very transparent, cause it’s a little bit rough around the edges sometimes, and that’s very authentic to people.

[00:30:48] And in that case, I also reach out to people where it’s like my hiring perspective. If I know somebody I want to interview, like I’m going to send them a personal video ahead of time and being like, Hey Richard, this is why I want to talk to you. I look forward to your interview on Tuesday. Maybe this makes sense.

[00:31:03] Maybe it doesn’t. And if it doesn’t, I may know in front of one interview, introduce you to, and people will show up.

[00:31:10] Yeah. Yeah. That’s a good way to think about that. I know we were working on hiring for a. I’m going to forget what it’s called now, like a warehouse manager type position.

[00:31:20] You know, it’s all like local laborers type force. And we were just having a hard time finding that. And maybe we’ll have to change some of the way we’re approaching and getting people in.

[00:31:29] I’m also really big if you have anybody on the team as well, though, it’s like consistently my best hires have always, whether they’re hourly based, you know, much more location-based jobs or knowledge-based work.

[00:31:41] They almost always come from people I know already and often from my current employees. And so I believe in rewarding people, handsomely if you recommend somebody. With that said, if you have to make it really easy for people to actually want to refer you. Cause it’s like, people are like, they can love their job, but they’ll always, almost always find some excuse to not go to post on Facebook that you’re hiring a warehouse manager.

[00:32:07] And so it’s worth taking the time to write Facebook posts and Tweets and email drafts and give it to people and be like, look, I will give you a thousand dollars if I hire somebody that you recommend and here is draft wording. If you want to use it or not use it. And then like literally ever pretty much in our team meetings, I tell people I will pay you money if I hire your person.

[00:32:31] And so we’re still hiring for this role. And then by the way, here’s new wording again. And it just, you gonna have to make it really easy for people because we want to have good people come and work with us. We want to have our friends work with us, but work, tasks, home tasks, kid tasks, all of which is like too easy for me to make an excuse why I don’t just take 30 seconds and go post on Facebook. Cause like, what am I going to post? Well, if Richard gave me some wording, I’m much more likely to post and then Richard needs to remind me, I will pay you if I hire your contact. And they’re here for at least 20 seconds.

[00:33:04] That’s a good call. And you know, stuff that we’ve never done anything like that.

[00:33:11] But I mean, I go with that as well. I don’t do this at the current company, but it’s like there’s people I’m sure you’ve worked with at the four companies you work with now. And in the past where there’s people you’ve worked with that you would love to work with them again, because they were high achieving performers and people that you’re like, I don’t want to work with that person again.

[00:33:30] And so it is always a great investment for me to pay my employees, to take time, to cultivate the list of people that they know, whether they’re texts, email, LinkedIn. And then we like, again, here’s the draft messaging. I want you to send this email out to 400 people. I’ll even give you the tool to mail merge your list with, if you’ll send out the 400 people.

[00:33:54] And then when we hire your person and again, I will compensate you for assigning that person, but you do have to make it like people want to help. We often just think it’s going to be too much effort. So just take it out as the business owner make it easy for them.

[00:34:09] Yeah, just take it out.

[00:34:10] Unless there’s a cheap tool that you could give to anybody on your team that gets sent out an email to all of their personal contact that they trust about that office manager role.

[00:34:20] Yeah. And it’s just same thing we do with the internal business processes is to try to make them as easy as possible and repeatable as possible. So it’s the same kind of thing.

[00:34:30] Same kind of thing.

[00:34:32] Yeah. So I want to talk then about your common enemy in your business. Every superhero has an arch-nemesis, right?

[00:34:40] It’s the thing that they have to fight against in their world. And it takes a lot of forms and businesses, but I like to put this in the context of the clients that you work with, right? So you help you help companies go through the hyper-growth phase. And it’s a mindset, or it’s a flaw that those companies come to you with that if you had your magic wand and you could just bop them on the head and not have to deal with that anymore, what is that common enemy that you have to fight to overcome? So you can actually get your clients, the results that they come to you for.

[00:35:07] It’s a nice, simple answer. We’ll give you care to explain.

[00:35:10] Yeah, I know. Yeah, happy to I mean, and it kind of at all levels, but it’s like, there’s been so many times I’ve coached a mentor, people that have seven and eight figure businesses. So this is comfortable money. It’s really good money for a lot of people, but you know, a $9 million business, when you have expenses and employees may not actually be banking too much money, but it’s comfortable money.

[00:35:32] And this as a business owner, people are like, yeah, I mean, they might be clearing and a half a million, $2 million a year. That’s comfortable money. But they want to grow, but they don’t really want to do the work for that $9 million business to become a $90 million business.

[00:35:49] And so, because it’s comfortable. And so the same thing happens with big public companies as well. Hey, you’re growing really well. You’re growing at 10, 20, 30% a quarter, even that’s comfortable. Well, I don’t want to work at a company where we’re only growing at a hundred or 200% a year.

[00:36:08] Like I want to grow much more than that. And by all means, let’s strive for much more. And then if we fail, we’ve only grown it by like three X or five X this year. Well, but that comfort that people have, it’s really easy to be like, yeah, we don’t really need to change things where I’m very much at the belief of like, Hey, as best as you can the current business needs to be put on almost the back burner of the. And you need to have part of the business just focused on hypergrowth things that if it works, if new processes work, if new organic growth means work, that it almost puts the rest of the way you were doing other SOP, they’d go out the door tomorrow and that’s not comfortable.

[00:36:47] It’s not comfortable to think about like, Hey, I have a $9 million business right now. And everything that I’m doing might fundamentally change. Well, yeah, it might, but then you’d have a $90 million business or like right now I’m working with a company where they have hundreds of thousands of monthly visitors to their site.

[00:37:09] It could easily be tens of millions of monthly visitors. It’s not comfortable to do the things that are necessary to grow through there. Cause in summer, you have to be both happy with what you’re putting in an effort today and really unhappy with the results to go, well, I don’t want to sit here.

[00:37:27] You know, from a product perspective, I always hate whatever technology product I’m working on today, because in my mind, I know what it’s gonna look like in 10 years. And so nothing I could do in the next 12 months will make me happy because my vision is what the product will look like a dozen years out from now. That should be the case for everything in your business.

[00:37:46] Yeah. It’s interesting. A lot of people build their business for a particular lifestyle goal, and then they hit that goal and they just hold their business there. I assume that’s sort of like that comfort level.

[00:37:59] They’re like, you hit $400,000 a year. You were in the top 1% of income earners in the world. Like you got comfortable money. And so I assume that that sort of ties into that whole concept of like, if it’s not growing, it’s dying.

[00:38:14] So a lot of that and for me too, is it’s easy to find comfort when you don’t have a real mission yourself. Like making money, you’ll hit comfort level pretty quickly for most people to say, we see this a lot with software engineers where you kind of hit a number and then like you could triple that number for most people.

[00:38:34] And it’s not fundamentally going to change their happiness in life because good software engineers are worth a lot of money already. And so it’s the same case for a lot of business owners. I mean, even a lot of investors. And so like for me, do I have to work? Not really I work because I believe it’s the best way to grow people and to kind of help society from that.

[00:38:56] And I’ve tried retiring. It doesn’t suit me. Like not only do I get bored, I just know in my heart that I’m not doing the most what I can to make the world a better place and the best way I’ve always found to mentor people is not just to sit down and talk with somebody for one or two hours a week.

[00:39:14] It’s to work with them alongside them. Some cases working for them as well. Cause sometimes I coach upward as well. And so like when you find a business owner and you go, okay, you have comfortable money now what? You have young kids now what? Now there’s part of spending time with your kids.

[00:39:32] But like I took 19 months on sabbatical, I did nothing, but spend time with my wife after exiting a company. And I spent a lot of time with really wealthy people, like founders of companies, it was like FedEx ground or the company that became that. And so one thing I asked, all these people it’s like this point, a lot of them had kids that were in their twenties, thirties, forties, and I’m like, what makes successful kids?

[00:39:56] Or in some cases, what makes unsuccessful kids? And like, I kinda got this consistent thing that nobody articulated swipe. It was like, there’s nothing I can do on this device from my laptop. That’s not going to feel like I’m playing to my three year old or 12 year old or 14 year old. I can tell them I’m working.

[00:40:12] I’m a lawyer or building a company, but this is still going to feel like I’m playing or texting with my friends. And so how do I help that? I bring them into my business. I do the same thing with people that I work with. And so when you find kind of a core mission like that, there’s not a real comfort level.

[00:40:30] That’s going to make me okay. And be like, I’ve hit my number. I can go home and go buy a home in south know Savannah, Georgia, and just like sit by the ocean and be happy because I’m not contributing to society the way that I feel like I’m called to do.

[00:40:44] Yeah. And I think that’s actually a really good segue into my next question for you. Right? So if your common enemy is comfort, that’s what you fight against your driving force is what you fight for, right. It’s the flip side of that coin, just like Spiderman fight to save New York or Batman fights to save Gotham or Google fights to index and categorize all the world’s information. What is it that you fight for in your business now, your mission?

[00:41:03] I mean, I’m passionate about people. And so it’s also one of the reasons I’ve been successful in so many different industries, because I’ve been an automotive and cellular and all sorts of other things. And it’s like, do I like those things? Yes. I’ve owned a bunch of brick and mortar companies.

[00:41:16] I liked those things. But what I love is people. And so I want to hear the stories of people that are the foster parents on my team, people that are in elder care, people that we’ve been able to change their lives. My brother and I, we built up a brick and mortar series of stores largely run by people that were coming through narcotics anonymous and transitioning back into much more stable lives.

[00:41:41] And it’s like when that’s your passion and you’re fighting for that, you can go to any industry and attack it and be good. And even before that, it’s like before I knew what my passion was it was still kind of the same thing, but it’s like, I’d have been just as happy helping you with your passion, try to achieve your goals because that helped me figure out do I like what Richard cares about or not?

[00:42:05] Well, That’s like, okay. That’s a great way. I think for a lot of people to try to figure out, like, what should you be fighting for? If you don’t know, find out what somebody else is fighting for and go head over tails and helping them.

[00:42:17] You’ll fight with them and see if you like that battle, see it’s worthwhile, that’s a good way to think about that. And I know cause it changes for everyone. Like people are interested in different things. And really like we’re all building our businesses to help support ourselves, support our team support our customers and whatnot.

[00:42:36] It’s all really people, right. It’s helping people in one way or another. So you know, you’d have to figure out what makes it important and worthwhile for you.

[00:42:45] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I’ve led teams on six continents you know, countless countries and it was really rewarding to be able to have a meeting with my teams in Singapore and they not know whether or not it was gonna be a virtual meeting where I’d walk in the office, but it’s like, that was great.

[00:43:04] But I do really like, have we kind of transitioned so much, it sounds like much of your life where, you know traveling full-time for five years where it’s like I get on the calls with my team now. They don’t know whether I’m here or at our property in north Georgia, you know, hours away. And it’s like, or am I in Florida or another place, like, that’s great to be able to kind of have the same thing happen with my teams and realize, wow, somebody on the team, they’re visiting their wife and Peru cause something’s going on now.

[00:43:30] And it’s like, cool. Like that’s part of being people first. I’ve kind of believe in mission first people always.

[00:43:39] Yeah. And it’s interesting because, especially since the pandemic which has only been a couple of years, but like everyone is more comfortable virtual now. And so, like any of my company meetings I’m in, they’re always like, where are you at today? Because they always want to know. Cause we travel, which is not a normal thing, but it doesn’t hinder being able to get work done anymore. The way it used to

[00:44:01] You keep talking about traveling full time. It’s gonna make me want to go buy an earth rum.

[00:44:05] I mean, it’s worthwhile. We’ve been having a good time. Our next goal is to buy a sailboat and do port to port around the world. And with the satellite stuff that Elon is putting together, it might actually still be able to continue working doing that.

[00:44:17] Yeah.

[00:44:18] You know, it’s just a different world than it has been in the past.

[00:44:21] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:44:22] So I want to talk about some practical stuff. I call this the heroes tool belt. Just like every hero has their awesome gadgets, like batarangs or web slingers or their magical hammer they can spin around and fly with.

[00:44:32] I want to talk about the top one to two tools you couldn’t live without in your business. It could be anything from your notepad to your calendar, to something you use for marketing or something you use for your product delivery, something you think is essential to getting your job done on a daily basis with the clients you work with.

[00:44:45] Trello and physical note cards. So my wife and use Trello, the project management solution. Not only do, I use it in all businesses. It is a requirement. If I’m coming to consult with the company, I can adapt to something like in a sauna. So my wife and I are so invested like each of our properties have our own Trello board.

[00:45:05] We have a different column for errands and buying things because you buy different things at Costco, then you do the grocery store, then you do at Walmart. And so, Hey, I’m at home Depot. I just pull up the home Depot Lowe’s listing whatever’s on there. It has been added in the last five seconds. I know to go check off and buy, but I still I’m a little old fashioned by my list ends up coming to note cards.

[00:45:26] And so this is about the good and the bad of my existence when it gets too thick, I need to go enter things into the digital source for my teams to pick things up. And but this lets me stay not distracted.

[00:45:39] Yeah, my wife is that way, everything goes into a notebook and I’m always like, I can’t handle that cause I’m like a digital first kind of person. So I’m like, it’s not actionable if it’s in a notebook, I can’t do anything with it because when I can’t find it and I don’t know where it is, but we had our entire business for the production company, built in Trello for a couple of years and we actually just moved everything off of Trello, into a ClickUp because it allowed us to build the documentation inside of the lists.

[00:46:10] So like the actual tasks, like when you click on the documentation shows up right in there. So if you click on it, it’s like right into it. So same kind of thing. But yeah, like having some sort of project management system has been huge and then learning how to actually use a project management system so that like the project management system can self manage if that makes sense. Where you don’t need to have a project manager to manage your project management system.

[00:46:34] Yeah, I mean, there are places for project managers. We have one on our team, we were probably about to hire another one, but I very much like it’s having the trusted system that it’s like, it’s got to get out of my head because if it doesn’t get out of my head, it’s not going to be, you know, like it’s not actual when it’s here, you couldn’t possibly pick up, you know, the ball and run with it.

[00:46:54] If the idea is just in my head. And so my index cards on my desk have reached two piles, a little bit too high that I need to actually take about an hour or two and go enter them into Trello so other people on the team can pick it up and run with some of those tasks.

[00:47:09] So just out of curiosity, what do you think are some of your most important processes that you either see missing or you always go to first, when you start working with a company, when it comes to hyper-growth like, what are the systems that you always either see missing or you see need help when, when you get in?

[00:47:27] The two core things for me are having at least a weekly review for the individual and or leadership. I mean, if it’s a smaller sing along company, it can be just with that person, but it’s like, but they’re also, it’s like, no, no, no. Like on every Sunday or first thing Monday morning, what happened the previous week in your schedule what did you get accomplished? What did you not get accomplished that you thought was really important in that Monday?

[00:47:51] And then time-blocking your priorities for the weekend? Like everything else, like the processes will adapt, but it’s like those two things keep you true for, I said this was important and I didn’t do it. And so I can adapt to be iterative on everything else, but fundamentally it comes down to is this shortlist important or not?

[00:48:14] There’s a lot of things that we have to do. We entered it in Trello that that they can never have and never get done. And the business doesn’t actually change. But also I’ve looked back at times before and said, wow, like that job description that would have helped me, it’s seven weeks later.

[00:48:29] And I haven’t written the job description yet either I don’t need to hire that person or I need to do nothing else until that person’s hired. And so I think that weekly review for myself, but also coaching others and then making sure that they time block going forward, it’s kind of an accountability process that corrects everything else.

[00:48:47] So do you recommend like, just teaching people how to do that themselves on a weekly basis or like actually setting company time to like get together either as a pair or a group of people to do that process?

[00:48:59] Both. So if it’s a leadership team I think people should show up to it having done their own, but it’s the process of doing it together and giving grace to people as well where, Hey, if you have four or five leaders on a team, we have a founding four, a core four on our on our team. And so. It’s highly likely with just everything going on personalize and work. At least one of the four of us would not show up to our Thursday meeting for us with fully prepared for well, giving them the grace to show up however they are.

[00:49:31] And then we’ll kind of work through that. But that’s important to do that together as a team because that’s that level of transparency as well. We also use something kind of, that does help with it at the end of the week, built in a Slack called geek bot, where you can just answer, like, here’s the kind of, you know, five questions that everybody to answer.

[00:49:49] And then it posts to as a public channel. And so it’s like, what did you get done? Well, it should be in your geet bot survey and it’s public for everybody, everybody in the company can go and see kind of what you got done or not done. And so that’s pretty transparent, but also a little bit raw to where sometime you go in and type things, you know, like either, I wasn’t really effective this week or I just didn’t keep track of things either way. It changes how you show up the next week.

[00:50:17] Yeah. We do something similar with one of my mastermind groups that I’m in. And so it’s like leaders of different companies that are doing that, but we have like essentially like, Hey, here’s what we plan to do last week.

[00:50:28] Here’s what we accomplished. And here’s what we plan to do next week. And you know, we sort of popcorn back and forth on help and discussion on those kinds of things. But we do like a minor version of that with my production company where we have like a weekly meeting. And we cover essentially like, Hey, here’s what the company’s goals are.

[00:50:41] And you know, here’s what we’re working on there. And then we go through each of the major departments essentially, and like, Hey, what are you guys up to? And like, what’s next kind of thing.

[00:50:50] Yeah. I mean, you have to, like, everybody has to get started somewhere, but I’m also very big on people where like Bobby, you can say that you worked on things, but things don’t really count until they’re done. Like, Hey, you can have written 90% of an article. It doesn’t matter until you actually finish it and publish.

[00:51:10] They get published.

[00:51:11] Yeah. The engineering team, seven people could have worked on an engineering project and they get it to 98% until it’s released it says unfinished as if they’d never started to the client. And so that’s a hard thing for people to kind of feel as sit with of like, well I don’t get any credit for it. No, it’s okay to show work. And some things take multiple weeks, a month to work on, but until things are done, they’re not done and they don’t count.

[00:51:39] Project management coach that teaches how to build processes in project management systems. And her number one recommendation actually is the number two recommendation. Number one was to develop your project management system around processes and not around an org chart, but her number two was don’t use custom statuses.

[00:51:57] She’s like all the project management systems, you to have all these custom statuses that show you all this stuff for work. She’s like there’s only two it’s either to do, or it’s done. There’s nothing else. She’s like, cause if it’s not done, like you’re faking yourself out into thinking you’re making progress.

[00:52:14] She’s like you can have stages for stuff, but like for the actual task it’s either to do or done that’s it.

[00:52:19] And you can break things up. I mean, like I work a lot like an enterprise SEO, so large websites that have millions and millions of pages on there. Hey, you can ask for this crazy complicated page to be built.

[00:52:32] Well, and that might take 30 person days of work to be done, or you can also just have the initial project thing is, Hey, Mr and Mrs. Engineer, can you put words on a page that pulls from this database 140 character. You can iterate it on an afterward, but like that initial type thing that might be able to be done in a couple of days, but if you want it to be two and a half pages or 1400 characters of custom tax, it goes through an AI writer and all that’s complicated.

[00:52:59] So was like chunk it down to your point. So you can say it’s either to-do or done, and then just have a whole bunch of dones as you’re moving the project forward.

[00:53:07] To do or done or active or complete. She was like, that’s it, that’s all you’re allowed. You can stage things, you can break them up, but she’s like for your project management system, if you actually want it to be effective for your team, she’s like, it’s the one thing we’ve seen consistently is if you start switching your project management to do, done.

[00:53:23] My wife and I, I try she’s much better than me, but I have to remind myself, like, I mean, I’m either with my family or I’m not, I can’t be checking my phone, checking Facebook, reading the news sources and be with my family.

[00:53:38] And so it’s very, kind of similar to that. Like, you can only have one status. I’m fully at work, I’m fully relaxed, I’m with my family, you can’t be doing multiple of those things.

[00:53:48] Yep. We are at best as human beings, single taskers. Multitasking is a lie.

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[00:55:20] See you there! Now back to the hero show.

[00:55:27] So essentially every hero has their mentors, right? Just like Frodo had Gandalf, Luke had Obi Wan Robert Kiyosaki has his Rich Dad, or even Spiderman had his uncle ben, I want to know who were some of your heroes? Were they real life mentors, speakers or authors mayne peers who where a couple of years ahead of you and how important were they to what you’ve accomplished so far in your life?

[00:55:43] Very important and a little like on a different so it’s like, I got a work ethic from my mom. My dad may have been a knowledge worker and Gump and cranking through things, but my mom was the mentor that taught me.

[00:55:54] Like, you don’t go to sleep when you’re tired, you go to sleep when you’re done. You know, I remember Reno you know, helping in the garden and raking leaves and doing things around the house, literally like, you know, being little at like 11:30, 1 o’clock in the morning because there was work to be done.

[00:56:08] And so the project was done, you didn’t finish. And so that instilled a lot of things for me, but it really wasn’t until like, I was well out of college that I had my first real mentor named Don and Don was a new skin like, he was just transparent and showed me, you know, opened up and showed me things about work and personal life that I didn’t even know people have relationships like that. But that showed me a different way to kind of lead teams and and grow.

[00:56:35] Absolutely. I know it’s always been fascinating to me to hear who people put up as their heroes, because generally speaking, if you would ask those people, Hey, did you know that? I thought you were here, you were my hero.

[00:56:46] They would say no. Right. They wouldn’t know that. So I always liked to think to myself, like, am I acting in the kind of way that’s going to be worthy of being someone else’s hero?

[00:56:55] Yeah. Well, and to that point, like many people I would look back that were pivotal in me reaching where I’ve been. At the time would not have considered themselves. They were a mentor coach or like being strongly teaching me things. And I’d say it’s probably fairly evenly split between people that like, we had formal like mentoring conversations and that’s about four and another four people I look back and be like, yeah, they didn’t realize at the time how important that they were for showing me what it looked like to be a reasonable person in society.

[00:57:30] That’s a good way to put that a reasonable person in society. So I want to talk then a little bit about your guiding principles, right?

[00:57:38] One of the things that makes heroes heroic is that they live by a code. For instance, Batman never kills his enemies. He only ever puts them in Arkham asylum. So as we get to the end of this interview, I want to talk about the top one, maybe two principles that you live your life by, maybe something you wish you’d known when you first started out on your own hero’s journey.

[00:57:52] I kind of mentioned example, it comes from, you know, a lot of military people take this approach, but it’s mission first people always, I was very much early on in my career believed, you know, I led by authority, you know, it was like the mission was what we’re trying to do with the company. And like, forget people, like if that was collateral damage, it didn’t matter.

[00:58:10] And so that’s been very different for the last, probably 15 years for me. And so those are really my two guiding principles where I’m very, very solid on what mission is and will not steer this and will not separate from that, but my personal mission and what we’re doing in the company. But I also know that like it doesn’t even matter if we hit the end result if we let people fall by the wayside.

[00:58:31] Yeah, absolutely. It’s a good guiding principle. So mission first people always, well, I think that’s a great place to wrap our interview, but I do finish every interview with a simple challenge. I call it the heroes challenge and I do this to help get access to stories that might not otherwise find on our own.

[00:58:47] Cause not everyone else else’s doing the podcast rounds like you and I might be doing. So the question is simple. Do you have someone in your life and your network, who you think has a cool entrepreneurial story? Who are they? First names are fine. And why do you think they should come share their story with uu here on the hero show? First person that comes to mind for you?

[00:59:04] I do. I mean, I would say my former mentor, Don would be one that would come to mind.

[00:59:10] Awesome. And we can get together later, maybe do an introduction. See if he will come up and say yes to the show. Not everyone says yes, but when they do, we get some cool stories out of those people.

[00:59:17] So in comic books, there’s always the crowd of people at the end who are cheering and clapping for the acts of heroism. So as we close our analogous to that is where can people find you if they want help taking their company through that hyper-growth. Where can they light up the bat signal, so to speak and say, Hey, Kurt, I’d like to get your help. And then more importantly than where they can go to do that is who are the right types of people or companies to reach out.

[00:59:36] Yeah, so the best place to buy me is my personal website, KurtUhlir.com. It’s going to link to LinkedIn or anything, but I do a lot of writing as well. So I’m a big believer in like, Hey, there’s places where I can step in and help specific companies. But it’s like, I just put out like 12 to 13,000 words on a high-achieving servant leadership.

[00:59:55] And so like, that’s good for any solo entrepreneur that wants to grow a team and a company or anybody that’s a public company executive. So I had been at both of those roles. And so I actually wrote like two recent articles for kind of an audience for anybody who believes that serving is the best way to kind of grow a company. And I have a lot of dollar figures and data that shows why that’s actually true. So.

[01:00:20] Yeah, and people will be able to find those on KurtUhlir.com.

[01:00:24] They can.

[01:00:25] Awesome. And are you actually actively taking new clients?

[01:00:30] Not really. I’m always open to a mentoring or coaching relationship that kind of shows up, but not any clients, I’m pretty except with the companies I’m working with right now.

[01:00:40] Awesome. Well, we do appreciate you coming in and sharing your story with us here on the Hero Show. Do you have any final words of wisdom for our audience before I hit this stop record button?

[01:00:46] Nothing. The only thing I would have is if you don’t have a mission help somebody else with theirs and so you figure it out.

[01:00:52] That’s a great thought. Thank you very much, Kurt for coming on today.

[01:00:55] Thank you.