Episode 269 – Phil Odella

Richard Matthews: Were you born a hero or were you bit by a radioactive spider that made you want to get into product and packaging stuff? Or you know did you start a job and eventually moved to become an entrepreneur? Basically, where’d you come from?

Phil Odella: Yeah, you know what? So it’s probably a bunch of adventurous steps and missteps and learning and growing I’ve always had a passion to invent, right? To look for ways to do things to solve problems and that’s really where I get joy and get energy out of and as a kid I consider myself a recovering IT guy and  operations person and I started my career as a developer and working in IT and then got into project management and process deployment and operations management and through that journey I always found ways to invent internally in terms of different solutions but then externally while I’m in the corporate world I’m always looking at different opportunities and that led me to go on different adventures

Richard Matthews: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome back to The Hero Show. My name of course is Richard Matthews. Today. I have the pleasure of having on the line, Phil Odella. I feel you there.

Phil Odella: I am here. Yes. Hi, Richard.

Richard Matthews: Awesome. Glad to have you here, Phil. And I know we always like to start off where you where you’re calling in from?

Phil Odella: Yeah, I’m calling from outside of Portland, Oregon.

Richard Matthews: Portland, Oregon, and now I’ve only been there a couple of times and it was in late fall. So it was really cold. What’s it like this time of year? Middle of summer. Is it actually like warm there?

Phil Odella: You know, it is going back and forth. It’s been warm and it’s going to be in the eighties. Later on this week. It just so happened, however, that this last weekend a storm came in and it’s been, it’s in the fifties and raining, but 

Richard Matthews: Yeah. I’ve that Portland is one of those places that it rains more than it sunshines.

Phil Odella: You know, what’s funny is it does for a part of the year, but as soon as you get to late June, there’s almost as if a light switch flips and it goes completely dry until October ish, mid October. And then that switch gets flipped again and the rain comes and 

Richard Matthews: Yeah. That’s when we were there. We were there during Halloween [00:01:00] one year.

And yeah, and it was almost like it was bipolar. It was like 80 degrees or raining and nothing in between.

Phil Odella: Yeah, that’s exactly. And you know, people say it and it’s funny. I’ve only been here about eight years. And what I was told when I moved here, it’s July 4th is when the switch gets flipped and it goes dry. And Halloween is when the switch gets flipped the other way and it gets wet again. And it’s within a couple of days, but it almost always lines up to about that.

Richard Matthews: Awesome. So what I want to do before we get too far in the interview is read a short bio that let our listeners know who you are. So Phil is the co owner of Inspired Results Incorporated, which is a sustainable product firm based in Portland, Oregon. He’s got a background in operations, finance, and technology, including eight years internationally in three different countries.

His passion is for invention and looking at the big picture to find solutions that may not otherwise be obvious, Phil and his wife have two sets of twins in high school and he enjoys travel, golf, food. music, the outdoors, and is always up for an adventure, which is, I don’t know if I mentioned this before we get on the call, my wife and I are full time travelers. We’ve been on the road for [00:02:00] years as of a few days ago, and we had our last child actually on the road, so the whole adventure thing is hardcore for us.

Phil Odella: Oh, that is fantastic. Yeah, absolutely. Right? And you never know you got to go for it and you live and learn as you go. So that’s fantastic.

Richard Matthews: So, two sets of twins in high school. We have also have four kids, but they’re all spread apart by several years. 

Phil Odella: Fraternal. So I have two, two sets of daughters who are just graduating from high school later this week. And then I have fraternal twins who are boy, girl who are sophomore. So they’ll be going into their junior year next year. So I get a lot of hard time about my operations background and how it’s about operational efficiency and getting all the kids in and over, you know, through at the same time, but it’s been great.

Richard Matthews: Yes. I’m wondering, there’s something to that cause I have four kids as well, and you know, you probably know this cause you have four kids. Four kids means you always have like, seven to nine kids at your house, especially as they start getting older.

So you get really good at the operational stuff. And that’s actually one of the strengths of our company too, is the operations side. Something about family makes you good [00:03:00] at operations, especially the big families.

Phil Odella: Yes, absolutely right. So yeah, it’s been great. And we’re at a kind of key, I would say key peak chaos at the moment with four high schoolers. And then I keep telling myself we’re going to move into a new chapter at some point, but I’m not sure when that is. So it’d 

Richard Matthews: Oh Yeah. I’ve only got one who’s starting high school and the rest of mine are little. So I got like 10, seven and five. So they’re their own type of chaos, but it’s more like chaos with Legos and blocks and whatnot. So,

Phil Odella: Yes. Yeah. So great.

Richard Matthews: Let’s start off with what you’re known for then, right?

This question really sets up who you are now. What’s your business like? Who do you serve? What do you do for them?

Phil Odella: Yeah. So, we are enterprise level, prints, promotional products, packaging, distribution company. Really known for our partnership. And so our mission is a one word mission statement of partnership. And I like to think about it as transparent partnership is really the key piece with that.

And it’s just part of what I define, [00:04:00] as a key value that you get from us and that is dealing with reality. And we like to talk about where we are. We like to talk about what’s working, what’s not working and how we can make it better.

And so from our company side, it’s really about that engaging with the key clients need and helping to push that forward.

Richard Matthews: So I’ve had a lot of experience in the Econ and physical product space, right? Helped build a an Econ company up to a couple million dollars in sales per year. We were selling candles and fuels and stuff, had a lot of packaging that went into that and like product inserts and things.

Also did a supplement company that we sold you know, close to 50, $60,000 of units every month. And there was packaging involved in that. And one of the things that I found really interesting was, we were actually white labeling an existing product or and the existing product could be purchased on Amazon for a third of what we were selling it for.

And the only major difference was our packaging and how we presented it to the market. And so I’m curious where in those sorts of like things, where does your company fit? What do you guys actually help someone like [00:05:00] us do?

Phil Odella: Yeah, and there’s a couple different pieces with that, right? There’s certainly from a promotion side and branded merchandise for clients that want to give away either to employees or their clients

Richard Matthews: like swag?

Phil Odella: event. Swag, right? We can work with them to actually put some of that custom packaging and what we all know is the packaging and the presentation can have such an impact on when we receive a product when we’re opening it and the look in the field, right? It’s all the time and energy that an apple will spend in designing that box and how it comes.

So that’s a really key piece of when we’re working with clients from a brand side. And how do we make sure that they have that brand impact that they want to as they’re working it.

On the other side, frankly, it’s more of a commercial. So we work with a lot of healthcare companies. We’ll work with pharmacies who are doing shipments to the end consumers as they’re receiving a mail order prescription as an example. And so part of that is less about, obviously not about branding and all that it’s about safety security. [00:06:00] And that’s really where we then also get into sustainability.

And when we start to think about the brand impact of someone receiving a package, that’s either not sustainable wrapped clumsily, not per product, not protected. That’s where we start to step in and we try to help be the advisor for our clients to say, what are we trying to optimize for? And how do we make this work best for you, but also your end client and the 

Richard Matthews: Yeah. So do you guys also work on or work with companies who want the you know, just and I’m, I don’t even know where, how to phrase this exactly, but you know, you’re creating a product that you sell online or you sell in person, you want to have the experience of that product, not just the product itself, but the actual like opening of that product and the way that the box works and the way that it’s presented in the box and all that kind of stuff so that you can have that more premium feel like, you know, the premium cardboards or the premium, like, I don’t know the tabs that you use to lock the box down and all that stuff.

I don’t know what any of those things are called, but like, that’s what you guys help companies with. 

Phil Odella: We will and our real value. Our real role is [00:07:00] in the sourcing. The distribution will do kidding. When we bring these components, when we have a design need like that, we’re typically going to be working with our different partners. 

And one of the benefits of our model as being a distributor, as opposed to a producer or manufacturer ourselves is we’re constantly on the lookout for the best products, the most high impact, and trying to match up our client needs with what the different offerings are.

And so that gives us a little bit of that agility to help really find the best fit solution, not try to make our product fit a niche that’s maybe not natural for it or isn’t the optimal solution.

Richard Matthews: It makes a lot of sense. So let’s talk then about your origin story, right? Every good comic book hero has an origin story. It’s the thing that made them into the hero they are today. And we want to hear that story. Were you born a hero or were you bit by a radioactive spider that made you want to get into product and packaging stuff?

Or, you know, did you start a job and eventually moved to become an entrepreneur? Basically, where’d you come from?

Phil Odella: Yeah, you know what? So it’s probably a bunch of adventurous [00:08:00] steps and missteps and learning and growing. I’ve always had a passion to invent, right? To look for ways to do things, to solve problems. And that’s really where I get joy and get energy out of. And as a kid I consider myself a recovering, IT guy and operations person.

And I started my career as a developer and working in IT and then got into project management and process deployment and operations management. And through that journey, I always found ways to invent internally in terms of different solutions, but then externally while I’m in the corporate world, I’m always looking at different opportunities and and that led me to go on different adventures.

so as you referenced in my kind of the opening bio, I had a chance to have three different international assignments in in different and always took those on as an exciting opportunity to get uncomfortable, to really learn and jump into a new culture. 

Typically didn’t know the language, typically didn’t you know, understand a lot of the cultural nuance before I got [00:09:00] there, but come in with a humble spirit and a curiosity to be listening and learning and try to grow as we go.

So that’s kind of led me down different paths as I start to see different opportunity. And as my current business partner says, part of my issue is I see an opportunity and in every corner. So I’ve you know, that, that discipline, yes, right. That discipline of picking and choosing and really prioritization and where to spend time and energy is one of my key pieces of focus.

Otherwise I can run off and get excited about lots of different things.

Richard Matthews: So when did you guys start this company? 

Phil Odella: So, Interestingly, so my business partner and I worked doing merger and acquisition work, working for a large company. And our role was to acquire companies like ours now. And so we worked together for about three years, acquiring these entities, traveling around the country. But myself with four young children based in Atlanta, my business partner with three children based in Phoenix after a couple of years, just got tired of it.

And when we were looking at and looking under the cover and working with so many of [00:10:00] these small businesses we just said, you know what, we can do this. So we put our heads together in 2015 formed a company and then acquired three of these entities that we had previously worked transact for the bigger company that we had been working for.

So since 2015, we’ve been working on this consolidated entity has subsequently divested some business and acquire some others to bring it together, but really about bringing together and doing things differently. In an industry that you know, there’s a lot of change but to some extent, there’s a lot of history and a lot of baggage and a lot of the way we’ve always done it. My business partner, I’m very passionate about changing that and looking at it differently.

Richard Matthews: So this is a selfish question, but one of the things that we’re looking at for our agency is we’re really good on the operation side you know, operationally complex business for what we actually deliver as a service. And we’re pretty much better than most of our competition. 

One of the things that I’m looking at is if we hit a certain sort of revenue number [00:11:00] that we can start using acquisition as a way to grow because we could serve other clients better than the companies that we would acquire would be, I’m curious your thoughts on a strategy like that for growth, just because it sounds like you’ve done it.

Phil Odella: Yeah. And we’ve seen it frankly work and seen it not work. The biggest thing for me is, when you contemplate a strategy like that is really thinking about the, from the cultural fit of individuals. So if you’re bringing people over, you’re bringing clients over that may have a different expectation or a different perspective on how to do things, you’ve got to make sure that you are aware of that and honor that when you bring them in.

It can be easy to you know, I’ll say it differently, I think most transactions at the beginning, the first thing everyone says is, don’t worry, nothing’s going to change. You’re going to keep operating the same way you are, but the reality is that’s not why a transaction happens. Transaction happens to actually do things differently, to do things better, to maybe more synergies and make it better. Right?

So I think it’s looking for those opportunities [00:12:00] where you actually can make the difference. And then to the extent there’s people involved of coming over or clients that there’s actually that cultural fit as well that goes beyond just, you know, what the numbers say and what the growth can look like.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, absolutely. It’s definitely something we’ve been chatting a lot about and I hope to sort of figure out more of it. But yeah there’s been both the discussion internally about acquiring companies that have our exact client base and we can just serve better, but then also acquiring companies that serve right before our clients needs and right after our clients needs so we can make our product offering better and doing things like that.

And there’s definitely some strategy involved in trying to figure out how acquisition can be a company growth tool.

Phil Odella: Yeah. And I think it’s a really interesting thing to think about what you’re trying to achieve. And I’ll give an example, at one point in our history here, we knew we had some deficiencies in terms of the internal culture we have and we needed more of a growth mindset. So when we acquired a company, it was actually to inject [00:13:00] some of their cultural attributes into our existing entity.

It wasn’t just to bring them in and our way is the only way, it was actually to learn and inject some of those in there as well. So I think that becomes part of this, the whole is greater than the individual parts.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, absolutely.

So it sounds like you’ve had an interesting journey to get here. What I want to talk about next is your superpowers that you developed over that journey, right? Every iconic hero has a super power, whether that’s your fancy flying suit made by your genius intellect, the ability to call down thunder from the sky, or, you know, Superman’s famous for his super strength.

So In the real world, heroes have what I call a zone of genius, which is either a skill or a set of skills that you were born with, or you developed over the course of your career, that really energize all your other skills.

And so the superpower is what sets you apart, it allows you to help your people slay their villains, come out on top of their own journeys. And the way I like to frame it for my guests is if you look at everything that you have developed over the course of your career there’s probably a common thread that ties all those skills together, and that common thread is probably where you find your superpower. 

So with that, what do you think your superpower is as, you know, one of the [00:14:00] founders of what is it?

Let me see if I can remember the name of your company, the inspired results.

Phil Odella: Yes. I think the common thread for me is, jumping into chaos, jumping into complexity and finding a way to distill the key problems, the key challenges, the key opportunities and really find a way to then simplify what are the key levers that we need to drive.

And you know, part of my passion as a background in Six Sigma and continuous improvement of that is, is this belief that we can always improve and we can always do things better and finding a way to distill key pieces that can make the biggest difference and thinking about it from a Pareto perspective, right?

What are the 20% of things that we leverage, we can pull that can drive the 80% of the impact through that.

Richard Matthews: So like that Kaizen sort of idea that you can always make something a little bit better.

Phil Odella: That’s exactly it. And you know, there’s a dangerous flip side to that of believing you can always make it better. And that is, you’re constantly always trying to make everything better. Right? [00:15:00] And what we know is true growth, true execution performance requires a semblance of stability as well.

And so making sure the trick being knowing when to metal, when to tweak and when to let things go and sometimes slightly sub optimized process, but running very efficiently can work better than introducing the cost of change and the cost of continuous improvement in there as well. 

So it’s counter to my ethos of always wanting to tinker and that’s where the collective working with my business partner and our key leadership in our company is a great checkpoint for me to make sure that we’re really focusing on the most important and most impactful items and not just tinkering into everything. 

Richard Matthews: Yeah. I feel that really big because I’m a tinkerer and the same kind of thing, right? One of our core values at our company that we talk about on our court on our meetings is the idea of constant improvement. And we just made a major shift in our operational, like our project management system that basically runs [00:16:00] everything. 

And so we shifted it all over from one to the other and it was a big improvement in things. But and I’m like, I see all these things that we could make even better, but I’m like, Nope, we just need to let it sit and simmer for a good long while so everyone can get used to the big change and then we can get everything, you know, because a big change like that is very rocky.

And then like once everyone gets used to it, it starts to smooth out. And once it gets smooth, then we can like, okay, here’s a small thing that we can change to improve. Here’s a small thing we changed to improve. So

Phil Odella: Yeah. No, that’s exactly it. Is you’ve got to let that let give it time to mature to to set in. And that, that obviously the flip side is again, not being complacent and not letting it become too embedded such that the changes are even that much more difficult. 

Richard Matthews: Yeah. It’s definitely an interesting balance of like, how do you constantly improve things without wearing your team out with change?

Phil Odella: Yes 

Richard Matthews: Yeah. And for those of us, like, sounds like you and me who are obsessed with making things a little bit better all the time.

Phil Odella: Yes, that is, and the key for me is having some trusted [00:17:00] advisors who I trust to give me very clear and direct feedback when it’s slow down or not now, or we need to think of something else. 

And that’s been my key pieces, my business partner and our key leadership is trusting them and being comfortable and confident that when they say we need to let it simmer for a bit, letting it simmer.

Richard Matthews: So what I’ve been doing, I don’t know if this is helpful or not, but maybe one of our audience members might find this useful is when we get a big system change in place we don’t touch it until everything is documented really well. And once everything has good documentation and we have like levels for documentation where it’s missing, weak moderate and strong.

And like once all of the SOPs for that process are in a strong situation and strong for us means, that like the process is documented, it has documented screenshots, it has FAQs along with it. It has, you know, remedies for things that have gone wrong. And it has a person that’s assigned to it to update it every couple of months to make sure that it’s still in place.

And then, like, once all the processes are documented well, then we’re allowed to work on [00:18:00] improving it. Because until it’s documented well, you may not know that if there’s a problem with the process, or if there’s a problem with expectations of how the process is being used or understood.

Phil Odella: Yeah. I love that. And having ran many kaizans in a previous life where my role was driving improvement here. What I know to be true is every single time you go through the process of defining what the current state is, everyone walking into the room thinks they know what the current state is and everyone walking out at the end of that day say, wow, I never really realized that.

Or I didn’t understand when I did this, it had this impact on you downstream. And so I love that idea of that discipline to say we’ve got to really capture what is and really make sure we understand what’s working before we start tweaking and tinkering. Because otherwise we’re just throwing answers against the wall, hoping to find a question.

And right, without really knowing what those problem statements are, then you can work to it 

Richard Matthews: One of the things that I’ve been talking to my operations manager about [00:19:00] is that, like, if a process is not being followed, what’s the waterfall? And so the waterfall is the process not being followed because we haven’t defined a process. Right? That means we don’t have well documented SOPs that are like in place and are there. So that could be the first problem, that’s our fault as a company. 

And then the second one is, are the people who are responsible for the process aware that the documentation exists? And also, if they aren’t aware, that’s also our fault as a company. 

And then the third stage is like that’s what you’re going to do. If we have a process and everyone is aware of it and has been there and then we have a problem, then the issue can be, is there a problem with the process? Right?

Is it not documented well? Is there something that’s an issue with it before you get to, okay, all those things are true. Now, maybe we have a discipline issue with staff. Right? And I think a lot of companies start with discipline issues with staff without realizing that there’s probably at least three stages of it’s your fault as a company before you get to the point where it’s a problem with your staff

Phil Odella: Absolutely. And I think there’s a maturity in the way you describe that, which is look at yourself first before you’re [00:20:00] accusing others, right? Look at yourself and understanding ourselves in that case, being the management, the ownership, the leaders of the team to say, do we have everything lined up to give people the best opportunity for success, to allow them to best be successful before you start pointing fingers at people. 

Richard Matthews: Yeah. and I’ve discovered for operational efficiency, like that sort of an attitude and like, even if you want to pursue Kaizen, you want to pursue that. I’m not familiar with Six Sigma, but I imagine a similar kind of thing, right? Where you’re trying to just constant improvement. Have to have all those things in place before you can work on improvement. At least that’s what I’ve learned over the course of failing through it a bit.

Phil Odella: Absolutely. And I think also the piece with that when you start with that manner, you open up the dialogue for people to be willing to share opportunities for improvement, to do things differently, to do things better. When you start with just the accusation, you might have a great disciplined person executing exactly as you want doing the exact wrong things.

And they know better, but you don’t. And, one of the quotes from the [00:21:00] continuous improvement trainings, and I’ll get it wrong, but the essence of it is that, we, that these nothing so, damaging or nothing so problematic with doing something efficient, which should not be done at all.

We can drive efficiency into doing projects or processes and executing things, but if there’s not a need for them or they’re wasteful or they’re doing the accomplishing the wrong end, then you need to stop and do something different to begin with. 

Richard Matthews: Yeah, I love that. I should write that down and stick it on our board.

Phil Odella: I’ve got the got it written on a wall somewhere. I just don’t happen to have in front of me and I’m fumbling through it. But essence is making sure you’re challenging it. 

Richard Matthews: So you hinted at this a minute ago, but every superpower has their flip side, right? The fatal flaw. And just like every Superman has his kryptonite or wonder woman can’t remove her bracelets of victory without going mad. You probably had a flaw that held you back in your business, something you struggled with. 

For me, it comes out as a systems person who likes to improve things. It’s perfectionism, right? I always make something a little bit better before we ship it, before we put it to market, before we turn it on [00:22:00] an operational side which a lot of time leads to us never actually doing anything because perfectionism is not like you can’t achieve perfection. So you never ship. 

So I think more important though, than what the flaw is, how have you worked to overcome it yourself? So you can continue to have success in your growth, hopefully sharing a little bit from your experience will help our listeners learn from you.

Phil Odella: Yeah. No, definitely. You know I think as I told a little bit ago, I think my biggest challenge is that I see opportunity everywhere. And the challenge with that is not spending enough time and energy to focus and actually be successful in complete a project and get something completed before you’re moving on to the next item.

The way I’ve been able to help offset that is, as I said, to surround myself with the right people to be the checkpoint and trusted advisors, people that I know and I can trust to say, okay, yeah, you’re right. Time out. We should look at this differently.

The other piece of that is that accountability to actually finish the execution. And I know as a kid, my father always drilled into me that if you don’t finish it, it’s [00:23:00] not worth starting. And it actually does irritate me significantly when I see a job that gets started and 90% of it gets completed, the final 10 percent doesn’t get accomplished.

And I think that’s part of what I try to then bring into this environment, which is when there’s lots of opportunity everywhere, it’s easy to task switch and to jump from one to the next. But if you don’t actually get them across the line, it doesn’t actually make a big difference. So it turns waste.

Richard Matthews: Right. so that’s actually really interesting to me because my weakness as a perfectionist is flipping the switch on things, getting that last 10%. Like, I’ve solved the problem. So I have like two issues. One is that I want to make it a little bit better before we actually turn it on.

And then the other issue is, my interest in solving the problem was in the solving the problem part. And once we’ve gotten most of this, like most of the plan in place, like I lose interest, I no longer care. So for me, I have to hire other people who really like finishing and maintaining things. like, that’s where I know the limit of my, I don’t know the [00:24:00] things that bring me energy the, yeah.

The things and the maintaining things drain me. And so I’m like, I need to stop here at about 80% and then I need to give it to someone else who’s going to finish it and turn it live because I’ll never turn it live and I don’t care anymore because I already solved the major part of the problem.

Phil Odella: That’s exactly it. And it’s fine. So what I got certified a couple of years ago, and there’s a model working genius model that was developed by Patrick Lencioni in the table group. And the idea behind it is there’s kind of six key stages of work and they’re not about competence.

It’s about where you get joy and energy. And it goes from wonder, which is asking questions to invention, to discernment and making decisions, galvanizing communicate, which is about communicating tenacity or engagement and the tenacity enablement. And then tenacity, the point being there each person has different areas where you get joint energy and what I found as part of this training and actually, the more training I do, the more I learn is the idea that there are some things I can’t [00:25:00] stand and get no energy from that actually are the brightest spot in someone else’s day. 

So there are things that I can’t even dream of wanting to do that someone else, if I don’t give them the opportunity to do that, I’m robbing them of the opportunity to do something they get joy from.

And so it’s really helped me think about things differently in a both a judgment and guilt for myself, right? There’s pieces of even communication when we want to go and tell the good news about a story and get it going. I don’t get energy from that, but my business partner loves it, that’s where she gets so much energy. 

And so when I think of this idea of, Oh, really, do we have to go do this and tell the story? If I don’t allow her to do that I’m robbing her of an opportunity to do what she gets joy from and at the same time, I get off my plate, the thing that I don’t get the joy from.

And so I really like the idea of looking at where you get joy and energy, not just where you’re good at, because there’s things we’re good at, they can suck our energy as well. 

Richard Matthews: That’s a really [00:26:00] important point of something that I’ve learned over the last several years is that skill and energy are two different things. And just because you’re good at it doesn’t mean you should be doing it. There’s a lot of things I’m really good at that sap me dry that make me want to just go stick my head in the sand and not do work anymore.

And then there’s other things that I’m really good at that when I do them, I’m lit up, reminds me of an old quote that says, you know, go and find that, which makes you a lot feel come alive because the world needs more people who are alive. 

I can’t remember the exact quote, but that’s it’s very similar. And it reminds me of something that .Actually, my wife is the person who taught this thing to me because she is very into things that are repetitive and monotonous. They like they bring her joy in ways that I just cannot understand. 

So like, as, just as a really fun example, she does cake decorating and one of her favorite cake decorating methodologies is something called pointillism where she takes the little icing bag and she just dot, all the way around to make the design of the cake. And so like a big three dimensional cake, like she made a T Rex with volcanoes and [00:27:00] everything for one of my nephews a couple of years ago, very cool.

But there’s probably like 10,000 little dots of icing and different colors on to make pattern and I was like watching her do it makes me want to gouge my eyes out with a spoon.

Phil Odella: Exactly. 

Richard Matthews: Right? Because I was 

Phil Odella: But you get so much joy and energy, right? 

Richard Matthews: Yeah, she gets joy and energy and I am like, I can’t even begin to understand how you manage that kind of thing because it’s like, I’m a very problem solver kind of person. I’m like, I learned how to put a dot on the cake. I put one dot on the cake.

I’m done. Right? Like,

Phil Odella: Yes. Exactly. And I thinks, that’s the risk. And I try to filter that into when I’m mentoring or coaching or working with either students or people young in their career, just starting their career is making sure you get in touch with those things where you get energy, not just going down a path where someone sends you or recommends you go down because you’re good at it.

And I think that’s part of one of the interesting theories I have is coming out of the pandemic. One of the reassessments we’re doing in general is where do we [00:28:00] get joint energy and not necessarily the continuing down a path that maybe we’ve told we should go down or we’re good at so you should always be doing this function.

It’s forced us to look at things differently. And I don’t view it as a negative. I view it as a, to your point of the quote earlier, like we need more people that are alive. We need more people where they’re finding their energy. And when they find it, they get so much joy and they can be so productive and provide a lot of benefit value.

But it’s finding that match that’s into it.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. Are you familiar with Marie Kondo? 

Phil Odella: I am, yes.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, so you gotta like Marie Kondo your tasks in your life, right? What are the ones that bring you joy?

Phil Odella: That’s exactly, I love that actually. I hadn’t connected that in there, but that’s great. 

Richard Matthews: Yeah. We follow something similar from a minimalist lifestyle because, you know, we travel full time, which means everything we own fits in a 40 foot box that we drive around. 

So, we’re very with what gets to stay and what doesn’t and what we have room for and what doesn’t. So like either it brings us joy and we use it regularly or it’s not in our life. And so it’s really useful to think about the [00:29:00] same thing in terms of what’s the actual work that you’re doing to produce your income, right? 

And are you doing the things that bring you joy? Or are you doing the things that don’t bring you joy? And if you’re not, there is someone that you can hire for whom that task will bring them the kind of joy that the tasks that bring you joy bring you.

And when you find that, that’s magical.

Phil Odella: Absolutely. I think that last piece is the key insight because we presume everyone else looks at things the same way we do. And in reality, there are people that love the things that we can’t stand. So finding those right people is the trick. 

Richard Matthews: Yeah, absolutely. So I want to switch gears then and talk a little bit about your common enemy, right? Every superhero has an arch nemesis, and it’s the thing that they constantly have to fight against in their world. 

So in the world of business, it takes a lot of forms, but we like to put it in the context of your clients, and it’s a mindset or a flaw that they come to you with that you have to fight to overcome so you can actually get them the result that they came to you for in the first place. 

So with that sort of like understanding, what is the common enemy in the space that [00:30:00] you guys are in? Yeah.

Phil Odella: You know what, I think the one just becomes resorting to pricing and the risk of the products that we sell being just the products, as opposed to the overall solution and the idea that we’re helping to solve a problem that’s bigger than just the individual products we’re delivering.

And so it’s an interesting piece in that the more success we get in a client, typically the more visibility we’re getting of that spend and the likelihood that there’s a procurement lens that gets looked at in terms of the dollars that are being spent.

And so what one of the things we’re having to do very intentionally is making sure we’re building relationships, but also being able to tell the story of the bigger impact.

And that’s where there are the transparency. I think our reference earlier comes into play. We’re a huge believer of being transparent with our data, with the information, with our successes and our failures. So that we can help drive this improvement within the client. And not just be about [00:31:00] selling more products, selling more product.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, Of those, like, the sum is greater than the parts kind of thing. Like, you know, because if you just count the parts, you’re like, this is our cost, but like the actual result for it is bigger than what you put in. Yeah.

Phil Odella: Absolutely. And I think you then have a situation where change becomes attractive because someone can offer you a savings and an economic, and it’s easy in those moments to discount the intangible benefits, the process, the relationships, the bigger impact that you can have on a business and really looking at that date and leveraging the data, leveraging efficiencies and frankly, the brand impact that as well can have when you’re doing it the right way.

Richard Matthews: You know, one of the experiences we had with packaging and branding, which was really interesting to me and it showed how the sum was greater than the individual parts. So we were in the supplement space and I mentioned that earlier, right? 

And we were selling something that you could have bought for cheaper, but we built a whole brand around it and part of it was the packaging and we had really good packaging, really good design and we [00:32:00] had a really good story that went along with it. 

And so we took that and then we did one other thing on top of it, which was we started telling a brand story to go along with it that had a environmental impact. And the environmental impact was it was actually, I don’t know if environmental impact is the right word. Every time we sold a bottle, we were donating a portion of the proceeds to a company that took supplements to children who needed it across the country. Right?

And so it was vitamin A for instance is the leading cause of death for malnutrition in the world. For children under, I think, 10 years old it’s lack of vitamin A and vitamin A only costs like 25 cents to get someone a year’s worth of vitamin A. 

And so we were doing a, buy a bottle, we donate 25 cents to this company and was part of the story that went along with it. And so it was very simple, it was just some stuff on the packaging and some stuff on the branding and the emails and all the little pieces that went into selling the product. This had just said, buy a bottle, save a life and it went and talked about that story. 

And so we put all those things together and then we played a little bit with price elasticity. And realize that we took our product from selling it from $21 and we would just raise the price a [00:33:00] dollar every couple of months just to see how it would go.

We got all the way to $35 before we started to see a dip in sales. And what was interesting is it stayed consistent until we got to about $33 and when we switched to $34, our sales doubled. Right?

And so it’s one of those things that like, when you put all these things together, you realize that like, not only is the sum greater than its part, sometimes it’s multiplicative.

Phil Odella: Yes. Exactly. And I know that people they like attaching themselves to a story like that to doing good. And I truly believe in our heart that people want to be contributing and doing in a positive way. And to the extent they could find a story like that resonates with them there’s actually an interesting piece.

Like you said, when you go that 33 to $34, that there’s an authenticity of paying a little bit more that they feel like, okay, this has to be legit. They must really be doing what they’re said they’re doing. If it’s the cheapest and they’re doing good, you’re kind of suspicious of how could that actually be possible?

And so that’s an interesting story. I love that. 

Richard Matthews: Yeah. It was really fascinating to see how that [00:34:00] happened. And, you know, I think there was a lot of pieces that just sort of played into that everything from like triggering free shipping to having a good story that went along with it to having the believability to having the good packaging. It was like, It’s one of those things that like all those things individually, right?

The sum is greater than the parts kind of thing, you put them all together and you have massive growth, which is really cool. So yeah, that’s my understanding is essentially you help people create those kinds of experiences with their products.

Maybe not exactly, but things like that.

Phil Odella: Yeah, where we try to make sure that the products that we’re making available are easy to get, easy to order, have delivered are very complimentary to the brand and tell that brand story that resonate with the brand and then are obviously cost competitive but from a value, you know, taken from a perspective of what’s the overall value you’re getting as opposed to just the pure product price. Yeah.

Richard Matthews: I love that. So let’s talk about the flip side of that, right? You’re driving force, right? So if you’re coming in with what you fight against, you’re driving forces, what you fight for?

So just like Spider Man fights to save New York or Batman fights to save Gotham or [00:35:00] Google fights to index and categorize all the world’s information. I want to know what it is that you fight for with your company your mission, so to speak. 

Phil Odella: Yeah. So, again our mission is partnership and I think about this transparent partnership is our key piece. What we’re really helping to drive is impact. And part of what I kind of my purpose is helping people, organizations to solve things, to see things and solve things in a way that they hadn’t imagined so that they can accomplish the things that they have imagined. And often I see that there are artificial barriers that we put up all the time. Right? 

And asking questions, leading people to think differently about a situation allows us to maybe unlock this opportunity that we didn’t even realize was sitting right there in front of us. And then it’s also connecting the dots, right?

And so making sure that what we’re doing in one area of the business doesn’t compromise our brand story or doesn’t get in the way of other things that we’re trying to drive and make sure that for our clients they can see the [00:36:00] whole picture and for sure. And so, that’s it’s analytic dashboards. It’s making basic data available in a very transparent manner so that we can help make things better, right?

And solving. Yeah.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. I love that. And one of the things that just popped in my head while you’re talking through that is the idea that you can look at what they’re imagining and then help them see things that they never even imagined, right? You’re like expanding the world of good that they can accomplish.

Phil Odella: Yes. Unlocking. And I think, you know, I, this, I’m kind of focused on this artificial barrier thing. And we all have them, whether we realize it or not. I was thinking about this today of driving back to the gym this morning and thinking I had to go a certain route and there was going to be traffic and, but that’s the way I have to go.

And all of a sudden I stopped and said, well, wait a second, there’s three other ways I can drive. But just because I was an autopilot feeling like I had to go a certain way. It made me think that there’s a, you know, I put this artificial barrier that I’m going to have to go through this challenging spot just because that’s the way that I normally go.

And we see that all the time, right? [00:37:00] Or maybe it’s my favorite cup. I can’t find my favorite cup. And if I can’t find my favorite cup, how am I supposed to have a cup of coffee? 

Richard Matthews: I can’t drink water, but like.

Phil Odella: Right, I can’t drink water. How am I going to get water if I don’t have my cup? Right. Well, there’s four other ones right next to it that you could probably use instead.

Richard Matthews: Oh, I’m not sure why, but it reminds me of one of our older episodes on this podcast name was Victoria Wick, if someone wants to go back and look it up, but she ran a QVC company, she sold jewelry and I chatted with her a little bit after we got off the interview cause she’s really good at selling product.

And we were working on that candle company and selling product for that candle company. And so she had a story about candles for me and she turns the camera around to the side. And she has a candle behind her that is ,you know, it’s like 15 inches across and maybe 40 inches tall. It’s got 40 wicks on it. It’s a massive candle. 

And she’s telling me a little bit about this candle. And it had to do with the success in her business and some other things. But she makes roughly like, I think it was something like $500 million in sales she’s done.

Anyway, very successful. And the candle that she had behind her was a [00:38:00] $10,000 candle. It was a mind expanding moment for me to realize that I had limits that I didn’t think I had limits on, because I was like, I can see spending a million dollars and receiving a yacht. Right? Like that makes sense.

But what I can’t see is spending $10,000 on a candle and then lighting it on fire. 

Phil Odella: And you just literally burning what you invested in, right?

Richard Matthews: Burned it down and that’s its intention. And I was like, Oh, there’s a level of wealth that I’m not aware of that I don’t know how to understand.

Phil Odella: Or joy and, you know, some impact, right? Some excitement or energy you get out of burning that $10,000. 

Richard Matthews: Yeah. I thought it was interesting. And just in terms of like, you know, these artificial limits we put on ourselves and expand your mind, you’re like, Oh, there’s people for whom $10,000 is totally worth lighting on fire.

Phil Odella: Absolutely. Wow. That’s interesting. 

Richard Matthews: So well, I want to Talk a little bit about your, I call this our practical portion of the show. It’s the hero’s tool belt. And just like every superhero has a tool belt with awesome gadgets, like their batarangs or their web slingers or the laser eyes, or, you know, [00:39:00] their big magical hammer, they can spin around and fly with we’re talking about the top one or two tools you couldn’t live without in your business today.

Could be anything from your notepad to your calendar, to something you use for marketing, to something you use for your actual product delivery, something you think is essential to getting your job done as the founder of your company today.

Phil Odella: Yeah, you know, I think to some extent it’s a crutch, but Excel is where I live and I do lots of modeling and playing. And I actually use it as a brainstorming tool as well. And so whether it’s just thinking about concepts or modeling things out Excel is probably a place I live that’s a key piece.

And then Yeah. I mean, it’s, yeah, the versatility of doing things. And so, you know, that’s a key point. 

Richard Matthews: It reminds me of something. I just started a newsletter. Shameless self plug for that. It’s push button nations if anyone wants to check it out and we started talking about the three things that I think every business needs to have today. In order to really be good on the operation side. 

And those three things are a database, an automation platform, and [00:40:00] an intelligence platform. And the intelligence could be either AI or human, but you have to have intelligence that runs the other two. Right?

And what’s funny is most of our database design starts in Excel or in our case, Google sheets, but same process. Because Excel is a fantastic, you get to see, you get to design the database in the forefront kind of thing, and then you can take that data structure and move it into a more database y application later, but because it’s so simple and friendly to you. People don’t even realize they’re looking at a database when looking at an Excel sheet, but that’s what you’re looking at.

And so, it’s a fantastic tool. And it’s the kind of thing that like, if you don’t as a business owner, either yourself or have someone on your team, who’s really good at database design in Excel, you’re missing out big time. 

Phil Odella: Products available, and people aren’t buying them at the rate that they would like. So, we’re in the middle now of again, using Excel, just as some analysis and analytic and slicing and dicing of the data as a database to then help come up with some [00:41:00] of those insights and work with them to think through how actually are we, who is the actual person putting the button, making the selection and pushing the button to order?

And are they receiving the support and backup and the air cover? To make the decision you want them to make, or are they getting beat up because there may be, they’re ordering something a little more expensive. 

Point being, we’re using Excel as that tool to do the analytics to help them lead to some of those insights around who’s making which decisions when.

Richard Matthews: So First system by Mike Michalowicz and have spreadsheet tracks all of the profit first stuff. And one of the things that, so like we have a table for our clients and we have a table for our staff and we have a table for our hours and we have a table that goes through like what our cost of goods are on a service, on an hour delivery basis on like just all of this stuff and it all ties together. 

And one of things that was really fascinating to me is like, as we grow you trigger different like percentages that go into different accounts. Right?

And so, like, as you’re smaller, you start off putting a larger percentage into the owner’s [00:42:00] account and you know, a smaller percentage into operating expenses.

And as you grow, that sort of shifts where the owner’s percentage gets a little smaller and the operation gets a little larger. And that was really a struggle for me to understand how that worked until I started modeling it all in Excel and seeing how you get the, efficiency of scale reduces your cost of goods because it reduces your cost of labor. It reduces like you have economies of scale is a real thing.

And you don’t really understand how that works. But when you, as you expand your team and you expand your resources, you expand all those things, the actual cost of doing business goes down. 

So actually everything gets a bit more profitable. So if everything’s getting more profitable, you can put more resources into operating expenses and less resources into profit and owner’s pay and those kinds of things. And from a volume standpoint, you’re actually making more money, even though from a percentage standpoint, you’re putting less into those categories.

And. So it was Excel that really allowed me to see that and to believe it. And to like, to actually just like push the, you know, push the gas pedal down, so to speak.

Phil Odella: Exactly. And it’s often that playing [00:43:00] around that becomes the key piece. And like you said, you can hear a concept, you can talk about it, maybe even see it, but until you’re able to get in there and play around Lisa, certainly for me that’s how I get comfortable. That’s how I digest concepts. 

So that’s definitely a key one for me and that I probably see my phone. Right? And the phone being like we all know, the good and the bad that comes with that, the distraction for sure, but the flexibility that it enables and again, with the family being able to be available when needed to help and engage with family and support there, but then also being able to have this integrated world where I can be with my family and sometimes I have to deal with the work thing, or I can be at work and sometimes have to deal with the family thing.

It enables some of that integrated life that I think is at least as a business owner enables me to find the best of everything, right? Really to balance that. Yeah. 

Richard Matthews: It’s crazy to me because right? Like I’m sitting at my podcast studio desk here, right? And I’ve got a laptop in front of me. I’ve got a teleprompter and a camera and a second monitor and lights and a stream [00:44:00] deck and a microphone and another camera. There’s like $10,000 worth of gear sitting here allows me to do some of the things that I do in my business, like work product wise, and then I can step away from my desk and do 80, 90% of it with my phone that costs a thousand dollars, one 10th, the cost, right?

And I’m happier about it because I’m not sitting at my desk doing work. I actually went through maybe, I can’t remember how long I did it for. It was like four or five months where I was like, I’m not going to use my real computer. Not that this isn’t a real computer because it totally is, but I’m not going to use my real computer. I’m only going to use my phone and my tablet because the phone and tablet force you to not do work and force you to manage work instead. 

And as a, someone who’s a burgeoning CEO, right? And building a large team and doing all those things, I had to get myself out of the habit of doing things and into the habit of delegating things and building team and building culture.

And realizing that a lot of that has to do with how you communicate. And what’s, you know, those kinds of things. And it’s a lot more of the things that are better suited to, I can’t do much other than communicate on my phone cause that’s what [00:45:00] it is, it’s a communication computer.

Phil Odella: Sure. I love that discipline that it forces you to have. It’s much easier in the short term to say, oh, well, let me just jump in and I’ll do it for you, or I’ll show you how to do it. But that’s not gonna build up the skills and the experience and the confidence of your team so that the next time they can actually do it and come to you and say, Hey, look, this is what I did.

How does that look? Or do you, what, do you have any feedback as opposed to coming to you first? So I 

Richard Matthews: Yeah. And it’s crazy too, cause like, you know, we’re a few years into this now. And like this last week I had to take a couple of days off to go help a family friend of ours that needed some help and I could just, they’re like, hey, clear my schedule, I’m going away.

And they can just handle all those things cause we’ve built some of that stuff into the team and now I have the discipline because I taught myself to it, to know when it makes sense for me to sit down at the computer and do work you know, actual work product versus when it makes sense to be more of the CEO leadership role and having that separation, I think, and the phone has been really key for that. 

And what’s fun is that we mentioned earlier things about, you know, the three things every business owner needs, like a database an [00:46:00] automation platform and and intelligence.

And one of my favorite new little tricks that I’ve been doing on my phone now is I’ll use the voice memos app. And I’ll just talk to just like raw data dump ideas. I’m like, here’s the thing that I want to get done, or here’s an idea I have, or here’s something that I, you know, whatever it is like CEO type stuff.

And I’ve got a little database application on here. I think it’s called collections. And then the iPhone comes with an automation platform called shortcuts. And I built a little automation that lets me transcribe my voice memos and then uses open eyes ChatGPT to analyze what I said and then turn it into whatever output I want, like a task for our smart suite thing or feedback for a vendor or feedback for a client or a blog post for our website or whatever it is.

So I can just use my phone to raw data dump the things that I need to get out and then click a couple of buttons and have it turned into work product where I don’t have to like sit down on my computer to actually do things. 

So it’s like, man those couple of tools really, you know, having a [00:47:00] phone and being able to like leverage some of these technologies we have available, we live in a crazy time.

Phil Odella: We do. And I love that story from a number of aspects, right? It’s the discipline of the phone. It’s the ability to capture and then use the automation for what it’s used for, right? What’s intended to do, which is to make things quicker and easier and simpler, it’s not replacing you and your thoughts.

It’s actually making your thoughts more powerful, more actionable, more directly able to add value and send them where they need to go, as opposed to be swirling around in your head and you’re trying to remember that plus 14 other ones that came up, right? quick, easy way to figure it. 

Richard Matthews: Realized about the modern sort of like language model AI is that we have access to nowadays is, it allows us as CEOs to separate the creativity from the work output. And it’s really hard for us as humans to do, because we think in terms of our work output, right?

If you’re going to put a task in your task management system, you’re thinking, who do I assign it to? What’s the description? What’s the steps that need to go into it, [00:48:00] right? If you’re thinking I need to write a blog post, you’re like, I need an intro paragraph and a, you know, like you’ve got a structure that you’re following, if you’re taking a picture, you’ve got a four by three frame, you’re taking a picture inside of.

So we’re always thinking within the limits of our output. And so we create that way. And what I have found that’s been really freeing for me is that because of the AI stuff I can let the AI handle the structure of the creativity. Like, what do I want to do with it? Later, and I can just data dump the ideas that I have into a transcript because I can just, I don’t even have to worry about any of it structure.

It doesn’t have to be an order like there doesn’t have to be any sort of, there has to be no structure thought I can just the creativity that, you know, the spark of divinity, so to speak into the transcript. 

And then I can use the automation to be like, okay, now that I’ve got this all down, I want this to be you know, I want it to be a blog post. I want it to be a transcript for our podcast. I want it to be, you know, a feedback for a vendor. And, you know, we’ve thought through some of our, how we’re getting those outputs. It just allows us to change those outputs really readily. And it’s, [00:49:00] again, it’s just leveraging tools that we all have access to already.

Phil Odella: Allowing you to be more efficient and more effective at doing what you do best, which is sharing those ideas, not having to do the formatting and all the other pieces that can be automated. yeah, that’s great. fantastic. You

Richard Matthews: So let’s talk for just a second about your guiding principles, right? 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 brings them to Arkham Asylum. And I learned recently that, Spider man actually doesn’t punch his enemies all the way because he’s afraid he’ll kill them. He always pulls his punches. 

So as we wrap up the interview, let’s talk about the top one or two principles that you use regularly in your life. Maybe something you wish you’d known when you first started out building your own company. Yeah. 

Phil Odella: You know, for me, one of the main thing is about integrity in doing what you say you are going to do and do what you say. And so, for me that’s really my guiding principle of trying to make sure that when I make commitments, when I promises, when I’m engaging with people that I’m [00:50:00] holding true to my word and doing that.

And, you know, like every, everyone clearly very fallible. And you know, there’s times I try to learn and get better and try to improve. And that’s where this continuous improvement mindset comes as well, which is trying to harness and leverage from the past. But not get dragged down by it, trying to leverage those things as lessons learned and then use those as my inspiration and drive to go forward and make a difference.

Richard Matthews: Yeah I love that. And it’s fascinating to me. And I know we mentioned before we got on the episode and started recording. One of the purposes of this show is to just show that most entrepreneurs are actually out there to make the world a better place. I never, you know, I sometimes skip around on the questions we ask on these interviews, but I never skipped this question because it’s really important to me. 

At some point, I’m going to put together like 400 plus of these like short clips of everyone answering that question. Because what’s surprising to me is almost 95, 96, 97% of people that I asked that question to respond with some variation of integrity, right?

As being their guiding principle for running their company. And like, I [00:51:00] wouldn’t have guessed that a few years ago when I started this podcast. But the more and more I’ve interviewed entrepreneurs from all over the world, the more you realize that like, Hey, capitalism actually works because there’s mutual trust. Right? Because we’re both providing value to each other.

It’s an equal exchange of value, and you can’t have that equal exchange of value if you’re not trustworthy, right? If you don’t have integrity. And so integrity is like a baseline functional reason to operate in where we can’t work, right? We can’t do what we’re doing.

Phil Odella: Exactly right. And you know, not an original thought, I picked it up from someone I can’t remember who he was, but this concept that, try to live and be driven by clean fuels of integrity, innovation, impact, and not dirty fuels of fear, anxiety, jealousy, frustration.

And so I try to think about it in that context is like, how do you, yeah, anything can work on dirty fuels for a little bit of time, but you’re going to burn out, you’re going to create damage. It’s not going to last and not be sustainable for the longterm. 

So what are those clean fuels [00:52:00] and how do we get inspired and how do we do that? And integrity to me is at the basis of all that. Thus, making sure you’re using that. 

Richard Matthews: And it’s absolutely right. And like, there’s always the stories of the entrepreneurs who are the villains. Right? And sometimes they’re just legitimately stories and sometimes they’re actual like things, right?

Everyone’s heard of Enron, right? But like those things always get found out eventually, right? And they always crash and burn eventually. Right? Because you can’t actually operate in a real capitalist society without integrity as the baseline of what you’re doing.

Phil Odella: That’s exactly right. And it’s playing that long game, right? And knowing and have comfort when there’s around you that are not sticking to your game and not lowering yourself to maybe where others are and keeping on the high road with comfort and confidence that there may be short term things that you’re leaving and short term compromises or short term benefits you could be leaving aside, but knowing that in the long run you’re doing it the right way.

Richard Matthews: Well, that is a wrapped up interview and we [00:53:00] almost nailed it, and now we’re on the dot. But I do finish every interview with a simple challenge I call the Heroes Challenge. 

And, the Hero’s challenge is really to help us get access to stories we might not otherwise find on our own. 

So the question is simple. Do 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. And why do you think that they should come share their story with us here on the hero show first person that comes to mind for you.

Phil Odella: Know, first person comes to mind is a friend of mine, Josh, who he actually is working in a corporate world and a corporate job, but he’s been through a fascinating journey of a couple of different careers, a car accident that was very devastating to him. And there’s a resilience of recreating and continuing to grow and look for new opportunities and help coach and focus on others, right? And allow others to unlock their potential. 

So his entrepreneurial journey is really about creating content to help others as well. And to you know, whether it’s through workshops or hiring. And so I think that’s the first one I come to mind comes to mind for me. [00:54:00] 

Richard Matthews: Awesome. So we’ll see if we can reach out, maybe get a an introduction and they don’t always say yes, but when they do, sometimes we get cool stories to come on the show. 

So our send off, just like in comic books, there’s always the crowd of people who our cheering and clapping for the acts of heroism you know, as a thank you for their work.

So as we close, we want to know where can people find you if they want your help in the future, where can they light up the bat signal, so to speak, and say, Hey, Phil, we have some things that you can help us with our products on our sustainability. But I think more importantly than where is who are the right types of people or businesses to reach out.

Phil Odella: Yeah. So I think for me, so our website is InspireNW.com and so Inspire Results and it’s really businesses that are maybe confused or struggling or looking for direction. They want a partner. They want a trusted partner. And someone who’s going to deal in reality. And so for me the right fit client, the right engagement and it’s not about sales, my challenge frankly is I just want to solve problems and help people out and monetizing it is always [00:55:00] you know, behind there and. 

And so I think it’s people that really want to learn, grow, think differently, maybe challenge some barriers that are in front of them. 

So again it’s InspireNW.com is our website for inspired results. And happy to speak with anyone and share anything I can.

Richard Matthews: Awesome. So InspireNW we’ll make sure that the link for that is in the description below. Phil, thank you so much for coming on today and sharing your story with us here on the hero show. 

Do you have any final words of wisdom for my honest for hit this stop record button.

Phil Odella: Just a pleasure to join. I really appreciate the opportunity and I wish everyone luck and you know, persistence is the key, right? And knowing and playing the long road, playing the long game keeping integrity at the key to what you’re doing.

Richard Matthews: Awesome. Thank you so much, Phil. Appreciate you.

Phil Odella: Thanks, Richard.

Take care now. Thanks.