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ads.

Well, hello and welcome to another edition

of the E-Commerce Evolution podcast.

I'm your host, Brett

Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce,

and today I am delighted to

welcome to the show Mr. JC Hite.

He's the co-founder and

CEO of Hite International.

You'll hear more about that in a moment.

He's all about scaling with stability.

You'll also hear what that means

and why that's so exciting.

And I first heard JC and

his lovely wife, Karen,

speak at my partner and friends event,

Tom Shipley deal Con,

and so just hit it off.

Similar values, similar faith,

similar approach to business

I think in a lot of ways.

And so we're like dude and

also Midwest guys. And so hey,

let's hit you on the pod. So

with that JC Hite, welcome man,

and how's it going?

Oh man, it's going great.

I'm excited to be here.

Hopefully we can add some good value

over the next 30 minutes, so I'm.

Excited. Let's deliver some value. Yeah,

so want to get into a variety of topics.

I know one of your specialties

is recruiting and hiring talent,

retaining that talent. And one thing we

see, whether it's in the agency space,

which I'm in on a day-to-day basis,

or we help e-commerce brands,

if you don't have top talent, and yes,

we know that AI is disrupting and

getting the right tools and the right

approaches, that's all good,

but without the right people and without

the ability to attract and retain

top talent, you're going

to be a step behind.

And so I'm excited to talk about that.

I'm excited to talk about mentorship and

you've actually formed friendships with

some real leaders in the leadership space.

I'm excited to unpack that story

here about your event. Also,

you and your wife work together

and you genuinely appear to

each other and you appear to

working together most of the time.

And so I think we'll throw a few nuggets

in there too for those that may end up

working with their spouse as well.

So we're going to be fun times,

but first of all,

what is Hite International and what

do you guys do to get a little context

here?

Yeah,

I mean our big focus as you said there

in the beginning is how do we help people

scale with stability?

And what we mean by that,

obviously we want to scale

the business, we want to grow,

but what I have found is

business could be one of the most

destroying things in the world.

It can be the most stressful.

You throw your finances off, you

take big risks, you can fail hard,

but it can also be one of the

most freeing things in the world.

I never miss a ball game. I got to

coach my kid. I can give to the church,

I can help, I can serve, I can

invest time in my marriage,

and it can also be the greatest thing.

And so when we talk about

scaling with stability,

it's really about having a business that

can allow you to have a really great

deep marriage,

to be very involved in the church and

your relationship with Jesus and as well

as serve and help and

raise amazing children.

And so these three principles,

and so we do that really focused on

three areas, Hyatt International,

we have an advertising firm,

and we got about 80 employees

in our advertising firm.

And then we have our education side,

which we have events and a mastermind,

and then we have our investment

wing, which I'm really excited about.

We started investing in companies that

are on that same mission of growth and

how do we get more involved in

the details of helping them scale?

I love that man.

And you and I are a hundred percent

aligned on that scale with stability

framework.

It's one of those things where why

would you do this if the most important

things in your life fall by the wayside?

And so I think the idea for everybody

is how do you get your business to align

with your personal mission and to

help fuel healthy families in a

healthy relationships and things like

that rather than destroying those.

And so love that approach.

That's awesome. And Yemen,

just excited to dive in.

Now you are just coming off the

heels of a really big event.

Can you tell people about.

Scale.

With stability, what that was, where

that was, and kind of how that went down?

Stupidest thing we've ever done,

but it worked out really well.

So I'm always really honest with ideas.

Sometimes it's just you take jobs.

And so we wanted, on this framework,

we wanted to do an event, and so

we did Skill with Stability Summit,

and then we had the crazy

idea, we have a university,

Harding University in Arkansas

that we're very passionate about.

So one day I told my wife, what if we

had the event here? And she was like,

why in Arkansas? It's in

Arkansas. It's 45 minutes from,

there's not a Marriott here.

There's not wide. I was like, well,

let's think about it. They already

have av, they have all the rooms,

they have space, they

have food, they have all,

and then we're bringing

people to our alma mater.

We're bringing in celebrities

here. Could this be something that,

and it worked really well. We had

750 people. It was a brand new event.

That's crazy, man, from logo to

you name it, and seven 50 people.

We had Daymond John came down.

We ended up inviting three college

students and pitched Damon and I.

That was super cool.

Many shark Tank. By the way, did

either of you invest in these pitches?

Well, we did not invest

in anything on that one.

They got an award for the best pitch,

and so we actually got all three of,

makes a lot sense, the money sense.

So it took the pressure off of

the table there. We actually were,

the premise of the pitch

was that as entrepreneurs,

we all have millions of ideas.

So which ideas do we jump on and which

ideas do we shelf? That's brilliant.

Brilliant. And that's based on timing.

It's based on who you've got around you.

It's based on money, it's

based on a lot of factors.

And so the calling was for these

students to pitch the idea that

should be the thing that they

take off the shelf and jump into.

And then which one had the

best. Anyway, it was fun.

We had Willie and Corey Robertson there.

They talked a lot about

marriage and faith and raising

children and how you're in the

middle of this huge jump and just

everyone's pulling you and everyone's

wanting you and wants access,

and how do you raise really healthy,

God-fearing amazing

children in that cycle?

And so I feel like they've

done really well, which.

Is really the hardest thing. And you

and I have talked about this a lot.

I mentioned it on the show as well.

I've got wife and I have eight kids.

There's really nothing

harder than raising a family.

There's nothing more rewarding and

there's nothing more important.

And so getting that right in the

midst of businesses is awesome.

And you have a limited

business, we can fail and start.

Over again. Totally,

totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I guess technically you could just

have another child and do it over,

but probably not the best approach.

And Karen and I, anyway, we got two,

you've got eight, so

it's fun. So yeah, we had Dr. Gary

Chapman came to the event as well,

and Dr. White and who wrote

the book Appreciation at Work,

which we can talk about here in a minute

as we talk about team. But it was good.

It was fun. Super fun.

That's amazing. And yeah, I

know you mentioned John Maxwell,

one of the all time greats as far

as leadership goes. And so yeah,

Harding University in Arkansas

attracting some big, big names,

attracting 750 people,

which if anybody has done an

event or tried to do an event,

they know that is a monumental lift.

And we do events a couple of times a year,

but they're for just business

owners and smaller events. But dude,

it's still a lot of work.

It's a massive, massive lift.

And so kudos to you guys for doing that.

I want to talk about attracting

and retaining talent.

And I want to kind of frame it this way.

I was listening to one of my favorite

podcasts on the drive in today called

Founders Podcast, and the

host was reading the original

Jeff Bezos shareholder letter.

And one thing that Jeff

Bezos talked about then,

but he is talked about ever since,

is our success hinges

on our ability to continuously raise

the bar in terms of who we hire.

And so they've got this idea

called the Bar Raiser program.

And I'm not going to get this exactly

right, but it's something like, Hey,

with each new hire,

we're going to ask how will

this person inspire us or

how will we admire this person?

If we bring them on board,

how will they raise the

bar in their department and

collectively? And then

there's a third component,

there's always a third component,

but it's kind of along those lines.

It's not how do we just hire the next

person who fills a role but makes me

look good, not quite as

smart as me type of thing.

How do we raise the bar with those hires?

Now that's difficult to do and it's

difficult to do if you're a small business

because sometimes the best talent

comes with a really high price tag,

but not always. That's

not always the case.

And so I'll kind of make this a broad

question first and we'll dig into some

details,

but how do you approach

hiring and hiring the right

talent? And I don't know if you want

to start with any kind of frameworks or

philosophies around that

before we get into the tactics.

So a few things that we do. So number one,

I'll mention something on the interview

process that I have found works stupid

good for us,

and I stole it from

Mindvalley forever ago.

I don't know if they still do this.

And then two, let's chat about

where and how I recruit from a standpoint.

Then we can talk about the team

itself and how do we retain them.

So we require every single person that

applies for high, they do one interview,

15 minutes,

and by the end of that interview we

asked for what's called a video of

awesomeness. And on that

video, it's very simple.

I say, Hey Brett, you going

to do a video of awesomeness?

I want three things that make us awesome

and three things that make you awesome.

And that's it. And they're going to

ask questions. They're like, okay,

how long should it be? I don't

know, when is it due? I dunno, well,

can I use friends? I don't know. Just

the video, three things. That's it.

And I have learned, Brett, you

can learn so much by this video.

So some examples I have some people

they'll take two, three weeks,

but I mean it's like perfect.

Well,

there's certain positions

that that's really,

and then they have people that just

take out their phone and film it.

They give me exactly what they, but

no more, no less. But it's done.

Immediately.

I.

See people with their personality and

some roles, you want that some roles,

you want that person. Yeah, that's

right. And you see their personality.

You see, most people aren't

comfortable filming videos. Well,

welcome to the life of working at

Hite. We never know what we're doing.

JC is always telling

us to go do crazy junk,

like start a event in the middle

of Arkansas. There's no roadmap.

So there's no rules, there's no

boundaries, there's no anything. Hey,

can I get friends to help?

Sure, any job you have at Hite,

you can go have as many

people help you. So I.

Learn, this is kind of like if you

look at personality tests, right?

So we used to do it called

Culture index. We love it.

We also use Patrick Lencioni's

widget, the Working Genius.

There's some tools like that.

They do it in some ways this cuts through

all of that and just allows you to

see it. Their working

genius shows up their disc,

whatever. You're going to see it on

display on this project. That's really.

Really, and I can show you some videos,

but we have so many of

these crazy creative videos.

And what's interesting though

is you start making it where

first off, people wanting a job are

not going to take the time to do it.

It's just it's too much, right?

They'll show up for another interview.

But those that really want,

then I'm actually hearing what

do they actually know about us?

What made them want to apply

are the things that they think.

Are your website's awesome?

You were really friendly on.

The.

Surface level stuff.

All that type of stuff.

And so that's my one tip.

I think it's the easiest from a

time standpoint for me as the CEO,

because I like to be involved

in a lot of our hires.

It is the easiest way for me to get

to know without a 30 minute meeting.

I can watch a video in

two minutes and learn.

I could see probably did they use Brent?

I have probably six people that

have written songs about hype.

I'm talking about full on banjo songs

edited, and I'm like, dude, this is the

coolest thing ever. Amazing. Anyway,

that's a big one. Big one for me.

The second thing, I'll say this,

obviously a lot of people are

going overseas for talent,

but I think one thing we

do way wrong there is that

when for some reason in the us,

our mindset is here's my budget.

What's the best person I can do?

I can afford 6,000. Who's

the best I can find?

But yet when we go to latam, it's like,

did you know you can hire someone

in the Philippines for seven 50?

Did you know that you can hire someone

in Nicaragua for 2000? Like, dude,

I'd have to pay six grand in the US in

Nicaragua, I would only have to pay two.

That's the wrong mindset. So one

of our big secrets is going, okay,

I would've to pay someone 5,000 in

us. Who could I find for 5,000 in you?

Get out.

Yeah, yeah. It would just be

the best of the best there.

I mean, holy cow. So if you're willing

to pay this Now, this has gotten

more competitive in the

last couple of years,

but I really encourage companies

to go find the top layer.

So for example, yes, you can find

someone in the Philippines for 600 bucks,

but you can also find someone with an MBA

that's worked for Verizon for 10 years

and then a bank for five

years and pay 'em 2000.

And that lift is undeniably better.

Clearly going to be a bar

raiser in your department,

whereas the 600 a month person is going

to save you some money on your p and l

potentially, but you may

get what you pay for there.

But for some reason, our mindset when

we recruit overseas is always different.

It's always

How do I save money?

The lowest is the reason why

I'm going is to save money.

And if you go with that intention,

then just naturally you're going to

be thinking, how cheap can I pay? And

we don't pay perfect. We went through

some really bad seasons there.

We made a couple of bad acquisitions

and it was really, really tough for us.

And so that's where it comes

to my next point of view.

Ron Kaufman wrote the book

Levels of Service and it's

all about how do we uplift our service

and serve our team as the best way

possible.

I built Hite with the intention that

every single one of those team members are

going to pay for my kid's college.

This company will bring every

dream I have and my job as CEOs to

serve them. We had at

our event, Dr. Chapman,

along with Dr. White as I mentioned,

and they together wrote the

book Appreciation at Work,

which is the five level languages for

the workplace. So it's the same once.

Right? Interesting.

Works of affirmation, quality, time,

access, service, tangible gifts,

physical touch, but we don't think

about that. So often the workplace,

this next generation is

much more into appreciation

versus rewards.

So they want quality time with people.

They're really interested

in words of affirmation.

And so just like I do with

my wife, how do I figure out,

especially my team around me,

what is their love language?

How do I connect with them?

And it's incredibly different.

Some of my people, man,

they just want money.

I mean tangible gifts is what

it's about if you pay 'em.

And nothing wrong with that at all.

I used to have a personal

assistant, I love her to death,

I love her to death,

but her appreciation at work,

her love language was words of

affirmation. And that is not, I mean,

I do really well with my wife and my

kids, but outside of that, I'm the most,

I'm just not very lovey word wise.

With your words.

And it was a problem because I would

go a week without talking to her just

because I was busy and she got the work

done. She was so efficiently, so gc,

are you mad at me? No. What

happened? Did I miss something?

Did I say something? Did I

say that I was mad at you?

No, but you haven't like no,

because you're crushing it and you don't

need me to tell you what to do right

now. Words of affirmation,

she wanted to just be told.

And so I think, okay,

how do I find the right talent where and

what if my strategy around finding the

right talent, and then once I get them,

how am I loving on them as

much as humanly possible world,

this next generation, they'll quit

and they don't need another job.

They'll quit and they'll go

move back with their family.

They'll quit because they got

30,000 in the bank and shoot,

I can go live in the Philippines

for six months without much money.

And so they think differently.

And so we got to be prepared.

How do we build the

relationship with them?

Yeah, it's so good, man. And it's

one of those things where yes,

you got to pay people competitively and

you have to have a job and a role that's

structured well that gives

someone a chance to succeed.

But people really need that appreciation

and those extra things and they need to

be seen and loved. We'll

use the word loved,

even though it's maybe not a word

you use in business a whole lot,

but I love that. And we're big fans, big

believers in the Five Love languages.

It's true at work as well.

It's going to be the work version

of those things that work.

And so how do you see that and

recognize that in your team,

and then how do you

show them appreciation?

How do you lead them in the way they

want to be led or to see appreciation?

That's.

Right. That's great, man. And I always

think about it, a good coach, man.

I think about coaches I had because

I love playing sports growing up.

And who were the coaches that they were

fine. I learned and they pushed me.

And some were just

hardcore and that was fine,

but who are the coaches that I love?

The coaches that I would run

through a brick wall for?

And I think we have the

same thing with bosses.

Who are the bosses that I'll

show up for? I like the job,

I'm going to do the right thing,

but who are the bosses that I

would run through a brick wall for?

It's not just about pay.

It's about those intangibles of how am I

getting appreciation and receiving love

from this boss?

That's right.

Really, really great. Hey,

what are some of the other,

but before we talk about

retention, some of those things,

I want to talk about

this overseas recruiting.

I think that that's just becoming more

and more common in every business that I

know from the agency space

to the e-commerce space

and everything in between.

What are some of the other

mistakes that people make there?

So I love that you pointed out our

default is how do we go to the cheapest

rather than how can we pay more than

anybody else and just get an unbelievable

team member.

What are the mistakes do people make

when they're hiring internationally?

Well, I think a couple of things here.

I think the mindset around

it is very different.

Most in our culture and even

the digital marketing world,

we call almost anyone that's

outsourced a VA in some way shape.

We have our team in the US and

we got 10 or 15 VAs in Nawa,

and it's like we just have a

mindset problem around what team

looks like. This is the team.

And so I have an issue with that.

I think one of the things that we just

have a huge opportunity for is that

Nick and i's three and a half

hour flight from Dallas, Honduras,

all these things beforehand.

So a lot of things are shifting to

latam from the Philippines and Asia,

things like this, which creates

an opportunity to visit the team,

be a part of them. So again,

just like these love languages,

physical touch trainer for gifts,

acts of service, quality time, four of

those can be done in person quality time,

being present, being able to touch

someone. Hey, here's what it is.

The affirmation of course can be online,

but there's very different when they

feel the body language around it, So much

can be done in person.

So I think that's a huge

opportunity. And again,

us we're really like,

what does comp look like?

The world is getting flatter and flatter.

I feel like there was 10 years ago we

were talking about the world is flat,

it was opening up the doors, but it wasn't

like it was still very unlevel wise.

That is starting to gradually

equate more and more over time.

Yep. Yep. Love that. Well, let's talk,

let's shift gears. Talk about retention.

And this is one of those things that if

you've been in business for any length

of time, you've had a key team

member leave and it's painful.

And we've all had experiences

where someone turns in

their resignation and we're

like, oh, I've got a fake. I'm

sad here. This is so terrible.

But then there's some people that they

leave and you're just gutted, right?

Oh my goodness.

We had someone on our team who

I mentored him and trained him,

and I invested so much time

in him. And then when he left,

it was almost like a gut

punch. I was also proud of him.

He was going to pursue something

bigger, which was just tough.

Some people are really tough when

it's really tough when they leave.

So how do you think about retention

strategically and also tactically.

Have you ever read of the

book, the Dream Manager, Brett.

The Dream Manager? I have not.

I love it. It's a little fable about

a company that scaled and grew and

they were a cleaning company, clean

toilets for a living. In that book,

it talks about how they

finally realized that

they were a stepping stone elsewhere.

There's certain roles in their company.

I think I struggled

especially earlier where

it was like an ego Hite was the savior

for everyone. You couldn't leave.

Why would you leave? You are

going to be served your best,

we're going to be able to pay you,

we're going to be all these things.

And I think finally I got where

that's not the case for most people.

And so I try to segment and go, okay,

what is my retention rate on leaders,

managers, these types of individuals

and then everyone else at Hite?

We don't get a lot of

leadership roles that open up.

We just don't turn over,

which means I actually need to expect

there's a big group of people that

will move because there's no spots for

leadership unless I'm trying to scale

Hite. I am in growth mode, which

quite frankly right now, high digital,

we're not because I don't know where

the world of digital marketing is going.

And so how do we treat our company

more as a, I like sports teams.

I think they do two things really well.

Number one, they don't get affected.

Well, I mean they do, but people

move. That's just part of.

It. People move, people get

traded, people contracts.

Don negotiate that. But another move

really well is they're always recruiting.

They always have this bench.

And so one of the things that we've

really tried to do from an HR standpoint,

even if I don't have a, let's

say a Google Ads person,

I have a bench waiting now. It even

changes the framework to my leaders.

I mean, you've done this

and I got a B player,

and it's like they're not super good,

but do I want to go recruit and find No.

My leaders are going, I have a B player,

and we got Sarah on the bench.

Sarah's got right?

So what our HR team is

for all of our core roles,

we try to have someone on the bench

somewhere and we'll literally just like

sales. We'll call 'em up every

month and go, Hey, Brett, hey,

we don't have the role just quite yet.

My thinking is maybe the

next two to three months.

But you still wanted to join Hite if an

opportunity came up, right? Yeah. Okay,

cool. And so that's the conversation.

We have two or three of them that are

already approved, already have the videos.

We're just waiting.

And that brings so much security

to our company. And so again,

I think we have as owners just

a huge God complex that we are

the lifeblood of our team. And once we

get over that, we just realized like,

dude,

I have had so many people that I

hated to leave and one of two things

are not true either. One,

I didn't truly care about them because

they ended up with a way better job or a

way better opportunity or whatever.

So either one or two things

are not true either. One,

I didn't care about them

quite as much as I thought,

or two as you thought you did. Exactly.

And so I think we got to

loosen up there a little bit.

If your deal is retention, I think

that goes back to appreciation at work.

I think at the end of the day,

nonprofits are your greatest example of

people that have a lot higher retention

than most for-profit companies yet

they normally don't pay that much.

They focus on what they're good at.

And so there's been seasons

where we're like, guys,

we're really struggling with,

we are going to love on you.

We're going to be able

to serve you. I mean,

I've got two people right now at Hite.

One just had cancer treatment,

another one's got a daughter with

cancer. Both of them are fully out.

We're paying them. We have no rush back.

We're taking care. We want to be an

organization that serves our people in the

greatest way possible.

Same here for sure.

And that's where we can win. It doesn't

matter where you're at or who you are,

that's possible.

That's so great, man. And

it's a really important thing.

And one of the things I reminded myself

very early on in business is if you look

at the best companies,

the Googles and Facebooks and

other Mag seven companies,

they attract really great people.

But with attracting great people,

a lot of times they want to

move on to something else.

They want to go build their own company,

they want to go do their own thing,

something like that. And so if you

are constantly attracting talent,

they will move on. And I

heard my pastor said long ago,

and I shared this from

the early days of O mg,

we're going to bless people when they

come and bless people when they go and

maybe we'll give people a hard

time. And that's what we did.

We did a cake you dead test type thing

just as a joke. But it's always like,

we're going to bless 'em when they come.

We're going to bless 'em when they go.

We're going to talk good

about them even when they go.

I think that's one of

those things that's common.

Like this person left and we're

going to bash 'em internally. No,

not going to put up with that. And so.

We had had a team member, and

we've done this many times.

We have a team member that was here

for two years and he was like, man,

I just don't. And we were honest with him,

I don't know that you would

get a promotion if we had it.

You're good and I love you to death.

And we had a real conversation and then

we hired a recruiting firm to help him

find a new job. And he stayed

with Hyatt another three months,

90 days or so until the recruiting

firm got him something. That's amazing.

But it also I think loosens

the conversation and ideally,

and we're not perfect at this,

but how do we create a culture

where people are just really honest?

And I would much rather a team member

tell me, dude, I don't see my future.

Cool. Let's plan it. I will

help you find a job. If I know.

Let's help you find a place where

you are fulfilled. Yeah, weeks.

It's going to be better for you, better

for us weeks notice in our world,

especially account managers

and leaders. Man, that's tough.

And it's tough when you're a smaller

business with a smaller team,

it's even worse. And so open,

honest communication can

be really, really great.

That's great, man. I love it. Well,

let's transition to our final topic here.

Let's talk mentorship. And

you've had the privilege.

I know it's been by design and by effort

and by just getting out there and doing

stuff. But you are friends and

have mentors that are really

world-class leaders like John Maxwell,

like the Robertsons from Duck

Dynasty, like Damon John,

and we'll throw our mutual friend,

Vinny Fisher in there as well.

First of all, how do you view

mentorship and why is that so important?

And then I want to talk about how

you meet these world-class mentors.

I am scared to death of business.

I have seen so many of

my friends sacrifice it

all to get to the top.

And I mean great people,

good people that just

somewhere one mistake,

one bad night, one whatever,

successful business.

And then overnight something

happened and it wasn't, and

my mentorship is just

straight out of fear.

I look at some of these men and women

that John's been married to Margaret

forever, and Dr. Chapman,

we were texting just a few.

Dude, how old is John

Maxwell? Do you know?

Or are you allowed to say he's

got to be 70 or something?

Eight.

Yeah, if.

I remember right.

Hearing about the global leadership

summit's still articulate sharp as attack,

just killing the game.

We were just talking yesterday about

him coming to scale with stability next

year. And this guy, Dr.

Chapman impresses me more.

Dr. Chapman's 87, he.

No way, he's sharp. I didn't know that.

He's sharp. I mean,

we had him just as event the

other day and we did a q and a.

So the audience is asking random

questions, it not, and he's joking,

spitting back, no time. He

knows this stuff. And so for me,

I am,

I'm a big believer that wisdom just

transcends generations.

Obviously as Christians,

we believe in this thing called the

Bible, and it's absolute truth. It's.

An ancient book.

They struggled with their marriage.

And so I love this and

it's been such a blessing.

I remember I had a season where

I had to get rid of a couple

of partnerships and that

caused a couple of other

partnerships. It was just a big

drama. And I called up John,

actually his right hand, Mark Cole,

and we were chatting and he's

the CEO of all of Maxwell now.

And I was like, dude, I

just feel like a failure.

I let these partners down. I broke

up and that's creating drama.

And then I feel stressed and just

everything I feel like has been affected.

And I was like, how does John

prevent this stuff from happening?

And he just chuckled. He is like, John's

going through a huge breakup right now,

right now.

And the leader on leadership

in the world had a bad,

it didn't work and it was a

drama and it was a problem,

and there was legal involved and

all this. He's welcome to it.

And so I have spent a lot of money,

time and energy connecting and

being with around some of what

I have seen be some of the

most successful folks out

there. And some have failed with it

and overcome, some haven't. Right?

So John will Roberton, Dr. Chapman,

Kevin Harrington from Shark Tank,

and the list goes on. Jesse Itzler,

got a couple of.

Dude, love that guy. Yeah, met

Jesse, he's the don't know,

he's the author of Living With a

Seal, which is a phenomenal book.

And Jesse just wants to

live a legendary life.

And I love his big calendar that he plans

on and stuff. And so it's really cool.

And yeah, I love the way you

framed it. So first of all,

mentorship and getting wisdom from

people that have gone where you

want to go, been where you are right now.

It's really hard to put a value on

that. It's so incredibly valuable.

But you mentioned a couple of things.

You said one, you paid for it, two,

you worked for it, and you

built those relationships.

You're not just going to wake up one

morning and John Maxwell call you unless

you're doing something earth

shattering or whatever.

Sometimes you got to pay to be in the

right room. Sometimes you got to pay to be

around people and you

form these friendships.

I can think about relationships that I've

built over the years that started with

a paid relationship like my buddy now

we're really good friends. Ezra Firestone,

we've done lots of business together

and I call him up when there are things

going on in business or whatever,

but that began with a paid

business type relationship.

I met my wife and I go to Life church.

So Craig Rochelle is the senior pastor,

one of the best leaders I think right now,

the Craig Rochelle Leadership podcast.

So he flew into Springfield

and my local pastor said, Hey,

will you and Brittany go pick

Craig up from the airport?

So we did got to meet him and Amy, his

wife, and then also Bobby Grunwald,

who's the founder of YouVersion Bible app.

Yeah.

The Bible app.

For those that don't know it is

the most downloaded Bible resource,

almost a billion downloads. It's a

free app, a church put this together.

But Bobby's a business savant

and he's built businesses.

He's been in life church for

like, I dunno, 26, 27 years. But

we took Craig to church. He

got mobbed like a rockstar.

And so Bobby's just hanging out.

So I started talking to Bobby and I start

telling him about some m and a deals

that I'm working on. And so then a week

later, Bobby calls me, he's like, Hey,

how's the m and a stuff going?

So he's like mentoring me

and coaching me a little bit,

which is just super cool.

So I think you've got to be

able to do all those things.

How can I get out there? How can I

be the one to form a relationship?

I did a partnership with

Russell Brunson back in 2009.

I saw him in the lobby of an event and

came up and just start talking to him.

You got to be willing to talk.

You got to be willing to pay,

got to be willing to put yourself

out there. But man, I'm telling you,

those relationships are more

valuable than almost anything else in

business. It's huge.

I mean,

I feel confident I can call any one of

those folks and they would make sure my

wife and I were not homeless. And so

big secret, that's why I do events.

Events are not really profitable,

but events fund some of those

relationships in a big way.

Most of those guys are less. If

you've got a really good mentor,

I find they never tell you what to do.

First off, I rarely get told what to do,

but there's, they.

Help you process things.

Yeah, that's right. Stories.

But I think so many of us of

entrepreneurs think we're special.

And what I mean by that is that

we've got special problems or man,

no one else has these relationship

issues and no one else is running a $4

million company and can't

figure out how to do payroll.

And no one else has struggled

with turnover and no one,

we feel we're special in a negative way.

And the reality is once

you talk to these folks,

everyone's got the same stink issues.

Everyone's struggling with fire,

everyone is,

and the encouragement there is to give

you a little bit of peace in the ability

to go, okay, it's a normal problem,

so how do we fix it versus wallowing

it in it compounding in a negative way.

Yeah, it's so good. Yeah,

we noticed that in early 24.

We had just grown headcount massively.

E-comm was scaling and we were scaling

we through two rounds of layoffs.

And so it's been remarkable though, as

I've shared that with other leaders.

They're like, me too, man. And

this is what happened. We did it.

This is what happened afterwards.

This is what the mistakes we

learned while we were doing it.

And so one of the worst times in

my life as far as business goes,

but every business goes

through something like that.

And the cool thing is those that are

mature and who've done it before generally

want to help you not crush

in and give you some tips.

We'll just help you walk through it.

So dude, this has been fantastic.

We're kind of coming up against time

here. What do I want to do though?

Let's talk about your events. You're

going to do scale with stability part two,

I believe, next year. So any plug you

want to give for that would be awesome.

And then you also have

an event for agencies.

And so would love to hear kind of who

that's for, what type of agencies,

what that looks like. And so

it's, tell us more about that.

Yeah, the Commitment Summit is

in Cancun. That is kind mean.

It's a VIP type event all

inclusive. We got Mike Mitz coming,

several others. We have had

John Maxwell there, Damon, John,

Jesse came, all those guys.

Nowadays it's turned into,

it's anywhere from two to 10

million agencies coming together.

We got speakers in the morning and

then everything else is like hot seats

working together in the

pool, collaborating.

And a lot of people ring their families.

It's fun. Four nights, three days.

The commitment summit.com scale of

stability summit is just more holistic.

It's all about helping

businesses scale with stability.

And it's a faith-based conference as well.

And we are scaling it. So right now

we'll have our location in April,

which is in Arkansas.

It's kind of in the south,

but we are actually debating Brett

having another one, either Missouri,

Nashville or potentially up. Let's go.

And so as you're talking

about your church,

I'm like literally someone

just the other day was like,

have you considered having scale stability

Summit at one of Greg's churches?

Love church location. I think it's pretty

smart. They'd probably up for that.

So that's amazing, man. Love what

you're doing, keep up the good work.

You guys are building an amazing

business, profitable, scaling,

growing and all that, but you're

also doing it the right way,

sticking with your mission,

taking care of your family,

good relationship with your wife.

So love what you're doing, man.

Thanks for delivering value here and

looking forward to connecting with you in

person soon.

Yeah brother.

Alright, man. Thank you so much. And

thank you for tuning in as always.

We'd love to hear from you. What would

you like to hear more of on the podcast,

have you not done? So we'd also

love that review on iTunes,

helps other people find the show.

And with that, until next time,

thank you for listening.