The Brad Weisman Show
Welcome to The Brad Weisman Show, where we dive into the world of real estate, real life, and everything in between with your host, Brad Weisman! Join us for candid conversations, laughter, and a fresh take on the real world. Get ready to explore the ups and downs of life with a side of humor. From property to personality, we've got it all covered. Tune in, laugh along, and let's get real! #TheBradWeisman #Show #RealEstateRealLife
The Brad Weisman Show
Homeless to Unstoppable: Stephen Scoggins' Journey
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Stephen Scoggins shares his journey from homelessness to multimillion-dollar business success, revealing how personal alignment is the foundation for sustainable entrepreneurial growth. His concept of the "integrated entrepreneur mindset" challenges conventional wisdom about what makes businesses succeed or fail.
• Integration means becoming aligned with your authentic self and authentic purpose
• The five true reasons entrepreneurs fail: arrogance, ignorance, impatience, fear, and insecurity
• Entrepreneurs at all levels share the same restless ambition to reach the next financial milestone
• As businesses scale, they inevitably change team composition, keeping only about 2% of original staff by $100M
• True leadership requires being "one part lion, one part lamb" - both bold and compassionate
• Periodic disconnection from technology and distractions is essential for achieving clarity and alignment
• Personal presence is more valuable to family than financial provision
• You can't scale dysfunction - in yourself, your team, or your client base
• Alignment leads to better income, relationships, and health
• Human energy operates at different frequencies, with alignment creating a powerful presence
Take the Integrated Alignment Quiz at stephenscoggins.com/alignment to discover where you stand on the path to becoming an unstoppable entrepreneur.
#stephenscoggins #unstoppable #BuildPodcast #alignment #bradweisman #thebradweismanshow
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Brad Weisman has been a Realtor since 1992 and proudly sponsors this podcast!
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Welcome to The Brad Weisman Show, where we dive into the world of real estate, real life, and everything in between with your host, Brad Weisman! 🎙️ Join us for candid conversations, laughter, and a fresh take on the real world. Get ready to explore the ups and downs of life with a side of humor. From property to personality, we've got it all covered. Tune in, laugh along, and let's get real! 🏡🌟 #TheBradWeismanShow #RealEstateRealLife
Credits - The music for my podcast was written and performed by Jeff Miller.
from real estate affects the market as a whole, which then sometimes will affect the right. You know the real life. We all learn in different ways. If you think about it, wayne dyer might not attract everybody and everything in between. Mission was really to help people just to reach their full potential the brad weisman show and now your host, brad weisman. All right, we are back another thursday. Oh, amazing, hugo, we're back that's right that's right like the terminator you have a nice hat on. It's too bad, people can't see the hat oh yes yes but some point we'll get you a camera.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we'll show you that, that new look I've been working on it's a.
Speaker 1:It's a really nice hat. Yeah, you have to see it's very big brimmed hat, very nice, it looks good. So we've been talking to this guy for a while and trying to get him on the show. Not trying, we're trying to get our schedules together to get him on the show and we are lucky to have this guy here. He is traveling all over the place, he's working on a new book. He is just a great thinker, and one of the things that stood out to me was the word unstoppable. So once we get done with this podcast, I think you're going to understand why unstoppable was the word that I think of when I think of him. So we have Steven Scoggins here in the studio with us, straight from Charlotte.
Speaker 3:Yes, Right, yeah, charlotte, welcome to the studio. Hey bro, it's good man.
Speaker 2:Have a good time oh that's good, we've been chilling and chapping.
Speaker 1:Hugo, come on over here.
Speaker 1:Just come over here just for a minute To show the hat quick. Yeah, you got to show the hat. Yeah, come give him a hug. There we go, there, we go. There it is. Oh, look at Hugo go, awesome, and even does like a little walk. We had to kick the show off. We're going to get him. We're going to give him a camera. He's going to get a camera soon. He's got a microphone. I mean, the guy's really taken over the show, if you think about it. I mean, for Christ's sakes, when we first started the show he was silent. Now I can't shut him up. It's amazing. Now he likes to chime in because he's the time when your name is there. So it's your name, unstoppable. But one of the things I want to ask you first is what does integrated entrepreneur mindset mean to you? I know Well, it sounds like a mouthful.
Speaker 3:It does.
Speaker 1:Well, you know you notice I had to say it very slow because I'm thinking I'm going to screw it up. But no, integrated entrepreneur mindset.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'll have to. I'll have to change that up a little bit, all right, so the easiest way to explain what an integrated entrepreneur is, it's a state of being, okay, okay, and the reason I say that is because almost every major dumb decision I ever made in my relationships, in my business, in my family life and so on and so forth, came out of something that's called dysregulation. It's a fancy word for saying I was out of control, gotcha Okay. An easy way to understand whether or not you're dysregulated is how much anxiousness.
Speaker 3:You carry on a regular basis Gotcha Right. So integration is the process of becoming aligned with your authentic self in conjunction with your authentic purpose. So that's fully integrated.
Speaker 1:So authentic self, if you don't mind me, an authentic purpose two different things.
Speaker 3:There are two different things. I'm on a bit of a crusade to not only bring awareness to both of them, but also integrate them and bring them into one, into one, because when you have those two together, are you unstoppable, unstoppable I think you are yeah, yeah, all right. So unstop. The word unstoppable can easily be a cliche word. Yeah, easily be cliche. Sure you know, unstoppable it's great unstoppable.
Speaker 1:It's great. Could write a song called unstoppable. I think there's a song called unstoppable. 16 songs, is there 16? Yeah?
Speaker 2:that's the song. Yes, that's the one I was thinking of yeah, I didn't know he sang.
Speaker 1:It's just a new thing too. That was not in the resume.
Speaker 2:That was not here. That's the new tenor voice, I guess. Oh he does.
Speaker 1:And he does that too by the way, it's the first show.
Speaker 3:I've done that on, by the way.
Speaker 1:Oh, there you go.
Speaker 3:See there's um, yeah, no. The word unstoppable to me is nothing more than basically preventing yourself from not making progress. So let me try that again, do that again, go all right. In order to be unstoppable, you simply don't give up, gotcha, you get knocked down. You get back up again. Yeah, you get knocked down, get back up again. Yeah. Now, it doesn't mean you're not going to go and suck on a corner or cry and whatever for a few days or a day or an hour or whatever you need.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and by all intents and purposes, that is a form of grounding, believe it or not, is release, yep, like actually allowing yourself to feel it yeah, feel it, yeah be present with those emotions, feel it, but then you have to, at some point in time, make a mental switch in your head and like, okay, well, this is, this is not where I'm gonna stop. Right and for me, I see a lot of people. They do one or two things either. When adversity comes, they either lean away from it, run away from as much as they can, stick their head in the sand, or yeah whatever, what's worked for me is to feel it and then forge ahead.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and you know, I've been through a lot of various things. I've been through divorce. I've been through 2008, I've been through the pandemic, I've been through exiting a company, I've been through embezzlement. I've been through embezzlement. I've been through. You know a number of different things and you know each one of those, to your point where we were talking about all fair earlier, about character building.
Speaker 1:Oh, it builds character.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean well, and I told you, you asked me. You asked me like well, how'd you become homeless? I'm like well, I was arrogant and prideful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know put me in business for myself, made a bunch of money. That's incredible. I mean that journey is is pretty amazing. I mean the journey from being homeless and going to a trash dump and finding things that you that became useful, yeah, to build a business.
Speaker 2:I mean and it wasn't a sexy. It's not even a sexy business and it's not even a sexy business, like you know. To be honest, I mean it's not he did.
Speaker 1:He was working on siding houses, yeah, yeah, I mean not many people go. I guess what I did for a living, you know, and go, oh, I do siding. Oh, then people go, what vinyl or aluminum?
Speaker 3:yeah, exactly, I'm like all of it, all of it. I'm really good.
Speaker 1:I even do james hardy but no, but seriously, that's incredible, yeah, and it just shows you it doesn't matter what business you're in. If you have the focus and you're authentic and you have the passion to do something, you can do it. It doesn't matter what business it is. It was siding.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, think about it this way. I'm going to come back to the siding. Yeah, go ahead. So that business built a lot of components in me. Right, I was a high school dropout so I didn't graduate. High school ADHD, dyslexic kid given a second chance. I didn't deserve to start this company. Even other trash piles. I didn't deserve the second chance I got, uh, did the first handful of homes completely by myself, out in the heat and the cold and whatnot. Go on and build the business piece by piece, team, member, team, member, pole by poll, siding by siding, whatever you want to call it. What was interesting about that whole journey was I didn't have leadership skills, I didn't have an MBA, I didn't have anything but unrelenting tenacity, and tenacity can get you in trouble.
Speaker 3:So, one of the reasons I'm so passionate about this concept of integration is because they say in business that businesses fail, it doesn't matter what profession, it is right, but especially entrepreneurs and business owners. Eight out of 10 businesses fail first, five years After the first five years. You might get lucky if one of those is still standing literally 10 years later. Out of those you got another I don't know 30% ever gross a million dollars top line. Out of that you got two-tenths of a percent that ever actually sell a company. Right, there's, the statistics are ridiculous, right. But they say the top five or so reasons and I won't rattle them all off, but I'll give you a few. Uh, lack of sales, right. Marketing penetration, lack of leadership, poor team management, product fit right. These are the. These things rotate year after. You're like google right now. Why do do businesses fail? What are the top five reasons? You know and you'll see the list, but it'll kind of switch.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3:Cause it's you know, it's it's market generated and, you know, sometimes economies are better than others. I mean, right now, the economy is a little shaky for us, and you know what I what I feel like is interesting about that is I discovered when I went back and looked at my journey and then I looked at all the entrepreneurs that I have worked with and continue to work with even today. One of the things that they're dealing with is isolation. They're dealing with hey, I don't even know who I can turn to. So I know I dealt with that a ton, which is why I'm like, okay, well, if I dealt with that, you dealt with that. Okay, I'm going to be a listening ear Now.
Speaker 3:Granted, we've got to find a time on my calendar to do it right, but on top of that, when I start thinking in terms of integration and alignment, most of us that's not at the forefront of our mind. Most of us aren't thinking about how I show up every day, how I think about myself, how I think about others. Am I a blame, shame and condemnation person? Am I someone who is overly optimistic? Am I what I quote unquote too realistic? I'm a pessimistic Like there's. There's this balancing, this balance beam of sorts.
Speaker 3:And then I discovered that, okay, well, if I go back and I look at my journey and I say, okay, well, journey, I'm looking at you as a movie screen, I'm gonna step back out as a character, I'm gonna watch it. I come out on the editing floor. What do I see? What I see out of every emotional outburst or bad decision-making, um, but that could be the money I spend. How I show up my family, how I um responded to a team member who was trying to get a piece of information that I should have had that I didn't train them well on. And leadership, if I'm just honest with myself, I find that entrepreneur. If I go and look at the same entrepreneurs, after working with countless entrepreneurs at different levels seven figures, eight figures, nine figures my biggest client's been 10 figure client.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Okay, which is funny, cause I never made 10 figures yet.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:You got to work on that, I do, but fortunately that's not what they were coming to me for. But, uh, but they, what they were coming for is alignment. Like, uh, you know, I've a lot of them. Either they're either chasing the brass ring and they think, and that's going to make them whole and fulfilled, or they've gotten the brass ring and realize they're empty. Either way, you're chasing fulfillment in emptiness and you can't change fulfillment. And emptiness, right, you have to chase alignment. So. And emptiness, right, you have to chase alignment. So there's really five real main reasons that entrepreneurs fail, and what are those? Arrogance, ignorance, impatience, fear and insecurity. Wow, so what's?
Speaker 1:interesting is. What's interesting about that real quick is that they think that the failures is because is outside of them, and it's actually inside of them. Oh, that was my lesson too, isn't? That great, but that's crazy though, when you think about, everybody thinks that the reason their business fails is something that's outside of them. It's the economy, it's the marketing. Yeah it's the largest person, yeah, I did that, so it and it, and what happens is it's really, it's here, everything stems from here well, think about All right.
Speaker 3:So we'll just take one example of my journey. One example was in around the 2017 timeframe. I had a suspected embezzlement. I'll just call it that, because of legal stuff. Suspected.
Speaker 2:Right right.
Speaker 3:Alleged yeah, alleged $1.7 million is not in my account. Let's put it that way.
Speaker 1:It's a lot of alleging, a lot of alleging.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, I pray for them in Jesus name. Um, in the grand scheme of things, no, but that goes down to ignorance. Like I wasn't paying attention. Wow, right, I, I overtrusted, I over delegated, I didn't inspect what I expected and, as a result, I basically walked away from my leadership. So I wasn't leading, I wasn't holding myself or them accountable. Right, and human nature is human nature Unless there's a structure in place to hold responsibility and accountability in different areas at the same time.
Speaker 3:Not so good things are going to happen. Yeah, so I don't blame I actually don't blame them at all. Yeah, it's, it's part of it. Yeah, I, you look at yourself. Yeah, I, I mean, I didn't at first, of course, I'm just being full of transparency, but you know, I, I went, I had to go back and really look at you know. So I looked at these major events and then I started looking at these entrepreneurs and it's all the same thing. It's crazy, right? So you're arrogant. You think, hey, no matter what happens, we're going to figure it out. Yeah, right, okay, well, what's your plan? We're just going to figure it out. Well, how about taking a few moments, sitting down and figuring something out? Yeah, like, come up with a plan. Yeah Well, no one knows me like I know myself. I'm like dude. Everybody knows you better than you know yourself. Yeah, cause you're judging yourself by your intentions. They're judging you by your actions, exactly Right.
Speaker 1:Well, your reputation is different than your character, exactly Until you reach integration Right, then it becomes your reputation, and then you're then you become whole, it becomes aligned.
Speaker 3:Yeah that's right, yeah.
Speaker 1:We're coming back to the same words this, this is good man, but it's real.
Speaker 3:So I say that to say that, all right. So if I meet a six-figure entrepreneur, it doesn't matter what industry they're in. They want to know how do I become a seven-figure entrepreneur? Yeah, seven-figure entrepreneur says well, I want to know how to become an eight-figure entrepreneur. Eight-figure entrepreneur says, I want to know how to become a nine-figure entrepreneur. So entrepreneurs all share one thing in common, actually, I would say achievers, people who want to obtain something. It doesn't even have to be money. Nine times out of ten they can't even articulate what it is, it could be running a marathon or achieving something.
Speaker 3:It's this essence of, and this goes back to impatience of well, I should be further along than I am right now.
Speaker 1:So true. I saw that in some of the stuff.
Speaker 3:I see it over and over and over again.
Speaker 1:I do that to myself. Yeah, with the podcast. I think about it all the time. What are we not doing to get to the next step?
Speaker 3:So what is the next step?
Speaker 1:Let's workshop it. Well, that's what we're working on, and that's stuff that we do now is we sit down and go? Okay, what to the next level?
Speaker 3:Yeah, all right. So let's say, you get to next level B. Yeah, you're going to be like Now what we got to B. Let's go to A Right. Do we ever celebrate? You know it's really funny. This is going to blow your mind. I just had this conversation. Yeah, no-transcript, awesome she really is so one of the things, one of the first things that she asked me and we started dating um, because you know, we were both pursuing our own individual other grain alignment and whole.
Speaker 3:So we came together. It was like conversations were easy, the whole deal, but she goes, she goes. I just I'm curious. I'm like, okay, well, she's very curious by nature, so she's. We were always asking questions. Yeah, she was when you sold your company. How did you celebrate? And I was like, uh, isn't that fine. I tried to take three weeks off and then I got tried. Listen to that Tried. Well, ironically, like it's funny, I was already in my mind I was already building the next thing. That's exactly right, right.
Speaker 1:See, I think, as an entrepreneur, the celebration for us is actually while it's happening. It's not a peak, it's not a place that we go to. It's not a peak, it's not a place that we go to. It's, it's. It's the journey, is the celebration, but it's insatiable.
Speaker 3:So what I'm trying to do? She made up a good point, that's a good point. Oh, that was a great point, and you know what it caused me to. I'll give you another one that's just like this again, those same, those same five. I call them constraints, yep, right, and think of constraints like someone's suffocating you, right, yeah. So the more at play those things are, the more you're getting suffocated, which is why your soul feels like it's getting suffocated, like something strangling your soul, right, yeah? Which is why so many people have a hard time putting into words, because it's hard to say, well, my soul is getting strangled, yeah, that is a what's a different one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I like that, though I might use it.
Speaker 3:Hey, you're welcome to you, know, but if you think about it, like my son, uh, my oldest son, tyler, who uh was by marriage, I I've had the fortunate pleasure of of helping raise two boys that were biologically mine, and you know the the moment in time came for a divorce. Um, where we were, they were both graduated from high school. One was, I think, in Charlotte. Ironically, my middle son just had his first child, so the last week, week before last um, which is why I'm in charlotte now. I'm like norman, um, but, uh, tyler the oldest, he said hey because we had to do it on a zoom call, because he was at campbell, they were anyways. Long story short is we had the zoom call, he's on the zoom call. I said hey, before, uh, before, before you go anywhere, can, can you come have dinner with me tonight, okay? So I said, of course, anything for you kid Like you know, we just dropped the bomb.
Speaker 3:It's not the bomb that I expected to drop. It looks like this is where we're heading, Okay fine. So I go to sit down with him in a little Mexican restaurant outside of Campbell La Casita, I think they call it. Oh, sounds good. Yeah, it's great food actually Nachos, Homemade guacamole.
Speaker 1:Now he's thinking about tacos, right, tacos and burritos. And we are sponsored by Moe's. No, just kidding. Welcome to Moe's, welcome to Moe's, welcome to Moe's.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:The show took a turn.
Speaker 3:So we're sitting there and he says two things, one of which I'll share and one of which I won't, because it's it ends up being a dig, and I don't. I'm not digging digging at people anymore. He says uh, if there's one thing you could do to be a better husband and father, just one thing. He said you were so good at so many ways. He said just one thing. I'm like, so I lean in, like I'm like I actually want to hear this, because normally I would have been more stuck, I wouldn't want to hear it. Right, and this is going out to every single parent listening yeah, pay close attention. He says if you could learn to be more present when you're present, that would mean the world to us.
Speaker 3:Oh, I keep in mind these, these, these children had traveled. Yeah, uh, we were very blessed to have some nice things and do nice things and not really have to struggle a lot yeah, you know, financially I mean, we did weather, we weathered pandemic and some other things like that that were tense, but nothing, yeah nothing, that squashed our souls.
Speaker 3:And and you think, as a provider, right. So, father and mother and this is mothers too, especially single parents that if you can give your child a better life, they'll know how much you love them. That's not true. No, if you give your child your attention, they will know how much you love them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm guilty, as can be. My kids and my wife are listening to this right now, I know it, and they are saying oh, I hope you're listening.
Speaker 3:Well, look it's, it's, we're all achievers specifically Right, and I and I use the word achievers because, you know, entrepreneurs have this mindset of create something out of thin air, like they're, they're very they, that's kind of their creative yeah, achievers may be a great number two and number three, a C-suite professional, but they're still working a lot. They're still probably not paying attention to everything that really matters in their life and, as someone who has been very fortunate exited a company, did did well enough that I can do some fun stuff in life and like kind of pursue this now and try to help people.
Speaker 3:It was interesting to me because, like that was one of my most unhappiest. Yeah, I had all the stuff. All the things could travel, could do whatever, and I wasn't happy yeah.
Speaker 3:I was in a big ass house by myself, overlooking the mountains. Yeah, right, and something was missing. Yeah, something was missing, and what was missing was alignment Right, alignment, al, something was missing and what was missing was alignment right, alignment. Alignment will bring connection, misalignment will resist connection. So for those of us who out there who, like her, are on our 85, 85th relationship and we think it's the other person, and we're just dating the same person in the same denominator, in the same skin?
Speaker 3:yeah, it's, you know I I found myself dating the same type of person over and over and over and over again, which is a me problem, not a then problem. Yeah, I was misaligned, so therefore I was calling, quote unquote, calling in someone who else was misaligned. Yeah, the same holds true in business and profession. Right, it's, it's attraction.
Speaker 1:It is a law of attraction there and that really happens is, you know they? They always say that if, if, if you're in line with yourself, aligned with yourself and you're authentic, you will attract a completely different person than if you're not a thousand percent.
Speaker 3:Yeah, cause you're going to attract somebody that's not authentic, yeah, well, and you're also going to have what's called the counterfeit just before you have the breakthrough. So what's that? Oh, it's, it's simple. It's the temptation to fall back into the same pattern. Yeah, you know, in my case it it. You know, might've been somebody super attractive and look like we had alignment, and then you figure out you don't have alignment, and you know. Then you're kind of like, well, what did?
Speaker 3:it like so I missed this again for like an 89th time. Yeah Right, what the heck was going on, right? So it was like okay, well, you know, one of the things that I do upon any major life shift upward or downward, or, if you want to call it downward, I think everything's a lesson is I do what's called a sabbatical. So I recommend this for anybody and everybody, especially if you're walking around with anxiousness right now. I invite you to disconnect from the world for the for the longest amount you can humanly make it right. So it used to be a weekend, then it became a week, then it became two weeks making me nervous, and then I was in new zealand for a month.
Speaker 3:Oh, god last february oh god by yourself, yeah, by myself. No agenda, wow, yeah, because you can't get radical to learn about yourself if you do that there's no getting away from it. Yeah well, you can't get radical alignment until you have radical clarity.
Speaker 3:You can't get clarity with all the noise Like, and noise comes in many forms. Noise comes when text messages go off, when emails fire off, when a TV show program owns, when you want to play video games, like. All these different things are distractions, and what we don't realize as people and as human beings is that the distraction itself is a telltale sign of misalignment. You are trying to escape yourself. Yeah, most of us. Uh, it was funny. I had a. I had. It was on a podcast recently and, um, awesome dude, I was interviewing him ironically and he was saying that one of his big epiphanies was when his girlfriend said can you go to the toilet without your, without your phone?
Speaker 1:oh, that's hard to do, though, dude have you tried that I am.
Speaker 3:I am now because I got convicted so hard to do that right, rather than scrolling, he's like, yeah, he's like most of us can't be alone with ourself long as the poop that's, isn't that?
Speaker 1:crazy it's, but I always say, like, what the hell did I do before? Yeah, what do I do? I do? Well, there's because we don't have newspapers. We don't have a newspaper anymore.
Speaker 3:There's no magazine. There's a basket of magazines on the bottom.
Speaker 1:We've replaced that. Yeah, yeah, you know, but we couldn't. I'm bringing magazines back.
Speaker 3:You know what's really funny? The big statue of the guy on his chin like this.
Speaker 1:Like you know where he it actually was. I think it was. We should make our own. Yeah Right, but now that's interesting and everybody it's funny. Um, when you talk about that it is really hard. Like you going into to drop your car off to get work done, I can't imagine not having my phone, seriously like in the waiting room. What do you do in a waiting room If you don't have your phone?
Speaker 3:it's really're so afraid to have like just me time well, think about it this way most of us are lost in either the past or the future. Yeah, it's so true, right so true I am working and have been working on this number but a year and a half, like consistently I could. My daily practices have drastically changed, where I try to be present in every moment yeah and I'm present with you right now.
Speaker 3:You know, I think you know it's funny, you and I were going to try to have lunch beforehand. I got to get this thing done.
Speaker 1:And I knew that, I knew how I knew, I kind of knew. I said you don't worry about it if you can but, I, didn't want to be rude and not ask yeah.
Speaker 3:You know what I mean. You also have to realize that you would mention something I actually trained entrepreneurs on achievers on.
Speaker 3:All the time when we do a programs and stuff is like I call it the brain dump, ironically, and you called it the phone call but either way you're in your driveway you don't go into your house until you let go of everything you got, like I used to have a pen and a pad and now I have a chat and I'll just talk to my chat or whatever I'm like. You know, this is all the things that's in my head before I go inside.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Right, and once I've got it out now, it's there for tomorrow. I don't have to worry about it. I don't have to wake up at 3 am and go, oh my God, I forgot to do this. Yeah Right, and everybody that is listening and watching just now has had that experience.
Speaker 1:We're talking about Matt Lachanko's. We were talking about Hugo. Remember the story with Matt with his daughter. We were talking about that before, before you got here, and, if you get a chance, listen to the Matt Lachanko podcast too. It was really, really good. And he talks about coming in and we were saying one of the things that I do and you're saying you write it down. Yeah, I, when I'm on the way the house with the phone on my ear, I just don't do that, because that is not the way I want to come in the house.
Speaker 3:That's not presentness.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know who would really be ticked off? My dog. He demands attention when I come in the door and the phone would be flying. But yeah, so it's interesting how we all have a ways to try to be more present, and I think it's a work in progress. I mean, none of us are perfect and you can sit there and say all the we can all say all these things. Everybody that we listen to and everybody that we know says this is what we're going to practice, and you're just constantly practicing it.
Speaker 3:Yeah Well, let's talk about this for a second. So this has been now scientifically proven, peer reviewed, the whole deal. Human this has been now scientifically proven, peer-reviewed, the whole deal. Human beings have an energetic frequency. Some say it's because of the magnetic field on the earth. Obviously we have mostly water, like with the ocean water rolling in time, rolling out, all this kind of stuff. People of faith know it's my soul. My soul is living a conscious experience in a human body, blah, blah, blah. Either way, we know that if you are dealing with overwhelm, anxiousness, fear and avoidance consistently, you're operating what's called a low vibration is what they call it.
Speaker 3:All that means is that your emotional regulation is so far out of whack that you don't have a moment of peace and you cannot get perspective perspective like accurate perspective without peace. Conversely and they've shown, been able to show this that that field radiates off your skin at that level, about a quarter inch off your skin, when you're operating in what's called a low vibration. Right, if you take the same technology and you are your authentic self, you're integrated, you're aligned. You, you know who you are. You're not wearing masks anymore. You know you don't take on other people's thoughts of you as your actual identity. Right, if you're working on yourself, you know you're working on yourself. They're used to you for the last 10 years. It's going to take them a minute to catch up, right?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so if you go through that process and you're and you literally love yourself and this is, I know that sounds, yeah, it sounds woo-woo, but it's not. I get it right. You're not like you're. I'm not talking about ego and arrogance. I'm talking about I have a purpose. Yeah, my life has value and it's intrinsic. It's.
Speaker 3:It's not something you have to earn or perform for, and achievers and entrepreneurs and business owners. We're constantly taught that we're supposed to achieve and perform to get our worth right. If, if you're chasing your worth, you're going to end up automatically in the lower vibration fields, which is going to get you in trouble. However, conversely, if you become authentic, you become aligned, you become grounded and regulated and consistent and you maintain a level of peace that does surpass all understanding, which faith can play a huge role in that and basically does in my life Then that same magnetic field and that's how they describe it as a magnetic field radiates off your body upwards of a foot. That's crazy, right? So you may? I'll ask you, and you can just be honest when you met me, did you feel a presence?
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, it's almost everybody. It's funny that you say that, because you do and a lot of the guests do, but I don't get to see every guest in person sometimes it's through through streaming.
Speaker 3:I insist in a person I loved it.
Speaker 1:I loved it, loved it that you're here in person. It's just. It makes it so much better for everybody the audience, for you, for me, for hugo maybe not for hugo, who knows, I don't know. He's like I'm not sure, but there's other ones that have come in here. Sylvie DiGiusto yeah, Amazing presence when she comes in. She just I don't know what it is. There's something, and that's the thing. You can't put your finger on it.
Speaker 3:The presence is the field. Yeah, so that presence either attracts or repels, right? Okay. So if you find yourself blaming, shaming, victimizing yourself it's all their fault, it's not my fault, I have no responsibility, no accountability, it's always outside of me Then you're, by definition, operating at a lower field, which means you're going to repel the very opportunities and the things that you actually want. So, ironically, alignment leads to income. Alignment leads to quality relationship. Alignment leads to income. Alignment leads to quality relationship. Alignment leads to health. Like, my body is energetically healthier than most males my age, yes, because I'm operating in a different field. Sure, right, so that field was something I discovered, not by accident, not by intentionality, but by crushing my ego. Has died at least 10 ego deaths in my lifetime to date. I pray to God that I'm done with the last one.
Speaker 3:At least we haven't seen any dead egos yet while you're here, just so you know we're good.
Speaker 1:But that's human, it's human, it's human. I mean ego, but that's part of the human experience it is.
Speaker 3:So here's the thing about ego, and this is where people like I know we're going, we're not, we're not going. Woo, I promise I'll probably no I.
Speaker 1:I don't mind wherever this goes, it's fine with me, this is good, this is all good, I promise we'll go, but we'll.
Speaker 3:I'll tie it all back to business and it doesn't have to be you're good, you're good but your ego has one job, and I learned this from a good friend of mine named henry amar, and then then my energetic life coach, paul Willis, who's out of California, in Palm Springs I think it is. Is it Palm Springs? Yeah, it's Palm something. It's a desert. One of the palms. It's a desert, yeah, in California. There's another palm in Florida.
Speaker 2:He's not in that one.
Speaker 3:That's humid there, it's a desert in the other place, different humidity Totally. And then when I did the soul searching, I found it to be true, which is ego is doing one thing Its sole job is to keep you safe, and it will lie to you to keep you safe, or it's the perception of keeping you safe. So, for example, let's say that you grew up in an environment that was very chaotic, chaotic. At some point in time your nervous system said you know what that chaos?
Speaker 2:actually feels safe, and then lo and behold, you go through your life.
Speaker 3:You go through a transition, call it a you know breakup, a business failure or whatever. And the next phase of your life, you go through a time of what I call dark night of the soul death. Whatever you want to call it, it's, it's, it's a rebirth of sorts. You're getting reborn in many ways. When you go through this experience, you come out the other side of that and you realize that like and I had to do this, like I had. It was funny. I was telling you about when I was, um, the dating my girlfriend. It took me a solid three weeks to, oh, wow, like calm being like normal. Wow, like cause her energy is so steady, she is so steady, she is so steadfast.
Speaker 1:She's very consistent. She's a party, was like what's wrong?
Speaker 3:This is. This feels really bizarre. We should be fighting, we should. We should be yelling at each other. How come we're not?
Speaker 1:Because you're you, you actually kick that actually to you, your ego, saying that's safe Well think about it this way.
Speaker 3:So we're leaning into relationships a little bit, but how many people do you know or know of stories of that will go back to someone who deeply hurt them or wounded them?
Speaker 1:or abused them.
Speaker 3:Oh, many times it's because, technically, if you look at their track record of their life to date, you would go back and you would see that that's what they've experienced. And that is like so that what makes them, that's what makes them feel comfortable, yeah, yeah. So that's where your ego can lie to you Say well, you know what, this is too easy, this shouldn't be happening.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow this is this?
Speaker 3:is this? It's the bottom. The bottom is about to fall out.
Speaker 2:Yeah out.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the shoes, all the shoes about to drop, you're about to get about tsunami and and then you will go and create chaos to feel safe again.
Speaker 1:That's pretty wild, that's interesting. But that's how that's, that's interesting that's how the ego works.
Speaker 3:So the reason I say that is because part of integration is figuring out a way to and I dealt with this, uh, as someone who who forced their way into quote, unquote what the world would call success. Like I built my first business by sheer will, yeah, and I did a lot of things.
Speaker 1:Did you do it out of survival?
Speaker 3:It was, in the beginning, survival and rescue programs.
Speaker 1:So you were not, you were not, you were not. You didn't set out to go. I'm going to be. Oh no, you had no idea you'd be doing this.
Speaker 3:No. And we got on the other side of the 2008 downturn and I realized I built a runaway train. I couldn't stop it, oh wow. So I had one choice Up Either grow or die or stop. And my ego said we're going to grow, we're going to grow, that's right, because we need to be safe.
Speaker 1:No, that's crazy.
Speaker 3:It's amazing, when you think about that, that you started out more survival and then it becomes survival changes. Then, yeah, what's funny, we're going to be launching a. I'm hoping to do it later this fall. I shared with you before we jumped on the show that a desire in my heart has been a property called Safe Haven.
Speaker 3:Yes yes, so about two years well, about a year and a half ago, right before I went to New Zealand, but originally a year now I went through another significant change I didn't expect. Yeah, kind of um, I went through another significant change I didn't expect.
Speaker 3:Yeah, kind of felt like it came out of nowhere, went through in a deep, deep, um, what they call somatic work, somatic spiritual stuff. Yeah, you know, energy work, but in the grand scheme of things, I had this, this word come up. Safe haven was like I want to, I, I want to save haven, yeah, and then I was like, okay, well, what are the different? What are the different experiences that happen along the way that that turned me into a more whole person, that allowed me to pursue alignment, that allowed me to get, you know, like inner, fully integrated, those kind of stuff and this property, um, you know, and when I made the decision to move back to north carolina, it was like lakefront, okay, I'm, I feel amazing around water.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's so funny we are humans are attracted to water.
Speaker 3:Yeah, because, right, because of what we're made of what will really blow your mind is lake water has a different frequency than ocean water and you can measure it. Get out of here. It's ridiculous, but it's true.
Speaker 1:Well, that's interesting because I like lake water better than ocean water.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so ocean water has higher ions than lake water because lake water tends to be a little more stagnant. You can get some, but ocean is constantly crashing. Right right, right, right.
Speaker 1:So anyway, that's a whole other scientific episode. My goodness, that's another podcast. We're just going to talk about water. It's going to be all. That's all. It's going to be.
Speaker 3:Oh, you should interview Tracy Dews man.
Speaker 3:She can show you something, too. You can talk to stuff that actually works, yeah, but I guess what I'm getting at is this for any entrepreneur, achiever, business owner that doubts what I'm saying. Yeah Right, I'm going to invite you to do two things. First of all, I want you to go to my website, stephenscottkinscom backslash alignment, and I want you to take a quiz. It's called the integrated alignment quiz assessment. It's like seven, seven or eight questions. It will break you down exactly where you are. It'll tell you exactly what you need to know. There's there's nothing for you to buy Good.
Speaker 3:It's just, it's just for you to kind of get self-awareness because self-awareness is the starting point, right, you can't be sleepwalking through, wife, and expect your life to change, right? The second thing is if and not if, but when I haven't with us the last quarter of this year, the first quarter of next year, if you don't believe that alignment can radically change the game for you, then come as my guest and just go through the three and a half day process with us. I will teach you how to scale your company. Yeah, that's cool. I can teach you the systems and processes and strategies. But here's the thing You're the person that has to operate it. So to you change that doesn't change. So what's the difference? Going from six figures to seven figure?
Speaker 3:you person seven figures, eight figures you. Eight figures to nine figures you. Which means I'm trying to figure out how to change it to 10.
Speaker 1:I'm just kidding yeah, right, no, but that's. That's funny, because if you talk about the 10xing stuff, you know um what's the book. Let's talk about 10xing, I forgot yeah it's a great. It's a good one. I knew grant, yeah, but so when you talk about the 10 X thing, you know a lot of it has to do with that that you're not going to who you are now at the six figures or seven figures is not who you need to be in order to be the eight figures, or whatever.
Speaker 3:Right. So then that's a step one. There's a step two, and this is statistically proven as well. Um, cause, obviously I've done a lot of research and a lot of growing to kind of do this. Your team, okay, let's say you're a, you start your business year one, right, and you're one through five, you, you become one of the rare unicorns. You make half a million dollars, top on revenue, six, 700,000. You're well on your way, right, you've got a business that's working. You're probably still an overwhelmed. You're probably still burned out on a regular basis. Ask me how I know? Yeah, right, right, right, right. So.
Speaker 3:But when you go through that process, you inherently think the team that you have from year one to five to that first million call it that first million dollars, we'll use million dollar markers You'll keep about 90% of your team from one to 10 million. You'll lose about another 25%. From 10 million to 50 million. You'll lose another 30%. From 50 million to 75, you'll lose another 20%. Lo and behold, when you get to a company and you've scaled it to a hundred million plus or just shy of that, you'll have changed out literally all but 2% of your team. Yeah, if you're lucky, Right. So the same reason that prevents you from growing your business also prevents your team from growing themselves to grow your business, cause they come at some point in time that either the team itself won't grow with the business and they fall away, or you have to fire them, and it doesn't make them bad people. They were great from one to $10 million but, dude, you got over $10 million and you're like, oh my God, I'm just, I need your skill sets change yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 3:I need your skill sets change yeah, absolutely so. If you got those two pieces that are true, like you have to change to scale your company, you have to be aware that your people have to change to scale your company, you're going to discover what I discovered around my business even though it was a siding company, that we scaled to just under nine figures that one company. One of the things that we discovered was we were never a siding company.
Speaker 2:Isn't that funny.
Speaker 3:We were a personal development company masquerading as a siding company. That sounds familiar. It's called Keller Williams.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and also Newcastle lawn and landscaping. He does all their, their other market like marketing video. I'd say the first place. I found it and we'll see, but yeah, keller Williams is definitely.
Speaker 3:Newcastle is.
Speaker 1:Is is with this as well, but I first heard that from dave ramsey dave ramsey yeah, absolutely yeah, and it's funny that is that that is more of what we're hearing today. It's, it's you're in the people, you're people in uh, development business, because if you're not developing them, then you can't grow.
Speaker 3:Yeah, every business has three types of people yeah, right, you got your team, you got your clients, you got your community. Yeah, and if your business is not performing at high levels in all three of them, you can't scale a company. In fact, this fell out, it was on the radio show, probably three weeks ago, and one of the shows that we were on. It's like what's preventing the entrepreneurs from scaling their businesses? I'm like it's easy, because I've tried this, by the way, many times you can't scale dysfunction.
Speaker 1:Right, oh, that's so true, you can't scale a dysfunctional you.
Speaker 3:You can't scale a dysfunctional team. You can't even just scale a dysfunctional client base. Some of the best decisions I made were firing my clients, absolutely. Yep, they were always the one that, always the ones that paid the least. They needed the, the, the most babysitting. Meanwhile you've got other people that are paying you a whole lot more. They actually value your input, actually their, their business operations merge with your referrals.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's yeah it's, just it's it's. Yeah, absolutely it's good to fire customers every once in a while. Yeah, now, just you know, don't get crazy out there about that, but no, but it's good, it's good to you, you should, you should do.
Speaker 3:I'm a big believer in doing 360 surveys to a degree like like, like. Survey your team. Yeah, who's our most different? Who's our most difficult customer?
Speaker 1:That's a good. That's a good one, because if they're also not treating your team right, then that that affects the team.
Speaker 3:Well, and see, and that's the other thing is your. If you won't stand up for your team, why should they stand up for you? Yeah, so, true, so, true, yeah so.
Speaker 1:I want to make sure we cover everything. What else?
Speaker 3:I'm here all day. This has been great.
Speaker 2:I'm here. This has been great.
Speaker 1:Just let you know this is going to be a longer one than normal, just because it's just the way it is.
Speaker 2:This is good stuff and we're rolling here this one just hit me.
Speaker 1:You had a popular keynote. Was called one part line, one part yeah.
Speaker 3:What can you? Can you tell it? It hit me. I'm like what is this? I don't want to give the all this. No, I know, Cause you have other stuff that you want to do with that. Yeah Well, we've got a lot of really cool things happening. That's actually under um. We're almost done with trademarking everything, but there's a whole. We're caught where I'm building something called the LLS entrepreneur system. It's an operating system which is the integrated entrepreneur meets business strategy and tactical implication. That framework is basically done. Um. I'm going to launch it with our unstoppable entrepreneur community, probably next month, month after, and then we're going to track them for the next 18 months to to show that this works. Oh, that's awesome, because I've helped, I think. Results 18 entrepreneurs break to the million dollar ceiling. They were stuck at half a million for that's great five or six years and we work together for nine months and we get them over the ceiling. What?
Speaker 1:business when you talk about that, what? What business do you find is um?
Speaker 3:there's only one business that my, my stuff doesn't work on, and that's the the technically, the technology business, because I don't, I don't those businesses deal with raising debt? Yeah, and all that and I'm and I invest in businesses from time to time now, but you, but that's not my skill set.
Speaker 1:No, you're looking to make profitable.
Speaker 3:My skill set is taking a hardworking, hard-charging, impact-driven entrepreneur and giving them the tools and the assets they need to win. And when I say win, winning to me for entrepreneurs that we work with is they have better families, they have strong cultures and they're profit centers that drive community impact. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, that's why, when you said to Keller Williams and let's do this and you mentioned that you've been one of their top affiliates for a while or franchises. I'm like yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're doing very well here locally, but it's because of the culture and it's because of how they care about people, it's it's, um, it's been, but it's because of the culture and it's because of how they care about people.
Speaker 3:It were yes, it does work, so back to yeah, let's go back to lions and lambs, yeah, lines and all right. So let's, let's think about some of the characteristics of a lion, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna keep it 30 000 foot for you, because it would take a while to dig deep. But, uh, lions are typically bold. I mean, they have zero problem trying to take down an elephant, right, okay, tiny lion, yep, taking down an elephant. Ironically, it's normally the female line going after the hunting for the word. Of course, they are normally courageous. They protect their cubs, like it's going on, they doesn't matter what's coming at their cubs, or protect their cubs, um, they will sit in presence in between hunts. So true, so they'll be still never thought of that before.
Speaker 3:And they, they're proud. Yeah, yeah, um, they carry themselves with presence. Yeah, so you can be near a line If you move into the zoom zoo and you were like you get, you know, within three feet of a line and you'll hopefully not feel fear Cause being giant glass wall in front of you. But you know, but if, if, if, presence to pretty much everything living, but, yeah, they're. The presence is one of stability and strength. Yes, okay, they're very strong for their size. Okay, conversely, a lamb is not known necessarily for being very bold and courageous, but it's known for being peaceful, loving and compassionate, like it's next to it next to its thing so like.
Speaker 3:So does sheep does sheep?
Speaker 1:yeah, I just, I just sheathed it, I just so it's water. Does sheep? Yeah, I just I just sheaped it, I just so it's water and sheep.
Speaker 3:Next, I just sheaped all over the place but, um, dad, joke, I'm got full of them. I'm now a granddad, believe it or not. So no, but if you take the two, if you take these basic, characteristic, characteristic traits when you think about authentic leadership, yeah, okay, and you start thinking about the leaders that you want to follow, almost in every case, they're bold, they're courageous, they're humble and, if you're honest with yourself, they carry themselves with presence that's compassionate and loving and peaceful, like my. I'll tell you how I discovered this. This whole premise came out of my grandfather, who passed away in 2016. He was my spiritual mentor, living my entire life. I spent, I think, five years as a very convicted, faith-based atheist. Oh, you did. Oh, yeah, wow, I hated some God. Well, you might remember, my childhood was a little whack.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Unfortunately, everybody that was involved in my childhood is now great people and yeah, they've been through reinventions and stuff.
Speaker 3:But yeah, um, this was, uh, maybe four years before I was about to sell the company. I'd realized that I was running on fumes, meaning the company could absolutely break 150 million. 200 million can get there because we have. We have the systems and processes in place. We just need the team and the refinement, whatever. But I'd ask myself, do I really want to do it? Yeah, right, because I've. I'd work my entire life and this is the framework I used to use. I don't use it now. But to fight uphill my entire life, right, like, literally fight uphill. Give me.
Speaker 3:And I started the company with a nail and a hammer yeah, right, and wood from a trash pile and built it step by step, actually lumber by lumbers, or rather than brick by brick. But I was, I was confiding in him. And yet at that time and this is before all the embezzlement stuff happened I found myself getting more notable publicly on social media. At the time, algorithms drastically changed and I, I've, I've drastically changed. So I started getting requests to speak more, more. I'd stumbled my way into speaking by accident and found out that I that I did, I wasn't afraid, like a lot of folks I got, I got excited, yeah, you know. So I started something.
Speaker 3:So I had these, these other uh elements of of steven that were evolving and changing, and really wanted to pour into people and really wanted to help people and and knew I had insights and knew that my struggle was could. Could my struggle could have more meaning if I could use it to help more people, right? So all that's happening in the background, meanwhile the business is still doing, is still doing pretty well overall. I'm still growing all that kind of stuff. So we had, you know, I kind of had like the best best of both worlds, but I was going through yet another bit of an identity shift. So I go to my grandfather, I'm sitting down with him, granddad, his nickname his nickname was silver fox. Ironically, he was really good with ladies I was gonna say he sounds like leo with white hair.
Speaker 3:Yeah, sean, calgary. Oh yeah, sean, hello, granddad. Um, so, anyway, so we're doing the uh, you know, so we're, we're chatting, and I was like, hey, I'm just this is what I'm working on. He goes son, can I be honest with you? I said, yeah, of course you can. He says, uh, I actually think you can do really well speaking. I've watched you speak. I see tears on people when you speak. I I've watched you speak. I see tears on people's when you speak. I see smiles and you speak. I see lines that come up to the lines of people that come up to you to talk to you. After you speak, he says, so there's something there. He goes, but there's also this other business guy and he goes.
Speaker 3:If you think about it, you could become pretty impactful in a lot of different ways. What do you want to do? What lights you up? Not not. What do you feel like you need to do? Yeah, right, like what lights you up?
Speaker 3:And I was like man, I just I like seeing these awakening moments and people like they're never the same afterwards. And you know my I've. I've benefited from live events and speakers Same here and, and especially now, I'm in different circles of folks now that are in the thought leadership world and you know, there's some things that really touched my heart in a beautiful way and other things that really challenged my heart in a few ways, but in the grand scheme of things, he was like all right, he goes. Well, I'm going to give you the most honest you ever want to be successful as a leader, as a speaker, as an author, as a business owner pretty much any area of your life then you need to start reshaping some of yourself. You're gonna have to become one part lion and one part lamb. Oh, wow, and I was like it stunned me. I started crying, yeah, and I was like cause I felt the weight of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Right, and that weight was unique. It was different. It's a mantle. In fact, I began using the word mantle right. It was something that when I promoted one of my COOs, it ended up becoming one of the equity partners in the company I sold and I actually did this experience with him.
Speaker 3:Kind of loosely off of this, we had the entire team come in the room. At the time we were probably 60 team members. I guess that could get get to the building because we do a lot of stuff in, zoom and out of markets and broadcasting. And when he comes up to me I said, okay, well, we're gonna, we're gonna plan this event. I'm gonna acknowledge the fact I'm promoting you to this level, but I'm gonna do it my way. He had no idea what that was gonna be.
Speaker 3:So I went out to dick sporting goods and this is not I'm not being paid by dicks, by the way, I'm not sponsored by dicks, um, but uh, no. So he, we, we go to, I go to dicks, I buy a weighted vest. All right, I come back to the building. We have the we call it a friday morning production meeting, which is like our, like our weighted vest, a weighted vest. I grab, I take all the weights out of the vest. I lay all the way. I lay one weight on each seat. Yeah Right, and then I was my. My facility is the place we did Ed's event and stuff like that. Even to this day there's they still. Uh, the company I sold still occupies part of the building. Um, so we, you know, we had a bit of a small auditorium. It was like seats like 380 people and that's that kind of stuff. And uh, so we, you know teams sitting on the front row and they're like. And then I proceeded to get on stage with, you know, with this, uh, with this leader.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And I wanted him to understand the weight that I carried every day. Oh, wow, Right, Um, when COVID, not when COVID happened when, uh, 2008 downturn happened, I went two months without pay. Yeah, I paid my team. I tried to keep the lights on, I tried to just lean in and and um, when I made decisions like important ones, sometimes I would not talk to anybody about it. I would spend weeks pondering what the right decision might be. Right, I now know to give myself a little bit more, less lead time to do that. Like, sure, Give yourself a week to get all your due diligence in place.
Speaker 3:But any who, uh, we're, we're sitting there and I'm, I'm just saying, hey, look, you know, this is what leadership is. This is what it means to me. This is my grandfather would call this the mantle, all this kind of stuff. And, um, I said, are you sure you want this? And he looked at me. I said okay.
Speaker 3:So I said, okay, we'll sit around here for a second. We're both on stage. And I said, okay, guys, you guys are probably wondering what that weight is in your seat. And he's like yeah, I was like well, that weight represents every one of your families. Oh, wow, Every one of your families. So for those of you who are married and have kids, for those of you who are engaged, don't have kids. For those of you who are married and have kids, for those of you who are engaged, don't have kids. For those of you who have grandkids, like it's yeah, and you know, I I said when you come up to him, you have the choice of choosing to put the weight on him or Walker, Cause he had, I hadn't put on the weight the best the best right.
Speaker 3:Towards the end and, sure enough, like you know, I was like and it's up to you guys. So, unfortunately, all the team members went to him, which is good, um that could have gone wrong.
Speaker 1:I could have gone way wrong, but hey, you're bad I went with, I trusted my instinct, yeah and um.
Speaker 3:So it was really funny. So everybody, I said, if you, if you believe this, I want you to grab your weight, I want you to come up to him and, just before you put the weight in the vest, I just, you know, tell me if you're, if you really mean it, I trust you with my life and my family. Wow, that's cool, right? So, lo and behold, it takes 15 minutes, believe it or not. We had some team members that were tearing up.
Speaker 2:He teared up a couple times I teared up like it was a school.
Speaker 3:It's a meaningful thing because at the end I remember that, the very end this was kind of like the joke part or the not joke part of it, but like the relief he's wearing all the weights. Yeah, he gets up off the chair. He has a hard time getting off the chair. He was, holy crap, this thing weighs a lot. I said exactly. So I say that felt it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, Well, it's it's.
Speaker 3:It's easy to talk about leadership, it's easy to talk about weight, it's easy to it's easy to talk about these things, but when you put it into that, but when you put it into actual perspective, that you know we at the time, I think at the height, we had like 416 people working for CHE, which is the acronym for the longer name of the company, and by that time we had come, we'd be called, we became the CHE companies, because I had four companies that I rolled up into one and that became the CH commercial division, renovation division, residential, and then a millwork thing that we were trying to launch correctly. We get all the way to the end of it and whatever. And I think everybody felt the weight. Yeah, so contrast that two years, almost three, four years go by and I'm now deciding whether or not I want to sell my company.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I was getting courted by private equity, I got courted by family office and either the money was great and the people were terrible, or the people were great and the money was terrible and I was like this is not what I'm going to do. It wasn't aligned with my soul. Again, alignment, I wanted to make sure that whatever I had built stood a really good chance of actually being a true legacy.
Speaker 3:Yeah sure, um, and I say that to say that that same gentleman was at the table, yeah, and even though he had worn the weight of the roles that he had, I told you. I said, once you make this decision, everything changes, because now you're going from team member to owner or part owner, and it was funny, it was probably three months after the exit. I see the guys for the first time in a quarterly board meeting because I'm the board chair and still, yeah, so you're still involved. Yeah, I still own 20% of the company. Oh, cool, um, cause I believe in them. Yeah, absolutely, I believe they can execute. But when I, when I saw him and a couple of the other guys, yeah, I remember, uh, he and one of the other guys says he goes, I had no idea. So I want to say that to leaders.
Speaker 1:It's funny how nobody does.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so stop expecting your team to understand. They're never going to understand until they're in that position.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So a servant leader is not going to expect them to understand you. You're going to learn to understand them, yeah, and then you strategically align them like dominoes to serve the best interest of the business and the community, and your benefit of that is a byproduct of doing that. Well, yeah, exactly, alignment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there it is Back to alignment. My gosh, it all comes back to alignment. So you are working on other things. You're working on maybe some other books coming out in the future, so we're going to stay in touch with that whole thing, absolutely. We're also going to stay in touch with everything, actually, because we covered so much material. How much of it was stuff you highlighted? None, none, but that's okay. It's okay. He's now the record for the longest podcast we've had. Let's go so, which I am very happy about because it's great material, it's great information. I don't know if there's anybody that can listen to this and say they can't get something out of it, uh, but you're very authentic. You seem very aligned. Thank you, and I wish you the very best in all the things that you're doing and we'll stay in touch.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I get to see you sing. Yeah, you do get to see me sing, that's right. Hopefully he likes it. What if he doesn't? What if he's like oh, um, unstoppable is what he is. And your um, build is the podcast. Right, he's got a podcast called build and, uh, you want to check that out too. It's really good. He's got all kinds of good people in there. But, uh, you're gonna, you're gonna love it. So that's about it. See us every thursday at 7 pm. That's about it. All, right, see you.
