The Small Business Safari

If Jobs Don’t Want Your Experience, Lead With Your Mission | John Tarnoff

• Chris Lalomia, Alan Wyatt, John Tarnoff • Season 4 • Episode 223

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Stop waiting to “feel ready.” Here’s the hard truth: confidence comes last.
If layoffs, ageism, or career ghosting have knocked you sideways, this conversation with career transition coach John Tarnoff offers a practical way forward—without applying to 100 job postings.

John breaks down why the old career playbook—resumes, cover letters, and cold applications—fails experienced professionals, and how to replace it with mission-led positioning, warm introductions, and a narrowly defined “superpower” that solves one urgent problem for the right buyer.

We dig into how to turn your LinkedIn About section into a clear mission and promise, rewrite headlines around outcomes (not titles), and shift from task execution to executive-level problem solving. John also shares his own path through eighteen jobs and seven firings, reframing setbacks as data—and momentum.

This episode connects career transition, leadership, and entrepreneurship with a consultant mindset: diagnose pain, map a path to results, communicate relentlessly, and finish the last five percent. Whether you’re W-2 or 1099, the goal is the same—become the trusted thought partner leaders rely on.

If you feel stuck, consider this your nudge: move while uncomfortable, define the promise you’re making, choose the niche you can own, and reach out to five people who can open the right doors this month.

💡 GOLD NUGGETS 

• Confidence is the outcome of action—not the starting point
• Why ageism is hitting earlier and how referrals bypass it
• Mission-led career design from the inside out
• Turning LinkedIn profiles into stories and value promises
• Writing headlines around outcomes instead of roles
• The baseball mindset for outreach (.300 is elite)
• Selling strategy to executives, not tasks
• Reframing firings and setbacks as usable data
• Thinking like a consultant in leadership and entrepreneurship

🔗 Guest Links

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johntarnoff/
• Programs & Coaching: 

🌍 Follow The Small Business Safari

• Instagram | @smallbusinesssafaripodcast
 • LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrislalomia/
 • Website | https://chrislalomia.com

🎥 Watch the full episode on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@TheSmallBusinessSafari




Thanks to our sponsor Smart Hire Solutions LLC!

SPEAKER_00:

When you're doing that, do you find that you have to start building their confidence back up, find out where they are mentally before you get going?

SPEAKER_02:

All right, let's talk about confidence. For me, confidence actually comes last. Uh I think you talk, you're an entrepreneur. You talk to any number of entrepreneurs and ask them, oh, you must have a lot of confidence to do what you're doing. And I guarantee you that most of them will say, Hell no, I'm scared shitless every time I go out. But I have this vision. All right. I have this vision. I have this certainty. I've done my research. I've put all my ducks in a row. I'm scared, but I'm going to do it anyway. So I'm confident when it all comes together and I cash the check at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to the Small Business Safari, where I help guide you to avoid those traps, pitfalls, and dangers that lurk when navigating the wild world of small business ownership. I'll share those gold nuggets of information and invite guests to help accelerate your extent to that mountaintop of success. It's a jungle out there, and I want to help you traverse through the levels of owning your own business that can get you bogged down and distract you from hitting your own personal and professional goals. So strap in Adventure Team and let's take a ride through the Safari to get you too. Oh my god, where's Alan? I've lost Alan. Guys, it's just me today. Small business safari, small business safari adventure team. It's just Chris. I'm just gonna have to rock it by myself. I don't get Alan to poke and prod and figure everything else. So again, if you really want to get after him, email me Chris at the Trust Toolbox and just give me F. Alan in the subject line, and I'll take care of it and give him a big old slap in the face next time I see him. But uh, no, he's missing out. I'll tell you what he's doing. Uh, we got a great guest today, and I was telling John before this is that um he did not have this on his calendar, but he did have it on his calendar, but he went for a more important thing in that here in our local chamber here in Johns Creek, Georgia, number one city for living in the U.S., uh, two years in a row, pretty cool. Um, the chamber's getting revived, and they have sucked Alan in. And guess what, everybody, they suck this guy into. So not only am I doing the president of Neri here in Atlanta, finishing my term this year, but they want me to get on the Chamber of Commerce for John's Creek. So Alan's going there to vote me in, whether I wanted to or not. As John said before, cut out. I'm like, I don't know, man. Every time you think you're getting out, I just can't say no because I love giving back. And um, you've you've been with this podcast long enough, you'll know that networking is huge. Uh, we know it, we believe in it, but we also believe in our city and giving back. Uh so I said, yeah, sign me up. It's a pretty big board. Hopefully, it won't be too much time commitment, but they actually already tapped me for a couple things. I was like, all right, I can do one. I said, I gotta get back to running this business and I gotta have this podcast because I can't give this sucker up. So, John, it's just you and me today, buddy. We got John turnoff ready to make it happen.

SPEAKER_02:

We'll make it happen.

SPEAKER_00:

So you have to be extra funny because Alan's not.

SPEAKER_02:

No pressure.

SPEAKER_00:

John, we were talking before, and uh, I love this topic because we talk about mid-career life's life crisis. And um, for me, I didn't have the midlife crisis. I always knew I wanted to start a business, um, but I got sucked into that corporate world, and then I got sucked into the lotus that was the corporate world. I love the bonuses, I love the 401k, I love the prestige, I love my personal suits, I love my custom suits, I love my Mercedes Benz, I love my corner office, and I got sucked into it. And I went, oh my god, I hate what I'm doing. I can't believe I'm using half my brain. I'm gonna go start my own business and didn't have what we have today, you know, all these podcasts available to you, these great books. I use score. Uh, score was my first uh first stop. I use a lot of mentors here locally. There wasn't a lot. You had to go to Barnes and Noble to a bookstore, hello, Amazon, right, and read all this stuff. And now we got all these great opportunities for people to really explore this whole midlife crisis uh or midlife career crisis, as it were. So, John Tarnoff, why don't you uh let's welcome the show. Tell us a little about yourself.

SPEAKER_02:

Sure. So I'm uh based in Los Angeles, I'm a career transition coach. I focus primarily, if not exclusively, on people in mid-career transitions. So that's people can be as young as their early 40s because ageism is getting younger. So early 40s to mid 50s, late 50s, uh, people who are kind of butting up against this mid-career crisis that a lot of people go through, which really is, I think, an expression of two things. One, that the um the the career marketplace is going through lots of changes, and uh people are uh finding a lot of uncertainty in a very volatile economy. So people are getting fired more. There are more layoffs, there are more reductions in force. Um, and there is ageism, and ageism is happening younger and younger. Uh used to be something where you'd be in your late 50s and people would start saying, Oh, so uh you thinking about retiring? And you're going, no, I still have got a you know a good five, 10 years left, and they would go, oh, interesting, and leave you guessing about whether they were they were thinking about getting rid of you before your time is up. Today, I mean, I have a colleague who is a 40-year-old uh tech executive, she was let go in her 40th year from her tech company in Seattle because she was too old.

SPEAKER_00:

That is astounding to you.

SPEAKER_02:

I mean, they didn't they didn't admit to it, but there was no other reason why she was let go. So amazing.

SPEAKER_00:

Uh looking at us. If you're listening on the podcast, you know that uh uh that uh you can't see us. If you're watching on YouTube, you can see us. So John and I do identify as a little bit older than 40. Um and so when you hear that, you know, especially when you were 40, you look back on your career, John, when you were 40, um, ages, and you were like, and no, I'm just I'm in fact, I'm the young buck here. I'm the I'm the guy who's gonna be up and coming.

SPEAKER_02:

I'm gonna be just starting to get going.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm just getting going, 40. And we're like, ah, those 55 plus guys, now they're looking, they're looking kind of old, but not me. And now we're at that age, and you're kind of going, hey man, I'm still feeling like I got some something to give. I got a lot of them to think.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So as you work with these people thinking about this, people come to you and say, you know, or they find you, you hopefully you'll find us on the podcast, and we keep talking about stuff like this. What is their biggest reason? Is it are they running away from pain or are they running to something?

SPEAKER_02:

Most people are running away. Um, and they are trying to kind of get back in. So the the kind of typical situation that I deal with um is someone who has either been let go, in many cases, they've been at a company for a long time, over five years, sometimes over 10 years, and they are adrift. They are feeling completely at a loss as to how to get going in this jobs marketplace, because all of the previous wisdom that we used to use to get another job, update your resume, compose a cover letter, find open positions, send the cover letter, send the resume, you'd get a reply back. Chances are if the fit was somewhat in the right ballpark, you would get an interview, and eventually within a span of a couple of months, you'd get another position. Today we have people out there who are out of work for three months, six months, a year longer. They have submitted resumes and cover letters to dozens, if not hundreds, of job openings. In many cases, they don't hear back, they get completely ghosted. And all you have to do is scroll through your LinkedIn feed, and you will see multiple stories every day of people who are going through this nightmare that is taking a lot of people by surprise.

SPEAKER_00:

That is uh astounding. Again, as somebody who's been an entrepreneur for uh 17 years, I started in 2008. You know, I'm not looking for a job. Um and so I'm always looking to hire people, as it were, in my business and my field. And to hear that, it just was bringing me back to back the back in the day when you're right, when you said, okay, I'm gonna look for a new job. Hell, my first job I found out of the newspaper. Uh I was graduating from uh I was graduating from graduate school back in the early 90s uh in mechanical engineering, and the job offers I got, while uh I started looking in the newspaper, the job offers I got all came from people who knew me or knew of our our institution and what we did. And you think about that, that hasn't changed. I mean, all this all these decades, that hasn't changed. So you're right. When you when you're out there, you you can put out a hundred if you want, you could submit to a hundred, but they don't know you, right? And so that's got to be really disheartening for people. And that might do you see a lot of people going through introspection at this point, yes.

SPEAKER_02:

Um uh mostly uh self-criticism, or worse, um, people really lose confidence, they really get this deflated sense of, well, I must be done. I don't know what I'm doing. There's no one takes my experience seriously. I would have thought after 20 years or more that the experience would mean something, but no one seems to pay any mind. So what what's going on? It's a completely bizarre world for a lot of people. And a lot of reasons why this has taken place, uh, but I think you you just alluded to the the mindset shift that everyone has to go into in order to succeed and get through this, and that is to shift your focus from applying to jobs and using your resume to focusing on relationships, building your network, getting into conversations with people, because the only way, particularly as an experienced mid-career professional, that you're going to get hired is through a referral.

SPEAKER_00:

Amen. I think that uh that speaks volumes to people who are thinking about getting into business. And you look back, the people I interact with are people that I want to network with and uh and I talk with them. If I get a uh again, LinkedIn, one of the worst ones, we'll talk about LinkedIn in a minute. You know, those messages you get, those unsolicited uh those solicitation, unsolicited solicitations. I mean, come on, man, it's a delete, delete, delete all day long. And that's just numbers game. You're like, yeah, I'm not in for that, man, because I believe in people and and networking as well. And so when these guys are coming to you and doing this, you're right, they're losing their confidence. So you must be building up their confidence again because that's hard. It is hard to go out there and go grab that ring or that next thing if you're running away from pain or you were forced into a situation because we talk about that forced entrepreneurship that happens to a lot of us. Hey, I got let go, I gotta go find something. Well, hell, I'm gonna go bet on myself and I'm gonna start my own business. Rockstar, man, let's go. So, when you're doing that, do you find that you have to start building their confidence back up, find out where they are mentally before you get going?

SPEAKER_02:

All right, let's talk about confidence. For me, confidence actually comes last. Uh, I think you talk, you're an entrepreneur, you talk to any number of entrepreneurs and ask them, oh, you must have a lot of confidence to do what you're doing. And I guarantee you that most of them will say, Hell no, I'm scared shitless every time I go out. But I have this vision, all right. I have this vision, I have this certainty, I've done my research, I've put all my ducks in a row. I'm scared, but I'm going to do it anyway. So I'm confident when it all comes together and I cash the check at the end of the day, but up until that point, confidence is not part of my vocabulary. So anyone who is saying, and I hear this a lot, you know, I hear what you're saying about networking and about going out of my comfort zone and trying new things and what and whatever. But I I I want to wait until I build up a little more confidence before I take that step. I say, don't take that position because you will never get anywhere. You have to feel this discomfort and this sense of uncertainty, and you have to disregard it or live with it and pursue it. And it's that old great quote from Winston Churchill if you're going through hell, keep going.

SPEAKER_00:

Nobody wants to stop in hell. You gotta get through hell. That's right. I I love that you're right. Uh well, I just need a little more confidence before I do this. Nope. I need a little bit more. No. Nope. Stop. Those are excuses that's making you feel better about having to go live in that world of uncomfort. And you and I were talking about sports right before that. You talk about the world of uncomfort. Uh, for a lot of people in sports, you know, getting up and getting ready to hit a baseball with somebody throwing it at you at 100 miles an hour, 90, hell, 80 miles an hour. It doesn't matter. Uh, it's an uncomfortable position to get up there. And you're like, did he have confidence when he stepped in that uh batter's box? And they talk about that a lot in sports, but I think to your point, no, they're getting up there going, no, I'm scared jealous that I'm not, I'm not gonna strike out. I'm I'm I'm not gonna be able to hit that ball. I mean, and I'm gonna seven out of 10 times, if I'm lucky, um, I'm gonna be a Hall of Famer, and that's it.

SPEAKER_02:

You know, baseball is a great analogy, and I talk about this a lot with people who I say, you know, one of the things you gotta do is go out and start having conversations with people. You've gotta, you've gotta do outreach, right? You've got to connect with people, go, you know, sift through this morass that is LinkedIn currently, where you know, you're constantly getting this BS input and and inflow of people trying to sell you stuff. Just get rid of that, start doing your searching, focus on people that you know already, friends of friends, so your second-level connections, start to make inroads and ask people for their connection, ask people to get into a conversation with you, see how that goes, try to get an informational interview going with someone in your field who is doing something along the lines of what you want to do, or maybe they don't have any jobs available, but they could be a referral source for you. And people say, Oh, you know, I I just can't take rejection. I just, you know, I'm afraid of kind of reaching out, and people aren't gonna want to talk to me, or they're not gonna respond to my my direct message or whatever it is. And I say, think about baseball. If you're hitting 300 in baseball, you're a superstar. That's 30%. That's three in 10. So don't expect that you're going to be making a connection, a meaningful connection with everyone that you reach out to. Quite the contrary, you're going to have to keep getting up to bat, keep taking those swings. Sometimes you connect, sometimes you strike out, but over time, over this lengthy time that you have in your life and your career to build up this network, you're going to make connections. And the connections that you make are going to be meaningful ones that will yield dividends for your networking plan and your career opportunities.

SPEAKER_00:

So when somebody comes to you and says, uh, John, I need some help. Uh come to work with me. Tell me how that intake process works. How do you start that process? What do you do?

SPEAKER_02:

The most interesting thing about the process, and I'm not a traditional career coach. I do not come out of HR or recruiting. I'm a business guy. I'm actually come out of the creative industries here. I'm a former film studio executive working on movies and TV shows. I took a sabbatical into technology in the 90s when that was taking off. I founded a startup with a partner. We kind of ran it up through the bubble and then the bubble crashed and we ran it back down. So I've I've been up and down, both in my movie business career and in the startup world. So I've seen a thing or two, I've learned to become resilient. But the most important thing here, and this is kind of going back to this idea of people having confidence and uh kind of regretting that they don't have the confidence or waiting for the confidence to come, is that introspection, self-reflection are where you have to start. For me, this is an inside out process. This is not about you fitting yourself into all of the opportunities that are out there, the jobs that you kind of sort of could have do, could do. Um traditionally, a career counselor, advisor, coach is going to say, okay, let's see what are people hiring right now? What are they hiring for? Let's look at your background, let's look at what the job market is, and let's see where you fit. I reject that approach entirely. I think it's a really lousy way of going about it, particularly for an experienced professional. Because as you get older, you get more experienced, you really develop a very specific set of skills, a real focus and a real expertise in one area, you're not going to be right for the majority of the jobs that are being posted. And by the way, when was the last time you saw a job posted that asked for 15 to 25 years of experience? I'll give you a very easy answer. None. Zero.

SPEAKER_00:

Zero, not a zip, not a nibble.

SPEAKER_02:

Usually, you usually they're looking for seven to 10 years experience, maybe at the outset for some senior position, 10 to 15 years. They're not posting the positions for the more senior positions because they are hiring those people through referrals. Right? So you want to define your career in terms of what is unique about you and translate that into a LinkedIn profile that tells a story. It tells a story of what are the roles that you do, the deliverables that you deliver. And in your about section, which most people use as a kind of a strange bio or a list of skills or some kind of a condensation of what's in their resume or their experience section on LinkedIn, which is your online resume. I believe that the about section should be a mission statement. It's a conversation starter. It should be who you are, why you do what you do, and where you want to take it. You really want to give this sense of who you are as a whole person. What's your motivation? What's the meaning and purpose behind the work that you do? That's what moves the needle. That's what gets you into a conversation with someone who is otherwise reading about sections that read like corporate, you know, uh a word salad, experienced professional through 25 years of, you know, seasoned, experienced, hiring leading team. I mean, come on, this is all BS. You know, you've got to break through the scrolling, break through that kind of resistance that's going on to someone reading yet another profile on LinkedIn. And connect with them as an individual. And those are the people that you want to connect with because your goal in this inside to outside process is to build a tribe around your values, your experiences, your preferences, your vision, your mission. That's where you're going to get the referrals by becoming part of the tribe or the tribes of people who are kind of in your wheelhouse. It's not about your skill set necessarily. Remember, skills can be learned. And as a business owner, I'm sure you've been in this situation countless times. You've got two possible hires. One checks all the boxes on the skills for that job description. The other one, not so much checking the boxes on the skills, but you just love this person. You think, oh my God, they are such a great fit. Love the mindset, love the attitude, love the energy. They can learn all the other stuff. I want to hire that person because that's the person I want to go to work with every day. Be that person.

SPEAKER_00:

So you talked about this. Let's go back to LinkedIn. You talked about the don'ts, and I uh I 100% agree with it. Give me some do's. You talked about the story, um, your your mission value, your mission statement, your value statement. What are some good things that tactically we could all start doing right now on our LinkedIn to make ourselves look better?

SPEAKER_02:

Your LinkedIn headline is not your job title, it's not your company. It is the three, four, maybe five value drivers that you provide through the work that you do. A lot of headlines today, and I think this is a good approach, or certainly a good approach as you're trying to work this out, is to make it a deliverable. If I do or I solve this problem for this client with this tool for this result, think about that, right? Because anyone who is looking to hire has a very specific need. They're not looking for generalists. Sorry to say, I'm a generalist. I'm sure with your experience, you're a generalist. We're all generalists. We you kind of can't have a career for 20, 30 years and not be a generalist. You kind of appreciate the value of all these intersecting skills and experiences and points of view. It's not what the hiring market is looking for. They're looking for a single specialist to solve this particular problem. So the trick is to look at everything that you've done and can do and think what is the single keyhole that I need to kind of squeeze through in order to get in the door, deliver my value. And then from there, once they see that I've solved that problem, then they're going to say, Oh, wow, this was great. What what else do you do? What else have you got? Right? Right. So it's very important to define that specialty, what I call the superpower, that particular intersection, that synthesis of who you are, what you do, what you've delivered, what you can deliver, the techniques, the skills, the insights that you bring, but it all has to focus in this one area.

SPEAKER_00:

I love the keyhole uh analogy about you know, you got to push yourself through. Um, I love that the uh the other part about you know solving that one problem for somebody. Demonstrate that one thing. One of the things I talk about, even my sales guys here in the remodeling and handyman world, uh is they do a lot of networking at BI, which is a uh close contact networking group for uh for home services and other things. That when they go there, you're not everything to everybody. You're not just a handyman, you're not just a remodeler. You could have solved that one problem for Alice and Alpharetta, who had to have this drywall fixed before her in-laws came for Thanksgiving this year, and that way she could be the rock star in the dining room and not have her father-in-law say, I can't believe you haven't had this fixed yet. So uh I love how you talk about that. So you talk about those stories, and I think stories carry the day. As you work with people, and I know that's where the specialty is for you. How many of these people end up going into a corporate or into a position, and how many end up starting their own biz?

SPEAKER_02:

I would say most of people that I work with, uh I'd say maybe it's probably about 75%, go into a corporate position, are interested in kind of staying in the corporate world, uh, trying to figure out a different way in, trying to um uh really refine their value proposition so they can communicate what they're doing better, be considered for higher level um jobs. I just worked with a guy who is a um very experienced marketing executive in the uh retail food space, incredible expertise in this area. Never been a CMO, wanted to be a CMO. And what I said to him is this I said, you know, you're you're selling yourself too hard on your experience and your skills. They want a higher level of strategy and expertise. Stop telling them about all of the minutiae that you know how to do because that's what they're gonna hire you to do. They're gonna continue to see you as this Mr. Fixit guy. What you need to do, and I helped them get a CMO role, was work with that CEO, find out what is the what is the set of issues that are keeping that CEO up at night, be the solution to what that CEO is looking to do, bring your strategic solutions to that person, that's the boss you're trying to cater to. And he is expecting you to hire the people who are gonna fix it and do all the little minutia that you dine out on. He doesn't care about that. He wants a thought partner and a strategy partner. So of all the stuff that you know how to do and you know the why and the wherefore, that's what you've got to rely on. Bring that stuff to the fore.

SPEAKER_00:

That's uh great advice. I love that you just talked about this because you're right. You're gonna go do what you're best at, but what a lot of people are looking for is somebody's gonna solve their pain point. And you're uh the people at the levels that you're talking about, CEOs, CMOs, anybody in the S-suite, they're looking for people who are gonna be dogs to go out there and solve those problems that are keeping these guys from executing on what they want to do. So they know that people are gonna be able to get there, but they want to know somebody who can have that dialogue with them and be that peer-to-peer. And and positioning yourself like that and solving my problem has me more excited than somebody who's just gonna go do what they do. I just learned some valuable lessons about that, you know, in my home services world, is that I'm trying to solve customers' problems in homes. You know, I'm trying to give back time to fathers who want to be at baseball games, mothers who want to be at soccer games, uh, families that want to be together, people who want to do it. And if you're a boomer, guys who want to be able to play golf or go on vacations and not have to worry about the house, we start talking about those pain points and people are attracted to you. Yep. And I think that's what uh you're right. A lot of things uh that people are looking at putting on LinkedIn are all about what you can do in the deliverables you'll bring. Yeah, but what are you doing to solve my problem? So as you work with people, and what's the name of your academy or how can people find you? I want to make sure we get that out there. I forgot to bring that up.

SPEAKER_02:

Sure. So uh you can find me uh on LinkedIn. That's probably the best place to find me, John Tarnoff. Um, the only John Tarnoff uh career coach on uh on LinkedIn. Uh and uh I set up a uh a community group called the Mid-Career Lab, which is really for people in mid-career who are struggling with these issues, struggling with, you know, how to get ahead, how to find that next job, uh, looking for support, looking for other people's uh stories and experiences to help them uh through this uh through this hell that's happening in the job market.

SPEAKER_00:

So, Johnny, going back to your career, uh, how many jobs did you have? You said you were a film studio executive in Techstar. How many jobs did you have?

SPEAKER_02:

So over the 35 plus years that I was in uh in Hollywood and in my tech career, I had 18 jobs. I was uh, and I I I have the number because I talked about this in my TEDx talk as a as a kind of a proof of concept about why I was up there talking about jobs. So 18 jobs, and I was fired from seven of them, which means that I think if the math is still right, I was fired from 39% of my of my jobs. And I I got a kind of a nervous laugh about that when I when I mentioned that statistic. And and I mentioned not so much kind of as a sick joke, but really to kind of demystify and destigmatize the idea of getting fired. And I think a lot of people kind of come out of this shame-based uh perception that if you got fired, you did something wrong. And even in a mass layoff situation, you may get the axe, but the guy three cubicles down is still here. What's that about? Why did they retain their job, but I had to get the axe? It must have been something wrong. No, there's nothing wrong with you. You're living in a crazy world where people are making often arbitrary decisions. And what you have to remember is that there are lessons every time you face a setback. So your job is to take stock of those lessons and look at ways that you can use your setback as an opportunity to do something more, to do something that's closer to what you want to do, who you are. You now have this new opportunity to use everything that you've gained in this last job to put it to work, future focused for someone else. Or if you want to do it for yourself, I mean, there is that 25% of people that I work with who do go off and start their own businesses. And the other thing I want to say about that is it's really important, I think, for everybody today, whether you are an employee on a W-2 or a contractor on a 1099, to think of yourself as a consultant providing value to a client, never as an employee seeking direction from a manager.

SPEAKER_00:

That's great advice. I think uh for anybody, again, most of our listeners, you know, you're thinking about starting a business, maybe you're even running a business, trying to scale it. If you got all of your employees to think about this as a consultant providing something, or if yourself you're thinking about it, you're a consultant, even if you're the CEO of a company, you're a consultant providing something to your company. That's a great way to look at things. And I'll tell you what, you'll approach your job a lot differently. You'll approach that day a lot differently with that mindset.

SPEAKER_02:

It's about taking ownership, and there's there's got to be a way for you to find ownership in that process, whatever it is. And it will it will up your performance no matter what you're doing.

SPEAKER_00:

Guys, go check it out. John Turnoff, LinkedIn coach. Go check him out. I'm gonna I'm I know I'm already following him, so good stuff there. John, this has been a uh great stuff. Love talking about this stuff, mid-career stuff. You know, by the way, uh, that 18 jobs, I was thinking that you would say like four, because I thought I was crazy and I was at five before I started my business. And uh back in the day, that's just not what you did. You didn't hop much, you didn't do a lot of that. And today, um, if you think of yourself as a consultant and you take pride in your personal brand and what you do, and I know John's a big proponent of personal brand as well, that's a huge step for you. So always be thinking about your personal brand, what you're putting out there, because you never know where it's gonna lead, because not every job is gonna fit everybody, and not everybody's gonna fit every job. So you guys go and find it out, John. Thank you so much. But we got to get to those final four questions, man. All right, I love hitting it. So, first, what is a book you'd recommend to our audience, the adventure team?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, it's an oldie, but it's a goodie. Uh, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. It's the kind of the OG management values-driven Bible. Uh, and I reread the book every year or so. Um, I'm a big fan of number six, which is seek first to understand, then to be understood. I think it's a real great insight on how communication works. And I would just recommend it to everyone.

SPEAKER_00:

Uh, highly great book. That I tell you, uh, John, my first job out of uh out of college wasn't a manufacturing engineering firm. And I was the uh, it was me and another guy. And then after that, uh, the closest guy at age, we were 24 at the time, and I think our next closest guy was 36, 37. And uh, I remember my boss came up to me and I thought I was kicking ass, you know, taking names, doing everything. He came up to me and said, Man, I think you could probably run this place. He said, But until you figure out that you've got to focus in and get your time management down, he goes, You're going nowhere. Have you ever heard of this, heard of this book called Stephen Covey's highly effective? So I uh I made it through four and a half habits. I finally finished the book, but I I went all the way in, man. I had the binder back in the day, the the daily planner, the weekly planner, the monthly planner. Um, it's timeless, guys. Uh, you know, as especially with all the electronics and all the distractions you have, this book helps you get focused in. Love that one. Great recommendation on that one. All right, number two. What is the favorite feature of your home?

SPEAKER_02:

It's my view. Uh, I live in um northeast Los Angeles. We are kind of uh right up against the San Gabriel Mountains. Uh, we have this, we're facing west. We live on a property with 12 California oak trees. And the uh the sun, particularly in the summer, sets right outside of our living room. And uh I'll just sit out there on the deck and watch the sun go down. And of course, it's changing every every you know, every day. It kind of moves back and forth across the horizon. And there's one week in the spring and in the fall where the sun, I call it uh uh, well, the the name of the of the street we live on is Lolita Avenue. So I call it Lolita Hinge. The sun at sunset just shines right into the dining room and the kitchen, and it's like, you know, kind of in an Egyptian temple, that ray of sun just blasting in. So that's like a fun, you know, anniversary every every year to see that uh that oh man, I am jelly, man.

SPEAKER_00:

That sounds awesome to see that view. Yeah, that's that's beautiful. You you painted a beautiful picture on that one too. It that's uh that's just dynamite. All right. Next question. Alan and I are customer service, and he would say, freaks, uh, but we are. We live love talking about customer service. What is a customer service pet peeve of yours when you're out and you're the customer?

SPEAKER_02:

Uh follow-up. I think that none of us do follow up well, and I think you can never over-communicate when it comes to service. And so I would say make sure that your customer knows what you're going to do, that you've done it, that you've just done it, and that they know that you've just done it. And do not leave any gaps in that process.

SPEAKER_00:

I love that one. Follow-up is a big thing. It's so hard uh for a lot of people because we're always uh, especially in today's world, we're so in the present and the now and get easily distracted by those technology devices we love to call our phones or the computers.

SPEAKER_02:

But the the you know, the solution is in the technology. The technology can do all this for you, automate all this for you, remind you of all this, so you never have to miss an opportunity to touch the customer.

SPEAKER_00:

You're right. It's right there in front of you. And that's back to the highly uh have the effective habit because of the technology. You have it right there, it's all sitting there. It's not book and binder anymore. It's just a matter of, but guess what? It's still basics.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I mean, I'm constantly getting reminders. It's like, oh, you have a client in five minutes, like, oh my god, right, right, right, right.

SPEAKER_00:

Right. There you go. We have no excuse. Love that. Follow-ups. All right, last question. I love uh working on homes. That's why I started my business. I got into it. It was always a fun thing for me. I was in the corporate world, I got out of it, but I had a lot of DIY nightmare failures. I mean, I've had I've had flames, I've had water, I've had nails through the old hand clamp that we like to call my fingers. I've stepped on nails, as I told John before we got on here. John, what's a DIY nightmare story of yours?

SPEAKER_02:

So I don't I don't have a particular DIY story. I I uh as I said to you before the the the interview, uh I I try to leave a lot of the stuff to the professionals. So when I kind of feel myself trending towards a DIY nightmare, I stop, um, you know, have a cup of coffee uh and uh and and hit and and hit you know the internet to figure out who can I can I call to uh to get this thing going. But I will put up a pet peeve I have about homework and remodeling and contracting and all that. And I've done two fairly good size remodels now, one on this house, one on the house I had before. And I really, really get so completely triggered by being abandoned by my contractor in the final stages of a job.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, as I've often said to Alan, is that my next kind? My next company is gonna uh today on the trusted toolbox here in Atlanta and in Athens. I said my next one's gonna be just give me three more days contract. Just give me three more days. John, it'll be done next week. Don't worry about it, John. It's gonna be done next week. Yeah, uh, that is the ruse of our whole world. That's why I've got the podcast, that's why I started the training company, the home service institute. That's why we're gonna get masterminds going because uh we need to change that mentality because that's not gonna last. Um, in today's day and age, you know, with I've got over 1,300 Google reviews for the trusted toolbox, people can see exactly what it's like to work with me. You know what you're getting. And people are not gonna be putting up with the cheapest contractor anymore, and they're not gonna be built because people put so much value on your time today, yeah, even more uh than we used to. So um, I agree with you. The the guy who goes to that that's just that's just a death sentence. Uh, and it's so hard to get any satisfaction. John turnoff, this has been great. That's the uh career mid mid mid-career lab. Mid-career labs.

SPEAKER_02:

The labs are do all sorts of experiments on on your career.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, let's do some experiments. Let's go figure it out. Hey, don't get stuck in a job you don't want to be. And I we didn't talk about this, but one of my big reasons I started my business was I didn't want to be 60 years old and go, I wonder if I could have started if I had what it took. I wonder if. Don't wonder if, go do, go make something happen.

SPEAKER_02:

Never, never want to be in that in that spot, right? Go check out John.

SPEAKER_00:

Get in John's get in John's uh circle of influence, get in his sphere of influence, get out there, network, get out there, be uncomfortable, man. Go make something happen. Make this a great week. Let's go make one, 10, 100. Let's call it a million. We're gonna get a million dollars. Next week. We got to keep going, Adventure Team. Keep it rocking. Keep it rolling. We'll talk to you next week. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Small Business Safari. Remember, your positive attitude will help you achieve that higher altitude you're looking for in the wild world of small business ownership. And until next time, make it a great day to get your team.

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Chris Lalomia

Host
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Alan Wyatt

Co-host