Why “Giving a Damn” Is the Ultimate Business Advantage with Justin Ricklefs

What if the biggest lever in your business isn’t another strategy, funnel, or hire… but how much you actually care?

In this episode, we sit down with Justin Ricklefs, founder of Guild Collective and author of Give a Damn, to break down a completely different approach to growth. One that challenges the idea that scaling requires more complexity, and instead focuses on clarity, alignment, and building a brand from the inside out.

We unpack what really separates companies that grow from those that stall, why most businesses already have the answers but struggle to execute, and how simplifying your message can unlock momentum across your entire organization. If you’re trying to scale without losing what makes your business great, this conversation will shift how you think.

What we get into:

00:00 – Why most businesses struggle to scale effectively
03:00 – The shift from complexity to clarity in growth
08:45 – Finding the right niche without limiting your business
14:50 – The difference between product and process
21:50 – Why culture drives everything in your company
27:00 – The real driver behind referrals, retention, and growth

Connect with Justin:

Book: Give a Damn
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinricklefs/

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About The Hosts:

• Tim & Cindy Dodd are the Co-founders of PEMA.io, based out of Miami, FL. Connect with Tim and Cindy on LinkedIn and Instagram:
  • Tim’s LinkedIn, Tim’s Instagram
  • Cindy’s LinkedIn, Cindy’s Instagram

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Transcript

00:06

Welcome to The Takeover with Tim and Cindy, where we show you how to dominate your market.  Let's get winning.

00:16

Welcome to the show, Justin Rick Lefs. Thanks, man. It's good to be here, Tim. Well, I'm excited to dive in. It's funny that when I saw we were lining up for a podcast, I'm like, oh, this guy's from KC Mo. And so it's always cool to meet. There's actually a lot of agency people in Kansas City, Missouri. And I don't think a lot of people know about how much actually there is a lot of people in the agency world there. Yeah, there is, man. And yes.

00:42

all things kind of  originate from the heart, right? And so, yeah, here in the Midwest, we love the KC small town connections.  Yeah, there's a wonderful agency group and especially on the owner's  side. uh Obviously, there's some huge agencies with multiple hundreds of folks, but for us kind of on the smaller end, there's a wonderful collective of groups that really care and believe that there's

01:08

an abundant game to play, not just a scarce one that we're all competing for the same small stuff. And so,  yeah, I love being part of that community because there's a bunch of big hearted folks who are trying to grow big businesses and do cool stuff for sure. That's awesome, man. Well, I'd love to dive in. know,  one of the first questions I love to ask  is like, what is your mindset around growth, scaling,  building a business? Like when you when you think of growth and scale, what are the first things that come to mind for you?

01:39

It's interesting. had, you we're almost a decade into our journey at Guild Collective. for, I don't know, many years, I was almost allergic to the word scale. And I had this phrase that kind of hung with me for a long time, which is, you can't scale soul. And so I had this almost hesitance or reluctance towards the concept. Now, have I always wanted it to grow and be more profitable year after year? Of course, all that stuff's true.

02:08

But I had this  belief that scale was inherently maybe wrong or bad or we'd lose something in the process.  And  I'd tell you right now, man, I'm in process on  the actual concept and in part because  it's taken a lot of damn work  and a lot of uh trial by fire and pain.

02:32

But we're starting to get really clear and tight  on  a  simple, but it's not easy, a simple system to help  brands become human first  and what that means and how to do it and why it matters and all that.  And so all of a sudden, my light bulbs are starting to kind of come on for me of like, oh, damn, we actually have  a  way and a point of view that can scale.  And I think part of it is as the CEO and the founder of the thing is,

03:01

I wasn't sure.  I was scared. There's been part of me that's been scared  of the simplicity and the niching down.  And so all that's the same, man. I'm in process on it. And frankly, I read Benjamin Hardy's book, Science of Scaling,  about six weeks ago.  And I was like,  oh,  I've got some work to do in my own  beliefs around abundance, my own beliefs around how impactful this stuff is. And  frankly, the way our team composition is today,

03:30

it gives me a lot more confidence and belief in the  scaling process without having to add a ton of complexity. And  that's the part that I've been hung up on is like, man, it feels like all these moves towards quote unquote scale have added lots of complexity and frustration and not ease.  And  as I've uh walked my own road as a leader, it's like, oh no, no, actually part of this is we haven't done, I haven't done  the hard work of getting really damn clear on what it is that...

03:59

that matters, what's the essence of this thing we're offering?  And then be brave enough to cut all the other stuff that's kind of a pain in the ass and doesn't work anyway and everybody's mad about.  Yeah. Yeah. get really tight  on, for us, it's how to build a human first brand blueprint and what that means in terms of driving clarity, connection and creativity. And so anyhow,  very much in the transformational stage of like  selling services only is...

04:26

is tricky. And so we're,  we're, we're beginning to productize and, and, and I'd say systemize our offerings so that they're more repeatable,  convenient, effective, efficient, all that. And, and so that we can just continue to hone in and get better and better each time we have a rep at it. That's a long answer to your awesome question. No, no. So, I mean, so you're, mean, yeah, great book, uh science of scaling. If, if you haven't read it, definitely read it. I've been through it about five times and continue to go through it because it's a

04:55

It is a really, really good book around scaling. So you're kind of at this point, just so I'm clear, where, mean, you've built  a pretty successful agency. You've worked with some really awesome brands. uh But you've kind of been allergic to  that because of your pupil first mentality and philosophy, and you can't scale soul. But now you're kind of looking at it going, actually, no,  it's not complex. Scaling  is actually removing complexity so that you can focus on

05:25

Your core niche or your core offering or your core product and so you're kind of in that place of uh, let me get clear Are you looking for like? Narrowing in on the niche  and the offer and the product tell me about that journey that you're on right now Yeah, no, it's a great question to have the the narrowing  is done  And so we've identified and gotten super clear and again, it's come through there's of course it's complicated and there's long stories all of it, but  we've

05:53

gotten great feedback on certain parts of our process and projects. We've  seen it generate massive results and returns for companies that we've done it for.  And we've started to pay attention to the times when,  I mean, in its most like casual conversations, like  the parts of it that suck  when the client thinks certain things suck and our team thinks  certain things suck. Like, why are we doing that? Why is our energy not aligned in terms of the uh offer being...

06:20

It should be a delight to do business together. And sometimes in the professional services space, it feels like this convincing exercise or, we're in this weird codependent way trying to please you and like, did you like this color on the website instead of that color? And again, those things aren't bad. But as we get tighter, to your point, more narrow in our belief and frankly, then in our behavior, it is starting. And again, we're just, I'd say the...

06:49

the first leg of the journey here  of now and Rachel Burnett, our COO and partner of mine in the business. It's, we've just been through this. It felt like a dogfight for like six months. Like, is it this, is it this, is it this?  Our team's given feedback, our clients have given feedback. And now it's like, oh damn, we got it. And, and will it change or iterate or evolve? Of course. But like, we got it  and let's go.  And I think part of, to answer your question is practically speaking is we realized that in

07:19

the majority of our client work, we weren't starting with baseline assessment insights. We were jumping right to like, oh yeah, we got your pain. We understand your problem. We've done this before. We're going to pitch you this solution that we're all excited about. And then you get six months in and you're like, yeah, your business is growing or whatever, but there's no baseline understanding of where we started. And therefore, an analytical, measurable, repeatable process that we can understand.

07:48

for us where we're sorting measures, again, clarity, connection and creativity and not creativity and just the, is it cute sense, but is it moving human emotions in a measurable way from the inside of the organization out. So all that to say is like, yeah, we're right there at the beginning of that trailhead. And I think we're climbing the right mountain, but definitely open to feedback as we go on the scaling journey together for sure. So who...

08:15

who is the client that you're working with and you know, what kind of brands are these? The answer to your question, I'm hesitating because I think there's an opportunity for us to get even sharper on  the, uh we've got  the profile and the type of leader. It's a visionary leader who wants to build a legacy,  but they're frustrated with the gap between their vision  and the actual health and performance of the brand.  So there's been so much wonderful work done with business strategy.

08:45

scale companies like in the US, right, as an example.  And then there's wonderful marketing,  external messaging, scale companies like Story Brand.  yet there's this,  what we see is that the heart of the business is the brand and how do they tell that story in a repeatable, consistent way that generates growth.  so we've,  and again, lesson here for me was I was so hesitant to be  niched.

09:13

Cause I didn't want to frankly part of me was afraid of it. was like, man, if we,  we just do this and we can't do that.  Um, and so we're, we're tightening our circle. I don't know if it's quite tight enough yet, but we're in this space where we want to work with visionary leaders who want to leave a legacy and can give a damn about their people.  But they're frustrated with that gap between the brand performance and their business expectations.  And so,  um,  what's interesting is like, we've got some really lovely case studies and.

09:41

We've got some really lovely case studies in education. We've got some really lovely case studies in construction.  And so we're trying to niche into a belief and a big hearted leader and a  mindset that they  believe care can be their competitive advantage.  And what's true is I think we still have work to do to get super tight on becoming  experts in this space for this specific industry. We're not quite to that part of our journey yet.

10:08

Yeah, well, and you know, I think we've ran, uh we've  had over a thousand like LinkedIn clients. And the first thing that when you come to us, it's like, who's your avatar? Who's your client? Who's the decision maker? What's their 10,  their 10 emotional question? What keeps them up at night? Like, you know, I staring at the ceiling, like  we get all these things. And I will tell you, it's either  the two mistakes is either I help everybody or I help overly specific person.

10:37

Yeah. I think it's like, oh anytime I talk to anybody on a journey of like, okay, who's our niche? It's like,  actually you want to start wide. And then you, as you start seeing like, Hey, you know what, all the efforts and energy, these ones convert really well, but they don't retain greater or that's the experience isn't great, but these ones are a little harder to convert. But you know what? Those, those that they grow with us, they scale with us, they move down. I know for us,

11:03

And so we looked at, we've worked with over a thousand clients and we actually saw that uh like marketing agencies. I'm like, are they all retained? Like they all stick around, they all retain uh and they work super well. And so we're like, we made that transition and it was tough. We've made a transition and it was hard and we had to dial in the offer a little bit better. But on the other side, once you get through that and you have gone wide, the thousand clients of every B2B industry there is, and then you find that segment of where you're

11:32

biggest wins are like both sides, like we love them, they love us  together. Like you said,  that journey is worth it, man. That journey is worth it. And so  that is, is a mistake that I see people make is they either over niche too early. What do you say? Niche or niche? I'll get a minute. Right.  Either too early or  they don't do, they go too broad. Like, and so  for you,  do you have that uh pool enough to say, Hey, here are some of our

11:59

awesome clients. Is it like the ones you mentioned or are you still figuring that?  Yeah, yeah, no, it's, and I'm much more Missouri Midwest redneck, probably I say niche,  which is probably wrong. ah But  yeah, think, think, Tim, the,  answers are,  it's more a psychographic analysis of the leadership structure. it's a  high,

12:25

that they don't care about their team and it's just profit that they care about. That's not a, that make it bad, right? But that's not value aligned with our crew. So we're more, we're trying to understand value alignment. But then yes, I think  to your point, we're starting to see really strong signals for us in  the delight factor of education technology, that there's some healthcare tech companies that we've really seen a lot of success and alignment with. um Which again,

12:52

is that they're into, which makes sense because we're positioning around human first brands. And in that space, everybody's flooding with heavy tech capabilities, which again, doesn't make it wrong. But when you stand into this human first environment in a very crowded tech space, they're winning and having a lot of success there. And then like I said, there's some construction, home service, that type of space that we're seeing some cool wins in. And so we want to serve and be

13:22

really effective in our methodology. One thing  else that's been a struggle  and finally once the light came on, it was an interesting learning.  We were kind of mashing up the product with the process. And so we were kind of saying like, hey, here's the approach and it's got all this stuff in it.  And so we've started to  strip out and separate. Here's the product, the set of deliverables, it's the same seven things that everybody's going to get regardless of your  industry or type or company size.

13:51

And then here's the process in which it's going to come to life. And even honestly, just separating those two things felt like, oh, damn, we could have done that two years ago and saved a lot of pain. oh, but that's how... in like sales process wise, marketing wise? Both. All. Yeah, all. So from the external visibility, from our marketing and storytelling all the way through the sales journey, and then even in the client delivery journey, which is like, hey, no, no, that's a...

14:21

process conversation, not a product conversation. And being courageous enough to be really clear about what those lanes look like. Well, walk me through when you mean those two things, because it sounds like that was a pretty big breakthrough for you. What does that mean to you? When you think of process and deliverables and why is it important that you separated them? Yeah. So practically, our core product, right at this moment in time, is called the Human First Brand Blueprint.

14:50

And agency people call it brand strategy. Clients  don't want to buy brand strategy.  They don't get it, right? They're like, what's that? Why do need it? I already have one. I've got a business plan or I've got a business strategy.  I want you to fix my marketing. And so then we're out here convincing of like, no, no, no, you need a brand strategy.  So where all of that led us to was the development of the human first brand blueprint. And it's seven core pieces.  It's

15:19

getting clear on the company's purpose. So everybody comes to us and like, oh, we've got a mission statement and a vision statement. We've got values. They sit on the wall. But it's like, but why do you exist? And we think that the energy flows from the heart of the organization. And so that's a purpose statement. So we help through workshops, get clear on purpose. And then we move into the people profiles. So that's our way of talking about target audiences, which is what you're asking me about.

15:48

uh So we work through a people profile workshop. So we get super clear on who do you need to have buy this thing that we're selling and what was the cost and what are they afraid of and what do they want? What do they desire and how do you reach them? All that. uh Then we move into,  know, what an agency might call like a single truth or a tagline, but it's a development of the brand heartbeat. So that singular  phrase.

16:15

that is two to four words that you build everything around. So everything internally from a messaging standpoint, everything externally from a marketing standpoint.  So that's step three in the product.  Then the fourth one is the heartbeat principle. So that's what people would maybe naturally assume as value. So that's how  the  heartbeat of the brand is happening.  What does it look like from the inside of the organization?

16:42

to for belief and behavior. So the values of how does it show up? So for us  at Guild, our heartbeat statement is  we cultivate connections.  And it's like, cool, what's that mean? Interesting.  Well, it shows up because in ways that we give a damn. So that's a heartbeat principle or another heartbeat principle of ours is  we want to be unreasonably hospitable like Will Guderas book taught us. So anticipate the client needs, be caring in our approach, be thoughtful in our gifting, all that.

17:11

So we're walking through those. So that's number four. Number five is the narrative. So the  core brand story. And it's not just like the long, emotional, rich  story. Sometimes it's as simple as  in a sentence, a paragraph and a page.  It's baffling when you ask business owners or leaders or their department  leads  to describe the business in a sentence.

17:39

A lot of people are like, well, yeah, we do blah, right? And that there's no consistency or congruence of those simple sentences.  And so when we say brand story, it's not just like the  long origin story, but sometimes it's these really specific and concise sentences that describe what the business does. Then number six is the personality. So the  brand has a personality. it  lighthearted? Is it funny? Is it engaging? Is it serious? Is it heavy? Is it academic? Is it theoretical? Is it...

18:09

Practical, it? So we walk through the client leading them to discover. lot of the times these answers are already in their executive team. They just haven't had a process or a methodology to be able to put it all in a spine. And then the last one is the visual identity. So how does the brand, how is it experienced? And some people will say, well, the brand is a logo. And it's like, my God, it's such an annoying conversation. The brand's not a logo.

18:37

The brand is how you're experienced when people aren't in the room. And so you bet the logo matters and the type matters and the fonts matter and the colors matter, of course, but it all is it is all a manifestation or a reflection of, of the brand heartbeat. Okay. So that's, that was the long answer to those are the seven components of a human first brand. Let me ask you on that. it's cause I mean, it, you know,

19:04

Anytime you come into a company, I'm sure like, yeah, yeah, we've got that.  We've got those things written down. What I'm curious about is because there is, and they might've really been thoughtfully created and made, but as you said, sometimes it can be made and now it's just hanging on the wall  versus the company living it. How often do you find that they already have pretty good material and foundation and your job is maybe to tweak it and then actually.

19:31

make it alive in the company versus just being something that nobody ever freaking knows about or ever reads about? 100%. It's almost all the time. And truly, it's a statement we make in every discovery or workshop we're in, which is the answers are already within. You guys have these answers. And one of our clients so beautifully put it six weeks ago, she's like, your job, you meaning us, our ad guild,

19:59

She's like, your job in this project is gonna be to synthesize our ideas,  because we don't lack them. We have plenty of ideas, vision, brainstorm, value statements. We got like  Google docs coming out, you know what?  But your job is to synthesize this. And back to your scale comment, complexity can't scale. And so neither does story. So story can't  scale or  be generative or ripple if everybody's telling a different one.

20:28

And so a lot of the work we ended up helping clients with is really simplifying their own story so that they can,  a great example is we work with this local bank in Kansas City  and their heartbeat that we developed was  champions of possibility,  which in and of itself is like, okay, cool, what's that mean?  But they've oriented honestly everything around their.

20:54

internal communication and their external communication around that singular heartbeat.  Could they say other stuff and it's true also? You bet.  But they've simplified their story. So it's just like, we're the  place where we're the champions of possibility.  And how does that show up? It shows up in the ways that we care about the community and the way we care about depositors and the way that we show up at events, yada yada.  And so, yeah, to answer your question is almost every time the business has done some level of work, but then it  sits in this.

21:23

PDF somewhere or sits on a shelf  or it hangs on a like a weird wall that's like, yeah, we have values. right over there and nobody, nobody knows what they are. And so that's, it's like brands are lived out the real things that people experience. You can feel the energy when you walk into a room,  you can pay attention to it when you engage their marketing materials. Like you just know, we don't walk around saying that stuff out loud, but you feel it.  And so even the ways that we're helping companies understand.

21:50

when you are speaking to your target audience, get clear on how it resonates with their head, with their heart and their gut. Cause we're complicated creatures who  we need to experience and trust  your brand before we  take the leap  to buy it or engage with it or whatever. anyway, yeah. I'm gonna think beyond just  the client experience. mean, just the kind of employees. Like, so for us, we  we started doing personal, professional, financial goals with all of our employees. So we know,

22:20

What are the three, you know, one, three, five year goals for you personally, professionally, financially, and how can  our company be a vehicle for you to reach those three goals? And then every week, we run on EOS on the EOS system. So every week we do that, our weekly meeting, we actually rotate who goes through our mission, vision and values, which is we have five values, the power. And so.

22:45

It's cool, which it allows that to become alive. Cause when I had first built the company, we scaled the 243 retainer clients in 18 months from zero and just no operations, no culture. Then the thing just blew up on my wedding week. literally all these customers to crash. And so when Cindy and I partnered with me, she has a background in operations. We built this, the culture from the ground up and how do you make it alive? And I think.

23:15

I had, like you said, I had it all written down. I had all the, and I, and I believed in the mission. I believe that I couldn't put it back to you and my team sure as I couldn't put it back to you  for sure. But  man, it is such a difference. So what you're talking about right now isn't just about, Hey, let's get a better  market perception. You're like, we're actually creating a significantly better company.  I always tell you, like, if you're trying to help your teammates hit their personal, professional, financial goals,

23:43

How would you want to, if you were that employee, how would that make you committed to the team and to the company? And  we've just seen,  it's like we have just the most amazing team. Like we could build this company insanely large with a very, very small team because they're just so, committed to the company. Yeah, man. And Tim, I love that. I'm going to steal some of your ideas  and give you credit for it. Cause I think it's such a simple way to be curious about your...

24:12

team members and to care for them and to be others focused in the communication. And a shout out sounds like Cindy has a lot of similarities to Rachel, our COO. We've adopted EOS as well. And it's like, man, the quote in Rocket Fuel that freaking haunted me and I hated it was, vision without integration is hallucination. And that's how it felt for a long time before Rachel was our COO and she came in and like a good So were you hallucinating for a while?

24:41

Totally. It's terrible. It's a terrible way to live. It's a terrible way to work.  And so integrating that vision is such a key part of this. But  all that to say, think uh the phrase we find ourselves using a lot is that human first brands are built from the inside out, which is what you're doing, which is like,  this team, because I know their personal, professional, financial goals, they're going to give a damn about our mission because I care for them.

25:11

and give them a voice and give them a perspective. And everybody knows the companies who are trying to market their way to health  because then you engage their team and you can just tell they hate working there. They hate the boss, they hate the people.  Right? Like you walk into any chain rest. Friday, right? Totally. Totally. Punch out. Totally. And it's like all those people have pretty websites and cool Google ad campaigns and really smart SEO people who work at their business. And they've got probably pretty billboards in their cities.

25:40

But when you engage their team, like, they don't say it. Some of them actually do, but they're like, this place sucks, I ain't working here. And so it's like, the vibrancy of a business is built from the inside out. And you can't fake culture. You can't like pizza party your way to good culture. You have to do it every damn week. Like you're doing on Mondays at your L10s to go, hey, what do you guys want? How do you like? We don't have any ping pong tables, no beer on tap at five o'clock.

26:08

Literally just like caring about the humans that you're entrusted with. Yes. Amen. And that's a competitive advantage, man, for you big time. I love that. Well, let's kind of shift gears a little bit. When you think about, uh you've got your niche, you've got your, what you're really focused on. Tell me practical tactical boots on the ground. What are you doing? What are you thinking about to,  to get clients to, to upsell clients, walk me through kind of your path of how you actually grow  now that you have focus.

26:39

Yeah, that's an awesome question. we  had a meeting about this yesterday with Brett Peters, who runs our client delivery group. He's our Director of Client Strategy.  the best,  you I kind of came up old school sales organizations,  and I love classically trained sales behaviors. I think they're really helpful and great.  And what's true is the best sales person for your business is a client who refers you.

27:09

who loves you.  so doing good work compounds, it just does every time. And so if you do good work, it shows back up in lots of ways that you don't expect or know.  He went to a local event  in North Kansas City, in the Northland Chamber on behalf of one of our clients. He was like taking pictures. She was presenting this thing that was his idea that she ended up executing. uh then  afterwards, a chief development officer of another Kansas City company was like, holy crap.

27:38

Jen just talked about how great Guild was. Like we need to talk about this stuff. So I think like that is one way, especially in this city, as you know, that things grow. I think that the second piece though is we- Let me say something on that really quick. There was a guy who's, I commented on one of his posts. He reached out to me. He became a client, super successful guy, exits this, that, and the other. There's just 500,000 L's on his podcast.

28:08

Awesome guy, very, very, very successful. uh he's  and I was, had him on, I had him on the podcast today and he said, and he was talking about scale. He's telling, he's helped a lot of people scale very, very successful, like multi-eight figure companies.  And he said that a referral KPI is one of the most important numbers to have in your company for growth, even though most people do not, they do not mention, Hey, what's your referral? What's your referral percentage? They have no idea. They're not even tracking it.

28:37

He said that's important numbers because that above everything else tells you not just where you're going growth wise, but it's your retention, your customer satisfaction.  And I thought that was interesting. So it's kind of the second time I've heard a similar message today. Totally. And of course it's more complicated than this, but there's four kind of primary buckets from an external side. Like  you've got like marketing behaviors, marketing  materials, marketing stuff, and then the sales process and engine and then

29:06

assuming somebody says, yes, you've got the delivery part, you're providing the service or the product or whatever.  And  then there is that storytelling advocacy client referral. that's the,  and again, we fall into the same trap where it's like, oh, let's just market ourselves. Like, let's do some more stuff and get some more new stuff.  And you  ignore these other three really damn important buckets, not because we're bad, but because we lose focus and start to think, oh, we need more new. And then the whole time, these,

29:34

clients who already trust you, have already written you a check or given you an ACH account. They've already engaged in your thing and they're just sitting here  ready to be delighted. And then they know a bunch of damn people.  so  anyway, it's not always that simple, of course, but I think it's helpful for me to kind of think through, okay, how did our brand show up in these four ways  and in ways that are uh congruent to what we want  and help shape the story for the types of clients that we want to get.  So yeah, we don't.

30:04

have a ton of outbound efforts. We want to match frequency of the things we want to sell both from a product and a process standpoint.  And then ultimately  share those stories of the clients whose businesses grow through this work. then that's, you know,  testimonials are the best  sales candy in the world. It's like,  oh, you  went through this thing and it was a great experience and your business got bigger. Cool. We want to do the same thing you guys did.

30:32

as opposed to Guild telling you, hey, you should buy the human first brand blueprint. Like it's, it's much more human than that. Yeah. And it's interesting too. Have you ever heard of a flash roll? Speaking of Tesla? No, tell me. So though there's one thing that's, it's interesting. And I read this in some like some obscure, I've read a million sales and marketing books and I usually learn more about sales from good marketing than I, than I learned about from sales books. But this, this one guy,

31:01

He actually uh talked about a flash roll where he said, the problem, the only problem with testimonies is that oftentimes if you just show them too slow, like here's this, here's this, they start to go, well, did they sell spinach? They did sell spinach. Was it frozen organic spinach? No, it wasn't frozen organic spinach.  But like a flash roll is like, where you just kind of like almost rattle off, just like, wait, did this, this, this, and this for this client, this client, this you just give enough so it's that herd mentality like, wow.

31:31

It be awesome. Yeah. It must be awesome. And we started implementing some of that in some of our sales process instead of here's this testimony, here's this testimony. was just like more of a flash roll and it's like you build trust. So I always suggest to take your testimonies, your top ones, and how do you like bullet point them and just flash roll them. So they go, okay, this thing must work. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. And I think, I mean, sometimes we complicate this stuff so much like, oh like you wouldn't roll up.

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to  a new  friend you met for coffee or dinner or drinks or whatever,  and just start like trying to manipulate them into this very obvious guessing game of trying to like the self-serving sales sequence. It's just annoying, right?  But like as a business, we like fall into these traps like, ah, we got to put them in our sequence. We got to this like perfectly planned thing. And it's like, well, no, where's the humanity in the ways, how would you get her to say yes?

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to you or like  if you're a parent, how do you understand how to tell a kid, no, you can't have Chick-fil-A four nights a week. Like  these human relationships are the ways that we  build connectivity. But then we  do these just awful annoying things as they call it marketing. And it doesn't,  it might kind of work, but it doesn't work for the long haul, which I think is what you're  after. certainly that was my first,  we were really good at marketing and then.

32:58

Once, once the cracks start showing in the operations and the team and the culture, it is bad. Yeah. Yeah. A friend, she's got a very, very successful agency and she said, well, you know, once you start getting past the 20 million a year, I mean, your growth is almost 100 % going to be just how well can you retain upsell your clients? Because it doesn't matter how fast you grow. There's always going to become a point where if you're losing clients,

33:27

You could be getting 100 clients a month. If you're losing 100 clients a month, you can't grow. so,  I mean, I think there is the mistake of people  over-obsessing about like, don't want to scale fast. I want be so perfect for every single one of my clients and I'm hand service and white glove. And they stay almost like small business and never get out of that. Or the other side is just like, let me like  close, close, close. And then you end up burning all these relationships when as you're kind of  talking about is your best

33:57

your best new customers or your current customers that want to keep paying you money. And the way you do that is you just deliver exceptional service, exceptional results,  and  just knock it out of the park. So for you, when you're thinking about, hey, how do I give such an exceptional experience to my clients that they not only want to keep paying me, but they actually would want to pay me more and then even refer friends? Yeah, I think, I mean, I think

34:24

Tim  and your two extremes there, like I've definitely erred  on the side of no, let's go slow. Let's do it right. Let's be very precise.  And  again, probably underneath a lot of that was some level of fear or like, damn, I've never done this before either. I don't know how fast we can go or big we can go.  And so there's  my own kind of personal journey is, which by the way, like entrepreneurship is such...

34:50

deep soul work every bit as much as it is professional work. You got to face this stuff that's inside you.  there's no one,  I mean, of course there's other people in the business that have responsibility,  but there's no one that you can look at and be like, well, the boss did that or this F the board. Like they did this crazy thing. Like you look at yourself in the mirror and you're like, Oh damn, like our reality is because of my own.

35:17

contribution to this thing and responsibility. And again, that's not minimizing anybody else's impact. It's just,  that was a part 10 years ago that I didn't have the same level of appreciation and understanding for as I do now.  And when I get to have very honest conversations with other business owners, that's such a common thread as people go, oh boy, I had no idea  what internal journey I was signing up for. And everybody's thankful for it, but they're always...

35:44

underestimating that on the front end.  anyhow, entrepreneurship can be  brutal,  absolutely brutal,  you know,  when you persist through it and you  just be like, okay, it's going to be really, really hard sometimes. And you stop freaking out or wondering, like when it comes, just realize it's normal. And every other successful entrepreneur is going to that. It is pretty incredible. The human you become when you learn

36:14

learn from the experiences versus be crushed by them. And I think that's why most people give up is because it is so brutal. um And I think for me was the realization when I just, when it's like, Oh no, this happening is normal. And the process is  a challenge growth, solve the problem  and then you grow to another level where you not hit a new challenge because you're hitting at another level. And these new challenges become brutal, tough.  learn the lesson.

36:44

you go to the next step and it doesn't ever stop. And you should never hope it does. You should just hope that you just keep getting better and smarter. Yes, amen, dude. And I think what's just this reservoir of resilience that gets built underneath you  is ridiculous. It really is. And  I don't, yeah, I mean, the way you just put it is exactly right, which is  these kind of turns that you continue to take and the  lumps you take and the fear you face and you stare at it.  And at some point you get

37:13

you get stronger. And it doesn't always mean  it's easier, it's linear, it's up and to the right. At least for my journey, it hasn't been that way always. uh But over time with a wider perspective and lens, start to realize, like you said, you've changed. And that's terrific. uh from a  partner in life perspective  and parenting perspective, and certainly employee perspective,  when a leader starts to get

37:41

healthier. That's good for everybody. Everybody.  I agree. I agree. It's a, it's the captain of the ship. If the captain's freaking out, everybody's screwed. Right. You know,  so the captain's got to be calm, cool, collected and That's right. Well, Hey man, this has been, this has been awesome to have you on. I think there's a lot of value, but what I really want to do is I want to, I want to have our listeners be able to connect with you. What will tell me a little bit about what you're doing now?  What are some of some of the, know you just launched your book 10, what 10 days ago?

38:11

Yeah, we're about two weeks in, it's called Give a Damn.  It's a big bright yellow cover. You can find it on Amazon. ah But what I encourage leaders, the book in a nutshell is this thesis of uh care can be your competitive advantage.  If the leader will focus, and I wrote this book for myself because I was going through this journey on my own. And I found that it's been really helpful for me to share these stories with others because

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we're faced with this crisis of, man, should I choose care or should I choose profit? And my thesis is, no, no, choose both.  It's not an either or, it's a both and. And you've modeled that for me in this conversation with the way you care for your team,  which is like, of course, I wanna have max amount of profit that we can get to and I wanna have max amount of care. And the Chick-fil-A owner summarized it so well, and I quote him in the book,  which is care and commerce can coexist.

39:07

And so I built the framework around, can we,  as leaders grow in curiosity? Can we grow in compassion?  Can we grow in clarity? Which was a tough one for me. And then ultimately can we grow in consistency? Which is, we get up and do the damn thing every single day? Knowing we're gonna fall short, we're gonna have days that are threes out of 10 instead of nines and tens out of 10. And so anyway, that's the premise of the book is  care can be a competitive advantage and that we each have this power in our hands,  the whole.

39:36

framing is around a single match, which is we walk around with these  matches every day. We've got the power to either burn and cause harm  or like someone else's spark with their, with our flame, which is what exactly what you're doing with your team, which is like, what's,  what boss asks you what your financial goals are? It's like, dude, that's powerful.  That's powerful.  Um, as opposed to like, what can I extract out of this employee for as long as they're here? You know, it's a totally different mindset. Yes.

40:04

Yes. And then how can people get connected? How can they get your book,  Books on Amazon, like I said, just search, give a damn big bright yellow cover.  And then on LinkedIn,  just type my name in on LinkedIn. And that's where I'm publishing  almost every day. Say something, you know, moderately helpful or random on the internet every day.  Awesome, brother. Well, it's been great to have you on the show, Justin. And um stay winning.  Yeah, you too, Tim. Thanks so much for having me, man. Great job. Keep up the good work.  Awesome, brother. Great.