The Integrated Entrepreneur
Welcome to The Integrated Entrepreneur with Jonathan Fodera, hosted by founder, author, public speaker, investor and entrepreneur Jonathan Fodera. On this podcast you'll learn strategies on how to become a better operator, how to acquire more clients for your company, how to retain those clients, valuable lessons, and how you can avoid the mistakes that Jonathan has triumphed on his path to $500M+ in financing for business owners and entrepreneur's.
Meet the Co-Host:
Keith Gause was born in Houston, Texas and moved to Jacksonville, Florida at the age of 2. He continues to reside in Jacksonville with my wife, Deanna, and two daughters: Addison (13) and Kylee (10) and their 4 dogs, a cat, a bearded dragon, and a snake. (If it were left to the ladies to decide, they would have a zoo!)
Keith’s childhood was spent playing sports, being an only child, and watching his father become an entrepreneur by continuously failing and trying again. His father built a multimillion-dollar company allowing him to retire and live the life he always dreamed about. Watching his father’s journey taught him a lot about business.
Not ready to jump into the family business, Keith went into the military in the year 2000 at age 18. He spent 5 years assigned to the 20th Special Operations Command in Ft. Walton Beach FL and spent a majority of his military career deployed to places that needed the most attention.
Keith continued in the world of excitement and danger by going into Law Enforcement where he spent 10 years working in Northwest Jacksonville. He worked the nightshift, 6pm -6am, which allowed him to have a full day to make an impact on what he ultimately wanted to do. That goal was to create an empire and to impact as many business owners as possible.
In 2009, wanting to care for his wife and first born in the best way, he took a big risk and spent his entire savings on an inactive business name and one inflatable bounce house. Bounce Around Jax Party Rentals was Northeast Florida’s #1 party and event rental business. At least that is what he believed!
By 2012, Keith was able to make a 7-figure exit and leave Law Enforcement and began to study all things finance & investing. He focused on learning about any mistakes he had made as a business owner and became obsessed with helping others avoid the same ones. That is how Tideland Consulting came to be. Now, Tideland operates in all 50 states and has created a non-bias ecosystem for growth-oriented entrepreneurs that maximizes how each dollar impacts the business, from protecting assets and reducing taxes to succession plans and exit strategies.
In 2023, Tideland aligned with GFG Solutions as a strategic partner to serve business owners at the highest level, with a white-glove service feel from a world-class team.
The Integrated Entrepreneur
Entrepreneurial Nightmares: Facing Your Biggest Fears
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summaryIn this conversation, Jonathan Fodera and Keith Gause discuss the critical mindset required for business growth, emphasizing the importance of understanding various aspects of the business before delegating tasks. They explore the challenges entrepreneurs face, particularly in hiring and marketing, and stress the need to confront these challenges directly. The discussion highlights the necessity of continuous learning and reflection to effectively solve problems and achieve business success.
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Jonathan Fodera (00:00)
Hey guys, what's going on? We are going to go over the mindset of truly growing a company today.
You should be focused on actually building your ability to do things that you want to do when you want to do it, how you want to do it.
Keith Gause (00:08)
you
Jonathan Fodera (00:14)
And we have to find other ways to earn money. So why don't we talk about those? All right, so here's one of the things I want to go over. Like last week we broke down why people have trouble selling their business. They don't build it right. They don't build it to exit. And a lot of times people just buy a high-paying job, OK, or build a high-paying job. What I don't want to do is go into the assets without telling you what the mindset has to be while you're building it.
We are going to make this a three part series and we're going to talk about the mindset because this is truly where people drop the ball and where I've dropped the ball in the past. And I'm going to bring this to the forefront and I guarantee as soon as you hear it, you identify a few things that you've done this with in your life and in your business. And I'm going to give you one from relevant experience and I'm going through now guys, because listen, we are people, we are human. We...
mess up all the time. And guess what? We struggle with things too. Just because I'm up here discussing how to grow your business doesn't mean I don't struggle with some of the same things that you guys struggle with. something I've always struggled with is hiring. I hate it. I hate every part of it. I hate the interview process. The interview process to me feels fake. So what I've done in the past, I've delegated it without truly making something
Meaning, I delegated it without a system or process in place and I'm hoping that somebody else can just figure it out. And guess what happens? They don't figure it out and it leads to cost revenue and headache. And actually, it keeps me further from the goal of growth than it would have if I just sat with it and played with it and figured it all out. Maybe it's not hiring for you. Maybe it's marketing.
Okay, maybe it's sales, maybe it's operations, but there is some part of your business that needs your attention desperately. And without your attention there, it's not going to get better. All right. And before anyone has that smart ass thing to say, well, why don't you just hire for it? Well, the reality is you can't hire for things that you don't know what the outcome and what the process is going to be like through it.
Okay, because then all you're doing is just throwing money at the wall, hoping that you found the right solution. If you don't, not only did you waste that money, but like in my case, with hiring, there's going to be follow-up costs with that. There's going to be somebody's salary I'm paying for two, three, four weeks before I fire them. All right, if you're marketing, it could be you running ads for three or four or five months or having outside agencies run your ads for three, four, five months with shit results.
And now you're sitting there, I paid somebody to do this, but it's not happening. Well, why is it not happening? Cause you don't fucking understand it, right? because you don't know what's going on. And as a business owner, what do we do? We, we tend to either delegate, pay for it cause we are good at other things or kind of just pretend it isn't happening. It's like that meme where somebody's on a swing and all the buildings behind them on fire and you see the smoke billowing and it says,
Keith Gause (02:56)
Right.
Jonathan Fodera (03:14)
I'm fine, everything's fine, it's just gonna be fine. It's not gonna be fine.
Keith Gause (03:16)
It's all fine.
you bring up some good points here, Let's break this down. Okay, so the evolution, the business cycle that you and I have had the pleasure of seeing in other people is what you just described. I'll repeat the business or real life. We started a business because we're sick of working for someone else nine times out of 10,
You don't come through high school and be like, I'm to be an entrepreneur, Unless your dad was an entrepreneur and he was better than everyone else's dad. And fucking actually coached you to be something before everyone else. However, that's a small percentage of people. So we get sick of working for someone. Then we go do the same thing, but for ourselves, we figure out how to get some business, side jobs turned into full time clients. Then to your point.
I need more clients, I need more money, so I need more clients. But they just go hire the cheapest marketing company that they can hire who gives them shit run around, no leads, and then they get burned, Never to go back to marketing again because of the bad taste they got up front, which then just delays the growth in the business.
Then they just avoid marketing altogether and hope and pray with some posts on Facebook and some friends that they get enough business to eat. And that's, a struggle for them forever. Right. It's swimming upstream. The reality is which I think a lot of people avoid is learning what you need, because how do you hire the right person? If you don't know what the hell takes place in that role and
spinning sometime and here's a perfect example before black label I didn't do any marketing I paid for it I knew a little bit about it no one knew what I should have since black label I've had to learn marketing
So what did I do? I didn't go to school, I didn't pay anyone, I went to YouTube University and I did some due diligence and I figured out who the top priority people in the industry were and I started researching them and what they do and how they do it. You can learn how to do this in 20 minutes a day by watching some YouTube just to give yourself some knowledge.
If you're new, go do it yourself. Get punched in the face, ask the questions, learn it, then hire someone. That way you know a little bit about what the person's saying so you don't end up spending, fuck I don't know, what's a media buyer cost in Florida right now? Probably a hundred grand a year? That's a pretty big salary for you to make an uh-oh,
Jonathan Fodera (05:20)
about that.
Keith Gause (05:24)
So a lot of people, if they would just take the time instead of scrolling Facebook and go learn one thing a day on it, in a few weeks, you'll have enough data sets and enough information to go out and at least start looking for the right person and avoiding people that are just a no. so I think you can delegate it. I think you can hire for it, but if you don't do the due diligence and learn it yourself beforehand, you cannot do it successfully out of the gate.
It's gonna take you a long fucking time to learn the lesson.
Jonathan Fodera (05:50)
Correct.
And so I've heard Homozi say, and I don't disagree with it, hire an expert to teach you what you need to look for. But if that expert doesn't know or he's not an expert or he has bad intentions, it might not work. I do think it's a great way to start if you are totally intent on hiring it out to give you a rough idea. But in my experience, it's been...
almost impossible to hire out for roles that I didn't know every aspect of the role. And so what'll happen is like, know, Keith said a hundred grand for a media buyer. Yeah. That's if you're bringing it in house, right? If you were to pick up an agency, you're probably going to pay them five grand a month plus ad spend. Well, guess what? Five thousand a month plus ad spend can add up to way over a hundred K real quick. And that hundred K that's just that guy's salary.
That has nothing to do with ad spend. So making a wrong move or several wrong moves can be very, very costly. And what we are suggesting here is because most entrepreneurs want to delegate it or hire it without fully understanding it, you're more prone to make mistakes at this point. rather than doing it that way, the way that everyone does it and make their mistakes.
Try to learn as much as you can. YouTube University is a great way to start. I'm at a point where now I'm potentially bringing on a recruiter because I understand what they do, how they do it. I've vetted them. And this is something for me that I think is a good idea because I cannot, the only thing that stopping my growth right now is people. It's not leads. It's not processes. It's not systems.
It's not marketing. It's just having bodies in the seat and I am approaching this from a two pronged effort I have front end I'm building out front end AI that should be done at the end of this quarter and then I my goal is to hire another five by July and then I'm gonna have another five behind that before the end of the year so I can have a total of 12 internal on my team and Then however many external probably 30 or 40 and the reason I'm doing it this way
is because one, I can test it in tranches, right? I'm gonna test this first tranche of people, see how it works, see if the recruiter works. If it doesn't work, I understand what my risk is. My risk is what I'm willing to pay that recruiter and how long I'm gonna keep these people on salary if they don't work, which will be a very, very short amount of time. All right, but I'm at least going into it with a plan and a better understanding on how to accomplish the goal.
Is it foolproof? Absolutely not. There's no such thing. However, I have a pretty good idea that where I'm at now will work and what I'm trying to put together has a high probability or high likelihood of going through and actually achieving the goal. Whereas I'm not just shooting blindly at something. And if you think about whatever area it is in your business that you feel you're struggling, Why haven't you addressed it? Because it's painful to address these things. It's much easier.
Keith Gause (08:24)
Go.
Jonathan Fodera (08:47)
to let it go for the time being and say you're gonna come back to it and do what you're good at. Every single listener here has a strength that you are amazing at. Probably you feel you are the best in the world at. Every single one of us as an operator has those types of feelings. For me, it's relationships and sales. The rest of it, I honestly don't think I am that good at. I can write some copy.
I can write marketing and I have no problem doing that. And the reason I don't is because I know that I write well, but I could definitely hire for that role and no problem. Why? Because I know it. What I'm struggling with is the hiring aspect. And typically it's counterintuitive for us to lean in and to attack what we are weak at doing.
We just don't work that way. We're not wired that way. However, if we can train ourselves and coach ourselves, there's some resistance. I'm thinking about dropping it. I'm thinking about leaving it alone. If we can train ourselves to go towards the shit that we don't want to do, if we can train ourselves to head into the storm, okay, and actually learn, we will build these assets much quicker because as you're building your company's assets, there are going to be things that you feel you're stuck on. There's going to be times when you're like, I don't know how to do this.
And as soon as you get that feeling, as soon as that comes, that should be your hint to lean into it. That should be a green light for you. And if it's still a red light, you're never actually going to grow and scale the company where you can exit successfully or exit for what you want and what the company is worth because you're leaving
Keith Gause (10:20)
That's one thing I never understood,
is, we're entrepreneurs, what are we? We're problem solvers. That's what we do, We just all have a different problem we enjoy solving. Well, in order for you to solve that problem, you have to know the things that we're talking about. You have to know how to market to the people that have the problem that you can solve.
And then you have to know how to move them through your system so that you track them to solve the problem. So there's a lot of little components when you need to reverse engineer the end problem that you're trying to solve for that will highlight the people you need, the problems and the micro problems that you have to solve for the big problem. I've never figured out why entrepreneurs don't fucking solve their own problems.
Jonathan Fodera (10:41)
and
That's
Keith Gause (11:02)
The biggest problem that's gonna generate the most fucking money is my problems in my business so that I can sell you more shit quicker with less headache. So why would I run from that? And I think that is a differentiator between people who have...
Jonathan Fodera (11:02)
You
Hmm?
Yeah.
Keith Gause (11:19)
successful businesses in a very short amount of time versus those who take 15 years to get to the exit. Cause you and I personally know guys who have sold for a hundred plus million in five years or less. how in the Royal fuck does he do that? And I'm over here dying. Look, the reality is he solved all of his own problems first. And he was willing to do that.
Jonathan Fodera (11:34)
Mm-hmm.
Keith Gause (11:40)
don't reinvent the wheel shit that we all do daily. Let's do it this way. Let's try it that way this time. No, wait a minute. And this guy's over here like, no, dude, I'm just going to stick to the game plan. Figure out my own shit and then I'm going to fix your shit. And then I'm going to sell triple the amount in a quarter of the time that you are. Stick to your own problems first.
solve them or study how to solve them and then have someone solve them for you. But it all is understanding how to solve a problem yourself. You have to figure out some of that concept. So I think that is a big turning point for people when they come to that realization of like, okay, I hired three marketing agencies who royally screwed me over. Now what do I do? Well, I need to go read a little bit and figure out what's the keyword. Okay. And then that leads you to the next thing. Well, how do you pick a keyword? Okay. Then how do you post it? then, you know,
It's not rocket science. Running ads is very easy. You just gotta learn it. that's the... No one wants to sit down and spend a few weeks reading.
Jonathan Fodera (12:34)
here's a great example of this, When I first started to learn ads, I got my account shut down because I was running affiliate stuff. I didn't get my Facebook ad account back for four or five years. And then by the time I got it back, I was so turned off. I'm just like, you know what? I just want to hire this out. And then I started to mess around in there, understand what was going on. But if I wanted to...
run a campaign and a link wasn't set up properly, or it wouldn't allow me to set it up and go through, I would lose my mind. And it's very hard to backtrack and go through everything with a fine-tooth comb to see what was broken. So it took me a very long time to train myself to do that. And so I can actually put up an ad. But before I was able to put up an ad, there's no way I could hire anyone to do that. Everyone I hired had failed.
Why? Because I had no idea what they were doing. I had no idea how to manage it.
Keith Gause (13:21)
And they knew
And they knew it. So that's why they're getting over on it.
we hired a guy recently to run Google ads for a couple of clients and, be the account manager. interviewing fine, but that's the 15 minutes of bullshit people put on the mask and the makeup. And then I don't know that, but you know, his portfolio is fine as, you know, his work was good, but we monitor.
got trust the verify. I do that for a long time. And then I don't have to do that anymore. I either weed you out or you're in for life. But this particular individual was full of shit. Telling us, oh, we put tracking here and we put codes there and I did this and I did that.
Technical things that had I not gone and studied and understood before I hired people I would like yeah, man. Awesome. Sounds great. I know those things need to happen I just don't know how to go check them. Sounds good Three months in my clients would have been pissed and that would have been bad relationships and ended, business and then the one store reviews and all the other shit that happens but because I had a
Jonathan Fodera (14:03)
Mm-hmm.
Keith Gause (14:20)
Minor understanding and I was able to get a look and figure that out. didn't set shit up. Nothing was done. You know, so, so I would have been paying this guy three months of salary just to lose those clients anyway, just to be pissed. So guys, this 20 years in the business, different companies, the shit still pops up. Right. You always have to learn. You always got to know, trust the verify and have at least a small data set to know where to go look.
Jonathan Fodera (14:38)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. well guys, listen, me and Keith are experienced and we're having these issues, this is something you need to stop, reflect on and see what are you avoiding, If the only thing that you get out of this show is figuring out what you're avoiding and you lean into it a little bit or approach it from a different angle and actually take care of it, that's a win.
so please think about it, lean into it, get it fixed. And also, guys, we put this out all the time. Share this with two people that need to hear it. Like we're trying to get you the best content we can that are real life examples, real life experiences, teaching you from our mistakes and things that we mess up or things that we actually do well, so please share it with someone needs to hear it. We appreciate you guys. We love you guys. And we'll catch you on the next one where we go over what assets you have to build to be able to exit your
business successfully and at a price that you want, not somebody else wants.