Removing the Roadblocks: Eliminating What's Holding You Back

summary

In this conversation, Jonathan Fodera and Keith Gause discuss the importance of recognizing when to let go of clients, business ventures, and other burdens that negatively impact mental health and financial well-being. They emphasize the need for self-reflection, the courage to make tough decisions, and the benefits of delegation and strategic pivots in business. Through personal anecdotes and insights, they explore the balance between perseverance and knowing when to walk away from unproductive situations.

takeaways

• Unwinding bullshit is crucial for sanity.
• Evaluate what's working and what's not in your business.
• Firing clients can lead to new opportunities.
• Don't let your ego keep you in a bad situation.
• Recognizing when to pivot is essential.
• Growing pains are part of every business.
• You need to delegate what you hate.
• Addition by subtraction can improve your life.
• Sometimes you have to cut your losses.
• It's hard to turn a failing ship.

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Transcript

Jonathan Fodera (00:02)
Hey, what's going on everybody? Today on the integrated entrepreneur, we are going to talk about unwinding bullshit. All right. No one hold them. No one fold them. This has to do with clients, businesses, anything that's stressing you out and making you lose sleep at night. Sleep obviously important. Your sanity is important. Your financial health and wellbeing is important.

Keith Gause (00:22)
Little bit.

Jonathan Fodera (00:26)
a lot of times we hold onto shit too long because our ego gets in the way and we want to push through it. And there are times, there are a lot of times that you have to push through, but there are also a lot of times where you have to understand that this is not worth your time, effort, energy, and most importantly, your fucking sanity. And so we're going to go through when to unload it and when to dig your heels in and fight.

Keith Gause (00:46)
Mm.

Jonathan Fodera (00:52)
So with that being said, Keith, what's going on,

Keith Gause (00:55)
Now's a real good time to take a step back and see what's working and what's not working. What do you continue doing? What do you get rid of? And so you don't end up with four seasons of the same shit that didn't work that you should have shut down in the beginning. With every turn of the year, people change their business. People look back at what they didn't like and then they make a reflection and they change.

Jonathan Fodera (00:59)
you

Keith Gause (01:14)
But you don't ever hear about people changing their clients. It's always about their product suite, their service. It's never about their client. So I want to spend a little bit of time, just having some discussion on Should you fire clients? absolutely yes. 100 % yes. I think that's one of the things that people do last that they hire people before they fire clients. And I think people.

hold on to clients way too long and it causes destruction and chaos in their business. I'm in a season right now, we're firing a lot of people because we're changing. It's not necessarily a negative connotation on it, but every time, I fire a client, we find four or five new ones.

people need to really peel back the onion layers and determine? Is it your marketing strategy that sucks or are you just keeping the wrong people on the bus?

Jonathan Fodera (01:59)
Yeah,

when I fire a client, it's usually because either one, ethically, I know there's a better solution out there that I don't have and I send them there. if it's real estate related, I will send that to someone that can help because if they're not buying the property for their actual business, I'm not a good fit. If they are buying it for their business, I got it all day long. And then

I'll fire clients that don't want to work on the actual problem. I'll give you an example. Somebody has challenging credit or they have issues. I get them financing. And then I say, between getting you the money today, in between the next time you need money, you need to do these three things. I connect them with someone that's in credit repair. I'll connect them with someone that'll build their business credit. And then I start making all these introductions,

And if they apply again with me and they haven't fixed any of it, that's usually a warning. Because I want to graduate them. I want to get them into better programs. I want to really help them. And if they do it between the second deal and the third deal, I've given you the blueprint to get better and you just continue to do this. Not a fit. Or when people don't respect your time or how they work. I stick to my schedule. If it's not on my calendar, it isn't happening.

Keith Gause (02:46)
Yeah.

Jonathan Fodera (03:06)
And I really don't like random phone calls. Okay, because what you're saying is you have a situation that is way more pressing than anything I have going on And it could be for a simple question. I get these people that it's just a question that they could have Googled. That's someone I'm not working with, because they don't respect your time.

Keith Gause (03:19)
Dude.

funny.

I used to be this guy, if someone would text me, I would immediately answer. If someone would call, I would answer because I always wanted to be available for someone. I was never a guy that had red bubbles on my phone. I always paid attention to everything. I'm the king of red bubbles. And so my wife asked the other day, she's like,

right now I've got 68 unread text messages. That would have never in a hundred million years happened until I just let it go. That shows me that there were 68 questions that really weren't fucking serious that I didn't respond to that never got answered or they called me.

I don't answer the phone ever because I always get on long calls and tangents helping. so I quit answering phone calls. So I know they didn't get an answer from me. They just didn't ask again, cause they probably were able to find it themselves. nine times out of 10, if you just fucking open the hood look, you get the answer.

I like to think that I was teaching them valuable lessons, it just goes to show in your day of unraveling the bullshit, dude, that's part of the bullshit. Getting caught up in minutiae phone calls that aren't important. Texts aren't important. Emails, not important.

not just about the clientele who you're with, when you're examining this, you need to start with the very smallest things in your business because that's where it started. That's what starts infesting the rest of your shit. So.

Jonathan Fodera (04:34)
What takes your time away?

I

agree. And you know what? It's been long enough, so I don't mind talking about this one, So we're talking about clients let's change the game up Let's talk about businesses. I invested in a gym franchise. The gym franchise was absolute dog shit. When I mean absolute dog shit, it's probably lower than dog shit. It's the shit that grows on dog shit,

Keith Gause (04:44)
shit.

Jonathan Fodera (04:56)
So I got sold into this thing and listen, I signed it. I'm a big boy. I signed it. I had two partners. My partners are great. We're still friends this day. We go into this franchise and we were sold a dream. They didn't even have a functional CRM. It was a Google Sheet empire. They didn't have the marketing.

you always talk about running the play, especially when it's a franchise, there should be a model that they know works. Well, guess what? Everything we did that they said we should do, we tried, did not work. We were told that, you only have to stop in once a week, Just show them daddy's around, literally verbatim. Show them daddy's around. That didn't work, So we opened two locations.

We spent about 1.8 million over three years. And it got to a point where it was such a distraction to my main business, and we were losing so much money, because I had to keep putting money in that I made the decision, and unfortunately I made it a little bit too late, so it cost my partners, and I really feel bad about this. I asked them to keep it open another six months. It probably cost

each of us about a hundred grand by doing that. Cause I had my ego and I wanted to be successful and I wanted to turn it around and it just bit me in the ass, So that's a lesson learned and long story short, unwinding that I had to speak to the landlord, buy out the lease. I had to sell all the equipment off.

There's a lot of things that went into unwinding it. But the biggest benefit was the amount of relief I felt when I knew I'd never have to take another phone call related to this. And when I knew I never had to stroke another check, out of a successful business to cover a failing business. And we could go back and say, hey, it was the franchise. But here's the reality. One, it was unrelated to my successful business.

Two, we were definitely not serving the same clients. And three, I didn't do enough homework. I didn't do enough diligence. And I did not have the time to allocate to this. Now, if someone said, you're going to be working this 40 hours a week, 60 hours a week for the first six months,

Do you think I would have invested in that? Absolutely not, However, I was told that day you could do it remote, it's not a big deal, just go do it. Well, that was a big mistake. and unwinding it gave me such relief. and it doesn't have to be a business guys, this could be a product, it could be an employee. when you have these things that are weighing on you and causing you to lose sleep, you have to make a decision. Is this worth it?

Keith Gause (06:58)
Right.

Yeah, let's do it

Yeah.

Jonathan Fodera (07:20)
Or Should I know when to fold them? And sometimes you just hang on a little bit too long and it burns you and you won't do that again. Keith, what are your thoughts on that?

Keith Gause (07:30)
this is another one of those things entrepreneurs hardest decision is hiring The really hardest decision is the first fire whether it be a ploy a business partner a client whatever it might be because you're

mentality wise as the entrepreneur, giving something up that we need. I need that salesman to maybe bring me some money that really is asking bringing you or you wouldn't be having this conversation with yourself to begin with. there's a reason you're having the conversation. So

Anytime that I decided to either unwind a business or end a business relationship what I realized is

when I'm no longer interested in the thing, I need to shut it down or find someone to take over because I will pivot right on your ass so quick and find something else new that excites me And instead of giving it away or shutting it down, you've got to have someone else in the seat to continue to run. Learning that about myself and then just following through when I had those feelings was the best business

growth that has ever happened to me.

Jonathan Fodera (08:26)
When did you figure

that out?

Keith Gause (08:29)
I think after the second pivot in business back in like 2008, 2009, when I was really getting into entrepreneur mindset, just decided one day I hated the position that I was in and I was still doing some of the wealth management shit

So December 31st, I looked at my wife and said, I start over tomorrow. I'm changing. And I changed, I made it work. that let me know any time I decide to change from here, I'll make it work.

But not pushing that decision off saved me mentally, emotionally, financially, Because there's the other part I'm going to force it to be successful is poisonous,

forcing something to work It's a different approach to it than saying, I'm gonna force this thing that's failing to be successful. It's hard as shit to turn a failing ship around. It's not impossible, but it is damn near impossible.

Jonathan Fodera (09:22)
I think there has to be a line, So I could distinctly tell you the reason I knew it was time to cut the gym, besides that my heart was never into it, was when I realized the systems and the plays weren't working. And then when I spoke to everyone else in the franchise, and realized each one was having the same experience, if not worse.

That's when I made the decision, hey, this is stupid because I could be at this and at this and at this. There's other people that are dealing with the same things. This is a failing model. So when I knew the model was failing and when I saw the unethical stuff that the franchise was doing, that's when I wanted to pull the plug. as soon as I made that decision, my life instantly upgraded. I'll tell you one other time this happened.

Keith, I think we met when I had Sprout Lending, Sprout was a pretty large company, and there were times I thought we were on top of everything. Well, one of the things that I didn't know is that I offered to do the finances, I offered to do the taxes and all that good stuff.

And my partner always said, I'm taking care of it. Never got a tax return. So I'm like, what's going on here? So my partner never sent anything. And then finally I realized, way too late, that he wasn't filing.

And then I found a smoking gun. The smoking gun was we had an office in Melville, New York, and somebody almost kicked the fucking door. And when I say knocked aggressively and let himself in, I mean it. And then he did the same with my private office. And all he wanted to know was where my partner was Well, he was an IRS agent. and he's.

threatened and huffed and puffed. so long story short, when I asked him who he was looking for, he was looking for my at the time current partner. And then I was literally shitting myself thinking, is this for this business? And I found out it wasn't. I found out it was for his media company. And then when I text him about it and gave him the information, he shrugged it off like, no big deal. Well, there was a reason my partner was moving around all the time, because he never filed taxes.

and he had multiple seven figure businesses and I was attached to one. So right then and there I made the decision. I confronted him about it. I didn't like his answers. I said, I'm gonna take care of these taxes for us, So I did it for Sprout. I did four years of a seven figure business that was profitable each year, You know how much I owed? A lot.

So I went in, I did them, and then I started Integrated and I gave everybody a choice. I said, look, I'm not doing this anymore because of X, Y, and Z. You guys can either stay at Sprout or come with me. Everybody came. And even still to this day, I like my former partner. It was confrontational but he did teach me a lot of skills and he wasn't a bad person.

He just made this mistake and he repeatedly made this mistake. And because I had the assets, I wanted to distance myself. So I finally got to separate and I rebranded Sprout into Integrated and it was one of the best decisions I ever made. I felt so much better. The amount of relief when I made that decision and then when I made that break, life changing,

Keith Gause (12:26)
Yeah.

Mine are minor when I know when I'm miserable, when I go home miserable, there's a fucking work stop or when I'm Sunday comes around, I'm like, I do not want to go back and do any of that shit this week. That's what I know. You need to find a new role in the business or find something else to do.

You know, and it doesn't happen often, but that's my trigger. When I know I'm absolutely over it. I don't give a shit if it's super successful or not. I'll shut it down and go do something different for my sanity, But, there's also, you got to understand when it's just growing pains of a business versus you're fucking over it. There's a difference.

Jonathan Fodera (13:00)
guys, I don't want to discount what Keith just said. OK, that's probably the most important line to understand. There are growing pains that every single business goes through and it doesn't make a difference what kind of business and you're always going to have growing pains at every stage. And at every stage, you're going to be a little bit different. All right. The ones that you are doing dealing with as a startup are going to be different than the ones that once you hit a million.

The ones that you hit at 2 million are going to be slightly different than the ones at a million, but not much. Now, when you hit 5 million, again, different ball game. And I'm telling you guys this because I don't want you to get the message when things get hard or when there's growing pains or challenges, you walk away. That was never the case with the gym. That was never the case with my former partnership. And I'm sure that's not what Keith is talking about here. OK, there are.

Keith Gause (13:31)
you

Jonathan Fodera (13:49)
more times to dig in than there are to walk away. But the reason I walked away is because there was no relief in sight and there was no clear path forward. Because if your partner decides he never wants to file taxes, they can still mess with you and it could still impact your things. And if you know a business model is broken and you have handcuffs on because it's a franchise,

Keith Gause (14:07)
So, think that's very good?

Jonathan Fodera (14:13)
That's not an uphill battle you want to fight because then you got to fight the market and you got to fight the franchise. And if you are absolutely mentally checked out and you want nothing to do with it, you are just disgusted by the idea of you doing it one more time. That's pretty fucking hard to fix. if you want to throw your laptop in a lake at any point.

And it's not just a mistake or a blunder, That's a telltale sign it's time to change. It's time to do something else.

Keith Gause (14:39)
the problem is people will put their defensive blinders on and stick it out until the fucking plane blows the fuck up on the ground, And it's... Fear? Maybe fear of the other side of that? I don't know. But...

Jonathan Fodera (14:43)
Yeah, you're right.

Yes.

Keith Gause (14:51)
You take away one of these things, make one decision to get rid of one thing you hate doing and delegate it if nothing else. Shit, start there. Pick one thing that pisses you off every fucking day and delegate it. The other person you delegated to does it 10 times better than you anyway. You'll figure that out when you delegate it. You're welcome in advance.

Jonathan Fodera (15:10)
I'll give you another example of this. So when we exited the gym, we all lost 600,000. Each partner lost 600,000.

We know two franchisees that stayed with it after we told them, this is what we're doing and this is the exit.

these two people decided not to cut when we did, and they stayed on an extra year, with a burn rate of about 25,000. Okay? So the problem is people's egos about wanting to be right and wanting to prove that you can do it, Will cause you massive losses,

Now they are $300,000 more in the hole after gutting it out for another 12 months. So making that line in the sand and understanding when to unwind it versus when to dig your heels in is such, such an experience and a power move. you don't wake up one day with the ability to understand the line in the sand. You usually have to get your ass kicked. You have to step on the landmines.

multiple different times before you realize it. But if you could take this from me and Keith, then try to learn this on our mistakes Because if you do it on your own, I would have declared bankruptcy three times over during that.

Keith Gause (16:23)
had I not decided to pivot in the stages where I pivoted, absolutely would fucking be broke. And it just goes to just prove making the hard decisions in the moment suck, but you'll get to a point where when you do make the decision, it's like, oh my God.

It's orgasmic, I have to deal with that shit no more. So do yourself a favor, find the thing that you currently hate and quit it. Delegate it or get rid of it in full. And then come back to us so we can tell you what's the next thing to get rid of.

Jonathan Fodera (16:55)
Exactly. Hey guys, There's a reason the saying holds up addition by subtraction. You are adding to your life by subtracting the shit that you don't want to deal with that doesn't bring you joy, that just brings you misery and losses. And hey, there's things I caught that were actually making me money, but I could have allocated resources in a way that I would have less stress and I could

get a better return, I'll give you an example, a piece of property, I've done this with real estate, where if I'm only making, let's say, $1,000 a month on one property and I have a ton of equity in it and the tenants I have are locked in there and they suck to deal with, you know what? Why don't I sell that and buy a bigger property, get better tenants, and hopefully I can find a better deal?

All right, you can do it with investments. This goes for anything in your life, guys.

Guys, listen,

do us a favor, okay? We have been putting out more and more more episodes. I know we're picking up viewers left and right, but I can tell you, I know when people share it. So if every single one of you guys feel like you've got something out of it and you can share this with two people, we'd be very, very grateful. All right, until then, we'll see you on the next one.