All right, welcome back to The Daily Mastermind, George Wright III with your daily dose of inspiration, motivation, and education. And we're joined in studio with a guest here today, I guess virtual studio, I should say. Michael, how are you? Doing well. Thanks, George. Yourself? I'm doing great. I'm doing great. I'm glad we had a chance to kind of visit a little bit more before the show, because I think people are going to be very happy about some of the strategy, tactics and stuff we're going to talk about today. So I want to give you in our audience here a little bit of introduction as to who you are, because I think background matters, right? Everybody knows my background, but they also know that if I make time for a guest, it's somebody that has that proven background and so they can really learn. So listen, if you're looking for some strategy and tactics today, we're getting into it. So Michael Erath is our guest, and he's the founder of Next Level Growth, author of Rise, but also the new book, Five Obsessions of Elite Organizations. And he's built a $45 million empire early on, early on and lost everything overnight, but rebuilt from scratch. And, you know, he coaches CEOs on how to scale with clarity, not chaos. As I was growing one of my large corporations, I actually had a personal coach. This is the type of individual that you need if you're trying to get to the next level. So So, Michael, I really appreciate you being here, man. I hope that at least gave some type of a background for you. But I really want people to get to know where you came from. So can you kind of lay the backstory a little bit for them here? Yeah, I appreciate that. So the short version, I was second generation in a family manufacturing business. We manufactured hardwood veneer for the furniture industry, millwork companies, door and panel companies, kitchen cabinet companies, people like that. And when I got involved in the late 90s, we were about an $8 million business. We were primarily domestic. Most of our customers were furniture manufacturers in the mid-Atlantic. And in the late 90s, early 2000s, there was kind of this mass exodus to Asia of a lot of that manufacturing. So I had to reinvent the business early on in my career into more of an exporting and international company. My father was 44 when I was born. So as I got out of college and was getting involved, he was starting to wind down. And one of the challenges we had was sourcing raw materials. It was highly competitive. And I decided to vertically integrate the business. I brought on a partner and created a subsidiary that did timber merchandising. And so at that point, we started buying standing timber. We started buying large, large parcels of timber. And he would merchandise everything we didn't want to produce. And then we would keep the logs we wanted to produce. we'd have them at a better cost price and it gave us more control of the raw material. He and I became best friends. I became his son's godfather. We were really, really tight. And I found out in 2008, not only had he embezzled half a million dollars, but he was committing bank fraud in the entity that he was the managing director of. So a very long story, which is what the first book is all about. I was able to navigate that outside of bankruptcy, but we did liquidate and lose the business to pay off the bank, pay off the creditors. My father had passed. My mother was, we had transacted my mother out of the company through our estate planning, but she was still hung on one of the bank guarantees, which was about a $6 million term note. So all of these kind of dichotomies happening that I had to figure out how to protect my mother, her net worth, my wife, and myself who were all stuck on this guarantee. So I navigated that with the special assets group outside of bankruptcy it took about 18 months i got the education of of bi-weekly reporting and meetings with special assets which if you haven't been through please don't attempt to go through that yeah my former partner and best friend spent two years in federal prison my wife and i were able to keep the equity in our house and as i said avoid bankruptcy we moved to ohio restarted a business from scratch in the same industry and outsourced our production to a contract manufacturer in Ohio. And that was the business where I really started to get focused in on building systems and structures and things to help put some guardrails around myself, my blind spots in the business to prevent that from happening again. So grew that business to 7 million. I started down the path of EOS, the entrepreneurial operating system. A lot of people are familiar with the book Traction. 2015, I exited that business successfully and decided to spend kind of the second half of my career taking everything i learned from the first half and finding ways to give that back and build a build a coaching business around that uh started working as an eos implementer did that successfully for uh just about six years but one of the things i i grew very frustrated by was the prescriptive nature of a lot of these business operating systems and that's what ultimately led to me starting next civil growth and focusing less on a prescriptive system and more of a principled framework that creates more flexibility because what i was finding was being part of a prescriptive system by default you ended up putting primacy on the system not the user and one of the most common complaints i was hearing was people saying that it felt too rigid um it didn't really feel like it fit them just right and so i wanted to create something that was flexible and could put primacy on the user and the results they were after the goals that they had whereby the system they ended up with would be secondary and would be a byproduct and very custom tailored um along the way there was one quote that i want to share that i that really landed with me it's a paul batalden quote he was a healthcare ceo and i've seen this attributed to edwards demming but but the research for my book found that it was Paul, but that every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets. If you want a different result, you need a different system. And for me, what that really opened up was this realization that if I look at all the things that are subpar or mediocre in my business and my personal life, there's an underlying system that was created most of the time by default, which is getting me that result. And until I allow myself to think through the systemization of how I do things that are leading to that result, I can't really ever fix it because I've got to change something in that system. Yeah, it's interesting because I talk a lot about that in business and in life. You're either creating this system, but make no mistake, their systems are being created regardless. You're conscious, you're subconscious, the things you're doing. I think that is a great roadmap for what we're going to talk about today because it helps individuals to understand where you came from, what you've done, and where you're going. But I want to kind of go back and unpack that a little bit because I think this is important. I always find, and one of the qualifications I have to get a guest on the show is their background, their proven background, what they've done. But I also feel like that's the foundation for what makes you who you are and why things work. So I want to back up to just a minute when you had this failure, which led to everything else. Leadership and resilience and things it takes to be able to get to where you're at, because your system, and we're going to break down the book here in a second, goes through some real paths that are based on users, but it comes out of the place a lot of people might be in, where they're struggling and things like this. How did you, from a mindset standpoint and a professional standpoint, go through such a big setback with this business going under 45 million. And was that the reason that pivoted you into systems or have you always kind of been a system person? So I guess part one is how did you make it through that? People are dealing with some, especially if they're scaling a business, they're dealing with some major, you know, stress and anxiety and things they're dealing with. How did you deal with that as an individual leader? And is that the way you dealt with that? Is that what took you through this path or have you always kind of been a systems guy? You know, the second, I'll answer this in reverse order, the systems piece of it was really more something that I learned and that became evident to me over time. It's not always been my background. I don't know if any of your listeners are familiar with Colby as an assessment, but I'm actually a very high fact finder. So I do default to systems and processes and things like that. I just haven't really unpacked and understood them early on. But to your question about kind of going through that and resilience, it's interesting when I coach people around discovering what their core values are, I refer to them as behavioral core values. And I think Gino Wickman was right in the way he describes this attraction is that they're discovered, they're not created, right? They already exist. And so through that lens now, I'm able to look back. And so in Next Level Growth, we have four core values. The first one is take ownership. The second is be resourceful. Third is have a thirst for learning. and four is be fun to work with. Fourth one is because life's too damn short. But what I've realized in reflecting on that entire journey is that first core value, take ownership in my personal life and my professional life. I gravitate towards people who just take ownership. And I tend to not enjoy being around people who don't. Friendships don't last, things like that. relationships. Yeah. Right. And so what I started realizing as I go back through that story, when I went to the special assets group, we had hired a retired FBI forensic accountant to help my CFO kind of put together everything before we went to the US attorney's office in the bank. And for people that remember 2008, most companies that were in trouble were throwing the keys at the bank, letting the attorneys fight it out. And in hindsight, it was the fact that I am very much wired to take ownership. And that's an important core principle and value of mine. That's why I went to the special assets. I could have let my mother pay for her attorney and I pay for ours and we could have let them fight it out and see where things settled. And in honesty, that might've been an easier road in hindsight, but that wasn't really that that's not who I am. And so that was kind of my approach was I knew at the time that the special assets group had all these fires all of a sudden landing in their lap with all these companies going under then I felt like if I took that mindset and I went to the special assets group and the conversation I had with them was literally, if you bankrupt this company and all this new equipment we've purchased with the $6 million term note, if you auction this, you'll get nothing because our industry is very niche. Nobody's going to want this stuff. The whole industry is imploding at the moment. But if you give me enough liquidity to keep the doors open, I will navigate an orderly liquidation over time and get you significantly more recovery. So I think at the time I was one less fire to fight. So they took that. And I had a few really, really, all transparency, very fortunate breaks that allowed me to get the bank made whole, get the creditors made whole. And my wife and I took the haircut. We just had this, we were in our late thirties at the time. We just had to live to fight another day mentality. And that's what got us through. I love it. I love it. Tell me again, one more time, what are the four core values that you have? So the first one is take ownership. Second is be resourceful. Third is have a thirst for learning. And the fourth is be fun to work with. Okay. I love those. And this leads me to kind of one of my main questions I wanted to ask you because for the listeners that are listening, obviously your experience that you go through, you want to find people that have already been through the experience you've been through because they can give you the lessons. But what happens is if you're an individual like yourself, this experience builds a foundation of core values and things that you can now help individuals to go through but what i love about what your book and your systems and things do is number one you made it clear it's personalized to individuals because someone doing the exact same thing you're doing may or may not deal with things differently but if you have a core set of values and another foundation to apply it against regardless of your personality like you said your systems are systems but they're personalized, but then you have this core foundation of values as well. Those people, regardless of their personality, can then follow a system which works clearer. So I love sort of how you put that all together. So that kind of leads us a little bit to your book. Talk to me about your book, Five Obsessions. And first, most importantly, what made you decide to write a book? You already have a successful business. You have a lot of things going on. Other than being able to really make it a tangible thing, was there a reason you decided to do a book or was it just to capture these concepts on paper? You know, I enjoy very much. I enjoy writing. I enjoy writing blogs, things like that. And to hire a high-end business guide to be a partner to help you grow things requires your business, at least from a free cash flow perspective to be at a certain scale that there are lots of businesses that aren't at a point where they can afford to hire us yet and for me the book i was at a point in my life where i felt like this book would be a really good opportunity for me to not only give away the the concepts and the thoughts but actually the path some of the how to actually do do this yourself. Because my thought was, if we could reach a significantly larger ecosystem of entrepreneurs at smaller stages, and get them to start understanding that you don't have to settle for something prescriptive, you can create your own customized approach if you do it with this intentionality. And with a focus on these five things, I wanted to give them some step-by-step foundational how to do some of this. And then I created, as I mentioned to you when we were talking earlier, an AI clone to accompany the book that's been trained on everything that I teach and my team teaches. And that's kind of another layer. If people want more insights and guidance for a nominal subscription, they can add on the clone and use that as kind of their own business coach. Yeah, because as time has gone on, I think people have learned that it used to be that people would pay for information and now information is so accessible. They started paying for the perspective on it for an individual, the individual perspective of the information. And now what it is, is they need real-time access to things because the market's moving so fast. I will note that one of the things that drew you and your book to my attention is, and this may be subtle, it might be have nothing to do with anything but a cool design. I noticed that the title, Five Obsessions of Elite Organizations, was sort of separated. And in my mind, it immediately went to, you know, five obsessions of elite organizations, because the color is different on the book. And it's two things that create each other, but could run independent of each other. You know, you can have these core obsessions, but also have an organization. So can you, I don't know, that might just be how I saw it, because I always like everybody wants to have an elite next level organization, their systems, but these obsessions, the logical question I had is what are the obsessions? And so if you don't mind, can we just go deep into these now? What are the five obsessions? Absolutely. What's the title mean for you? Yeah, no, I appreciate that. And I love that observation because there are a lot of things that strategically mattered to me that I never knew who would pick up on this, who wouldn't, would it be subliminal? How would this land? But they are two different and yet interdependent things if you're truly going to achieve greatness. and where this, a lot of where this came from, there was a very short Nick Saban video. It's on our YouTube page, um, of him giving a talk. And he talks about five choices we have in life. And for anybody that hasn't seen this, he says that we all have five choices on how we do things in our lives. We can choose to be bad at what we do. And sadly, some people do that. We can choose to be average. We can choose to be good. And he said, being good is probably about all God expects of us with whatever talent he gave us. But we can also choose to be excellent or elite. But if you choose to be excellent or elite, you have to have a special discipline, passion, focus, and drive to do things to a high level at a high standard all of the time, or you really will never get past good. And it just resonated with me, that idea of being elite. And I thought about companies that I've worked with, business owners I've been friends with, and people I've known who have really done elite things. And I started to realize that at a principles based level, there were five consistent things that were kind of commonalities among these. And then I even started looking at great legacy or dynasty sports organizations. And ironically, these same five things, and maybe some different iterations were all there. And so the first is great people. And i sometimes get pushback on this because a lot of people have read jim collins good to great and right people on the right it's the bus analogy yeah and the book gives lots of great examples but it doesn't give you any here's how to do this right and so we really got clear on how to help organizations both from a cultural alignment perspective and from a performance perspective get a clear lens on what greatness looks like and both of those caveats for every role in the the organization and then how to measure that and coach people around it. So it's great people. So let me, and let me ask you a question. I'll put a pause for just quick. Sure. I want to make sure I make this clear distinction, but these teachings, trainings, obsessions, and ideas would apply to individuals, leaders, and teams and corporations, correct? I mean, these are going to go, this is individuals, whether you're an entrepreneur, a leader, a team, or an organization, these are the things to be excellent that are required these obsessions correct yes yes it is and we even have had situations where at an at an executive level a corporate an organization will not adopt this but a leader of a team within the organization will and there have been times where it may take a year it may take two years the performance changes and the dynamic changes of that team lead the executives to realize that they actually should have done this and they come back to us. I love that you said that because what I'm finding more and more, and I co-host a podcast with Franklin Planner. And so I'm getting this because I'm usually in the entrepreneur, serial, you know, serial entrepreneur, business owner, and executive CEO. But there's a lot of people out there, whether they're entrepreneurs or entrepreneurs that maybe feel there's a lot of things outside their control, but these are the things that are within your control that also, like you said, can influence everything out of your control to go the same direction. So I want people to understand no matter where you're at, these are obsessions. These are not just team and corporate systems that have to be implemented. This is at an individual level, right? Exactly. So whether you think about this at your team or your organization, depending on your role, if you focus on filling your team or organization with great people, Got it. And the second obsession, make sure that you give them what they need to be aligned and driven by an inspiring purpose. And I think this is something, so, you know, as a marketing guy, I think you probably see this in a lot of companies. Most organizations invest their entire marketing budget in external marketing. Yes. Rarely do they market internally to their team members. If you really can figure out how to articulate what your true purpose is and And we, and in the book, I talk through how to figure this out and how to really think about it the right way. I could come to work for an organization and share the core values. I could be a high performer in my role. If I can be, if I can form an emotional attachment to the organization and what we stand for and what we do, I will always bring more creativity, passion, and energy to my work. And I will, because I will be connected to that purpose. And it'll be emotional for me, not just intellectual and transactional. And are you saying the purpose of the organization as well as the individuals, maybe purpose, like in other words, helping to get them aligned with the organization? Or is it as a leader making sure that, okay, that's what I think. I think it's both. The entity has its own purpose and story. And you're in your podcast with Ken Rusk, and I would encourage people to go back and listen to this from a few days ago. He talked about this idea. I think the way he said it was every company should be able to, for every employee, answer the question, can I get what I want in my life with and through this company? Yes I love that Which leads to great people right Because you going to get better people if they feel like there can be solved as much as yours Right If I can connect the dots for an employee say coming into my organization between here what we believe in as a company which Simon Sinek talks about an infinite game as your just cause Here's how that belief drives our daily purpose. And here's how in this organization you can get what you want out of your life. And I have to have a relationship with you. Right. I have to ask you questions. I have to understand you and see you to be able to help you connect those dots. But if I can do that for an employee, they'll be inspired. They will be self-motivated to greatness because I've helped them connect all the dots. And that's an effective leader. So I think if we obsess, and that goes back to the elite statement, to be elite, I think you have to literally obsess about these things. You have to have that much of a tenacity about them. But filling the organization or team with great people, ensuring they are led and driven by an inspiring purpose. Third is we have to give them optimized playbooks. And I don't mean detailed SOPs and work instructions. I think we need those for onboarding. We need those to make sure systems are really optimized. But once somebody has been through their training and onboarding, having checklists and high-level playbooks for them to follow, because it's human nature to create shortcuts and workarounds. And if I've got 10 people on a sales team and they all kind of do it their own way eventually and deviate from our playbook, it's going to create chaos. But if I can keep them focused on following an optimized playbook on how we sell and how we convert leads to clients, that's going to be much more effective. And playbooks, they take pressure off of people, right? When we have good systems and playbooks. Would these be flexible or specific? Meaning I like your word optimized because it's optimized, not just because it's the specific path, but maybe optimized to the people, optimized to the organization, right? So yeah, so what, like, for example, in our, if you go into our, our LMS, and looked at our playbooks for business development, for example, so I've got, I've got nine other partners right now, as we're growing, and each of them have unique backgrounds, unique personalities. So the way that we've built our playbooks is, it clarifies what is a brand standard that you're not able to to deviate from. This is part of our brand who we are. It's a must do it this way. And then other components within that same play, there may be steps within the play that are, these are kind of the guardrails and this is the outcome of that step, but you need to personalize how you do that. Right. And so like professional athletes, right. I mean, they know that they run the play, but a Michael Jordan is not going to just like run the exact, like you got to be able to call audibles, right right okay exactly and so um even you know take a wide receiver running a certain route different players will have different ways they use head fakes and things like that they're still doing the exact same number of steps and the exact same angles and whatnot but there are nuances to how they play right and that's because you have to react to the market right right people around you there's there's an isador sharp quote i think he was the founder of the four seasons i think was four seasons um that you systemize the predictable in order to humanize everything else and i love that statement right so everything we do in our organizations has segments of the process that are predictable and those are what we should systemize if if i come to work for you and i know the systemized things i have to do i don't have to think much about that it frees up my creativity to humanize the experience. And I think that's why an organization like his has become so successful and has such a great reputation because they've done that really, really well. So they're not intended to be restrictive. They're intended to just like a playbook for athletes. They're intended to open up the creativity that exists in the human spirit by providing a systemized path or flow. Yeah, because, I mean, let's be honest, like if you can eliminate the need for someone to think about the process and it's systematized, then they can be creative. So I love where you're going with this. So, you know, if you have the right people, you get them individual purpose, which is going to drive their passion, drive the business regardless, and then a playbook that's optimized. That's like that's the making of a good team. So what's what's number four? So the fourth is a culture of performance. And sometimes I see people bristle a little bit on this. And I always want to say this is not a fully punitive performance-based culture. The way I define a culture of performance, I think number one, when it comes to our people and our relationships between employees and the people to whom they report, the underlying cause of most of our frustrations is unclear expectations. and so yeah we need to have very clear expectations which we cover and the way we we set up the great people obsession the culture performance we have to have very clear ways to measure success against those expectations uh if i go to work for an organization i need to know what winning looks like in my role and how i'm being measured if i don't know that it's it's a crapshoot i'm guessing Right. And so, but clear is kind. And so if we give people clear expectations, clear ways that we're measuring them and clear goals, then when they agree to take the job, we essentially have a de facto agreement that this is the expectation, this is the standard. So that allows us to measure performance, both in cultural alignment and execution. So once we can start to measure that, And we have a threshold for what, what is meeting expectations and what is failing to meet expectations anywhere that someone is failing to meet expectations. If you have a really effective culture of performance, you have a, you have a system that will identify those individuals and that will provide them coaching and development and support and guidance to help coach them up to be able to meet the expectation. Yeah. that assumes that those people are coachable. And if the system works properly, you also have come up with a way to determine who is and is not coachable. And so the system essentially coaches people up or coaches people out. And if you have an effective system to do that, you will end up with a high performing organization. And it's also very fair to people because I think when you have a very fair, comprehensive and systematic approach to how you coach underperformers, I tend to find statistically about four in five people that are identified as underperformers end up just fine. Yeah. Because the company supports coaches and guides them. The handful of people who either aren't coachable, they're defensive, they just don't have the attitude to take it. Those people tend to leave the organization on their own through the process because they realize they can't hide from accountability. They can't get away with mediocrity. and so most of the time they leave and now they're not your HR problem, right? Yeah, it's when you start to create that, that's why it's culture, right? That's when you start to create that intangible that helps you to grow the organization without you having to put pressure and influence. And I would say that so far, like all these obsessions independently on their own can push an organization to the next level, but they kind of stack, right? I mean, if you got the right people and they're purpose-driven with playbooks, they're gonna perform better or they're going to be more apt to be the ones that want to perform. They won't be the people that don't, right? So they do stack, but at the same token, any one of these areas can make a difference, right? Right, exactly. And that then leads right into the fifth and final, which is growing profits and cash flow. And the longer I've gone on in this career as a business coach, the more frustrated I get hearing people say profit and cash is a byproduct of doing everything else right. I see how people buy into that theory, but I believe if you're going to be elite, that's an intellectually lazy statement to make. I believe that you have to be intentional about your pricing strategy, your cash conversion cycles. You have to be looking for the, over time, the improvements of incremental change, a 1% improvement here, a half a percent improvement here, and really understanding the financial literacy of the business and teaching that to people within the organization. Because if you believe in your purpose, your profitability and your cash flow is the fuel that goes back into the engine to allow you to publish more of that. So I think it's a misstatement to say, I really believe in what we do as an organization and profit in cash or a byproduct. Because if that's how you treat them, that's what they will be. Yeah, it's not a default. Like the idea is not run a great or next level organization and you'll be profitable. It's the other way around in both, right? At the same token, you will. I love that. You know, it's interesting. I ask a lot of people like, explain your pricing strategy to me. And I just leave it there. And it's almost like deer in headlights. Yeah, because they don't have a strategy. Right. It sounded good. It was a markup or we priced it because this is what everybody else charges, right? Okay, so you have no differentiated value, right? They do compound though, I tell you, it's like when you have the right people, playbooks and performance, they want to maximize profits. and prices and cash flow and all those things. So I do like, what's unique about what your book is, I'll tell you, besides the personalization of your systems and things is this idea of it being obsession. And I think anyone who on one hand looks at high performers, they know that they're obsessed. And it's not just like you said, systems and paths and processes that are all important. They're all important. You gotta be obsessed with it. You gotta be obsessed with greatness. You got to be obsessed with, and if it's driven by purpose and passion, it makes it easier for people to be obsessed with that. Where do you think most people from your experience in the, you know, you're, you're working with a lot of, you know, fortune 5,000, where do they fall down the most? Or is it all over the board? Like, where do you feel like, and it may be at different types of levels of organizations, it's different, but where do most struggle the most in these obsessions? I, you know, I see probably two things and ironically they, they, they relate back to people. Um, but, but two more common areas, I think, as, as I, as I think about your question, um, number one is I think leaders who avoid radically candid, honest conversations with people where they not meeting expectations Um there a really good documentary that uh one of my colleagues in genius network was sharing with me um a couple of months ago that it on professional poker players And he said you know the biggest difference between professional poker players and amateurs is that professionals play significantly fewer hands. When they recognize they have a hand that's not likely to win, they fold and they get the next hand. If you relate that to people in an organization, how many times as leaders do we have hire we got wrong, or we've promoted somebody into a role where we know they're not going to be an A player. And rather than addressing it quickly, we kind of take the amateur route and we keep thinking, well, gosh, you know, if we just get that queen of diamonds, I'll win the hand, right? The card doesn't come. And so I think being faster to respond to people issues, and again, clear as kind, coach and mentor and do your best to help people level up. But if they can't level up, you've got to be able to coach them into another role or perhaps help them transition into another organization where they can be more successful. And then the other thing is I think sometimes, oftentimes actually, I think people will have a B player or even a C player on a team and for another 15, 20% on the compensation, they could go get an A player and they get fixated on the difference in compensation. They get fixated on the marginal cost of the A player and they fail to get the marginal value, right? And so if you think about it, I'd say one, your A players are free because of the value they bring. And number two, you get to hire them for interest-free financing, right? You hire them over a 24-month pay period at 0% interest. So, you know, $120,000 salary, right, is not $120,000 on day one, it's $10,000 a month. But if you're taking what you are currently paying, $95,000 and you go pay $120,000 to get an A player, you're getting value in the first 30, 60, 90 days that far exceeds the marginal cost of $10,000 per month. plus burden, right? And so getting people to shift their mindset and think about being willing to invest in the A players, but having a system that measures performance has clear ramp plans. So we know three months in, is this A player really going to pay for themselves or not? We don't wait until it's been a year or two before we figure that out. You've got to have those underlying, it's back to that systems quote, you've got to have the underlying systems in place as checks and balances to then be comfortable taking the risk of that investment. Because otherwise, you end up getting the same thing and you just spend more money. Yeah, I think, boy, you said it really well there. I made kind of a note. It's the awareness that these individuals and organizations need to have the indecision, being indecisive, whether it's a person or whatever else costs you money. And that the way you're paying, if you're viewing it through the cost versus an ROI perspective, but you made a comment, both of these problems you're seeing in organizations, indecision and not paying the right amount, do come back to a mindset. And it's a mindset of, if you were a mindset of excellence, we perform at an excellent level. You don't try to underpay. You don't become indecisive. It's like everybody complained because Michael Jordan was so difficult on his team in the playoffs, but they're all wearing a ton of rings and they're happy you did it. Right. So it depends on what your goal is, but it does come back to a mindset. Do you feel like when you're working, it's why I like the idea that you individualize things. And I know we don't have a lot of time here, but because the individual, the mindset of the individual is what affects the process and the plan they move forward with. So is that what you, you got to struggle with as you're working with individuals and organizations? It is. And really we try to focus on smoking that out in the initial courtship phase with a potential client. So we, it sounds silly saying it. And I honestly have to force myself to say it because I, my own head trashes. I feel it sounds disingenuous, but we don't have a sales process. We have a confirmation process. And what we mean by that is our role when we're talking to a new prospect is to confirm whether or not they're going to be a right fit to work with one of our partners and guys. We have finite capacity and part of our flywheel in our business model is referrals from raving fan clients. If we onboard a client and give them some of our capacity and they don't have the drive and the desire to do things to a high level, they will not get the results they want. They will not be as much of a raving fan. That's going to affect our business model as well. And so we actually have to be protective of our capacity. One of my guides actually said it really well. He said, we have to think of ourselves as Simon cowl, right? We have the solutions. The person coming to us actually is the one with the problems. They need to audition more for us than we need to be a dancing bear showing them that our stuff is better than somebody else's. And that's even a mindset shift that requires you to have a level of authority and confidence in what you do to be able to approach it like that. I love that. And I would note, and I know you do this, and I'm sure you're looking for not people that have that strong mindset. It's the people that have the intention and willingness and ability to do what it takes. Because obviously if you were where you wanted your organization and your life to be, you'd already, I mean, if you're already doing it, you'd be there. If you're not, it's because you don't have the mindset that needs to be instilled through the systems as well as the association, right? From people that have struggled through it, done it and been there. Well, this has been really, really helpful. I love the obsessions. I love how they stack. I love the individualization you give. Where is the best place for people to connect with you? Because I know you have the book out and I want to make sure we make it kind of clear for people. Where's the best place for them to connect with you? So directly through our website, nextlevelgrowth.com. That's kind of the entry point. You can access the book there. There's downloadable resources. The book is available on Amazon and Audible. You can also go to the website, fiveobsessions.com to find that. But nextlevelgrowth.com, you can get to our team of partners and guides and see all of their diverse backgrounds. They've all been former owners, CEOs of YPO qualifying businesses, basically 10 million or more in revenue, 50 or more employees, so very experienced individuals. and then our YouTube page. If you just search Next Level Growth on YouTube, we've got a ton of content on there. We've got lots of short kind of video nuggets and ideas on, hey, if you're dealing with this issue, here's something you can try and things like that to help entrepreneurs and growing companies. Perfect. Okay, and what I'll do, if you're listening, I'm gonna put those links all in the show notes so that you can grab them quickly and go there. I'd encourage you to connect, see what you can do for your organization. But I guess before we take off, Michael, one last question for you. Let's just, regardless of where people are at, let's say you're an entrepreneur, solopreneur, you're a CEO, or you're business scaling and you're starting to bump up against some issues. Is there any final, you know, kind of like strategy, advice, tip or something you would give them as to, you know, where they should start or something they should do? I just wanted to see if you had any final thought you want to kind of throw out to, you know, the audience here. Yeah, you know, I think beyond the comment I made about, you know, systems being perfectly designed to get the results they're getting, Dan Sullivan has a book that came out a few years ago called Who Not How. And the underlying premise is that most of the time, entrepreneurs misidentify a who problem as a how problem. And what he means by that is, for example, my background is operations. I'm not a marketing guy. I'm having to learn. I'm having to use people that are a lot smarter than me at marketing. It would be very easy for me to overly obsess about learning the how and trying to do it myself versus finding the right who and delegating all of that to them. And so oftentimes where I think, especially earlier stage entrepreneurs get stuck, is we try to treat ourselves as the right who for everything the business needs. And I think that's a limiting mindset. It's natural. It's a very natural place to be. But until you can kind of get beyond that and think about who is the right who to help me do what needs to get done, what would it cost me to invest in hiring them? And what's the opportunity and the value that would come from having this problem solved? I think that's great advice. And I think if you want to have an excellence mindset and you want to be more or have more or grow your company more, you've got to recognize that you don't have all the answers. So it may be it most always is a who, not a how problem. But also, maybe if you're listening to this, it's it's it's something you can apply to yourself as well. And you might not have the answers. You need to go and seek out individuals, whether it's, you know, individuals like Michael or whatever else. It's the whole reason we do the Daily Mastermind, right? So you can surround yourself with next level individuals that can help you, even if it's just help to inspire or motivate the thoughts for you to take action. And so, Michael, I think that's a great piece of advice. I really do appreciate you being here today, man. I think it's been enlightening. I love the positioning you have on these obsessions as well. And so thank you so much for being here. Yeah, I appreciate the invite. I had a great time, George. Thank you. Awesome. Well, listen, if you're listening to this for the first time, make sure you hit that subscribe button. Like I've always said, no matter where you're at, you know, it's never too late to start living and creating the life that you're meant to live. It's never too late to make that organizational shift. And so do what you need to do. Hit me up on The Daily Mastermind on Instagram, Facebook or YouTube. I look forward to hearing not only what you're struggling with, but maybe what your wins are. Let's celebrate some wins. And so once again, I appreciate you being here. We're looking forward to talking with you more later this week. Have a great day.
