93. What is Business Success?

"The numbers tell the story of where you've been, where you are, and where you wanna go.” How do you define "success" in your own life? Are you looking to break even, pay yourself, or reach that million dollar mark annually? Are these what truly defines "business success"? Defining success for yourself is key to building a business that works for you, your team, and your customers. 

What if redefining success could completely transform your life? Learn the four benchmarks we created that define success for our lives on today's episode. 

Key Takeaways: 

• Don't get distracted by everything
• Is profitability the only benchmark to define success? 
• How can you stay profitable? 
• The two factors to customer satisfaction
  
  

Hear why knowing your numbers and having accountability partners can make or break your business, especially if you're a financial advisor or CPA. We emphasize the critical role of customer satisfaction and product quality, both of which directly influence your business's reputation and employee retention. By openly addressing financial issues and always striving for customer satisfaction, you'll build a solid foundation for long-term success.

Iron Sharpens Iron Community: https://go.viewfromthetop.com/community
LinkedIn Group: https://www.viewfromthetop.com/group
Local Roundtable Events: https://go.viewfromthetop.com/isiroundtable

Connect with Big A and Wally:
View From The Top Website: https://www.viewfromthetop.com/
The Climb Newsletter: https://www.viewfromthetop.com/climb
Big A’s Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaronwalkerviewfromthetop/
Wally’s Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinwallenbeck/

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey everybody, welcome back to View From the Top podcast, where we help growth-minded men who desire momentum in their business, their family and their finances get through the valleys and up the mountain to their very own view from the top. Hey, as I was thinking about our topic today what is business success I just wanted to share with you all that I had an experience recently. I was in the Iron Sharpens Iron community app this past weekend and I found myself scrolling. Now, I'm not a fan of social media scrolling, primarily because, well, it's just a complete waste of time, in my opinion, and it sucks your energy and gives you no joy. That's my experience. But I found myself scrolling in the app.

Speaker 1: 0:48

But what I found in the ISI app was really quite the opposite man. These guys were posting great resources, challenges they needed help with and even sharing in their successes and, frankly, it just made me happy. So if you want to be happy, you can get connected and get engaged with a growing group of growth-minded Christian businessmen and leaders. Go check out viewfromthetopcom slash community and see for yourself. All right, speaking of guys celebrating business successes, let's get Big A in the studio and dive into our conversation today. Big A welcome.

Speaker 2: 1:26

Well, good to see you. I was listening to you do the opening and I recently read a study about social media. We're not going to talk about it today, but it said that most people that spend an inordinate amount of time on social media are not as happy as people that don't. And as you get into the meat of that, they said that it was because there's such a comparison and all people display are the good things, not the challenges that we're having, and I find myself being less happy as well, and so I think the post in circle for our ISI guys. There's not a comparison there. They're just sharing those great resources, they're offering challenges and situations that they're dealing with, and it feels so much more authentic, and so I think that's the reason it made you happy.

Speaker 1: 2:16

That was good. I think so too. It's been a joy to be in there.

Speaker 2: 2:20

You know it goes right into our topic today. What is business success? You know it goes right into our topic today. What is business success? You know, wally, you and I have been around for a minute like decades in business and when we were putting this together it's been a long time I was thinking golly.

Speaker 2: 2:52

For me personally, it's really been redefined a number of times. I thought when I was a young business guy that you just go out, you have a successful product or service and you made a little bit of money and later you sold the company and you know you had a golden parachute. You know that's not exactly the way it's worked out each and every time. Not exactly the way it's worked out each and every time. But I've watched over the course of my life of how success in business has kind of morphed over time. And when I think about success today, it's really a combination of things. For me it's not just about making money, although I do like to make money. I know you like to make money as well but today for me it's really about all of the resources. It's kind of a combination of things. It's the resources. It's also about free time and that's more important to me today than it used to be, because my family's grown and gone now. But the other thing that I'm really focused on today is legacy, and it's more important, I think as you get older you start thinking, man, what am I going to be remembered for? Is all this just to have made money? Is it about meaning? Is it about purpose? Like, what is the legacy? And the truth is, we're all leaving a legacy, right? Some of them are just intentional and others are unintentional, but we all are leaving some type of legacy. So I want to leave a legacy business, you know, in view from the top. I want it to go on without me kind of going forward.

Speaker 2: 4:11

But when I was thinking about our topic today, I thought you know what would be a good summary for me personally, and what it would be is I want to be an equity partner.

Speaker 2: 4:27

Like I love doing things with guys like you and Derek and Brooke and others. Like I want to be involved, kind of, in a partnership arrangement, an equity partner, and I want it to be consistently profitable, because I want to achieve a customer satisfaction that is second to none. That is just a personal lofty goal of mine personally, but I want it to be sustainable in a way that's not solely dependent on me, and I see so many people today that they really have a job, a high paying job. They don't really have a business and I recognize that, even in this view from the top with our Iron Sharpens Iron mastermind, that even in this view from the top, with our Iron Sharpens Iron mastermind, when I was doing one-on-one coaching solely, it was really a high-paying job. It wasn't really a sustainable business. And so finally, I guess, from a summary standpoint for me personally is I want a business that has meaning for others and it gives me a real sense of purpose because of it.

Speaker 1: 5:25

I think what's interesting and kind of a theme that you've talked about, even so far that I'm picking up on, is that it's important to define, like, what success is, and that that may come and that may change in different stages of life. I know, for me it's been that way as well, and so, with all the listeners that are out there today, you may be, you know, solopreneur launching right now. You may be in kind of that startup mode. You may be in kind of growth mode where you've, you know, got some income, you've got some EBITDA and profit and you're trying to figure it out. Or you may be in a stage of life where you're thinking about, hey, what's next? Like Big A's talking about with legacy. So we're going to cover a bunch of a few different things today, right, related to that, really cover all three areas of those. They're not just inclusive to one or the other.

Speaker 2: 6:19

Wally, did you catch yourself at an early age, when you were a young business person, not having defined what success was going to look like?

Speaker 1: 6:31

I was pretty goal-oriented when I was younger, so was I holistic in my goal. No, no, no, no. So I was goal-minded, so I would set a goal and I'd be like, okay, I was, I was goal minded, so I would set a goal and I'd be like, okay, the goal number one goal for me in in the business that I started back in 2003, uh was well, most businesses really before that, even the ones that didn't work. My goal was like how do I break even? Like maybe that's a stupid goal, maybe Right, but for me in the beginning I was like, how?

Speaker 2: 7:02

do I pay myself? When you're losing money, how do I pay myself? How do I pay?

Speaker 1: 7:07

myself, how do I get enough business to reasonably pay myself and get going? And then, once I hit that goal, then it was like, okay, how do I work myself out of this and get enough money to hire this person to do this? And so for me it was very linear, like one step at a time, and that worked out for me. But I missed out on a lot of other things, even related to business success, because I wasn't looking at it holistically. I didn't have that help back then, right. But things definitely have changed over time and in the beginning it was really focused on profit in the very beginning.

Speaker 2: 7:39

You know, while I think back my first business, I went to the bank and signed a note for $150,000 when I was 19 years old to open a business.

Speaker 1: 7:49

So what was that? What would that be? What would that be today?

Speaker 2: 7:52

I don't know.

Speaker 1: 7:53

That's a long, long time ago, I don't know 45 years ago. It's like I wonder what that. I have to look that up. Like what translates?

Speaker 2: 8:05

Maybe 800,000 million? That's insane. Yeah, yeah, imagine doing that. Yeah, wow.

Speaker 2: 8:07

But to my point was I didn't know at that time to know any differently. Like I didn't have trusted advisors, I didn't have people around me that was guiding me, I didn't have mentors, I didn't even know to know that that was a thing. Like I just wanted to make money, I wanted to pay the bank, I wanted to make enough money to provide for my family and I wanted to build a successful business. Like that was it, like that was my sole focus. I didn't even know to be holistic in that. And it really wasn't until I'm embarrassed to admit this, but it really wasn't until a couple of decades later multiple businesses that I'd owned over the first 20 years of my career, that I had anybody even around me 2000, 2001, which is now almost 25 years ago that I really understood what success was outside of making money, mm-hmm.

Speaker 2: 9:13

And that's the reason I want you that are listening to us today to really think through what it is that you're trying to accomplish, because if your mindset I'm not getting on you, I'm not penalizing you for not thinking differently Some of you don't even know to think about what a successful business would look like outside of it being profitable, and so that was one of the main reasons that I think we wanted to do this podcast episode today was just so that people would think about it in a holistic fashion, and we're going to talk about some of the things that Wally and I really agree on that are important in our businesses.

Speaker 2: 9:51

But I think it's important also to set those benchmarks, because otherwise, how will we know when we've achieved success? Like, if we're not goal-oriented and we haven't established some of these boundaries and some of this holistic approach, like how will we even know? So we'll constantly be in a state of flux. It's like, well, yeah, I made a little bit more this year than last year, but maybe my expenses were more and maybe I'm not bringing on employees like I would like, or maybe it's not scaling the way I would hope it had scaled, and so there's so many different variables and facets that we look through today to determine whether we have a successful business. So I just think it's important that we really set those benchmarks, we really have a level of accountability and we think through what it is that we're trying to accomplish.

Speaker 1: 10:41

Yeah, that's good. So let's dive into the first topic. I know we're thinking bigger picture here, we're going to get there, but I don't think we can ignore probably what's on most everybody's mind when they think about business success is the financial performance.

Speaker 2: 10:56

Yeah for sure. Without it, you don't have a business right, and so, not to discount it completely, it's got to be the focal point originally. It can morph into the other areas. But, wally, when you've either here in ISI or in your previous business with Interact, how did you ensure that your business remained consistently profitable? What were you focused on? Let's go back to the very basics. What were you focused on to make sure that you were consistently profitable? You?

Speaker 1: 13:44

were consistently profitable. The number one thing I think for most businesses and it's for some people, this is like yeah, no doubt, like that's a no brainer. There's a difference between knowing what to do, what you should be doing, and actually doing it. I see so often especially, you know, solopreneurs, guys that are just starting off, or even those with a small team they really don't set themselves up for correct financial bookkeeping. They don't really know what the numbers are. You know, a lot of times find business owners that will manage financially by what's in the checkbook balance. That is not a good plan.

Speaker 2: 14:24

Right.

Speaker 1: 14:28

It may work for a short period of time, but it has really no longevity for you to advance, right, because you're always going to be. You see what's available there and you kind of be stealing out of that pot. So I think the number one thing for me then, my experience and this is just my experience I say my experience, I mean drawing from I don't know how many guys I don't want to over-exaggerate 100, 200 guys, right, that I've had the opportunity over the past, especially eight years inside the ISI, iron Charm, iron Atmosphere to be able to be alongside of either just you know, to be able to be alongside of either just learning from them or being able to speak into them. And that is the number one problem that I see is that if you don't know your numbers, you don't know where to go. The numbers tell you the story of where you are, where you've been, where you are and where you want to go. That's just a fact. So, number one, get your financial bookkeeping in order.

Speaker 2: 15:28

Wally, what you said there related to being in the ISI community and obviously we're huge advocates of that. We're in it every single day. We're involved with these guys. But you're not going to get away with that stuff long if you're not paying attention. When you've got the level of guys that we've got in the group that are really focused on finances and many of them are financial advisors there's some of the top shelf CPAs in our organization you can't not address this. It's like they're not going to let you. That's what's so cool. We even do the live events and we'll have financial topics that we'll be talking and they'll say, like, well, where are you at with this? Or like, ah, I don't have that. Well, why don't you have that? Like, you've got to have that. And then we've got other members. I think of Brett Barnhart with Barnhart Construction. I don't know of a person that knows his numbers any better than Brett does.

Speaker 1: 16:23

He's a sharp cookie on numbers, yeah.

Speaker 2: 16:25

Yeah, but he really has dialed in to knowing exactly what the numbers are. And he said hey, what is it that you're lying to yourself about? Like you can't do that, like you got to own it. You got to step up and really say what the numbers are, because oftentimes and I've seen this time in and time out is we stick our head in the sand, we don't identify what the real problem is and we're hoping it will go away.

Speaker 2: 16:48

And I just want to tell you, if you're listening to this today, it's not going to go away just on its own. You've got to address it. And it's painful, wally. It is so painful sometimes to admit some of the areas that we're falling short financially. But, man, once you do, you can build such a solid foundation and you can build on top of that. But if you don't know your numbers and you're hiding and you're lying to yourself, you're never going to have a successful business. And so I just want to encourage those people that are listening today if you don't know your numbers, like Wally is talking about, reach out to us. We can recommend some amazing people that can help you get on track.

Speaker 1: 17:24

Yeah, that's a good word. What else Big A? So what's another kind of benchmark that might define business success for guys to think about?

Speaker 2: 17:33

Well, here's the thing that I really think is cool for us is that we have a success and significant scorecard, and so every member in our organization fills this out, you know, at least once a quarter Some of them not once a quarter, but maybe once every six months and they highlight exactly where they're at financially. It's like, hey, we can't hide. It's like you put it out there, and the reason that I shared that is I don't know, wally, if you do, because you're very disciplined, I'm probably not as disciplined as you. Related to really keeping up with your finances. You do a spectacular job with that, but I need a level of accountability. I need people asking me those questions. I need to show up and present myself accountable in some environment, and I do that even with my small group, my accountability group.

Speaker 2: 18:22

There are three guys I meet with every week and we talk about finances and how we're being a good steward with those finances and we look at it. You know, is your financial portfolio growing or are you going backwards? Are you eating up the equity to live on Like? That's not going to serve you well long term either. If you start eating up, you know the base, and so it's really putting yourself out.

Speaker 2: 18:46

Wally, it is so uncomfortable to do that. Right, you get in these environments and you're like, man, I don't have as much as Billy and I've probably got a little more than Tommy, but I probably hadn't put as much in my 401 as I should and I've probably got too much debt and you've got this facade. And then you hide behind this wall and you go like I'm not going to tell anybody, that way I don't have to defend it. But what you find yourself is not having the resources or the advice that you need to go to that next level. Because you're prideful. You're like, ah, but man, when you finally let that wall down, it is so refreshing and so satisfying to say the good, the bad, the ugly. You know I could have done better, but maybe I didn't. And this is where I'm at now.

Speaker 2: 19:30

And you guys helped me get to a great place. And I could stand here for the next hour and give you success stories of guys that have done that, that have up-leveled their game so much, and today they're absolutely crushing it because they let that facade down, they let that veil down and they said, hey, here's where I'm at. You guys help me work through it. And so for me you know we could go on. There's numbers of things, but I would say, financially, we need accountability. We need people in our corner that can ask us the tough questions. Wally, I don't know about you, but customer satisfaction is at the top of the list for me. It's like I want our clients to be satisfied. Where does that fall for you in regards to of importance for having a successful business?

Speaker 1: 20:15

For me, customer satisfaction in my mindset has always been two factors and I know there's more and, depending on the business model that you have, it may change and evolve over time as well but the number one thing for me in my mindset was the actual product or service quality that I had my product out there and my service out there and I wasn't fulfilling it well, then it just became a revolving door and then I got a bad reputation. And then you know my, my employee retention, my team members suffer. There's so many downstream effects from not having a solid product or service that is just super top-notch quality. I'm not talking about over-the-top like has to be better than everybody else out there. I'm just saying like, if you find a couple of things that you can hone in on that solves pain points for a customer, and you can focus on those and do those well and not get distracted by it's hard not to do this. It's so hard not to get distracted by all the other things you can do. But just be really good at a few things, especially in the beginning, until you now Alex Ramosi talks about that where focusing in on one thing until you reach a certain plateau in your business right Number of customers, volume of revenue, profit, and then maybe transition to something else. But but that you've talked about a million times it. We better be, uh, an inch deep, right, inch wide, inch wide, a mile deep. There we go rather versus versus the other. It'll be too wide and not have any depth.

Speaker 1: 21:57

So I think I think for me like that's probably one of the the top things. And then just having listening to your customers so often and I'm guilt, I've been guilty of this so many times it's so, so easy just to walk in and want to tell your customer this is what you need, this is what you do, blah, blah, blah. And I, it's so hard. And if we just listen to what they'll tell you, they'll tell you. And then, especially if you have team members like account managers and folks that are working with customers, you have got to have a feedback loop back to the leadership team that that information is getting relayed back. So that's gotta be, because when you stop being on the front lines as much as the business leader, you've gotta have a good feedback loop for what's going on to maintain customer satisfaction. Those are the two things for me. What about you? How do you look at?

Speaker 2: 22:50

it when I think about that. I don't know. I've ever told you this. I'll tell you publicly instead of privately. When someone leaves our organization, of course I hate it. I always hate when anybody leaves, but one of the wins for me is when they say hey, you know, Iron Sharpens Iron has been great, or the coaching's been great. I've got other situations in my life. Don't ever forget that. I'm going to recommend people. I'm going to suggest that they join y'all great organization, and they do, I know they do. They do you know. What's cool, though, is some of the guys that have left they're coming back. They're like they got outside of the community and they said man, it's lonely out there, Like we missed you guys, and they're coming back. But, talking about customer satisfaction, it feels so good that we don't burn bridges, Even when guys leave, you know, even if we're not doing everything right and we don't.

Speaker 1: 23:40

That's so hard?

Speaker 2: 23:42

Oh, it's so hard, yeah, but you can't burn that bridge and you've just got to listen to them, and I think we've done a really good job with our company. We did it in other companies as well, but we do some things proactively, like we do. One thing once a year is we'll do a surge call and I stole that from a friend of mine, matt Jarvis that's what he calls it in his company. I said I'm going to steal that, I'll give you credit for it twice. After that it's going to be my idea that was a good steal.

Speaker 2: 24:12

And so we go on the call. And the whole reason that I go on the call personally is I'll give them an update, a little bit of vision, say, hey, here's where we're going. But we'll spend the next hour hearing from every guy and there's usually three questions that I'll ask them. And I'll ask them exactly what's working good, what's not working good and how could we improve. And then I've got a journal and I journal every one of those and then us as a lead team you, me, derek Brooke we all go back and we look at that and go, hey, I'm seeing a pattern here. These are areas that we need to improve.

Speaker 2: 24:43

The other thing is we do surveys regularly, like when we do the live events. We'll do a survey and it goes out the next day. Well, it's top of mind, it's fresh. We do the surveys. But then I'll also do one-on-ones, like I'll call guys. I'll call probably five to eight guys a day when I'm on task doing that and I'll just say, hey, wally, how's it going? What's going good in ISI? How can I serve you? What do you need? It's getting that constant feedback and it is so good for retention.

Speaker 2: 25:12

So if in your business, what could you do? Any of you out there thinking through, you know, maybe you can't do the search calls, but maybe you can do surveys, maybe you can do the one-on-one calls. Even at the live event we'll have a Q&A time to where we're like family. It's like okay, tell us what we're doing good, what can we improve on? You know we'll run the mic around. The guys will say I think it's so important, regardless of the business that you're in, that you are constantly asking these questions. Just don't make an assumption that you're doing a good job. Ask them and be willing to take it on the chin, because sometimes it's painful. Sometimes they say things it's like man, I didn't even know that I was not doing that or I had no idea, and you'll start to see a pattern. People will start to tell you what it is that you're doing excellent in the things that you could improve on.

Speaker 1: 26:03

So for me, I think, a number. You hit on something there. I interrupted you. I think it's important. You hit on something that I think is so key. If I was to sum up what you just said about your view, I love your seat, the role that you play as founder and your gifting and your talents and your abilities that God's given you. Like you do that role of connection with your members, their customers. At the end of the day, I was talking about a business perspective, right? So the other people's, like the guys, listening their customers, you do a great job at like connecting with the customer. Now, you don't always have, they don't always stay, you don't always have all the answers, no, but one thing customers want is what they want to be heard.

Speaker 2: 26:52

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 26:53

They want to be heard. They want to know someone's listening, not just dictating to them, right and no one's asking.

Speaker 2: 26:59

That's what's so funny I see this happen all the time. No one's asking and we've got to ask.

Speaker 1: 27:04

I had a situation where I have a. I live here in Tennessee now, right, so you got to have a bug guy, everybody's got to have a bug guy, otherwise you get bugs, or else you do it yourself. I think you're a DIY bug guy. I think maybe you can come do mine sometime.

Speaker 1: 27:14

Anyway, I had a bug guy uh did the house and he didn't do the yard. And he came by one day and he, uh, I asked him. I said hey, do you do you guys? Uh, do you guys do yards? Cause I'm putting my own product. I got a pool out there and I've seen ants and you know, spiders and stuff, and I got a dog. So I don't want to text in the yard. So I'm putting my own application Do you guys do it? He goes yeah, we do. It's like another charge if you want to do that. That was it, like that was the whole conversation. Well, for me, that's actually what I think about being the most important part of what I need from a pest control perspective, probably because the other stuff they do takes care of other pests. So I don't see it. He missed it he missed it.

Speaker 2: 27:55

He had a golden opportunity right there with you.

Speaker 1: 27:57

I've got all these guys showing up in my door, not every week or anything but. I probably had three or four in the last year that show up and say, hey, we do this, we do this. Well, I had a guy show up a month ago. He's like we do this, we do this. He laid it all out we do yards, we do this. Here's the price. It was a little bit more. It was a little bit more, but it did exactly what I wanted to do.

Speaker 1: 28:17

So I called this other guy and I'm like, hey, I'm canceling. I'm going to be a professional and tell you personally that I'm canceling, and he was mad.

Speaker 2: 28:51

No-transcript morphs right into what I was about to say is that they could have easily turned a satisfied customer into a loyal advocate, but they missed it. When you said, hey, this is what I really need, all he said was there's an additional charge, and he went right on. He could have said Mr Wallenbach, listen, let me tell you what we can do. Let me give you a proposal. We want to serve you well. We want to take care of those pesky pests out in your yard so that Sonia's a happy swimmer when she's out by the pool.

Speaker 2: 29:25

But they missed it, and so I would just encourage all of you to think how can we turn these satisfied customers into loyal advocates? You want somebody that's speaking on your behalf, that is waving the banner of whatever business it is like. Really go above and beyond. What about employees? Like? I know that? No, I don't know. I would assume a lot of people pay attention to their staff, to their team, and I know you were a master at it with Interact. What are some of the things that you think are top of mind that we should be paying attention to as it relates to business success, when it comes to your employee retention or the engagement that you have with those employees or your team members? What's top of mind so that we're more successful in our business?

Speaker 1: 30:17

Yeah, this topic here, guys that are listening and be like well, you just said, like I already know that Great, are you doing it? That's my question. We need to be reminded more than we need to be taught. So here's the thing Unemployee retention engagement, contractor retention engagement, whatever it is Like, first and foremost, especially with younger hires, anybody that's under 30. Right now, they really want vision's, really important to them. They want to know what they're doing is making a difference and impact in the world. Vision's always been important, but it's even more important with the younger folks. Like, they really want to know that what they're doing is having a better, bigger impact. Um, it interact.

Speaker 1: 30:59

I struggled with that because I'm like, what in the world? Like we sold websites and marketing for RV dealerships. So, like, what is our bigger picture? We help RV dealers make more money. Like that doesn't sound very exciting for people to wrap their head around, and so what I did was through experience, right, it took me a couple of years to figure it out. What I realized is that, like, our like mission, a part of our vision was actually we helped families, right, be able to tell stories for generations around the Thanksgiving table of these awesome and terrible camping trips that they took in their RV. That's what we were helping them do, and so everybody was like yeah, okay, that makes sense, let's do that.

Speaker 2: 31:47

Right, it changes it Totally. Position it that way, totally.

Speaker 1: 31:50

And it was truth. It wasn't I didn't make it up, it wasn't like I had to, but that's what. That's why we were doing it. It wasn't to help the RV dealer make more money. That was a by-product. If we did the mission thing first, other thing would happen. So vision's important, and then we've heard a million times already from any podcast you ever listened to or any book list you're on who, not how, right, find the right people, put them in the right seat.

Speaker 1: 32:16

Again, I'm not an advocate of the good to great bus. I know it's a stupid thing, right, I want, I want my people not to be on a bus. That just sounds boring. I want them to be in race cars. So we have a race team. So how can I fit each person? Uh, not, not fit the race car to the person, but put the person to the race car. So we have that car. It's got a job out on the track, um, and that person needs to sit well, fit well, uh, in that seat. So there's more things, of course, but, man, if you're, you've heard those things before. Business owner listening right now. If you're not doing them, you're missing and you're not going to find the business success that you think you want, without those two ingredients, with your people.

Speaker 2: 33:01

Wally, I want to give a shout out just for a second. I'll tell a quick story, because I think this really demonstrates how much we love and appreciate our team, our employees, and when I say I love them, I really mean that they are the absolute bedrock of what we do. They're the cornerstone. I just can't even begin to tell you how much I care and appreciate and love our team, but I do want to tell specifically about three of our team members that live in the Philippines.

Speaker 2: 33:31

About a year and a half ago, I get a phone call on Monday morning from Brooke and she said hey, dad, they've had an earthquake in the Philippines and our team is down. They're okay, they're not hurt, but they're down, they can't do their job. And I said wow, it's Monday morning, we got all these groups about to meet. What are we going to do? And she said well, I'm going to pull up the systems and processes and I can go in and I can do some of the things that they normally do on Monday morning. You know they're 13 hours ahead, so they're in their workday, you know when we're still asleep. And so about an hour later she called me back and she said hey, dad, no worries. And I said what do you mean? And no worries.

Speaker 1: 34:14

And I said what do you mean? And she goes.

Speaker 2: 34:17

They drove to another city. Wow, that's really good To do their job and I thought how cool is that? Because we pour into them, because we love them, because we care about them, and see if your team is not willing to drive to another city in the middle of the night to do for you, we're not doing something right from the lead side. We've got to care about our team, we've got to love on them, we've got to nurture them. They're people and you've got to invest in them at a very high level so that they have these aspirations and these goals to serve the team well. And so just a shout out yeah to our team in the Philippines. What an incredible group of people Switch gears. What about market position? When I start thinking about what we can do, the listeners out there it's like how can they heighten their brand? What is it that they can do? Their products, wally? What are some of the things that come to mind for you?

Speaker 1: 35:14

Yeah, it sounds like a big word and it can be scary for people and I would encourage you to go do some research on this there's some great YouTube videos and obviously watch for the discernment for yourself. But the idea of product market fit that sounds big, sounds scary, but really it's exactly what it is scary but really it's exactly what it is right. You've got a product. You need to find the market and how it fits into that market, and and so it's. It's not that you may have a, a vertical that you're going into. Let's just say that. Let's just say that you're.

Speaker 1: 35:53

This is probably a bad example, but let's just say that you're going to be using pest control right. So there's probably pest control may be a bad example, but there's probably there's companies out there that focus on certain types of homes to do pest control. Other homes they don't, right. Maybe it's certain neighborhoods. The point is they have somewhat of a niche. So if you take your product, you find a market, the fit is kind of like the niche and where you're serving within that, and so every business can figure that out. The challenge is a lot of times we show up to the marketplace and we have a couple things we do for a really broad scope of people and that's difficult to thrive in. You can survive in that, but thriving in that's going to be super, super difficult. So I would encourage you to think about product market fit, think about your niche, you know, and that that helps if you use tools like I know. The word avatar seems overused, but we have an avatar. We call him David.

Speaker 2: 36:57

Or David.

Speaker 1: 36:57

Yeah, we call him David and there's a whole thing behind that. There's actually David's our avatar, but then there's what? Five personas, I think Kind of like sub David. So we have discovered that inside of our product market fit, we've discovered that we're best able to serve well like these personas, these situations, these life stages, right that these Davids are in. I would encourage you to do that in your business. Doesn't matter if you're a bug guy, doesn't matter if you're a pool guy, doesn't matter if you're a construction guy, doesn't matter if you're, you know, restoration, water and flood restoration Like there's something in your product market fit that you can really hone in on, slide into and you'll find more success and thriving in that, versus just surviving.

Speaker 2: 37:48

Well, as we wrap up today, man, I want to thank you for having this discussion about what is business success. I want to thank you for having this discussion about what is business success, as we kind of reflect back over some of the key points that we discussed. I want you to take action to enhance your own business. I don't want you to sit there and just listen to this information. I want you to implement, I want you to act and I want you to make certain, first and foremost, that you're profitable, because it won't be long that you're not going to be serving anybody if you're not profitable.

Speaker 2: 38:23

So pay attention to that Satisfied customer. Listen, they share with three people An unsatisfied customer. They tell everybody they know. So it's really, really important that you focus on that customer satisfaction. Well, for me, there's not much more that's gratifying than having a team member. As I expressed to you a while ago, all of our team is amazing. I want your team to be amazing too. So think about how you can get them excited about really focusing on your mission, and when you have unique qualities and you have innovation in your business, you're going to enjoy a competitive edge like nobody else. It's going to create massive value, so that your market position can catapult you to your very own view from the top.

Speaker 1: 39:04

Hey guys, thanks so much again for listening in today. Remember what we talked about in the beginning go out to viewfromthetopcom slash community and look to see, to get connected and engage with the ISI community. We would love to see you there. We'll see you there or we'll see you next week.