Hiring Top Talent Overseas

#002: Dylan Williams in conversation with Stratton, a visionary entrepreneur, dives into the essence of entrepreneurial success. They explore how creativity and leadership shape business, dissect the art of problem-solving, and discuss the importance of thinking big. Stratton shares personal insights on building impactful ventures and the role of mentors in entrepreneurial journeys

Show Notes with Timestamps:

1:00 - Entrepreneurial Creativity
5:00 - Mentorship and Growth
10:00 - Leadership in Business
15:00 - Vision and Execution
20:00 - Building Business Legacy
25:00 - Overcoming Business Pitfalls
30:00 - Importance of Family in Success
35:00 - Learning from Industry Leaders
40:00 - Big Thinking in Business
45:00 - The Future of Entrepreneurship
50:00 - Lasting Impact and Personal Goals
55:00 - Key Takeaways from Stratton

Stratton's Links:

Website: virtualhelp.io
Instagram: instagram.com/strattdaddyy

Dylan's Links:

🎙️Podcast: BusinessConfessionsPod
📽️YouTube: @BizConfessions
📷Instagram: DylanWillx
Linked-In: /dylan-williams

Other Episodes you might like:

Past Guests: Chandler Saine, Daniel Martinez, Stratton Brown, Lee Maasen, Nico Lagan, Daniel Roman,Tim Branyan, David Van Beekum, Nick Hutchison, Deirdre Tshein, Sanchez Zehcnas, Christina Lopez, Keigan Carthy, Hemant Varshney, Taniela Fiefia, Jennifer Blake, Nicki Sciberras, John Chan

[00:00:00] Stratton: And I think the most important trait of an entrepreneur is their creativity. There can be all sorts of stuff, but then the most creative people, they creatively problem solve. And then they put their stamp on their businesses creatively and on the marketplace creatively that helps create a moat around that company that no one else could have.

[00:00:17] Stratton: And then it helps with your marketing. Like the creativity of an entrepreneur, I think it's really, really undervalued. And that's why I don't think like these Excel jockeys, like who I go get Harvard MBAs are. Necessarily like amazing because like, are they that creative? Or if they just gotten all their creativity squozed out of them by the school system.

[00:00:34] Dylan: Stratton. Glad to have you on man.

[00:00:50] Stratton: Thanks for having me on bro. Of course.

[00:00:52] Dylan: We're going to go right out of the gate here. What do

[00:00:54] Stratton: you do? What the fuck do I do? I sit at a desk all day and talk on the phone. That's what I do. [00:01:00] We own a company called virtual help. That is like a virtual staffing company that helps small businesses hire on people, build out their onboarding and SOP.

[00:01:08] Stratton: So people actually stick because whenever you lose people, it's costing you probably half of their salary at least. And that is just a mess in and of itself. And I've at this point had to hire on thousands of people for our companies. And so I know what it's like to hire on the good ones and get them to stay and all that other good stuff, building good company culture.

[00:01:27] Stratton: We own a couple of storage facilities and we own some couple of houses. We have a B2B marketing company, I guess that does pretty well. I just don't really talk about that one as much because it, I don't get any growth from it on social media.

[00:01:41] Dylan: Yeah. A call center as well, or you had a call center that you've transitioned to something now, but that I just say that because that's how kind of, we

[00:01:47] Stratton: got connected, I guess.

[00:01:48] Stratton: So, yeah, I met you before that and you were one of my first clients and the most loyal, I think I met you at a Steve O thing. I met you through Gino, Gino baby. So we had a call center, [00:02:00] call magicians as its biggest point was like 150 people. So it got pretty big. And eventually me and my partner didn't see eye to eye.

[00:02:09] Stratton: And we got gutted by the downturn. I've never seen such rapid growth and then stuff going down as fast. And I would say I was more about like customer success and acquisition. The partner wasn't necessarily as much. And when you're not aligned, it'll go bad. And the entire company is about servicing the customer.

[00:02:29] Stratton: But I would say I was not prepared for like the downturn because we lost like half of our business. And within a matter of like two or three months, when people were just like getting gutted on the market and they couldn't sell deals. And then we're like, damn, like we are losing clients like crazy. Like we couldn't acquire fast enough.

[00:02:46] Stratton: Cause we'd grown everything through word of mouth and then it was like, Oh my God, like, okay, I gotta get better at email. I'm probably going to have to get better at running ads because you can only go on so many podcasts and word of mouth is only so big because like [00:03:00] we got to a million and some change pretty fast, like a million dollars a year.

[00:03:04] Stratton: But then after that, you have to add on something else for like more growth. Like I can't just keep doing more and more podcasts because I, at that point, pretty much everybody in the real estate space knew the company. And so I got, have to just get in front of them more and more creative ways. And then actually have more inbound marketing coming in.

[00:03:21] Stratton: And then, I mean, we could have tried direct mail and some other stuff, but yeah, I would say I didn't keep throwing down on marketing. And at a point in time, we had a chick, a large sum of money. Glenna stole a bunch of money from us. A bunch of money.

[00:03:34] Dylan: So I don't think it was a marketing issue. You were in front of a lot of people.

[00:03:39] Dylan: It was more so an internal issue or mixed with the market issue.

[00:03:44] Stratton: I'd say it's both, dude, because we weren't getting a ton of leads as I'm looking at that. It wasn't a ton of inbound lead flow. Yeah, it is a marketing issue because if you had enough leads coming in to where you could hire on an additional sales rep, then I think you're [00:04:00] like, you're like really pumping, but we never had it at that point where I was like, okay, yeah, we'll hire on another sales rep and I'll really ramp up the sales because the marketing wasn't like humming.

[00:04:09] Stratton: And I think that equates to me not necessarily running, in all reality, online traffic. We did all sorts of like podcast sponsors that didn't necessarily work. I thought it would be crazy good. I partnered with one of the biggest influencers in the real estate space, and that didn't do as well as I thought it would.

[00:04:26] Stratton: I thought we'd get a lot more reach. It did. Okay. But then at the same time, you got to think about when you're operating in a business, you're kind of in a red ocean in that space. And like the virtual assistant call center space, because you have Joe Schmo, there's no barrier to entry and some other fuck in the Philippines.

[00:04:43] Stratton: And this is not racist at all. Just to preface this, it could be anybody who can go higher on talent, cheaper than you, and just gut your prices. Cause when I went into it, my prices were, and my thought process was, I want to be the top of the market to mid to top rather than the bottom, [00:05:00] because I'll have more margin, I can deliver a better product than we did, right?

[00:05:03] Stratton: Toward that company. If somebody closed their first deal, we'd send them a bottle of champagne. We would send swag. I know you have like our sweatshirts. Like, wait, we did a lot more than just like a regular call center to make ourselves stand out, but that comes with eating more margin as well. And then even for our training, we would train our people two to three times a day and to where like no other call centers were doing that either.

[00:05:25] Stratton: And I, so it was like stacking all those on top of it and making an overall better product and a better offer. In order to do that, you got to be at the top of the market. And I would say I was going all of my margin. I didn't need the money and that company. And so I was investing all the margin into growth.

[00:05:39] Stratton: Of like more people, more infrastructure to where looking back at it, I would push people to their limit more to see, do we really need to invest in more people and infrastructure? Or are you just inefficient going

[00:05:52] Dylan: back a little bit to whenever you first started that? Because I want to touch base on something that you kind of skimmed over a little bit and that was that rapid [00:06:00] growth.

[00:06:00] Dylan: What was that initial idea or gap in the market? That you saw to establish that company initially, because you were doing what everybody else was, you were wholesaling investing. And so what was that initial idea? What did you see that other,

[00:06:15] Stratton: I went to one company. So it all started off this dude named fucking Nielsen scammed me for like six grand.

[00:06:23] Stratton: Cause I was like, Hey, I need some callers. He's like, I got some callers out in Nicaragua, blah, blah, blah. And then I sent him a payment. We did a deal. I was like, okay, sweet. I sent him a big lump sum. And he just disappeared, didn't send us KPIs, didn't send us any leads for that month. I was doing some JV marketing with a guy I knew who wanted to buy some houses.

[00:06:43] Stratton: And so I fronted his marketing for the next month. Like I just had to come out of pocket for it. And that sucked. And then I was like, okay, I'll go to another call center. And then at that point, I had like eight callers with them. Like, you know, I want to up it another four or something. And this is like three, four years [00:07:00] ago.

[00:07:00] Stratton: And they got me another four and they were trash. I was like, man, fuck this. I was like, Hey, I'm canceling immediately. You guys are not delivering what I need to, I'm going to have to just take everything back in house. So I took everything back in house. At that point, my entire company was all run virtually.

[00:07:16] Stratton: Everything I have is still run virtually. And from there, a bunch of people started coming up to me. Like, Hey, could you help me with like a VA? Could you help me with that? Could you help me with that? And so I saw a hole in the market of having like a, nobody operated it like a true business and nobody made it an actual experience to deal with a company.

[00:07:36] Stratton: Right. Like nobody ever thought about the client experience. Everyone's like, yeah, like we'll send you leads, but like, what was the relationship that was there? How did you separate? Nobody else is actually putting in training. Nobody else was sending out swag. Nobody's doing like all these things that we were doing.

[00:07:49] Stratton: And I was like, okay, well, there's a hole in the marketplace there. And I think we get, we could attack that. So you

[00:07:54] Dylan: took what was working in other businesses and applied it to something that was severely

[00:07:58] Stratton: underserved. [00:08:00] Pretty much, dude. I mean, I wouldn't say it's underserved because there's every Joe Schmo has a call center now at the time though, but like nobody did it, I would say professionally.

[00:08:12] Stratton: And then I knew nobody was putting in the amount of training we did because I paid Steve a lot of money every month just to train our sales coaches. And so like nobody else in the industry had the industry's leading sales trainer, training your sales coaches internally. So then they could train the teams.

[00:08:29] Stratton: I had nobody had that. And so it was like coming up with like new different ways. And this is when Steve's and Steve's sales training still is the best. So like we had all of our sales trainers trained by Steve, all of our people were getting trained two times a day, one motivationally. culturally and role plays, and then they'd still get one on one coaching once a week.

[00:08:48] Stratton: So sometimes they were getting coached three times a day. And I didn't know of any company that was like actually putting in. That much effort into their people to make sure that they're developed. I remember

[00:08:57] Dylan: some of our, uh, VAs would have to [00:09:00] step away or we had a meeting and some were scheduled and they're like, we have sales training.

[00:09:02] Dylan: And I'm like, we're already doing that. You don't need to step away again, but it was, that was how it was. It was the first 30 days or 90 days, or I can't remember the timeframe, but you guys, it was, they were, it was mandatory that they went through initially before they got put on, once they were on, they had to still continue that sales training.

[00:09:21] Dylan: X amount of days before they could initially

[00:09:24] Stratton: go in, we came up with another guarantee to where if anybody went more than two days without leads, we'd give them a day free and to where nobody else had an offer like that either to where we had better training. So like better overall product and then a solid offer.

[00:09:39] Stratton: And we still do cold calling services. I'm just not trying to like scale it up to the moon because it was really, really hard to manage that many people and control the quality of the product. When you don't have an office, I know if it's under 50, we can for sure get it done. Anything besides that is really hard.

[00:09:56] Stratton: So now we staff up a bunch of people instead of [00:10:00] keeping it all in house. Like the best person I think in the space is a dude named Scott Morris. He owns a company called Lammas who leads cause Scott and his part partner, Eric, we're doing 40 million a year running a call center in a certain way. And Scott has taken that and he can control the culture and the essentially the product because the people are the product.

[00:10:22] Stratton: All day. And toward that was like, okay, if we're really going to do this and I want to be top of market, that is the, in my opinion, was the only way to be like top of market. And then I was at the same time, like, do I want to, in order to get to like 10 million and EBIT, whatever it is, 10 million net in my pocket every year, I got to have.

[00:10:40] Stratton: A couple of thousand employees and that didn't sound fun. Yeah, they were

[00:10:44] Dylan: known for, I guess, a higher caliber of virtual assistant. Scott, I believe so. If that was the company I'm thinking of. Yeah, it's like they were the top of the market that they were priced the top. Yeah, Scott was not cheap. Yeah. So what was your [00:11:00] initial business model going into

[00:11:03] Stratton: that?

[00:11:03] Stratton: Into the call center. It was just charged by the hour, but I will never charge by the hour again.

[00:11:08] Dylan: And how's that evolved now?

[00:11:11] Stratton: Now what we do is we staff and we take a fee of their yearly salary. And we'll, with that fee, so we'll, let's say, so before this, I was talking to a business owner. He does land and he needed some really intense data person and someone to work the phones.

[00:11:27] Stratton: I was like, okay, so it's really going to cost you just based off of what we've seen in like the global labor markets. You're going to be at six to 7 an hour and four to 5 an hour at those people. And we charge 37 percent of a yearly salary at that price. To get all this done. Oh, wow. And they pay that up front?

[00:11:45] Stratton: And they pay that up front.

[00:11:46] Dylan: So that's helping with any kind of cash flow issues as well? Yeah.

[00:11:51] Stratton: Well, it helps with, you get immediate cash and that's one thing. At a point in time in Call of Magicians, we were doing all the work and then charging afterwards. And we had [00:12:00] 50, 000 in collections. That one hurt.

[00:12:01] Stratton: Very, very hard lesson. With this now, my gross margin is significantly larger. Because I can do this with a team of three up to a very, very large scale. And so like that pod can operate and the net margin on that's really high. Cause like our backend efficiency is really good. It doesn't take a lot of labor.

[00:12:17] Dylan: How do you foster a vision for a virtual organization?

[00:12:23] Stratton: It's fucking hard. It's really hard. How do I foster a vision? My biggest thing is we're just going to be the best ever. Like my big thing is that if we just hold the standard of being the best, we'll be fine, but then you really got to get that company aligned again of being like, Hey, here's where we're going.

[00:12:40] Stratton: Here's what we're doing. Here's what it looks like. And it's just, you talk to them every day. And I probably, I talked to my team members once a day, they check in and then they go, and then we have a once a week weekly meeting. My hardest part about call magicians when we got really big was keeping a amazing culture [00:13:00] virtually across that many people.

[00:13:02] Stratton: Obviously it comes to making the right hires and I made some wrong hires to where some fucking people were woke and I was like, yeah, you're fired. But like, those things all come with it in a small company. One bad hire can really sour a lot of things.

[00:13:16] Dylan: You've interviewed a lot and I say a lot because I know you have virtual or overseas employees.

[00:13:23] Dylan: What have you learned from that workforce?

[00:13:25] Stratton: Different areas have different cultures of work. What are they? There's just different Down in South America, it's a lot more of a gig economy. And so, you're going to have more turnover down there. But you'll have better phone work because they are used to the American culture a little bit more.

[00:13:41] Stratton: Filipinos are really steadfast, and they don't care, and they'll work hard. But, you're going to have to pay a premium if you want someone who has really good English because they know what they're worth. And then Egypt is a little bit harder to deal with culturally because like their culture is completely different than ours.

[00:13:56] Stratton: What I say is, I don't know if I'd say Islamic culture, but like, that's really what it is. It's [00:14:00] like a completely different type of culture than America. So you gotta like navigate that whole thing. I would say firing fast is good. And if nobody's parents or grandparents really die.

[00:14:11] Dylan: I've heard that many times.

[00:14:13] Dylan: Are there certain qualities that you prioritize now

[00:14:16] Stratton: knowing what, you know, it's hard to find out if someone's really a grinder, you know, like, I just want someone who's going to work really hard and has impeachable character. That's really what I care about. Obviously they have to be intelligent. Like those are the two things that I care about.

[00:14:30] Stratton: Like, are you a hard worker? Do you have impeachable character? And are, are you somewhat intelligent depending on the role? And can you really solve problems? Is what I'm looking for. So I, Hey, I just need this done. And this is a lot more of my management style of we're a startup company. So if you're going to come work for me and you're going to be working with me, you need to be able to solve problems on your own because I can't solve your problems for you because I'm solving my own.

[00:14:54] Stratton: So with that being said, I expect you to be able to get these things done. If you ever can't figure it out, just [00:15:00] send me a message, but you should Google a lot first. And just, Hey, so for example, I was like, we need to get all these different data sets set up and we need to get all this done. Please just bring back to me like the best possible aspects for that and then get a setup and then they'll come to me if there's ever like any massive roadblocks that they can't overcome.

[00:15:19] Stratton: Like that's a lot more of how I run business to where if someone's working for me, cause I think if you're working in a small business and you're not like some big company, that's a lot of the value in it too, is you get to be able to create things. And that makes things a lot stickier for you as well, is that you have someone who's actually helped build the company and it means something to them because like, oh, wow, I built this system and process.

[00:15:41] Stratton: And yes, we have someone who can go through the back end and like really clean it up. I want them to go out and figure things out and not just rely on me all the time. Because I'm everywhere and so I'm really just my number one message on slack. If I'm just not, I'm like, I sent a message, figure it out.

[00:15:58] Stratton: Like, I don't know. Like you're asking me, I don't fucking [00:16:00] know. I'm going to have to go to the same shit. You're going to have to do to go fucking figure it out to where some people don't take it the right way. But at the beginning I let them know, like, if I send you a figured out message, it's just because I think you can go figure it out and I didn't hire you cause you're stupid.

[00:16:13] Stratton: So I think you can go figure that out. If you absolutely think it's a me bottleneck, let me know. Resourcefulness. Resourcefulness.

[00:16:20] Dylan: Are you testing for that? Or are you giving kind of test?

[00:16:23] Stratton: Not really. I haven't had to hire someone who works directly with me in a while, as we've been moving things around.

[00:16:29] Stratton: Because I have a really solid team, so I haven't had to need to hire for Let's say massive growth of someone who needs to be resourceful around me because the people have been working with me and I have like a team of like five who work directly with me. They know what to do, but it's taken me years to find good people.

[00:16:48] Stratton: I should probably come up with a way to test out resourcefulness and like in the interview, you can ask him those questions, but then I don't know a lot of times like you think they'd get it and you're like, man, this person is going to be a killer. They're going to be so smart. And then it doesn't [00:17:00] really turn out that way.

[00:17:00] Stratton: I think that I've

[00:17:01] Dylan: gone through it so many times. And they've had those questions asked to them and they've gone through those trainings within the early stages of each career or business that they attend. And pretty much they're really good at interviewing essentially because they've been through so many, they know what's expected.

[00:17:15] Dylan: They know what's asked. That's why I ask if you did any kind of testing or anything. We

[00:17:18] Stratton: do different types of tests. I don't believe, yeah, they're good. I think it's just really hard to know if someone's fucking about it or not. And you need someone who's really just fucking about it. If you're running a small business or even if you're running any.

[00:17:33] Stratton: Unless you're working for a really big company like Google or something like that, like you need someone who's about it who can work weekends if needed be if something breaks that they can figure it out to where they can push back on bad ideas if they think it's a bad idea. And what does articulate their thoughts of why it wouldn't and what they should do differently.

[00:17:53] Dylan: Yeah, you don't see that with overseas a lot. And if you do, you need to hold on to that person. Yeah, that's, [00:18:00] especially with like my, the way I view things and how I interact, I really enjoy constructive criticism. I thrive off of it. I want to know everything. 'cause I just wanna improve it at the end of the day, you know?

[00:18:11] Dylan: Yeah. And I wanna prove it in the most efficient way possible. What stands out to you that tells you they're a killer? Is that something in the interview process that, is that something you tell them to do and they do that they take initiative and they, they have something done or? They give feedback on something.

[00:18:26] Dylan: Are you asking for that? How do you know? Because like I said before, anybody can ace an interview, but when it comes down to it, you're looking for things that it's hard to see in an interview. So what are things that stands out and what are things that you look forward to that?

[00:18:38] Stratton: I would say energy in the interview, their ambition in life about what they're trying to accomplish.

[00:18:45] Stratton: And then if they're going to be working. And let's say like some type of, and this isn't like coding, but like development role, what is something that they've had to go build? And this is my number one question. What is something you've had to go build? [00:19:00] What were the issues that you had to overcome? How did you overcome them?

[00:19:04] Stratton: And then what has been your greatest achievement in business? What has been your greatest achievement in life?

[00:19:08] Dylan: If you had to start all over again in those early days, what would you have done differently?

[00:19:14] Stratton: What call magicians wholesaling?

[00:19:16] Dylan: Let's take call magicians because you grew that substantially

[00:19:19] Stratton: quick.

[00:19:20] Stratton: I would have probably, I guess the one thing I would say is I would have run ads. I would have grown it faster because if you look at it, Pace and Cody. I started my VA company right after Pace and Cody and Pace is the one who like really gave me the idea and Pace and Cody's company has got to be worth 50 million plus.

[00:19:41] Stratton: They're huge. You think that's because of their reach though? Yeah, because of their reach. But if you can figure out your ad strategy, right? And so that's what I'm working on now is like, okay, now we got to start running ads in this one company. Revenue solves most problems. And so I would have overall, I [00:20:00] wish I always look back and like, yeah, I should have gone bigger.

[00:20:02] Stratton: And then I would have made, I got some really good hires out of the gate. I'm not going to lie. We wouldn't have grown like we did unless we had like the good hires that we had for how shitty that person did us at the end. She was actually really good. And then we had two other people that we got because of COVID who were jewelry salesmen on cruise ships, straight killers, Isa and Carol and they were out of work.

[00:20:25] Stratton: And so they worked for us. And Carol like became like our HR person. Isa was like our head trainer and they were really good. And there's no way we would have been able to got to where we got to and like delivered a quality product without them because we were growing so fast. I wouldn't have had the bandwidth to do so.

[00:20:40] Stratton: I think I would have just spent money on ads. I would have built my, and I would have taken email marketing a little bit more seriously.

[00:20:46] Dylan: That's something I'm focusing on as well right now. That's something I wish I would have learned a long time ago with also ads as well. Yeah. It's a whole nother revenue source in itself.

[00:20:56] Stratton: If you guys are wanting to learn more, you guys need to go get a Matt Larson's email [00:21:00] list. I think Matt is a really good email marketer. What does he do? Larson's the dude who had an entire warehouse built to keep his own inventory because he flipped so many houses. And so he eventually, he's like gone into the guru space.

[00:21:14] Stratton: But he applied like that same fucking tenacity to his guru space and he's a great marketer. And that's

[00:21:22] Dylan: what makes a good company, I believe. Yeah. You mentioned revenue solves a lot of problems to bank on that a little bit more. I think revenue allows time to fix what needs to be fixed in the company. If

[00:21:38] Stratton: you're smart about it.

[00:21:39] Stratton: It buys you more time, bro. You got more runway. These fucking venture backed companies. They're just trying to figure it out. Like, Oh, we got to go raise another round and then go fix all the problems that we, and then they go fix all those problems. Like, okay, well, now we got some more problems. We need some more cash to fix these problems.

[00:21:53] Stratton: You don't want to be super cash dependent to fix the problems though, is one thing I've learned with another company where we went out and raised [00:22:00] money to where it, I think it ruins ingenuity. If that's a word, it ruins like that creative thought process. If you just have like a blank check. Cause you're like, Oh, we can just go hire on another person.

[00:22:13] Stratton: And I kind of did that in call magician. So I was like, Oh, fuck it. Like, let's just go hire on another person because someone's bitching about being overworked. But again, take a deeper look at it. Where were we overworking them? Are you really being overworked or are you just not good at your job? Like, where are your inefficiencies?

[00:22:28] Stratton: And should I just give your job to someone else and let you go and just crack down a little bit more? Right. And I, and having that honest conversation with yourself of being, are they good enough? Are they not? Cause in some of these roles, I never performed an administrative role in that company once in my life.

[00:22:47] Stratton: I never did any reporting. Nothing. Like, we had all sorts of reports out the ass. And I never did it. I was like, hey, here's what I want done. Here's what I want it to look like. Send it to me when you're done. Which is good, but [00:23:00] then at the same time it gets hard to hold someone's feet to the fire when you're like, hey bitch, this is taking too long.

[00:23:04] Stratton: They had to create it. Yeah, cause they created it. They know how long it takes, but then I have nothing to hold them by. But I mean, that's like micromanaging bullshit and stuff like that to where it goes into that, but something to think about, but revenue doesn't necessarily solve all problems. You still need to be, and I'm working on something called letters to Zeno and these are letters to my son.

[00:23:25] Stratton: Of all these little lessons I have learned, because I've gotten like me and you were talking the other day about like reading shareholder letters and like that founders podcast, how much I love it. And it inspired me when I was listening to Rockefeller writing letters to his son. And I think the most important trait of an entrepreneur is their creativity.

[00:23:41] Stratton: There can be all sorts of stuff, but then the most creative people. They creatively problem solve, and then they put their stamp on their businesses creatively and on the marketplace creatively that helps create a moat around that company that no one else could have. And then it helps with your marketing, like the creativity of an entrepreneur, I think it's really, [00:24:00] really undervalued.

[00:24:01] Stratton: And that's why I don't think like these Excel jockeys, like who I go get Harvard MBAs are necessarily like amazing because like, are they that creative or if they just gotten all their creativity squozed out of them by the school system.

[00:24:14] Dylan: There's two sides to that thought what you just mentioned and also to, I feel like nowadays, which is obvious we're distracted.

[00:24:21] Dylan: We don't have enough time to think and that's so important

[00:24:26] Stratton: walks. Dude, I used to go on a lot. I, I still go on walks. I was going on a lot more, but walks have been massive. You get a lot of good ideas and you can just think. I take really long showers, too. I take like 30 to 45 minutes showers

[00:24:40] Dylan: at the beginning of the day.

[00:24:42] Dylan: I will every day I will take two hours phones off, no computer, nothing pen and paper. And I started doing this originally because we get anxious, you know, as, as entrepreneurs, it's in. What I've realized, it's typically the things that we're avoiding. So what I do [00:25:00] is I'll write down things I'm avoiding, come up with all the problems and then address how I'm going to fix those or what I need to do to do that.

[00:25:05] Dylan: And it's simple of the things that I do. I'll do those things. And then that, that fixes whatever I'm having issues with, typically, but also allows me time creatively think, which is so huge, you know, and to think of long term, a lot of the great entrepreneurs we know, I feel like they're. Time horizons longer than the way we probably used to think I used to think in there's two ways you think in time and then you also thinking money as well.

[00:25:32] Dylan: My time used to be 12 months like that was a long time and I would think what I'm going to do in this 12 months and then money. Was seven figures seven figures is a lot of money when you're not making seven figures the way Now that I think and I'll probably progress as I go on through life as well But I think on five to ten years now of like what I'm gonna do and I'll allow myself something just like this podcast I'm gonna go 52 episodes before I change [00:26:00] Much on this, you know, and just the time horizon that I can allow to do that.

[00:26:04] Dylan: I digress from what I was doing on that end, but that's essentially it. It's just the time horizon. And that got me going to, because I think they talk about that on the founders podcast as well.

[00:26:14] Stratton: Or did you listen to that one on Constellation? I sent you the

[00:26:18] Dylan: monkey man or the banana

[00:26:19] Stratton: man. But listen to the banana

[00:26:21] Dylan: man.

[00:26:21] Dylan: I did. There's two of them actually. And there's a new one. I don't know if it was the same one you were talking about. I found the old one that you were talking about, but I think the day that you told me like the next, the following day or the same day, he did a follow up episode to that.

[00:26:35] Stratton: Isn't it like one of the greatest podcast episodes ever?

[00:26:38] Stratton: That dude is good. The man.

[00:26:40] Dylan: It's good. It's really good. That one. And then also the letters that he does. What is his

[00:26:45] Stratton: name?

[00:26:47] Dylan: Rockefeller. Rockefeller. Holy cow. I was thinking of the Rothschilds. Is that the Rothschilds? Yeah. Yeah. When you said that letter to your son, I was like, that's it. That's so good. I love that.

[00:26:58] Stratton: Yeah. Cause I was like, [00:27:00] how much can I pass down to him that like, I've just had to learn over this amount of time to where like my parents didn't pass any of any types of lessons like that down to me to where. Even if it's just like a little book and you know what everyone in the family gets the book and you all little shits are gonna read Grandpa's book cuz it's gonna be good for you.

[00:27:20] Dylan: I love that. What's

[00:27:22] Stratton: something that you've said? What if I said the biggest one is creativity is your most important trait? Having lots of energy is a must I've been writing them down because now it takes time to sit down and really get elegant with your thoughts and like write well. And so on my phone, I have a bunch of just like, Thoughts.

[00:27:45] Stratton: Okay. Okay. That's a thought that needs to be elaborated on. That's a thought that needs to be elaborated on. That's a thought that needs to be elaborated on. Oh, what was another one? And I got this from Rockefeller and I think it's so true. Surrounding yourself with weak partners creates a weak man. And so, who are [00:28:00] you?

[00:28:00] Stratton: You need to be very, very careful of who you're going into business with and what their goals are. Because other people will be scared of what you're trying to accomplish and they'll try and like sabotage it and hold you back. To where if you're trying to go for the moon, my son, go for the moon. And I even got this yesterday, as, and somehow this Hormozy clip popped up.

[00:28:18] Stratton: And he was like, yeah, so a dental unit is 500k. What if we roll those up and we sell them and we make 30 million dollars a year? He's like, but then we created a company that rolls those up and we can sell that company that does all the roll ups. And he's like thinking on a bigger scale, and it sounds very simplistic, but it's crazy of what he could accomplish with what he knows.

[00:28:40] Stratton: Nobody's telling him he's crazy or like high or stupid or anything else. And like, even if they are, like, no, this is what I think I can go do. I call

[00:28:46] Dylan: that there's two ways to that. I call that upstream thinking. I can't recall who or what. I think it was Dean Graziosi. No, it was Tony Robbins. He has a saying, and this is to fix problems, but it was a story.

[00:28:59] Dylan: And I'm going to butcher this [00:29:00] story. Probably have to take this out. But there was a man drowning in a river and another man walking by. He stops and helps guy out. And they see another person come down the river drowning as well. So they both. Help the guy out and see two more, two more and two more continually.

[00:29:14] Dylan: It's just back and forth and they're helping all these people out. One guy walks by and they're yelling at him. Hey, come help us get these people from drowning. He turns around and walks the other way. And they're like, where are you going? He turns around and says, I'm going to see who's throwing all these people in the river.

[00:29:28] Dylan: And that's the, that upstream thinking is what I always like to say. And I apply that to, to business as well. And applying that upstream, like not only to address a problem, but to think of something as. Looking at it as a whole and how can I apply something else to it? Or how can I wrap that up and sell that?

[00:29:46] Dylan: Essentially, most people struggle to create one single seven figure company. You've managed to build two in 18 months or what tactical move or strategy do you credit that rapid growth to?

[00:29:58] Stratton: I would say mentors. [00:30:00] I'm not some like wizard at all. Like it's, I'd say mentors are really big. And then wanting to go that big is another thing, you know, like actually having a goal of like, Oh, okay.

[00:30:11] Stratton: I'd like to see what this looks like and see how big we can get it. And then what tactics, like marketing tactics, it's been cold calling and social media. I mean, there's really only like five tactics we can use in business to get more people. And then I would say massive action is something that a lot of people do, and I'm not saying I'm the most massive action taker and I should have quadrupled down on our ERC company in all reality because like it's, I was getting a 68 X return on my money.

[00:30:41] Stratton: A year ago. And then now we're probably at like a six to a seven X. That is a very massive gap toward if I would have taken even more action and been like, Oh my God, Hey, I can go talk to whoever, but I'm getting this type of return right now. I need to raise some money so we can make this happen. I only did that with three investors, but if I would [00:31:00] have, let's say, instead of a year, I did it a year ago.

[00:31:04] Stratton: I did it 18 months ago. And I was getting those returns and I would have saw that and listen to one of my mentors like, Hey, you should probably like look into this. It's going to be like, good for you, listen to them, done that. And then I could have made 50 times the money in the same amount of time. If I would have taken more massive action, been more dedicated and yet worked out because like, we still did good with that company.

[00:31:26] Stratton: And I mean, there's more of like a, what's crazy about affiliate marketing is like when it hits, it hits and then like, it'll, it'll go away. So right now we probably have another year left of making money with that company and then it'll kind of like phase away, but we made really, really good money.

[00:31:39] Stratton: During that amount of time. And so like, what's the next thing? But I'd see massive action and massive reiteration on problems of like, Hey, this happened or what's going on. And then it's like, solve it next, solve next, solve next. And so it's massive problem solving is what it gets to. Right. Cause you can have the startup, but then it's like, okay, well, so like, what's the problem solve for [00:32:00] the problem, move on to the next thing and just keep creating more problems.

[00:32:03] Stratton: But then that creates the growth because real estate, there's not a ton of problems that other people haven't had to solve before. Yeah. Like all your problems in real estate, most people have had to solve those. And so if you can just reach out to someone like, Hey, here's where I'm at and be very clear like with like your writing or your journaling, what is frustrating you, what's going on.

[00:32:22] Stratton: And if you have someone to reach out to like, Hey, here's my exact problem, what should I do here? And then just keep reiterating. But like you said, everybody avoids it. I avoid it. If I didn't avoid it, I'd be wealthier right now. Like there's always something you're avoiding or something you're not doing or something you can improve on.

[00:32:37] Stratton: But take massive action and then massive problem

[00:32:39] Dylan: solving. What were some of the best investments that you've made in

[00:32:43] Stratton: your businesses? My best investments always in myself and my skills, I would say. I mean, that's an infinite return. My skills are never going away. The other one would be good people. I got a really good investment on my real estate since I don't have any money in there.

[00:32:57] Stratton: So I guess that's an infinite return. Infinite [00:33:00] return. Yeah. But I would say yourself and then others. So like investing in people and then investing and growing in those people. By growing them to help them become better and everything that they do. Those would have, I want to say that like there should be like a better return, but I can't do anything without other people, you know, like no one's out there making a buck by themselves and they're just thinking and money comes out of their ears.

[00:33:22] Stratton: It doesn't work that way. You can't make a dollar without helping someone else.

[00:33:25] Dylan: There's a few solopreneurs. I feel like that managed to do a few, but

[00:33:29] Stratton: with someone else at the same time, you know, like you're still interacting with vendors, you're still interacting with your customers. No one sits down, thinks and makes dollars come out of the walls.

[00:33:42] Stratton: If they do, like I, I'd love to meet 'em. 'cause I'm, I'm on board. I'm on board, I'm there. I wanna learn how you do that, but it doesn't work that way. You gotta lead teams, you gotta sell people. You gotta market people. Everything always involves another human.

[00:33:58] Dylan: I would love that. I'm a huge [00:34:00] visionary. Same as you.

[00:34:01] Dylan: Ideas come to me every day. I wish I could get money for those ideas. I talk to, I

[00:34:06] Stratton: have a really good one right now. What is it? I'm not going to say it. I'll tell you afterwards. I'll tell you. I have a really, I wrote about it this morning. I've started a journal as well. Yeah. I was like, bro, I think, and I like model it out.

[00:34:17] Stratton: Like I'm on my iPad writing like, okay, so if we do this, this, we could charge this. We could get sponsors to pay this. Oh bro, we got something there. But then it's, my biggest issue has been shiny objects. And you only have one thing that always killed me, is that shiny objects deplete your cash. If you're like me.

[00:34:37] Stratton: Because I'm like, yeah, whatever, just fucking throw some more money at it. And then you just start spinning up, taking away your energy from this place. Now the money that that thing's making is going over to this thing, and this thing's not really gonna make you any money for the first six months to a year anyways.

[00:34:51] Stratton: Like there are no get rich quick schemes. And so as you're losing that, you're losing the thought and you're losing the cash. For example, [00:35:00] I started a social media agency at some point that dude ended up, the operator of that company ended up lying to us, telling us his mother had died and that he had gotten really sick and was in the hospital.

[00:35:12] Stratton: All fake. We sent him money for his mother's funeral. But at the same time, the whole company was a distraction. Because like, yeah, we can grow our social media agency. We get virtual assistants. We can do this. Like, bro, that is not correlated. Just because you get people doesn't mean you get how to make people go viral on Instagram.

[00:35:26] Stratton: Just because you have a big social media following does not mean you can make people go viral. Right? And like, just because you found an editor doesn't mean, like, all these other things. It was a distraction, bro. It lost me a ton of money. It lost me a ton of time. And then here I am again back on the core business.

[00:35:43] Stratton: It's a great idea at the time, though, there was a solid idea at the time. You always have to have your head up looking for new, amazing opportunities. Like Rockefeller didn't start off in oil, but then he was like, Hey, this is going to be the one, but then if you look at them, he didn't deviate for 50 years.

[00:35:58] Stratton: And so it's really, what can [00:36:00] you do for the next 10 years? That's going to give you the outcome that you desire. That you've seen someone may have something resembling it. And so I'll use like Eric Spofford. Eric Spofford was doing rehab clinics. And Eric did that for 15 years, I want to say. And he sold that company for 110 million.

[00:36:20] Stratton: Very clear outcome. He was like, I bought real estate because I had extra money. He was like, but all I did was rehab centers. And the real estate was really just to help me offset my taxes. And I had to. He didn't have any little side businesses. He didn't have anything else. And so that's why I'd moved into like, okay, what do we have?

[00:36:37] Stratton: How can we isolate out? And either we have a really good team running this and it kind of operates like a holding company, our main company, and then we have the other stuff below it. But in all reality, and I got this from Caleb Marty, Caleb's worth fucking, I want to say 50 Ms. And he's 32 out of Missouri.

[00:36:58] Stratton: His portfolio is in the second largest [00:37:00] city in Missouri. And he was like, bro, I've done all the math. If I just don't raise money and I keep doing good at making money and plowing the money I make in real estate into more real estate, my net worth grows exponentially and I don't have to raise any money.

[00:37:12] Stratton: He's like, and I just stayed focused and I just don't dilute myself and I keep going. And the dude's putting in a fucking Topgolf right now. So if you can stay focused and keep a good amount of equity, or you stay focused and you take a little bit amount of equity, because I think Mark Leonard from Constellation who I sent you owns like 5 percent of Constellation and he's a billionaire.

[00:37:32] Stratton: You just got to know what game you're playing and how long you want to play it for. And know that

[00:37:35] Dylan: trajectory, that timeframe.

[00:37:37] Stratton: Like you just mentioned. Commit to it. You know what, this is what I want to do for the next 10 years. For me, I know I don't want to be wholesaling houses for the next 10 years. And so I was like, okay, what can I do over the next 10 years to where I can do this, have my desired outcome, create enterprise value, and not get too distracted.

[00:37:58] Stratton: Yes, I can keep buying real estate, [00:38:00] but that's because you have to, and anybody who really makes money, they have to buy real estate, whether it's as a limited partner or as a GP. You just got to kind of offset your shit.

[00:38:10] Dylan: How do you test those ideas though? I know you said you struggle with shiny objects, but how do you decipher in between a good idea and it being just a shiny object?

[00:38:20] Stratton: Oh, I think they're all good ideas.

[00:38:26] Stratton: How do I know it's a shiny object? This one company that I'll tell you about afterwards, it could be a shiny object. That whole space is really hot right now, but do my skill sets align directly with that the way that business operates? So I'll take our ERC company. I was like, okay, so we already know how to cold call.

[00:38:48] Stratton: We already know how to sell people. We already know how to train up most semi train up sales reps. I can go generate leads and sell these people out the gate. All I'm doing is changing the widget. I don't have to learn any new skill sets. I [00:39:00] just think this is a better vehicle to place essentially my money.

[00:39:03] Stratton: Because we were doing wholesaling and I was like, well, I'm getting a 60 something X over here. I'm getting an X amount return over here. We should probably just go do this. I don't have to go learn anything new. My skill sets are already there. They can build on that and it's a lot easier. So that's really what I look for.

[00:39:21] Stratton: It's like, what am I already good at? Does this align with that? And do I think I can make this grow with what I'm already good at? The other one, like, if it's, yes, I could go start a software company, and I really want to go start a software company, but Stratton Brown can't code for a goddamn, how am I supposed to start a software company?

[00:39:38] Stratton: Like, and I'm not trying to show myself how to code either. Like, I just know what I'm willing to do, and that's not something I'm willing to do because it's not the way my mind works. I can't sit down. You

[00:39:47] Dylan: thought of founding or sourcing like a co founder, I guess I would say for something like that.

[00:39:53] Stratton: Yeah, but then you got to commit to it.

[00:39:54] Stratton: My big thing now is if you do something, you need to commit to it for the next 10 years [00:40:00] and stop just deviating from the path. And another example, Patrick, but David sold his company for 300 million. This man sold life insurance, but the man didn't do anything else for the last 20, 30 years. Pastor Ben David sold life insurance and he was amazing at it.

[00:40:18] Stratton: You gotta get good at the one thing. And I was even listening to Hormozy this morning. And he was like, bro, you don't get benefits from the first two years. You get benefits in year 10, year 15. When you've outlasted everybody, your skill sets really start to grow. And then it exponentially grows on itself.

[00:40:36] Stratton: So it's really hard. That's where I'm at as far as no more new businesses. I'd love to be an investor and like find someone who could just take my little ideas and run with them. But I think there's something to be said about the man with the idea and his passion about the idea. The vision is huge, bro, because that goes in that creativity part.

[00:40:53] Stratton: Your creativity and vision is very, very underestimated. Not really talked about as an entrepreneur, but your vision and creativity are your [00:41:00] two greatest traits. You're going to do

[00:41:02] Dylan: what the next person won't do because of that vision. Exactly. You're

[00:41:06] Stratton: going to go through the suck. You're going to go through the suck.

[00:41:08] Stratton: You know what you're building. You know what it looks like. It's all in your head. You're like, Oh, it's going to be awesome. Even though you just got kicked in the balls like 30 seconds earlier. But like that vision, that person who you pass off that idea to may not have that vision or you may not see the upside.

[00:41:23] Stratton: And that can be you as a leader. But I think that's why people like to do venture capital because like, Oh man, I just get to see all these great ideas all day. These are so dope.

[00:41:33] Dylan: All right. It's time for our confession segment

[00:41:37] Stratton: for this open on this bro

[00:41:38] Dylan: for this. I want to know the secret sauce, something you haven't told publicly.

[00:41:43] Dylan: So let me keep to yourself Stratton. What's your confession?

[00:41:47] Stratton: My biggest fear is not creating a big impact, not being remembered, leaving a lasting impact. I am very ego driven, like Napoleon Alexander, the great, like I want to be a fucking dude. [00:42:00] And it is a very big fear of mine that I will be nobody.

[00:42:03] Dylan: I got a scenario for you then.

[00:42:05] Dylan: Hey. You can have all the money in the world. You can hit your billion. You hit your hundred billion, but nobody knows about it. No,

[00:42:13] Stratton: I want to be the second part. And I want everybody to know I'm the best. I don't care about being just famous, but I want to be the best. And I want everybody to know I'm the best.

[00:42:23] Stratton: He was the best. I mean, same thing with football, bro. Cause like that's my background. And a lot of people don't get like that sociopathic competitor. I am the best. You're going to know I'm the best. I'm going to bury you. And then I'm going to go bury someone else and I'm going to be the best for all time.

[00:42:39] Stratton: Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, Tom Brady, like I want to fucking win and winning comes with notoriety as well because like, you don't, you think Tom Brady doesn't like being called the fucking goat? Of course he does. He's slaved away at that for 20 years. Of course he likes being called the goat. So it's a mixture of both.

[00:42:56] Stratton: I'm yes. Money is good, but proving to myself [00:43:00] is big and proving to everybody else that I am the best is a really, really big reason of why I do what I do. That a good enough confession for you? That was a good one.

[00:43:10] Dylan: I like that. Most people aren't honest that way, you know.

[00:43:12] Stratton: Well, everybody wants to be all virtue signaling and say they just want to make money because they want to change the world.

[00:43:17] Stratton: Yes, I want to change the world, but I really do want to be the best and then, I know if I have enough money I can do, I can change whatever I want. Very true. We're

[00:43:26] Dylan: all selfish.

[00:43:27] Stratton: No, everybody's selfish. Everybody's doing it for some reason. So

[00:43:30] Dylan: as we go through our entrepreneur journey, I feel that we gain different levels of knowledge.

[00:43:36] Dylan: We either take that knowledge and apply it to advance or we don't and we stay where we're at. Think of knowledge as steps. Where are you on that staircase?

[00:43:48] Stratton: I haven't even taken my first step. There's lots of, man, if it was like knowledge, I don't think anybody could take a step. There's so much you can always be learning.

[00:43:58] Stratton: I mean, but Ray Dalio is [00:44:00] still out there learning. Warren Buffett is still reading every day. Like some of the smartest, most, the best entrepreneurs in the world are learning till the day they die. So I would say I'm nowhere even close to being on a staircase. Where do you think you'll end up? Hopefully I get like, if this is the stair, my foot's like on its way up to the stair.

[00:44:20] Stratton: You don't want to

[00:44:21] Dylan: be at the top?

[00:44:22] Stratton: Middle? I think anybody who says they're at the top is lying to you. I

[00:44:26] Dylan: think anybody that says they're on top. Is only cap their knowledge.

[00:44:29] Stratton: Yeah. Cause like, as far as like knowledge, bro, I just see my, if Warren Buffett, all he does bro is read for hours a day. And all he has done is read for hours a day.

[00:44:40] Stratton: I'm nowhere near to being anywhere on the knowledge tree, staircase, escalator, elevator, you name it. I'm nowhere close. And so as I'm like learning, I may know a thing or two, but there's lots and lots and lots to learn. And if I get half a step or like a step on like the grand scheme of [00:45:00] things, I think I've done pretty good.

[00:45:01] Dylan: What's the best knowledge that you gained from

[00:45:05] Stratton: mentors think bigger, thinking bigger, leading better. Yeah, I'd say think bigger and lead better. You're in a few

[00:45:14] Dylan: masterminds now, and I know that you are around a lot of eight, nine figure people. What have you learned from them? What's some takes that you've

[00:45:23] Stratton: taken from them?

[00:45:24] Stratton: They're regular people who have stayed the course and built something meaningful, and they don't really jump around. They may jump around once they've gotten to the point where they feel that they're comfortable and they can, and they're at multiple eight or multiple seven figures, but they really don't jump, but they, I have, this is going to sound very vain, but I've only met one person who I was like, wow, he's an exceptional human and he's like very talented.

[00:45:49] Stratton: And that was Josh Snow and Josh is my age and his company does like 200 million a year. What does he do? Teeth whitening. We talked about that before, but most people are pretty. [00:46:00] Regular, I would say Josh is a very exceptional human, but that's out of, I've met a lot of people, I've met a lot of people and I've met Josh stands out one lesson that I got from the dude who owns the jazz.

[00:46:12] Stratton: So, when I was dead broke, I was back home in Utah and we went to this place called the pie in downtown Salt Lake and this dude was sitting next to us and it was him and his wife and some buddies and one of my friends from high school. We all went out with a bunch of high school buddies and. He's like, bro, do you know who that is?

[00:46:29] Stratton: He's like, his name is Ryan Smith. He just sold Qualtrics for 4 billion. And the number one thing, cause I was like sitting there, like asking him, like, what's like, what should I do? He's like, you need to pick a good wife. And he's like, if there's anything I can tell you, but you need to pick a good wife.

[00:46:42] Stratton: And so that lesson has also stood out to me. And I got to have pizza with him for an hour. Like I just got to talk to him for an hour. And that was the number one thing that stood out.

[00:46:51] Dylan: What was his, people have that one thing, they typically like. Go back to, or talk about most, what was that for him,

[00:46:59] Stratton: family?

[00:46:59] Stratton: I [00:47:00] don't think it is so hard to be able to ask him the questions. You should be asking him because he's so far away from where you are. You know what I'm saying? Like the questions you should be asking him are so fucking past you that you don't even comprehend what you should be really be asking him.

[00:47:16] Stratton: Like you can't really give it. It's best shot. Like you, yeah, you could go to dinner with Elon Musk, but it's really just gonna be more fascinating than it is going to be educational. Like you'd want it to be. So I think you could really only ask questions and obviously if I ever got a chance to like go sit down with a billionaire, I'm taking it in a heartbeat, but it's really like people who are two to five levels above you.

[00:47:39] Stratton: Not like this man lives six doors down in a skyscraper, but I'm trying to think the overall theme was really family for him and he was, but back then I didn't think nearly the same way. I think now I wouldn't have approached it the same way. I probably would like so much different if I would talk to him now.

[00:47:59] Stratton: [00:48:00] Yeah.

[00:48:00] Dylan: You thought you were asking the right

[00:48:01] Stratton: questions back then. Yeah. I was just like curious. I just wanted to talk to him, but I wasn't necessarily an on the entrepreneur. I am now like, this is back when I was just like, just getting started wholesaling. Like this wasn't, I mean, this was a long, like, this is right.

[00:48:17] Stratton: When Ryan Smith sold Qualtrics and this was like the week of, I happened to be with him for an hour and they bootstrapped up to a significant amount of money. He was one of the only bootstrapped companies that I think like, uh, The biggest VCs essentially were pounding down his door, trying to get in.

[00:48:36] Dylan: Throwing money at him. Yeah. You mentioned it being more fascinating than educational. That conversation, because of the level you're at and where he's at. Somebody the other day, they mentioned, or they said to me, your best mentor is where you want to be a year from now. And you should [00:49:00] constantly be changing who you follow.

[00:49:02] Dylan: And evolving to that next mentor, I was like, that's so, that's, that's very true. You know, cause if I talk to a billionaire right now, I'm so far away from that. Like I said, there's levels to this. Yeah. There's what I'm seven figures to eight figures is it's a different level. And there's multiple levels inside eight figures.

[00:49:20] Stratton: And there's so many different problems, the way he sees the world, the way he thinks about fucking capital allocation inside of his own company. I could be asking about that. Like, okay, bro, you've had one of the most profitable tech companies in the world. How did you think about capital allocation as you were growing and investing that money into growth?

[00:49:36] Stratton: How much were you paying yourself? Right? Like, how are you finding your great people? Like you could, cause he had to go through all of that and he was the number one salesman, but then even inside all those questions, there's a ton of other questions. And yeah, that I think that's my most fumbled bag of all time.

[00:49:53] Stratton: Obviously, I didn't know I was fumbling the bag, but I wish I could go back there right now and talk to him again, send him an email because [00:50:00] he bought us all pizza too. I was like, Oh, that's so nice. What would you ask him? If you were in my shoes, yeah. After everything I've told you about me, and what I told you I'm going to set out to accomplish, what pitfalls do you think do I need to avoid?

[00:50:13] Stratton: That are very blatant that you wouldn't think about? Because we both know tons of little mistakes in our industry that like, cost you a lot of money if you don't really think about it. But we've been through it. And so if I'm on this journey and I know where I want to go, and you know enough about me of what I'm trying to accomplish, What do I need to watch out for?

[00:50:33] Stratton: Ignorant text. And if you were me, what would you do? What do you think he'd say? I don't know the dude good enough. He might say you're going too small.

[00:50:41] Dylan: That's something I regret at the beginning. Now, I mean, my mindset's totally different. Beginning, like we mentioned before, shooting for ten, er, ten figures, shooting for eight figures was the goal, and then wish he would've shot for a lot more.

[00:50:53] Stratton: Yeah, everybody has the same amount of time and it is scree, it is glaring the older you get [00:51:00] that someone else is your same age and a significantly farther than you. It's because they went bigger. It's not really a whole lot else because there's not, like I said, there's not a lot of extremely exceptional people who are just wizards and there are, and like, yeah, Hormozy is the Messiah, bro.

[00:51:14] Stratton: Alex Hormozy is where he is at because I think he is an exceptional human, but there's only been one Alex for how long have we been on social media, 10 years and no one else has been able to be that articulate and market that good. He set a different standard. Alex set a different standard. Right. But like, so there's one person who was able to do that.

[00:51:34] Stratton: All across all the millions of people, hundreds of millions of people on social media and millions of entrepreneurs who are very, very capable. And only one. As Alex,

[00:51:45] Dylan: I'll tell you somebody else who gets the hype, but now I feel is very underrated Tai Lopez for what he's actually accomplished and what he does in the way he thinks.

[00:51:56] Dylan: Have you heard him speak like in and I say that [00:52:00] somebody recorded a mastermind he was in and the level that he thinks that and what he's done before he's smart. He's a smart man and it's done a lot.

[00:52:09] Stratton: I've never dug deep into him or like, listen, any content.

[00:52:13] Dylan: Is there anything. You want to touch base on or anything before we end?

[00:52:17] Dylan: I don't think so, bro. Stratton, I really appreciate you coming on today. We've shared a lot. It's been a pleasure.

[00:52:22] Stratton: Thank you for having me on, bro. It's been fun. We'll do it again. Oh yeah.

[00:52:27] Dylan: Hey, if you're still listening, hopefully you got some value out of this, or amusement. Either way, I really appreciate you for listening.

[00:52:35] Dylan: My goal with this podcast is to build something of value while also showing others that it's possible to do the same. And what I mean by that is I'm not perfect at this. I fumble, I stutter, and I just want to show that it's okay. If you've been putting something off, this is me telling you to go for it.

[00:52:54] Dylan: So. I need your help in growing this, and there's two main ways a podcast grows. One is through ratings [00:53:00] and reviews, and two is through word of mouth. So, I can only do it with your help. If you can leave me a 5 star rating and review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, as well as post this to your social, it doesn't grow without you.

[00:53:13] Dylan: Again, thank you, and I'll talk to you all next week.

[00:53:24] 

Business Confessions

Hiring Top Talent Overseas | Stratton Brown

Business Confessions

Hiring Top Talent Overseas | Stratton Brown

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