Curt and Melody explore the intricate relationship between being a visionary and a control freak in entrepreneurship, emphasizing the delicate balance needed to successfully bring ideas to life. They delve into the challenges entrepreneurs face when trying to realize their visions, often battling the impulse to micro-manage their teams while striving for innovative outcomes. The duo reflects on personal experiences and anecdotes, highlighting how their journeys have shaped their understanding of risk, creativity, and the nuances of leadership. They also touch on the importance of delegation, illustrating how a strong integrator can help visionaries maintain focus while allowing others to contribute meaningfully.

Ultimately, this episode serves as a reminder for entrepreneurs to introspectively evaluate their control tendencies and embrace the collaborative spirit necessary for growth.

Welcome to the Sole Proprietor Podcast.

I'm Kirk Kempton.

And I'm Melody Edwards.

Each week, we dive into the ethical questions and dilemmas that keep entrepreneurs up at night.

We love talking about the soul of your business, which means having tough conversations that challenge what we believe and push us to think deeper about business values and what really matters.

Whether you're building your own company or exploring life's big questions, you are welcome here.

Hey, Melody, what's going on with you today?

Oh, not much.

Poison ivy is going on with me.

We had this, like, whole pre show discussion.

I know, but then I'm looking at my face and I'm like, why do I have so much poison ivy?

It loves me.

How are you?

I am doing well.

There are.

There's no poison ivy in sight in Phoenix.

However, just be glad that you are not absolutely, you know, covered with cactus needle pokes.

So it's just like, wherever you live, pick your poison.

Right.

That's.

That could be it.

But you've never had poison ivy, have you?

No, I. I actually have no idea.

What it lasts forever and ever.

Yeah.

Really?

Yeah.

It's got to be like medicine for that.

There is.

It's called steroid cream, and I'm.

I use it.

I'm.

I'm at the point now where I just get the steroid cream and then I just put it on, because that's the level I get as an allergy.

Those words make no sense.

We can start this over again.

But I say keep it.

People want to know.

Allergy.

I want to rub some steroid cream on my biceps so I can impress my wife.

But.

Well, that's a.

That's a podcast for another day.

Yes.

But today's podcast is something I've been really chomping to talk to you about.

What's it about?

Well, there is a fine line that we as entrepreneurs walk.

We have to bring something into the world.

I think that's kind of, you know, the dictionary probably not won't agree with this, but if we defined entrepreneur, there's lots of different things and spins you could put on it.

But one definition that I could go with is birthing an idea and making it a reality.

Yeah, we're creators.

I feel like a business owner is not necessarily a creator.

They're owning a business.

They can buy it, they can franchise it.

It is a creative endeavor in many ways, but it is not entrepreneurship in the way that I think of it.

Yeah, like in the service industry, I can think of a few where people came in, and the main Thing that they brought was not a new service.

It was not a new cool thing.

But their brand, they brought a brand to life and they birthed the brand they deliver on their service.

Like, I'm not, not saying that.

Like they're all brand.

No, no service.

Of course.

Like, what are you going to do when you come into the window cleaning world and everybody just gets glass wet and it makes it dry and it's clean?

Got to be different.

Like, how am I going to birth that?

You're not.

But if you add a super slick logo with a really cool tagline and some really cool yard signs all over town, like, you can birth that idea.

And like you said, the idea isn't necessarily the execution of that idea.

And that's that fine line right there is.

I have an idea, I need to bring it to life and I need people to help me, actually.

Also, I was listening to a podcast today with Gary Vee and something that he said that reminded me that entrepreneurship is not a normal thing.

And I don't know if this is true for you.

I've always felt like an entrepreneur.

I've always been thinking of how to make a business or how to do a business, whether it was like when I was 9 and had a business of like dusting my neighbor's house or doing, you know, a lemonade stand or all of these like little opportunities to create something.

I didn't know what a business was at that point, but it just sounded fun.

And the other thing that we discount is how much risk we take as entrepreneurs.

Like we have to be very risk averse or we don't even know.

Like, did you know that there was a risk when you started your business?

I, I, not in the traditional sense.

I don't feel that until I'm already deep in and then I'm like, what am I doing?

I think as I graduated from business school thinking I knew what was up because I, I'd done pretty well in business school.

Yeah, I get to entrepreneurship and got my butt kicked.

I was so surprised when I was outside.

The reason I even have a software company is because when I was a window cleaning, pressure washing business owner and I get to like my first, like the first time someone respond to my money mailer ad and had me come out to give a quote, like, wait a second, I'm a salesman.

What?

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

I'm a window cleaner.

No, you're a salesman.

You went to business school and you forgot that sales is part of the thing.

And I'm like, thought I sidestepped that.

No, you didn't.

And, like, you talk about the risk.

There's the risk of, like, if this doesn't work, you know, And I think a lot of people think about that.

But you know what else you risk?

Having a cool idea that you can't do anything about.

Like, as an entrepreneur, I love bidets.

It's no secret.

I've told lots of people about this.

I love bidets.

If I wasn't doing what I'm doing right now, I would be making sure that every hotel, every hospital, and I know those aren't cool and sexy, but every restaurant, every fine dining restaurant establishment, what are we even doing in the first world country?

Like, I'm passionate about this.

So listen, Kurt, can I do anything about it?

We would have to educate all of America about bidets to begin with.

That's a huge job.

I'll do it.

I'll do it.

But the thing is, I can't do it because I'm too busy running a software business.

And that's the risk.

The risk is I love it.

Can't do Jack squad about it because if I chase two rats, now Elon Musk's of the world are all listening to me going, what's wrong with you?

Wait a minute, though.

Yeah, okay.

Richard Branson's different.

Let's just say Elon Musk is, I think, a marketing genius in many ways.

But he did not invent Tesla.

Did he not take Tesla from two inventors and then it became Elon's Tesla.

Oh, okay.

Actually, I wasn't aware of that backstory.

Oh, look it up.

I feel like the boring company, which I think might be failed, but the SpaceX company, the.

Sure.

I don't know.

Like, these are great ideas.

Were they his?

Who knows?

He says they are.

And I. I don't know.

When I look at, like, let's think of who are our favorite entrepreneurs that we know.

Richard France is pretty cool.

He is cool.

Yeah, he just seems cool.

You know, if you.

If you watch Shark Tank.

I kind of have a love hate relationship with every single one of those people, but I just fell in love with Mr.

Wonderful the other day.

Really?

Yes.

I hope I don't get emotional here, man.

I can already feel it coming.

Just give me a second here.

But okay, so someone was interviewing Mr.

Wonderful, and I'm like, ugh, he's the one I really hate.

Love to hate the most, you know?

Yeah, he's hard to love.

But they're interviewing him and he.

They just asked him something about his mother and I watched him transform.

Into a human.

Yeah, just he talked about what his mom went through to get him to where he was at, how they didn't have anything to do, rubbed together kind of thing, and just.

Oh, man.

And I just watched him melt and he got all emotional like it really was from his heart.

And then he proceeded to give a lot of really good advice.

But, you know, me having the relationship I do with my mom and knowing what my mom did to get me to where I'm at and, you know, fully recognizing those sacrifices, that just really resonated with me.

And I'm like, you know what, Mr.

Wonderful, I will forgive you for all of the horrible deals that you've given to other people to take advantage of them on royalties.

And, and I will forgive you for all of the things you've said to the other sharks who were trying to lead someone to the right way.

But you, you know, at the end of the day, Mr.

Wonderful's oftentimes right, but he's just right in the way that, like, it's too cold hearted for me.

Well, they need that personality on the show.

They absolutely do.

In fact, as I understand, he's like the owner of the show.

I'm sure, like, he's kind of like Simon Cowell, who in the beginning was playing a part.

Right.

He's the mean one.

Yeah.

But we all know he has a heart of gold.

Yeah.

So anyway, that's one of the things about risk that we take on as entrepreneurs is that we say, repeat after me.

Do you so and so take you business by the right hand and promise to never look at another business?

And other people can, but I cannot.

And.

And that's a risk that comes with my, with my decision.

Interesting.

Yeah, it's really hard right now.

Matt and I have an agreement that I will only have one business at a time at this moment, because I've had two businesses at a time.

And the level of chaos that that brings into a home, I don't care how many people are like, oh, I've got everything together and I've delegated everything.

Great.

I don't know how to not make things personal.

And so inevitably it comes back to my husband, essentially.

I would love to have this discussion with Megan likes.

Yeah, I would love to.

We gotta have her on.

We should have her on.

Then we will, and we'll have a tailored discussion around her.

She.

She has lots of businesses.

She's done a lot of business, she's scaled back.

She's been very successful.

She's gotten other people to run different things.

And frankly, she's just an amazing human being.

In fact, she texted me the other day and I could not.

I just happened to have like a moment and I like, had to call her.

I'm like, I need to hear your voice.

Wow.

I haven't talked to you in months.

Anyway, so there are people who can do it.

And so risk can sound like a lot of different things, but I think that today's topic of bringing other people into your vision and being a visionary over those people as that borders on control freak.

Helping them to bring your vision, not their vision, your vision, to life.

And I want to dig in on what that means because I've been kind of racking my brain thinking some ideas and examples of people who I actually don't like them as a person.

They don't mesh well with me.

Like, we're not going to be hanging out having fun, but I think they're better at entrepreneurship than I am actually.

By definition of bringing things to life.

Sure, let's go ahead and say this.

The people I'm going to be giving examples of have brought things much bigger to life than I ever have.

Yeah.

But there's a trade off and we'll talk about what that is.

So I ask you, Mel, have you ever had the pleasure of working for a visionary?

I have never had.

I was going to say never.

The only job I ever had that was not window cleaning was for three months at a holistic skincare company.

It felt like the marketing of that company was very visionary because it was.

But I don't feel like I was working for visionaries there.

And also I got laid off because I worked too hard.

That's another story.

You got laid off for working too hard.

I didn't understand that when you are in an office setting, you have to look busy.

When you don't have stuff to do to preserve your job and don't ask for work all the time.

And the job that they had given me was not a real job to begin with.

It was a gift coordinator.

So I was literally just making gifts for famous people.

There are not a lot of famous people to send gifts to.

So they kind of put this job together and then I started helping all the departments and I think I helped myself out of a job.

Or at least that's the story I like to tell myself.

Interesting.

All right.

Yeah.

But I've known visionaries, but I don't feel like I've ever worked for a visionary that I can think of.

I have never Either.

I. I don't think I've ever either.

You consider yourself a visionary.

Yeah, I do.

Me too.

Yeah, I do.

And.

And if you follow eos, the traction.

Yes.

The book traction.

You have a visionary integrator.

I. I know for sure that I can do integration, but I could never.

Like, an integrator is a great employee, you know, so maybe we should just define that real quick.

Yes.

Yeah.

So visionary I would almost categorize as unemployable people.

You're starting it off so negative.

No, no, no.

Like, I actually, I couldn't trade an hour for a dollar knowing that every day I gotta wake up and work eight more of these hours in order to pay my mortgage.

Like, yeah, couldn't do it.

Yeah.

They're unemployable usually, because if there's someone above them that can slash their idea and they don't get the final shot called.

And I know where this needs to go.

And if you're not letting me build that and orchestrate that, then you're basically taking the oxygen from.

Yeah, that's a great definition.

I was just thinking, because I'm add and can think of many things, I was envisioning myself and how forward I usually am looking at vision.

Like, I'm thinking very forward.

Too forward sometimes I would say.

Yeah.

And then also at the same time, I was thinking it would be so great to work for somebody who's an integrator but doesn't have any vision and they just want me to be the visionary.

And I was just dreaming about that for a second as you were talking.

I don't know if that would work, though.

Well, I'm not going to say it's never worked because maybe there's some sort of scenario where it does.

But here's where it gets a little risky for an integrator.

Integrators typically want to work really, really hard, be told what to do, be given that, you know.

And it's not to say they won't have visionary tendencies, because they certainly can't and will.

But where it gets sticky is if I'm going to assume all of the risk of this business, I need to know where it's going and why am I going to risk it when I could go work hard and achieve all the things that I want to do, go find a visionary who will hire me, and I don't have to think about anything other than the task you've given me.

But when you're at the top of the food chain now, you got to make sure My marketing's right, My books are right.

Tax got filed correctly.

Make sure that the sales are operating.

You know, sales are delivering.

They're not risk takers.

Integrators, you said that they want to be told what to do.

I don't think it's that they want to be told they're going to take your sparkly vision, this crazy idea, and they're going to make it categorized into delegatable pieces if they're good.

Right.

I think you're right.

You're more accurate.

Now there are some integrators that do want to be told what to do.

They don't want to.

They just want to like, kind of get.

Get things done.

But there are, you're right, the puzzle.

Fix it.

Like, like a developer, a software company.

Like, they want to know what the feature is so that they can have that fun puzzle piece.

Figuring out experience.

There's not a lot of incentive for an integrator to start a company because you can almost go find everything you need at someone who's going to handle all the big picture stuff.

And it allows you to get more refined in what you do.

And then it's not to say this is another thing that could vary by integrator, but that ability to clock out and say, like, I thought as hard as I'm going to think about that thing today, and I'm going to now clock out and not think of it anymore.

There is some magic and power there.

Again, I know there are integrators who are never off the clock.

They can't stop working and they're workaholics.

And that's a different kind of control freak.

Yeah, but, but the incentive for that, even that person to go start their own business.

You know who I think of right now?

I'm thinking of someone.

Her name is Michelle Jepsen.

She is amazing.

She is.

She is.

Now she's actually a mixture of visionary and integrator for sure.

But the thing about Michelle and, oh my gosh, this girl, just for people who don't know her, she got her master's degree in like six months.

Like it was something stupid silly.

But like, I'm trying to give you guys an idea of the amount of horsepower under the hood here.

She could juggle like many, many tasks all at once.

And she keeps it all straight and her curiosity off the chart.

And she researches stuff so fast.

When, when AI first like started hitting the mainstream, like, she knew more about it within like two or three days of me hearing about ChatGPT than I probably know now at this moment, she's.

She's that smart.

But she could go find.

She could go find a job anywhere she wants.

Yeah.

Tell them how much to pay her.

Not gonna.

She's not gonna start something and wait for six years to get a profit.

She will immediately get under the hood.

She will immediately understand what the vision is.

If she's in love with the vision, she'll take the job.

She will make that thing come to life.

I say all of that because it's not to say that Michelle can't and by the way, has started a company of her own, but the incentive for her to be able to stay in that business dev biz.

Dev environment without having to worry about all of the boring stuff that goes along with it.

I just think it's too great of an incentive to stay in that integrator role without distraction.

Yeah, I think.

Well, there's another part of being an integrator that.

Wait a minute.

Let me just say everything you said about Michelle is absolutely true.

And I. I don't even know all of the parts of her, but I consider her a friend.

And whenever I need a brain, I like to go ask Michelle.

And she's so generous and also so nice.

I don't feel like I've ever seen her too flustered.

I don't know.

And you would very humble.

You would never know, like, what's going on in her brain.

I just talked to her literally yesterday, and we had talked about a time when she really was in a lot of turmoil.

And I'm like, I remember that exact conversation.

Michelle, you were so professional.

I had no idea.

There may have been a storm going on on the inside.

And I literally told her and she's like, I know, I'm sorry.

I should have told you more about it.

Like, honestly, you did the right thing by just remaining so professional.

So when you say that you've always seen her even kill, I agree to that.

But I can tell you, just based on a conversation I had there yesterday, she.

Michelle has the ability to allow for a storm to rage on the inside.

And she's still can just perform.

Yeah, I can't do that.

I don't think a lot of visionaries.

Well, I can do it if it's the right kind of chaos.

I actually really like it.

It's not healthy, probably.

No, it's not.

No.

But it's like my way of dealing with chaos.

It's like if there's a huge car accident, my brain is like, okay, I'm going to deal with this thing, I don't freak out.

I would just do the.

Whatever needs to be done.

But give me time to overthink and I will.

Well, Dan Martell's book, Buyback Time.

In his book, he actually says, we, as entrepreneurs, we are subconsciously constantly cutting our own legs out from underneath us because we are addicted to the hero syndrome, that chaos.

So as soon as everything's running good, we don't even know we're doing it, but we'll go start trying to mix something up a little bit for sure, make chaos again so that we can jump out and be the hero.

We will literally break working.

I don't think of it as the hero complex.

I think of it as being uncomfortable with comfort.

Yeah.

Because from my point of view, I've never really been comfortable with comfort.

Comfort feels very insecure to me.

Like something's about to.

Like I'm just waiting for something to happen.

And I don't know.

But I think that is his point.

That is.

His point is, is that we are so uncomfortable with comfort that we will subconsciously do things to make.

Yeah, he's not wrong on that one.

When he said that, I remember thinking, geez.

And then right after that, he said something.

I think that replies here too.

He said, faith is not knowing what's going to happen next, but believing it's going to be good.

And fear is not knowing exactly what's going to happen next, but believing it's going to be bad.

And he said, so we all have beliefs about what's going to happen, and some of us spend our life in fear, and some of us spend our life sort of in this faith state.

And by the way, when I was going through my major faith struggles, I remember thinking, like, I was so obsessed with proving that God does not exist that I don't know what's going to happen, but, like, I'm just going to kind of imagine that there is no God behind all this.

Or if there is a God, he just.

I'm his pet.

Like, he doesn't care about me so much.

Like.

Like I'm a dog to him.

And I thought, so that's kind of living in place of fear.

And I didn't like the way I felt.

And when he said that, I.

That was actually a breakthrough I had in my faith crisis of where I was going.

You know what?

I do addict myself to chaos, and I do not know what's going to happen next.

But I, as an entrepreneur, I almost feel like I have to poke holes in everything.

So I always Poke holes in my future as well.

Oh, yeah.

I know we went off a little bit on a tangent about integrators, but one other thing I want to say about a good integrator.

If you have a visionary integrator relationship.

So a visionary is at the top.

An integrator is that middle layer protecting the rest of your team from your vision.

Yeah, from you.

Is they are a vision strainer.

They're going to be able to take your vision and get all the good parts out.

Because not everything in our vision is great all the time.

It feels great.

Feels.

And it might seem great, but it's untested.

So anyway, that's the last thing I'll say about that.

But back to visionaries.

Well, it's.

It's two side.

I think of it as two sides to the same coin.

You have your visionary and your integrator.

You smash them together and you got a coin.

So now we.

Here we are having our topic of a visionary having an idea and needing to bring it to life.

The story I wanted to share about this that helps illustrate.

I just keep thinking about how visionary can be taken to a point where it's, you know, you use the word healthy or unhealthy.

I think that's actually.

Yeah, I think, I think that healthy or not healthy and constructive versus deconstructive is Steve Jobs.

I don't think anyone can debate that he was a visionary.

Yeah, maybe one of the best visionaries of our.

Of our time.

Certainly has gotten his birth of an idea into more hands than any other visionary, as we can tell by the largest company in the world.

So.

So here we go.

For those of you who don't know, I've read the Steve Jobs autobiography.

It was years and years and years and years ago, so I'm a little bit foggy, but I know enough to at least know that what I'm going to tell you is true enough to prove the point.

There was a.

An imac.

It was the G3IMAC with a translucent design.

Okay.

It was the first of its kind in any kind of personal computing world.

Nothing was as compact, nothing was as aesthetic.

Aesthetically pleasing, I guess.

I'll say.

For those who don't know, Steve Jobs spent a lot of time before he became the owner of a technology company or a founder.

He was traveling the world, meeting with gurus and art, and particularly Japanese art was his main thing.

His feng shui, I don't know.

I know I used that wrong.

The point is, is that he went to India and met with Gurus.

He studied Japanese art in Japan like crazy.

And it was that sort of very distinctive, simple design that really drove him in his visionary process later on when he got to computing.

So you can imagine when the ipod came out and it was like, just finger touch, like a scroll wheel is so novel but simple.

But in some ways so simple that it was actually complicated.

Like, if you want to work.

No, it was hard.

Do you, do you remember getting your first, like, MacBook or did you ever get a MacBook I?

Yep.

Oh, yeah.

I remember going from when like a PC to a Mac.

And it was so complicated for me because I overthought everything.

I just couldn't understand how to do simple.

Yeah, yeah.

And that was.

He would always push people to do simple.

In fact, when his company started to take off, he was famous for firing people on the spot who would overcomplicate things or who didn't catch his vision.

Like, he'd be in a meeting with like super smart engineers and one would say something like, hey, Steve, enough with all the fonts.

Like, we're just going to do a couple of fonts.

And he's like, get out.

We don't need you.

Like, you're, you're.

What's wrong with this is you don't understand.

And what he was saying was, you don't understand my vision.

You're not worthy of being in my space.

That was very much the message he would send.

So this G3IMAC is about to come out.

It's a, it's a desktop machine.

But he had designed it to the point where with his designers, Jony I've, I believe, was even on at this point.

I'm pretty sure Jony I've was a, well, don't hold me nap.

But the point is he's got like, great designers working for him and they had designed this computer to look like a face looking back at you.

And if you want to do a Google search for the G3IMAC, it'll be hard.

You're not going to see the face.

Like, it's not going to like pop out to you.

But it needed to look friendly and inviting.

And the computer was designed so that when you're sitting in front of it, it would subconsciously bring to your mind that you're looking into another friendly base.

Well, in the very first iteration, he had expected that they were going to have this slot drive for the cd, which, by the way, that was also novel at the time.

Floppy disks were out, CDs were in, and this was the Ability to use the mouth of the machine to take the CDs in CD ROM.

And so what happened was he's getting ready.

He would have these big performance practices before they'd roll out at his conferences where he would make a big deal out of these big secrets.

And to this day, they still, Apple still does this for everything.

They roll out.

They're secretive.

They roll it out.

It's.

It's this big thing.

Well, apparently the slot drive that was supposed to be the mouth of this machine was either unavailable or overpriced or I can't remember all the obstruction that he reached, but this ended up having the buyer have to make a decision when he was trying to provide, like, either we don't get drives to be able to ship these things.

And our company is in massive financial upheaval, Right?

Like, we're in a big make it or break it situation.

We're very red.

We need this machine to go.

We need it to go live.

And I'm going to make an executive decision.

I'm going to order the tray drive.

I know it's spec'd with the slot drive, but we're going to have to go with the tray drive.

So gets ordered.

They do this all behind Steve Jobs back because they know that Steve's not going to be happy about it.

And their best bet was to just roll it out.

And when the prototype came that he was going to present at this conference, it was going to have this tray drive in it.

And so when Herschel comes and they bring the machine out to him and he's doing his performance and he sees what's on there, he.

He melts down.

Completely melts down.

And he is just absolutely like, you know what?

We're not doing it.

We're not going to.

I guess we're going to cancel the show.

And they're like, steve can't cancel the show.

We're going to have to announce this, this G3.

And he's like, well, I'm not announcing it.

And our company's not releasing this garbage.

That thing is sticking its tongue out at the person who's using it.

Like, that is the most disgusting, like, in his head, most disgusting thing you could do.

This is revolting to me.

Everyone's like, steve, it's still a CD ROM drive.

You can still do it.

People will hardly ever notice the face.

It's not going to like, well, that was the wrong approach.

Steve freaked out on that.

As I recall, they actually had a therapist come in to try and talk sense into him.

Steve, if we don't roll this out, Apple will be gone in a week.

We have to sell these machines in order for us to stay in business.

Well, he finally did agree.

As long as they promised the next generation would have a slot drive.

And now we're finally to the point of the story, which is.

That's extreme.

But I think that it's a great example if we all look into ourselves as visionaries.

Anyone listening who owns a business or anyone who's ever worked for a visionary, you can take anything to its extreme, and I think that this does a good job of going close to that.

But we want our vision to be the thing we said it was supposed to be.

And we want the people who are following our vision to do it our way.

Can I explain vision for a second?

Yeah.

For me, I want to know if it's the same for you.

I literally have a vision in a way.

It's not.

It's something I can taste and feel, and I don't always know what it is or, like, what it fully encompasses.

I just know.

And I don't even know how to explain it, but I can just.

Something comes into my brain, and I can.

Once it's fully formed.

Because, like, when I started home Service va, I did not have a vision for this company.

It took me a long time.

I was trying to fill a need, and I was trying to start a new thing, and I wanted to have an international business.

It's always been on my to do list.

And so my checklist and every girl.

Every little girl's dream.

I know, Seriously.

But I.

But once I caught the vision, which, by the way, was not much different than all the other companies that I've ever done, like, the vision tends to be very similar in many respects, but once I had it, it's really hard to release a vision and to let something go, like, to.

To let a vision go is one of the hardest things.

And I don't mean, like, let it go.

Like, I'm a control freak, and everybody must follow it.

Like Steve said, sometimes you have to, like, not even follow a vision.

But that's how I feel.

It is.

It's painful if I don't get to complete the thing that my mind has decided on.

How do you explain it?

I would probably explain it the same way.

I don't think that I might.

There might be a little bit of nuance difference, but I don't think it's.

I think it's pretty much the same for me.

Like, when you started responsivid I mean, it was because you don't love selling things and you wanted to create a system or like a software that would help make it more automated and easier, which you did.

But as you went on in the company, like, was your vision very clear from the start or did it develop?

Like, how did your vision come to light?

Honestly, this is where I feel like a fraud.

I still am not.

Like, my vision has not come to life yet.

I'm still, still working.

But also in fairness, my vision is, is so many, there's so many folds to it.

Right.

Like, yeah, there's financially, what I want my business to do.

There's culture within internal team workings of what I want my business to do.

There's product, what I want my business to do.

And I wanted to do it now, by the way, that's like, that's the other problem with.

Yeah.

Like today.

Like, I'm looking way down the road and I'm measuring what we're doing right now, today by that.

Yeah.

And we're wrong.

Like, everything's wrong, you know, and, and everybody, you all are way underperforming.

And, and, but like, yeah, Kurt, obviously, like, and, and the problem with vision is that it can come fast.

Yeah.

So like five minutes from now, I could really articulate to you in just a couple sentences this amazing vision.

Just like imagine that we are the gold standard in CRMs.

Like you could say something like, we're the gold standard in CRMs.

I could say that.

But becoming a CRM is a big job.

And then if you want to be the gold standard of CRMs, it's also another 10x20x100x big job.

And you're doing it with bootstrap money and a team of 10.

Right?

Yeah.

So.

So vision is really easy to have.

Bring it to life is hard.

Articulating to other people is hard.

Being patient and moving it quickly without overwhelm and moving it slowly without drudgery.

All of those things in every aspect.

You just described my life every day.

Especially like in those frustrating moments where the vision is far ahead.

I am looking at the day to day progress.

I'm worried about overwhelming people with too much change too quickly.

But also I'm like, why can't they take on more like me?

I want them to be doing 30 things.

That's again, why a vision strainer is so important.

Because they're keeping the cadence, the actual rhythm that normal humans need to exist within so that we don't drive them crazy.

I think that's another reason.

But.

And Pushing, Pushing humans to what they can do.

Right.

Like, so that's another thing is that as long as the visionary I know I'm guilty of this is, I'll say, but that's unrealistic.

So we'll just deal with the status quo today and tomorrow will be a new day.

And that's also bad because I'm not going to push.

I'm not, I'm not going to get out there and like, like.

But then maybe you do get out and push them way too hard.

So, like, I've been in both, both camps.

I, I'll say one other thing about vision.

For a business owner, I think this is important, and hopefully my people are hearing this too, is that a lot of times you'll give a back seat to your own health, your own sanity, and you don't, you'll say, my vision is something that's going to happen 10 years from now or five years from now or even a month from now.

And so today I will eat junky food.

I will not exercise, I will not take personal time to de.

Stress or relieve my, my anxieties.

Because anything less than pushing forward on my vision, it shows weakness.

And I, I got big.

I remember Jason Guyman one time walked up to me at a convention.

He's like, whoa, you put on some pounds.

Yeah.

I remember being like, I hate you so much for saying that.

And, and, but I, I could, like, what are you supposed to do?

Like, you look down, you go, yeah, I think you're, you might be right about that.

So I want to say that vision needs to extend.

You know, as I'm saying, you're looking down the road and you're looking right what's in front of you.

I have recently, in the last year, gotten my health a lot more under control, and I'm super stoked about some of the barriers I've broken through.

But I'm also mentally in a different place.

And so having vision that extends.

You know, I've talked about the quadrants in your business and the different departments and different goals and vision achievements that you want.

Yeah.

But I think that as an entrepreneur, I've been guilty of not putting myself and my vision for my family and my relationships and myself physically.

And we've, we talk on this podcast about spiritually, too.

I think that that's another big thing.

If you're going to be a visionary, just like my encouragement to you and just sort of at this place in my life right now, my encouragement would be to say, don't forget that you can't just visualize one part of the future and allow yourself to be addicted to that because it will end in you giving up the vision for maybe what you actually want.

It feels like vision is also something you mentioned, like spirituality.

It almost feels like a gift from God or whoever we, you know, like when.

Because you said if you choose to be a visionary.

I don't think people choose, it is bestowed upon them as a gift.

Let me say, let me say it a little bit differently than if you choose the path of entrepreneurship as a visionary.

Yeah.

And listen, I'm guilty now of struggling with.

I will put myself last always.

Because I, I'm so compartmentalized and I'm so.

And the funny thing, which is not funny is that the more that I do that, it's always like, you just have to do this one more day or one more week.

I'm always pushing for like just one more.

And I know that it's not good at the time, but I believe that I'm pushing towards something, forgetting that this is like a cycle.

It goes like that forever if you don't break out.

I don't know about you, but like my breakout is literally just usually it's an injury or something and I'll be like, sorry, I can't do business for two months.

And then my business still works.

Everything fine, I get my brain back and.

But this time what I'm trying to do is take the summer, like take a couple months to get my visionary brain back.

Because I'm feeling that burnout lately and I know that, that cycling, that hustling, like I can't make myself think harder.

It's.

I need to back away.

And I think that's something that we have like a very bad on, off switch.

It's a, it's control, it's addiction.

It's like all those things, right?

Like we are control freaks about the vision, but we're also addicted to work.

I think we are.

I've met visionaries who aren't.

Were they never, like.

I don't know.

I don't know a lot of people who.

I don't either.

But I think that, I think that that's.

It's something that I guess I've seen myself start to heal a bit and it's been as I've been putting more self.

Like at 4 o' clock in the afternoon, I am going to be putting on my riding clothes and going take my bike on the trail.

And I guess I'm just saying that as a recovering, you know, workaholic work.

Still a workaholic, but recovering.

Like work timeaholic, you know, like, yeah, computer aholic maybe.

But yeah, I think you bring up some really good points.

And so that's, that's where I ask you, I say, melody, I think that being a control freak is part of the job of a visionary.

Yeah, but what is the line of control?

What is the good amount of control?

Because my whole job is about delegation.

I don't struggle with delegating things sometimes.

Okay, that was not true.

Sometimes when I've allowed my brain to become so cluttered and so over stimulated and overwhelmed, I can't delegate.

Like, I wouldn't know how to because probably because of my concussion two years ago.

That has something to do with it, but also many other reasons, just like the way my brain is.

But there's a lot of things you can delegate.

And I might not have a problem if I can vis.

If I can voice it to people.

But I'm always worried about the.

If I don't.

If I.

If I think quick, I'm worried about what will be produced.

Because micromanagement.

Well, I don't.

I'm a recovered micromanager.

Okay.

And the way I did that is I really have to be thoughtful about.

If I'm giving somebody this thing, this part of the vision, I have to release it completely and almost be uninvolved.

And it's.

Well, that's part of the way I cannot micromanage.

Like, if I am sitting there with you, watching you do it.

Oh, my God.

Like, just like even in training.

Yes, I'm involved in some way.

I'll keep taking it back.

I know I won't even take it back.

I'll just keep inputting my thoughts and.

Oh, you could do it faster this way or so that's why I really try to stay away from that part.

Like, I try to give the vision as much of the vision as I can for each of the departments that we have.

And then I let my Denise, my vision strainer, manage that process.

And she's so good.

She will come into a meeting.

We had a meeting today.

We were talking about some things.

She lets me go off on my, like, crazy tangents and she's very patient about it.

And then I don't know if your brain works like this, but I will go off in a million directions.

And it starts with one simple thing.

She's asked me a question.

And then I'll get to a part like five minutes later in there where I've gone 10 steps in many directions.

And I'll be like feeling discouraged because I just said 30 things we need to do.

And then I have to reign myself back into the beginning.

And she's like, Mel, you know, don't think so big.

We just need to get this one little part like just tell me what you want the vision for this part to be.

So she's good about, but I'm good to allow her the ability to, to have that kind of conversation with me.

She has permission to do that and I encourage it.

I bet Steve Jobs did not give permission.

And, and I guess that's sort of where, where the flexation point is for me is that I think that Steve Jobs at his level of control freak has proven that it can be very successful.

And I've proven that what I can do can be very fulfilling.

And success to my degree of success.

I'm not saying I'm unsuccessful, but I'm not.

Go to a random person, ask if they've heard of Apple, and then ask them if they've heard of Responsibid.

I promise you'll know my level of success within about 10 of those interactions.

So.

But I don't want that life and I don't want to hang out with Steve Jobs now.

Steve Jobs, no one can hang out with him right now unless you're pretty dead.

But yeah, but I mean he, for those don't know, he got cancer at the end of his life.

It was very quick and he was taken and he didn't have a relationship with a spouse or help meet of any kind.

Not really even a girlfriend.

He did have a daughter.

There was almost no relationship there until the very, very end.

And that was a choice he made.

You know, so I told that whole story letting you know like that's he's powerful and he was able to be in his vision, in power.

But in some ways I clobber Steve Jobs.

Do you think it's worth it to have your name known maybe for 100, 200, 300 years when you did not get to live a fulfilled life?

And maybe he, well no, he couldn't have been fulfilled because there's so many different areas to life.

Yeah, vision feels big.

It feels like it's creativity.

It's sometimes otherworldly, but I guess it's also, it could be culty.

Well, listen, I think that there's as many personalities there are in the world is how many ways that question could be answered.

Is it worth it?

But I will say this.

There was an experiment done years and years ago where they they.

They got some homeless people and they gave them $100,000.

And my understanding, as I recall, is that they offered them all financial advice when they gave them $100,000, but it was optional.

They didn't have to take the advice.

I remember that the way that that study came out at the end, and it may have just been with one person, because I'm remembering one person's face in my mind.

This person at the end, I remember they got a Dodge Ram pickup truck.

I remember thinking, huh, that was an interesting choice.

Okay, now trucks are $100,000, so you could spend a fortune on a new truck.

But he got a really nice apartment, and then his family kept asking him for money and people wanted help, and he was helping him, and he loved it.

He did have to pass psychological.

Another thing with homelessness, a lot of mental illness.

Yeah, did I remember.

Gave a psychological test.

But here's the thing that we learned at the end of this one.

The statement he made when he was deep in debt and had no.

Not only no money, but negative money and all the complications of taking care of all these possessions and stuff, his words were, it would have been better if I had never gotten this money.

That's what most people who win the lottery say.

Yeah, yeah, I've heard that too.

But the point I'm getting at is that, is it worth it?

Is it worth trading in your life for fame or for some sort of, like, expanded vision?

And I think some people would say yes.

I think some people be surprised that they would end up saying no after they've said yes, because, you know, there's that sort of realization time and realizing what you're really giving up.

But I think there's also some people who would just say, yeah, like, people aren't my thing.

Maybe they don't have people yet.

Well, that could be yet.

But let's not forget, like.

And I'm not saying that only autistic people don't need, you know, but.

But I'm just saying that there are.

There are just conditions that people, like, mentally just don't need that sort of validation.

It doesn't.

Doesn't do anything for them.

And so I think that the answer could be for people that, hey, like, success to that standard, is the success that will make you happy.

But make sure.

Right.

And that goes back to what I was saying earlier about vision is make sure that you're looking at your vision not just from one angle or even a couple angles, because there are like a hundred different angles.

Yeah.

And honestly, I Think the world makes it seem like everybody can be an entrepreneur and everybody could be successful.

That is the American dream, after all.

It is.

But what percentage of people actually can be successful entrepreneurs?

It is very, very small.

I'm shocked that I have managed in all of these years to like not go bankrupt or something because that's like what most, that's what happens to most businesses.

They go out of business.

I don't know.

Like, I feel like it's partially a gift and.

But it's not just a gift.

It's a lot of education, a lot of learning and continuous growth and all the other things.

What a really insightful statement to say that.

I'm just thinking in my head about what it is to hang on in today's world of technology.

You can be passed by really quickly.

Like you can be a flash in the pan so easily now because it's not like back in the old days where we shook hands 10 years ago and we're still in an agreement.

I'm still waiting for my pension to pay out 60 years later.

So you can be a flash in the pen.

You can rise up really fast.

And also you can hang onto a business having technology do things that you used to have to hire people to do, which would have sunk your business.

And so that's kind of an interesting eye opening thought, is that we live in a day and age where you could actually persevere through a business that should not, cannot succeed.

And you're like, wow, I'm not one of those statistics.

You also could do that thing where they go, wow, what an overnight success.

Yeah, I worked 14 years.

Yeah.

And then had my overnight success.

And you, you saw the overnight.

I think that's one thing that I think about a lot when I want to give up at any time is giving up is like, that's how you don't get to that.

I feel like there's no other option but success.

Whatever my vision of success is right.

If you give up, you don't reach that point.

I agree so much with that.

Yeah.

And in my marriage, we got married, we said like, divorce is not an option.

We're gonna be successful.

Then I started meeting people who were totally normal, great people.

And then one of the people in the marriage turned into abusive, like, and I'm not just talking like physically abusive, but like verbally and emotionally abusive.

And I'm like, that should not continue on.

And so I've changed my mind since then.

I've even heard some really smart people say, like, if you can't say no to it.

You're not saying yes to it.

And so I'm trying to do that with success.

Like, if I could say no, I could just end this all right now, but I choose not to.

But I think that at the end of the day, I can't see a life where I'm not successful because I will fight and work, and I will do it the right way.

I am not going to take shortcuts, and I'm going to.

I'm going to push through.

So in that sense, I know you should be allowed to say no to the things in your life that you want to say yes to.

But success, I just.

As a.

Maybe it's just part of being a visionary.

I'm not sure.

I don't know that I would ever be able to accept.

Like, success for me is to have the completion of a vision.

And it could be a small one or a large one.

And, Kurt, I say I know what my vision is.

I do.

But not for every single part of everything.

And I don't know what the end of that vision looks like.

Right.

Yeah.

But because it's complicated.

It's not one simple thing.

I just know myself.

I can't give up or stop.

However, I have heard people say that, you know, failure is not a. I have failures all the time.

But failure should not be.

You shouldn't be ashamed of failure.

And I do believe that.

I think if.

Sometimes I wonder if.

If I could let go of my ego a little bit and be a more.

Have more humility sometimes and not.

Then maybe I would have done things differently and made it easier for myself.

It.

You know, there's so many.

But everything's a lesson.

Yeah.

Well, yeah.

Yeah, I.

And that's it.

That's it right there.

That mentality.

Everything's a lesson.

Yeah.

Life.

Everything's a lesson, too.

So it's the same.

Yeah, that's true.

I just think as entrepreneurs, we expose ourselves to more lessons.

Oh, yeah.

You have to be okay with lessons.

You have to be okay with, like, you can't worry about failure.

And.

Not that you can't worry, but you can't be thinking of that when you start a business.

And you also can't be afraid to keep pushing yourself.

And there's.

There's no comfort.

I don't know what I feel comfortable with.

My husband would die.

Yeah.

My wife.

My wife.

I cannot wait for the day that my wife will allow.

Will come on this show.

And you're.

I want Matt and Rachel to be on here because.

Because Honestly, we wouldn't be who we'd be without them.

Yeah.

And they are so yen to our Yang.

Right.

They are.

And we will get them here someday.

They'll agree.

They're reluctant heroes.

Rachel has pretty adamantly said no.

And I told her that's cool for now.

Right?

It's cool for now.

No pressure.

That's one of our, that's one of our best qualities is the grit that we have when we never give up.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So let's, let's, let's start circling the airport here.

Visionary has a very positive connotation.

Control freak has a very negative connotation.

They're very deeply related and I, I used the term fine line before Melody.

Where do you see yourself on the spectrum as a visionary as it relates to control freak and how related do you think they are?

I actually if I'm looking big picture I am not a control freak when it comes.

I would love it if anybody would come take my visions and just make them happen.

I have people in my company like Denise but she is not the kind of integrator where it's going to be like massive push forward.

When I have a billion dollars I'm just going to hire integrators who are just going to take the vision, whatever this vision is and then just make it happen.

Because there's so much that goes into that.

I don't really like the part where I have to make it.

I just like the vision part.

So maybe I'm not as control freaky as I am.

It's when I have to be involved in parts of the process that I start to like we talked about like if we are there we will micromanage the process.

So I have learned to put boundaries and barriers between me and the act and the vision and the actual work that needs to happen to push it forward.

And sometimes it's very annoying and frustrating and, but also it's needed.

What about you?

Where do you see the relationship of your, your control freakin visionary coming together?

Well, I'm like I'm self aware so I, I used to be very, very controlling about the vision and it's almost like the smaller my business the bigger the like the bigger I felt like the fear of having to hold on to the vision and not let it expand beyond me which is what you need to happen.

Usually if you' gift of a vision it should be expanding beyond you.

But I think the best times are when I can walk away and I trust that I have the right team and they are executing towards the, the greater vision doesn't have to be perfect because ultimately when I'm actually seeing the thing working and I don't know the details, I just see it's working.

That feels really great.

Yeah.

I would have to say we're pretty different in that way.

And I jones for a little bit of what you're saying, but I think that for me, back in the day when my business smelled like you, the smaller the business was, the more I had to be on every single thing.

Then you start to experience other people doing things the wrong way.

That works better.

And you're like, okay, I need to just kind of butt out here.

And that's a very important learning thing.

But I think that I read the book who, not how, and it talked to me like, stop telling people how to do things and like just find people who can do it the right way and let them write the protocols.

Yeah.

I mentally embrace that, but I still struggle to this day all the time with really living that.

And I have room to grow for sure.

Do you know why?

Because your company isn't a company that tells people that they need to delegate to experience the freedom that they've always wanted.

If I don't practice that, you're a hypocrite.

I am the big.

And sometimes I am a hypocrite.

That's why it's always top of mind for me.

So that's the trick.

You have to start a company where it's required that you have to delegate things and be okay with.

But I'm.

I will always probably have that struggle internally, but not as much when I trust the people who are in, who are in it with me, who are doing the stuff.

And right now I feel really good about the people.

Well, I think that if anything comes from today's conversation for me, and it will, is I need to spend a little bit more time understanding what vision I have for my interactions with my people.

And when I say my people, yes, there's my work people, but there's also my home people.

Right.

And I have tried to sort of carry on a reputation of a certain, just certain expectations and, and all of that.

And I think that I try to be very outcome based for how I measure success.

Yeah.

But it active.

I still find myself monitoring activity to a degree that I think is healthy.

By the way, I do think I'm in a healthy zone.

But I do listen to these stories about the Steve Jobs example I gave.

And I know of personal friends who have taken control freak to the wrong levels.

And I Think that I have something to learn right now.

And one of those things that I have to learn is that I need to get out of the activity way more and more into the results.

And people appreciate that.

They want to be held to a standard.

I'll get a result, yes.

But micromanagement, while I wouldn't consider myself a micromanager, I have micro management tendencies and like moment.

Yeah, no, same.

That's why I'm always trying to not be.

There's a freedom in releasing that by saying, oh, Denise is in charge of that because my vision, I'm just going to drive everybody crazy.

And so I need to stay out of that stuff.

Well, I mean, part of that is because otherwise it would just never end.

I see everything that's, you know, we see every detail, we understand what it should be and.

And also we break people on accident when we're not building up their ability to just take ownership over things.

And we keep like inputting our own.

And that's the hardest thing is like that.

And we come back from a conference and we tell everybody we learned a new thing.

Everyone stop everything that you've been doing the last however long and all the projects that you're excited about finishing up soon, stop all of that.

Yeah, I've got something brand new or I read a book or I saw a movie or I had a dream.

And I think that, that actually there is a lot to be said for having that intermediary integrator filter between you and your people.

And you know, some people listening are like, nice, Mel and Kurt, thanks.

I have two employees.

Like I am the employee or I'm going to.

I've just hired my first employee and I think that everything that we're saying still applies, but obviously differently when you're first new.

Can I give a tip on this?

Because I think one of the things I think is really important when I was.

And I still struggle with it, but it's a mindset thing.

Really all it is is you have to imagine that you are the vision of the company.

Or if you don't think of yourself as a visionary, you are the owner and you are at the highest level, you are not just doing the work.

Just think of that as the most temporary part of what you're doing.

You're a builder and you have to act like that when, even when you hire the very first person, you're going to feel like a fraud.

You're going to feel like that.

Imposter syndrome.

If you're most normal people and you're Maybe going to act buddy.

Buddy or friends.

No.

You have to hold them to the standard of the big company that you're building.

Not just this one, but when you practice that mindset, at least for me, it really transformed.

I learned to think like that.

But it takes a lot of practice.

I will say that.

Yeah.

And it's a lot to ask when you're starting out because it feels so impossible that you will be building something because you've got the reality and you're hustling all day and doing the work and everything.

Kurt, I was out in the field today doing some window cleaning.

Estimates haven't done it in about eight years, seven years.

But I'm helping my old company while my brother just had a baby, and they're a little shorthanded.

We help them take care of that.

Are you serious?

It was like, I got to have fun by going back and doing the thing that was easy for me before.

But I remember that feeling of, like, every day you have to hustle.

It's a lot of work.

So it's hard to be a visionary when you're so exhausted, but kind of have to.

I don't know, now that I'm thinking about it, it's really hard to.

To tell people who are just starting out how to do it better, because if they're anything like me, they're going to do it the hard way for about 10 years.

Oh, yeah.

That's another way of knowing you're a visionary.

Do you like doing everything the hardest possible way, even when you know it's not right?

Okay, you're probably.

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, this was like a really.

I could talk about vision, visionary business all day and all night.

This was a really fun conversation.

And we didn't even really get into a lot of the controlling aspects of it.

Maybe we did, but I think we could.

I think we could have a guest on to talk more about, like, scenarios, too, because I can think of.

We've named some that were cool and that would be good, but at the end of the day, I. I think the listener probably went so introspective.

I. I know I did.

I. I hope they did.

If you're listening to this and you had some moments in your mind, you're like, that's where I get a little unhealthy.

That's where I get a little bit controlling.

Oh, this is probably a little further than I need to go.

The fact is, is if you're doing that, you're probably just defaulting to a normal thing.

You're Not a bad person by any means.

And it's that line.

You have to do it.

Like, part of pushing your vision onto other people is I must control the situation.

I must even control the person to a certain degree.

But also I need to know where that boundary is.

And.

And I think that that boundary is going to have to be something that you understand within yourself.

And hopefully, as you've thought a little bit retrospectively on some of your past experiences and thoughts and feelings and whatever.

Maybe you got to a point where you're like, I could tune a little bit there.

Yeah.

And one last thing I'll say about this is I think visionaries don't live in the fear.

And to grow outside of just the small business mentality, you have to live.

I. I don't know how to say this.

I had it in my head right as I was talking, but it's like you have to be open to what other people are saying.

Because I remember when I first started owning a business and I was hearing everybody.

Well, not really hearing, but I was just, you know, on the Internet that had just come into existence a little bit, but everybody, like, just knew exactly what to do.

But nowadays we have people who are actually going to tell you, like, hey, Want to skip 10 years?

Do this thing.

Yeah.

If you find that right person, take a chance and listen to them and just follow their step by step.

It doesn't mean it just will save you so much time.

I wish I had had that blueprint.

I don't know if I would have had the insight to.

I don't think I would have followed it, just to be honest, but I wish I would have.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, most businesses don't die from not knowing what to do.

They die from what they do, so.

Yeah.

Well, thank you for this conversation.

It was very helpful to me.

As a reminder.

Me too.

What I should not be doing.

Me too.

Me too.

Hold us accountable to.

To being the people that we are talking about.

Well, thank you, Melanie.

It's been an absolute pleasure talking to you and look forward to our next conversation where we will go deep on the things that are on the minds of entrepreneurs and visionaries who have a lot of concern about some of the bigger things in this world.

See you, Kurt.

See ya.