Summary

Adam Packard, founder of Ninja Prospecting, discusses his journey from the golf business to starting his own marketing and business development company. He shares his experience with using LinkedIn for prospecting and explains his manual approach to avoid automation and LinkedIn restrictions. Packard also talks about his long-term vision for his business and the importance of coaching. The conversation touches on topics such as the challenges of selling advertising, the use of Sales Navigator, and the value of personalized outreach. In this conversation, Jothy Rosenberg and Adam Packard discuss the future plans for Adam's company, Ninja Prospecting. They explore the possibility of transitioning to a broader marketing focus and rebranding as Ninja Marketing. They also discuss the challenges of changing company names and the importance of long-term vision. Adam shares his source of grit as being inspired by his father's entrepreneurial success and his desire to provide a better life for his family. They also touch on the idea of slowly transitioning from the current business model to the new one and the importance of having a strong team.

Takeaways

• Adam Packard transitioned from the golf business to starting his own marketing and business development company, Ninja Prospecting.
• Ninja Prospecting takes a manual approach to prospecting on LinkedIn, avoiding automation and focusing on personalized outreach.
• The company uses Sales Navigator for prospecting, but also leverages other tools like Apollo and ZoomInfo for more specific targeting.
• Packard's long-term vision for Ninja Prospecting is to build a referral-based business and offer coaching to help clients maximize their marketing efforts. Consider the long-term vision when naming a company to avoid the need for future rebranding.
• Transitioning from one business model to another can be challenging, but starting fresh with a new company may be a more effective approach.
• Having a strong team is crucial for successfully navigating business changes and growth.
• Grit and determination are essential qualities for entrepreneurs, often fueled by a desire to provide a better life for their families.
• Balancing the current business while working on a new venture requires careful planning and management.

Sound Bites

"As a golfer, I had to get out West."

"You never have to shovel sunshine."

"Be good at marketing and have a team on the backend to be able to execute this and then, um, leverage that."

"Eventually probably change it from Ninja prospecting to Ninja marketing and be more of a marketing company.”

Links

Adam’s Ninja Prospecting: https://ninjaprospecting.com/

Please leave us a review: https://podchaser.com/AdventuresOnTheCanDo

Tech Startup Toolkit (book): https://www.manning.com/books/think-like-a-startup-founder

Jothy’s website: https://jothyrosenberg.com

The Who Says I Can’t Foundation: https://whosaysicant.org

Jothy’s TEDx talk on disabilities: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNtOawXAx5A

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Background

03:12 The Manual Approach to LinkedIn Prospecting

08:37 Using Sales Navigator and Other Tools

14:43 Building a Referral-Based Business

23:41 The Challenges of Changing Company Names

27:56 Finding Grit and Inspiration in Family

29:53 Building a Strong Team for Business Growth

35:10 Balancing the Current Business with a New Venture

38:11 Conclusion and Appreciation

Hey, Adam. Welcome to the podcast episode.

Hey, hey!

Thank you. It's nice to be on the other side of the table for once. I appreciate it.

Yeah, and it's so funny because you just look so professional in the new outfit.

Which is so funny because this is like this is this is dressed up for me I I usually joke that I'm always wearing a hat or a hoodie unless I'm going to a wedding or a funeral But yeah, this is my new look so

All right, well, we'll take advantage of it. So just say a little bit about, because I think it's phenomenal that you grew up in Maine, which is way up here in the country. And now you live in probably the hottest place other than Death Valley, Phoenix. And I'm just guessing that the whole

reason you went there was golf.

You're not wrong. yeah, I didn't, I didn't move directly. I went to school in Pennsylvania, then lived in Denver for a few years and then down to Phoenix about 20 years ago. So, but yeah, the golf season in Maine was three months. I remember playing in the state championship and it was, the ground was frozen and it was snowing. and it was just, yeah, as a golfer, I had to get out West.

That's a, there's a new meaning of a sand trap when it's actually a snow, a snow trap.

It's more like asphalt. Yeah. Just frozen sand. Yeah.

I'm gonna go back.

So if you were a golf pro, you must be really good.

I'm pretty good, I can get it around. I'll take some money from you anytime you wanna go out there and tee it up.

I don't play golf. Golf is one of the sports I don't do. But I mean, how often are you getting out nowadays?

Once every couple of weeks right now, not a, not a ton. it's as hard with the eight year old at home and of course summer now. So, but usually once every couple of weeks, I'll get out and take some money off some, some friends, but, it's more of a fun now.

So they must make accommodation for like you can really, really early morning tea times when the day is going to be 120.

yeah. We keep you off in the summer. I think the first tee times at like six 20, six 30. So we get off and we're done by nine. And so it's perfect. And everybody's like, yeah, it's, it's hot out there. It's dry heat and that's 110 is 110, but I would retch. I always tell people you can't, you never have to shovel sunshine. So, you know, I don't, I'm not a cold weather guy. I'm more of a warm weather guy. So I prefer being able to jump in my pool. It's 90 degrees and.

Enjoying the warm weather and what's nice about Phoenix is you can drive an hour and a half north and be at 7 ,000 feet elevation and it's 30 degrees cooler and it's like a whole different world. So it's a great place to live.

Hmm. Where do they get all the water for the golf course?

That's a good question. I don't know the Rocky Mountains. Yeah, it just kind of trickles its way down to us.

Okay, so You are a your startup guy you've got a startup right now it's called ninja prospecting and And and in your bio we talked about some of the things you did before that but but you know really you you came out of the corporate world and you

You saw some things, and I would love for you to describe what was the thought process that led you to doing what you're doing now. And then we'll take it from there.

Yeah, I've been in networking and sales for most of my life after my career in the golf business. and I kind of fell into this. It's not something that I thought I would ever do. when I got laid off from a corporate position, I had a friend that had a new startup and he reached out to me. We've been friends for a while. We've done some, some business together in the past. And he said, Hey, I have this new startup. Can you help me generate some, some business? And.

They were trying, it was as actually in the golf business and they were selling GPS devices. They go on the golf cart. So if you ever play a golf course and has the GPS, so you can see the hole in front of you. And they were basically selling advertising on those units. And so he's like, I need to need to sell advertising. And so I had never sold advertising a day in my life. So I literally went to Google and typed in how to sell advertising. Who do you market to? And the list of, you know, media buyers and agencies and those types of things came up.

And I realized the only place I could find them was on LinkedIn. I always had a LinkedIn account, had never really used it. And so trial and error, just got in there and figured out what works and what doesn't. We landed some national clients forum, which was really cool. and then my wife was actually the one that said, Hey, you're pretty good at this. You should do this for other people. And that's kind of how it started. So it was helping a friend out, started to do it for other people. and of course it's changed quite a bit in the last seven years. Now we've got it pretty.

pretty well refined and working well. but that's kind of how I fell into this whole space of marketing and business development for people.

It's funny how a little comment from a spouse can just make such a...

She's so great. She's such an, I mean, she's like my biggest fan. Like she talks me up to everybody and, and just, you know, is amazed at what we've created here. And, but yeah, without her, you know, supporting, obviously she does a ton, to support me in the business. So, but yeah, she kind of was the one that said, do this for other people. This is kind of your thing. And it, it was great timing. You know, I was in a corporate role, but I knew I was not going to stay there for my career. I'm not a corporate guy. never has never have been. So it was.

It was my first real like job. I mean, cause out of college, I worked at golf courses. I don't consider that really corporate. then I worked for a motivational speaker that wasn't really corporate cause I didn't have an office job. Then I was in network marketing for 15 years, you know, working from home. And so when I took the corporate role, it was definitely kind of, you know, having to clock in and clock out and, and be on someone else's schedule. They kind of knew that I wasn't going to be there long -term.

and then they had a reshuffling and laid off about 200 people, from the company all at once. And I found myself, you know, one of the newer guys, that they let go, which, you know, was a blessing and a curse. Of course, you'll want it happens. You're like, what am I going to do? And I have no income and, you know, they gave me a three month severance and what's the next step we have, you know, you know, family and a home and, you know, children to support and, yeah, but it was kind of that push I needed to kind of, okay, time to get back to doing your own thing.

And then when I had that friend reach out, that's kind of what spurred the whole thing.

Well, without giving away any trade secrets, can you explain? So right now, LinkedIn has, I think I just saw the number, 950 million users on it. And in some fields, everyone you know, like mine, everyone you know is on LinkedIn. And, but,

What you do is something that it's not super obvious and straightforward, or else you wouldn't have a job or you wouldn't have a business. I even put some stuff in my book about how when you're looking for, you're trying to sell to somebody. And there's, besides Sales Navigator, which is like a separate tool they kind of provide, that

mines the same database, but you can just use the search in a way that most people don't know about. And so there's all this stuff that's somewhat hidden in LinkedIn. Is all of what you do through Sales Navigator, first question, is that true?

For the most part. Yeah. I mean, sales navigator is not perfect. by any stretch there could be, it could be a lot better. I would say 90 % of our clients probably use sales navigator. We require it because we need to be able to, you know, find the right people and do more outreach and stuff. I do have some clients that we build outside lists for, whether it's I want to target the founders or CEOs of an Inc 5 ,000 list, or I need to find people that are in series A or series B funding stages.

Cause you can't get that granular inside of sales navigator. So we might need to use Apollo or zoom info or a tool like that to be able to build a list. but the preference is always to use sales navigator. Cause that allows us to not only find the right people, but find people who are more active on the platform. and that increases the chance of, you know, kind of getting that conversation going.

So full disclosure, I've actually been a customer of your service. OK.

We prefer client customers. Client is under the care of someone else. Customer is someone you do a transaction with. You were a client. Yes. I take care of my people.

OK, I was a very happy client. And so you asked me for some words to describe what I was looking for. And at that point, I started to see some results. So the rest was a little opaque to me. But how much of it is automated and how much of it is

Hehehe

is manual from the point at which you got a sense of... You had me fill out, by the way, one of the largest intake forms I've ever seen. Did you do that as a test or did you actually use that information?

That's I use that for everybody. Yeah. I had one client that messaged me the other day. She's like, it took me three hours to fill this thing out. She's like, but I would say 95, you know, close to a hundred percent of the people that we send it to, they think it's a great exercise because. You know, when you start to look at marketing, unless you kind of have it dialed in, it's hard to just, you can't be general in your approach. You can't be general in your audience or your offer. And so it does.

does a good job of kind of giving us that 30 ,000 foot view of what are we trying to do? What, who are you and how do we make this work for you? so yeah, we use that for everybody.

I knew it was important and I think it did take me three hours. I didn't quite finish it. I got to a certain point and I said, all right, I've just decided you've got all you need.

I guess some people do that too. They're like, yeah, I'll skip that question. and yeah, so it can be a little redundant, but sometimes that makes you think a little bit deeper because the goal is really to kind of get inside the head of the person that you're trying to reach out to. And if we can do that, then when we reach out and start that conversation, it just, it hits home.

Mm -hmm. And so how much of it is, once you get all that, how much are you able to, like, do you have some bots that you're using that go in and do all this? Or do you?

I kind of, I know it's actually everything. There is no automation whatsoever. everybody always asks, do you guys use AI? And we don't, because I don't think AI and what we do from a copywriting standpoint to help start these conversations. I haven't found a way to kind of in inject that personality of the person, that we're working with. So everything is done manually from the creation of everything to the execution of it.

so we're not using, you know, and LinkedIn's against bots and automation anyway. So if they catch you using it, they'll shut you down. And so about six years ago, we moved to a completely manual process. So we do all the creative work. we do all the strategy, all the copy and targeting, and then I hand that off to my team and they're the ones that actually execute everything manually, which is safer. it's more consistent, more targeted. but yeah, there's no automation whatsoever. it's all done manually.

Hmm. I'm not surprised that they object to bots, but I wasn't sure that that would necessarily dissuade everybody from using them anyway.

They still use them. Yeah. It's almost like that, gray area. I think LinkedIn kind of looks the other way because it brings in users and a lot of premium subscriptions when people are using software and automation. and a lot of people use them, but I always caution people against it because the last place you want to be is LinkedIn jail, which is basically they've restricted your account. You can't log in. then you have to kind of like prove that you didn't do something, which could be challenging. so yeah, that's why we.

We moved away and we kind of pride ourselves in being the opposite. And so if we're the opposite, we're not doing any automation. We're doing everything manually. And that's a big kind of selling factor for us.

And they probably love it because they're still getting all the additional sales navigator licenses.

Yeah, now we're, we're a very tiny subset of the 950 million people, obviously using LinkedIn. So, but yeah, we, you know, I think having that differentiator helps us stand out in a very crowded marketplace.

Okay, so here you are, you've got this, you're a bunch of ninjas that are prospecting. And now you've had some discussions with me, but let's have those a little bit more here about what you find not working and what you...

what your long -term vision is for what you'd like to see this become.

Yeah. And I think our offer and our program has changed probably 20 times in the last seven years, because I'm always looking at what everybody else is doing and trying to be different. There are a lot of agencies out there. There are a lot of marketing companies. most of them charge a high monthly fee, like a retainer type of model. Our model is a little bit different. And so we're kind of building out a system.

I'm giving you all the tools and resources and team to execute that system. So we do charge a setup to build everything out, but then I'm giving away my tools and my team at cost every month. So it's a slightly different model. And then we do coaching and support on the backend. So, a little bit different in the fact that we're not charging a thousand, $2 ,000 a month to do the work. my goal is to build a huge referral based business.

You know, obviously charge enough upfront to make it worth our time to build the system, but for about the cost of one client for most people, they can build a system that can do all this stuff for them. on autopilot, even though it's not automated, where it can bring in clients regularly. that's kind of our goal. Kind of flipped the script on the, on the model.

And what you're trying to do is something that's a lot more scalable than what you can do right now.

Yeah. So that's the long -term play. Obviously you've been doing this for a while and I'm still very involved in the process because I really enjoy the strategy part, like talking to you and saying, okay, what's going to work best for you? and kind of coming up with the best game plan. I enjoy that part of it because it's the creative part that I like. so I'm still very hands -on in the beginning, but the goal is we grow and scale is to, you know, obviously leverage the knowledge that we have and how to actually create this and do it the right way from the beginning.

but then give that away to people and then offer coaching on the back end to kind of help them maximize it and leverage it. So that's how we'll be able to scale is bringing in the right team to be able to kind of take some of that fulfillment stuff off the plate.

Yeah, you love coaching. You wrote a book about it. You wrote a book about it.

I enjoy it. Yeah, it's fun. Yeah. Yeah. I did. Yeah. It hasn't been published yet, but it's, it's on my to -do list to, to finalize and, and get that out there.

I read it. I loved it. It's about a golf course too. And I didn't realize the extreme importance of what a golf course, why a golf course would be in your book. Now I got it. I didn't know you were a golf pro before. And...

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the, and the title of the book is called the caddy master. So it's, it's, if you haven't been at a golf course, some of these courses don't have golf carts. They have caddies. and I actually worked at a golf course when I was 20 in New York and there were no golf carts. There were only caddies and I was the caddy master. So I was the guy that was, you know, assigning the different caddies. Yeah. So now that character's not me in the book, but, yeah, that's kind of the connection to golf.

you were that guy.

Well, if when we had all those other Zoom calls and whatnot, if sitting behind you was a picture of the Masters, then I would have started asking golf questions, but I never saw that before. All I ever saw was your New England Patriots hat, which of course I really appreciated.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I'm gonna, we just moved. So I gotta, I gotta fill in the office a little bit, but yeah, my, I want to put some stuff behind me where it kind of gives a little glimpse into me and what's important to me. So golf obviously is one of them family. So yeah, my wall is going to be filled up with some other stuff here shortly.

What's behind me these days is all the items that we're going to be auctioning off on Saturday for our fundraiser for the nonprofit foundation that my family runs. So I got to tell you about this one. So there's a local shop, wine shop, that and the.

That's awesome. That's awesome.

owner and I have become friends and for the last two years he's been donating wine and he gives me some high -end wines but the first time he did it he gave me two and then last year he gave me four. Two reds and two whites and they were nice, really nice wines. This year I go in there two days ago in fact is when he did it.

He gave me nine bottles of wine, three pinot, three cabs, and three Italians. And the total value of the nine wines is $718.

some good wine.

It is, I mean, he was the way he does his, his shelves is that the, the really cheap wines are at the floor and the, and the, and, and on the top shelf, the cheapest thing on there is like 55 bucks and up and in between is in between. And, and so he's just, he's walking around saying, okay, I want to give you three of these. And he's going, he's just picking from the top shelf. So I know we're getting, you know, the.

Yeah.

Hahaha.

primo stuff. And it's, it's, it's going to be a huge hit because I know there's some people that are coming that are, that are wine aficionados. Still, it's so hard to get enough to pay for one running prosthetic leg, which is about 20, $21 ,000 for a child's running leg. They are very expensive.

Yeah, what does that... 20 grand? Wow.

That's crazy. That's crazy.

Yep. Well, we'll just have to figure out other ways to raise more money. But this is our 10th anniversary.

That's awesome. Now that's awesome what you do.

So back to this. Okay, so.

So I know where you want to see this go. And you've said a little bit about how you'd shift this model. And one of the main things is that it's pretty leveraged. And you're going to be able to leverage the team and the tools that you've developed and essentially give those to

you know, third parties that now how do they, how will that third party pay you? What will you be selling them? Will it be the tools? Is that what you're selling them? The tools?

No, we'll be giving away that at cost. I'm not going to make anything on that. So you need someone to help you with copywriting. I've got copywriters. You need someone to help you execute it. Obviously we have that part covered. I'll be compensated on the backend where they want to have help with coaching, support, sales, training, mindset, work, you know, business building, right? A lot of the people that we work with are newer entrepreneurs, newer business owners.

Now all of a sudden they're wearing 15 different hats and, and, you know, I'm a big believer of staying in your lane of what you're really good at. And if you can do that and outsource and find the right partners to kind of come in and fill in some of the other gaps, I want to, I want to be the company that, you know, gives, gives so much away that people want to hire us to help them kind of execute on it. so that's the goal is to, you know, kind of be that, that provider for people to be able to generate the conversations and.

Be good at marketing and have a team on the backend to be able to execute this and then, leverage that. And hopefully I'd love to get some more, you know, speaking work. I've, I've spoken quite a bit over the last 20 years. I enjoy that part, do more writing. I want to write more. so it'll free my time up to do more of the creative stuff and add more value, whether it's every month coming up with a new idea or a new strategy, and then sharing that with the community. because.

marketing and things that are working are always changing. So if I can kind of stay on top of that and spend more time doing that versus the, you know, little day to day operational stuff that I have to do now, that's kind of the goal longterm.

So does the name still work? Is it still Ninja Prospecting?

I'd like to change it to Ninja marketing, eventually, but that's a whole thing. I had, we actually, when we first started, I think I've had four or five different names at one point. It was get your link on dot Ninja was our website. And so I would send emails out, but all of my emails would go to spam because who has a dot Ninja email address. I saw it. I thought it was cool. And so I grabbed it. And so I had to do a complete rebrand where we now are Ninja prospecting.

but we do a lot more than prospecting. I mean, we do a lot of coaching and support and business development and marketing. So, eventually probably change it from Ninja prospecting to Ninja marketing and be more of a marketing company.

You know, it's so funny about naming because...

People name things a lot of times without a super long -term view, I would say. And to me, the most interesting example is that one of my company's three or four back, we had a new investor come in and their name was One Liberty Ventures.

Mm -hmm.

and sounds like a really cool name. And the reason it sounds like a really cool name is that it's a really cool street address. Liberty Street in Boston is an old part of town. And if you have the house or the, sorry, the office right on the very end, well, its address is 1 Liberty. But then they moved. And...

I laugh at anybody that puts their address as their name, because changing names is really hard once you're established. And they moved out to the alewife part of Cambridge. And they kept the name One Liberty for a few years after that, but they finally changed it, and I forget what they changed it to. And I was talking to somebody today that is...

a booking agency for getting on the high listenership podcasts. And they did a very, what normally I would say is a very good thing, which is make sure your company says something about what you do and yours does that. Okay. It is prospecting and you know, chop, chop, chop, ninja. But they named themselves Speak On Podcasts.

Yeah.

That makes more sense.

or yeah, but they've decided that they're gonna branch out and they're not just gonna do that. They're gonna actually help people market their podcasts. And so they're gonna have to go through a name change.

It's a ton of work. You don't realize how much stuff is connected. You know, agreements and websites and, and marketing materials and logos. And I mean, it's, it's endless. Yeah.

It's.

I do know it's so it's it's it's a dreadful process to have to change your name. And and so, you know, I think you don't want to name yourself after a locale and you and you don't want to name yourself without thinking long and hard about where do I think this will be in 10 years? You know.

Yeah. And when I started this, I didn't, I had no idea what was I going to do this for 10 years. Right. So I think that kind of played into it. Like I'll just do this as kind of a little side project for fun. And it started to pick up steam, started to get better at it. Started to bring on some team members to help me leverage my time and, and yeah, but when, when I started this, I didn't see where it could go. And now obviously being, you know, in this for almost seven years, now I can kind of get a vision for where it can go.

so it's definitely changed everything. I'm looking at everything differently.

Yeah, so will you be able to transition from the ninja prospecting, what you do today, which I realize you just said is not just prospecting. But now you're going to be doing a much broader set of marketing types of things. Is this something where you're going to keep

company A running like it is, while in the background you're working on company B, and then when it's ready, you pull the switch, or is this more going to be, OK, we're going to slowly transition, and company A is just going to become company B through this sort of slow transition?

That's a good question. And I don't have, I don't have an answer yet. It's it's because it's slightly different, but it's very similar. So I think just from a business standpoint, it'd be easier to start fresh. obviously keep doing what we're doing, but kind of phase out of it over time. And then kind of change to the new model that we're looking at. but yeah, it's kind of that, it's kind of that interesting kind of time where.

I'm still having to manage the business that we have now, but as we're working on evolving it, is it a brand new business? Is it just an extension of what we're currently doing? So I see it more as a new, a new venture using all the tools and systems and team and knowledge that we have from the previous one and just maybe a rebrand and repositioning. but yeah, I haven't quite figured that out just yet. And that's part of the challenge of being an entrepreneur is.

is not having all the answers all at once and kind of figuring out as you go.

Well, I had a company that I had to do a significant transformation with. I don't know that this is going to be super helpful, but there might be one idea in here. So it was a company that was in a market. It was actually fourth in a market that was declining. It was in the document management market, which was going with

in the process of going away. And if you're first in a market that's declining, that's not a good place to be. It's way worse to be the fourth in that market that's going away. And so this is a great reason to change the name of the company, by the way. So I changed the name of the company. It was called Novasoft.

And we changed his name to Fact Point, which is one of those names that's like two words and it doesn't mean anything. We weren't super creative about it, but it also, we could shape it into anything we wanted. And here's the mistake I made. One of the many, many mistakes that I describe in my book. Because when the...

When the board said, now listen, there's still revenue to be made here. So you need to be cognizant of that and get all the revenue you can. But by the way, you also have to start this new thing. And I should have said, no, that's not how it's going to work. You're going to have to put money in. I'm going to shut down the old thing gracefully and start something new. But I didn't do that. Instead,

I said, okay, great. The sales guy and the sales team will keep the revenue going. And the marketing guy is all focused on the whole new thing, except that sales can't necessarily do their job without help from marketing. And that would really be frustrating for sales. And marketing kept complaining that if I can't focus on this new business, it'll never take off.

And so ultimately I'd made the wrong choice. And I'm not sure that necessarily means that you should shut one down and go to the other. I'm just saying it's very hard to smoothly transition from one thing into another. That's my only point.

Yeah. And when I started this, you know, I've had a corporation for 12 years, because my CPA said you should set up a corporation. So, so I did. so I think knowing how to actually run a business now with income and expenses and have it completely separate from, you know, living off the income that I make and, and kind of co -mingling. I could be way better at that. But when I started, I had no idea. I mean, I was just.

I found something that I enjoyed doing. We were good at it. It turned into a business. And I think starting fresh with a fresh set of books and a fresh approach and, and leveraging all the things we've done for the last seven years would probably make more sense because the goal eventually is to grow it to a point and then scale and sell. and I don't think I could do that the way I have things set up right now. So I think it makes more sense to kind of.

Set something up that's new, almost like a newer version of what we've been doing, but just have it a lot cleaner.

Well, the key would be, for you to pull that off, the key would be the team. You'll have an expensive kind of double team for a little while. And then the one person that has to kind of move back and forth, but that shouldn't be too difficult, is you. And anyway, so it's just.

Here we are, we're brainstorming right here on the podcast.

Yeah, like we, like the way I haven't currently set up right now, which is super frustrating is, you know, even though we give away our team, our VA team to actually execute the stuff at cost every month, people are still paying me. And I'm like, okay, so I've got this large bill every month to pay my, my team. And it's basically, you know, it's a wash, right? The people pay me, then I pay my team. So I'm like, why don't you just pay my team? Just cut me out of that part of it. I don't, I don't need to collect the.

Couple hundred bucks and then send it to my team. And so we're in that slow transition of getting rid of that large expenditure every month and changing up our revenue model. VA team, you know, my, my team loves it because they're getting paid immediately versus having to wait 30 days. and just keeps it nice and clean. So we're kind of in the process of moving more to that model. which is good for everybody. but yeah, it's a bit of a process when you make any of these changes.

So like any startup person, you've had to develop grit or else you already had it. What do you think your source of grit is?

Man, that's a good question. I mean, there's a life of a business owner and entrepreneur. I mean, it's, you have stretches where things are going great and you're like, this is awesome. You know, had a great week, had a great month. And then you have those months where things just don't come through clients and say they were coming on board, end up, you know, canceling or changing their mind. And you make, you know, makes you rethink your entire strategy. And should I be doing this? Are we adding value? Are we helping people?

But man, I mean, it all comes back to. I want to provide the best life for my family. My dad did that for me. He was an entrepreneur. He started a business with, he, I'll tell you a story. He's pretty interesting. So he was a great salesperson and he worked for a copier company, selling copiers and faxes back when, you know, copiers and faxes were pretty, you know, used regularly. so he worked with this guy and, the guy, not a nice man.

he asked him to sign a non -compete while he was working for him and said, Hey, I need you to sign this saying that you're not going to ever go out and start your own business and be a competent competitor of me. And he saw that. I think he went home, you know, slept on it and came back and he quit his job. And he said, I'm not signing that. And he went out and started his own company, with $500 and, you know, sold a car, sold my mom's ring, to start this business. And he grew it to.

a hundred million, a hundred million dollar company. you know, a couple hundred employees sold it to icon office solutions. but he kind of had that moment where he's like, okay, I can either work for this guy or I can start fresh and have my own thing and have no, have no limits. So I think I learned a lot of that from my dad. and then, yeah, I think just kind of seeing the lifestyle that he created for our family growing up.

You know, we were always, my wife choked. She's like, you had like the perfect childhood. You know, your parents are awesome. They're still awesome. You know, you grew up in this small town and you had everything. but I appreciated everything. I didn't, I never took any of it for granted. my wife had a completely different childhood growing up. So, you know, she can't relate to my childhood and I can't relate to her childhood. But I think having him as an example of this is what I want to have for my family.

I think that's what helped me kind of develop that grit that I'm not going to work for somebody else. I'm going to start my own thing because I know I am in control. I can take my son to school every morning. I can pick him up every afternoon. I can take off for a week and enjoy vacation, even though I'm still, you know, knee deep in the business, but having it, it's all on me. I'm not relying on anybody else. And I think I learned that from my dad.

Cool. Was he in your book?

Yeah, he's the, he's the caddy master.

He's the Cate Master. Is his name George?

His middle name is George.

OK. OK. All right. Well, you have any last things you want to say?

Yeah.

No, I mean, I just appreciate, I'm so happy you and I cross paths. I think, you were referred by one of our clients and then I connected you to, some of the people I work with. And I knew, I knew as soon as we met, you know, being that you're from Boston and I'm from Maine that, you know, we did, you know, immediately have that Northeastern connection. And yeah, it's been awesome just to kind of working with you and seeing what you do and having you help me through some of these challenging, you know,

conversations and where do I go from here and how do I grow this? Yeah, I really appreciate having your guidance as we grow this.

I love the opportunity to hear the ideas and have some hopefully useful insights occasionally. And.

Absolutely. And hopefully one of these days we meet face to face. That's one thing I've only met probably, gosh, less than a handful. You know, I can count on one hand how many clients I've worked with over the last seven years that I've met face to face. You know, it's always fun because, you know, you're always on zoom and or phone calls and you never get to actually shake someone's hand and say, thank you.

I will not come to Phoenix in the summer.

The pool is warm. It's beautiful out here. Doesn't rain.

Yeah.

Well, you know where I'm now swimming three days a week is in Walden Pond. So you remember that. Yeah, yeah. It's like just an amazing place.

That's awesome. yeah. yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

We'll probably go somewhere where we have some more space and, and kind of live the, you know, not completely off the grid, but more off the grid.

Mm -hmm. Sounds fun. All right, well, thanks very much. Wonderful to have you on. And like everyone who's on, as a thank you gift, I am going to be sending you an autographed copy of this book.

Awesome. I got your I've got your hoodie by I showed it to you to my wife and she's like, that's a really nice hoodie. She's like, you need to wear that more often. So next time we have a zoom, I'll have it on for you.

Yeah, well the problem with the hoodie is that I sent it to somebody that is now dealing with 110 degree days. And it's like, when only.

Doesn't matter. I wear it inside all the time. My wife's like, what are you doing wearing a sweatshirt? It's 105 degrees outside. I'm like, I like to be warm. I like, this is just my, kind of my comfort blanket.

And if you stay inside in the air conditioning, then it's probably just fine. Yeah.

Exactly. Exactly. Well, good to have a great event this weekend too. Hope that goes awesome. Yep.

Thank you. Thank you.