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The Transparent Podcast
The Transparent Podcast
Chris Reese on the Secrets of Successful Ventures
Chris Reese, the dynamic CFO and Co-Owner of ASW, joins our conversation to share his journey through the world of entrepreneurship and leadership in small businesses. From family business roots to leading tech company turnarounds and global consulting, Chris's path is full of valuable insights. We'll explore the motivations behind side hustles, from seeking extra income to transforming hobbies into significant ventures, all while underscoring the importance of full commitment when accepting external capital. Chris's experience offers a firsthand look at how dedication can transform a fledgling idea into a thriving enterprise.
Our dialogue takes a turn into the evolving landscape of organizational decision-making. Discover how the shift from traditional top-down approaches to decentralized models is empowering employees and fostering a sense of ownership within teams. Through personal anecdotes, we highlight the pitfalls of ignoring team input and the benefits of incorporating frontline insights. By valuing employee buy-in, leaders can cultivate a more engaged and committed workforce, where everyone feels their voice matters and contributes to the success of the organization.
Family business dynamics, entrepreneurial ventures, and key success factors are all on the table as Chris shares his experiences with both starting from scratch and buying a franchise. The conversation touches on the essential elements for success, such as sufficient capital, humility, and hard work, while also emphasizing the role of networking and strong professional relationships. As the episode wraps up, Chris leaves us with a light-hearted but crucial reminder of the power of knowing the right people in the business world. This episode promises to be a treasure trove of wisdom for aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned business leaders alike.
It's time for the transparent podcast. We are bringing transparency to the world of small business. Hi, my name is Nick Ford and I am the host of the transparent podcast. This week. I am joined by a guest, chris Reese. And Chris, I will let you introduce yourself.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, nick. I'm honored to be a part of this podcast, happy to be able to help out and share some wisdom. I'm CFO for a company called ASW, or Atlanta Soundworks is how it was previously known in this market, but I've been an entrepreneur goodness gracious for as long as I can remember, started out with an accounting information systems practice, worked for my wife's dad my father-in-law for about three years she comes from an entrepreneurial family as well and then got into buying, fixing and flipping phone companies, had a wholesale phone company, moved out here in 2010 to be part of a leadership team to do a turnaround of a tech company in Suwannee and then spent several years traveling around the globe about a decade traveling around the globe consulting and helping other small business owners and midsize company owners, doing a lot of leadership, development or development work, yeah, and then, in beginning of 2021, ended up becoming a principal in this organization and it's been a wild ride ever since A little bit of real estate development as well.
Speaker 1:So yeah, for for people listening that don't know what principal means, you need to tell. Tell people what it means that you're a principal with the company.
Speaker 2:So I am uh, I'm one of the owners of ASW.
Speaker 1:Yeah, perfect, okay, well, yeah, so, um, I'm the owner of transparent staffing and, similar to the theme of the podcast, I believe in bringing transparency to the staffing industry, just like I believe with the podcast, bringing transparency to the world of small business. Kind of. The idea behind the podcast was that if people could hear from entrepreneurs and hear how they got started and kind of their mindset and ideas about entrepreneurship, uh, as a side business or your full-time business, uh, and the way you provide for your family, um, that they would be more inspired to to go and take that first, that step, first step um, into. You know, so lots of people have ideas and that they never act on which, um, that's part of life. But I think there's opportunities for people to learn more and be able to kind of do that, and with transparent staffing, that's what I did and you know it just started with getting my first client and then kind of snowballed from there and I always wanted to be an entrepreneur from as far back as I can remember and it's been a wild fun ride. It always is, yeah, and it's not for everyone, that's for sure too, that is true. So, as far as the podcast, I want to kind of just talk a little bit through your, your background and business. But you know a lot of people.
Speaker 1:A popular idea today is going into a side hustle. People want to have this. They think they can have and they can't. Some people can have a side stream of income on top of their w-2, you know, and thinking that I can be a passive thing or a side hustle while they have a full-time job. You see that, I'm sure, all the time. But what is your view of like? If you're on Shark Tank, they're going to tell you you got to jump all in, you got to go fully into the business if you want to be an entrepreneur. What do you see in that as far as starting a side hustle versus going all into entrepreneurship?
Speaker 2:I think the answer to that, nick, is it really depends. If you're taking outside capital, absolutely, if it's my capital, I'm going to want you all in because I don't want to have more skin in the game than you do. I do think a side hustle is a great way to test out an idea. So if you, or to convert a hobby into something that maybe just pays for itself there's all kinds of ways to do a side hustle and the gig economy has really helped out with that. You know whether it's Uber or Lyft or Grubhub or one of those.
Speaker 2:So I think it depends on the point of the side hustle. If it's just a way to make a little mad money for weekend fun or entertainment or whatever, that's one thing. For weekend fun or entertainment or whatever, that's one thing. Or if you're just trying to close the gap because you're starting out in a new career and you haven't quite worked your way into a role that covers some of the obligations, especially over the last year. I mean, you know we've seen it with our staff. They felt the pinch of inflation and we have very well compensated employees. So I think it really does. I think it really does depend.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like the way that you compare. You made the reference to whether you're taking on capital from someone, because that's not a thing I've thought about as much, because I haven't invested in other companies directly. I'm you know, I've invested in stocks and things like that. But yeah, if you're taking on money from me, if I was going to invest in someone else's business and they asked me to invest capital, then I definitely would view it a lot differently as far as a side hustle or them being fully into the business. So that's a good point.
Speaker 2:Well, and a bank is going to want to see that too, right. So if it's something that's going to require you to take out an SBA loan or you know any type of outside capital, right, then you need to really count the cost and you need to figure out okay, well, how much time am I going to be able to commit to this? Because what I've also seen is things that start out as a side hustle kind of grow and then people go all in too fast from a financial standpoint and then that turns around and gets ugly really fast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and from personal experience too, you have to be if you're married, especially with kids. You really need to discuss that with your spouse. As far as focusing in on that time management, because for me I think I can do everything all the time and we'll dive right into things, but I have to slow myself down and my wife does, my wife, sarah does help with that. You know, thinking about hold on what. What does that mean for time with the kids? What does that mean for time with us? Those, those are, you know, you'll see, it's a long list of people you look at in business that sacrifice their family life, and it was bad for their family life and for their business. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. So, as far as with ASW, how many employees do y'all have? What is the structure of your team there?
Speaker 2:Right now we're at 24. We currently have open job recs. Out of those 24, four of them are part-time roles and that's really not because that's more that person and their availability than it is our need. But yeah, we've got 24 and we're in a great niche that continues to grow. So one of our biggest challenges with staffing is A a lot of people don't understand our industry and know that it's out there as a viable option. They've got a lot of mis and then the ones that do have a lot of misconceptions about it and what the earning potential and the different roles within our industry.
Speaker 1:Yeah, ok yeah, as far as the structure of your team with 24 employees, how many people are in leadership? So like, is there multiple people that are kind of over those different teams multiple?
Speaker 2:people that are kind of over those different teams there are. So we've got an interesting organizational structure. It's very matrixed I don't know if you've heard of that term before Not really Meaning that there are cross-functional teams that operate as a unit, that have kind of that interdependent accountability, and then the person that's doing their review is not necessarily their teammates. They do have a reporting structure right. So based on what role they're doing in the organization. So we've got a leadership team of four or five if you count our coach. We do have a coach. He's kind of our de facto chairman of the board. He's a gentleman that has actually walked the path that we're walking with our growth trajectory and the plans that we have for the organization, and has done that successfully. So he's been invaluable with helping us kind of navigate this, this path.
Speaker 2:And then, outside of that leadership team, we've got certain parts of the organization. So our warehouse team and logistics team. They kind of follow more of a traditional hierarchy. They roll up to the COO and then we've got our administrative support. We call it our mission support team. They're really kind of that admin and finance accounting function. They report directly to me.
Speaker 2:But then our field teams. We've got a sales unit. So we've got a project manager that is accountable for a couple of teams. But the team will have a sales person, it'll have a sales engineer, it will have a superintendent, which we call a mission success leader, and then you've got that project manager who kind of serves as the team leader. And then those teams function as an independent business unit. So they're very similar to a franchise. They have targets and bonuses based upon those targets and there's interdependence there because there's a there's a sales component of that bonus and then there's an execution component of that bonus. And so if you're on the execution side, if there's not enough sales, you're not going to qualify for your bonus, and if you're on the sales side, if execution is failing, you're not going to qualify for your bonus. So it's a really cool. It's a really cool structure and it and it and it seems to be proving out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've been in similar structures and there's a good yin and yang there between the different teams because they're both motivated in the same kind of path. They're both working toward the same goal and motivated financially toward the same goal. So that's where that works well. So that's where that works well. So, when you think about your decision makers on your team, the people who are going to be making decisions, and then the people on the ground, kind of your ICs, like your individual contributors, do you think it's better? So we both know the person who gave me this idea. So I'll tell you his name is Houston Oliver, and a piece of advice that Houston gave me coming into the church leadership role, but also in the business world with my business, was that he said that it was better to get, it's better to implement a B plus idea that has feedback from as many people involved as possible than to implement an A-plus idea that you developed alone. So what is your thought about that and is that something that you try to think about with your team?
Speaker 2:It's a very good question, right? You think about the evolution of organizational structure and organizational decision-making, of organizational structure and organizational decision-making. So up until really probably the mid to late nineties, it was very autocratic. Most organizations were right. Everything was just top-down. Decisions were made at the top and then everybody else's job was just to do or die trying Right it was, it was execution. I think Houston is spot on.
Speaker 2:One of the things that we try to do and this team structure that we've implemented I think does this very well is we try to push decision making out to the edge of the organization.
Speaker 2:Making out to the edge of the organization Because what I have found is those closest to the problem are typically the most informed on how to solve it. Now there are certain things that affect multiple parts of the organization right, that do need to come up, because you need to be sure you've got a 360 degree view of the problem before you choose a path. So there are times where things need to go up, but that buy-in is extremely important. And what I've also found is people don't necessarily need their idea chosen, but they do need to feel heard, and so what that looks like is maybe leadership have come up with a solution to a problem or we've made a strategic decision to take on a new product or attack a specific vertical right. So before we head down that path, we're going to solicit from what we hope. I mean. Our goal is to hire people smarter than us.
Speaker 2:And that way, we want to tap into the knowledge right. We want to tap into that mental capital that we've paid for, and so we're going to have a discussion with them and let them raise their concerns. A concern or an obstacle isn't necessarily a deal breaker, but what I found is, if you can come up with the contingency or you can get buy in you know what, hey, that's a very valid concern. Valid concern. What if? Are you cool with us? You know, moving forward, if we address that concern when and if it arises, or if, why don't we set a time to get together and let's come up with a game plan for when that situation arises, so that you already know how to address it before it comes up? Could you get behind this then? And I have never found anybody that says no, if you have that type of conversation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think leadership gets into the position where they feel like they need to have that top-down approach, because and I've told leaders that when I've had leaders make decisions that I don't agree with, that I think is that I know will, that I know with very high certainty will negatively affect me personally. I've told leadership I know that you're making a decision that's looking at a bigger picture than just me. Either it's 250 employees or I'm on a team of 30 people. I know that it may be best for the whole team and not best for me, and that that's what we need to do. So I'm aware enough of that. On the flip side of that, though, I've also been in a situation I'll give you an example where we're going to implement a new way of doing recruiting at a staffing organization I worked at and they brought our whole team of about 30 people on the psychiatry division that I was on into a whiteboard meeting with a vice president, an executive vice president and a couple of directors kind of leading that, and they wanted our feedback and us to brainstorm this new way of doing recruiting, and we all whiteboarded for two or three hours. It was a great meeting. We came up with this plan that we all you know, all the frontline people thought would work well, all agreed on. And then the next week we came back into the leadership, went back and were excited about it and they were going to put together some formal kind of models and presentation that we could kind of distribute to the team and follow. They came back in and presented it to us and it was completely not what we had talked about the week before, totally opposite of what we had all talked about. And during that meeting most of the team could clearly recognize that they had already come up with this before they ever talked to any of us. Waste our time with this whiteboard meeting like did they just hope we were gonna, like they could steer us to what they had already decided, or like did they go back and decide something else? And what ended up happening is no one on the team was bought into it. No one wanted, even if it was a better idea, no one cared and none of us. We all just were like we're just gonna do things that we want to do. And it just did not go well at all and and probably I mean you know, it didn't last very long. Only, we only did it for a few weeks or a month maybe, but it just didn't go well.
Speaker 1:And I think to your point, like, you don't necessarily have to give the team that you know tell one person that's a individual contributor, they're going to make the decision or they're going to make the decision, but for them to feel like they were a part of the conversation even, and got to like you know, you're going to implement a new software that they got to like evaluate the software with the team before it just got. Hey, this is what we're using now. You're going to training on Monday. So that's kind of my experience with it. I think Houston was spot on. If you get buy-in from people and let them be a part of the process, for one thing, if you hired people smarter than you, they're probably gonna have good ideas about how to better implement it, or maybe not do it because they're gonna know things and see things that you didn't see. But also, if that is the solution, then they're gonna be bought into it and it's gonna be more successful because they felt like they were part of it. That's my experience with it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I heard several great points in what you just shared there. So, number one yeah, it does make a difference who's on the team, whether you've just hired a bunch of minions that you don't respect. You just want them to carry out your orders, which in certain organizations.
Speaker 2:I mean, hey, you know that that works. Maybe if you're laying bricks or you know you're doing some sort of low skill task, then it's just hey, I'm going to train you how to do the task. I just I'm paying you to repeat the way I trained you to do the task, and and that's kind of that. But most organizations are not that way, and so you can do a lot of damage to the culture of an organization by you, you know, trying to do buy-in and not really mean it, just like the story that you shared. Right, because the attitude that you ended up with is exactly where you go Now. I want to say two things about that. Number one buy-in is not consensus, and we need to be clear about that. So, but buy-in is again making sure that folks feel like they've been heard, the concerns that they have, the fears that they have, and they feel like those are going to be addressed, and that you care about those things that affect them.
Speaker 2:The other thing is, when you're having this conversation or you're doing a brainstorming session, the people in the room need to understand which team they're on, and I've seen this in organizations, too, that don't have a healthy culture.
Speaker 2:Is you bring certain division leaders or department leaders or whatever. You bring them into a room and the attitude they walk in with is one of I'm a representative and I have a constituency that I'm here to protect and that's the wrong attitude. When, if you're invited into that room, you are on you are on company leadership team and you're supposed to bring everything there. Now you bring your knowledge of potential issues, things that are going to create challenges for implementation. Whatever. You bring that into the room because you need to discuss those and create a plan on how to deal with those. You need to discuss those and create a plan on how to deal with those. But then once everybody agrees in that meeting on whatever the go forward plan is, then your responsibility at that point, if you were in that room as a leader in the organization, is to go out and implement right, implement Right. So I've seen I've seen that go wrong in so many ways, um, in unhealthy organizations.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's, um, it's important who you're working with and you know the the conversation can be very different if you've, you know, decided to move forward with something and someone pushes back and you, your response is basically dismissive and saying you know, that's great, I appreciate that, you told me that, but this is what we're doing and you're just have to go do it, versus saying, hey, tell me a little more about why you're concerned and how. How do you think we can make it an easier transition for the team? That's right, you can accomplish the same thing and have a completely different cultural uh, you know feedback from the team by the way you handle it. Um, so, you know, I think about, like, working with teams and one of my one of my first like experiences watching a organization uh, one of my favorite shows that's not going on anymore is Duck Dynasty and watching a family run business and the dynamics between team people in the family working together but also people not in the family was just super funny to me and I love entrepreneurship, so it's kind of seeing some of the business side of it is fun, and you and I know each other personally.
Speaker 1:I know you also work with family in your business, so does that? What kind of unique challenges do you have? Do you have an uncle sigh on your team? That's just, you know, causing problems and chaos.
Speaker 2:Not now, but, but we have, but, but we have. So I spent three and a half years in my father-in-law's business, and so it wasn't just me that was part of that organization, it was my wife, it was his sister, it was his brother-in-law, his sister's husband, uh, and it was his dad.
Speaker 1:And then we had um 25 other employees yeah, and remember some of them might listen to this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I got to watch this play out firsthand, very early on and then I got to spend some time in ASW before Shane and I took over in 21. And that was somewhat of a family business as well, because Galen Shane's dad was president and CEO, his mom was over all the finances and then you had Shane trying to drive sales initiatives. So the crazy thing. I think there's both good and bad things about a family business. When it works well and if you have people that are willing to be emotionally mature or to mature emotionally, then I think it can be very constructive. One of the cons of a family business is, depending on what family members there are, you know you're never off right. The business goes home.
Speaker 2:And you know, those personal discussions that you have get continued into the business. The personal issues get brought into the dynamics of the business. The business issues get taken into the personal realm and the family realm as well, and so it can be very good, you know, love him or hate him. This is not a political statement. But if you look at Donald Trump, donald Trump has run a family business, right. Um, he has ex-wives that he's still on very good speaking terms with and business relationship um that you know have pieces of that business and um, I think his kids have turned out pretty well. You know, um haven't seen any mug shots of them.
Speaker 1:They've stayed out of trouble.
Speaker 2:It seems like you know, um, and so you know, regardless of of how you view him from a political standpoint, as a businessman, as a businessman you know he's been able to navigate the waters somewhat successfully, right. He's had multiple, multiple marriages, right. So that's a casualty of a family business, so I have seen it work well. Now, right now, shane's wife reports to me. She's part of my mission support team and kind of a right-hand person for me, and that works pretty well. And then my son, my oldest son, jacob, works in the business as well, but he does not report directly to me. He's a couple of layers away from me and that seems to work well of layers away from me and that seems to work well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, and I've gotten to work with your team through our combined work at the church, and you know Jacob's also talented and mature, and so that helps too, having someone who you can, you know, rely on. That's also a family member, and that you got to teach and raise, so that's a lot of benefit. Yeah, rely on that. That's also a family member, um, and that you got to teach and raise, so that's, that's a very proud of benefit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you should be great, young man.
Speaker 1:Absolutely Um. So, with your background, I know you've had some other entrepreneurial uh ventures outside of ASW and you know I started transparent staffing from from scratch. I built the and I started transparent staffing from scratch. I built the branding and the clients and I did everything myself.
Speaker 1:I didn't have any outside investors, didn't have anyone really advisors or anything like that, had people like this so that I could talk to and bounce ideas off of, but that was pretty much it and I loved it. It was great. I really enjoyed it. There were some challenges, but for the most part, I really pretty much it and I loved it. It was great. I really enjoyed it. There were some challenges, but for the most part, I really really enjoyed it.
Speaker 1:I had great clients which I got lucky with to an extent where I just ended up working with really good people that were honest and transparent, which is part of why I named the company. That is just. To me, transparency is just being honest and upfront about how I work and I think by doing that I allow other people to feel like they can be that way with me and just leads a good business for me. Um, but what do you think about as far as, like I started a business from scratch. Have you done that? Have you, have you started stuff from scratch? And like, what's your opinion about maybe buying a franchise where you have an established business model, or joining a company that's already got clients and systems and all the things set up? How do you kind of view those two different ventures?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and again, some of it depends on what type of business it is. A lot of times in professional services you can start from scratch. If you as far as that business goes Because maybe you have a book of business that you're bringing with you, you know, you've established a client base, now you're ready to hang your own shingle. This happens in the trades all the time, and so that's relatively low risk, I mean there is still some risk right.
Speaker 1:It's also low capital service For me, like it's a service base, I don't need real estate and that kind of thing.
Speaker 2:That's right to me, like serve, it's a service base, so I don't need real estate, and that's right. So that's right. Um, the risk becomes, uh, really on the on the income side, right, if you, if this is no longer a side hustle, it's the main thing, then um can probably the riskiest endeavor from a startup, right? Hey, I've got this product idea. Now I'm going to go out and try to move this, push this product into the marketplace. That is super is that is super, super tough. And it can get even tougher depending on, uh, who you're up against, right? Who are the incumbents that you're trying to displace? What are the existing solutions that are solving that need, even if not well, uh, somewhat right.
Speaker 1:Or if it's something brand new.
Speaker 2:I mean, you think about the iPhone. When it came out, none of us knew we needed a smartphone, but it took a company like Apple that had the horsepower and the capital to push that thing into the marketplace.
Speaker 1:And the visionary behind it, that's right, that's right.
Speaker 2:So you know, unless you've got just a ton of capital sitting behind you, or it is a service-based business where you can start out as a solopreneur and you know just kind of eat what you kill and there's pretty low risk from a financial standpoint, you know it's a lot better to look at buying a going concern that you can bring value to or buying a franchise where you've got a proven business model and then it's just it's executed right, you've got other smart people helping you with locations and and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:Right, and that's something that I learned, I mean early on. I was that entrepreneur that was. You know, I was going to charge hell with a water pistol.
Speaker 1:I was just naive, you know and man.
Speaker 2:I got a lot of mud and dirt on my face and my nose, you know, scratched up.
Speaker 1:It was ugly yeah, well, and that's something that I got. Another thing that was lucky for me I worked for a company when I was when I started transparent staffing I was an employee benefits broker. I found out that that business seemingly maybe, maybe I just got unbelievably lucky. But I was pretty laid back about like having side hustle type things. And you know, the first client I had I originally reached out to because I was trying to help them with recruiting so I could talk to them about benefits, and that was an advice that a leadership had given me. A leader, my sales leader basically was like go just help people, find something that you're good at that you can help them with, and just go help them for free. You'll become a trusted advisor to them. You'll get to build a relationship with them. Then maybe at some point you'll talk to them about benefits.
Speaker 1:That industry is also just a very slow buildup. It was a slow sales cycle. So that's what I did. I reached out to this HR manager and told her I could help her with her job post writing because she had posted on LinkedIn about needing help with it, and she set me up with a call with the owner that afternoon.
Speaker 1:The same day I messaged her and the guy owned four companies and he just started asking me OK, what would you do to write our job posts, what would you do to? I need, I need sales people in thomasville, georgia. What would you do? And I was like, well, I would, I would call the thomas, I'd call thomasville university and ask for their business. Majors that are athletes and those are the guys are going to be competitive and no business. And and he liked what I had to say and after 20 minutes he told me to send him a proposal on how I would charge him to do all four companies recruiting.
Speaker 1:And I set it up in a way where I basically charged half of what a typical agency would charge, but he provided all of. He basically made me an internal recruiter where they paid for job posts, they paid for me to have an email and they even brought me down to Thomasville and put me up in one of his 500 properties that he owned and rented and it was great. It was zero risk. My boss knew I was doing it and had no problem with it because he saw it as an opportunity to build a relationship, and so that was.
Speaker 1:That was a lot of God's aligning things, the stars for me, um, but I also had a vision of doing that for a long time. It had been 10 years in the making of me wanting to start a business and I took the opportunity, which some people don't. But, um, my view of, like, what separates people who succeed in business and those who fail, because a stat that I've heard a few times on this podcast is that 90 percent of new businesses fail. So what do you, what do you think about what separates the people who succeed in business and the people who ultimately fail?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it comes down to four things in my experience. The first one is capital, and this is just having enough. Whether it's your own savings, whether you've raised the money, whatever, but you got to have enough cash to survive the learning curve of that business. I don't care if it's an industry that you've been in forever. Once you go out on your own, there are a lot of unknown, unknowns, and those are the things that will suck that capital. It's going to take twice as long and twice as much as you think it's going to. So that's the first thing. The second part is humility, and even the people that are coming to mind for our listeners or viewers right now that they're like. Well, I can think of five people, and I wouldn't call them humble.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they are.
Speaker 2:They were humble enough to hire smart people and, at some point, listen, because if you look at the size of their endeavor now and we're talking really in the context of a sustainable, viable business, right At some point they couldn't do it all on their own, so they had to hire people that they trusted, that they respected, that had knowledge and there's humility with that right. They have advisors Sometimes it's lawyers, accountants. You need to have a good CPA and you need to have a good attorney, and the only good attorney is your attorney, by the way.
Speaker 1:And then that's very true.
Speaker 2:You've got to be willing, number three, to put in the hard work. Yeah, you've got to be willing, number three, to put in the hard work, because it's going to be a lot more difficult than you think it is to get that thing going. And hard work is very related to number four, which is you need to have a little bit of luck or providence. You know, however, you want to contextualize that you know you got to have the right product or service, the right place, the right time. There. There is a component to that Right and, and hard work and experience help you become luckier, because you gain wisdom that helps you look at things and pick up on things that not everybody's doing, so you get more of a sense of when to back off or when to lean in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I have. I believe in luck, but I have a. I have a picture up behind me of Ron Swanson from Parks and Rec and I think he said that luck was a invention created by the weak to explain their failures. But I do think that luck has a lot to do with when hard work meets opportunity.
Speaker 1:That's exactly right, because there's so many people who had opportunities that they never acted on, and there's so many people who put in hard, work in the wrong direction and it didn't go anywhere. They're on the treadmill and work in the wrong direction and it didn't go anywhere. Um, they're on the treadmill and headed in the wrong direction, Um, and so like. For me, by the way, the things that you said, I agree with all of them. There are several more on my list of the top three things I would say, but for me, the thing I think about the most is just having goals. If you don't have goals, you are a ship without a captain and you're a ship without a destination or a plan. So you have to have goals, Otherwise you're going to just be wandering and you don't have it. You don't have something to work toward and to achieve. So that'd be the number one thing for me. That the next one would be similar.
Speaker 1:You said about hard work you have to have, you gotta be tenacious and persistent. You gotta let the failures roll off of you. If you let them, if you let them drag you down, you're going to, you're going to get dragged down and you're not going to be able to push through and succeed and get to those opportunities. Because we all uh, there's this quote, that this quote that we're all standing in our own acre of diamonds and so many of us are digging and digging and stop right before we hit the diamond. Yes, because we didn't want to keep working and so you got to have kind of blinders on and just be able to put in the work and keep persevering.
Speaker 1:And and part of that too, I think, is having faith, because you wouldn't, you wouldn't persevere and continue that hard work if you didn't have faith that it was going to lead to success at some point. Otherwise, why would you keep doing it? Um, which ties back to the goals. You gotta have the goals, the right goals too. So I think those you know having goals, being persistent and getting lucky somewhat. I mean, there is a lot involved.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the persistence. You know, the persistence has to be coupled with humility, right? So the hard work with the humility. I've seen people that have ended up broke not because they weren't willing to put in the hard work, but because they were not humble enough to take the feedback that both the market and other advisors were giving them. That's not to say there's not plenty of people that have succeeded in, you know, against the voice of opposition. That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is, you know, you need to be flexible, because how you end up is not going to be how you started, Right that?
Speaker 2:service is it needs to be informed by started right. That service needs to be informed by the marketplace feedback. It can't just be an idea that you have that you know. That's why the next generation of iPhone came out right. You know the market needs to inform you, and if you're not humble enough to listen to what the market is saying, uh, then you're not going to be very long lived.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's a great point too, being able to be flexible and adapt to the market. And paying attention. Paying attention like in being humble, yeah, being humble enough to realize you have to re re steer your course. So, so, when you, um, when you think about you know maybe people who are thinking about getting into small business that might be listening, uh, or people that you talk to what kind of advice would you give them? Um, if someone came and asked you about you know, starting a small business, or or maybe buying into a small business, like you did, um, where you joined into as a, as a principal, with a business?
Speaker 2:the very first thing would be why are you interested in that business? Because if you don't have a passion, or there's not a passion that you have, that you can tie into the hard work that it's going to take to do whatever that enterprise is, it's going to very quickly turn into another job and you're going to be regretting your decision and it's going to affect your ability to be successful. So the very first thing is you got to have a clearly defined why, and it can't just be to make a lot of money. It's got to be deeper than that. And then the second thing would be okay, well, be honest, count the cost, surround yourself with some good advisors and make sure you go in with your eyes open.
Speaker 2:You know there's plenty of businesses that have been bootstrapped, and I'm not going to go into all the ways you can do that, but you know that have been successful. But you need to go in with your eyes open and have a plan and some goals. And then you need to make sure you've got the buy-in of the people that you're responsible for, because you've got to have that support. And so those are the initial things right, and you need to have a real plan. You need to have a real plan that has withstood the scrutiny of folks that have been in that business and folks that you know your attorney and your CPA.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't have a whole lot to add to that. That was really good advice. I think some things that we talked about are takeaways for me and, um, yeah, I think just for the only other thing I would add to that and I would reiterate what, what you said. But, um, just take the first step. Like you said, a said if you want to do a side business, it's a great way to test the idea. So just take almost the same amount of effort as sitting around thinking about it and researching it to just do the first thing. Whatever that first step is If it's like just writing down a business plan or like a goal for what, what your first client is going to look like and just contact that first person, Just call them and just say you know how can I help you with whatever your idea, especially if it's a service but just do it, Take the first step. That would be the only thing I would add to that.
Speaker 2:But don't worry. Don't worry about I mean at some point, yes, you've got to prove out that the business model works right, that you can make a profit but, you know in the beginning, if you're just testing an idea or you're trying to see if the marketplace is going to buy your product or service, go out there and give it away for free, and in exchange for soliciting feedback um, that should include, hey, what would you be willing to pay for this?
Speaker 1:right, yeah, that's great, that's going to inform whether or not you know you're able to take the jump yeah, and then you may even have like kind of almost a reference there and you have a story to tell, because now you've got someone.
Speaker 2:That's right. Nobody wants to be the your first customer, especially if they have to pay for it.
Speaker 1:That's right. So tell us a little bit about how we can help ASW help you. What do y'all do and how can we help you?
Speaker 2:So ASW is really. We are involved in helping our clients create experiences that will help them impress their audience. So we've all got an audience that we need to impress, whether we're a corporation, a house of worship or a, or a school and even civic. We do a lot of work with, with communities that are trying to attract people to come live there, and we do that primarily in the audiovisual and security, physical security arenas, and so we'd love to have a conversation. If somebody that's listening to uh wants to figure out how to do a better job, the impression that they're making with either their facilities, um or um, you know, the way that they're doing their events is not, uh, consistent with the image that they're trying to project. Uh, it's not landing well with the audience they're trying to impress then they can come visit us at ASWAVcom, and then you know, if somebody wants to reach out to me, I'd love to have a conversation over a cup of coffee or whatever.
Speaker 1:If you know, I love to talk to entrepreneurs, yeah, and if you need, if you need a good reference, for ASW, you can call me because I'm a, I could be a personal reference for you.
Speaker 2:I've seen their work firsthand. Thank you, you're very kind.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so, um well, thank you for being on the podcast. I thought uh you shared some great insights and it was great learning more about ASW and your and your business uh background, so thank you.
Speaker 2:Appreciate the opportunity, nick, and hey, if you've got staffing needs, you know who you need to reach out to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know a guy.
Speaker 2:I know a guy that's exactly right. That's exactly right. Thanks so much, Nick.
Speaker 1:Thank you, chris, appreciate it Okay.