Navigating the Rapids of Entrepreneurship with Nathan Bourne: Growth, Adaptation and Core Values

It's time to level up a few thousand degrees. With a Lava Hot podcast and host Joseph Connell Jr, you'll hear from ordinary people who are doing extraordinary things, from tech startup CEOs and marketing professionals to authors, investors and sales trainers. This show will be packed with information to help you level up in life or business, taking you from on fire up to Lava Hot.

Welcome to Lava Hot podcast. I'm your host, joseph Connell. Today I've got a fun episode. When I first launched the Lava Hot podcast, I had this individual on the show. He was the very first guest. A longtime friend, native to the area that I grew up in, went to the same high school and we have been running along a very similar path in many ways. A little bit about Nathan Bourne, outside of the fact that longtime friend grew up in the area. He launched a company called my Core and he just celebrated the five-year anniversary and I wanted to have him on. He happened to be in town. I was like, hey, you've got to come on the show. I want to get more or less the State of the Union address and just get a feel for where their business is now. The last time we had him on it was a year and a half ago and I know a lot can happen in a year and a half. It's been a little over a year since I launched my company and everything happens in waves. There's some good moments, some bad moments, some stress, some highs lows. I want to hear a little bit about the past five years and I also want to dig in about what have you seen over the last year and a half? We're post-COVID. There were some big highs in the mix of COVID and I want to hear what he's seeing With that. Nathan, welcome to the show.

Yeah, thanks for having me Long time listener, second-time caller. I'm excited to be here and always good to be home and get face-to-face with you. We have a lot of great conversations on the phone or on Zoom this week and just kind of connecting. Sometimes it feels like, man, we should be podcasting those conversations. I'm glad we can kind of formally do some of that.

Yeah, yeah. But yeah, where I led, that is, it's been a year and a half since you've been on the show. A lot can happen in a month, let alone a year and a half. I'd like to hear kind of like a status update of where you are with the business growth, some challenges. But I'll let you give like a full, like, hey, this is kind of where we've been, where we're going, yeah, more sure.

Where we've been, where we are, where we're going. You mentioned COVID. When I did that episode with you, unbeknownst to me, I had COVID so sorry if you got sick or anyone else in the studio, but at that moment I was actually days away from maybe even hours. I think. I was maybe leaving the next day to moving to Florida and made that move right there in the new year. I knew going into it that I was going to be in a new space geographically. I also knew that I'd be entering a new mental space. Some of my team was local, so getting face to face, doing events, being kind of high touch. I knew I was going to have to get more intentional about that because of being truly remote from my team. Right, we've always been fully remote. We serve all 50 states. We're international now with a few clients in Canada and we've got the ability to serve even in unique markets across the world with some of our services. But I think things were still relatively fresh at that time in the way that we were operating. I would say we broadly like the world of work right business. It was still kind of fresh. I think we were still navigating the life of Zoom and the digital arena and landscape. I would say that making that move and putting myself in kind of an uncomfortable position where I knew I was going to have to grow in ways that I could normally lean on, with getting face to face or kind of going and closing the deal or putting on an event it definitely stretched me to think, okay, how can we maximize impact and do it in the most efficient way while everyone retains their autonomy? So we did that and we realized some really awesome growth. So we more than doubled our client base in 2022, more than doubled our revenue. But you kind of mentioned a second ago that every level has its devil right. So, going into 2023, coming into this year, we faced some new challenges, cash flow being one of them. We staffed up for that growth. Frankly, we overstaffed and then, about six months ago, shit got real right. It was like, oh damn, we could hit an iceberg if we're not, you know, careful here, we could really jam ourselves up. So that was a sobering experience and I think it would be valuable to talk about that. Yeah, I'm sure there's listeners that can relate that have hit levels in their business where good things are happening, like doubling your client base, doubling your revenue, getting your brand out, you know it kind of realizing and actualizing all the the progress that you dream of. But there is a another side to that that I Look back, hindsight being 20, 20, and and kick myself and think like hey, how did I not prepare for that, how did I not see that? And I don't know. I mean no, no, ragrats, you know not a single letter. But I Certainly process it often and think and also just have like Humility around it and and and try to Thank God that, like I saw the writing early enough that we, we could, the bell went off like in the Titanic movie that I Spurred like shit, like we need to. We need to make some real changes. Right, and I can credit a lot of it to my, my CPA. Actually, she, she gave me some tough love and was like, look, you're growing, it's awesome, you've got a great thing here, but you're gonna like screw this up if you don't make some changes. Today, and I Did, I made some tough decisions. We right sides of the company, in other words, we let people go right. Yeah, we, we, we got lean and realize, okay, what are the exact tools we need you know these other Softwares and and really evaluate our tech stack and realize we could do without that. We could pare that down. And that was emotionally tough too, because you, you know, you're grinding it for that time, for Right four years, and you feel like man, we've broken through, like the the, all the things are adding up and then wait, our very Success could be our demise. Yeah right, I know we've talked about this before that nothing fails like success and I've been saying that for years like understanding it Mm-hmm, theoretically or in principle, but actually Experiencing a successful company that might fail if we don't make some major changes Made for a unique few months. So I'll tell you more about that, but that there is a good ending to that story. But I just thought I'd dive right into the good shit, the good stuff.

Yeah, yeah, no, and it's interesting because that Right now, like in the marketing game where I'm at, like it throughout COVID, you know a lot of the clients that I work with, I mean revenue was just booming, you know they, they were increasing, you know, maybe their staff, they were increasing customer flow. And then it's weird, over like the last, like year, not to say that people aren't still buying, it's just the landscape has changed a little bit and and I see companies, often times, like when I go in and first meet with them, they're like they're scratching their head. They're like you know, we've invested in new people and new trucks and but then the marketing has slowed up for whatever reason. They can't figure out why. And Do you think you know what? Yeah, I mean I've identified a few areas for some of the clients that that I work with mean often times there's, you know, maybe like a new marketing piece that that's available in their market and they're just behind the curve. You know it's the same goes who moved my cheese? Sometimes they're not moving the cheese. I find that oftentimes businesses will kind of rest on yesterday's laurels right a little bit and in some cases they'll give, like the marketing vendor, the benefit of the doubt that you know, maybe it's just A dip in search traffic or something like that, but oftentimes it's really, you know, it's a strategy, right, it's like you said, the the cheese has moved.

We were chatting about this the other day. You know, ken, ken Blanchard thought process, school of thought, and I think sometimes we we look at change in macro, like major changes. You know that, oh, wow, the the economy shifted or there's a new President's presidential administration or or or personal life, you know, like something, I went through a divorce, or you know I got cancer or something. But there's these micro changes that that have to occur and you know the compound effect tells us that those micro changes are going to become the macro. Even COVID, it wasn't like in March of 2020. The first case was recognized, right. I mean, that thing was brewing for months and months before, and so I think, as entrepreneurs and business leaders, part of our job description is being in the know, right, and it's a hard thing to balance because you're essentially creating your own reality, right, and and recognizing that you are Envisioning a world that doesn't exist. I've been talking recently about this idea of a future version of the future, idea of a future version of yourself, right, that if you are not constantly envisioning and imagining and crafting this future state of you, then what are you doing? You know, if you're not ripening, your rotting. So I think sometimes that ends up in more of like a self-worth space, which is important, right, you want to build up your self-esteem and your, your belief systems, but then there's tangible, practical, tactical things that need to happen, like the latest feature of Major platform that powers your solution. Like you need to learn that damn thing, you know. I think the the newest conversation is obviously around AI and and everything that's happening there and, admittedly, I I've resisted it a little bit. It's a little bit uncomfortable, how, how freakish it is, but we've embraced it more and allowed it to streamline some things and prompt some things. So that's kind of the, the, the big thing right now. But more philosophically, if you're not in, I think all leaders are in change management, right, like that's what they ultimately are doing, and I actually have kind of an art and art and a science to the way that I manage change. We could talk a little bit about that because for the past five years We've been iterating, innovating, even recreating, and as a relatively large organization we're not huge, but there's 40 50 people that could be listening at any time and there's different levels and layers to that. Yeah, but I know how to Within, you know margin of error, implement that change. You and I we've been working on something on the scenes that we're not going to share right now, but right for the people that are listening, they're gonna want to know about the thing that we're working on behind the scenes, anyway, but that has taken a lot of change management right within the organization and and on a personal Node and and it's it's. It's kind of what I'm saying. It's like you start reinventing and going. Okay, maybe I had in my mind, pretty hard wired, this Version of my company, this version of me, this my, this version of my brand, and I think, right now more than ever, companies need to get open to the idea of collaborating. They need to get open to the idea of Staying in their lane and bringing other people alongside of them that have mastered A certain, you know, discipline or a certain Arena. So all that to say that I don't think the pace of change is gonna slow, it's not gonna be like man, that was a crazy three years. I think it's gonna speed up.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, I'm right there with you. I think that it's all going to happen very rapidly and you know it's interesting because, while there's even changes in Like, maybe the marketing landscape, there could be changes to the, you know, your, your competitors, you know there could be a competitive change. You know, if you look back at Like throughout 2020, when the housing market was going just absolutely Just insane, right, and I've referenced this before on the show but there were, there were 21 year old kids that were getting their real estate license and they were just getting on tiktok and they were just gobbling up market share. They weren't better at real estate, they were not better at writing up the deal, maybe not even better at sales, but they were sure as shit better at marketing. Right, and that's what it took In, you know, in that time to just grab, you know, listings left and right. Yeah, was just being better at marketing. I mean Good product placement for the topic. But you look, you look at prime Logan Paul. What I find impressive about Logan Paul and Jake Paul and Mr Beast and some of these people, is their ability to cultivate attention Like no other Like, if you think of when we were younger, because I have teenage kids now and this is what they drink. They drink, they don't drink Gatorade. When I was 14, 15 we drank Gatorade. That's it's what we saw on TV, you know Michael Jordan drinking a Gatorade and sweating it Sweating yeah, I remember that campaign.

But now it's like these guys they take a picture and they, you know, they doctor it up a certain way, it gets hundreds of millions of views Organically, right, asshole.

Jake Logan Paul, talk about this. How, like his marketing cost is like such an advantage because it's like next to nothing, because he is the marketing Right and his ability to just cultivate attention Is it's just insane. And to be able to get that attention and then launch a product, I firmly believe this will be the product that makes him a billionaire. I think he'll get there Before, before his brother, who you know on his own is impressive. You know what he's done in the boxing game, whether you love him or hate him, and that's, that's part of the formula. Like he actually his formula is. I want you to hate me, right, he's polarizing and I think you're spot on and you know you see this with, like Michael Jordan, right, like he made a lot of money and he's been doing a lot of things like that.

And you know, you see this with, like Michael Jordan, right, like he made a lot of money playing basketball, but it doesn't remotely compare to what he made with Nike and other products or endorsements, or you know, I don't know it too well, but I think that that's that's the formula, right, like, how do you put yourself in a position where you become an outlier so you can't be like a normal chill dude? You know, like, if you're like a normal chill dude and you are expecting I love your intro, right the ordinary people with extraordinary results, extraordinary stories, and at the end of the day, we're just people, right, like we're all just trying to figure it out. But what really separates that? You know what? What makes somebody go off the chart and be extraordinary? It's not that they were necessarily born with it, although natural faculties help, right. I mean, I think sometimes the the story can get kind of skewed. That, okay, michael Jordan was cut from his basketball team I don't know, I think he was a freshman, it's probably an eighth grade and they like benched him one game or something and then it just becomes like he's normal, like you buy these shoes, but at the end of the day, the dude's a beast basketball player like. Obviously he's talented. Now I don't think that Homeboy is the world's greatest boxer, but he's polarizing, he's fit, he's willing to put the work in, and you can only get punched in the head so many times for so much money. And also, it loses its steam eventually, right, the notoriety of him fighting another person and then talking smack to each other runs out right. Plus, there's a season. Nobody wants to see a 45 year old version of that dude boxing, right, they want to see him in his prime. So I think all leaders, all business people, no matter the scale or the the goal around it, have to consider the formula right, that's what is one of our core values at my core lead with who, but it it's much more strategic and and and tactical than it is just altruistic, which is to say, okay, I'm going to work most on who I am and and create an identity, one so that I can make good decisions, and then I can be consolidated in my thinking, and then I'm going to take that identity, I'm going to take that DNA and I'm going to step into a why, into a purpose, into a mission and then the byproduct of that and very specifically, by product. It better be a product, you know, a service or a good in the what space, because that's where the chiching occurs, you know, that's where the transaction occurs. So I think people that get this formula and understand this sequence of events are not only going to do really really well, or already doing really really well, whether they define it this way or not, right, but they have what I think is most important and could be, because on Saturday I turn 35, but I look for sustainability in everything I do today and I'm not like one of these environmentalists or something you know, like I'll burn some fossil fuels, that's go, but just saying like what is the sustainable energy that will rejuvenate you and recharge you to wake up every day and do all the stuff you got to do, because there's a lot of mundane, there's a lot of tea deus activities that you have to do to build a business and even after you delegated or outsource it or develop a team to manage it, it's still weighs on you, right? I mean, it's there, you know it's, it could be better, you know you want to shift from this system to that system, from this software to that software, and if you're not waking up every day and leaning into who you are and why you exist, you'll just gas out. You won't have the energy to fix the what or to implement a new what or to really change right, which is absolutely required, as we've already stated. So, yeah, I think this is a prime example, because you have to connect that what with a who and then that what will change. You know like they'll find another what and then they just sort of it might lose some of its steam at some point, but it doesn't matter. It becomes a staple part of their revenue model. And then the next thing that they bring to life assuming they preserve their identity in the market by not being absolutely hated or canceled, which, ironically, is their actually. Let's put it this way those guys just can't become likeable, like if all of us, and you're like oh my gosh, do you have like good values and you treat women well, like they'd probably be canceled for that. But they work because they're hated, because they're seemingly douchebags.

But yeah, no, I mean, that's like, you know, andrew Tate. I mean, he was the most polarizing individual for almost a solid year, where you couldn't go on a social media platform without hearing his name until they shut down his name. They were arrested. Yeah, they were arrested, him, which I won't go down that rabbit hole. But let me. I wanna ask this because I'm familiar and I know you've read this book as well Start With why. Can you explain the difference between the philosophy behind Start With why and Lead With who?

Yeah, yeah, I'm glad you asked me that that's the only thing I care to talk about these days, yeah, so yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, let's start with Start With why, because chances are, if you're listening, you've read it and I highly suggest you do. I'm a huge fan of Simon Sinek, kind of have like a man crush on him and love his work. I think he's sophisticated, I think he's brilliant and I also think he knows what's up Now. It's not just regurgitating philosophy, he really knows the application of it. So I've read all of his work. I have a great deal of respect for him and I think there's more to the story. So, having studied Start With why, having implemented Start With why and really kind of just always rolling that way in my life, I think when you start to have some success maybe even if it's early enough in life and we all have different stories, but I was blessed to start getting some wins early athletically, academically, socially, so I was starting to build this identity around, being a successful person I started to believe that I was a stud, that I had natural faculties. Now I backed it with a great deal of work, like an insane amount of work, and I know you know my story and we talked about it pretty real and raw on the last episode. But the very short version, if you're new to the Lava Hut podcast, is that I'm the fourth of nine children. I grew up very poor, in fact. Last night we had a nice little family dinner and we were hanging out and my mom had cooked and we said let's just like count all the places we've lived, let's do it. And I know it was a little sensitive for my mom to hear, but we just started going and granted, there's 21 years from my oldest brother, who's 42, to my youngest brother, who will be 21. So they both turned in November of 42 and 21,. So 21 years. So my oldest brother is closer in age to his parents because my mom and dad are 60 and 61, and now there's 21 grandkids. So it's madness. Yeah right, I mean nine kids, 21 grandkids. My parents, are 60.

Your siblings didn't have kids too.

All me yeah, just me 21 kids and I'm sharing all that to say that it was just a challenging, unique upbringing and in this very town we have lived in over 15 homes, so we've lived in every version of Worcester County the. Bishopville, westo, you know, see all the things. But then it dawned on me because I was the oldest one there, my three older siblings weren't there. That wait, you guys don't know about all the places we lived before you were born you know what I mean and before you were. So we had to string the timeline together and I would name a place and I got to a point in the sequence where Noah, who's three years younger than me, was like I remember that and I'm like all right, well, you pick up from there, right. So we went from really just me not even my older siblings to my youngest brother and it ended up at about 30 different houses. So that's a lot of instability, right. And then I did some thinking, right, and I'd probably just triggered a bunch and I was like holy shit, man, like I lived in just high school alone in the four years at Decatur, seven, eight places. And to navigate that change right, and to also be the president of National Honor Society, get a perfect GPA, go to an Ivy League school, be a Division I wrestler I'm not saying that to boast or brag or to impress Actually it's the only reason I'm saying it but rather to impress upon, you know, but just to call it what it was which was that very early on in my life, in what were juvenile, adolescent years, I was managing change at like a crazy rate, right, and things that were probably normal, like hey, I need to print something for school. Oh yeah, go in the computer room, you know, as we used to have the computer room and print that. Well, it was like a big task for me, you know, I had to plan it into the library for the day and all those things. So I'm saying all this to say that I've always had a drive, I've always been on a mission, I've always had a purpose, and growing up a Christian and being around church and learning biblical principles, I knew what a purpose driven life looked like. You know, I leaned into Jeremiah 29, 11, and I believed that God had a plan for my life. But what really I think I was building and him, you know it's like it's over was an identity right, was a. I called it a DNA, and I like that phraseology or that thinking around it, because, although some of our DNA is hardwired right, like we can't change how tall we are or how strong we are, but like we also can not so much the height, but you can go work out right, you can get stronger If you weren't given the most natural faculties. You can make up in hard work where you lack in talent. And I think the part that is so important and to draw the distinction from your question seven minutes ago is where am I putting my energy and which part of this energy is a constant and which part are variables? And I would encourage I've found this to serve me in my life. It hasn't failed me yet. The more I invest in the constant of who I am, the more I have to pull from the reservoir of who I am the resilience, the grit, the belief, the faith and all the messy shit. You know, most people won't face their shadow, they won't face the dark side of the moon and they're missing a huge opportunity because that's where their best stuff resides. I mean, you've known me for a while, man. Like there was a season where I was killing it and it was all like fairy, dust and rainbow and butterflies and I got sort of addicted, honestly, to positivity and now, with hindsight being 2020, I would call it toxic positivity. I mean, there was a time where everything was awesome. Everything was awesome. Everything was awesome, but everything wasn't fucking awesome. Everything was really bad in my life, but I thought that if I did what I had done when the stakes weren't as high, I could just plow through it with positivity. And it doesn't work that way, right, and two things will happen. One, you'll just be completely in denial and you'll be delusional. Secondly, you'll be a narcissist. Or thirdly, you'll be deeply depressed. And then there's a fourth scenario where you're all three of those things right. So this is a very dangerous zone because if you're driving the why all the time, then there becomes a purpose and an agenda that you want to fulfill and you're going to persevere and you're gonna hard nose it and you're gonna make it happen. And sometimes you do that at the risk and at the harm of other people, and definitely yourself, and it's never people that are far from you. It's the people that are closest to you. It's friends, it's family, it's children, it's spouses, it's your inner circle, it's your core. So I learned this the hard way and I realized, man, I can't be starting with why, because then every interaction I go into, I have a reason to be there and I'm sorta just waiting until I can advance that purpose. When I started leading with who? And I looked inward and then I looked at the circle of people I was surrounding myself with and I became obsessed with their growth, and not their growth is in just up into the right, but like saturation depth, then I realized, man, this is sustainable because I'm really just tribe building, I'm community building, I'm relationship building, and we'll figure out why we're doing it later. And then, whatever, all the what's are gonna change and the how's and the when's and the where's. So I know that's a long answer and a lot of philosophy in there, but hopefully I semi touched on my past. Yeah, no.

Are you picking up what I'm putting down? Yeah, what's interesting is, throughout my career in marketing, I have, like this basic philosophy when I first meet with a client, just to figure out, like, how to market them really and it's funny because I always start with who Like. Who are you trying to market to? Who's your customer Like, who is the person that you really want to connect with. Because once you can figure that out, it makes it a little bit easier to then be like okay, well, what do you sell?

Right right.

Why do you sell it? Like really, why is usually like fifth or sixth down the line trying to figure out, like, why are you doing this and why should somebody choose you?

I think you just touched on a couple important nuances to it too, because I've been in this, I've been on this lead with who kick for a while for five years about you know my whole life really but I started to define it five years ago and you just mentioned who they're looking to attract, right? Well, the basis of the law of attraction is that, like attracts, like this is really, really important, because you don't have to be a master of the secret or you know, like go deep into this to understand.

There's no weeds.

There's no weeds, right, and I think what happens is people think that, okay, this is really important too, because a why is a desire, right, it's a purpose, it's a mission, and desire is very dangerous, because if you are in a state of desire, because you want something like, for example, we started the podcast a little bit later than we expected right, have you had lunch yet? No, neither have I, right, so I could eat. I'm getting hungry, right? So what will happen is everything in our systems, soon enough here, will be telling us to eat, right, and it will be like nothing else matters until we find that food, find that source. Was this a hint? No, yeah, stop talking, but watch this. So we are here in this moment and soon our body will be like, hey, you need food. And if we were to leave here and go to Chipotle and crush some Chipotle which is not a bad idea then right, then, now I'm thinking about it, right, immediately after we get down to the end of it, the last thing we will be thinking about is food, right, because we will be full, we will have satisfied ourselves. So here's where the law of attraction is incredibly nuanced is, if you are constantly in a state of wanting something. You are telling everything the people, the circumstances, the events of your life that you still want that thing, which will keep you wanting that thing. However, if you lead with who you are, you say I'm a person that's already satisfied, I'm a person that's already fulfilled, I'm a person that exists in this state. You'll attract the things that match that state. So that's why starting with why is very dangerous, because then you'll be constantly reaching for the carrot and there's no amount of money. We know this in history. I mean kings, queens, wealthy people, famous people they're never like. And then I became a billionaire and everything was okay. So it's really about leading with who you are, being satisfied in it and then allowing it to bleed into the why and the what. But like attracts, like right. So if you're not a person that can attract that customer, don't kid yourself, right? Don't break the 11th commandment thou shall not kid thyself, because if you say I want really successful. you know thought provoking leaders to reach out to me, oh awesome. Are you really successful in thought provoking in a leader? No, no, no. But I'd love to surround myself with that. Is it like attracts, like Right? That's why you're very exclusive about who you have on your podcast, right? I mean, with all due respect, I'm sure there's people that hit you up all the time, are like yo and you're like no. They're like yo, you're like no.

Yeah well, fortunately for me, I don't vet any of them, Brooke, that's a good game changer. Yeah, luckily for me it all comes in and then if she doesn't like the guest, all right. Smart, which sorry if some of you have been really good opportunities, but yeah, so oftentimes it doesn't get to me until.

Right To often and that's a killer.

It's a super important layer to have in place because you know At the same time, there's also like a list of like I want to interview these people. But think, and some of them like, admittedly, some of them are out of reach, that's what I'm gonna say. You're not who you need to be, and I oftentimes think of like I'll invest money to figure out okay well in skill set or maybe in some cases, in some cases, what I'm finding like in the podcasting world. Sometimes it's also a matter of like status on. Instagram Followers and the insights, which is reasonable, I mean it's understandable, because I realized, like, if you're trying to let's say, I wanted to interview Tom Brady, Right, it has to be worth the 30 minutes for him to do so, right, which Tom Brady would be one of those people.

If you're listening, yeah.

If you happen to be, you know, tom Brady, yeah, tb12. Right, right, so, yeah. So I realized that as well, that, like, at some point, in order to grow into maybe attracting the type of guests that I want, that I have to grow the platform to attract some of those guests. And also, on the flip side, I mean, some people that I've really wanted on came on that were Right.

I've seen it Hot pedigree and.

I include you in that category where it's like I know you're running a company and what you're going to share, and a lot of the guests I mean I would say most of the guests that I've had on all came with something that I was looking for, which and it's no secret that the thing I love the most about this platform is I get to put you guys in the hot seat. I get to ask about, you know maybe, the challenges I get to learn from every guest. I mean think about that.

It's like a coaching.

Call that, like I don't have to pay for it. I was gonna say that you're getting paid for it directly.

Again, man, you're hitting on some nugs within a nug there, because, to be an entrepreneur and I can only speak from my point of view, right as a founder and CEO, so as somebody that has created a business, scaled it and sustained it, right I don't you hear all kinds of stats around this, but I know a lot of businesses don't make it to five years. I think it's like at least half of them fail and then most of them still fail after that. Right, and again, every level has its devil, right. So get very comfortable with being uncomfortable, because what I dealt with six months ago and the kind of 90 days after that and then the 90 days after that bringing us to present, I have just in the last few weeks, found real peace around it because I'm like, okay, we are out of the woods, the light there it is. It's right at the end of the tunnel, but it was dark there for a moment and it's a really hard place to be and I have a feeling other people can relate to this because you are succeeding but you are not successful. I call it the middle. If I ever get around to writing and it might write a book, we'll see, but I plan to write the book Lead With Hill.

I think it deserves like a full unpacking of a couple hundred pages and since we just documented, if somebody tries to jack that title from you.

I've got a couple of things there as far as IP goes, so I already own a lot of the stuff there. But I say all that to say that I wrote this journal the entry called the middle, and it was this idea. It is this idea around where most of us live. Right, we live in the middle, and the middle is a brutal place, but it can be a wonderful place if you approach it properly. And you could even maybe connect that to like socioeconomics, like the middle class. But any high achieving person should be just offended by the idea that they would be considered average or in the middle. So if you were to take like all the people you interviewed or all the people that you surround yourself with they're just like people that we know that are successful and they're doing it they're probably actually in the middle. Like, just, they're probably like okay how much money do you actually make? Yeah, man, I'm making 120 grand, like yeah, so does like that dude over there working at that store or something. So it's this really hard space to be in, because you haven't quite gotten there yet, but in your mind you have. So therefore, the people around you think you're delusional or a little bit crazy, and I think there's a lot of support that needs to occur in the middle, for two reasons. One, if that's where you end up, you better be okay with it because, hey, it's awesome and you're making a living, you are feeding a family, you are serving a client base, so you have to be, like, perfectly content with the fact that, like this may be it Right, like you'll have incremental growth and you'll raise your income and you'll buy that house and you'll eventually upgrade that car. But there's a great deal of people that don't become the Pauls, right, there's a lot of people that don't become Michael Jordan and they live beautiful lives. So it's this really interesting space to be in in the middle where, if you're not careful and you're constantly having delusions of grandeur, then you won't be present in the moment that you're in and it'll pass you by and you'll go holy shit, my kids are out of the house and I spent most of the time I struggle with this because I'm a certified workaholic, I mean, I just am. And it's sobering. It's like, oh my gosh, my daughter's gonna be 11, and then she's gonna be 13, and then she's gonna be 15, and then she's gonna be 17, and then she's gone. So you start really getting aware of this. At the same time, you have to be very careful who you share your dreams with. The Bible says don't throw your pearls to the swine. I remember reading that, thinking like what's that mean? And it's hard because some of the people closest to us are swine. They're dream stealers, they're haters and I don't mean haters like. I mean like they will take little pieces and parts out of your vision and dream. And here's the thing. It's not their fault, it's your damn fault for saying something to them. You should be smart enough to detect that they don't have the capacity for your dream and for your vision and for your goal and what you believe is your future. So you better keep that close to the vest and then preserve and celebrate moments like this, because I know there's nothing you say to me. If you said Nathan, I was thinking about last night and I'm pretty sure I'm gonna be the president of the United States of America I went bad a fucking eye. You know, I'd be like totally man, like I think that's a great idea, make me your VP, and vice versa, right, if I said something crazy, like I'm thinking I'm gonna go to Mars one day, you'd be like yeah, why not? Well, those are golden relationships that you have to protect. And then don't be so foolish to go out telling all the normal chill dudes the extraordinary things you're gonna do and then wonder why you feel like shit after they didn't respond positively. That's on you. Does that make?

sense? Yeah, no, it does. I had watched this. It was like a documentary at one point where I'll talk about like, like the different types of people that there are out there and ways to be able to identify them. Oftentimes it's like little subtle behaviors, little subtle things that they might say, Like if you share, like like an idea of something, like a product you wanna launch, and their knee jerk is to be like oh, are you sure that's for you?

Like just know that.

Like you're subtle and oftentimes it'll be like that friend, but they call that like covert, like trader.

Like, almost like Little Benedict Arnold, little mini Benedict yeah and.

I think, there's like part of this where people want you to do well. They just don't want you to do better than them. Right right, and that's not the case for everyone. But there are those people out there where they want you to succeed and oftentimes, like they'll say, they'll make statements like you've changed or you act different. And it's really not that I act different, it's just you're treating me different because I'm maybe in a different place than I was a year ago, or maybe where we were a year ago, type of deal. Not that I'm experiencing this personally. Everybody who is around me seems to be very supportive, Are you okay? Yeah, but I know it happens. I know throughout my life it has happened. I know that there were certain times of my life when I wanted to transition from doing more of like that manual labor and I wanted to get into sales. Because I read in a book. I remember it, I remember it, Like if you get into sales, like that can unlock all these other layers, Like that's step one learn sales and from there you can start going down this entrepreneurial journey. Not that you have to do that, but it just seemed to be the path I saw.

I think there's another component there that is important to speak to too, because typically sales is a pretty individual sport. You know, it's kind of a lone wolf game. You're managing your pipeline, you're keeping your relationships, you're doing all the follow up and the follow through. And it's the classic if you wanna go fast, go alone. If you wanna go far, go together.

And so true, right, right.

So you can sell, sell, sell and you can go, go, go and you will get there fast. You will get to six figures, you will get to two, you will get to three, depending on the industry you're in, you could maybe even get to a six, seven figure income, but there's no way you're getting past that, right? I mean, even the best stock brokers in the best market don't make that much money relative to GDP or something, right? So then you have to create this whole new set of thinking, which is how can we go together? And I did this five years ago, because the story behind the story is that I started a version of my core in 2016. I know you know this, right, so I'm actually coming up on an eight year anniversary. It was January of 2016 where I embarked, you know, and I pivoted and I made a really big life decision from a seven year career, and that career was going well, like I was making great money and I was getting all the kind of trappings that were starting to like really take off, and I made a hard decision that no, I think I'm called to do something else. I think I'm designed to be somebody else. And then, even three years into that journey, I had to make another decision, saying wait, no, we got to reconstruct this and we've got to build it for scale and we've got to create capacity for other people to come in and have dominion and occupy space. So it's really interesting and I'm sharing this to say that over the past six months it was the hardest season, even back before the ramen noodle days, you know, or back in the ramen noodle day. It was harder than that because there was a moment where, mathematically, logically, in the neocortex part of the brain, not the limbic system, so in the what and the how, not the who and the why I shoulda, coulda, woulda, from everyone else's advice, with the exception of the core group of us, I coulda pared it down and got really nimble and let a lot of people go and have less mouths to feed, and I'd have been fine. In fact I'd have been able to probably double my salary because we had built such good systems that I really only need a couple people to manage it all, and I coulda let all kinds of people go and I coulda paid myself a fat income. So the hardest part in that was staying true to no, no, no, we're gonna go far together and we've weathered that storm and it's like this, I don't know, just this insertion of DNA, it's this fabric in, and all that just makes us feel like ironclad rock solid and we just have this mutual understanding that nothing is going to stop this company. Now, if it was ever going to fail, it woulda been in that moment. Yeah, sorry. So yeah, you're just firing that thought.

The other thing that I like when you have a team around you, when you're I've been experiencing this recently where opportunities have been almost lined up and it's almost like this mutual like you tee it up, I'll help you sell it. What I've liked about that, really throughout my career, and it's why I've always encouraged that type of like mutual relationship with a team is for me. What it does to me mentally is it allows me to play from the pocket when it allows me to.

It allows scrambling, yeah.

So like and I gave this analogy to Tom Brady was his best when he sit back in the pocket opportunity here, there's one over there like he could just kind of flow and like when you, when they get into a rhythm and they have opportunities, one after another, one after another, coming at ya, when you have all these opportunities and on an individual basis, you could do this too If you're just like building your pipeline, because I often, you know, the pipeline is really like the lifeblood of not just income but it's also the lifeblood of like, like how you feel mentally and when you're sitting back in the pocket and you're just, you're just dropping bombs, you know, and you land one catch here, one over here.

But when it comes to like when you're scrambling and you're you know, well, because then you're on the run and you're trying to dodge it, like it becomes in oftentimes.

I mean, I'm a Ravens fan. You look at Lamar Jackson when he's on the run. It's him Like it's. Oftentimes it's just him, he's going fast alone, fast alone and trying to figure out how do I get the damn points on the board, how do I get the extra yard?

Plus, he's got a 250 pound linebacker wanting to rip his head off, and that's why they try to get to the side of that, which could be a COVID or an economy change.

It could be a new marketing change.

Yup, it could be a bad one. Bad decision, and I made some bad decisions. We took on debt because we were growing and it was like we're not, this good growth isn't gonna stop Like we're fine, took on a few hundred grand in debt. Well, I didn't really consider the term and was like damn, we paid this back fast, like it kicks right into gear, and all of a sudden we were churning and servicing debt at the tune of 20 grand a month and things didn't keep compounding. By the way, I was just looking at the books and we're gonna double our revenue again this year, but we didn't double our client base. So I was measuring the wrong thing. I don't know if I got a chance to mention this yet, but my core has three core values Walk by faith, lead with who, measure what matters. And it's taken me 34 years, I guess at the time when we fully published those core values to recognize that they are all encompassing. Because, as an entrepreneur, you're gonna have to step into the unknown, you're gonna have to manage change, you're gonna have to constantly be on and that's what you signed up for. If you're like, can't wait for the days when I'm not thinking about, go get a fucking job and you're like no way. You are paid at the top to think, not to do. It's all between your ears. If you're still doing well, then you're not there yet. You need to get to the point where all you do is think Right, so say that. To say that when measuring what matters, I was measuring the wrong thing. I had the, as they say, the emphasis on the wrong collateral right. So the client count matters. It's not like it's not a metric, but it doesn't matter as much as revenue. Yeah, wouldn't you agree?

Yeah, yeah, for me I know that's up your alley yeah, that tends to be Wink wink. You know that tends to be the one thing I try to focus on the most is that is the revenue, like the top line. Obviously, keeping the money is the very important part, like having profitability and all that. I say all that like it's very passive. Being profitable is like it's an okay thing. No, but I, you know, it was just for me throughout, you know, throughout my career. But you know, following grant, that's where, like that philosophy is really kind of drilled in, which is like, you know, don't focus so much on the expenses, don't get bogged down by it, be prudent, but don't, it's not the credit card balance, it's the income. Right, it's not. You know, it's not the debt, it's the income, like if you can really just drive more revenue and that's what he is doing.

This is back to lead with who, because I don't even know that it's either of those things. I mean it is, but it's really actually about getting it close enough to who you are, but then with some margin of risk, because if you are conservative, and this is where you gotta go back and look and be like, oh yeah, remember my dad lost his ass in the economy in 2008. And then we had to move and I went to a new high school and that was really painful and really traumatic and my girlfriend broke up with me. That's not my story. My parents didn't have any money to lose. I remember when the recession hit and we were like what? We don't know what the economy is Like. We live off the government anyway. But jokingly, but seriously, people will start reading or they'll be listening to this and they'll be like oh, that's the strategy, oh, that's the way to go, and this is the power of leading with who is no, no, no. There's something hardwired in you, both from nature and nurture, that you better be constantly mirroring and matching. And then you start to create this sort of mega mind, this mastermind, because you're inviting other thinkers in and you're going oh okay, I'm only a percentage of this now. It used to be all me, but now it's a blend.

Yeah, no, I get exactly what you're saying because oftentimes, like me, I buy courses. I didn't go to college. My college is my car. I turned into a drive time university. I will listen to a great audio book. Some books I'll study more than others Like right now I'm going through Alex Hermozzi's $100 million leads in the entrepreneur space. It's like the hottest book there is, but I have it on audio. I went through his course, I have the hardback and when me and Brooke listen to a book like that, we'll kind of listen to it together. We both have our copies so we can take notes, which is cool. But what I learn about how to generate leads which obviously that's my game as lead so you gotta study your craft. What I learn about leads, or somebody who picks up that book, if they just read that book, they're gonna forget the first book, which is well. Now I gotta figure out how to make an offer. Then, when the lead comes in and this is very important how do I convert the lead into a person that actually buys? Now, I'm not talking like e-commerce, like there's ways you can get people to convert when they're on the landing page and all that jazz. But when a lead comes in to your dental practice and or your HVAC company pest control, whatever it is like you've gotta then convert that. So maybe there's another book. Maybe you gotta read one of Grant's books. There's definitely another book? Yeah, and there's, I think oftentimes in the space of entrepreneur, courses and things that you can buy, people will look at the one course and be like this didn't fix everything I was looking for. It's like I signed up for the gym but I forgot the nutrition plan. There's more pieces to it and you you would to go to who is. You've gotta craft you from these different experiences, from these different maybe courses, different things that you learn, and it falls into that space, that the way you're framing this is powerful because hopefully, everyone's aware that there's things that they don't know.

They don't know right, that we're unconsciously incompetent too, and the goal is to get to where you don't know what you do know right, where you're unconsciously competent, right. There's things that I do today, at almost 35, they're called 35 that I'm just like really, really good at, and people will come back and be like bro and I'm like oh yeah, I didn't realize I did that, but I didn't like wake up this way, right, like I worked it, I crafted it. I mean we go back 20 plus years, so I got in the game pretty early. I was a full-time entrepreneur at age 20 and I have never had a job, so I've got 15 years. I'm coming up on. Half my life, really at this point, has been full entrepreneur, fully reliant on getting your own results and making it happen. Well, we've all heard like you gotta be a sponge, right, you gotta soak it all up. But there's this caveat to that that I think people miss, which is that the only purpose for a sponge, or it's only of use if it gets rung out, if you just fill your sponge with soap and water and put it on the side of the sink. It's not doing anything, so that the exercise is reading that book, knowing that you, there's still a bunch of stuff you don't know. Like I know, there's all kinds of stuff I don't know yet and I even know some things I don't know. Like I'm consciously incompetent, right, I'm like I know that I don't know that, but in this moment, with what I have, I'm gonna just squeeze every bit out of this sponge, squeeze all the juice out, and then what will happen is I'll have a dry sponge. So the next book I read, or the next level that I'm at, or the next person that's hired, or the next partnership that I form, I'm like reading, absorbing, master mining, surrounding myself with people, and I think that's where people get stuck is they just start consuming. And now that information is so accessible, they can listen to this podcast and 27 other this week. Dude, I don't do that. I am like I listen to stuff very little.

That's more or less how I am.

Like I'll lock.

Well, I'll lock into certain people, so it's no secret that Grant Cardone has been the guy that I've kind of locked onto his content over the years, between courses, cardone University, the books. I mean going down to his headquarters. We just got back from Florida. We went down to the. It was renamed to the business summit. A lot of the content was just like the business bootcamp I went to a year ago. The difference, though, was me Right.

Same book. I was dissed yeah.

Yeah, same, same course, same content. I mean some little nuances here. Ai is different from a year ago, so there was like little things that they talked about there, but for the most part, I'm in a completely different spot. When I went there the first time, I had just launched my company Right, and where I'm at now is a completely different spot. Then it was I went to. I mainly wanted to, okay, dial in how do I market my business, which is a weird dynamic.

Being a guy that's in marketing.

I'm like the. I always say I'm the janitor who has a dirty house.

Right, it's hard sometimes to market myself.

But I went down there and was like, okay, well, how do I market myself or market the business the way that I want to, and I'm always looking to craft that. And then what do I want my sales cycle to look? Like, like, what do I want my sales process to be? So I went for the sales side. Now I find myself looking at the leadership side. Right, how do I get great quality people into my organization? How do I promote and attract people into the business, both on a customer base but in a people base, right, right. So it's cool going back and looking at information. What I liked about Alex from Mozi's new book is a lot of the information I'm very aware of, but he laid it out in a way of like, okay, I wasn't looking at this as affiliates, I was looking at it as, like this vertical over here, like a lot of the pieces I already had in place. I just wasn't putting it into, maybe the flow of how he does it, which was kind of cool because it gave a roadmap of like how to take all these different pieces between warm market, cold market, one to one, one to many.

I think that this is good stuff. I think there has to be an awareness around the fact, because we've talked a lot about change, right? And this will seem contradictory to that, but that's life. Life is a series of contrasts, right? So there's nothing new under the sun, right? Jim Rohn was asked I know you're Jim Rohn fan, like me, jim, you're a wise guy and what do you think the next 6,000 years years will look like? And his response was well about like the last 6,000 years. Right, there will be opportunity and there will be difficulty, sometimes more opportunity than difficulty, sometimes more difficulty than opportunity. But the mix doesn't change, right? That? The blend is still there. So I say that to say that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. So, right now, alex is your teacher because the student you have appeared. But the thing is that people don't get about that little nugget of wisdom is that we are both the teacher and the student. We are both the student and the teacher, right? So you are self-learning, but I promise you there's nothing in that book and I haven't read it. I'm excited to read it, but I just know that it's nothing that hasn't had. There's a book somewhere in a library that is speaking to the exact same thing. Oh, for sure, for sure, right. It's just that it's so energized right now, and it should be, because then what you're doing is you're collecting all these areas that you can get reinforcement. So it's wise to go where the energy is, because as you read the book and then you get on to TikTok or you get on to Instagram, you might get a little clip from him or an interview that he does and you go oh, that was a little fleshing out that a one-dimensional book can't give. So I think, in growth mode and in leadership mode, which everything rises and falls on leadership. So if you're going to invest in anything, invest in leadership and yourself as a leader. That's all I've ever done, dude. I mean, you know I don't have any actual skills. You know I can't do things.

Well, I think you have always been really good at being able to attract people into an organization or just in general, which I think is a amazing skill set the ability to attract talent.

Can I speak to that for a second?

Not every actually, yeah, I would love for you to speak to that, because I see it all the time. You know, grant said this and I thought it was amazing If you find yourself in your company saying it's hard to find good people. I can't find good people it usually is a like it's not the people. It's kind of like that saying if everywhere you go there's an asshole, you might be the asshole, but if there's not a crazy person in your family, you might be like crazy. Yeah, like, if you look at a guy like Grant, like he, just he attracts people, you know, and when you attract people, the good ones are out there. You're just not attracting the good people is the problem. And maybe it's because and it might just come down to like, maybe your reputation in the marketplace, like there's some, some great companies in our area that they attract all the all the top talent, you know, and it's just the nature of it, like they, you know, they tend to be the biggest organization in my head I'm picturing like Artiquette in there, right, great organization, family run business in the market, you know, and they seem to have always been able to attract some top talent in the HVAC space in the market and then, as they've entered into, like another category, it seemed like yeah, they just started attracting quality people and I think it comes down to because I've met Russell a few times for marketing. He's a solid guy, like he's a solid leader you know my connection to their family right.

Oh so Amanda and Noah.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Okay, yeah, yeah, for sure, so I didn't think of that at the moment, no, but yeah, so I've had some, just a few, conversations with Mr Queen over the years, but but to your point, he's a beast right, and I think a lot of times with these conversations it seems like it's reserved for, you know, podcasters or for the Grant Cardone types that are building you know multi-million dollar companies and it's like, hey, the local HVAC company doesn't get to bypass this law. You know like they're, they are also adhering to gravity and equals MC squared.

Yeah, like these are laws and principles and if, if and everything still rises and falls on leadership everywhere.

I mean whether it's in global politics, whether it's in local government, whether it's in business and our families. Do you want me to speak a little bit to the kind of magnet feature that they attraction? Yeah yeah, okay, because I've had to think about this right and and you know, at some point too, as your organization develops, and you've got systems and processes, and and there'll be this really cool moment where because you attract people that are like I'm going to put a tattoo on me of of the logo.

Nobody would do that. That's crazy.

So, yeah, cheryl, yeah yeah.

Right, yeah, I mean it's, I joke, but I'm not entirely joking. I say, oh yeah, my core, we're right above a cult. You know, I think we actually probably are a cult, for that matter. You know, just in the basis of what you would define one, as you know, not obviously all the underbelly and evil stuff that comes with that, but a lot of the same. I'm glad I provided the drinks, yeah, once, or what the time really says. We just dropped dead.

That was a good one.

I need a second. My mom is calling me. This is a good mom. I love you, but I'm in the middle of a podcast. You're now on it and there's feedback, so I can't talk to you, but I do love you. If you want to come into the studio, you know where it is, oh, okay, yeah, well, then maybe you could just get the shirt. I got to go. I love you, so I took that phone call because you got life in between all of this right, and your mom's blowing you up and your kids are sick, and it's like there's no perfect stage, there's no perfect setting, there's no perfect moment, and I think, even though we can curate it through social media, we can put lights, camera action what people want to know is that you're authentically going through it right. And that you're inviting them into that journey. So, if I may, I'm going to. I know we're probably over on time, but yeah, I want to speak to this final thought because I have had to put a lot of energy towards it. As I was starting to say is, as systems and processes and people develop and you can feel that like wow, the function of this business is working, and here's a good litmus test. If you're listening, you have a business where you aspire to have a business. Put this in your mind and heart now. It's morbid, but you have to constantly think about your own death. Wait what you do, because you're not leaving a legacy, you're living a legacy. Right, we're all going to die. We're all going to have a date that we were born, a dash, and a date that we die, and we all know there's a lot of energy around the date that we die. A lot of people talk about the dash and that's important, that your life. But there's this date that you were born, your origin. That really, really matters. I joke often and I'll say okay, I'll tell you the story. Let me just go back a little bit. So it was October 21st 1988. And I'm joking, but I'm kind of not, because I'm saying like, well, actually this is when it started. I know it started that day and everything up to this point is part of the equation. It is part of the deal. You can't relive all those years in a conversation, but you do have to be in touch with them. So I'm saying all this to say that when your organization is developed, you should be able to die and the organization go on. That's a litmus test that you have to constantly give and like, ponder. Now, assuming you don't die, because you probably won't, right, I probably won't die for a while. Then the second question, the second thing to ponder, is well, what do I do with my time now? Because I am no longer in that function, I'm no longer part of that process. And even if you could be, you need to get out of it, because the same things that you did to stumble your way to this point, your people need to stumble their way to that point. It's the classic teaching your kid to ride a bike, they've got to get bloody knees or they're never going to learn if you don't take the training wheels off. So attracting talent and really attracting entirely, I believe is this incredibly contradictory thing. Again, life is a series of contrasts, because you have to be equally strong and equally weak all at the same time. Because nobody's going to follow a weakling, nobody's going to follow a person that's not a badass, nobody's going to follow a person that doesn't have a clear identity and a clear mission.

Have you seen the Democrats? I'm just kidding.

Okay, that's good. Yeah, I mean gays and boy right, like if you can't even walk up a flight of stairs. I don't care what your politics are, you're not inspired by Joe Biden. You could be a raging Democrat. There's no way that you are inspired by that man.

And there's no secret that Donald Trump was not weak.

Right, right, because it's hardwired into our biology. Dude, I was born to-.

Borderline crazy and some of the stuff he would say For sure but he was very committed to whatever the hell he said. He would say it was some provado and some like-.

Just craziness, but here's the thing. No, but you make a good point, though, because oftentimes, in influence and leadership which John C Maxwell says that leadership is influence, nothing more, nothing less, right? So if you're a leader, you're an influencer. You don't have to have a million followers to be an influencer. Well, what I have found is that it's not the ability to get other people to believe what you believe, it's the ability to convey and inspire that they believe that you believe right. So, in other words, if you are so convicted and so strong in your belief, even if they completely disagree, there will be a bridge of respect because they'll go. That's what belief looks like. So it's so important to have a real allocation of your time, energy and money into your belief bank account, like you should be constantly working on your skills around belief. Why was Ted Lasso so successful? Because people love soccer in America? No, nobody cares. The only reason that show was successful and got all the awards is because of the sign that he put above the door in the locker room that said believe because everybody can relate to that right. Everybody can go. Damn, I wanna believe in something right and you can be unapologetic. I know that it's like borderline illegal to be a Christian now in this country, which is insane considering it was founded on Christianity. But I am unapologetic. It's my first core value walk by faith. So I mean there's a cross right in our shield, right, and you would think like, oh man, like are those HR issues? No, because people come to my core and they're diverse. We have all kinds of religions, all kinds of races, all kinds of socioeconomics, all kinds of backgrounds, because we're leading with who. So it's the internal, not the external. I'm getting off on a rabbit hole, but here's the punchline and I know we got to land the plane. Leaders think that they need to be strong and capable and able to attract, when in fact, the only way you attract good people and great people, for that matter is with a fundamental understanding that leaders need to be needed. So you have to be constantly sharing your vulnerabilities, constantly sharing all the problems that you're having, constantly sharing all the things that aren't working and that could be better and should be better, with a core of strength saying hey, with or without you, this organization is going to succeed, but it would be really dope if we did it together, right? And it's this interesting tension where both of those things have to exist at the same time, because if it's like, oh, these are all the problems and I really think you could solve them, and it's like I don't want anything to do with this. But if it's like, hey, we got it all figured out, but we definitely think that your life would be better and all your dreams would come true, that's not inspiring either. It's this very narrow needle to thread that is like, hey, we're gonna figure it out, but we really could use somebody with your skill set and I think we just will be better together. So I think if you're in a position as a leader right now where things have gone relatively well for you, you've probably attracted followers, and you need to take inventory of this and say am I leading leaders or am I leading followers? And when I recognized that I needed to lead leaders, I went deeper in my growth and now all I do is lead leaders, and it's not like hurting cats, it's like hurting Panthers. But if you want a scalable, rock solid fortress of a business, you gotta get into that. So there, that's it.

Yeah, so, as we wrap this episode up, what's next? What's next for my core? And then I wanna lead people to where they can connect with you.

Yeah for sure. So quick little rundown of my core. I mentioned our core values walk by faith, lead with who, measure what matters. Our mission, or why, is to be the world's most people-centric company. So it's within that ethos, within that identity, within that who and that why that we've developed a world-class business advisory firm and it's a hub and spoke model. So at the core of it is our advisors. They're on our experience team and they are the client's single point of contact for a whole wheelhouse of services. To date those services have been accounting, bookkeeping, payroll, benefits and HR. But we are adding. We have added a new service and if you go to our website you're gonna see it and I don't know if you've ever heard of this industry or this service offering Joe, but it's marketing. I'm familiar, right, so more to come on that. But what we recognize was that we had built processes and systems and great value in the market for our clients on these really unsexy but core functions of a business. And we thought wait a second. And really I didn't do much of the thinking you did and you've been telling me this for years. So this is the cool thing about this, by the way, is that I look back and the students ready, the teacher will appear right and I'm like, oh dude, I remember talking to Joe like back in eight years ago. He's like you should have marketing, you should be in marketing, dude. I don't know why you're not doing marketing, like everything you've built, if you were to take that and apply it to the world that I'm in. So I think I finally just started listening. Another important part of leadership that's hard and we're just thrilled to be bringing that to life. So, yeah, and then that really provides a full stack experience, man, and there's so much that goes into that between managing the tech stack, allowing for it to be a scalable business, and we're rocking and rolling, and I think that, like, I think it's kind of like undefeatable now at this point. So, yep, mycoreio is the website. Check it out, cool, cool.

Well, for those that are listening, I always like to direct you to go to thelavahotpodcastcom If you want to find any additional information about Nathan. We're gonna make sure that we have all of his social media profiles tagged there. We'll have the link to his website there and I know in the near future he's gonna be rolling out his own podcast. Thanks, to you With some of your old equipment, yep, so yeah, I guess that's another thing. A year and a half, lots changed. You went from someone else's studio to this studio, which has been really cool to kind of get together. It's amazing. You know the investment that goes behind it. But no, I'm definitely looking forward to seeing you roll out your podcast and more to come on that. This episode will probably air before his first actual episode, but I'll be sure, if you hear this later in date, to go back and I'll add in a link to his podcast to his profile. But on lavahotpodcastcom you just search for Nathan Bourne, You'll see his old episode. You'll see the video link for YouTube and this episode and the video link as well. But with that, thanks for tuning in. If you got value from this episode, please head on over to your favorite podcasting platform and just do me the favor, if you will, of mashing that five star and giving us a review.

You've been listening to the Lava Hot Podcast with Joseph Connell Jr. Do you wanna level up your business? Then visit us at golavahotcom for a free marketing analysis. We'll be right back.