How To Scale Your Team (The Right Way)
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Summary
In this episode of the Startup Unfiltered podcast, I sit down with the founder and CEO of property valuation tool, IPI, to talk all things property valuations. We discuss the challenges facing Irish property startups, how to deal with them, and how to keep them on track.
Transcript
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The biggest killer of momentum and success is not a bad decision or lack of funding or a key person
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quitting on you. It's the CEO taking their foot off the gas pedal.
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Kenneth how's it going man? Getting on good, Dan. How are you? I'm doing incredible. I'm looking
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forward to this conversation. Give me some details. What's your story? What's the business?
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So we have a valuation tool in the Irish market after spending over five years in the UK selling high-end real estate.
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You can probably tell I'm Irish. I found a gap in the Irish market alongside my business partner,
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whereby we collated and aggregated information from multiple portals.
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So like your NLS in the US, we looked at how we could get information to the industry
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to make it a more transparent environment for everyone.
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uh and what's it called yeah uh ipi the independent property price index cool so essentially it's a
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data aggregation uh product like what's the what problem do you solve like how does a customer
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interface with it so i would say we solve giving people a platform to get uh accurate valuations
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so give transparency with data driven insights so is it more for consumers or more for real
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estate agents or realtors or or investors yeah great question um agents bank valuers finance
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institutions media bodies we create can create you know dynamic reports for some of the media
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groups in ireland so that if the product has evolved um immensely since we first launched in
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2019 um and we're now kind of going on to a more i would say enterprise um offering whereby we're
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offering the data as a service as well as the subscription model.
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Yeah, I know this industry well. I've coached a few people in this space. So what are some
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questions that you might have for me that might be able to help you with?
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Yeah, I'm thinking some of the pain points. Obviously, I'm a huge fan of your content,
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and thanks again for putting so much out. There's a lot of value there for startups. You've been
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there you've you've you've wore the hat and so i mean yeah looking at how you some of the pain
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points in the iris market is you know how do you hang on to staff especially you know some of your
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maybe your your original uh coders or software developers or making sure that you have
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i would say yeah people people are the fundamental in our business um they've been there with us
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through the pandemic i think what what in your opinion would be the sort of three top points for
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keeping them so um is your challenge right now attrition like people are quitting or leaving or
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what's what what specific problem are you trying to solve uh so i would say making making sure that
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like they stay with us. No, we don't have a huge turnover of staff, but creating a culture in a
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startup can sometimes be, it can be a rollercoaster when we're busy and it's making sure that you've
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kind of time-blocked team meetings, but what has worked for you in the past to keep and grow culture
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within the business? Well, Steve, those are two different questions. So it's interesting,
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like you went from like how do I keep people to how to create culture and that's why as a coach
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I always I always try to really get to the root of like what is the problem you're trying to solve
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because you know my answer will be specific to that is is your challenge the concern that people
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are going to quit and you're not aware of it is it that you want to create the best place to work
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like what specific problem are you trying to solve so yeah create create an environment that people
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want to come in every day uh and also work remotely we've got people in six different
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countries around the world we've grown a team to 15 since march last year yeah um so here's a few
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thoughts um one like i'm gonna order them by priority because i think a lot of people get
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this wrong you know most founders because they're in the in the zone of knowing what the future
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looks like and what's happening day to day that they just assume that other people are going to
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know right so one of the things i like to do is is hold some kind of meeting you can call it in all
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hands you can call it a q a with the founder you can call it office hours but i think it's important
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that you know at the frequency that you feel is appropriate maybe it's once a month i think that's
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not often enough maybe every two weeks i do them weekly um the bigger the team more frequent you
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of where you're going with everybody on the team, right?
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So if I say I have a vision, so let's say I'm you,
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It's like, you know, I have a vision where every company making a real estate decision is using our data in Europe, right?
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Or whatever region, you know, in the future, I don't know when, but there's a future where every person making a property decision is going to use our data.
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and it's going to require us to you know build infrastructure that allows us to do x amount of
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calls and requests against our api and have the highest quality data just speak that future into
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existence and then with that go now that i've shared that i just want to create the space for
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everybody to ask me questions on on that future and what happens is that if you do that people
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are going to connect their work to that and there's a lot of gaps that are going to come up
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they're going to be like okay that sounds cool but how are we going to do this or that sounds
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cool but what about this or hey that sounds cool but how is that my department going to change i
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mean the reality of it is is most people are self-interested in how you're going to help them
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realize their dreams like i just assume everybody's going to be selfish like and that's okay there's
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nothing wrong with that i think it's very important that you just acknowledge it like
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they show up every day because there's an agreement that may have never been said that
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you're going to create an environment for them to be able to express their creativity in the best
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possible way without the bureaucracy without the constraints because otherwise they'd go work some
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other company and get paid more but they'd have to deal with all that does that make sense yeah
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yeah great answer yeah so so to me it's important that i create the space for my team to talk with
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me directly okay so all hands meeting really important so like you know talk about the future
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let them do Q&A. That could be a format. The other things I do. Oh, go ahead.
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And just on that, because you've obviously got tech and you've got business. And let's be honest,
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there's always going to be a fine line between the two and how each of them talk. Would you
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have a space for everyone and then do separate? Everybody. Yep. Because your leaders, you know,
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you're still small that you may not have dedicated leaders to those departments. But
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usually what will happen is everybody's on the call you speak that into the future spend five
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minutes and you might have said thought to yourself i already explained this last time
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say it again say it again say like i would argue that i spend 30 to 40 of my verbal communication
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speaking vision impact mission meaning that's that's what i do i'm literally a professional
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storyteller at this point my job is to tell them where the mountaintop is their job is to figure
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how we get there i don't hire people and tell them what to do i hire people to tell me what to do
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i just need to be clear of where we're going right how do you know it's very clear for everyone
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yeah it's north star it's what does that look like when we get there like paint the picture
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tell them i want you to i want you to visualize this okay we won an award for this and we're
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seen as the best company to work for and we've got a data set that's in the multi terabytes or
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And then what'll happen is if everybody's on that call,
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then individuals, they may not wanna ask publicly.
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The way I like to explain it is you want everybody singing
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So in a vector diagram, there's direction and force, okay?
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little, little vectors are like little triangles. Okay. But there's two, there's two components to
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a vector. There's a directional component to it and there's a force. Okay. So think of like one
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to 10 being the force in the direction, Northwest, Southeast. If I have two people on my team and
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one's vector is pointing that way at a five, and this one's pointing that way at a five,
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do I have any forward motion? No, they cancel each other out. Okay. The two fives cancel each
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other out. If I point them in the same direction, do I have forward motion? Yes. Then the question
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is, okay, how do I get everybody on my team pointing in the same direction and get from
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twos, threes, fours, fives, sevens, whatever, to tens? To the degree that you have the ability
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to get everybody pointed in the same directions out of 10, that is called leadership. That is
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skill can you learn the skill sets to be a better leader if you haven't read the 21 irrefutable laws
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of leadership by john maxwell great start start yeah anything from um patrick lencioni amazing
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books he's got a whole library of incredible books but leadership's one of those things as a ceo just
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like sales you really can't over consume like great place to invest your time but so all hand
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meetings and creating that space that's one okay the other one is one-on-ones okay so i have one-on-ones
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with all my direct reports every week but i only believe you should ever have more than five
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i call it the five by five rule so five direct reports five levels deep should get you to where
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you want to go in any business okay you can go up to seven but i just like five by five it's a simple
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methodology to think about and just build your teams underneath other folks so that people say
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well i like flat hierarchies that's great doesn't work right i don't i've never made it work i think
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people want a clear person who is leading vision and managing reporting and metrics and all that
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stuff um but every every monday i have direct reports one-on-ones okay and we talk about
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not the projects we talk about them we talk about their vision we talk about what's what's
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challenging them because that's why somebody's going to leave your organization and and to me
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it's mandatory so all my leaders have to have one-on-ones with anybody that reports to them
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because i don't want to be surprised that somebody was having challenges and decides that they want
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to leave to go pursue something else right so that's the second thing and then the third thing
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is um once a quarter across all my team okay and i have you know close to 100 people that work for
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me i do one-on-ones with everybody on the team 15 minutes okay so like today i might have three my
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whenever I have cancellations or something comes up.
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is there anything that you just see is so obvious
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that we should be doing that we're not even thinking about?
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Right, and just listen, don't make commitments.
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Don't try to, you know, undermine any of the leaders.
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just listen, right? Any questions for me, right? I like to create the space. Any questions for me?
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Like they're talking to the CEO, they have questions. And then finally, like I just said
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at the beginning, the end of the call is to connect their work to the bigger vision. That's my job. My
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job is CEOs have three things they have to do really well. They have to be clear about where
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we're going and communicate the vision. They need to manage the financial so that you don't run out
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of capital, right? So money. And they have to make sure that the right people are on the team.
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Those are the three things, vision, money, and people. And if you do those things, the business
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should build that momentum and continue to grow even faster than it has been so far.
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Based on what I just shared, Kenneth, I'm just curious, what resonated with you? What did you
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need to hear most? What did you like? I liked, you know, it hit a nerve when you started talking
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of you know getting everyone on the same page because that's been on my objective this year
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it's really interesting the time that this conversation has come about because
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I've literally been going ham I'm not gonna you know since March I've been going full force and
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I'm taking it I'm taking a sort of a week's uh holiday um to sort of reflect on on on the past
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you know year because it has been you know it's been uncertain for some we've lost our lead
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developer, but we've also gained a CTO, software engineer, we've grown our sales team, we've got
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analysts. So there's a lot of pros. And I think from what you were discussing, I like the one-on-one
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reports, the really just kind of sticking to having those CEO mindsets of your vision, mission,
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values, and making them solid in the business. All hands meet. I do like that. We usually do
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like a stand-up meet which is like it just ends up this one person talking where it's not actually
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it's you go out at the end of it and you've gone past 15 or 20 minutes you're like that
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there was no agenda set so making sure you're setting agendas making sure the conversation
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is led by team rather than up at the top of the triangle so lead from the bottom is one thing I've
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really taken on from the last month. And making sure that, you
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know, we're in what six different time zones. So aligning
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transparency. So doing what we're doing for the industry, but
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internally, I think will resonate more with our customers.
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Awesome. Those are big takeaways. I mean, to me, again, if
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you can get everybody aligned with the same amount of intensity,
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focus and uh execution that's what's going to create momentum so yeah i know you're a big
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advocate for outdoor sports and and and uh hats off to you for doing your your uh your iron man
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and what would you say if you had down time uh in the space 28 think yourself 28 maybe 30 years of
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age what would you be doing i mean i don't think age like i'm doing what i'm doing now which is
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you know yesterday when i started off i did a big hike was fun then i went wake surfing all
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day with the family and then i got back and i went for a mountain bike ride so i don't know
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i think it's just being outside in nature i think is a really uh important component of
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an integrated life like i believe i don't believe in i believe that most people that
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say you need to sacrifice to be successful is because those people don't have control
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of their calendar like they're you know they don't plan their mornings they don't schedule their
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lives they don't have a vision for their their business they don't have a cadence and the way
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i know that to be true is you know when i ask entrepreneurs that i coach you know privately
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you know what's something that when you do it a hobby an activity that really lights you up and
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it charges you up and it rejuvenates you and some people it's like kiteboarding or snowboarding or
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if you took half a day and went and did that activity,
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And most of the time they're like, no, I'd be better.
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Cause like most people need a separation from the work
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work to go do something different with their mind and their body to almost reset them to come back
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with another level of intensity. So I know I work out twice a day typically, but I work out at lunch
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because it resets my energy for my meetings in the afternoon, right? And I just show up better.
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Most people would think like, aren't you tired after a workout? Nope. I don't know about you,
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but after I go to the gym, I feel better, right? I feel, you know, excited, energized, strong,
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confidence um creative so i just think it's find the activity if it can bring you outside awesome
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if you bring you in the water even better right surfing that kind of stuff is is is great and if
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you can do with other people even even even better right um because there's nothing like you know
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getting your sweat on having a great conversation enjoying some vitamin d um you know being in in
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in nature to uh to make you feel like you're not sacrificing see business will suck every ounce of
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you if you let it and the biggest uh killer of momentum and success is not a bad decision or
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lack of funding or a key person quitting on you it's the ceo taking their foot off the gas pedal
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it's the ceo getting to a point where they're burnt out and they got to take three months off
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i have clients that get before they've worked with me you know they've shared with me they've gotten
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um they've gotten adrenal fatigue okay where their body literally says i'm done and there it's like
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you're hung over laying on the couch for three months like i have one of my clients right now
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he's in one of my programs i don't coach him privately that was offered to he didn't want
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to see anybody because his eyes were all inflamed okay but essentially what i'm saying is your body
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will have a physical response to your work schedule and stress levels and if you don't have a release
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valve eventually that tank gets to a high pressure and explodes and i just think you know if you don't
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incorporate physical movement or what i call sweat every day at least just break a sweat every day
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it doesn't matter if it's yoga hiking walking stretching just you know make sure your heart
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rate gets you know increased um then it's just it's it doesn't allow you to execute at the
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highest level possible does that make sense yeah yeah i'm i'm there on that cool bye
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launching, we're launching in the UK next. What would you say one key indicator of launching in
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a new market would be? Usually what I tell people when they're expanding into new markets, new
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segments, new use cases is try to go back to how you started and replicate that. So success leaves
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clues people that are successful have done things inadvertently they may have forgotten that they did
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right it might have been like a first partner like you launch because you had a partner that
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brought you into the market and then you go and you start a new market and you don't have that
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and then you struggle for six months and then you're like oh i forgot the thing that made me
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successful is that we had a partner that kind of like launched us into it to create that momentum
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So that's the big rule is like whatever worked in the past, so there's replicate that, so like pattern match.
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And then the other one is like everything in life, find somebody who's successfully done it, ask them what they learned.
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What I've discovered, because I coach a lot of clients that do international expansion, is if you are going to do it,
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we're going to build like a separate team, you know, customer base, et cetera.
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it's always best to have somebody from the main company move there and build the team with local
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people than to hire somebody to lead it locally that didn't come from your team because there's
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so much dna and culture and you know just like just so much knowledge that is required to take
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this and be successful because if you don't do that typically what i see happen is you know
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clients that have failed again before i work with them these are all stories they tell me because
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i've seen the pattern replicate itself is they hire somebody in the uk or germany or in south
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asia or whatever and then they hire somebody from that region that doesn't have any connection to
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the business they have no visibility what that person's doing they're trying to give the person
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space to kind of create demand and pipeline but six months nine months later they're like hey we
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just spent 150 grand on this department and it isn't even producing any revenue we're gonna have
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have to shut it down and maybe start again in a year or two years we have more time right so that's
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that's the big missed opportunity um when expanding into new regions geographical regions
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yeah that was very good so kenneth as we wrap up i'm just curious what based on everything you've
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heard me say share even other videos you've seen what has been the most impactful thing on your life
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the most impactful thing on my life in business yeah getting getting after it every day for for
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for a big meaning um sort of making sure i'm floating my own boat and i'm looking after the
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people around me i'm looking after my health well-being and i'm bringing people up within
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the business from may that may have never got the opportunity um helping the leaders
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yeah helping guys that you know uh i'm a firm believer that you've got to help people uh in
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17 18 19 in schools and you know disadvantaged areas that may have never got the opportunity
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because they might be the brightest minds in businesses um and that's a space i really want
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to explore into going into my 30s and 40s is like getting into schools uh because i'm going to be
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honest i wasn't a i wasn't i wasn't good in school uh but i've got a business mind and i was always
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at trade shows with my with my dad and learned a lot from him but it's like how do you how do
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you bring that to younger generations that if they don't get the points to go to college or
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they don't have the finances to fund it that they can have the opportunity to and i think giving
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you know programs towards that generation i think would have massive effect because
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They end up getting into drugs, drink, et cetera, and that's just a slippery slope.
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So how to bring my value and share my value to other people would be something I would like to do.
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Probably biggest thing would be, yeah, keep your group close.
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Try and surround yourself with the best brass in the business.
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People like yourselves, watch the content you produce.
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my mother always tell me you've got two ears and one mouth
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brought across the board, and what was the other
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it's been a pleasure man keep it up keep me boasted and uh hope you have a amazing rest of