You know, probably when I was about 20, I was probably at like 42,000 a year. And through skills coaching and the other educational aspect, within five years I was at like$130,000 in, in salary, welcome back to The Art of Connecting Podcast. This is your host here, Haydynn, back with another episode for you guys. And today I am joined by my new friend, Josh Sweeney. Josh first some reference I always tell the listeners how we end up meeting. So telling how the connection got started. A few weeks ago I was down in Atlanta at the Entrepreneurs Organization Accelerator that they have there. And my, my friend invited me and didn't even show up, so I was lone ranging it over there, which is nothing new. So I ended up meeting some awesome people at the event and at the mixer they had afterwards. And Josh is one of those people. And we talked about what his company does and I was like, dude, we need to have you come on the podcast and talked about it. So we're super excited to have you on the show today, Josh, and thanks for joining us. Yeah, thanks for having me. And it was great to make the connection. Yeah. And Josh for, for the listeners here, for you guys, Josh actually was speaking at the event, so he's not just an attendee. We'll let you tell more about what all you do later, but it was really cool to get to hear you speak and learn from you at the event. So with that being said, Josh, why don't we go ahead and just do a quick introduction and we'll get right into it. Sure. My name's Josh Sweeney, as you've heard, and my company is Founder Scale and we help business owners scale revenue. Awesome. Well, you've got your elevator pitch down. That was like a solid four seconds, I feel like. Easy. All right. Well, so let's dive into that a little bit. How do you help founders scale revenue? Yeah, so what we found is founders and business owners are really unique in that, you know, there's a lot of hype out there. There's a lot of companies who claim that they can just generate leads for you just sign up for their new AI tool, they'll spam everybody in the country and it'll just make it rain leads or sign up for their AI tool to do LinkedIn or whatever it is. You know, hire an agency, do SEO. And what we found is many business owners when they, when we first meet them, have tried one thing after another, one tactic after another, and found that it's a lot harder than the hype. And so when they find it's harder than the hype and it takes a lot more knowledge and help to scale revenue, they come to us. So those are our best clients. They've tried a few things and then they're ready to, you know, learn a little bit more. And so what we provide is we provide a framework, like a four phase framework to help them really understand what's behind sales and marketing, what really makes it work in larger businesses. Not just the surface hype that everybody has. And then once we walk them through that together or go through that together, we then execute on that plan with them side by side. Cool. Awesome. So you're not just dropping a course and saying, all right, go figure it out, and we hope you do well. But you're teaching people the systems to scale and then walking them through it as an implementer. Is that correct? That's exactly right. Yeah. We find that most founders, you know, they don't have the time. Really, most business owners don't have the time to just do another course. And also, you know, they wanna ask questions, they want to engage, they're gonna run into problems. And challenges as they try the things you know, that a course might have. So instead of doing the course, we walk it side by side. So it's kind of like it's more active, it's engaged with their team, and then we're there in perpetuity, or as long as, you know, the, our agreements are to help them overcome each challenge that will arise as they scale revenue. Awesome. Well, that's a perfect explanation. I love it. I'm a nerd, so I love getting getting into the weeds a little bit. So yeah. We will get out of the weeds now. And I want to really just talk about. Growing and scaling the company and how connections played into that. So where I would like to start with that is how did you get plugged in with eo? I know you told me this story, but We'll, we'll tell it. Yeah, sure. For the listeners. Right. So EO it was probably, it was about 13 years ago. There was another entrepreneur, and I don't remember exactly which one, but there were two really well-known entrepreneurs in Atlanta that I had got connected to. Don't even remember how I met them. And two of both of them at different times were like, Hey, you've gotta join eo. Like this is the program, you know, this is, you know, it's all the best, you know, top 4% of founders in the world join this program. And so I went and applied and I was actually promptly rejected because to join, to join the organization, you have to be at a million dollars in revenue, which most people don't know, but only about 4% of companies founded in the US ever make it to a million in revenue. So about a month later, one of them calls me back and is like, Hey, they started this new accelerator program. It's for companies between 250,000 and a million, and it's a three year program to get you over a million. And I was like, perfect. I'm at like right at two 50. And so I joined and then never looked back. I've been in it for 13 years now. That's awesome. And what, what has some of the results of that been to be in a community of like-minded individuals? It's sometimes it's hard to capture all the benefits of that. You know, when you're a founder of a company, a business owner, a lot of times you just don't have anybody else to talk to about your challenges that understands the full scope of what you're dealing with. So it's one of those groups where like you can just talk to anybody and they completely understand. You what your challenges are, right? They understand all the dynamics and really can dive in with you. And so it's, it's a tribe of people. Like most people that join EO feel like they, they found their group. They say they found, they found, they found their tribe of people that understand them. So when you're in a group of people that really understand you. And, you know, in this case, a group of all million dollar plus entrepreneurs that can really speak from experience instead of just opinions. You know, there's a profound impact to your life and your business, and that's what it was for me. Yeah, absolutely. Well, that's, I, I love this story. I, I got started in a mastermind. Looks like I'm frozen. Oh, there I am. My computer's been wigging out recently. I started out in Action Academy and it's a mastermind group that Brian Lubin runs. He has an awesome podcast as well, if you guys haven't checked that out yet. And I just, I just joined that group probably almost three years ago, which is freaking nuts now. It's been that long but. I had nothing going on at that point. It was a brand new group and Brian was like, I like your energy. I'll let you in if you pay me 2,500 bucks for life. And I was like, oh, okay. I did, I had like maybe five grand in my name at that point, but I was like, you know, this seems like something cool. I'll do it. And it's had a profound impact on my life. You know, I have a group of people just like you were saying, that understand what it's like to go through building and scaling a business. You know, so many experts in there to be able to like run things by. There's just someone posted in in the group the other day and said, I'm taking a two week vacation for my million dollar business and my employees are mad that I'm taking vacation. I haven't taken a vacation in two years. And it's like. And there was so many amazing comments in there of like, Hey, you have a culture problem. Right? Right. And right. People giving feedback on like, Hey, you know, this is some stuff that you can do to help remedy this. And you can't just post that on your Facebook. Right. It's not just like a, Hey, this is the problem of the day. These are very specific issues that you really wanna have a community of business owners to help figure out. Yeah, for sure. I mean, there's all kinds of instances where like, only that group of people really gets it because they know. The whole dynamic, right? They, they know what all goes into it. They know the effort. So it's it's great to connect one-on-one with people who, you know, already inherit that knowledge and, and understand. Yeah, absolutely. So I want to talk about your first company. Can you tell me a little bit about. Excuse me, the first company that you started and what you grew when you were in eo. Yeah, so my first company, the name was at Core Systems and we were, we were a CRM consulting firm. So we went in and we did kind of mid-market CRM implementations. All of them were highly customized. And there was a CRM platform that we were a partner with, and we were number six in a North America in their partner channel. So we would go into different organizations and do you know these really highly customized, integrated implementations for sales teams? And you ended up growing that to, to exit, correct? Yeah. I grew it to a few million and then we exited and sold to a company that was also a channel partner out in California and folded into them. Love it. Yeah. And so when, when that happened. A lot of times I hear of when someone sells their company for a few million dollars and that's what they've worked towards the whole time. They kind of have like an existential crisis. Yeah. Did you have a moment like that where you were like, okay, I just gotta check for a few million dollars? What do I do now? Yeah, a hundred percent. I think mine was a little different because I didn't know what I was gonna do next, and I got some really good advice from another friend in eo and they were like, they had sold their company and they told me, they said, here's the challenge when you sell and you get a check. If you, if you don't go to do anything next, you don't know what you're gonna do every month that dollar amount starts to go down. You start chipping away at it. You buy some of the things you've wanted to buy, and that number moves further and further down and it's, there's nothing going back in, right. It's a cash flow issue. And and so like I reflected on that and I didn't know what I was gonna do next. So when I sold, I also said, well. The, the owner of that company is like, what are you gonna do next? And I said, well. I figured I'd just come work for you. So I went and I was a consultant and in retrospect, I probably should have taken the month off. I took about, I think I took two weeks off, but I really should have taken a month off to think about that and said like, I'll either start this date or, or I'll call you and say I'm not, I don't know. You know, I don't know how he'd appreciated that, the, the non-commitment. But so yeah, I went and worked for them for about a year and a half until I thought of what I wanted to do next. And I think the biggest challenge I had was the existential crisis was actually that I felt like I lost my identity. Mm. Like I really identified as an entrepreneur, the one leading the business, the one leading the company. And so working for somebody else. You know, it was, it's an identity that I had for nine years as I built for that company, built that company. I was, you know, in eo I was part of other networking groups of other entrepreneurs. So like my friend group was tied around this identity. So I think that was probably the hardest part of that kind of existential crisis. Well, it's so interesting too, is I, I had no idea that you went and worked for somebody else after you exited. Yeah, I just, as an entrepreneur, I've, I've been an entrepreneur for. Yeah, I haven't worked for somebody else at W2 for probably three years now. And it's so cr like, I couldn't imagine going and working for someone now. I mean, like, I started my morning on the wake boat surfing this morning and Yeah. You know, if I had to be in the office at nine, you know, I would've been late, right? Like for my day nine 50 today, because I, you know, went on the boat and, and it's like. I just couldn't imagine going back to that like, and I'm sure you had flexibility, like when you've been an entrepreneur and you go work for another entrepreneur, it's not like they're not gonna be like, oh, why are you five minutes late? You know? I wouldn't imagine. But yeah, it's so difficult to go back into that, like, Hey, we should make this change. It's like, oh, you gotta talk to the big man. You can't just make that change. Yeah. It was definitely a, a learning lesson. And I think it was actually a growing opportunity for me because it was funny when I said that, I said, well, I thought I would just, you know, come work for you. And he, he looked across the table and I remember him asking me just point blank. He's like, well, let me ask you this. Do you think you can work for somebody else? And I was like, you know. Yeah, like I don't see why not. You know, I don't, I, I think I can, I think I'll be fine. And that was a little harder than I expected. It. It was, there was a lot of change. There was a lot of decision making that, you know, I was no longer, you know, had the authority to do in certain departments, you know, when things weren't going well or Right. Or what I saw was the right way to do things. So I grew a lot by, I think, make, working for them for another year and a half. And maybe it's a good reality check to be like, Hey. This is how most people live. Right? Right. Yeah. Sometimes I forget, I'm like, you know, on a random Tuesday in Cabo or something like that, and I'm like, it just becomes normal after a while when you've been in business for a while, just the freedom that you're granted and you get to choose what your day is filled with and what it's not filled with. And it's, I feel like we, we oftentimes as entrepreneurs take that for granted and forget that. Most people are clocking in in the morning or in the evening. Right. And they're going to work and they don't have the op. Not that, that they don't have the opportunity to do what we do'cause anyone could do what we do, but they don't live that life every day. And, and it's, yeah. It's good to be connected again and remember. Yeah. And I think that those lessons from that have also come up recently. And it's really interesting'cause like you said, we. As entrepreneurs, we don't report to anybody technically, right? Some of us report to a board. Some of us have investors, but. Many of us don't. The vast majority don't report to anybody. And what that means is you can end up doing things for long periods of time and thinking and having one perspective. It's kind of like this bubble. And what I've realized is as we go in and work with companies, it's interesting because at that point we are now. On the receiving end of a founder's behavior, right? How that founder operates. And over the past probably three years, I've had a lot of reflections in the mirror. So for example, we go in and a lot of the teams we work with run EOS. If you're familiar with EOS or you know, from the book Traction. And so we'll do a revenue. Level 10 meeting and we see the behaviors of the founder reflected back. And sometimes I'm like, man, this is painful, right? Like the thing that the founder's doing is, is hurting culture, it's hurting the team, and they don't realize it. But for me it's actually been a reflection Sometimes I'm like, you know what? I think I've done that before. Like, I think I've acted in that way and demotivated my team, but because of what we do, we get to be on the receiving end from founders. So it's really interesting. It was, it, that was my first moment going to work for somebody else after many, many years. And it was like, man, there was, there was some behaviors that. Should have been modified, right for the, for the benefit of the culture. And like I said, we see that now a lot of times when things get derailed you know, that founder doesn't have anybody giving them the feedback that they trust and that they'll accept the feedback from too. So that can be a challenge. And the great part about having that experience being in the driver's seat before is, at least for me, it makes you a little less scared to tell someone that you know, you, if you went north for your buddy. You know, sit'em down and say, Hey dude, you know, I'm noticing this and the team is noticing this. No one's gonna tell you this because everyone wants to kiss your butt, but Right. I'm gonna tell you the truth because you can fire me and I'll be fine. Right. Yeah. It gives you like a, you know, I, I'm always super honest with business people and I think it's what helps me with my connections is I can be, I can meet someone that is just starting in their business, or I can meet someone that's brings in a billion dollars a year in revenue. I'm not afraid to, to ask the questions and, and also be like, why, why do you do things that way? And, and Right. Challenge them. And especially the bigger guys. No one ever challenges them, like in their company. It's like, oh, yes, yes, yes. You know, whatever you want us to do, boss. You know, they're like bowing down to the boss right. To, to do whatever they can to get a promotion. And I'll be like, why do you do that? That way? That doesn't make any sense to me. And then maybe they explain it to me and it makes perfect sense. And then a lot, like, I've had it several times where it's like. Why do we do things that way? Like, I'm gonna go talk to my CEO about that.'cause I have no idea. That doesn't make any sense either. Yeah, definitely. And then they call me later and they're like, thanks for telling me about that. You saved us a bunch of money. Yeah. I feel like some are very obvious, you know, and, and it's like, oh, that's not good. And then there's somewhere, like you said, you kind of need to ask, you're like, oh. There are three ways to get to the same conclusion, and that one's just different than mine. Right. And so I think asking first, and then like you said, or you know, you're talking about kind of giving people feedback. You have to have that rapport, right? They have to be willing to hear it from you, or it has to be, you know, the right timing because, you know, we're not in the, the coaching business, so it's not, you know, when it's not your place to say something, you know, then it's like, well, how do you. How do you make that bridge and go, well, I need to say something'cause it's really messing up your revenue team, you know, but what do you do? You know, so it can be college. The way I would do that is I I just say, I don't know what I'm doing. Like I'll just like,'cause I genuinely most of the time don't, I'll just be like, Hey, I don't really understand anything about this, but you know, why do you do this that way? Yeah. Right. Yeah. And, and it kind of disarms because it's like, I'm just an idiot, you know, can you educate me? And then they start educating you about it, and kind of secretly in the back of your head, you, you do know a little bit, you know, you're not a complete idiot. Right? And then you're like, Hmm, that's interesting. You know, have you ever looked at that? And they'd be, you know, it's, it's just like an exploration rather than a, like, I'm sitting here and Josh and telling you, you know, you're not doing this right. You should do this another way. I'm like, yeah. Josh, have you ever heard of this really cool strategy that I read in the book the other day and it's like, no, I haven't tell me about it. And that's kind of how I, I disarmed that situation. Yeah. I mean, I think it's always good to be like, come from a more inquisitive place than a judgmental place. And I think I know I've had to, I've had to practice like what you said, right? Like be in, I'm inquisitive. And I am going to ask a question about it first, and I'm gonna think about that question because it can come across as judgmental if you say it the wrong way. And, and that may not even be the intention, right? It's just how do you engage in the right way? Yeah. How do you keep people from like, feeling angst when you walk up? Right? Yeah. That's not a good thing. Yeah. I mean, and you can tell whenever there's like someone at the office here and I walk in and she's like, I don't know why, but she doesn't like me anymore. I mean, she used to like me and I say, Hey, and now she like, she sees me and she intentionally looks down at her laptop, so I don't know what's going on, but you know, I need to have a conversation with her or something. I dunno, maybe not, I don't know. But. It's just interesting because you can read people's behavior if you pay attention. Yeah. And yeah. Anyways, we can get off of this subject. I'm kind of rambling. Yeah, no problem. Yeah. So the next thing I, I wanna talk about is you've got that little connect. If, if you're listening audio on, on Josh's background, there's bookshelf and it says connect on it. What inspired you to buy that? Yeah. So every year I set out a theme for the year. For the company. And so when I buy that, that one I think is actually from last year, 2024. So there's actually a 2024 sign that goes above it, but it gets mounted on the wall. So yeah, 2024 was all about connection. So I wanted to speak more. I wanted to go to more networking events. I wanted to work on. You know, like what we just said, how to ask better questions so I could really connect with people better instead of, you know, them feeling judged. So it was all about building connections and I made it a theme for the year and really sat down at the beginning or at the end of 2023 and said, how can I make this happen? What do I need to work on? How can I connect with more people? How can I help more founders and business owners? And so that was the the theme for the year last year. So what were kind of the results of that? A lot of personal development. So, you know, I started, a lot of times I read, I go through a lot of audio books, so I started looking for different audio books on the topic and just learning like, you know, human behavior connection you know. How to influence other people. I learned a lot about going scheduling, speaking events. So I got two different speaker trainings professional speaker trainings, and, you know, just leveled up on speaker training. So went through a lot of different, you know. Different venues or aspects of connecting with people. So I got better speaking skills, better stage presence. I learned that if you want to be a professional speaker, you really have to commit for like two or three years. A lot of people are booked out. Like if you start speaking today, you know, your first event maybe six months from now, right? People are booking things out well in advance. So yeah, I just learned a lot from. From those different activities. Another one was the book, the Like Switch, and they're like, you know, connecting with people is about frequency and proximity. And so when you think about that, it's like, okay, frequency and proximity, how does that. How does that work if I'm always on a Zoom call and people are in a rush to have the conversation and get off and go to the next Zoom call and they're doing 12 a day and I'm don't have enough frequency in front of a person that I want to have a good relationship with, right? What does that mean? What do I have to do? So all kinds of little lessons and takeaways from that. That theme. Hmm. I love that. And what, what were kind of the, you know, do you have a cool story about going to go speak somewhere and meeting someone afterwards that became a client or referred you to a client and kind of some instant results? Or was it more of like a crockpot? I would. I would say it was a little more of a crockpot. We did get some leads, like I was on a podcast and somebody called up and was like, you said you help business owners scale revenue and here's the situation. And it just really resonated with them. Right? So we got a number of leads from that over time. And then, you know, some of the speaking events where it's like really. Accurate to our target audience. We end up getting deals from that. Some of that also was one of the coaches I talked to said. You know, in your first six months of speaking, don't get hung up on whether it's your exact target audience. They're like, you need reps. You wanna get good at speaking and stage presence, and what inflection points you have that you really want to nail. And you can go speak to whatever group you want. And. A lot of those groups, the smaller groups that are less in your target audience are ones you can get booked up for in the next 30, 60, 90 days. So everybody was just like, it's reps, reps, reps. So I didn't worry too much about, you know, the target audience as much. And I just worried about getting reps, and I still do that when I have new content. Mm-hmm. I have there's a number of different entrepreneur groups and stuff around town incubators, and I always volunteer to speak there for free because I can work on new content and see like, how did it resonate? How did it come across what did they write down? What questions did they ask? So it's a, it's a journey. Well, speaking of speaking, if you would ever like to come speak at my real estate meetup. Yeah, I have some slots available starting in November. I believe so. That'd be cool. That'd be perfect. You talk about scaling a real estate business and you don't have you, you know, it's all principles that work together so you can just like take your put real estate business in there probably. I think that'd be really cool'cause we have a lot of owners in the room of different portfolios and management companies and things like that, so that'd be really cool. Yeah, that'd be great. Happy to do it. So what are some examples of some small events that you spoke at? Because I'm working on speaking at more I spoke at a Mortgage Bankers Association. I was like Mortgage Bankers Association and I own a lending company I guess, but I don't do mortgages, but, well, I guess I, I do, but I don't do like residential. Oh, hey there. It's me again. I know you expected Morgan Freeman to come on and talk about the biggest company in the world. Well, I'm sorry, but you get the next best thing. This show is sponsored by the company that I co founded, Acadia Capital, and acadia is a hard money lending fund originating loans in Southeast Tennessee and Northern Georgia on residential one to four unit renovation properties. We are regulation D five Oh six C fund and are actively seeking accredited investors. We provide fantastic first position real estate back returns. If you're ready to get your tired and lazy capital to work with a minimum 8 percent return, go to Acadia loans. com backslash invest. Not only do we accept standard investments, but we can also accept self directed IRAs and other self directed retirement accounts to take advantage of tax advantage investing. Thank you so much for listening to Art of Connecting now back to the show. Now I see people all the time and there was probably about 40 people there, but they're like, oh, I heard you speak at the Mortgage Bankers Association. And so it's really cool that I got to do that. So what are some like local organizations that you were when you were getting started? You spoke at? Yeah. There's been a number of opportunities. One of them was an angel investor that had a fund. Has a fund, and they actually brought me in to speak to two Techstars cohorts. Oh, cool. Which is really cool'cause Techstars is well known. And I have some unique content around how how to finance your revenue growth. And what he said was, he's like, man, a lot of these, he said, I just funded a founder a year ago. They got 250,000 in their first round. They blew 150,000 on sales and marketing. That didn't work. And now they're in like a really hard place. And I'm like, well, we could have, we, we put together those models beforehand right before you go spend the money and it's just a little work up front. So Techstars was a really awesome opportunity. There's one locally to us. I'm in Atlanta and there's a county, Gwinnett County. They have an entrepreneur center and so they bring in a lot of entrepreneurs to that group and I'll go speak there and that's always great because we can also piggyback and invite people to the event and engage. So yeah, there's just a lot of different ones that pop up over time. And then there's these unique ones, like there's one that's in the senior care space that, i'm speaking at here soon and it's I don't know a whole lot about the senior care space, but everybody's in sales and marketing. Mm-hmm. So it's all about like going from organic to structured referral systems and other things that can help them as individual contributors on the front lines of sales and marketing. So it's interesting when you ask, you know, people are on lots of different boards and they, Hey, revenue sales marketing's always a great topic. We'd love to have you. Yeah. Well, and it's, I was just, I was thinking speaking is such a easy way to like just be one to many, right? When you're, when you're networking, if you're at a networking event, you're just like one to one or maybe one to like three at a time of people you're talking to. But when you're the speaker, you know, people are sitting down and they think you're important because you're the speaker of the event, right? Right. So clearly this guy knows something if he's the speaker and, you know, it's, it's really an amazing opportunity to be able to get a point across to, you know, a large amount of people at a time. And you know, it is just, it's, I I enjoy speaking personally, so I guess I'm a very much an oddball in the fact that I, and actually enjoy doing that. Most people are terrified of it, and I guess that kinda was at first. So when you first started, were you scared to speak? Was this a, a intimidating thing for you or was it pretty easy from your company leadership experience? I would say it's pretty easy. I do get kind of a little more worn down from speaking. I'm not like super extrovert where I could be on stage, you know, day after day after day and going to lots of networking events and just always engaging. I'm more kind of in the middle. But from a. You know, a fear perspective, none of that. It was interesting, like when you start to get in front of the bigger crowds, you know, you do notice your nerves a little bit, but I've actually found, like my technique for that is if I'm running onto a stage, like in front of a big crowd and I just showed up for this my nerves are a little higher, right? I can tell. Whereas like if I can get somewhere 30 minutes before and do some networking and talk to people, then I feel like I'm kind of in rivet. Rhythm a little bit, and then I can, you know, take the stage. And so that helps a lot. So there's little things, but overall, like public speaking never really bothered me. So I was lucky in that aspect. Yeah, I've watched a friend of mine, bill Allen, he he's a very incredibly introverted guy, but he speaks all across the country. And I've watched how he, he behaves at the beginning of the events. He, he spoke at the Action Academy retreat we had in Tulum, Mexico. And he was just walking around with people saying, Hey, no one looked at the speaker. Like no one looked at the pictures of the speaker before. And so he was Right. Yeah, yeah. I do real estate. Yeah. And like he didn't say I'm the speaker. And then he got up and started speaking. There's probably 150 of us there. And all of a sudden, like five or 10 people were like, oh, I didn't know you were speaking. Yeah. And it's so funny'cause it's, it's what he does to like, kind of, kind of trick people out a little bit because it's like. He just stays very vague before he goes up and speaks. So yeah, that was so funny to watch'cause I knew who he was, so, yeah, that's always fun. People like, oh, I didn't know you were gonna speak, or it's like, yeah, here I am. Right. Yeah. I like the other thing. The other thing, I'm gonna go back for a second on you were talking about kind of the one to mini aspect. The other thing that I think is a cool takeaway and for any listeners that are thinking about speaking is like if somebody comes to your website and finds you. A lot of times you're doing the sales pitch, right? You are trying to show them your methodology. Show them why this methodology is different than others. Like in our case very different than whatever, you know, than the hype everybody else has. And so you kind of have to sell them on it. The great thing about speaking, I think, is that when I get a lead from speaking, they've already opted into my messaging. Right. So in our messaging, when we're like, okay, you tried an agency and you spent a bunch of money and you got no ROI, and then you tried SEO and you got no ROI, and you tried the meeting setter, right? When you've done all that and you've learned it's harder, call us. Right? Then somebody goes, oh. I'm that person. They identify with our system, our way of doing things, and there's just a lot less selling to it, right? They've already identified and opted in from the messaging they've heard. So I think that's the cool thing when you have a really. You know, a differentiated presentation is that people can opt into that method, you know, and I've seen that with some great speakers. Kind of like like Russell Brunson does this a lot. He's like, he's gonna tell you all about funnels, and if you believe in funnels, then you go into his funnel basically. You know, and there's just so many ways you can opt in. And, and people opt into your messaging from there, so that's really fun. Yeah. Bill's actually Russell Brunson's, CEO, which is kind of funny. Oh really? Yeah, he does all, like, he runs ClickFunnels now. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah, it's, I went to a conference with called Raise Fest. It was for capital raising some, raising money for my fund right now, Acadia. And Russell spoke there at, at race Fest and it was just so interesting to hear like. The FU word funnel was probably used a hundred times. Oh yeah. At least. And most people don't even really think about that. And I'm just now building up my go high level. I finally have funnels, you know, for, for different things. And man, it is hard to build that like it is. It is not easy as a new person to just get on and create a funnel, but once you get it set up, of course you can reuse it, template it, and you know. Built, you know, it works, but especially if you're a bootstrapping entrepreneur, it's very difficult. So what has your experience been in building funnels?'cause really that is a form of connecting with people and staying in touch. Yeah. So I'm gonna go back to the funnel comment before you said he said it like a hundred times. I listened to the podcast called Founders. I don't know if you've ever heard that one. Yeah. But it's a really good podcast and he always says like, repetition is persuasive, right? When you look at the Russell Brunsons, when you look at the Bridger, Pennington with fund launch, right? It's like they say fund, fund, fund, like a million times he says funnels, you know, so it's really cool how they've like. You know, known that repetition is persuasive and you can identify them with that, that one word. So as far as your funnel question though, like we're a little bit different. We do it, it's kind of like that funnel comment or, or funnel statement you made around it being hard. We find that that's another tactic that people take, right? They're like, oh, funnels will solve my problem. I'm gonna go do this. And then it doesn't quite work for them, right? They may start to build a funnel. It may work a little bit or get them leads, but they still don't hit their revenue goal, right? So to us, the funnel, the SEO, all of these different options are just part of a revenue strategy. And understanding the strategy helps when you go to do the tactical item, build the funnel, build the SEO, do the outbound sales, and you know, knowing those dynamics and a lot of the things we put together. Makes those more successful. So a lot of times we, we say like if somebody's just buying a tactic, like one item, they think they're gonna sign up for a CRM and that's gonna solve their problems. They're gonna sign up for funnels, you know, do funnels. That's gonna solve their problem. We're like, well, we. When you wanna know more, you know, come see us. You know, if it didn't meet your expectations, come see us. But I think it's a core part of the business. I mean, obviously building the funnels and landing pages and knowing how to do copy and everything that they provide is a crucial part of the bigger revenue engine. Yeah. And it doesn't work if you don't. Yeah, exactly. Like if you build a funnel, but you put it out to your Instagram, it has a hundred followers. You know, you're probably not gonna get that many leads. Right. You know, I, yeah. And, and that's part of the reason why I've started, you know, all of my events is I'm building a community of people that know me. They come to my in-person events and as part of the benefit also is. At each time they check in, I get a name, phone number, email, right? They work for, so you know, it's a, a list of people that know me and I'm able to reach out to them. But. You know, and funnel doesn't do much good if you don't have people to put in it. Exactly. Yeah. And I think that's, that's part of the system, right? So the funnel's crucial, but or, and if you're doing events along with it and you're gathering names and you decide to put out a new prospectus for a new fund. And when they download it, it shows some sort of intent or interest, you know, in the funnel. Well, you have people to send that to. You have people that you've built relationships with, they see your name on it, they're more likely to open it, right? So all of these things really work together and I think that's, that's one of the kind of disconnects we have with a lot of founders who initially come to us is they tried one thing, right? They tried SEO and we're like, that didn't work. You know, they tried ads or they tried networking and you know, there's lots of other pieces that have to come together to really amplify that and where, you know, one plus one equals three or five instead. Yeah, absolutely. So what do you think the most important. Action items are for like that most founders just miss like that you, I know this is a very general question, but like if you had to put a few things. Like two or three things that you just see all the time that founders miss, what would those be? Yeah, so luckily we have a very standardized framework, so I can tell you the three things we've added to it that that are usually missed. What we find is when people. People start trying to scale revenue, they, they do what they consider as research and jump straight to execution, right? So they ask their friends, they look at other businesses, they get feedback and they go hire the agency, or they go at a salesperson, right? They jump to execution very quickly. We find that there's really three pieces that we, or there are three pieces we put in front of it, and those three pieces were put there intentionally to offset that problem. The first one's capital. So most founders do the, the revenue rollercoaster, right? So what I mean is they go to an agency, the agency gives'em some sort of SOW. That they might call a strategy and they have to justify spending a hundred thousand dollars on this and hope it works. And then that's most of their budget, usually 90 to a hundred percent of their budget in sales and marketing. And when it doesn't work, they stop. They get disenchanted and they try the next thing. And there's this rollercoaster that happens. Well, if you look at bigger businesses, they don't do it that way. What they do is they come up with a budget. They say you have to spend on sales and marketing in perpetuity. It doesn't turn off and on. You have to continue to do it and overcome challenges as they come up. So like phase one for us is capital and really working with the founder and saying, what's your revenue? What are your targets? What is your budget? What should it be? What are the industry averages? How do you compare to that? Then we look at things like cac, customer acquisition cost. So for example, in a professional services environment, it's very common that the customer acquisition costs is about$5,000. So if you want to add two more customers per month than you did last year, you need to spend 10,000 more dollars per month than you were spending last year on sales and marketing. That's the numbers, right? They don't lie. And as you scale the businesses, the business, those numbers get more and more accurate, right? It becomes more of a finance game than a hustle game. So like part one is that capital piece, really understanding how capital fuels the growth of a business. I won't go so long on two and three, but number two is the strategy. A lot of people put together a strategy and it's more like a scope of work when really, I, I say this, I say, well. I'll ask somebody like, do you have kids? Or, or, you were a kid, right? Your, your parent didn't go, Hey, go pick a car and then I'll tell you whether I'll buy that car based on some general whatever. Some vague, some vague ideas, right? You know, and then the kid comes back with a Lamborghini and says, buy me this car. Right? The parents can be like, yeah, that's not gonna happen. But that's literally how most founders the first time do sales and marketing. Right. They're like, I don't know how much it's gonna cost. Agency gave me a quote, do I wanna buy this? You know, buy this, do I want to do this? So the strategy is all driven by the budget. Your strategy is very different if you have a$10,000 a month budget versus a hundred thousand dollars a month budget. And so everybody has opinions on what you should do. But all of those opinions fall apart very quickly when you overlay what somebody's actual budget is for the next 24 months. And then the last thing we put in before we execute is accountability. What are they accountable for? What results should we see? What is progress, right? And this is very common. I'll use SEO as an example, right? The SEO vendor says, well, you have to keep doing this for long periods of time. And the founder says, well, how much longer? Right until we see a result, well, we can actually come up with those numbers for you and say, this is what you should see. These are the expectations. This is what you're accountable for. And this is the timeline because we've done it so many times, we can hold that vendor accountable for a result we're looking for or, or say, based on our data, you're underperforming. So really it's capital strategy and accountability come before execution. And if you do those first. Execution and the utilization of that money is, is significantly the ROI is significantly higher. Yeah. I was looking to do SEO and I started talking to some really, really smart marketing friends of mine, and they were like, put in, if you go with an agency, put in the contract that you expect to see this amount of results in this amount of time. Yeah, and if the results aren't there, you get discounts on the services, you know, or you don't have to pay. So it was like, ah, it's genius. You know, because yeah, whenever the, the business is, Hey, it may work or it may not work, you know, it's, you know, you want to protect your downside. So that's, that's. Really cool. Yeah, exactly. And many are not going, you know, many of'em aren't going to take those terms. Right. They're like, Hey, I've got five other clients, like, I don't need to risk it. Right? So it's like, okay, you know, well then if, if you find that, then what are, what are the recommendations, right? If you're gonna pay$3,000 a month for SEO and it's gonna work after six months, well then you have to map out those numbers and your CAC is five. Thousand dollars. It's like, okay, well how many clients should we see within six months based on the spend? Right. We can really back into those. And I think for us it's also working with the entrepreneur on realistic results. You know, I had one entrepreneur, they, they started spending, you know, not a lot of money in the sales and marketing realm. They were just getting started and they're like, we haven't seen exponential, exponentially more leads. And I'm like. I don't know how$3,000 a month equals exponential lead increase. Right. Like the, the numbers don't map. It's not a faucet. Exactly. Turn on the faucet and imagine it, the money starts flowing outta it. Yeah. It is not. So those are things we, we walk that journey with them and help them understand like, what should the expectations be? What, when are you far exceeding them versus the vendors really not performing. Those are really candid and good conversations to have. That's awesome. Yeah. Wait, we've actually run up on our time here. It's time flies when you're podcasting. It's crazy. Yeah, it knows. I I wanna ask our final question here, and that is, what is a connection to a person or group of people that changed the trajectory of your life or career? Wow. There's, there's a lot. But I'll, I'll stick to one since, since I just went long-winded on the other answer. I met somebody that I was connected to that really helped me. They were in a, a similar space that I wanted to go into. And so they helped me by bringing me different resources and books and other things that were hard to access if you weren't in that industry. Mm-hmm. And that really played into building up knowledge rapidly for other roles that I got later on. The person also did early in my career. In addition to that, they offered to review my resume and do interview skills with me. And I think that made a huge difference in my, my early career because I basically, I went from. You know, probably when I was about 20, I was probably at like 42,000 a year. And through skills coaching and the other educational aspect, within five years I was at like$130,000 in, in salary, and I really attributed a lot. To the skills coaching from being able to know how to interview for jobs that you had not yet had and how to be confident in those answers. So I'm a big fan of having somebody really teach resume writing and resume interview practice on how people you know should answer certain questions. That's awesome. Yeah, it's, it, it's actually applicable to a situation that I just had. My, my brother-in-law was coming to me and, and he was like, Hey, I think about getting a new job, but I filled out like, you know, thousands of applications or whatever and I haven't heard back from anybody. And I was like, it, you don't need to know what you're doing in the job. You just need to know the person that can get you the job. Yeah. I was like, I was like, let me make a phone call to my buddy who's looking for a project manager. The next day he had an interview, and now he has a job offer that he has on the table. So it's like Nice. Yeah. You know, ance. Yeah. And then he had never done that job before, but I kind of talked to him, talked to him a little bit about how to answer questions in an interview, and he's a natural, like he, he's got common sense, which is, you know, yeah. It helps that, that, that, that right there will get you 90% hired on a, on a job. But yeah, utilizing those people that you know. I, I, I can't recommend it enough. Whenever people come to me and they need a job, it makes me so happy.'cause I'm like, oh, oh, I, I, I want to help. You know, I want, right. I know all these people. Why, you know, and if, especially if you're a good person, right? And I know they're, they're solid. If they're a little wishy-washy, I'm gonna be like, oh, hey, you should go apply. Yeah, yeah. How can I help? Right? Yeah. But for when people that are solid in my life come and ask for help to get a job, I love it. I'm like, let me make some calls, let me see what we can do. And pretty much every single person, I've at least gotten them a few interviews and. So I, I think that's, that's, that's awesome. And, and that sounds like it set you up from a young age to lead you into where you are today. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think, I think it's so crucial to have that mindset understand just that interview process. And then I think the other big takeaway was, you know, for each of those roles that I jumped, you know, 30 and$50,000 was, I had never done that role before. You know, so a lot of people I think, do get stuck in thinking, well, like, I've never done that. They, they hesitate to apply. And for a lot of people that's not the case. Right? I think there was a study that I was looking at a year or two ago, and it basically outlined like the, a very small percentage of people are in a role that also matches their college degree. You know, and it's like, look, you've already done this. You just maybe didn't recognize it. Right? You can go apply for whatever job you want. It doesn't have to be a little incremental step. It doesn't have to be the same role. You know, there, there's lots of other opportunities out there. Yeah. I told him this is some advice I gave him before I made the connection. I was like, apply for jobs that you're not qualified for, but put in your cover letter exactly why you're qualified for it based on the experience you have. Yes. It's like he was a personal trainer. It was like, like take what qualities you used as personal trainer and match it to the job you're gonna have. And literally outline to them before they even read what you've done. Hey, this is why I'm qualified for the job. And I was like, that'll you, if you just do, that'll help you do that. What, like if someone op, if actually opens it and looks at that, there's a very slim chance in my opinion, that you're not at least getting an interview because if you put in the time and effort to say why you'd be qualified for that job, people are gonna want to learn. Yeah. Yeah. Anyways, I could go on about that for a while. Sure. It's a, it's, I'm, I'm actually really passionate about helping people get, get jobs and stuff. It's, it's fun. So we I wanted to go ahead and wrap it up here. So, what is the best way for people to reach out or stay in touch with you, or if they're interested in learning more about founder scale, how to, how to find out about what you guys do? Yeah, you can go to founder scale.com and hit our contact form. I have some great videos on YouTube on a lot of these topics as well, under the Founder Scale YouTube channel. And then you can find me LinkedIn, Josh Sweeney. Awesome. Love it. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. This is a blast. Thanks for having me. My pleasure. Well, guys, if you are still here listening to the show, I just want to take a second and tell you, thank you so much without you listening to the show. This is me having a conversation with my friends on a microphone. So so thankful that you're here listening to our connecting. If you got something out of this episode, please, the best way that we can grow a podcast is to share the show. Click the share button, send it over to somebody else. Tell'em they should check it out. And then if you're listening from a friend that shared, shared to somebody else, would love to grow the show. And we will see you guys on the next episode.