Unbound with Chris DuBois

Chris DuBois
proactivity capital allocation, partnerships and more on today's episode Are you a leader trying to get more from your business and life meter. So join me as I document the conversations, stories and advice to help you achieve what matters in your life. Welcome to unbound with me, Chris DuBois.

Robert injuries is an entrepreneur and investor who's built an eight business empire each generating over seven figures annually, now travels the world while managing his portfolio providing presentations to 1000s of people in three different languages and consulting for business professionals to achieve two to 10x. Higher levels of effectiveness. Robert, welcome to unbound.

Unknown Speaker
Thank you so much for having me.

Chris DuBois
Yeah, I have a lot of questions. But the first one I always ask the guest is what's your origin story?

Robert Indries
Well, I think the most important thing for people to know is I'm a human being right, we're all from the same species, same planet, you know, breathing the same air, you know, living the same life. So I think in a world that loves to divide itself, that loves to find the victim to find the hero, you know, to always have a two sided story, we forget that we should remain humble, we should stick to one another, we like it. We should consider each one of us brothers, each one of our sisters, right. And I know say that from a UI perspective, I say that as reality at the end of the day, you know, if we look at ourselves as one species, us doing harm upon one another, does not help in any way, it just mathematically doesn't make sense. Logically, ethically, in any way you look at it. This just doesn't make sense. So me personally, I was born in I am Hungarian. I was born in a very small town in Romania. There a little over three decades ago. And at that point, still, I don't know, if it's still the case. There was still tug of war going on between Romanians and Hungarians because, you know, the one lost the war, the other one didn't, you know, so. It's it wasn't, wasn't easy. I was getting in fights every single week, you know, a lot of things happened at that, at that period in my life. I got, I became a very good fighter, which is good. So that's, that's, yeah. So if I ever needed, you know, haven't fought anyone in, you know, over a decade or more, you know, so that makes me very happy. But basically, at the beginning, we didn't really have much in terms of financials. We, as children, we didn't really feel need, but we didn't have much either. So our parents did great at loving us, giving us enough food, you know, giving us clothing and so on. But just to give you an idea, the first pair of new clothes I have, I bought when I was 14. Until then, I only had second hand clothes from you know, secondhand markets and so on. So that was my upbringing. And I'm very grateful for it. Because we did have food, we did have a roof. You know, we did have loving parents, we had both of our parents, right, which is a thing you know, so I'm very happy. We had the education it was, you know, not the best because, you know, it was like a low, low town, you know, public schooling, but it was still struggled. I mean, we still learn physics, math, you know, English, and so on and so forth. So incredibly valuable. Again, people underestimate how valuable all of those things are, right? So very happy for that. I then left my parents house when I was 14. My father is a retired Army General Colonnello or whatever, you know, the grades are. So he he had he had very strict rules and I don't really abide well, by rules, because I just like to do whatever I want to do. So I left home. And then because I didn't let leave on the best of terms, I had to fend for myself. So I started picking up odd jobs. And you can't legally be hired in Romania when you're like 14, so I had weird jobs like I was a lumberjack at one point. Another point I was building furniture, the entire furniture in my room. In an apartment we still own today. I built myself you know, over 15 years ago. I was very happy with that. I could buy the wood but I couldn't you know hire someone to build it so I had to build it myself. And then you know various other things. I really enjoyed engineering really enjoyed building stuff. When I was very young, I picked up a book, The, what was called the the evolution of technology. I really loved it, I learned a lot a lot from it, how things work, how the world works, how, you know, the vacuum cleaner works, you know, and so on and so forth. And it just amazed, amazed me. So I said, Okay, I want to, I want to build stuff. I just love this. So that's what I went on doing. I went on learning to build things. My first client was a, my first real client, I had some like small things here and there small projects, friends asked me, but my first real client was a manufacturing plant. They needed all of their workflows. automatized because they were still using pen and paper, which was weird, because they were doing millions a year in revenue. So like, No, you need you need to scale up this, like, even at that age. I'm like, no, no, you need something more. And so long story short, you know, I convinced them to let me help them build that. So I built it. I built everything they needed in around two weeks. They were shocked. They couldn't believe it, because they were in negotiations with a company in Budapest, on a lot of, you know, big amounts of money, it seemed to me back then. And so I told them, I'm going to do it for half the price if they allow me and they didn't believe me, but I still allowed me to try. So I tried. Two weeks I succeeded, built everything they the dev agency said was gonna take them months, you know, I don't know how many months I'm billing them. You know, I don't know how much money. I'm gonna do all of that. That's fine. And then I did. They're shocked. They gave me feedback. And then I managed to implement their feedback. And then it worked. And I did that when I was around 15. So that was my first big project. I love that. I got the bug ever since since then I've delivered on over 200 tech projects. My favorite ones are, you know, I don't know, autonomous flying drones. We closed the deal not long ago to build robots in the medical sector that do 30 different types of scans. It's just, I love it everything that has to do with taking humanity to the next level. You know, I enjoy. And so that's my backstory. And then obviously, since then many things happen. Yeah,

Chris DuBois
it's crazy hearing, hearing some people's backstories and you're like, you have like, similar upbringings. But like one one thing just kind of set you off on a different path. And it's crazy. I think when I was, you know, 15 to 16, I was stocking shelves at a grocery store and pumped about my, what I was doing, I don't know that I'll go back to that. One One thing that I've noticed, though, it seems seems like a trend from your even from your backstory, that you put a lot of value in acquiring skills, and just learning new things. How do you kind of foster that, as you're, you know, so grown up and you have way more, you know, so much. So many more resources, I guess, now, to be able to do these things, how are you so ensuring that you're getting after that?

Speaker 2
So the answer is actually very easy. It might be weird to some, but skill development is my hobby. So when some people pick up hobbies, you know, like I didn't know, playing guitar, or, you know, whatever fishing, or they're all like whatever people like to do with their spare time, you know, watch movies, I like to do pick up skills. I just love it. It just my favorite thing. For example, the other night. My wife was watching some I didn't know house of cards, whatever. She was watching something, you know, the series. It was, I think, I think we started like we finished work at like 8pm. And then we just didn't feel like much. So she started watching some series and like, I don't feel like series. So what am I going to do? I started learning next Jas, and like, hey, like, haven't done anything index js yet? Let me pick up a new language. Right. And this is weird, because like we have dozens and dozens of developers, I never need to code again, right? I never need to do this. But the next time you know, someone's going to tell me what you know what classes they're using, and next Jas, or what components they want to, you know, build or what's available in the market, I will know. Right? Because I've already done it. I've already skilled up. I'm ahead of the curve and anything that matters to me. I pick up. I picked up a lot of law during the years so anyone sends me a contract, I can almost review it as well as the lawyer or sometimes better because I have the business acumen as well and I know what they actually want to do. And so I can change the contract to fit so it's more fit for Breakfast, I'm not going to pretend that I'm a lawyer and I know all of the legal gibberish. But many times you don't need to, because what you need to know is, I told you that I'm going to give you this by this date, you told me you're going to give me this by this date. And these are all of the, you know, if this happens this, then this happens. If this happens, then this happens. Everything explained in clear English. If you explain everything in clear English, you're 90% better than anyone that doesn't know how to deal with contracts. Similarly, with, you know, HR with leadership skills with I took a course last year from Google, well, was it project management course or whatever? You know, I don't need to do project management. But guess what, I didn't take any course on this. Let me just take a certified course from Google. I took the course I loved it, I learned so much, you know, rehash some old concepts that I have? Why not? Like what am I going to do at 4am? In the morning, when I can't sleep? Let me let me just do something.

Chris DuBois
Yeah, well, what I like about it is that, so like, we're limited in our imaginations at some point, because you have your your creative imagination, where you're like coming up something brand new, and then synthetic, where it's like, I'm going to take two different ideas and put them together for something new. And like by bringing on all of these different skills and learning this stuff, even if you may never have to be the developer or the project manager, the ideas for new projects, right? When you can start piecing together things and create something new. It's like, that's what an entrepreneur does, right. And so definitely some value there. When we talked last, we got into a lot of just proactivity, and the need for entrepreneurs to be thinking about the future and not losing opportunities, because they just aren't moving into like making decisions and being proactive in those. Can you talk about some of your experience around just being proactive, and some of the decisions that were put in front of you.

Speaker 2
So I think that people, most people put things off, not because they can to do them or don't want to do them. And I think many people put them off because of lack of mental bandwidth, energy, however you want to call it right, like they can't deal with this. It's literally it's like 6pm, and you're like, I can deal with this today. Literally, it's that's you know how to do it, you know what you need to do, you're like, I'll do that tomorrow, right? It's a problem for tomorrow, or whatever challenges solution thing to do tomorrow. So proactivity means that you prioritize the important over the urgent, it's, it's literally that because it's not like you don't always have a plethora of things to do, you always have more things to do than time in the day. So the only thing that proactivity is, is allowing yourself to be a strategist. And most people aren't comfortable being a strategist, because whilst I'm spending two hours, you know, defining how we're gonna do whatever, you know, my team is burning hot with this new client situation or whatever it was going on. So it's very hard to detach from that, right? It's hard to say, I'm not going to deal with that. I'm just going to do this, right, I'm going to do something that actually matters. So I've noticed that I find strength in productivity, I find stability in that, whilst everyone's cowering, whilst Everyone's panicking while everyone's you know, rushing to do stuff. Like, what are you guys talking about? Why Why would I rush? What What is there to rush? Right? I can you know, some people, if they look at my day, they're like, oh, gosh, Robert, you're, you're lazy, like, No, I work all day. Or they work on things that actually matter. That's why I am where I am. That's why most people and I can say in general, you are where you are, right? Because you don't work on your business. You you just deal with the client issued you do not document what the client issue was, you do not do an analysis of what caused the issue in the first place. And then you don't build a procedure to avoid that issue from happening in the future. It's just as simple as that you do not put in that work. That is the work of the operator. That is the work of the CEO of the chief of ops of the whomever because most people 90 If I remember correctly, 96% of businesses never make it to million dollars which is which means most people don't have a mature leadership team. Which means that you if you're the manager are probably responsible for this right? Okay, if you are you know, 500 people person company and you're the owner, you should probably We have a management team of five to 20 people, and you don't need to do this stuff, but someone needs to do it, right. So if you do not, and by the way, I say need lightly, you don't need to do anything in life, you can do whatever you want in life, right? You can, you know, be a hippie, you know, just use CBD all day or whatever else, you know, and then just enjoy your life, you know, enjoy whatever you want to do with life. And by the way, that has nothing to do with anyone, like literally, you can play video games all day for all I care, you can do whatever you want, just literally be happy. As long as you're happy, the world will be a better place, you know, if you're miserable, being an entrepreneur, stop being an entrepreneur, or just do it differently, right? Talk to someone like Chris, someone like me, someone like anyone, you know, just find a different way of doing it. And then that can potentially make you happy, right? So at the end of the day, the when I say need I mean, if you want a self sustainable, high performing business, this needs to happen. It's like one is a requirement to the other. Right? If if you do not put in this specific type of effort, and you can hire someone, again, to do it for you, you don't need to do it yourself and hire someone to do it. We've been doing it for hundreds of companies. It's not that difficult. But it needs either time or capital or both. Right. And so that's, that's just what you need to do if you're in business.

Chris DuBois
Yeah. So kind of building off of this, like you you consult and coach people on just increasing the effectiveness of their their companies. What other things do you see that they mistakes that they're making, or things that they could just very quickly change the way they're viewing some problems in order to get a better result?

Speaker 2
Okay, so just one small clarification, I've had stopped consulting a little while ago, because we were getting a ton of people in and I noticed that I didn't have the time in the day. So the last time we did consulting, people were paying me 2000 an hour just to talk. And at one point, I might just, I can't keep doing this, because I really give my all right, like it's an hour and you asked me 30 difficult questions that you've been, you know, grinding your brains on for six months? And I answer all of them in that hour. Like I kid you not like every I don't think in five years I did consulting, I didn't answer a question I gave someone a solution of this is your problem. This is how you solve it go, right. And so I've been doing this, and it's very tiring on the brain. And so if I have a few coaching calls, or I used to have a few coaching calls a day, I just, I just need to break, right, I need to relax, I need to think of something else, right? I need to I need to go watch House of Cards or something, you know, I need to just unwind. So in terms of what I see. So right now what we do is instead of coaching we are we are the people that actually go in and build everything for you. So someone comes to us and says my builders, my business is doing half a million right now. And I want to go to a million, or I'm at 20 million, I want to go to 40 True Stories, all of these right? And we say okay, well, let's see what needs to be put in place. And we put that in place. So we put the people we do everything. And then you literally just and many times we tell the entrepreneurs go on vacation for a month, let me do my work, and then come back and you'll have a better business when you're back. Right. And so, this this has happened, I have literally told people at one point, I remember, one of our clients was in an issue, like grave issue from their perspective, I told them, turn off your computer, turn off your phone, do not do anything for next 24 hours, let us deal with it. Right, don't do anything, please just don't just take off, take the day off. By the next day, he comes back. And he's like, What are we doing? What's the plan? No plan, nothing to do. It's already solved. Just move on with your life. What do you mean, it's solved? It's so we dealt with it, it was easy, you know, you don't need to worry, you know, and so on and so forth. So many times, if people would just get out of their way, you know, business would be easier, because it's just math at the end of the day, you know, just this, this, this, this and you know, me as an engineer, I could just, you know, build stuff and they work. So what I see that's the first thing people getting in their own way. Right? They get stressed, they get upset, they get anxious, they get you know, emotional. And then I'm like this is not you know Telenovela, like this is like what what are you doing here? They're either in business, to do business or you're in business to do gossip and to stress and to worry and to what's what's this about? What are you doing? Why are you worrying? Well, because we might lose the client. Okay, and you worrying helps you how, you know, then people that literally people get in their own way And they, they worry themselves, and then they get everyone else in the company to worry, right? And then all of a sudden, you know, five years later, they're wondering why they have, you know, a defective culture, right? Well, because you're defective. Like you have the issue, you're creating the issue, right? If you're always stressed, if you're always yelling at people, or if you're always late on things, and everyone feels late, and so on, obviously, you're not going to have a calm, calculated strategic workplace. You can't be calm, calculated and strategic, you can't expect everyone else to be if you are not, right. And so you need to get out of your own way, start being more reasonable with everything that's going on in your life and start thinking, you know, in terms of solutions, not in terms of problems. So that's one that I notice. Another thing that I noticed is people, like, I mean, people are fearful, or let's call it fear. The main thing is fear. They're fearful of looking like they're incompetent. So I cannot tell you how many times I have to hop on consulting calls. And even recently, when we're doing the work, some of the people that we're managing their business for they're my friends. And so sometimes we have calls. And they're like, Well, Robert, I'm, you know, working, preparing the proposal for this company that's doing at 6 billion a year, you know, and so on. And so true stories, by the way, like real big entities that you've heard of, right? And they're, they're running me through that, and so on. And like, that doesn't sound like what you should be selling them. Like, well, yeah, but that's a puzzle. And this is what we talked about. So like, they're talking about, you know, better than that, no, you should do this, and this and this, like, oh, yeah, you're right, they wanted to ask you, but then, you know, I said, Maybe I shouldn't, like shouldn't why shouldn't you ask me? You know, for a $2 million deal? Why

Speaker 3
should you not ask me what you should do? And

Speaker 2
they're like, Well, you know, I thought they had it, they've done things like that, you know, as one, but this is not about ego, right? This is. And when I say ego, I say it with humility, this person, very humble individual, I love them to death, right. That's why I still, you know, help them and so on. But at the same time, you know, they're scared of, of, you know, not asking for too much, you know, not not putting themselves out there, you know, because they need to be the thought leader, they need to know what they're doing all the time. They need to they need to, they need to write all this pressure. Many entrepreneurs that have succeeded, they're already millionaires and so on. They're under so much pressure, they don't even realize, right, they do not know what the pressure less day feels like. They haven't had one in 10 years. Right. So this is another thing that I see many people don't open themselves up to people like myself, like you like many others, right? That we want to help them. But they really need to say, I think I know what I'm doing. But this is what I'm about to do. What do you think, right? That level of humility, very rare, very valuable, right? Because now we can have a productive conversation of this is where you're right now, this is your next level. Right? And so that's very useful.

Chris DuBois
Yeah, I would say the number of business owners I've talked to, to discuss leadership stuff. And they have said, Leadership isn't my problem. What I need is like more from my sales team, or more from my marketing team. I'm like, Are you sure that's not a leadership problem? Like? Turns out, like, if you can tell, once you tie that back to some some numbers, right, the math of business, then they're like, Oh, it is a leadership problem. You're right. But so something speaking, leadership problems and stuff. Let's talk about where extra money should go when you have it within your company. I think a lot of a lot of businesses have the idea. They can either exploit range just keep putting more in their pocket or they can expand and start growing the company. outwards. You had some interesting thoughts on this. Yes, that's the good.

Speaker 2
So the reason why I've grown so much over the years is because almost 100% of the money we made I put back into our ventures. So if I would make 2k extra a month right? We like we're consistently making took extra like for two three months, I would hire another VA, right if I or whatever I needed, whatever skill set that would free up more of my time, I would immediately hire if we needed a copywriter. So I didn't need to review copy I would hire if we would need the V so that, you know, meetings get booked, podcast gets scheduled, whatever, you know, anything that happens, you know, I will just hire for that. So I would always use capital to buy time, that's my philosophy always use capital to buy time, time is the most precious resource because you can get more of it. And people don't understand it, they, they say they do, and they think they do, but they don't. Because if they would, they would spend all of their money to buy more time, because that's the only thing you don't have more of money, you can make millions of minutes, you can't make millions of you have a set number of million of minutes or hours, whatever, and millions of hours. And then that's it, you don't have any more, right. So you can obviously have more by being healthier, and stressing less, and so on. And guess what better hires and less things on your plate helps you with the same thing, you get to live longer, right, you stress less, you worry less than then you can live more. So that's my main philosophy is I buy time with my capital. And so I can say that if you have more money in your business or more money coming in, that's, that's probably the best thing you can do is look at your org chart and whatever and see, okay, what do I need, or work with companies like mine, and there are many out there and say, Okay, we need more leads, let's hire a marketing agency, right? We need better development for this, we need to develop this higher dev agency, right, please pay them for the project or retainer. But you know, just based on what skill sets that you actually need, I need to get my operations in order, I need my systems or hire management company like ours, and so on and so forth. Right? Like there are so many things like that, that you can do with extra money. So that's what I recommend. That's number one, because that will have the highest positive impact for everyone. Morale, time, you know, scalability, and so on and so forth. Next Best Thing, I believe, in most cases, if you do not have cash reserves, create them, put money, create a savings account, put money there, my rule of thumb is I should have at least three months of runway, right? So if we stopped making any amount of money tomorrow, three months, I'm fine, right? They can still cover everyone's salary for three months. And you know, by that time in three months, should be enough for me to get back to, you know, breakeven or something, right. Obviously, in our businesses, we already have 10s of clients or hundreds of clients or whatever, so there's no chance in which I lose all of my revenue. So the three months of runway, if I lose half of all of my business from one day to the next, last me six months, and six months is more than enough time to get back on track to get clients back to get whatever, right. If I lose 1/3 of my clients from one day to the next, which is a lot I have nine months, right and so on and so forth. So you know, it's simple math. So that's why three months of complete runway, that's my rule in general. And I say it's a rule but when the company is young, you don't have three months of runway, your startup right? If you're a bit more established then you can put that aside Okay, and then another thing that you can potentially do you should definitely pocket a little bit more for yourself but you can pocket it in terms like financially for it to make sense like for example instead of giving yourself an extra two grand pay yourself for an r&r trip right because you can pay yourself bonuses from corporate money like a trip to Hawaii whatever you always wanted to build via Hawaii take yourself your spouse and your children to Hawaii for two three grand and that's something that the business gave you you and your entire family will remember that right you will remember that hey you know Western paid for this right or Robert enrich holdings paid for that or X ray seven paid for this right? You will remember that this car. I got it from here, right? This new watch. I got it from here, you know, and these small things this, this computer, this phone, this whatever. So give yourself these give yourself that but make it meaningful. Don't just give yourself cash many times because it's better to give yourself all of the things that you wouldn't spend cash on otherwise, but you want for like a long time like a vacation, for example.

Chris DuBois
What I guess I'm curious, what advice would you give to a first time company founder trying to get their business off the ground? I know there's a lot of details that could go into that. But

Speaker 2
gosh, I haven't been there in a while. So right now whenever I start businesses I Oh Almost always raise capital. Because I want partners, vested partners in the company success, I don't want to do things alone, I don't like doing things alone. That might come as a surprise. But I'm a co founder, and almost everything I have, I think, maybe one, one of the companies I have, I'm just just me 100%. Everywhere else I own shares, whether that's 80%, or 50, or 20, whatever, it's just mixes of those numbers. And so I have capital first, I don't start to venture without capital, because I don't need to anymore. I think maybe that sounds arrogant. But it's just when, when you're, when you're a different league, you don't, you don't play NFL in the top league, and then go and playing in a different league, you're in the top league, just you play where you are, right, and then you just take it from there. If if I would, if I wouldn't be in my league, let's say I would lose everything right now. I would, I will get the job. Because I need income, I would never let leave myself without income. Many, many people, you know, believe in, you know, passive income, and so on and so forth, or whatever, what I believe is cash flow is king, cash flow flow, getting money every month, month new money into the bank that you didn't have there in the first place, right. So at any point in time, I can make a few calls, and I can get the job for 10 grand a month, and I kid you not I'm feel very grateful. And very, very happy, right? I could potentially even push it to 20, grand or more, right? But 10 grand, I mean, anywhere in the planet, I can live for 10 grand a month, right? So I can easily get the job like that. At any point, let's say you're not there, let's say the best you can easily is, you know, 234 or five, grand, whatever, right? But make sure you get income. If you're doing a business, and you have no income, and you only have cash is dangerous, get to profitability in month one, that is my recommendation. If you cannot get to profitability in month one, get a job. Right? Do not make yourself miserable, right? It's just my two cents, you can do whatever you want, obviously, right? If you're a 20 year old and Harvard, like Harvard, like You're like the next Mark Zuckerberg, like you don't have anything to do with your time and your parents are paying for your tuition and so on, whatever you want to do, it doesn't matter if there are only so many marks out there, because there's only so many people, you know, that are in Harvard, everything's paid for them, you know, they have all of the time in the world, you know, to do whatever they want to do, right? That's rare, that's more rare than not right. And many times, even if the tuition is paid, you know, you have a quarter million in debt that you will, you know, bite your financial book for the rest of your life, right? So it's not like you have all the time in the world. Right? So I would get something that covers all of my bills puts me in a very good place, right. And again, or, or make your business profitable, I do not go into business in which I do not make money in the first month. I just don't, whether that's raising capital, and you know, from the capital, you know, we, we invest that capital in a way that we can make money very quickly, or I start a business and I already have a list of clientele. Right? Like, I don't start the business until, you know, I have Chris told me, Robert, if you start this service, I'm going to be your client and like, here's $500, I want to be your first line, I get 10 of those, right? I already have 5k A month coming in. And then I started the business. Right? I've done this before. By the way, this is not my first rodeo. I've sold products and services before before having them, I collected the money and then I use client money to start the business and then do that. So always cashflow positive. That's basically my recommendation. If you're an entrepreneur just starting off, get the job work for someone like Chris or myself or anyone you know, just find the job. Or get clients immediately right now, if you can't get clients in month one, the business isn't good enough right now for you to do something with it.

Chris DuBois
So now I want to ask how do you how do you approach like kind of validating demand for for a product or service? When you're starting a new company? Like that was a great, great idea, right? If people are gonna already pay me and say if you do this, yes, we validated like this idea is gonna work. How do you approach some of your other businesses?

Speaker 2
So that's a very, very good question. Validation you do in multiple ways. Money is the king of validation. If people throw money at you at the service. That's great. That's the first type of validation the money. The second type of validation is keeping the promise That's the hardest part. If you're selling gold, and you're actually have silver, you're in trouble. You're in big trouble, because people are paying for gold. Right? And you're giving them silver, they're not gonna like you. It doesn't matter how good friends, you are, right? They're not gonna like that. So let's say I started a lead gen company tomorrow, I'm easy. Example, because we own a lead gen company. I tell you, Chris, you know, I'm going to do lead gen for you. I'm going to promise 20 Guaranteed leads every single month you pay me $1,000. The only catch is that you need to pay me in advance every month. And then I guarantee that 20 leads during that month, right? And if you if I don't give you 50% money back, or all the money back, or whatever, I did, whatever. Okay, let's say you love it. It's an amazing offer. Obviously, I would pay for that, right? The only reason I wouldn't is because I've already been burned a few times. And you know, I just don't believe them anymore. But basically, let's say you and nine other people believe that. And I just pocket 10 grand. Now, I need to deliver 200 leads in 30 days. Now that becomes a problem. Because I probably don't know how to do that. And not at that price point. Right? If I do and if I make it work, perfect, well done. Fantastic. Kudos go on. Right, probably, I won't be able to do that. So then then that becomes an issue. I, for example, at one point, we bought a marketing agency that literally shot themselves in the foot with an offer like that, they made an amazing offer, they sold it like called Hey, cupcakes, and then they couldn't deliver. And then they were in financial Jeopardy and so on and so forth. They came to us and like, because they're a past coaching client, and they use our skill sets, they use what we taught them to actually deliver for their clients, they issues they over promised. So in some months, it worked. But then they had dry seasons. And when they had dry seasons, there are contracts that they need to give a refund, right? Like, how can you have a refund, you already put in the work, you already pay the salaries, guess what financial issues, cash crunches, so on and so forth? And I'm like, how did you not foresee this? How do you put yourself in this situation like Robert was working? Like, yes, it works, dude. But it's math, it's simple math, it's never gonna always work. It's just it always is a percentile of it will work. Even if you have a 90% percentile, it's gonna work the 10% that not will make your business bankrupt, right, etc, and so on. I had a long coaching call. But eventually they couldn't get out of it, we bought the business and we took the load. And then we delivered for those clients. So they saved reputation, we saved the clients, blah, blah, it was cool. But obviously, they would have preferred to keep their business, right. And I would have preferred them to keep their business because I don't need, you know, someone else's that you know, is like, Okay, I'm doing just fine on my own. Right. So I just helped them out of that, which was ended up being fine. So at the end of the day, there's validation in terms of can you sell it? And can you collect money, but really collect money, not just promises, like when there's money in the bank? And then two, can you deliver on that promise, right? So those are the two things that you need to validate, if you can validate both at least three to 10 times, you know, depends on the product, obviously, but not once once is like you sold it to your mom, wait to go sell it to three to 10 people, you know, that may or may not have bought from you, right? And so then then do that. And if you can do that, then it's probably validated and you can move forward.

Chris DuBois
Now, how do you go about finding partners for any of your new ventures?

Speaker 2
So typically, partners find me people email me, say, Robert, I've noticed what you've done and so on, someone told me about you or, you know, I would love to grow my business, could you help me, you know, so on and so forth. So, again, many times, or sometimes it's, it's through partners, so we know people like for example, you didn't either ship coaching, right? We, we know people that do leadership coaching, but then their fundamental problem is that they don't have the, the engine in the car, like they have a car, but there's no engine to actually, you know, make all of the wheels go, they need the ops, they need the DevOps, they need that it they need all of that for it to actually scale. And then you as Chris can say, Look, we can talk about this all day long. But in reality, you need someone like Robert to come in and then just drive this word, right. And so this has happened many times in the past where we will be brought in because we are not the consultant we are the implementer right? We work with people like you Chris or with the leaders or whatever, so that we achieve their goals. So at the end of the day, most people come to me and say, Robert, this is what we want to do, what can we do and so on. Recently, it happened. Someone started a business, infinite demand almost, but they can't scale fast enough. And they came to me and like Robert is like We can't deliver enough for these people like we're they're throwing money at us and we don't know what to do. And like, remember that conversation we had six months ago when I told you that I, let's set up this scalability from day one. Why did you not believe? Like, I thought it's easier? Sorry? Like, no, it's not business is not easy, especially at scale, easy to do for 20 clients, what do you do when you have 2000? Clients? You told me what to? Do? You tell me, what are you going to do? When you have 2000? Clients? You don't know. That's the truth, you've never been there, you don't know. So at the end of the day, you need to have the systems in place, you can build them yourself, you can work with someone else. So typically, people come to me, but what I can tell you is, if I were searching, or how do I make a decision whether or not to work with them or not, like how do I filter? Right? How do you filter a partner. So a few things, number one, in terms of the business itself, it has to make the world a better place. If it doesn't make the world a better place, I'm not interested, it's as simple as that. If you sell alcohol, I hope you go bankrupt, I have nothing against you, I really hope you go bankrupt. If you sell tobacco again, I hope you go bankrupt. Right? Just because they would wish you don't exist. I would wish you sell toys instead, whatever, I didn't need to do something else, find something else that you could become very good at and stop killing people in the process. Right? Or, or, or feeding into their vices, whatever, you know, gambling and so on. I've turned down millions of euro dollars in gambling projects, I have turned down millions of dollars in the adult industry. Right? You know what I'm talking about, of people wanting to scale their adult business, right? I'm like, I'm not I'm sorry. I'm not interested. I don't mind if you if there would be a way. Like for you to if you would be like a matchmaking site, right, that unites? You know, I don't know, very wealthy men with very hot women, because that's what they want. Fine. I'm all that I don't mind, you know, do that. That's fine. But that's matchmaking, everyone agrees on the terms, you know, it's perfectly fine. And you know, they start the family or they do whatever they want to do. Right. Anything other than that is not my vibe I not interested? Right. So again, as long as it makes the world a better place. That's number one. Number two, is is it profitable? From day one or month on? Whatever? So if it's already in the business, am I taking on that? Or am I EMI? Or if it's a very new startup or whatever? Can it be profitable, very, very quickly, so that we can sail sustainable is the better word, can it be self sustainable, that we don't need to put money in because as an owner, if I own 50%, someone invites me, you know, to a joint venture, I own 50% if 10k needs to be put in the business, I need to put in five, you know, and that that becomes a problem. Because I don't want to I'm in the place where businesses pay me? Why would I go back to putting my own money into something where it anything I touch turns to gold? Like why would I now give my gold from other businesses and give it to someone else? I don't want to do that. Right? So that's that? Can it be profitable from day one or month one, whatever. So relatively short period of time? And then number three? Is who? Who is that person? Can I work well with them? Right? Are they honest? Are they you know, someone that's straightforward. They tell me what I need to hear, you know, they're there. They put in the work, they have hard work ethic, right? I can give you two examples of conversations I've had with people just to give you an idea. So number one, at one point, I decided to invest in a business and it was a few years ago. And it wasn't, it was like I told you earlier as an intro, I was working with someone you know, or they were doing some consulting and say, Hey, you should talk to Robert, talk to talk to them. They showed me an amazing business plan. They showed me what they didn't tell them. They they convinced me from every standpoint. And like, I really love this. I want to invest, right. And I think he was surprised they were so easy or whatever. But he showed me everything I needed to see. So we went on and I kid you not a day after that, or two days later, the guy calls me like Robert, I'm sorry, I can't sleep and I really have to have a conversation with him like, okay, sorry, what's, what's happening? What's going on? Like, I need to be very honest with you about something and it is very important to me. Like okay, what? Tell me like, I'm already worried like, what's really gonna be? And he's like, Well, Robert, and Christian, like, okay, un 10s of millions of other people. So what? Like, no, but my, my faith is very important to me. You know, I mean, it's very important. You know, I go to church, you know, I'm an important member of the community. You know, I don't lie Not even a little bit, you know, I don't do any shady business stuff. You know, I'm always, you know, if if we lose money because it's the right thing to do, we will do that and so on. I'm like, Dude, that's music to my ears. I love it. Everything you just said, makes me Eve makes me want to invest even more. Like, are you sure because you know, some people can deal with it. I'm like, I can't wait for everyone to think like you. I can't wait for the scammers to die off. I can't wait for the charlatans do not exist, you know, to break leg down or break their necks or whatever. Like, I'm sorry, if I'm being rude. But if those people wouldn't exist, the entire world would be a better place. You know, maybe I'm being utopic when I when I say these things, but I really hope more people would be like that. I am Yeah, but more people would if more people will be like that would be a better place. That's one. And then in another example, we go, we went into business with these other entrepreneurs that they were already millionaires as well. And so we went into the business and I set expectations. I said, we're going into the business together. We are the founders, we will be there at the beginning. However, I do not need a glorified job. I will put my money my capital into this, we will put our effort into this. I can't wait to hire managers to do this work for us. Do we all agree? And said yes, yes. Yes, of course. That's the goal, and so on and so forth. Okay, perfect. We agreed. Few few months in, we have a come have a conversation with them. Because they wanted us to use Slack as a hate slack, just because everyone's like, instant messaging and so on. And so I, I don't like that stuff. I use it because I have to because of my businesses are using it. And that's just where they where everyone talks. And I just let my businesses use whatever tools they want to use, right? Whether use Slack or chat or whatever. But basically,

Speaker 2
it was a very interesting conversation, because they put me on the spot. They're like, Robert, we feel you're, you know, not contributing not part of the business as everyone else. There are four owners, each of us own for 25%. And I'm like, What are you talking about? Well, when we have discussions on Slack, you know, everyone answers, you know, quickly, and so on. So like, in five minutes, we get answers. And then you almost never answer you just give a thumbs up or, you know, you you answered the next day or you know, things like that. And you know, we're just want to be honest with you, like, I appreciate you bringing it up. But, and then we had an entire conversation around. I explained to them, I basically gave them lead lead free leadership coaching, if if your business needs you, at a five minute notice, there's a big problem in the business. There's a very big problem, because people aren't empowered, because they do not know how to take decisions, because they do not have the skill sets to make, do what they need to do, etc. Except whatever the problem is, or a combination of more problems. It's a leadership problem, because that means you are not doing what you need to do as a leader. If we need to be, I'm a millionaire, all four of us are millionaires, why would I go back in time to time where I had to be five minutes at anyone's disposal in the business? Why would I do that to myself? Right? And how is that the logical thing to do in a business? Jeff Bezos isn't five minutes away from anything, if any, he's he's five years away from the smallest problem in the company. Right? It will never reach him that he never would never know what's going on, you know, in Los Angeles that I didn't know what department and I didn't know what, you know, team and so on and so forth. That information is so far away from him, he will never be there. Right? Okay, you you're in a five person business. You're not Jeff Bezos by any regard. Fine. You should still not be five minutes at anyone's disposal. Right? That how is that conducive to good work? How is that conducive to deep work to work? That actually means something. Right? So I had that conversation with them. And I told them, Look, we never had an SLA of within the our response times. We always agreed from the very beginning, that the main goal of this business is for it to be self sustainable ASAP, and for us to not do this work, etc, etc, etc. Right? And then we said that expect those expectations. And guess what, no one expects me to be on Slack anymore, right? Whenever I reply, or reply, and so on and so forth. And I just deal with things in my own. I basically, block time every day to check my comms, right? I block time. And if you if you write me today at 4pm and the next time I check comps is tomorrow at 2pm You're not going to get the reply until tomorrow at 2pm. I'm sorry, it just is just the next time I check comps. Right? And so some people don't sit well with that and I I tell them run business the way you want to run it, I want to live to be 140. And I'm very happy, right? I am very happy making millions. And if you want to make millions in another way, you're welcome to do so it's not my vibe. That's it. So these are the three things right? Making the world a better place can be profitable. And who am I working with? Can we work together? Well as people. Awesome advice.

Chris DuBois
Robert, this has been great. I want to run three more questions by that I ask everybody with the the first being, what book do you recommend everyone should read?

Speaker 2
That's a very good question. I recommend people should read many, many, many books. And if they have requests, they can message me and I can let them know on email. One book that I really enjoyed is the success principles from Jack Canfield. Because there are many, many very good principles in there and just take it one by one, they read the first one, go to the next one, and so on and so forth. Right, like try to implement one by one, but really try to implement don't just, you know, go from one to the next. It took me three weeks to try to implement the first one and I did not succeed. And at one point, I said, I just really want to read the rest of the book. I can't I just, you know, and so I just continued reading and try to implement other principles. But the first one took me so so much time to implement, but it's very valuable.

Chris DuBois
That just that as you sold the book, I need to go see what what that first principle is. Next up, what's next for you professionally?

Speaker 2
That's a very good question. So we are right now, a few things are happening. I always start or go into 123 businesses every year, because I want to keep growing my portfolio. And so I'm looking for opportunities right now. However, this year specifically, it looks like I came up with something that I personally want to do. So we just launched so two things. Number one, we just launched a vendor, which I believe is the ultimate business process optimization platform, if you want to run your business properly, the way it should be run, you should go check out Oh vendor.com Because it helps you define all of your procedures. And whenever you give a task to someone, they have to follow procedure, you can't just randomly give someone a task, you need to be strategic about your quarterly goals, you need to put everything in there properly, everything has a due date the check up. And so I like it's it just forces you to think strategically. And, you know, obviously, if anyone has any questions, you know, they can email me, Robert, that'll vanda.com. And I'll help them set up and so on and so forth. So basically, that's what we have right now. And my next venture right now. That's in the ideation phase, I've extrapolated the business model for next five years, I cannot believe how much money this venture can make. I'm looking for funding right now for it. And so, first come first serve as, obviously if you know, I vibe with the person, and so on and so forth. But basically, I will raise money for that and then start working on that long story short, you know, it can get to 50 million, at least in five years, which is big, it's huge to get to 50 million in five years. It's like, let me tell you, statistically speaking, 0.01% of business together or less, right, like, no businesses get there, that's statistically speaking, no one gets to 50 million, and I extrapolated, crazy conservative, I showed it to someone that's already like, they're like in their 60s. And, you know, they've been in business like I, I appreciate their counsel, and so on and so forth. And they looked at my numbers, the way I put everything in there, like, Robert you so under valued everything here. It's crazy, because like, I put things like, you know, one per month, you know, on things that I could get 10 You know, or whatever, like KPIs, you know, and so on. And they're like, Robert, this is, this is crazy. I don't know how the math works on this. I've never seen something this real write on numbers on the sheet until now. So very good feedback. So I'm going to show it to a few investors in the next few weeks. Right? If anyone's interested, obviously they can ping me and then if it's not already gone, I expect the first investor I show it to to actually bite. Maybe I'm being a bit cocky about it, but I just did so good that I doubt anyone that has capital is not going to be like oh my god, here's my money, you know, just go build it. Yeah, so right. That's,

Chris DuBois
that sounds awesome. And then finally, where can people find you?

Speaker 2
So if anyone Google is my full name, Robert English, they can just, you know, find me. I'm sure the show notes and the title will have it. First brief three pages of Google shouldn't be about me. My website should be the first thing, Robert index.com. And if anyone wants to ask me something, or hop on a call, or whatever things of that nature, if they own a business, and they want to take it to the next level, whatever things of that nature, they can just email me at Robert to their.com. They mentioned unbound and they mentioned, you know, Hey, pay per Chris's podcast and so on. And that's why I'm here and then I promised to reply to

Chris DuBois
them. Awesome. That's appreciative. Of course. Robert, thanks for joining me. This has been a great conversation. Very insightful.

Speaker 2
Thank you so much. Great questions, and I look forward to hearing listeners feedback.

Chris DuBois
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